texts: Becoming professor and showing autonomy - when to exclude supervising professor from co-authorship

texts:
Following common scenario:

You wrote a proposal for a larger several million € research project with several university partners after your PhD, the project got funded and you are the project manager, the professor is project leader and official applicant and principal investigator mainly visiting the regular meetings of the research alliance but not doing the micromanagement of employees, Phd students etc. He also encouraged the project leader to go for tenure, write a habilitation thesis etc.

The problem I see: A researcher seeking tenure has to show autonomy, especially postdocs should leave their Phd supervisor for 1-2 years and join other research groups or industry before coming back to the old group and leading a subgroup. This is not written into stone, but advantageous facing a committee deciding professorship and many professors did go similar way.

In germany now the junior professorship exists with and without tenure after the professorship. But also the habilitation is still common to work for a professor.

But how can you sell your autonomy? Should you negotiate hardly with your professor to publish some work on your own with him as a coauthor (who did neither conceive the experiments, in best case only review the publications internally before submission). Do you highlight you have to compete with junior professors later facing committees and need this autonomy in publications, also technically you are not the principal investigator, but do 95% of work to get money and conduct the project?

It's a delicate question to discuss this with your professor which you owe more or less for your PhD, but who also made profit from your work. Ethically, I know my professor has not many good reasons to be a co-author doing not much more then visiting meetings and reviewing the publications. Technically this is the common case, but due to junior professorships I think the situation changed a lot in comparision to 10 years ago when habilitation was the common and only way to become professor working until then for an already tenured professor.

EDIT: this is experimental sciences. So you are often dependent on expensive lab equipment of your supervising professor. Maybe an idea then is also to work more on theoretical papers, then authoring alone should be acceptable/negotiateable with professor?


texts: Does the Portuguese higher education system follow Humboldt's model?

texts:
According to the other question on Academia SE, the Polish higher education system closely resembles the German one:

Which country or countries inspired the post-communism Polish higher education system?

Polish higher education follows Humboldt's model so does German education. I personally hate Humboldt's model as it is a time-hog in the case of undergraduate and masters levels.
Does the Portuguese higher education system follow Humbolt's model?
If No, which model do they follow?


texts:
(I'm a math PhD student)
I'm writing a paper and part of my work relies on an old result of my advisor.
Recently, I started to become concerned that the old result does not have a proof (only a sketch) and I have a hunch that the proof is considerably harder (or possibly just much trickier) than the sketch makes it look.  (It's possible I'm wrong; it concerns an area that I'm more of a novice in.  However, I know enough that I couldn't cite this result without at least reading the sketch.)
Not only that, there are certain questions I have not been able to address as it pertains to my results, and the more I have thought about the missing proof of the old result, the more confident I have become that those questions could be addressed if I knew the missing proof.  Therefore, not only does some of my work rely on this old result, but I may be able to substantially improve it if I figure out the old one.  (To put it differently, in my own brain at least, the old result is an important open question.)
Further (and, ironically, this was brought to my attention by my advisor), there is a rather big theorem in our research area that relies on the old result.  It's troubling to me that I don't know how to prove the big theorem without it, and it could be an issue for the larger community if, as I suspect is possible, no one knows how to fill out the sketch in the original paper.
It may be that this is simply an open problem that has been overlooked.
I am discussing this with my advisor and I'm concerned that he won't be willing to show me how to fix the sketch or to make time for us to come up with our own proof.  (We discussed it previously, before I had understood its importance, and his explanation followed the sketch in the paper.  It looks possible that my advisor and his coauthor overlooked the difficulty in turning the sketch into a proof.)
What's worse is my advisor is starting to get a bit defensive about it (or that's my impression).  I don't doubt that he will eventually hear my concerns, I'm simply worried that he will want to move on or will admit that he no longer knows how to fix it; and I don't want to sit around waiting until that happens.
Is now a bad time to reach out to a junior person in the field (who I know and trust) asking if they know how to turn the sketch into a proof?  I would not phrase it as "I'm concerned the old result is wrong," but as "What am I missing?  I'm new to this particular problem, is it known how to address this kind of issue?  Have you read this part of the paper before?"  I would ask that this person not discuss it with my advisor before we had come to a conclusion and have the entire conversation via Zoom rather than e-mail.  At the end of the day, I don't want to bother my advisor with technical details from old papers, whereas the person I have in mind is someone I trust to listen to my questions and take the details seriously.
My concern is if my advisor hears about it, he could misunderstand my intentions and think I'm telling others his old result is wrong.  However, this issue is pretty distracting right now and I just want to know I'm not missing something that really is obvious or understood by experts.  If that's the case, then I can stop pressing my advisor about it and move on to other things.
I could wait until this takes its course with my advisor; it's just that he's busy.  In retrospect, I wish that I had asked someone else first (before my advisor) so that I wouldn't be in the awkward position I'm in now.


texts:
I'm writing a small paper on statistics in science and I was wondering whether in most fields researchers do their own statistics, or do they usually have a statistician in the department to do it for them?

For example, say I am a researcher in psychology at a university and I designed and performed an experiment. I now have the data I wanted and it needs to be analysed. Will I do this myself or will I ask a statistician to do it for me? What is usual in science?


texts: Supervisor keeps "showstopping" defense with nit-picky grammar errors

texts:
My supervisor keeps on delaying and postponing my defense date, taking long periods of time between revisions (1 month of "revision" where the document is in his hands).  He has done this 2 times already, so I have been sitting here waiting for a total of 2 months now.  This last "revision" he sent it back to me with six or seven nitpicky grammar errors, (ie places I had left out words such as "the" or "when"), and the content-related comments he had were extremely trivial.

I feel like he keeps on showstopping my defense date due to nitpicky grammar errors, and it is impacting my career (obviously, my Master's degree now has 3 years on it, instead of the expected 2).  At this point I don't care about grammar errors (and I believe we must have found them all already) or clarity of expression or making perfectionist type improvements.  I feel really angry and I feel like writing a letter of complaint to my graduate program director.  Each term I have to stay bleeds more money out of my account, and the situation is making me really upset.

So far, I've been very polite and professional and have not "exploded".  I've hidden my emotions and my anger and not complained about what I feel is getting quite ridiculous.  Should I complain? Should I let him know how I feel?  Or should I just keep on going with it and "grin and bear" until it's over?


texts: Making latex sourcefiles publicly available by default

texts:
Question: where can I find (legal/pragmatic) information about having latex source files for scientific articles publicly available on github?
Or, how would you deal with it?

Problem description:

I like using git for collaborative tex'ing. So why not use it for scientific articles as well? Put up a github repo, collaborate, submit to arxiv while tagging the corresponding commit, incorporating reviewers suggestions, etc. Also, it comes at the additional benefit that not only a compiled preprint on arxiv is available but also your latex sourcefiles. This I think is desirable in terms of transparency and also others can easily reuse/extend complex latex bits you have in your articles.

Most publishers don't have a problem with arxiv preprints. But what about github repos? They don't contain the pdf, but in general, everyone would be able to compile the stuff from the source files on github. Would the source code on github then considered the same as the compiled preprint on arxiv?

I feel like the authors I know, that are using github, they might even just use github without thinking about the potential legal consequences (yes because it seems rather unlikely someone searches through the github repo). Also, if one knows upfront where the article might be submitted to, one can check the legal situation for that particular conference/journal. But sometimes one doesn't know beforehand, so one could end up having the latex source files publicly on the web, for a publication where this is not allowed?

I am looking for a pragmatic answer to this problem, as I think using github for scientific writing is just very efficient and good. Having the sourcefiles in addition to the compiled preprint available seems also desirable to me.


texts: Can I ask a Master's student to have their text proofread?

texts:
I am supervising a master student for his thesis in a technology field. His English is so-so and it takes quite a bit of work to correct it. I feel that correcting English is not my job, but to correct the technical aspects of the manuscript. Back when I was a student, I knew of students whose English wasn't that great and who would ask friends to correct their grammar, spelling, and wording. Can I ask my student to have his text corrected in this way—of course not the technical content! I would not consider it "somebody else's work," since it would also not count as contribution in the sense of authorship. However, I am also not sure whether it is rude to have him ask somebody else to proof-read. At my university we even have an official proofreading service (but only for PhD candidates), so I would expect it to be okay.

Edit: Good answers! Thanks. Just to clarify: The English (which is none of our's mother tongue) could be a lot worse and I had worse. With my last two students I did the mistake of correcting everything, which was a lot of work. Now I thought back and asked myself whether this is really my job. According to the answers - it actually isn't. Thanks!


texts: Who to ask for letters of recommendations?

texts:
I am an undergrad from a pretty unknown Asian university and I would be applying to PhD programs (mostly US) in pure mathematics this application cycle. However, my major is physics and my intention to switch fields came relatively late, and therefore very few math professors know me very well. I have taken as much upper division pure math courses as my schedule allowed, with courses in analysis, algebra and geometry/topology. I will hopefully have taken 11 one-semester upper division and graduate courses by graduation, but 6 of them will be taken this year.
I am now trying to gather the three recommenders needed for application. My thesis advisor is a math professor and I have been doing some independent study under him for quite some time, but I was struggling in choosing the remaining recommenders. I have a few candidates:

A physics professor from an Ivy League university supervising a summer research project on supersymmetry, though this particular project is not very mathematically intensive,
A math professor from my home uni teaching me a graduate topology course this semester (this is the first graduate course that I have formally taken due to curriculum constraints); I don't have much interactions with him though,
A math professor from my home university who taught me an undergrad algebra course on representation theory last semester: we had a bit more interactions but I haven't worked closely with him,
A math professor from my home university that I have been doing some small group study under, but he is not very closely involved (our small group does meet weekly but he only occasionally comes in and discusses) and we started fairly recently; since I also hope to do an MPhil under him if I don't get an offer, I'm a bit worried whether asking him for a letter at this stage will make him feel negatively about taking me in as a master student.

Any advice would be helpful. Thank you!


texts: In mathematics, is it a problem if all research is joint with senior co-authors?

texts:
If a mathematics postdoc's publications are all co-authored with established senior co-authors (e.g. advisors), could it be a problem when applying for tenure-track jobs? I wonder in particular if hiring committees discount candidates who do not have either sole-authored work or work co-authored with peers. If this is a problem, to what extent can it be mitigated by letters from the senior co-authors?

Edit: I meant to ask about pure rather than applied mathematics.


texts: Applying to a Math PhD program which doesn't require GRE as a physics/math major

texts:
I finished BS degrees in math and physics, and doing MS in physics.

I will be applying for PhD programs (mostly physics), interest in mathematical physics, and have taken only the Physics GRE. I found that Stony Brook mathematics dept does not require math GRE, so I am asking:

Can one expect to reasonably predict if it look bad to apply without a math GRE score, given that my background in math is (all pure courses starting from multi-var calc/linear alg/diffeq two semesters of analysis one semester of abstract algebra, undergrad diff geom., two semesters grad. diff. geom., currently in grad. analysis (and of course self-taught measure theory and point-set topology, complex analysis)) all A's.

No publications so far, but independent study in physics in understanding solitons of various classical field  theories, and string theory interpretations (used a little diff. geo (ADHM)).

And could one be able to predict if recommendation letters from at least one string theorist in a physics department will have as much impact as a rec. from a mathematics faculty?

Thanks


texts: Difference between 'PhD by Published Work' VS 'h.c. PhD' VS 'Dr hab'?

texts:
I have just learned of the 'PhD by published works' which appears to be a fairly common program for schools in the UK. Is this similar to an honoris causa conferral or is it some separate program?

After reviewing materials on the Oxford Brooks & Warwick sites it appears that the entire program is just preparing a defense, which sounds a bit like Habilitation at first pass but it also seems that these programs are not restricted to current PhD holders.

Can anyone shed a little light on this for me?

Thanks.


texts: The person who created the application I used for a study wants to help analyze the data

texts:
I used a commercial tool created by a small company to perform quantitative analysis of medical images for a study that I did.  I was very conservative in my statistical analysis and consulted with a university-employed biostatistician throughout the process.  The results were negative.  I presented the results at a conference and have submitted the paper to a journal where it is currently under review.

The problem is that the founder of the company whose tool I used came up to me after the presentation and started to interpret my results differently, putting them in a more positive and hopeful light.  He is an engineer and is, of course, highly knowledgeable about the tool we used since he developed it.  However, he wants to help us re-analyze the data since he 'saw some interesting results' in my presentation.  I feel uncomfortable about this since I believe there is a conflict of interest at play if we were to work directly with him.  I think he has a clear economic incentive to promote his analysis tool, and I can see how the results of our study might influence the perception of his product.

Am I overthinking this situation?  What level of cooperation with this person would be acceptable from a COI perspective?


texts: Why is it customary to call people with doctoral degrees doctors but not people with masters degrees masters? They are both graduate degrees that supersede the undergraduate degree.


texts: How should I tell my advisor that I want to leave my undergraduate research position?

texts:
I am about to wrap up my first semester at my University. Before school had started in the summer I had developed an iOS application for the University which gained the attention of one professor, before the semester had even started he emailed me and informed me of a research position he think I'd be interested in. It turns out that I have experience in exactly what they are doing and it sounded like it would be a great fit.

I accepted the position, it took about a month before I met who I would be working with and how exactly I would be applying my experience. I found out that my colleague developer is a foreign graduate student who doesn't speak much English and has hardly any experience with our technologies. We setup weekly meetings to do something, nothing is ever accomplished at these "meetings". Most of the time the professor cancels the meeting due to "conflicts" an hour before they are supposed to take place

Overall I've got several problems with my current position:

No way to collaborate with my colleague due to a language barrier and no structure in our work environment

No clear objectives for what I should be doing with my time have been laid out, yes I've asked. I get responses back such as "Do some iOS stuff with "Bob"" Whenever I sit down to work, I really don't have an idea on what he's expecting so its hard to put in any meaningful hours.

Extremely low pay for what I am doing, the technologies I am working with are not simple and I am getting paid about 1/5 what I would if I was at a company. I know this is an academic position but it's hard to be motivated knowing I'm getting low pay.

The project I am working on seems to be some project that has been hanging around and he is just trying to produce "results" with the grant money.

Overall I just have no interest continuing to work with this professor. What is the best way to tell that to him?


texts: Is this footnote from one of Perelman's papers meant to be a joke, or is it mandatory to list one's source of funding?

texts:
In one of Grigori Perelman's papers, on the first page there's a footnote where he says,

  ∗St.Petersburg branch of Steklov Mathematical Institute, Fontanka 27,
  St.Petersburg 191011, Russia. Email: perelman@pdmi.ras.ru or
  perelman@math.sunysb.edu ; I was partially supported by personal
  savings accumulated during my visits to the Courant Institute in the
  Fall of 1992, to the SUNY at Stony Brook in the Spring of 1993, and to
  the UC at Berkeley as a Miller Fellow in 1993-95. I’d like to thank
  everyone who worked to make those opportunities available to me.

Is this footnote from his famous paper meant to be a joke, or is it actually necessary to list one's source of funding, even if it is just one's personal savings?


texts: Statement of Interest for Ph.D. admissions

texts:
I am trying for a Ph.D. (computational biology) at IMSc, India (link). They are asking a covering letter, a statement of interest, a curriculum vitae including university grades/marks. When I searched about statement of interest, some webpages were dealing this same as thesis proposal. So I am confused.

Is statement of interest, statement of purpose and thesis proposal same?


texts: As an international instructor, should I openly talk about my accent?

texts:
I'm an international, teaching at an American university, and I have an accent, which can be strong at times. I'm working hard at it, have always been, but still, the accent is there.

This has never been a problem in my career as a researcher because I was most of the time working with senior researchers and grad students. And even if they were native, they've never expressed any concern about my accent.

I'm sure that several times they didn't understand a specific word I was saying but they catch the meaning from the context. Sometimes, people asked me to repeat in an informal way by simply saying "what's that?" or "say it again".

Last year, when I started to teach undergrads, which are unlikely to have experienced different accents, I had some issues.
Some students asked me to repeat and I gladly did. My concern is related to those students that didn't ask, either because they are shy or because they thought that by asking I would be offended.

This next semester (yes, I'm going to teach in the summer) I'm thinking to tell my students in the very first minutes of the first class about my accent and tell them that I'm totally fine if they need me to repeat some words.

I'm not sure about it, because I've read that the first 6 minutes with a new class are the most important ones, and by showing this "weakness" they will conclude that I'm not capable, knowledge-wise, to teach them.

A mentor of mine told me I should talk openly about my accent, and add that in addition to English, I fluently speak two other languages and can understand two others. Trying then to make a balance between my "weakness" (my accent when speaking English) and my knowledge with languages.


texts: How do you manage to work on multiple research projects?

texts:
Things that make multiple research projects different and single project:

Inertia that sets in once I have spent a few weeks on single one of them. The 'switching cost' seems too high to me, and it leads to not much being done first few days of switching to the other project.
Pressure of producing 'visible' results every few months to keep manager/sponsors happy.
Pressure of keeping up with literature related to multiple topics.

What can I do optimize my work productivity?


texts: Is there a reason to spread your research into multiple journals instead of just one?

texts:
Suppose one works in field X, and has say two or three manuscripts ready for journal submission. Journal A is a good fit for all the manuscripts, but journals B and C would be appropriate as well.

All else being equal, is there any benefit in having papers in different journals? Does it hurt to have all of your papers, or say a substantial amount of them, in the same journal A? For example, would it be a good idea to submit one to journal A, and the other one to journal B?

I could think of someone saying "I read journals B and C, but not A", so in this sense spreading your research in different journals would make sense. But maybe this is not so typical to begin with.


texts: My friends wanted to kick out our lecturer

texts: At my university, there is a lecturer that my friends dislike. I think he is a genius and really knows algorithms and programming. He is easily accessible and will talk with everyone. However, some of my friends dislike him because his teaching method. He often gives difficult questions and we had troubles on his exam. They created a petition to remove him. I hope he is not kicked out by them. What should I do?


texts: Use the keyword 'Internet' or 'internet' in our publications?

texts:
So far all research papers I read and wrote I used the word 'Internet' instead of 'internet'. I did see an online article about the fact that people are using 'internet' more often nowadays, so should we still keep using it as before?

My Take: the word 'Internet' is a name, that represents a technical infrastructure of many layers (networks, computers, programs, etc.) and its many users as a whole. So I think, the keyword 'Internet' should always be written with capital I. Am I wrong here?


texts: How do theorists in STEM fields update equipment?

texts:
As a theorist my chief capital costs are software and computers (for large calculations and simulations). If starting at a new institution I would ask for these in my start up budget (about 20k USD). But in 5 years these items might all be obsolete and incompatible. What do I do then?

I understand that most schools have computer replacement programs every x years but the type of computers I would be asking for in start-up are quite expensive and not your typical campus machine.

I am curious what other theorists have done. Especially interested in those that might be at a primarily undergraduate institution.


texts: Why is my Google Scholar profile not in English language when I search my name in Google?

texts: I read all comments for fixing my problems regarding my Google Scholar profile. When I search my name in Google, my Google Scholar profile appears in the Indonesian Language. I fixed the cookies, I changed the language to English from this link (https://scholar.google.com/scholar_settings?hl=en#1 ), I manually changed the URL, but as soon as I leave my Google Scholar profile and search for it on Google, the same problem still exists. It seems I never changed the language in my profile. I checked my account languages to make sure that there is no Indonesian language there.


texts: Is using academic writing services for a thesis considered plagiarism? Can they write in an original fashion?

texts:
There are many academic writing services (editing, proof reading and writing from scratch). These services range from writing basic essays to research papers and dissertations.
I will use editing and proofreading services because my mother tongue is different from the language of thesis.
I distrust these kinds of services, can they really do job appropriately and according to suitable form? Is this considered plagiarism and can they write in an original fashion?
Has anybody used these kind of services and what are your experiences?


texts: Should we put the references in slides/poster when we already have them in paper?

texts: After reading this question about slides making and asking myself two questions about poster making and TED talking, I realize that these activities are for showing what you found, make the audience be attracted. If they need further explanation, they should read your paper, which has successfully defensed and proved that your work is validated. One important thing when you attempt to attract people is concentrate on the important, which means unnecessary things need to be trimmed. I think the reference is one of those. So, should we put the references in slides/poster when we already have them in paper?


texts: Should each substantive chapter of a PhD dissertation be of similar length?

texts:
A professor told me once that the chapter sizes (measured in number of pages) in a PhD dissertation should be coherent. That is, the number of pages in each chapter should be somehow close to each other (to the average). Note: This does not include the Introduction and Conclusion chapters.

Is this really an important factor when writing a dissertation?


texts: Why are GPAs calculated the way they are?

texts: At most schools an A is a 4.0, an A- is a 3.7, and so on. I feel like this system is not really representative of a person's true skill. For example, a person who got a 100% in a class will get the same GPA as a person who got a 94% in the class. However, a person who gets a 91% in a class will get a significantly higher GPA than someone who got an 89%. Why don't schools base GPA off the actual percentage that someone gets in a class instead of their letter grades?


texts: Referencing a mathematical result already obtained

texts:
I was working(in maths) for some months on a paper. After I got the results, I found out that some of those were already obtained in another paper that was not very related to my topic. In fact, in that paper, the result is stated as of 'minor' importance because the main purpose of the paper was quite different. It is the technique that he used to prove this, the one that I rediscovered and used in my paper to prove this result and others in the same domain. Due to this, I didn't have a reason to search there in the first place. Although I have other results in my paper, this one was one of the main ones. Of course, I want to cite the old paper.  Hence my questions:

Is it worth publishing this with a proof?
Assume now that I do publish it with proof. Is a phrase like: "Although we arrive at this result independently, it turns out that this was already obtained in [Ref]" acceptable in the paper?
Is there a more correct way than the phrase above to cite the old paper?


texts: How can I overcome academic "researcher's block"?

texts:
I work as a senior academic in an important university in Europe. My name is in several publications in top journals in my field.

I have always published papers together with brilliant collaborators who really made the difference but they are not there any more.

I am working on a new paper as a solo author but I am suffering a mental blockage and serious problems of anxiety.

I have previously published some papers as a solo author but I need help with this new paper. The difference now is that I am not able to start writing the proof demonstrations and therefore I cannot attract collaborators. Blank page syndrome. When I try to work on it, I have panic attacks. It's not a lack of skills because I have previously performed at a high level, I am blocked because I am used to collaborative work and talk about work helps me develop my ideas. I am now in a vicious loop, without proofs to attract collaborators and without collaborators to develop proofs

I was invited to give a seminar on my previous paper in an American university. I could use that opportunity to talk with them about my new ideas. I also spoke with some of my department colleagues. They are waiting for me to develop a bit more the proofs to decide whether my idea is feasible and collaborate. They are busy and will not help me at the moment. Right now, I am alone with my unsolved proof and my panic attacks.

Two questions:

How can I overcome this mental block when working with theoretical mathematics?
My job is my life, I don't want to leave academia but this situation is killing me. Should I leave academia or stay regardless the consequences?


texts: How is a Masters different from the first two years of a PhD in the same field?

texts: I'm interested in Neuroscience research but haven't quite made up my mind about what sub-field I want to specialize in. I think taking courses from various sub-fields will help me take a decision. Should I go for a Masters first or a PhD directly? If I go for a PhD, will I have enough time at the beginning of my PhD to explore different areas and then choose a supervisor, say after around 2 years into the program?


texts:
What are the possible benefits or consequences of submitting my dissertation to ProQuest?

My university recommends submitting dissertations to ProQuest. I am wondering about the practices and academic reputation of this company, and whether or not it is in my best interests to follow the recommendation of my institution.

Does ProQuest support academic work? Do they charge exorbitant fees to access their content?


texts: Is it inappropriate to ask a professor for multiple letters of recommendation (at different times)?

texts:
I'm applying for an Honors program within my college during my undergraduate degree, and need a letter of recommendation from a professor in my specific field. However, because there are few professors in this field who have taught my classes, I'd need to ask someone who already provided me with a letter last year (for an award, which I won, if that makes a difference).

I know the question of "how many recommendation letters" was answered here, but I'm referring to letters requested at different times, far apart. Will this individual, if they remember me, likely be annoyed that I returned to them? Do professors save these things (perhaps they could recycle the same letter)?


texts: Dropping UK PhD - is it worth switching to MPhil?

texts:
I am just over two years into a CS PhD, and have decided to drop out. I was in a competitive field, and found it difficult and frustrating trying to make a worthwhile contribution. I didn't complete many of my experiments as it became apparent they were not sufficient, though I've done an extensive survey of the literature. Talking to my supervisor, he offered me a transfer to an MPhil course instead.

I have no interest in pursuing academia further, and intend to move into industry. I already have a reasonable STEM BSc and good CS MSc from top UK universities, and I'm confident in my tech skills (although some are a bit rusty after two years of research). I feel like I can explain my choice of leaving positively at interview. On the other hand, I have limited work experience, and there are skills I've learned in my PhD which I have no evidence for.

Given this, how does an MPhil compare to simply dropping out, purely in terms of my CV and employability?

Edit: in my mind, the difference is between listing "PhD in [topic] (not completed)" vs "MPhil, dissertation: [topic]" and I'm wondering if the latter is significantly better due to the qualification and documentary evidence.


texts: Should academics be concerned about professorwatchlist.org

texts:
There is a relatively new website: http://professorwatchlist.org/ whose mission:

is to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.
Help us identify, and expose more professors who have demonstrated liberal bias in the classroom.

What are the likely consequences for a US academic that is exposed as having a liberal bias in the classroom?


texts: We have a multi-author conference paper. What to do if one co-author does not respond when extending it to a journal paper?

texts: We have a multi-author conference paper. However, when we try to extend it to a journal paper, one co-author does not respond (and thus we cannot obtain permission of the submission). The extended part itself is hard to form a paper by itself (and it will be incomplete even if possible). Let's assume that this co-author will never respond. What should we do in this situation?


texts: In practice, how secure is a tenured position in the US?

texts:
Coming from France, where any official academic position (i.e. associate professor or full professor, or equivalent positions at public research institutes) is a civil-servant one, and therefore automatically for life, I've been always intrigued by the "tenure" system in the US.

While reading the Wikipedia article, I spotted the following paragraph:

  While tenure protects the occupant of an academic position, it does not protect against the elimination of that position. For example, a university that is under financial stress may take the drastic step of eliminating or downsizing some departments.

Does this kind of elimination/downsizing occur a lot in practice? Is it possible to "cheat" and to pretend to cut a position in order to save money just to get rid of a tenured professor? Are there some laws stating that if a position is cut, then another equivalent one cannot be created right after?


texts: How to know if one is suitable for pursuing academia or Research work their entire life?

texts:
I am a PhD student in engineering in an university in Canada. I am close to completion of my thesis but I am not very proud of my work. I have couple of publications from my work, all in decent journals. I feel that I have not utilized the opportunities available to me and wasted time in personal activities that did nothing to my CV.

Owing to my inadequate performance during PhD. I am constantly regretting my decision of pursuing higher studies. I was never a star student. My undergrad was from a very low ranking school where I had received very average grades. However, I somehow got into the top graduate school where too I struggled in getting average grades. My research there was very unimpressive and not a single professor urged me to pursue PhD. My master's advisor even expressed shock when I had asked for his recommendation for applying to PhD school.

However, luck struck again, and I got into a reputed PhD program. My advisor has had a lot of patience with me. She is a hands off kind of person, but she has never complained about my performance till date. Now as I am completing my thesis, I am confused about my future career trajectory.

I feel like I do not belong to academia or research industry as I don't possess the necessary skills (sound technical skills, exceptional analytical skills and focus). I feel like a failure who is in a wrong profession. I really don't know what to do now.

My only reason for pursuing PhD in my current field of study was that I loved the process of researching. I loved finding reason behind why a physical phenomenon occurs. But, I now feel that just love for research is not an adequate reason for doing PhD or master's degree.

In short; I have realized that I am not not suitable for academia or research industry as I don't possess the necessary skills for pursuing research. I should have taken the engineering job after my undergrad as I was never built for a life in research.


texts: Abbreviation of Doctor of Philosophy: PhD or DPhil?

texts:
I am a bit confused about the proper abbreviation of Doctor of Philosophy. I sometimes read that this person obtained his D.Phil from X University, while someone else obtained his PhD from Y University. According to Wikipidia:

  The University of Oxford also abbreviates their Doctor of Philosophy degree as DPhil but in other respects is equivalent to a PhD.

Is it up to me to decide what abbreviation to use?


texts: When asked to clarify a point to the reviewer, should I do so in the paper itself or the response to reviewer?

texts: Today I got letter from the editor of a journal saying that the reviewer found my work interesting but there are some points which he wants me to clarify. Now, one of the points he made is that he doesn't understand how I got from equation x to equation y and he wants to clarify how. Does that mean that I need to explain this in the paper itself or in the document that is send along the revised version, which explains my respond to the reviewer and what I have changed in the revised version?


texts: What to report as impact factor for a journal that had one the year I submitted my manuscript, but not in the year of publication?

texts:
I had submitted a paper in a journal whose impact factor was .78 according to Thompson Reuters citation reports in 2013. My paper got accepted in that journal and was published in 2014. The journal did not receive any impact factor for the year 2014. Sometimes I have to mention the impact factor of my papers with them but I do not know how to find the impact factor for this particular journal (It had impact factor when I submitted but when published it did not receive any impact factor). Please guide me what impact factor should I use for my above mentioned paper.

I have same question for change in the impact factor of a journal from submission time to publication time. Thank you.


texts:
I am international student and have a problem with formulating a research question. I know the gap, but I could not make it clear. + my supervisor is not convinced of what I am doing and believes that there is no problem really(the research gap).
Any advice.!
Thanks,


texts: Understanding an advisor’s refusal of an internship

texts:
I am graduate research assistant in Computer Science in the US. A while ago, a master student in the research group, who plans on a career in industry after graduate school, received an internship offer from a large, well-known technology company which is one of the most sought after and prestigious opportunities for any computer-science student. An internship at a company such as this would be extremely valuable both in terms of shining on his resume and the experience he would gain there. This internship would be a huge break for him and could really launch his career.

However, when he asked for his advisor’s okay to take the internship for the summer, his advisor told the him that he would have to find someone to replace him to continue work on the research project which would essentially mean the student would lose his funding when he returned from his internship.

My question regarding this is:

What are the pros and cons a professor has to consider when deciding upon allowing his student to do such an internship, particularly regarding that such an internship would be tremendously valuable to the student’s career?


texts: Submitting a paper to a peer-reviewd journal after putting it on medRxiv

texts: Most COVID-19 related papers(about 2/3) go as pre-prints on arXiv/medRxiv, and so I decided to do the same. Is it still possible to submit the same preprint to a peer-reviewed journal? In such case, are there some rules for bypassing the double-blind review? After submitting, I got an automatic reply from JMIR suggesting a submission to one of their journals. So it seems to be possible, at least.


texts: I've read from the NHS website that radiologists will stop receiving full funding from the UK government. I'm wondering if any other NHS related degrees have also had funding stopped for them, and which continue to receive funding


texts: When should I write a thank you letter to the author of a scholarly paper?

texts: If I read a scholarly paper and find it interesting and beneficial, should I write a short thank you letter to the author? Should I send the thank you letter from a .edu email address?


texts: Is it possible to automatically obtain abstracts and citations from a list of references?

texts: I have a list of about 150 references stored in my reference manager. They are from my dissertation. My end goal is to do a bibliometric analysis of these papers to visualize their network of connections based on the overlap of articles cited within each paper (and alternatively based on shared terms in the abstracts). Typically I do network analysis on papers returned from searches using the Web of Science, which generates a file containing the abstracts and lists of references for all of the papers I am analyzing. There appears to be no way to compile sets of papers using WoS other than to do a search though. This means I would have to individually search for all ~150 of my dissertation references and add them to my marked list. That is impractical. Are there any citation databases into which I can import a reference list and automatically compile a set of abstracts/references-cited for each reference?


texts: What are "fake", "shady", and/or "predatory" journals?

texts: This question is in response to this very interesting question. The original post mentioned that they wish to retract their paper from a "fake" journal. I don't know what a fake journal is but better safe than sorry so I want to make sure what defines a fake journal. In the comments, other people also mentioned "shady" journals and "predatory" journals. This is the first time I encounter these descriptions so I would like to know more about what they entail. I would be interested in hearing about your experience with such journals as well, if any.


texts: Pursuing M2 in mathematics after Masters from India

texts:
I am a master's student (5 year coursework, with a 1 year thesis) in Pure Mathematics in Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata in my prefinal year. I wish to continue in academics and hope to pursue a PhD in future.
As I understand the PhD system in USA is in the form of a grad school, where you first do around 1-2 years of coursework before starting your full-scale research. As my background stands right now, I would be glad to delve into some more advanced coursework before starting research in a full-fledged manner. So I understand, the PhD system in USA is better for me.
I have also searched a bit on the M2 degree in mathematics in France mainly in IMJ-PRG, which allows for starting directly from the M2 coursework without having a M1 coursework. Now if I want to do a PhD in Europe, and especially in France, I think doing a M2 before going for a PhD is a better option for me.
But, I am not at all getting any detailed information of the feasibility of this second option, as the websites of the French institutes seem to be a little less user friendly.
My primary interest is particularly in Operator Algebras and Non Commutative Geometry, but I would glad to explore some other related fields in Mathematics as well.
I would be happy if someone can provide some assistance regarding this M2 and PhD in France, and also whether there are any scholarships for M2 for Indian students, how is the atmosphere for international students there, and also about the medium of instruction. Further, if anyone has any guidance for these particular research areas in France, I would be pleased to hear them.
I would like a clear idea of whether it is even possible for an Indian student who is not comfortable with the French language to sustain there?
In particular, I would like to know the leading research groups in Functional Analysis, Operator Theory/Operator Algebras and Non Commutative Geometry working in France, which universities are best for doing a M2 as a precursor to a PhD with the medium of instruction being English. Lastly, what are the chances of getting a PhD straightway in France after completing M2?
Thanks.


texts: Difference of a PhD program for students entering with BS and MS

texts:
Students who have a BS can apply for PhD programs like students with a Master's degree (in the US). I was thinking why should students with only Bachelor degrees be admitted while many with Masters degree apply too. I thought the program may differ for these two admitted students. So, my question is basically this:

Is there any difference between the PhD program that an admitted student with a BS starts, and the PhD program that a student with a Master's degree goes through? (assuming they are admitted to the same program at the same university)


texts: Ask authors for some data (after already asking one of the three authors without getting an answer)

texts:
I have a question: I'm currently working on my PhD and I was looking for some specific data. After going through a lot of articels I found one from 2016 and one from 2017 both from the same three authors.

In this article the authors are trying to solve an empirical question and for this they create a very nice graph which shows exactly the data I was searching for. This graph is not the main subject of the article, only briefly mentioned and an interim solution to the main problem the authors are trying to solve.

Based on the article alone it is not possible to recreate the graph (because they are not using publicly available data).

Looking for a way to get the data I contacted one of the three authors via email (maybe this was a mistake). I wrote something like (my email was based on a question in this forum which I can't find right now):

I was reading your article
who I am and what I'm doing right now
what I'm interested in
what I need and that it would be very helpful if I could get the data (again I was pointing out that I only need the data points of the graph)

This was one week ago and I still got no answer. Should I contact the other two authors of the article?


texts: Best license for an applied research project

texts:
I am looking to incorporate a license in the source code of a research project of University A, in which I was the last contributor. Historically the computer-science school has not forced researchers to publish the code with any specific license; they mainly care about the ranking affected by publications, and releasing the code publicly is suggested but not mandatory. Obviously researchers cannot sell the code as the commercial use is reserved to the institution (although software patents are very rare in my country).

Given that the project could benefit from a dissertation that I have been developing on University B, what is the best license that fits for this case? I personally prefer to release the new improved version in a compiled format, and keep the new source code private, so GPL is not an option for me. Is the MIT license a better candidate? (It says “and/or sell copies of the Software” though.) The project in University A is an applied research based on state of the art that have existed freely for a long time.


texts: Is it possible to do research in several branches of mathematics?

texts:
I'm finishing my undergraduate studies and I've been interested in several branches of math to research in the future, to say: functional analysis, differential equations, dynamical systems, differential and riemannian geometry, (general, differential and algebraic) topology, algebraic geometry, theory of groups and rings, etc.

My question is if is it possible to learn about all those things and to do research using all? or are there imncompatible areas between them? Because I have seen that almost all of the researchers of my faculty are centered to research in a very specific topic and that makes me believe that is not possible to learn all of the math that i want.

Thanks in advance for your answers!


texts: A scam publisher offers me to publish, but it seems that I lose nothing if agree

texts:
I've received an email from Lambert Academic Publishing (LAP Publishing), offering to publish my manuscript.

I heard that they are a scam, but is there any reason to refrain from publishing with them?

Note that my math book is published online as open source (with a free license) LaTeX (and PDF). I have almost no hope to publish it conventionally with a serious publisher (some publishers said my book didn't have enough readership, some declined because it is already available online.)

I won't lose the copyright because they do not require copyright transfer.

So my question: Enumerate all reason (or is there none?) not to publish with them.

Note that I am not a professional scientist and have no degree.


texts: Etiquette with regard to email read reciepts

texts:
Context: I am an assistant professor working at a small liberal arts college in the United States.

Like many institutions, mine uses Microsoft Outlook.  On occasion, I will receive emails requesting read receipts.  Usually these emails are internal (from staff, administration, faculty, etc.) but in this case the email is from a student's parent.

Am I obligated to accept this parent's request to send a read receipt for their email?  Would it be considered rude to decline it?  I certainly won't ignore their email, but I'd rather not have them know exactly when I read it until I know what it says.

Furthermore, is there a certain expectation around read receipts for internal email?  This is probably institution-dependent, but I figured I'd ask anyway.


texts: When submitting PhD proposals in the humanities in the UK, are students expected to have already applied for funding?

texts:
In British universities, is there a standard procedure with regards the order of application for funding and submitting a proposal for a PhD? Is there an expectation from universities that the students have already sought funding or be in the process of doing so before their proposal is submitted? Is it more common to be accepted for the programme and then seek funding? Or do they tend to happen concurrently?

Or does it depend mostly on each individual situation and there is no norm?

My question relates to a PhD in English literature in a British university for a British national, but information from other fields and locations would also be good to know. I haven't found information about this on any of the university websites I have looked at.

Specifically, I would like to know if there is a standard procedure or not.


texts:
I recently attended a "preparing for the job market" workshop for PhD students where the speaker instructed us in no uncertain terms that we should always refer to a "curriculum vitae" and never a "curriculum vita." Following the workshop, I made sure to replace all instances of "vita" with "vitae" on my website.

Today, though, the professor of a class I'm taking asked me why I had the word "Vitae" (on its own, without "Curriculum") on the menu of my website, suggesting that "Vita" might be more appropriate. I looked around this website to try to get some clarification and noticed not only that there didn't seem to be anything on this topic but also that some people use both spellings in the same sentence (e.g., "A 'vita' is just a short term for a curriculum vitae").

So, is it "vitae"? "Vita"? "Vita" when the word is on its own but "vitae" when it's "curriculum vitae"? Also, is there any reason (based in Latin or something else) for these distinctions?


texts: What are the disadvantages of having postdocs or visitor in the lab?

texts:
I have seen professors clearly stating that they do not accept visitor students or postdocs.

So, what are the disadvantages of having such positions?


texts: Should Research Associates apply for Post-Doc research positions if they want to?

texts: I live and work in the UK and my training is in Computer Science and Mathematics. I defended my PhD thesis eight years ago and since then gained work as an engineer, then a Post-doc Research Assistant, then a Teacher, and now a Research Associate. Is it fine for me to apply for another post-doc research assistant position, or is that not the done thing? I ask because in job progression terms the job title may seem to some University employers like "going backwards". I'm slightly bohemian when it comes to research positions - I'm not really concerned about fluctuations in pay, but rather whether the research is interesting.


texts: Is there a rule or style guide on use of gender-specific pronouns in academic papers?

texts:
Some authors use "her" whenever they employ a pronoun referring to a noun whose gender is immaterial to the discussion.

Is there any rule (university or journal or conference-specific) which dictates this? Is it good practice to stick to the same pronoun throughout a paper? Or is it better to get rid of the issue by using the gender-neutral 'one'?


texts:
What defines excellence as an undergrad econ major?
I was talking to a few friends in CS and they seem to be very clear on excellence for them - straight As, widely used/well built programs, and a solid understanding of the math behind CS/algos (for interviews). However, I noticed that I am unclear about what excellence as an Econ major is.
Getting straight As is obvious, but I can't think of much more beyond that (perhaps a good senior thesis?). Yet, many people have straight As (or almost straight As) and asking for a groundbreaking paper as a senior thesis seems to be a bit much. Thus, how would I differentiate excellent undergrad econ achievement from merely good undergrad econ achievement?


texts:
I am applying for a postdoc position, and one of the required documents is a covering letter. Internet has models and templates and guides for such letters in rich supply. One thing, however, strikes me as strange: they normally contain the address. At first glance, maybe it is to be expected that a letter should have an address - but in this situation, I am uploading the file directly into an electronic application system, so it is utterly obvious what the document is, and who it should reach. I suppose almost all applications work in a similar way these days.

Firstly, I am curious if the address still serves any useful function. Or is it just a decorative element / historical artefact / etc.?

Secondly, should I actually include the address in an electronically submitted cover letter?

To clarify: I am asking about the address of the recipient of the application, not my own address. (While it is the case that I give my contact details in a separate form, I see how it could be convenient to duplicate this data.)


texts: Should university administrators share official matters with students?

texts:
Should the department share the departmental problems (financial, officials, political, etc) with the students? or it is official matter and none of their business?

For a more specific example. Imagine that students are complaining about the lack of teachers in specific topics. The department head tries to secure fund for faculty recruitment, but Dean refuses. Should the department head consider this as an internal matter between officials or should inform the students why he is not hiring teacher?

Of course, I do not mean organizational secrets. Most of these news spread among students through rumors and gossip. My question is: should a department head directly inform the students about problems? Or according to the common business models, an organization should not reveal its failures and problems to customers unless it is a must?

What is the appropriate scheme for treating students? (1) customers who get service from the university employees in return to tuition fee, or (2) part of the organization? Obviously, these are not solid categories, and I just want to express the issue.


texts: How long will the status "awaiting decision" after minor revisions last?

texts: I submit my manuscript to IEEE WCL on 4/14/2019 (Minor revision). On 4/26, the status on ScholarOne changed to awaiting decision. But until now, 5/17, the status are still "awaiting decision". I want to know how long will this status last. Can I send a email to AE?


texts: What is the etiquette for asking a professor to waive the prerequisite for a course?

texts:
Should I mail the professor? Should I meet him in person? I am a MS student in CS who wishes to take a graduate level course in Statistics department. The course is Machine Learning and I did cover most of the prerequisite course's content in multiple undergraduate courses so I want him to waive the requirement. I have budget for only 10 courses and wish to complete this degree in 2 years. Taking these prerequisite course would mean that I cannot take other courses that interest me.

The other reason I wish to have the requirement waived is because the prerequisite course itself is a statistics department course which also has prerequisite statistic courses and my college only allows me to take 2 courses outside of our department.


texts: How to politely tell a colleague they won't be an author of my article?

texts:
Looking for advice.
My coworkers and I have been working on a project for about two years, and we are right now in the process of writing a paper. About a year ago, we contacted a friend of mine who is also a researcher, told him about our results and asked for his insight. After a couple of zoom calls, he pointed us toward a research direction we had not thought about. After pursuing this direction for some time we found out it did not work, so we ended up doing something different which does not include our colleague’s suggestions at all.
Now, after discussing with the coauthors we have concluded that it is not fair for any of us to include this person as an author, since his contribution has been of no impact for the paper in the end. I agree with this decision. I also believe it would not be nice for our colleague to just find the paper online without any news, and especially since he is my/our friend I feel that I should send him the manuscript via email before sending it for publication. I wonder how I should I deal with the issue of authorship in this email: should I just send him the paper without him as an author? if so, should I explain to him that we do not think his contribution deserves it? or should I ask if he wants to be one? I am not familiar with the authorship etiquette…
Thanks in advance for your advice!


texts: Comparative quality of articles in questionable journals

texts:
This question on citing from publications on Beall's list got me thinking...

The list itself details predatory publishers, who follow bad practices or bad business models. However, is there any evidence that the papers themselves that are contained within those journals are any "worse" than articles in non-predatory, low impact factor journals? I'm not comparing to Science or Nature here, just any other run-of-the-mill journal. By worse, I mean:

Poor research practice
Lack of citation of previous relevant research
Higher incidence of fraud
Non-academic writing
...?

Does anyone know of a study that looked at this?


texts: List of accepted papers: Why do notifications take 10 more days?

texts:
I submitted a paper to an engineering / CS related conference. After several weeks of reviews, a list of accepted papers was published today. However, the notification will be sent out 10 days later, according to their website.
I saw that my paper was accepted since it is included in the aforementioned list. I was not explicitly notified, just the list was put online. I have not received any reviews, yet.
There are several conferences that publish their list of accepted papers before notifications are sent out.
What is the reason for this? The decision must already be fixed, otherwise there would not be a list of accepted papers. But why are the reviews not sent out, yet?
Is the list commonly subjected to change?
I would be happy if someone (program committee, chairs, etc.)  could shed some light onto this, since I am quite interested in the background of this accepted-paper-list.
EDIT: More details regarding this conference.
ACM/IEEE DAC accepted papers:
https://dac.com/2018/accepted-papers
They give a short explanation under "What is the DAC research manuscript timeline?":
https://dac.com/submission-categories/research-manuscript#questions

The second week in February: A list of accepted manuscripts will be posted on the DAC website.
February 20: Accept/reject notices and confirmation forms will be emailed to authors.

Thus, this seems to be intentional and no notification email got lost.
The same was done by the IEEE HOST this year, the accepted paper list was online many days before the notifications were sent out.
EDIT2: I just received the notification. The list of accepted papers was not updated as far as I see.


texts: How an international student can get a grant by himself?

texts:
First of all, I am open for a new title for this question to help me reach more people.

I am an international Masters student at a top 5 electrical engineering program in USA. I applied for a PhD though, but given admit in Masters program. I have spent two semesters already. Currently, I am doing an internship at a reputed company. Five months ago, I started working under a professor, who then just finished his post-doc from one of the best institutions. I still work for him during my spare time, and things look very promising (prospects of a paper). While working on the internship, I realized how much I want to do PhD.

Now, my department allows transition from MS to PhD given adviser's recommendation. However, my adviser tries to avoid the questions about PhD. Possible reasons could be that he is getting smarter students from his post-doc university next semester. Also, he can't afford too many students given he is extremely new.

Now, at this stage I don't think I can get another PhD adviser as I haven't worked for anyone else.

Another catch is that my university's tuition fees is very high, and a PhD would have eliminated the fees for the next year. But, that is not the reason of pursuing a PhD.

So, I am thinking if I could get a grant based on my own research to fund the upcoming year, that would have been great. Remember, I am an international student.


texts: Is it (ab)normal to propose a course to another university as a PhD candidate

texts:
I'm an external PhD candidate at a university in Germany, meaning that I have neither a post at the university nor funding. I know this isn't ideal, but my question is this:

My research is related to language education, and for my field work I'd like to compare students from a certain Asian country (mine) with German students. I have done the field work in Asia, and now I need to teach a class in at least two German universities to observe the students' attitude first-hand.

Would it be very outlandish to write an email to a department chair at a neighbouring university in order to propose a class in relation to my PhD project? I've checked their program, and the title of my proposed course isn't there. As this is for the sake of my project, I could do it voluntarily, although I'd be very glad if I'm paid. Should I state that as well (at least the first part)?

I have no idea whether an unsolicited application like this is common in academia (particularly in Germany). In any case I don't want to sound desperate or forcing someone's hand. Thank you in advance for your insight.

P.S. My supervisor is taking a sabbatical leave, so he's not around at the university, and I cannot easily ask questions like this.


texts: Does poor grammar on a shared message board for school annoy teachers?

texts:
From the experience of a student, these are the types of people I notice on class messaging boards:
Person 1. Writes almost six-seven paragraphs for a single question that could be asked in two sentences. All sentences are grammatically correct and punctuated. Always includes greeting and salutation.
Person 2. Writes about three paragraphs. Most sentences have proper grammar. Either salutation or greeting.
Person 3. Writes one or two sentences. Most I's are not capitalized and poor grammar.
Person 4. Random letters mixed in, most sentences are gibberish.
Does this annoy teachers? Especially from junior high through high school where this is common.
Most teachers reply even to the most nonsensical messages, which is nice of them, but it is annoying to me (as a student) when someone doesn't take the time and effort to add a period at the end of their sentence.
So, from the perspective of a teacher or professor, are People 3 and 4's (as shown above) behavior on a shared message board obnoxious?


texts: Who Owns the Code I Write (Graduate Student)?

texts:
As a graduate student in a CS program, "Who Owns the (rights to the) Code I Write"?

I know that the answer is different depending upon:

(Case-1) I work for the University or am supported in some way (such as a TA, RA, and whether I receive financial assistance such as tuition).

(Case-2) Or I work for an employer who is paying my tuition (and thus may have some claim over the code I write while working on courses).

(Case-3) My specific case - I am paying for my tuition, so there is no party providing funds. Thus it would seem that I retain ownership in the code I write on my own time. Does it matter whether the code is written to solve a problem or assignment?

I have read my University Intellectual Property statement, (which is written in legal terminology), but seems to suggest that I would relinquish (at least some) rights in the first case. This would indicate that I would retain rights in my case (or the employer policies in Case-2).

There are similar questions (below), but they seem to answer different questions, related to (Case-1) and relationship between student, professor, and funding parties.

Ownership of the code
Sharing assignments with a potential employer
Thesis in use, potential employer wants to see source code


texts: How much can a Professor influence admittance of his/her PhD students? (UK)

texts:
I was wondering how much influence a professor at a competitive university in the UK has in PhD admissions, when he/she really wants to work with somebody.

I am mentioning UK specifically, since the PhDs here are shorter and its maybe clearer what exactly the student will want to work on for his PhD.


texts: What are the consequences of a recommendation from someone in the distant past?

texts:
I am in the not completely unusual position of having an eight year period between my Master's and PhD degrees. During this time I was gainfully employed in a completely unrelated and non-academic field.

I have now graduated from a PhD and am looking for work.  Many good post-doc and academic jobs require three referees to speak on one's behalf, and to be competitive these references must surely be academics.

I had a great relationship with my Master's supervisor, including co-authoring papers together, and I believe that despite the 12 years since I was her student she could still speak credibly, confidently, and highly favorably on my behalf.

In the non-academic world it would stretch credibility to call upon a reference from such a distant point in the past.  But for an academic position, I think things could be different.

What are the potential advantages and disadvantages of using her as personal reference?  Are potential post-doctoral supervisors or hiring committees likely to discount her reference as stale and irrelevant?


texts: Could StackExchange be used to "do" open science?

texts:
The Q&A sites on StackExchange are a great platform for gathering knowledge about a multitude of things.

In my eyes, the reputation system does an excellent job when it comes to rating questions as well as answers according to usefulness and objectivity of their content.

Thus, the question arises, whether this framework along with the rating system could not be used beyond Q&A? In fact, I have been playing with this idea for a while but to be honest, I still could not make up my mind about it:

Could StackExchange's Q&A framework be used for A&R, as in Article and Review?

When looking at the tools one has at hand for writing a Question: There is the possibility to write equations (see mathematics), images are supported, links, ... everything you need to write an entire article, and the same goes for an answer (a review in A&R).

Just as a question and its answers are rated now, an article and its reviews could be rated (maybe a bad rating without leaving a comment should not be allowed in A&R). The history function for the edits already serves as version control and would assure a complete history of an article and all of its reviews. The rating system would serve as measure for impact-factor with the additional advantage that reviewing articles could finally be rewarded. The only thing that would need some adaptation is the accept answer functionality, as rather than a review, the article would need to be accepted at some point.

In fact, some time ago I started a proposition about this on area51, just to see what other users think about it. It seems that some really like it and others think the idea is plain stupid. As I said, I'm not really decided yet, I think such a site bears a great potential to publish, review, judge and access scientific findings openly.

So the question at hand really is:

What are the arguments in favour or against using StackExchange's Q&A framework as a ScienceExchange A&R platform to publish scientific results openly?


texts: How to find out paper from phrases like "Chun and Seymour (1989)"?

texts:
I'm a senior college student and start to read papers for my final year project. I find phrases like " Chinn et all (1982)", "Garley et al(1978)" and  "Chun and Seymour (1989)". When I type those phrase in Google Scholar, its results are not relate to graph theory at all.

I'd like to know how to find papers from this phrases accordingly: )


texts: Is there a term for "PhD at a department" vs "PhD at an (independent) research institute"?

texts:
All PhD students are getting their PhD from a university (as far as I know).

But some PhD students follow a PhD program that is just a standard program at their department (e.g. department of math, or physics, or sociology), do research under a supervisor who is just affiliated with the department. The supervisor may also be affiliated with research institutes, but the relation between the PhD student and the supervisor is not created via, or dependent on, or related to those research institutes: the relation is solely based on the fact that the PhD student and supervisor are affiliated with the same department.
Then there are PhD students, who (though they are of course also affiliated to a department) are enrolled into a PhD position that is specifically affiliated with a research institute. For example, there may be a research institute that is affiliated with university X, all researchers there are affiliated with X, but it is a somewhat separate institute. The PhD student would be specifically linked to that institute, rather than merely to his department.

Are there generally accepted terms that distinguish between these two types of PhD positions?


texts: Is it acceptable to have a figure caption running to the next page?

texts: I have a large figure with a long caption of 300 words, and they really don't fit into one A4 page. Can I enlarge the figure to fit in the first page and let the caption run to the next page?


texts: What to do in case when advisor refuses to provide a reference letter for a postdoc position?

texts:
What to do in case when PhD advisor rejects everytime (by his own choice) a request for reference letter for a possible post doc position? Majority of decent post doc positons requires PhD advisor's reference letter.

In the industry, a company cannot dare to hold the experience letter for an employee. But in academia, the situation is not the same. In such a scenario what is a possible solution? Is it that till the time he is ready to provide a reference letter I have to wait? or is there some way out of this?


texts: The potential advisor suddenly stopped answering my emails. What should I do now?

texts:
Sorry for yet another 'professor does not respond my email' question. I searched through other similar questions, however their context was slightly different from mine.

I am a M.Sc. graduated from Asia looking for a PhD position abroad (i.e. Canada).

About the 9th of December, I sent an email to a professor in one of the Canadian universities, asking to join his research group as PhD student. He initially found my CV and transcripts interesting and requested for some recommendations letters being sent to him.
It lasted until the 21th of December when all of my references finally sent their recommendation to the professor and then I notified him about it,  however I didn't receive any response from him.

Because of the new year holidays, I found the delay normal and I waited until 7th of January (a week ago) and still no response! Then, I sent another email to him, politely asked about the status of my application and recommendations which have been sent to him and he has not answered this email too.

The professor was really positive in our initial contact, so I don't know if I should consider this type of ignorance as a rejection and move on or I need to make other decisions. Actually, I am also interested in research of one of his colleagues and If I knew his final decision about my application I could start talking to the other faculties before the deadline pass.

P.S: In this university, the admission decision is completely based on finding an advisor willing to support your research through your graduate study.

Update: I sent another reminder email to him after a couple of weeks, politely requested for a feedback if he received my email. I used email tracker software and I found he opened my email and still no answer.


texts: How to approach a PhD if I want to have a career in academia?

texts: I am towards the end of the first year of my PhD where most of my time went towards doing courses and a small research project in our lab. I plan to continue in academia after my PhD and aspire to get a good faculty position sometime in the future. Is there a stark difference in the way one should approach a PhD if they want to go in academia versus if they aspire for an industry research position ? What do universities look for in a PhD which might be very different from what a company looks for in the same candidate and what can I do at my level to tailor my PhD research towards the direction I want to go in.


texts: Etiquette for academic job interviews in Ireland

texts:
I am scheduled for an interview for a Lecturer position at a leading Irish university in a couple of weeks. I am trained, and have a job in the North American academic system. Thus, I am well versed with the N. American protocols, but do not know much about the UK/Ireland context. I have looked up resources such as the ones highlighted below, but I still have some questions.

In an American context, an interview can be scheduled for 3 days with several rounds of discussion with members in the faculty. In Ireland, is it considered appropriate to reach out to individual faculty members for discussion regarding the position, department, and the university?
What is the standard dress-code for the interview? Is it just a jacket and tie or a full suit?
Are start-up funds part of the offer package, and worth discussing in the interview?

The resources I have looked up are as follows:

Interviewing for a lecturer position in the UK

My UK academic job interview experiences

For North Americans: the-peculiar British interview process

Dressing etiquette for interviews in academia


texts: Student Travel Grant = Volunteering; is it worth it?

texts:
I have a paper accepted to a conference and my adviser is willing to fully fund the trip.

However, I am also eligible to apply for a "Student Travel Grant" (being a student author).

Pros of getting the travel grant:

saves adviser grant money
goes on my resume

Cons:

i would have to volunteer and possibly spend half of each day with tasks at hand

I am not sure whether it's worth applying for the travel grant and helping at the conference, as opposed to just going there.

For those of you who have been in this or similar situations before, what would you advise?

UPDATE: I learned that the grant covers almost half of my total trip cost, and that the volunteering time is around 1/4 of the total conference duration, which is good; Hence, I have applied for it. Thanks everyone for your help.


texts: Is it plagiarism to copy-paste part of a figure from a cited work?

texts: I'm in the process of reviewing a journal submission and noticed that one of the figures is composed of a cropped out piece of a figure from another work. The authors don't cite the figure as coming from this work but do cite the other work elsewhere in the manuscript. Would this constitute as plagiarism?


texts: Is it acceptable that I plot a time-series figure with years increasing from right to left?

texts: I have a plot like this in my paper, but one of the co-authors says The x-axis is backward. I think as long as keeping all figures in the same style, it is ok. But I am not sure if there is really such a rule that years should increase from left to right? My field is environmental science.


texts: What makes an online course a valuable learning experience for a student?

texts:
I just taught my first course that finished last week and I was asked to teach the same course for next semester. The only difference is that this time I will be teaching the course online.

I have taken online courses before and haven't been super impressed. In my experience the instructor will assign reading to be done within a week and any assignments that will be completed from that week. The instructor doesn't teach in an online environment but more so moderates that way students learn. The student reads the text, does the work. The instructor responds to emails, grades assignments, and moderates discussion boards posted in the online forum for students to collaborate.

This format has the student teach themselves and from personal experiences students who are not familiar with the course material beforehand generally don't do as well.

What are methods to make the online learning experience less informal and more of a learning experience?


texts: What to do about students who ask for help too often?

texts:
For my writing courses, about 5% of students will come to me prior to deadlines asking for help with their paper. I see no problem advising students, as I often similarly came for help when I was an undergraduate. Recently, though, I found an increase in students who apparently just want to abuse this:

Students will bring me some plagiarized work, showing it to me early, as a sort of test if I will notice. It seems difficult to punish plagiarism when the paper is not yet submitted.
Students will bring in papers again and again, with little changes put in at each stage, hoping their minimal effort each time will be sufficient to reach their goal of a "D".

I've tried stopping students, but then they are angry when they see the "F" that they hoped I would help them get away from. While most of these students are probably just incredibly lazy, there is a chance that some among them are genuinely trying to improve, but just struggling a great deal, and I can't see it.

How might I go about blocking such abuses?


texts: How faculty might assess a PhD applicant who already has a PhD degree?

texts:
What concerns/worries a potential PhD supervisor might have when he/she sees an application from someone who already has a PhD and applying for the second one? The fields of study are distantly related (engineering - physics).

What questions should be addressed in the initial letter by the applicant?

The first PhD is not a complete failure but an applicant wants to pursue his ultimate interests. The applicant has a postdoc position secured but has serious doubts working in the field that is not of major interest for him. Postdoc applications in the field of main interest didn't result in getting a position.


texts: How important is specialisation in a master's degree?

texts:
My university offers an optional specialisation (e.g. algorithms, software engineering, networks...) during my masters program (which will appear on the degree). To qualify, you basically need a certain amount of credits on that topic.

I think I rather not specialize, so I can hear a broader spectrum of topics.
How important is such a specialisation for future job search (in academia and industry)? Does it matter at all?


texts: Contacting a professor in the university you are applying

texts:
I am applying to American universities. And just like many others, I intend to apply to many of them.

Anyway, I read a lot on the internet about this application thing and I notice that I should contact a relevant professor, read some of his articles and form an opinion (like in the answer of How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students? ), maybe for the professor to acknowledge who this applicant (me) is.

I think there would be a big obstacle. Let's say I am applying to 10 universities, then I have to contact 10 professors. Their work may belong to the same big branch, but definitely to small branches. What I want to say here is, 10 articles in technically 10 different areas, and they are totally not easy to understand. Then it would be literally impossible to do such a task.

I really hope I took it the wrong way somewhere. Do I understand this "contacting professors" part? Hope you could answer me


texts: What do I do when a student working in my lab "ghosts" me?

texts:
I am in my first PhD year and have some teaching duties -- assisting my supervisor with his lectures and also advising students. At the beginning of the semester, a student started working on his Bachelor's thesis and initially everything was fine.

However, for several weeks now I have not received any response from him. I wrote him mails on a weekly basis asking for a status update and inquiring whether he was stuck. Now the deadline is getting closer and while he could make some progress during the first weeks, I am afraid it is too little to pass. On the other hand, I saw a quite familiar post on SE recently and I believe it is actually him, as the topic is quite specific. Therefore I assume he actually is still working on his thesis.

I already have escalated the issue to my supervisor and he told me to let it student fail if required. I am not too satisfied with this way of dealing with the situation. Are there other options for me?


texts: Are comments on application folders accessible to students?

texts: If a student applies to a university in the United States, can they legally access all comments written on their application (e.g. as a consequence of the FERPA)?


texts: Do I not have the personality for a PhD?

texts:
I've been in the PhD program for a couple years now and I feel like people have a lot of expectations about the way I should think and feel about things.  Not just my technical competence, but also my motivations and personality.  I am wondering if my motivations disqualify me from being a good PhD student.

People expect me to have a specific research area I'm very interested in.  I would be fine working in any area and I'm not particularly passionate about any specific field.  They also expected me to know who I wanted to work with before I applied to the school (or even choose the school based on the advisor), and I only started thinking about that during visit weekend, when professors pitched their research to the students.
I chose which schools to apply to based on the US News rankings, and I went to grad school because it was more prestigious than the jobs I would be capable of getting.  It seems like nobody in grad school does this, even though I feel like for most people it is natural to go with the most prestigious option.
People expect me to go to talks and read papers for fun.  I don't understand how most people could possibly find talks fun.  Honestly I would rather watch a movie or play tennis.  I also find papers boring and difficult to read, unless they are in very soft subjects with no math.
When people come to my school to give talks, people invite us to meet with the speaker one on one.  I have no idea what students would talk to the speaker about or why they would want to sign up to talk to a stranger.  I guess they could collaborate with the speaker on research, but I would expect the professors to set up these kinds of collaborations instead of the students.  (It would seem weird to finagle my own collaborations because the advisor might not want to collaborate with those people.)
I have seen professors leave my university and expect their students to go with them.  I think if my advisor left my university, I wouldn't want to leave, because I have good friends here and I am dating someone.  It seems weird to be expected to uproot your life and move across the country just because your boss is leaving.
I follow my advisor's instructions on things and once in a while he says that I need to be more independent.  But if I did that I would be going against what my advisor tells me to do, and I think it's weird that my advisor tells me to do things and then tells me not to do what he tells me to do.  He said he expects me to "push back" and I find that kind of intimidating, because he is a professor after all.


texts: First postdoc as "the big filter": myth or fact?

texts:
I am currently halfway through my first postdoc (a two-year position). I have a Ph.D. in physics, published 3 papers during it, and since this postdoc is in a slightly different field, I still haven't published anything.
I am moderately comfortable in my original field, meaning that if I work for some months on something, it will most likely render some sort of publication (usually in Journal of Physics A/B or Physical Review A). However, my current situation at work is very stressful. I have less freedom than I thought I'd have to work on my own ideas, and the research environment is very dull. I find myself working on problems that might be simply too hard, and perhaps I can't solve them.
I started to wonder what will happen if I turn out not publishing anything during these two years. When I was struggling in my Ph.D., thinking about dropping everything and becoming a monk, I heard from many experienced researchers that it was OK if my Ph.D. was crappy. That the Ph.D. is not the "big filter" in the life of a researcher... And that this is the function of the first postdoc. They told me this is a decisive moment because people will not hire you afterward if you do poorly. In your Ph.D., the fact that you're still more of a student than a researcher usually saves you some explanations, but for the first postdoc, the lack of publications looks really bad when applying to a follow-up position. This is naturally very simplistic (a postdoc might not publish anything simply because his/her research group is non-existent, the boss is crazy, family problems, etc). However, if I were myself on the board analyzing applications, I cannot promise I wouldn't consider the lack of publications as a red flag.
If this filter is true, it makes the situation of someone who just happened to be unlucky in his/her first postdoc quite depressing. Maybe they will have to give up academia and go to industry, even if they don't want to, just because no one accepts them. As I really don't want to move away from academic research, I'm starting to get very anxious about this topic...
Well then... Is my stress justified? Will I be able to find another postdoc after this one even if I don't publish?


texts: How do you (digitally) catalog the books you've read over the years?

texts:
I wonder how you  keep tracks of what you've been reading over the years. I'm not talking about things that are 'relevant' and 'precious' to your academic work (to that end, all hail to EndNote or Docear and such, perhaps), but I'm keen to know how you track the 'miscellaneous' books you have in your personal library and other reading materials that you've laid your hands and eyes on in some other 'unusual' contexts.

How do you help yourself with remembering some dots (over the years) so that you have an even better chance to connect the dots?

[Story time, skip if you please] When I was 6 and started to have some sort of grasp of the alphabet , I was immediately told to make a 'Book of Books' by my godmother. It was a spiral notebook dedicated to the purpose of keeping tracks of all the things I was reading with details such as "title", "author", "page no.", "fav. quotes", and "one-liner summary". I also used colors, stickers and colossal-sized drawings/mind-maps while doing my catalogue work; simply because - ehem - the more stuff I filled up in there, the more sweets and ice-cream I got from my godmother. I kept up with this practice until I was 10 (then all good things come to an end, they say). Anyways,  I love this spiral notebook to pieces, and to this date whenever I look at it I can vividly recall the books that appeared in my life around that time. It's been super helpful and wonderful.

[Q&A time] Now at age 26,  I'm at a loss as to how to produce something similar: something simple enough but effective enough. I've tried to do it both manually (notebook/folder) and digitally (Excel spreadsheet/Goodreads) but nothing works anymore and nothing feels the same anymore.

With good old-fashioned lists, it's hard to retrieve things sometimes and it's almost impossible to 'share' it with anyone else. With catchy modern things, I can see book covers and retrieve/share book lists/recommendations with ease, that's wonderful. But because of this there's just too much 'noise' and 'temptation', and it's not like my life isn't miserable enough with Facebook and other ADHD-inducing platforms.

Please help! Any recommendation is much appreciated. How do you (digitally) track your personal libraries over the years?


texts: Can I quote something directly in a foreign language?

texts: I want to include a philosopher's quote in an essay (APA). Is it okay to do so? If yes, how should this be formatted? Should the quote be in italics followed by an English translation in square brackets [ ] ?


texts:
A question I have been wondering for a while is if there exists an actual proof that a blind reviewing process (i.e. where the reviewers are anonymous, and the reviews not published) is better than an open one (i.e. where the reviewers are not anonymous and/or the reviews are published along with the accepted papers).

Basically, whenever I question the fact that having a blind reviewing process does not guarantee any quality (which, somehow, usually coincides with receiving a poor review for a paper ...), I'm told that anonymity is crucial for the reviewing process. But is there any proof of that? I don't believe there exists any perfect system, but I'm just not sure why does the blind (or even double-blind) one is considered as the best (or the "least worst").


texts: Can a PhD student co-supervise master students in Germany?

texts: In Germany, is it possible for a PhD student to be co-supervisor of a master thesis?


texts: What should I write in a personal history statement (diversity statement) if I am not at all diverse?

texts:
I am applying for a PhD program in Computer Science. The university asks each applicant to hand in an optional personal history statement. I have detailed my research experience, career goals clearly in my statement of purpose. Hence I don't really know what I should write in a personal history statement. I am an average Asian student and do not have anything special. Any ideas on this essay?

EDIT: below is what they actually require:

  The purpose of this optional essay is to get to know you as an
  individual and as a potential graduate student, and to understand how
  your background will add to the diversity of our school. Please
  describe how your personal background has motivated you to pursue a
  graduate degree. You may discuss educational, familial, cultural,
  socioeconomic, or personal experiences or challenges; gender identity;
  community services, outreach services, first-generation college status
  or other matters relevant to your decision to pursue graduate
  education. Please note that the Personal History Statement is not
  meant to be a general autobiography.


texts:
Possible Duplicate:
  How do you earn opportunites to review journals or conference papers?

Assume that I have just finished my postdoc and am now starting a professorship/scientist position (I am not). How do I start joining the ranks of peer reviewers? More importantly, how do I become a peer reviewer of a particularly prestigious journal rather than some junk journal? Does the journal contact me or do I start to publish in those journals, the editors recognize my "expertise" and then they solicit me? Even though everything is "blind" does my reputation of doing quality reviews get shared with other editors?


texts: Why might a paper published in a good journal no longer be available anywhere?

texts:
I came across a paper with an interesting title/abstract which was published in a rank-A journal. However, the article is missing from all online listings (Project Euclid, ScienceDirect, etc.) and is also missing from the journal's website. The article has volume, issue, and page numbers x–y (listed as such on arxiv). The journal website and other online listings have the previous articles (up to page number x–1) and the following articles (from page number y+1), with the article in question just being omitted.

I contacted the journal about accessing the article a couple of weeks ago¹, but still haven't received a reply.

¹ A formal version of "Hey, I tried to access [this paper], but it wasn't available [here] or on your website. Is it possible to access this paper electronically?"

The article itself is posted on arxiv and is listed as a publication on the authors's professional websites.

I am very much interested in the result, but I am not familiar enough with the methods in the paper and it would take me a lot of time reading and working through the details of the paper. Time that would be better spent if the paper was withdrawn for containing errors. I don't quite feel comfortable contacting the authors blindly, asking if their paper contains an error. I can't really use "Please send me a version of your paper" as an excuse, because the paper is published on the arxiv.

What should one do in such a situation? In particular,

Are papers sometimes withdrawn "without comment"?
Do publishers usually reply to requests by email?


texts: How helpful is it for PhD admissions to be second author of a paper in a recognised journal?

texts: I recently submitted a paper to a fairly well-known journal and it got accepted. I'm listed as the second author. I'm a master's student. How much prestige is associated with this if I apply for a PhD?


texts: Should I put an ongoing research position that I recently started on my resume?

texts:
I started doing part time undergraduate research under a professor last week. I have a general understanding of what I'm working on, but I do not have an explicitly-defined project (rather, week-to-week my work will be decided based on the previous week's progress and what work I can reasonably do).

Today is the start of my school's application process for co-op. I would like to put this position as ongoing employment experience on my resume, but I am not sure how much I should put on there.

I am hesitant to ask the professor I'm working with because I'm only a week in and I don't want to unintentionally make him think that I'm just doing this to pad my resume.