texts: Should I leave my "first" job for a PhD student position?

texts:
I graduated from a masters degree half a year ago and I am been working at a private research institute. Today I received an email from a professor who is asking me to join him in August this year for an graduate position in the experimental sciences. If I accept, I would have to quit this job before the contract terminates, which I think may spark off some negative consequences in the industry, such as a marred reputation. I tried to make the best out of this situation by asking the professor whether I may defer admission for 6 months so that I finish my contract before I start. He said it won't be possible to defer, and advised me that I will have to apply again next academic year if this was the case.

I've previously had 2 years of resaerch experience as a research assistant, and the sole reason I think I need to do a PhD eventually if not now is because I want the rigorous technical training that only a PhD program can offer.

Pros for doing a PhD now:

I want to do it now in my early 20s as I think it will be more difficult as I get older (physically, or even mentally.
It is a rare opportunity that I get an offer since I had an egregriously low GPA when I was an undergraduate. I may not get this opportunity again.

Cons for doing a PhD now:

I am doing well in the private research institute I am in now, and I am responsible for a project that is not yet finished.
Quitting my job after just 10 months will not look good, and may raise issues with the HR in the future.

What do you guys thinks?


texts: Large, non-random proportion of students not invited for evaluation of a course

texts:
In the (not so distant) past I have received the student evaluations for my course. The evaluation was mediocre, something that surprised me since I thought I had good connection with the students coming to the class (about a third of the total number of enrolled students). These evaluations raised some eyebrows among the relevant committee members.

By accident, chatting recently with a student that really liked and performed very well on the course, I realized that the student did not receive invitation to evaluate the course. I thought it might be an isolated "bug" of the system but I casually mentioned it to a member of the relevant committee. He dug out the system and actually sent me a list of all students that had been invited.

To my shock, 38% of the enrolled students were not invited! What is even more weird is that this missing part is highly non-random and included many of the best students (that got 7+) and only one of the students that got 9+ was invited. The "informal" explanation was that because of some mistake (I do not know if it was the system's or some person's) the students who follow a research track (naturally, the good students) were left out and nobody was actually aware of that. They didn't seem to care even after I pointed it out.

To make it more concrete, out of the 75 or so students, the evaluations included the answer of 26 (non-randomly selected) students.

  How can I deal (internally) with this situation appropriately? I have in my record a very mediocre evaluation but it turns out the system made a big mistake leaving out many (good) students.  How can I explain this to possible applications where they ask about teaching statement and evaluations?

The main problem is that my department takes evaluations extremely seriously, and my mediocre evaluations had some (admittedly mild, but still...) impact on my development and assessment in the past and might have in the future as well (to some extent, my tenure-track offer depends on that).

  Can the department use these evaluations to decide if they will offer me assistant professorship based on the situation explained above? If they indeed use them, is there anything I can do?

Added: The protocol is to invite every student in the evaluation. Moreover, the evaluations should be collected before the grades of the exam are communicated to the students. In the case described above, besides the fact that a particular student group did not receive invitations, these were sent after the students have received their grades. I do not claim that this was done on purpose. But, besides being extremely unprofessional, it seems that no one cares about these facts and they still want to use the mentioned, obviously bugged in my opinion, evaluations.


texts: What to do when a professor is too busy to guide my research?

texts:
I am currently a Graduate student.

I had the opportunity to do some research as undergraduate for which the professor seemed very busy. I tried my best to "bother" him as much as possible with emails of when to meet up, questions and guidance for my research. The research didn't go far as you can expect from an undergraduate without any guidance (the type of guidance like a weekly meeting or reading material or direction for the research) I ended up asking a recommendation letter from him in which he butchered me and destroyed all my chances of getting in almost any college. This was after he happily agreed to write me a recommendation letter and was so happy to write all positive words. After I shared with him that I got accepted into a college. He later went on to explain that I "wasn't involved enough". I felt at one point that I was starting to harass him by sending emails every 2 days and stopping by his office hours uninvited. If anything I would expect the opposite kind of complain. That made me feel bitter and do some self-criticism, and be more persistent in the future.

Problem is that I am in a new college (as a graduate student) and facing the same issue. The professor I am doing research with doesn't meet with me, doesn't respond to my emails. And the research hasn't even properly started yet. I am highly-motivated and can take self-initiative but without direction I don't know what to do or focus in. I feel again that I might be repeating the same mistake... so I really don't know what I can do better or if there is a misunderstanding from my part. I have send a chain of 5 emails that went without a response over the course of the last 2 weeks.

How do I approach the professor and what do I say?
Is there a limit to the emails or office visits? Do professors take this as genuine interest or am I being exhausting them?
Is this a way for a professor to kindly stop research or any ongoing projects?
What am I doing wrong?!


texts: Is it possible to get a PhD position with only a Bachelor's degree?

texts: I have done a Bachelor's (4 years) and my GPA is quite low. But I have research experiences (more than 3 years) and few publications in some good journals. I want to do a Ph.D. in biology or a related field. Is it possible to get a position (e.g. in the USA or Europe) when research experience is the only strong point? Or should I go for a Master's first?


texts: Answer on really valuable review after rejection and invite reviewer into co-authorhship?

texts:
Let us suppose that we have received a rejection of our paper form a journal, but this rejection contains a really very valuable and detailed review, so some ideas of this review after some consideration and rethinking will be included into the new version of the paper.

And I here have two questions. No doubts: the new version of paper will contain acknowledgements to the anonymous reviewer. But:

Is it a good manner to answer editor's rejection letter and ask him to pass our deep appreciation to the anonymous reviewer?
Is it somehow possible to ask the editor to pass our desire to invite this reviewer to be a co-author of our paper?


texts:
When writing papers (and even more - when revising after collaborators', or reviewers', remarks) it's hard to keep track what is done, what needs to be fixed, what cannot be fixed, when opinions of authors are equivocal (and when an issue raised by one author is not supported by the others).

Moreover, it generates to a lot of e-mail traffic, often with a short remarks.

The question is, is there a issue tracking software (or workflow) suitable for reviewing academic papers?

(As a side note, I'm familiar with JIRA, but never used it for papers. I'm the most interested in answer when someone actually uses a given method, not "well, I never tried but here is [a link to a random issue tracking software]".)


texts: Should I do a group project on my own? If so, how?

texts:
Recently in one of my courses I have been assigned a task to be done in small groups (of 3 people). It turns out not to be too long (especially with some previous knowledge that I had), so over the course of an evening I have done roughly 60-70% of the work and the remainder would probably go even faster for me.

However the task was a group task, so I would feel that it could be quite inappropriate to just do all of the work and leave my other two friends nothing to do. I wouldn't like to make them feel left out and I wouldn't like to come across as a know-it-all. At the same time, I know that thanks to said experience not only will I need less time to complete the work, but also it is quite likely that the quality will be higher, potentially leading to a better grade and so benefiting all three of us.

Whatever I decide to do, I think I'll probably finish the task just for educational purposes, so the way I see it I can do one of those:

Tell them that I have the task complete. Apart from the disadvantages mentioned above they may feel compelled to also do all of the work, but forcing them to do so is absolutely not what I intend--if they also want to do so for educational purposes then they are of course welcome to, but I'd prefer to avoid them feeling like they have to do more than their fair share of work.
Pretend like I've only done some parts of the work and assign the "missing" pieces to them. First of all, lying about such matters seems to be a silly solution and also I feel like it could be easy to get caught and eithet be in worse position than 1) or have to lie more. Second of all, as I said when they complete their parts, it is possible that I'd feel obliged to make some changes to their work, potentially changing enough that it stops to look like their work, for us to get a better grade, which would be in all of us' best interest, but that would bring out some of the issues from 1)

How should I approach this topic, how should I communicate my ideas in the best possible way? Again, I don't want them to feel I treated them wrongly, but a the same time I wouldn't like our grade to suffer (in one of previous homework tasks I did give in even though I knew I was right at some points when discussing our solutions before turning them in, since I didn't want to come across as the smartass correcting everyone on everything, but our grade did turn out a bit lower then I would've gotten, had I turned all those tasks in by myself)


texts: How can I find the DOI for an old mathematical paper which is not in English?

texts:
(Not sure if this is the right SX site, but math.sx seemed to have no questions concerning DOIs.)

Everything I cite in my thesis has a DOI or URL (I think that's important), but I'm citing an article that was the first to mention a kind of problem,

  Arkadi Nemirovski. Nonparametric estimation of smooth regression
  functions. In: Tekhnicheskaya Kibernetika 3 (1985)

which seems to be quite obscure, it's not even listed on the author's website. It's not in our library (or any catalog I searched), but just a handed-down copy of unknown origin.

The journal doesn't seem to exist any more (or it doesn't have a website), and crossref.org yields nothing. The article is translated, there are some inconsistencies with transliteration, i.e. the author's last name is sometimes written Nemirovskiĭ, the journal is sometimes written as Techničeskaja, the title might be completely different, etc.

Any pointers where I could find some canonical information?


texts: Can a US university force a foreign student to obtain health insurance from a specific provider?

texts:
My wife is doing her MBA at a state university, and they have a requirement that she purchases health insurance from a specific provider (which has a pricing agreement with the university, but that is still very expensive). We have been able to find insurance from other providers at a much lower cost.

This restriction does not apply to local students: they can choose whatever health insurance provider they want. Can the university legally impose this on us, or are they just trying to take advantage of us being foreign? Is there anything we can do?


texts: Is it possible to give too much praise in a reference letter that supports a green card application?

texts:
I am currently writing a reference letter for a colleague applying for a US green card. Given that I don't know much about the process and expectations of the immigration bureaucrats who will handle the application, I asked around for examples of such letter. Obviously, they are all glowing, and I started writing in the same style.

Now, don’t get me wrong: she is truly a great researcher, I wish her the best of success with her application and hope to help as much as I can (at least, not to let her down). But… at the same time, as I finished writing my letter, I wondered: is it possible that I went over the top with praise? Is it even possible, in such a case? And if so, how can I tell? I mean, I did not  write anything factual wrong, but if read very literal (and outside context), it might sound more like the eulogy of a Nobel prize winner than the recommendation of a mid-carreer researcher (even a very good one).


texts: Do I have any potential in the academic field?

texts:
I live in a third-world country. Although I have a second-class degree in IT, I work in the general banking section in a private banking organization. This is possible because, in our country, private banks recruit engineering students (among others) as Management Trainees. They are rotated among various sections in the bank and are trained up for two years. After two years, they are promoted as Executives.

After joining the organization I found that there is huge amount of study involved to get confirmation and to get promotion. Moreover, I don't know Accounting.

Now I am thinking, since I have to study anyway, why not take the GRE and TOEFL, then study apply for a MSc in IT or computer science and then a PhD degree from USA.

I have already been away from academia for almost four years. And, since I am doing a full-time job, I think it will take 2 years more to prepare myself applying for higher education in the USA. At that point I will be 32 years old.

Is a PhD degree from USA enough to find a job at that age?


texts: How do I appropriately decline an invitation to an appointment lecture ("Probevorlesung") without burning bridges?

texts:
I will soon be accepting an offered professorship at a university that is a little further away from where I live.
Now I have received the invitation to an audition (lecture + interview) for a professorship at the local university ("Probevorlesung" as it is called here in Germany).
Actually, I don't really want that specific professorship at the local university, but I also don't want to mess with the local university because it is a potential employer for me. I would not rule out changing universities in a few years if the opportunity of a more suitable professorship at the local university arises.
Problem is: Rumors said that candidates who turn down invitations are never invited again.
Is there any way for me to appropriately decline the invitation without burning bridges?


texts: publication without sponsor's permission whether will cause illegal problem

texts: My work is currently sponsored by a company, but i did not sign any type of agreement. Our sponsor always want better results, which had lead us to have no publications record, although our result is quite new. We do not really want our work to go unpublished, but we also worried if we submit our work without the company's approval, we may have illegal problems. Our adviser depends on our sponsor which is not really an option to talk to her. Any advise? we kind of want to submit to a journal and just try.


texts: Does working for a prestigious company help in a PhD application? For example, suppose one does interesting work while at a prestigious company. Would this help an application?


texts: How do authors deal with figure copyrights when writing review articles?

texts:
Assuming I'm writing a review article and I'd like to use figures
after [1]" or similar? How am I expected to deal with copyright?  Obviously a review article is going to use existing figures, more or less--that's the point.  It seems from sites like IEEE that the expected practice is to pay, per figure, for each graphic used.  Is that really how things work?  Or is there some "fair use" clause that can be invoked?


texts: Only one student answered an exam question - and I strongly suspect he cheated

texts:
Today we (professors + teaching assistants) proctored a midterm exam for a class of about 80 students.  There was undoubtedly a "hardest" question on the exam, since nearly the entire classroom of students asked us how to proceed with that question. To be fair, we didn't give any hints, but it was clear that one had to use a definition to be able to proceed.

When we collected the exams, all of the exam booklets had that question unanswered -- except for one student's exam.  And this was the only student who asked to go to the bathroom.  I gave him permission to go, but I did not ask for his phone, which I now highly regret.

What can we do in this situation, in which I strongly suspect that this student went to the bathroom to look up a definition on his phone, so that he could answer the question correctly?

We still have to look at every exam to be sure that only one student got it right (the bathroom student), but if this were indeed the case, do we have any power to accuse him of cheating, or, have we missed our chance by not asking for him to leave his phone in the room?

I feel a big injustice will have been done to the rest of the honest students, if we let this one slide ...


texts:
I am currently in a Ph.D. will be graduating soon. I have applied for many post-doc positions but till now I haven't received any offer, I may get an post-doc offer in my own country. The problem is in my own country there are few collaboration oppurtunties, although there are many great researchers in my country. The field I have choosen in my Ph.D is quite in trend in my country. My goal is to get a job(assistant professor)in my own country. During my Ph.D I have published few results but I need more papers to get a job. During my post-doc I must need to publish 2-3 good paper in a year then only I am eligible for a assistant professor job in my country. In my country collaboration is less and in foreign country I am not getting post-doc. I am from asia. I can publish good papers at my own but not like 2-3 in a year.

Question : What I should do to increase my research paper output in post-doc If I don't have collaboration? Last thing I don't need publication in A* conferences, Even A level conferences are enough to get a job after post-doc.

I work in theoretical computer science.


texts: Which license should be chosen in arXiv for a paper to be published in IEEE TPDS?

texts:
I would like to know what license needs to be chosen in arXiv for a paper that is to be sent to an IEEE journal, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS).

Arxiv licenses:

non-exclusive and irrevocable license to distribute the article.
Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0).
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0 1.0).

I read numerous pages like A, B, and C, but I didn't find my answer.


texts: Research advice needed: How to make a move from web development to PhD research?

texts:
I am a web developer reasonably proficient in PHP and front-end development. I had completed my Masters (by coursework) more than 6 years ago and have been working as a web developer. My Masters' grades weren't very good (pass in average with few distinctions and credits). When I did my Masters, rather than focusing in one area, I was pretty much experimenting with different subjects such as natural language processing, multimedia, visual info processing, distributed programming, etc 'cause I wasn't too sure what direction to take.

I contacted few research supervisors after completing my Masters but didn't hear anything positive from them. Then I pretty much gave up and started pursuing career and moved into web development.

I am not sure how to go into research now and whether it is even possible for me. How do I prepare myself?


texts: How much attention should I pay to developments in other research fields?

texts:
I am at the beginning of my Ph.D. My research lies at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics, meaning that I will interact with a variety of researchers from several different fields - which should substantially broaden my horizons. However, reading the literature strictly related to those areas means I'm far less likely to keep track of developments in other areas, such as biology, physics, or computer science.

My question: how well aware should I be about major science developments that are not directly related to my area? How useful is this information for your own work?


texts: Should I cite the article that I am writing an opinion piece on?

texts:
I am writing an opinion piece on a definite article. Should I cite that article whenever I write about the author's ideas in my opinion paper?

I couldn't find any helpful resources when I googled this query.


texts: Is it appropriate to include class presentations in CV?

texts:
I have just earned an MA degree in a social science field. I'm planning to apply to American PhD programs (sociology). I'm from a developing country, and my university is quite modest, if not godforsaken, no extracurricular activities, no interest in research. My CV is quite empty. All I have is the  B.A. and M.A. degrees (I'm ranked first in both of them, if it matters), plus a B.A. thesis and an M.A. one; both of which are, I believe, worthy of publication.

I used to jump at every class presentation opportunity in my B.a. and M.A., sometimes in front of more than 100 classmates, at other times around twenty (M.A.). Sometimes, I used to spend half of the session presenting and leading the discussion, sometimes the whole two-hour session.

Is it appropriate to list these presentations (+10)? If so, in what format?


texts: What research shows how assessment design can minimize plagiarism?

texts:
This past semester has seen an unusually high number of students plagiarizing in one of the subjects I teach. To be specific, it was five times the previous maximum I had seen. This has lead me down the path of digging into ways to reduce plagiarism from my students.

I read this question which was great and had several good answers but it was broadly focused. I would like to dig a bit deeper into one specific area: How can assessment design be used to minimize plagiarism?

I realize that exams are less likely to have plagiarism but I want to avoid those because they are timed and I don't want my students to be assessed in non-real-world situations like that. So, I want the assessments to be take-home but I don't want to put more constraints on this question.

I really want to know what research has been done showing the effect of different assessment design and how it has impacted student-plagiarism (with a focus on what minimizes plagiarism)?


texts: Deletion of author when submit the revised version of the submitted paper

texts:
I have a question about the general regulation of VLDB for deletion of author when submit the revised version of the submitted paper (but the paper was rejected finally).

I found a link https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/resource-library/editorial-policies/sample-correspondence-for-an-editorial-office/addition-or-deletion-of-author-before-publication/ about making author changes before paper publication but not for my case.

Suppose our team (3 members) submitted a paper to VLDB, we revised the paper after received the comments from the reviewers.

We didn't include the work from one of the members in the revised version of the submitted paper.

Is it possible for us to remove this author from the paper when submit the revised version of the submitted paper?

What are the procedures required for such change?

Thank you very much!

Best Regards,

Chris.


texts: Sending multiple revisions to editor/referee

texts:
I'm finding that this is a problem for me.

All of my papers have been solo efforts so, naturally, nobody else is really invested in them before I submit to journals.  After I submit a paper, I either notice mistakes or cannot resist making significant stylistic changes.  Then I send a revision to the editor to forward to the referee.  This has happened multiple times, sometimes more than once for a particular paper.

I would like to hear from other researchers:

(a) Do you have similar tendencies?
(b) As a referee, how frustrating is it to get these revisions?  On one hand you're getting an improved version (in the eyes of the author), but on the other hand some of the referee's work may be wasted.


texts: How to balance academic reputation of PhD supervisor and teaching experience

texts:
When I read general recommendations on how to choose a PhD programme/advisor, it seems that many academics agree that one of the most important factors is the reputation of the advisor.

Next year, I may have the opportunity to undertake a PhD under the supervision of a "superstar" faculty who is considered an authority in his field. However, the professor in question recently moved to a university where the official language of instruction is one that I don't speak (though I would be allowed to write my thesis in english), and thus I would most likely not be able to gain teaching experience during this time.

Now, most job offers for postdoctoral or tenure-track professor positions that I see advertised online require a teaching statement and that one of the letters of recommendation address the teaching ability of the candidate.

In light of this, my question is the following: Is teaching experience for entry level academic jobs so important that it is always better to have a fair amount of it while completing a PhD no matter how well-reputed your potential supervisor could be?


texts: Do universities know that you have re-applied

texts: Do universities know that you are a re-applicant who applied to the same program last year? Do they keep that database? And if they do, does that hurt your chances? (Specific to universities in the US and the UK)


texts: issues regarding student research work in an undergraduate level

texts:
In the program of CS, in which I am currently working, we have a group of students that for ending their Honour´s degree they should submit and present a research in the field; limited to their undergraduate knowledge. The process is that they get an adviser, read some papers, ending up with an article that describe their experiments and discuss their results. After that, they should make a small dissertation about their research findings. Before going to this stage, their research work is revised by two lecturers to give their insights about this work. Regarding this procedure I have found, that in some occasions, the following occur:

The adviser of the student agrees that the current research work is adequate to the educational level, that is an undergraduate level. It is not a master´s or a PhD.
One of the reviewers asks for modifications in the research made by the student, that in the majority of the cases, would imply to make deep modifications in the research work that would take more effort and, of course, time allotted for the student.

In some cases, and this usually occurs in the dissertation, the questions asked from some of the other lecturers are very biased to their expert field. Making the student to feel discouraged of their work.

I mean how to deal with these situations, in this cases the adviser feel bad for the student also, but there are so many details that in my personal opinion is hard for the student to cope at this level. For example, imagine that a student X has chosen the topic of using neural networks for predicting diabetes treatment outcome. The student has made a literature review, obtained some datasets and perform some tests with the build model. Then, according to the adviser the paper is fine, and in the dissertation this happens:

Lecturer X suggest to use GA for feature selection instead of PCA. If this observation is not raised the student can pass, but with a minimum grade.
Lecturer Y, to test the knowledge of the student, starts to ask specific details of the architecture of the neural network. Lets suppose that Y is a mathematician, then he will start asking about what is the reason of the vanishing gradient issue and how to solve it. So this was a detail that the student has not considered, and according to this lecturer the student should fail.

So, what can we do to ameliorate this situation? Because at the end is bringing discomfort to either students, advisers and lecturers.

Thanks


texts: What are pros and cons of submitting a PhD thesis to ProQuest?

texts:
Many people published their PhD theses in ProQuest, and it looks cool. The thesis is indexed by ACM as a book, so you can list them in the publication section in your CV. I wonder if there is any disadvantage if I do the same?

To be honest, I really doubt that anyone will ever read my thesis. But I have spent 3 (extremely painful) months to complete it. So I want to decorate it a little bit.

My university has a public repository for PhD theses, it is googlable, but not indexed. I already put my thesis in ArXiv.


texts: How is the applicant's bringing attention to his/her own application viewed if you know nothing about him/her?

texts:
Let us assume that a postdoc is applying for a tenure-track faculty position in computer science in an English- or German-speaking country. After submitting the application, the postdoc contacted certain faculty members of the target institution and gave them a heads-up about the application. Now, you are one of the contacted members. You work in the same field, but know nothing about the candidate; you have not cited his/her papers or vice versa, you've never chatted with him/her, and no senior person has spoken in his/her favor or against him/her. What is your usual approach towards the candidate's request for attention? Here are some possibilities:

That's spam. You don't know the sender and don't have time to care; you move the letter to the trash bin and stay neutral.
The applicant seems to be too weak, arrogant, or in despair so that he/she has to speak for himself (instead of his advisor); you decide to vote against him/her.
The applicant's area is near to yours; you decide to take a look at his/her application to find out whether a future collaboration is deemed possible.
You copy-and-paste a boilerplate standard answer. (E.g. "Your research and teaching statements as well as your CV are very impressive! Unfortunately, I'm only very marginally involved into the hiring process. If the hiring committee asks me, I'll bring their attention to your application.") You really don't wish to be influenced but get kudos in case the candidate gets the job.
... (your experience goes here) ...

(An aside: this question is different from How is the applicant's bringing attention to his/her own application viewed if you know little about him/her? : there, you know something, though little, about the candidate.)


texts: Is it common for Chinese nationals to turn down review requests?

texts:
I am an associate editor for some international scientific journals. Unsurprisingly, I receive a number of submissions from Chinese scholars (working in China), which go through the standard peer review process and publication. However, when I ask Chinese researchers, working in China, to perform reviews they either never reply or turn down any invitation based on not being able to access files or external systems. This is not the case with Chinese scholars working in other countries.
This may well be just my own unlucky personal experience, but it seems to be a consistent phenomenon throughout several years already.
Are there any ethical implications of this? This is, publishing but never refereeing? Or is it that I have been unlucky for several years?


texts: How to allocate my time for two subjects?

texts:
I am working at my undergraduate university as a research assistant with my supervisor. Our group's research interest is in security and web, so we do projects about middlebox, encrypted searchable database etc. However, my personal research interest is in reinforcement learning and game AI. The reasons I joined a group that has a different research interest are:

I am entering my graduate university (different than my undergraduate one) in around 6 months, and I need a job before that. Staying in academia gives me chances to publish papers than joining a company.
For some reason, I had no better choice of research group in my university.

I am perfectly fine with doing research in a new subject, but I still want to make progress in my own area(which I am not sure is possible), since I plan to return to it in my postgraduate program.

Is it better to devote 100% energy and time in my group's research or allocate some time for my own research?


texts: What happens if the grant requirement for open access publications is not respected? [small & short-duration grants]

texts:
EDIT: I am referring to short duration (1-2 years) small grants (10k-30k $/euros) usually given to PhD or post-docs. The amount needs to cover material, conferences, publications, etc. Publishers now charge up to 10k for open access, so towards the end of the funding period when most work is being published the grantee might be short of 10k for a publication.
It is becoming increasingly common for research funded with public money to be published as open access with gold (expensive but immediately open access) or green standard ( free self archiving after 6 months). This is part of the grant agreement which is a binding legal contract.
What happens if a researcher publishes not in open access because cannot afford to pay the open access fee? Some publishers are increasing the open access fees and I have discussed with colleagues, particularly junior scientists and postdocs with limited funding, about this dilemma. Careers depend also on publications appearing in certain journals, so choosing a target journal for financial reasons seem to be a great disadvantage for younger scientists.

Will there be any legal or other potential consequences such as being banned from applying for grants from the same institution?
Will there be any non-written consequences such as being flagged as a
noncomplying grantee?**

PS: I'm not looking for advice on how to find money for paying the open access fees, there are already questions covering that topic.


texts: How do I tell my supervisor his idea is incorrect?

texts:
My supervisor gave me some guidance in order to complete my Masters thesis and to publish the result in a journal. His idea to develop the work is not correct and in this case I know my thesis better than him.

How do I tell him his idea is not correct?


texts: What did Grothendieck mean by "the capacity to be alone" in the context of mathematical research?

texts:
I'm confused about a statement Alexander Grothendieck made in his book Récoltes et semailles.

In fact, most of these comrades whom I gauged to be more brilliant
than me have gone on to become distinguished mathematicians. Still
from the perspective or thirty or thirty five years, I can state that
their imprint upon the mathematics of our time has not been very
profound. They’ve all done things, often beautiful things, in a
context that was already set out before them, which they had no
inclination to disturb. Without being aware of it, they’ve remained
prisoners of those invisible and despotic circles which delimit the
universe of a certain milieu in a given era. To have broken these
bounds they would have to rediscover in themselves that capability
which was their birthright, as it was mine: The capacity to be alone.

Why did Grothendieck say “the capacity to be alone,” and how does this phrase apply to researchers?


texts: Relevance of Research Papers from another field for Grad Admission

texts:
I am a student of Indian nationality, currently pursuing my bachelor's in Electronics and Communication Engineering. I wish to pursue a Ph.D. and later a career in astronomy (with an inclination to Radio Astronomy) and have done relevant research internships and projects in the same. However, I have no publications in this area.
Alongside this, I have worked on research in antenna engineering with a professor in my institute and we have published 2 papers in international conferences.
My query is: for graduate admissions, will my research papers in antenna engineering have any value and consideration or are only research papers in Astronomy looked out for?


texts: Is it recommended to email a professor at other institution to work with him over the summer

texts:
I am currently an undergraduate in mathematics and physics and graduate student in applied mathematics in the US. I am looking for a research position/internship for the summer (somewhere other than my current institution). Is it recommended to cold-call or send emails asking professors or researchers at other institutions around the world for an opportunity to work with them? In what other way can I find a position for this summer?
I am specifically looking at institutions in the US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and China.

Thank you :)


texts: Is it ok to enquire the editor about the accceptance chance of a paper which is under review for 1.5 years

texts: I have submitted two papers in a top-tier applied mathematics journal. The first one is a short paper and the second one is a full paper. After 7 months the short paper and after 8 month the full paper got major revision. For the short paper I submitted the revised paper after 5 months. Finally, this paper got rejected after 7 months after I submitted the revision. Therefore it was under review for (7+5+7) months i.e. around 1.5 yr including the time I took for revising the paper. For the second paper I submitted the revised paper after 5 months. After this 5 months have passed. Therefore it is under review for (8+5+5) months i.e. 1.5 year. Will it be ok if I politely ask the editor about the acceptance chance of the full paper. One week back I asked the editor, he told me that they are waiting for one review. After that they will send the decision. Is it ok to request the editor whether he can confirm its acceptance chance ? If they want to reject reject now only, so that I can send to other journals. I will be applying for some jobs now. I need to know this information urgently. I am concerned because from the first round reviews I am very much hopeful about its acceptance. If I pressurize them they may reject it.


texts: If I have a low GPA in undergrad, and want to get into top PhD programs, should I do an MS degree or redo my undergrad degree?

texts:
I want to get into specifically top schools (in materials science and engineering) because I want to have a decent shot at being a professor.

I am aware that quite a few people have successfully done an MS and went on to top PhD programs, but my concern is that because the MS GPA is so inflated, it won't help me in my case. I already have a first author publication soon to be submitted, so my research experiences have been covered well, and my uGPA of 3.1 is my only weakness. Remember, I am trying to get into top schools, where they get so many applications that they are seeking any reason to throw them out.

Because undergrad GPAs are less inflated, I was thinking that doing a whole another undergrad might be more helpful in letting me demonstrate an improvement academically. In addition, some schools require specifically an undergrad GPA limit, apparently without regards to whether the applicant has an MS degree or not. But at the same time, since I would be repeating the same thing, they might not see it as that much of an improvement.

What do you think?


texts: Repository which allows anonymous authorship

texts:
This question concerns a problem related to a paper submission in the field of psychological methods. As part of the review process, I was asked by the journal's editor to provide my appendices as online documents at an author-controlled site, and not in the main text (simply to shorten the paper). Since these documents will be reviewed as part of the journal's blinded peer-review process, the authorship of these documents should be blinded as well until the publication of the paper.

My question is which research-related sites allow this kind of submission (i.e., a document which is made available by an URL, with anonymous authors)? As far as I know, sites like arXiv or Zenodo do not allow anonymous submissions.

I am thankful in advance for any advise on this issue.

Edit: I am aware that a similar question addressed the anonymous storage of research data for a paper submission. However, the responses listed there (Dropbox, supplementary material in the submission) are not useful in my case. Dropbox is only a last resort, and I am not allowed to submit these documents as supplements.


texts: Resume writing guideline for applying a PhD position

texts:
I've been working a Software Engineer for almost 7 years. A few months ago I finalized my Master's degree on Computer Science, and now I'm thinking in applying to a Phd program in a European College.

I have no prior experience in research -besides the Dissertation for the Msc- so now my resume is very enterprise oriented. I'm a big fan of Gayle Laakmann resume tips, so the current version of my resume is very goal-oriented and brief but I'm not sure if that's what academia expects of a resume.

Do you have any suggestions on how to do a resume to applying to a Phd Position in Computer Science? Also, a template or an example would be of great help.


texts: Do researchers actually read all of the papers they cite?

texts:
I am a PhD student (middle stage). I have read only 2-research papers from last six seven months. I have seen some research papers in which they have cited around 12-15 research papers and I think this is the case with every research paper. To me it seems unrealistic to read 12-15 research papers with the details I have read first two.

  Question : What fraction of the cited papers has the typical author actually read?


texts: Help! Professor/Advisor Refuses to Publish Any of His Students' Research

texts:
I'll be finishing a PhD in physics in about five weeks.  I've worked hard, have done a lot of research, and have written 3 papers for publication.  But my professor refuses to take any action towards publishing anything I have written, and he has not published any of his grad students' papers in more than three years.  He keeps telling me that he'll give me feedback on my work and that he will submit the papers, and we set a deadline to get everything submitted , but then the deadline comes and goes with no progress on his part, and when I ask him about it he says he was too busy to look at the papers and doesn't have time to talk about it right now.

It is seeming more clear to me that he has no intention of publishing my work, and that he's hoping to shoo me out the door with my degree and hope that I will forget about the papers and stop bothering him about publishing.  The best that I can get from him is that he is obsessed with his reputation among his academic peers, and he seems to not want his name associated with any publications that do not fit a certain image or reputation.  I think that my papers are good and certainly publishable, but he will not even give me feedback nor will he do anything to improve my papers to meet his standards, whatever those standards are.

My blood is really boiling and I'm going to be very upset if my professor continues to fight my efforts to get my work published.  I really would like to see my work published.

What is my recourse here?  Should I use some negotiation tactics to find out why he doesn't want to publish anything new from any students?  Should I suggest that I go ahead and publish without his name on the papers so he doesn't have his "sterling reputation" tarnished?  I have already spoken to the university ombudsman and the grad student counselor and there is not much else they can do.


texts:
My thesis title is
: Important of user-generated contact in tourism decision making.

I am worried about my methodology. I am not sure what kind of data analysis that can I use.

I will use survey method. In my questionnaire, consist of 4 sections :
Demographic, media habit of visitor, internet behavior of visitor, credibility of source information.
For example, I will ask

-How do you rate the credibility of information from contents created by other users online?
-Would you agree that information from other consumers on Internet is more reliable than advertising?
-What us the most influential source of information when you are about to make a purchase?
-How often do you post contents (rating, comments, picture, video....) on Internet about a purchase.

My questionaire is not Likert Scale.

So far, I only know I can use SPSS to analyse.
But I really no idea at all what should I use to analyse. One type of analysis is enough for thesis?


texts: Asking for an extension for decision for PhD offer. And masters vs PhD?

texts:
I feel in a slightly difficult situation. I have just finished a masters course in pure mathematics, having done a BA in physics prior to that. Both of these were at the institution that is widely regarded as the best in my country- and maybe the world- for mathematics. I applied for PhD programs in my area of interest, and had two positive responses:

University A, probably the best department in my country for my chosen speciality. They didn;t want to offer me a PhD, but I had a personal follow up from one of my interviewers suggesting that my application bes transferred to a second masters course. This course has a high dissertation component, so I would likely be working closely with people in the department. I received an offer for this course, but have not found out if I have funding for it.
University B, probably the third best department in this speciality in my country. They are focused on  only one subarea of this area of math, but are very good at that. Also, I happen to be interested in one other, quite dissimilar area of math. I like these areas both in equal measure, and univesity B offered me cosupervision so that I could work in either area. The proposed supervisors' interests in this second area aren't so closely matched with mine, but I would probably have enough flexibility to work on something more specific to my interest.

Now university B offered me a full scholarship, only 2 working days after I had my interview. But they only gave me a week to respond. I have not heard back from university A if I have receieved a scholarship to study there. Though it is likely (though by no means certain) that I would hear back within the next week. Hence why I was considering requesting an extension from university B. Although university B is very good at this specialty, so I suppose they may have many students applying.

In many ways this PhD at B would be convenient in terms of proximity to home and other research institutions which have people I want to collaborate with. And also it is great that I could work on two areas. On the other hand:

I am not sure whether doing the masters at university A may lead to a PhD there, which would really really boost my prospects for good postgraduate positions.
I am concerned about lack of background. Ultimately, I want to do as good research in math as possible, but I have only had a year of learning pure mathemtics. I have no problem self-studying, but it would chip away time at my PhD when I would expect to be doing paper-worthy research.
I keep getting this nagging feeling that maybe I could have better PhD positions; from universities that are more widely reputed in math in general. Though I oscillate between feeling like this, and thinking that I should be grateful that anyone thinks me capable of doing good math research having only a year of math behind me.

I am meant to respond to university B by tomorrow. I'm not sure whether I should read into their relativity short decision period or no- perhaps it is like this because they really want me, or perhaps because they have many good candidates applying to whom they could be offering the funding. In general though, I am incredibly stressed by this. I genuinely have no idea what to do. I also an somewhat biased by the fear of getting old in postponing my PhD another year.


texts: How can I find papers of a specific journal?

texts:
I want to find papers of a specific journal. For example, I want to search papers about the smart grid security only in the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid journal. Is there appropriate configuration criteria for the particular search in the Google Scholar or Scopus;

Thanks in advance


texts: Is there a standard order for the preliminary pages of PhD theses?

texts:
I am a PhD student in a UK university. As I was putting my thesis together, I did not know how I should order the preliminary pages, which are as follows:

Abstract.
Dedication.
Acknowledgment.
Declaration.
An empty page with a quote at the top.

I have found that different people ordered them differently. Is not there a "standard" order for them?


texts: Posting Teaching Videos on Personal Website

texts:
Background: I am a fourth year math graduate student in the US.

I recently gave a talk in an undergraduate mathematics seminar at my university, and one of my friends in attendance offered to record a video of it for me.  I accepted his offer, since it will give me a chance to review my presentation and polish it, should I give it again at some point in the future.  However, he also suggested another use for it: post it to my personal website as an example of my teaching.

I felt the seminar went quite well and the recording quality is reasonable, so I am comfortable with such a thing representing me online.  The main questions I have are as follows:

Is such a thing appropriate on a personal website?  Could it be considered a bit overbearing?
Will this make any difference when applying for teaching positions?  Would anyone on a committee ever even bother to look at such a thing, let alone my personal website?
In a similar vein, should I try to make more of these?  Is it worth the trouble to have more examples of my teaching available?
Are there any other points I have overlooked?  Unforeseen benefits or possible pitfalls/risks, perhaps?

Any commentary whatsoever is certainly appreciated.


texts: What is the view between domestic and foreign prospective PhD students (U.S)?

texts:
So in my CS Ph.D. applications, in addition to the required Statement of Purpose (for everyone), domestic students are required to submit a Personal Statement. (Why?)

Q1: Are domestic applicants considered differently in terms of the review process? Is it more "costly" for the institutions to acquire a foreign than domestic students?

Q2: While most foreign students (from India & China, etc.) are elites, are there any tradeoffs when it comes to competing against domestic US students?  or are they equal footing?

Thanks for your time :)


texts: Best way to poll students during a class by web

texts:
I'm looking to get feedback from students fairly seamlessly during a lecture. I know that there is a reluctance to raise one's hand (if part of a large audience), and my experience of such polling attempts (as a student) has been to break up the flow of a lecture quite considerably. Personally I don't want to get into a high-school teacher role of trying to tease out responses to questions so providing a platform for quick and semi-anonymous feedback would be useful.

But how to achieve this? Crucially most of the students are unlikely to have laptops, but are almost universally going to have smart phones. I don't want them to be struggling to take down the URL to a poll from a lecture slide, or having to log into some terrible VLE like Blackboard in order to get access to a link. QR codes could, in theory, be used to provide a link - but QR codes don't seem to be used much by casual users these days...

The reason for a digital rather than paper poll is that I can immediately respond to the results. Most of all I'm looking for as seamless an integration as possible into the lecture environment.


texts: Can I collaborate outside my supervision on a work and add to my PhD thesis, me being the first author?

texts:
I wish to work with my Master's supervisor on an idea. The idea is mine and I do the implementation and write the manuscript. My Ph.D. supervisor is not open minded and will surely deny a  collaboration. My question is if it is legal?
Can I add it to my thesis?

It is my work, done during my Ph.D., will get published with me as the first author but no other advisor from my current university.

Please note that I do not work on funding given by my supervisor but survive on a university scholarship. So if I am using resources, it belongs to the university.


texts: Is it rude to change universities/supervisors after already indicating research interest with a current supervisor?

texts:
I am currently an undergraduate student studying in an area of mathematics and am planning to apply to do a masters research degree next year. I have been doing research with my supervisor who works in some topic say X and will be doing more research throughout the remainder of the year with him.

I am still very interested in topic X and consider this a large option for my masters, however, I have greater interests in another topic say Y. There is another university in our country that has a specialist research group in topic Y. I am looking into changing to this alternative university to study topic Y for my masters, however, I have had no conversations about my future research with people at either university.

Would it be considered rude for me to leave my supervisor now, who currently offers me a lot of support during my undergraduate, to pursue research in this other area of mathematics solely because I am more interested in this alternative topic? And what would be the correct way to go about this without burning any bridges with my current supervisor?


texts: How unusual is getting a Masters degree in a slightly different field than Bachelors?

texts:
Would it be out of the ordinary to get a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering and then go for a Masters in something like Civil or Structural Engineering?

I don't know a lot about how transitioning to a Masters program works.. Do people usually continue on in the same field, or is branching out common?


texts: To what extent might a non-faculty staff member expect -- or demand -- academic freedom?

texts:
Faculty and students are generally regarded as having some degree of academic freedom (tenured faculty sometimes having more than non-tenured).

Non-faculty staff seem to be a different matter. Specific institutions might have policies addressing this, but I'm asking more from a general / philosophical standpoint: is there any basis upon which a non-faculty staff member at a university might expect -- or demand -- academic freedom? Or should non-faculty staff basically assume they do not have academic freedom?


texts: Is it possible to publish a research paper as an independent undergraduate author?

texts:
I am interested in a new fast moving field in which none of the professors at my university have an interest. I have even started to work on some areas that show promise in the current scenario.

As I am working independently, and this will be my first paper, do I have a reasonable chance of getting it published (assuming it turns out well)?

What mistakes should I absolutely avoid while working on this paper? (to maximize chances of publishing later on)


texts: Is it possible to publish an erratum in another journal?

texts:
If an author published a paper that contains errors and decides to publish an erratum, but the journal where the article was published is inactive (but its website still exists). Could the author publish the erratum in another journal?
If so, what could the author do to make the article indicate the existence of the erratum?


texts:
Background: I'll start to write my (cumulative) dissertation in two months.

I'm currently struggeling to find a good technical solution to organize research-related thoughts for my dissertation. For each chapter, I currently have an individual Trello board with lists such as "ToDo", "Research Ideas", "References", "small thoughts / phrases / arguments for certain design choices". This seemed to work at the beginning, but now I have so many "small phrases" that I lost the overview of them.

Up until now when I was working on papers, I usually wrote all my thoughts into the corresponding sections of the papers. However, with my dissertation as a "larger paper", I don't think it's feasible to organize my thoughts this way.

How do you organize 100+ "small thoughts" about your research and still have a good overview? I know that I can use a physical notebook but I'd rather have an online solution that allows me to quickly reorganize my thoughts (which a notebook does not).

I know that Good practices for organizing notes is related but the answers were discussing online vs. offline and the general guideline was 'whatever helps you'.


texts: Can a professor force me to submit my incomplete paper to a journal?

texts:
I am taking a graduate class requiring that I submit a paper to a journal at the end of the semester.  The professor sent out an email informing us that we can either hand off a copy of the paper in an addressed envelope to her, which she will then mail, or email her a copy of the submission receipt if we submit the paper electronically.

I feel uncomfortable submitting my paper at this time, and I intended to work on this paper with my advisor over the summer before submitting it to a journal.

My advisor told me that I should report this situation to the Chair and I did, but my complaint was passed off to the Director of Grad Student Services within my department.  The Director informed me that she had talked with the professor, that the professor would not change the requirement, and proposed that I submit it to a journal and then just immediately withdraw the submission.  That has been the plan, but I feel like my right to determine what happens to something that I wrote, my intellectual property, is being infringed upon by this professor.

Can my professor force me to submit my paper to a journal anyway?


texts: What information should the speaker transmit during the title slide of a conference presentation?

texts:
Any standard presentation starts with an opening slide which displays the title of the presentation, name of the speaker and collaborators, affiliation and some attractive image.

Before any conference presentation the chair of the session usually tells the audience the name of the speaker and the title of the presentation. I have seen the following scenarios happen:

Speaker completely ignores the title slide and goes straight into the rest of presentation (assumes that after the chair gave the introduction there is no need to repeat his name/title)
Speaker gives an "extended version of the information". Example: "My name is X and today I will be talking about [insert more verbose version of the title]. I work in University U and collaborate with Y and Z". This can already serve as an introduction or an overview about what will be addressed during the presentation. (Should there be an overview slide for this instead?)

So, how important is the first slide of a presentation? What information should the speaker transmit in it? How much time should the speaker spend with it?

Does it matter if we are talking about a conference presentation vs invited presentation at an institute?

EDIT: Based on comments - I am aware that this question may be opinion-based but, as Dirk stated in the comments, the answer should be "based on how the different options are perceived by the audience", what impact the beginning of the presentation has in the audience and how it sets the rest of the presentation. Also, I should point that I am still in the beginning of my academic's career, and I still don't have a name that everyone will recognize straight away and immediately know what I do.


texts: Submit an article to a conference, which contains a section that has been already published

texts:
I want to submit an article to a conference, however, let's say 50% of the content of such article has been already published. The reason of such 'variation', is that after some suggestions, we applied some modifications to the methodology and the way to analyse the data, so basically a variation of the study resulted from that, but the core remains the same.

I actually never had the opportunity to present this study in a conference before or after the publication, so this is something that I'd really like to do; but I'd prefer to submit the 'second version' of the study, since I think that it is more complete than the published one.

I know that (if accepted) the entire article would not be published in the  conference proceedings (only the abstract), since its related to a published article, still I  would like to know if submitting an article that contains some part of a previously published article is something acceptable to do.

I'd appreciate your comments on this.


texts: Needs for ethics approval required on service evaluation for quality improvement in NGO? How to obtain ethics approval for small NGO?

texts:
I am working for a non-government organization providing elderly rehabilitation services. We offered various rehabilitation arrangement to our clients. Our clients are free to choose rehabilitation arrangement according to their needs.

Recently, we would like to analyze effectiveness of various rehabilitation arrangements on physical functions of elderly clients for service improvement. I would like to know:
- If we analyze data with consent obtained from participant, should we need to have ethics approval?
- If we are going to share findings (e.g. conference or journals), do we still need to have ethics approval?

Unlike US and Australia, we do not have local centralized research ethics committee on ethics approval. As we are small NGO, we cannot afford expensive commercial IRB services. Also, no academic institution has interest to have collaboration with us. Is there any ways for small NGO to obtain ethics approval? Thanks.


texts: Difference between conference paper and journal paper

texts: Many times I heard about papers published in conference. But still I am not able to find the major difference between papers published in a conference and those published in a journal. What is the difference?


texts: Am I allowed to my article to researchGate which is so far only published at arXiv?

texts: I understand that in general, it depends on the publishing license of the journal if I am allowed to distribute my article further. However, I want to know if I can upload an article, which I submitted to arXiv prior to publication in any journal (which is allowed by the journal I will send it to in the end), to researchGate?


texts:
I have to decide on which branch of software engineering to focus my studies. In my institute, the branches are not fixed. Each student has the possibility to propose their branch. For example, I could propose to do my specialization in "learning machine". At the institute, there is no person who advises the student on what branches are currently available in software engineering. So I'm a little lost.

I wanted to ask if you can name me branches of software engineering that you know. On the internet I have not found much info about it.

I also appreciate advice on which branch is going to have a better long-term future.

Sorry for my English. I know it's a somewhat ambiguous question, but for me it's very important.


texts:
I am going to apply for the masters program in computer science to various US based universities. I am  eager to apply to their professional courses which do not have thesis/projects in their curriculum, commonly known as MEng and MCS programs. These courses are more inline with the industry needs and that is where I eventually want to go after graduation.

As an international applicant if I apply to a program stating that I want to get a job in US because of better opportunities and doing masters there would help me in achieving my goal would it be frowned upon by the admission committee? How else can some convince that this is the right program for him?


texts: What are some practical examples of the use of a Luhmann box?

texts:
I've been looking at implementing a Zettelcasten. There are a ton of resources on the internet, including questions here as well as YouTube videos on how to set up your slip box and someone working through their own box.
I understand that the first question one should ask oneself when adding a new note is: "When do I want this information to appear?". This seems straight forward.
So, when adding a note, one puts it amongst notes to which it is most closely related. Let's make an example.

Economy
Human psychology
Cryptocurrency

Under each one of these we might have sub-categories and the final notes. Is the purpose to find insight across these categories and hypothetically write an essay with: 1.A.2, 2.B.1.A, 2.B.1.B and 3.A.2? Or, should I be adding notes in such a way that each category can become an essay on its own?


texts: What is the difference between dual degree, 2 Bachelors and double major?

texts:
We are considering to offer double majors between my department and other departments. While looking at examples from other universities, we came across other terms such as dual degree.

On the undergraduate level what is the difference, generally speaking, between:

Double Major
Dual Degree
Two Bachelors

Moa


texts: How do I approach professors for reading courses?

texts:
I am studying mathematics in a UK institution and it is not as common (or not common at all) for undergrads to do reading courses with professors as it is in the US. I would like to ask what would be a "good" way (sorry for the lack of adjectives to describe this) to approach professors regarding this matter? I have in mind what the topic will be and the main book I would be reading which matches one professor's field of interest.

How can I make an introduction that is not considered as "awkward" and when would be a good time for me to approach him if I plan to do my reading course starting from, say the coming October.

Besides, how would I know whether he would be willing to guide me as most professors seem to be very busy and one hour per week/two weeks is non trivial for them.

Moreover, what if he's going to be in sabbatical (although I won't know until I ask)?

Thanks in advance.

PS: A reading course is basically independent study, asking a professor to guide you through a topic/book etc, which is not graded nor having any credit.


texts: Is it mandatory to have published papers while applying for PhD?

texts: I've heard from people saying that while applying for PhD, you need to have past experience in researching something and should have international publications. I was like more concentrated towards practical experience and have't had any publications. If I am aspiring to do PhD and want to apply, it would be impossible if such a criteria exists!


texts: How would I fill out my employer on the graduate-school application?

texts: I need to fill out a short history of my work experience (including volunteer). It’s not very critical for the admissions decision (they will have my CV, which is much more important), but I still need to fill it out. Anyways, I have worked as a research assistant for a professor. I was not employed by the school or the government (although I worked with people form both). My supervisor / professor was the one who paid me. In addition, I had a very similar role on my fourth-year project but was not paid. What would I put down for “employer”?


texts: Do astronauts get co-authorship for experiments they conduct in space?

texts: Astronauts aboard the ISS help perform plenty of experiments during their flight. Do they get listed as co-authors for the research they help conduct?


texts: How to show interest to serve as a TPC or reviewer in top conferences?

texts:
My Questions: How can I express interest to receive invitation to serve as a reviewer in a top ranked conference? Currently I am registered with the conference review system (i.e., EDAS) and I receive review invitations from ordinary conferences, but I consider review in high quality conferences. Is there any feasible way to express interest and show that I have technical expertise to judge papers in a particular area. I know that having certain academic qualification (like master and more commonly PhD) and research experience is must to become nominated in top conferences.

Background: Researchers more or less receive invitations to serve as reviewer of a journal or conference. I guess the process in journals to identify reviewers is one of three main channels

Author suggests potential reviewer
Reviewer's profile is in the review system from previous submission
Reviewers can express interest to become reviewer in journals (Some journals have link to register).

and there should be other ways to feed information into the journal review system (that I might have missed).

However, in conferences, it is slightly different because

normally there is no registration link to express interest (I have not seen),
usually there is no option that authors nominate reviewers while submitting a paper to conference (at least I have not experienced the same).

the only way left compared to journal is that reviewer registers with the conference review system for paper submission. So in future, when organizing committee is selecting TPCs and reviewers, they can invite already-registered members to play as reviewers.


texts: Am I disadvantaged by declining authorship?

texts:
I have seen many discussions of authorship conflicts, which usually relate to a substantial contribution not being recognised, or a more senior supervisor insisting on co-authorship.

However, I am in the opposite situation: I have been offered co-authorship on a paper (currently in preparation for journal submission), and my contribution so far was very small. I am aware of the ICMJE guidelines on authorship and in truth my contribution to the acquisition/analysis of data probably wasn't "substantial".

Ethically, the right thing to do is probably to decline co-authorship.

(In fact, I am included on a previously published paper to which I made no contribution. My PI included me: he argued that I contribute to the group's work on this subject as a whole. But it does not feel right!)

But, I feel that many people would not decline... therefore if I decline, I will have one fewer paper on my CV than somebody who would accept. In the long run, presumably this puts me at a disadvantage to people who accept such co-authorships, e.g. this could include people I will be competing against the next time I apply for a job (I am an early postdoc).

Should I accept co-authorship and live with the slightly guilty feeling? Am I disadvantaged if I decline?

Note: I am particularly interested in the career implications of this decision/future decisions like this, and what is the "norm" - rather than answers that just apply the more "theoretical" criteria for authorship (such as ICMJE).


texts: Is it ethical to have manditory questions in an online CrowdSourced survey with paid particpants?

texts:
Our School Research Ethics Committee requires that when designing an online survey that each question is optional for the participants. These rules were devised before the era of CrowdSourceing when researchers had to rely on the goodwill of others to gather the necessary responses.

However as I am paying each participant to complete this survey (using Amazon Mechanical Turk) do you think I have a case to argue that I should be able to make some, or even all, the questions mandatory?

I have not approached the Research Ethics Committee about this yet, I just wanted to see what the norm is in other countries and institutions.

Thanks


texts: How to prevent students from using modified calculators to cheat on exams?

texts:
Recently my faculty (mathematics and statistics) and I have been dealing with widespread cheating due to calculators that have been modified so as to have more functionality than is permitted.

At my university we have a standardized calculator that is to be used for tests. This brand of calculator has limited functionality however recently these calculators have been modified and sold so that students can cheat on tests. We have managed to get a hold of one of them and it appears that the electronics inside have been modified. We have managed to identify the group of individuals responsible for modifying and selling these calculators however we are not sure what to do about it.

Here are the options we have considered so far:

Check each calculator individually before tests to see if it has been modified.
This is impractical as they don't look any different on the exterior and are no different in weight. We would need to open them all up and look inside.
Provide our own calculators to the students.
This approach, although better than the last, has its drawbacks. It would be expensive for the department to purchase enough calculators initially and then they would over time break and be lost, resulting in more cost so we would prefer not to go this route for that reason. Additionally, students could still quite easily take a modified calculator of their own into exams and swap it out for the provided one.
Change the official calculator model.
We could move to a new model of calculator however I suspect this would only be a temporary fix as the group responsible for modifying and selling the calculators could easily switch to modifying the new model.
Stop having calculators all together.
We would prefer not to resort to this as we don't think forcing students to do lengthy arithmetic calculations is the best way to test them. We could try to avoid such things however sometimes it is simply necessary to ask such questions, for example, in an introductory stats class we would like to ask students to find the standard deviation of a set of data points. Asking them to do this without a calculator seems unfair however we can't simply avoid asking such questions if we want to test the students properly.
Taking action against the group responsible for making the calculators.
Fortunately this group has been identified, however they are not students at my university so we cannot take direct action against them for academic disintegrity. We would like to take legal action against them if possible however my faculty and I are unsure if there is precedent for such a thing. As far as I can tell they are not committing any crimes. If there is something we could do in this regard please let me know.
Simply ignore the problem.
This is obviously not ideal as using these calculators gives students a clear advantage over those without them. Additionally, students using them often don't need to learn how to perform various calculations and can instead just plug in the various values and have the answer come out.

Has anyone has this happen at their institution before? If you have any suggestions as to what we can do in this situation it would be greatly appreciated.

Here is some clarification on the exact nature of the modifications:
To enter into the modified "mode" you type in a sequence of numbers (eg: 1234567) then it enters into the new mode in which you can do many advanced calculations.
pressing the reset button on the back causes it to appear to reset without actually resetting. If you type the password in you will still get back to the modified mode. In this mode formulas can be saved for example.


texts: I've applied an intership to prepare for grad school, but the acceptance result won't be sent before the deadline. Should I mention it in my SOP?

texts:
If everything goes smoothly, then before going to the grad school in fall next year, I will have an three-month long internship. The problem is, the admittance result will come after the deadline of the PhD application. What I can only say for now is that I have applied to that internship.

Should I mention it in my SOP and CV? Since I'm switching the field, getting that internship will be a strong proof that I'm capable on this field. And if I should, how to mention it?


texts: Standard style when citing different authors from the same group

texts:
I want to cite a series of three papers (condensed-matter physics, if it matters) where the first author is a different person in each case, say authors A, B and C, but all the papers come from the same group led by author D. That is, the list of authors in each paper is "A, ..., and D", "B, ..., and D", and "C, ..., and D".

Cited independently, I would refer to these papers as "A et al.", "B et al." and "C et al.". However, I want to cite them as the most correct variant of "a series of papers by D's group".

My question is whether this is acceptable as above or it would undermine the work done by A, B and C, considering boss D was paying them but probably was too busy to work out the details of the paper, and most of the work was presumably done by A, B and C.

Is there a standard styling for these cases I can rely on?

Edit:

I finally just opted by

... as pointed out by the same group of authors on a series of papers [1-3], ...

which I think strengthens the idea that A, B, and C did not reach their conclusions separately but as part of a wider collaboration.


texts: Should I report students that hand in similar reports (up to small permutations) in an assignment?

texts:
I am currently correcting assignments (pass/fail) for a Bachelor's course in which I am a TA. Students write some code and then discuss their results and approach in a report (in groups of two). My task is to "review a report and provide feedback for students how to improve their report" then they do a supplementation and pass.

The task/content is the same for all students so I will naturally encounter similar results.

While writing feedback I've noticed that I was pointing out exactly the same mistakes in two reports (including the same typos in equations). Upon closer inspection I realized both groups provide the same results and (more importantly) fail to provide results in the same area, i.e. the program should be run with different parameters, both groups only run one (and the same) set of parameters.

Both reports follow the same structure with small permutations, e.g. renaming sections or rephrasing of sentences and make the same "meta" mistakes like discussing their results in the conclusion.

However, looking at the code it looks like two different implementations (i.e. they seem to be using their respective code).

My initial response was to escalate this to the professor in charge and let him deal with it, but then I realized that I might be too pedantic, which I sometimes am. (My impression is that any of the other TAs would just shrug it off as "odd", but not do anything further.)

One of the groups has already caused trouble for another reason, so I don't want to "accidentally" escalate the overall situation.

I guess my question is how to apply the ethical guidelines of "propper scientific conduct" in this gray(ish) area, given that it is some "unimportant" assignment (of many) for a Bachelor's degree course. Should the needle tip towards "turn a blind eye" or towards "no exceptions".


texts: Invitation to anti-plagiarism service Turnitin

texts:
I received the following unsolicited email:

Subject: A new account Turnitin has been created for you
Hi NAME SURNAME,
you have been added as a teacher to the account, xxx, by Turnitin xxx Administrator.
as a new teacher, you are joining a global community of training experts. We are pleased to have you with us.
Are you ready to configure your classes?

With a button  lending to a Turnitin signup page, whose address is similar to:
https://www.turnitin.com/password_reset1.asp?utm_source=getting-started-instructor&utm_medium=webpage&utm_campaign=onboarding
However, isn't Turnitin a paid service?
Have you perhaps received this invitation and, if you registered, how you use it?


texts: How to deal with self-plagiarism or re-publishing of previous work in literature review paper?

texts: I am writing a systematic literature review and the problem is that in my subject there are multiple cases of previous work re-publishing or self-plagiarism: the same authors write multiple (2-3) papers on the same topic with almost no changes. I wonder how to deal with it. I am reviewing a theoretical models, so I cannot simply decide whether the paper describes the same or different experiments. The duplicated papers usually differ in some minor ways. I would like to create a graph of how my chosen topic was developed in time by plotting different papers and their citations and which model was based on which previous one. But I don't know how to deal with this kind of duplicate papers. Merge them into single, first paper? Plot all of them as a derivative models? Or maybe I should somehow graphically mark the papers which describe the same content?


texts: How do I tell professors I am no longer applying to graduate school?

texts:
I can't tell if my email should be a be a casual heads up or a weighty explanation of how I fucked up.

I just graduated college and have been doing a number of side gigs, one of which was teaching English online, for money. I always knew I wanted to research this niche topic in educational media, so I have been preparing my applications since graduation and requested letters of recommendation from all these people.

Then out of the blue, I get a job offer from the company I've been teaching in English in to move to their office and work on producing educational media. The industry sector, the job, and the country they are in is practically perfect. So naturally I take the job.

Now I'm at a loss over how to tell my professors I'm putting a halt on my applications. I feel shitty for making them write letters that I won't use, and worse, I know I will be asking them again in a few years to apply again.

Is it common for people to give up on their applications like this?

Is there a polite way of emailing them not only do I not need the letters anymore, but to also hang onto them because I will need them again?


texts:
Does the page number of scientific publication mean something? For example, are papers of an issue highlighted by placing them in the first pages?

Or they are the page number just randomly assigned?


texts: Suggestions for high school student who is visiting a professor for HS research?

texts:
So this is what she sent me:

  i emailed a caltech neurobio prof, dr. X, and he emailed me
  back and wants to meet me, im visiting him on june 16...i went through
  this sort of thing with ucla and stuff but this time i'm sooo nervous
  because he's a caltech prof and caltech is caltech...do you have any
  tips for me?

So my general suggestion to her is this: show that you can do something that can reduce the time load on his research (which is pretty much what all PhD/UG/HS research is about) - you want to do things that the professor wants to do but doesn't want to spend the time on, although some professors might be willing to "waste" a little time mentoring high school students and undergrads.

  he already asked me what lab and general knowledge i know i told him i
  know gel electrophoresis, pcr, restriction endonuclease digestions,
  immunohistochemistry, and some basic cell culture techniques and that
  i learned some basic neuroscience neuroanatomy and neurohistology and
  how to read fmri images through the us nat'l brain bee competition

I also suggested this: when making a list of your skills, show - don't just tell (although this is really hard for many high school students since they haven't had the chance to show yet). Professors are used to people who claim to know more than they really know.

====

What are some other general suggestions that can be helpful to high school students who are trying to do research with specific professors? Generalizable cases are fine - as I do get quite a few emails from high school students who want to seek my advice on how to get research with a professor.


texts: Do I need to cite Mathematica in my paper?

texts:
I am in the final stages of writing my first paper, in dynamical systems. The paper is purely theoretical but I use Mathematica for some images and graphical simulations (none of the actual results depend on a computation by Mathematica). The paper will be presented in a conference, where I will show some of these simulations in real time.

My question is whether I need or should cite Mathematica in my paper somehow.

More generally - had I used, say, Matlab, or an open source python library instead, would I need to cite them?


texts:
I recently received the reviews/comments for an article submitted few months back to a journal. All the reviewers overall appreciated the content and the usefulness, but also suggested corrections (varying from minor to major) : typos, better title and abstract, reorganizing the material, better exposition at certain places, adding more benchmarks; that need to be addressed before publications. All the reviewers recommended the paper for publication if the reviews were addressed satisfactorily.

The editor, looking at the reviews, mailed stating a major revision of the paper is needed before re-submitting the paper.

My question is, what does this mean, in terms of the chances that my article is accepted, when I re-submit it after making the corrections suggested by the reviewers?

In general, I would like to know what goes in the editor's mind when he suggests minor revision/ major revision etc. If an article needs major revision, will it be reviewed again? How do these translate into chances of the article being accepted?


texts: Why do some papers have 10-20 co-authors?

texts:
I am new to the field of academia, and when performing a literature review for really any topic, I am puzzled as to why some papers have so many co-authors.

Most papers have only about 1-5 authors which I can understand but I can't seem to understand how 10-20 people could all meaningfully contribute to a single paper. How possible is it that co-authorship is being gifted?

Are there any reasons why so many co-authors could be justified?

Update 11/11/19:
Some comments have suggested this question may be a duplicate. To clarify: I was not referring to large-scale taskforces that produce world-changing results such as the Higgs Boson project (What is the point of listing 1000 authors for a single scientific paper?). Those projects clearly play by different rules. I was meaning routine contributions to journals (such as a new formula or algorithm) where I struggle to understand how so many people could all meaningfully contribute to a small (albeit important) idea.


texts: Non Anglo and older grad school applicant

texts:
I am 49 years old, Psychologist with MA in Psych, PhD in Public Health and postdoc at University of Toronto. However,all my academic background here stated is from Brazil and I have been facing some stumbling blocks to enter Academia in Canada. Therefore, I decided to apply for a Masters in Counselling. Would my age and an already extensive academic past with a long research history [non North American] hurt my application? lastly, would I face institutionalized racism due to my non-anglo surname and academic history? My GPA's are: BA= 8.1 ; MA= 9,1 ; PhD= B.
Thank you!


texts: Acknowledge grants (which may indicate conflict of interest) in double blind review?

texts:
I have run into a bit of a double-bind for double-blind reviews as an editor. In short, the problem comes down to if reviewers should see an author's Acknowledgements section which cites the grants that supported the work. Either way has problems:

If you let the authors acknowledge their grant during the review process, it is often trivial to find out who is involved in authoring the paper (since the awardees for many grants are published online).
On the converse, if you do not let authors acknowledge funding sources, it is not possible for reviewers to identify potential conflicts of interest or biases in the manuscript.

In general, at least in my core topics, conflicts of interest due to funding is rare, so I am leaning strongly toward having such funding sources omitted. However, I could see it being a significant problem for other disciplines that I collaborate with. Does anyone know of any good rules of thumb, other than "use your judgement, case by case"?

Note: My general stance has been "No Acknowledgements during review" up to this point. However, on considering the issue in light of allowing reviewers to be aware of funding sources, there seem like very rational reasons why you should have this information available to reviewers, provided it could be done without identifying the authors or unfairly biasing the reviewers.


texts: Difference between Statistics and Machine Learning?

texts: What would I learn as a Ph.D Student in Statistics that I wouldn't learn and vise-versa in Machine Learning Ph.D program?


texts: What do people exactly mean when they say "PhD supervisors guide their PhD students in their research"

texts:
I am a statistics PhD student, and I just want to know what do people exactly mean when they say "PhD supervisors guide their PhD students in their research".
My supervisor is a Statistician. He has a master's and a PhD in statistics. His area of research is analysis of open-ended survey questions. Him and his past graduate students has worked on basic machine learning algorithms like KNN, SVM, etc to analyze open-ended survey responses. None of his previous research had involved applying a sophisticated deep learning based language models (e.g. Transformer, RNN ,LSTM) to analyze open-ended survey questions. He is in general not an expert in natural language processing (e.g. like those natural language processing professors from computer science department).
When I was starting my PhD program, I asked my supervisor about my general research direction, and my supervisor gave me a list of papers for me to read, and told me that this is where my research is heading. All of these papers were computer science papers on deep neural language models in natural language processing (which has no hint of analyzing survey open-ended responses). I got slightly confused and asked my supervisor that whether I am to apply these state-of-the-art natural language processing models to analyze open-ended survey responses. My supervisor told me that I won't be analyzing open-ended survey questions like he does.
So I read those papers, came up with research questions, and ran experiments and tried to make publications all of which were failures. I can't really discuss any technically of my work with my supervisor even at a broad level because he lacks the general knowledge about the field (e.g. he told me one day that he has never heard of the words like "syntax" and "semantics" before. These are all basic terminologies that any one in natural language processing community understands). I can't discuss technicality of my work with any of other faculty members / phd students in my department neither because the type of research I am doing mainly concerns with computer science and they don't do this type of research. It also took my supervisor quite sometime to understand that I need an access to good computing resource to be able to carry out a quality research. I'd really hate say this but these things tell me that he in general does not understand how natural language processing field works, and what natural language processing research entails.
So far the "guidance" I received from my supervisors over the past 5 semesters are:

the list of papers that he gave me to read while I was starting out in the PhD program
writing help with my publication drafts.

I would like to ask anyone who reads this posts if this is the right level of "guidance" that I am to expect as a PhD student, and whether I am entitled for more "guidance" than this from my supervisor. I personally feel that doing a research in natural languae processing / artificial intelligence all by myself in isolation is very risky and that I am not receiving adaquate supervision from my supervisor, but I might be wrong in that. Maybe I am bad as a researcher, or maybe I am just not good enough to make any publications. So I am just very confused about my situation and myself.
Could my lack of performance as a researcher be due to the lack of supervision I am receiving? or is this level of superivison normal for PhD students?
Thank you,


texts:
I am interested in mentoring students (undergrad / MSc) in areas of Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering.

Unfortunately, the university I graduated from/ currently work at do not offer such mentoring programs; however, this is a valuable experience that I wish to gain.

I appreciate any suggestions.


texts:
I took the GRE in April and recently received my score. I placed in the 88th percentile, which is respectable but far from impressive. I am hoping to get into a top 25 math grad school for a PhD in pure math. I don't think my score is representative of my mastery of the undergraduate curriculum as I barely prepared for the exam.

I didn't prepare as much as I should have and now am worried about whether I should study over the summer and take it again next year. I have an REU this summer which will eat up eight weeks and would like to get a start on my senior thesis afterwards. As such, my question is:

As far as graduate school admissions are concerned, is it worth it to take the time out of more interesting pursuits to prepare for retaking the GRE next year?


texts: How should I go about making CV as an undergraduate?

texts: I'm just an undergraduate math student, and I need to make a CV for a research application. However, from the CVs that I have already seen I have nowhere near enough to fill probably half of a page. I mean I can really only put my education history which is 3 schools. What else should I put?


texts: Should a list of typos go in thesis defense presentation

texts: I have a list of about a dozen small errors I've personally discovered in my thesis. Is it advisable to have a slide during the presentation listing these? I understand that this is superfluous, insofar that the examiners will probably already have identified these, but I want to look as if I am aware of them coming into the defense. Is there any possibility it could be considered insulting?


texts: How to deal with a complete failure in a group research?

texts:
I’ve led a small research project with another researcher. I’ve proposed a certain approach to a problem, but in fact, this approach doesn’t work, as even its simplest toy version doesn’t work. In retrospect, this toy problem should have been tested right after my part of algorithm was completed, so that two months of my co-worker’s subsequent effort wouldn’t be wasted. But coming up with such a toy problem wouldn’t be possible given the level of our experience, and especially this is my first group project.

Is this kind of situation common? How do I deal with it?


texts: What are job regulations for early career researchers in US compared to Germany?

texts:
In Germany, the job of a scientist for the public sector is regulated in a way that

on time limited contracts which are the general case you can work at most 6 years before achieving your PhD and at most 6 after it  (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz) and then only on permanent contracts (extremely rare) or under very special circumstances;
your payment follows a fixed payment agreement framework (TVÖD).

Are there comparable regulations in US?


texts: Should I send an email to authors of a paper I enjoyed reading?

texts:
For me as a graduate student, there are some papers out there that really stand out among the others. Some of them are really meaningful and inspiring.

Is it polite or even acceptable emailing the authors of a paper you enjoyed reading?

Sometimes I think some people would be happy for knowing that a student got inspired about the work they did. But at the same time, I think this could be taken as a weird/spam/useless e-mail.


texts: Can the supervisor ask a student to add them in an acknowledgment without any useful feedback

texts: I am a PhD student. At the beginning of my study, my supervisor told me that they are able to help me with my topic. However, later I found that they cannot even understand what is my topic. They wasting my time for more about one and a half year without any comments or help with my topic. Then, I worked entirely alone with my topic. I have done the first chapter of my study, they asked me to be co-authors with me for nothing but just because they are my supervisors. I refused this. Then, they asked me to add them in the acknowledgment as they are the supervisors of this project. They asked me to write this in every single paper of my Ph.D. papers. They did not help me with anything, they even cannot understand the difference between my objectives. My question, Must I acknowledge them in my papers?