texts: Is it better to have no publication than having you as second author?

texts:
I am a post graduate engineering student(Computer Science). I have only one conference (not very good) publication in my name as a first author.
One of my seniors labmate, worked on a very good research project a few months ago and wrote a paper. I have been approached by him to generate a few more results for his paper and proof reading and extending his paper with literature survey and elaborative explaination of results. I have been offered co-authorship(2nd author) for this paper.
Now, though I can dedicate some time to do that work, but is accepting 2nd authorship worth.

I would like to ask in general as well, that is it worth to put effort in papers and get 2nd authorship given that the paper is not related to my primary area of research or rather work and dedicate time on one's own research and get papers as a first author ?

Note: I have seen that in academia (where I want to go), usually advertisements call for applications from people having at least X no of papers as first author.


texts:
What is the average teaching load for a math postdoc position in the US? And can someone please explain this in reference to the trimester or quarter system, which I'm not too familiar with.

According to most job ads I've read, it seems for universities on trimesters, it's 3 courses per year, and for universities on quarters it's 4 courses a year.

However, is it the case that the summer term (in either system), is different from the other terms and that teaching usually doesn't occur in summer? So it's 2/1 courses per term under a trimester system and 2/1/1 courses per term under a quarter system?

Usually how many weeks are there in a term under each system? And usually, how many hours per week is there in a normal course?

Obviously, I know these answers will vary from university to university, I'm just looking for a ballpark answer.


texts:
What should I do if I have lost faith in my PhD advisor (leadership, research direction, everything)? I have worked in this lab for three years and from my observation, none of my advisor's project work out and zero publications so far. Since I already had a gut feeling that everything would eventually go on a dead march, I have tried to propose to him an alternative approach but my advisor never listens (or only listens passive-aggressively). Guess what, my advisor ran out of funding, and he blamed us (the graduate students) for no publication. Now we all have to serve as TAs. I somehow manage to pump out my own project but my advisor didn't quite like it unless it's his idea. He told me he had no funding for my proposal and continue to gamble on his own project. (Come to think of it, no funding was a lie.) Recently, I am publishing my paper and the way he edited my manuscript is always cursory, mindless and pushy. I have a feeling that I am destined to fail the moment I joined this lab, any advice? Any experience similar to mine?

I joined the lab because his research topics are interesting but found out later that all his approaches to the problem just don't "hit" the point. For example, you know you need different tools to solve a problem but he just keeps using the same one again and again and my mind just get narrower and narrower. Also his work were simply a rehash of the previous one, like switching apple to orange, and everything else stays the same.


texts: Is it normal to go to a conference/workshop without a publication?

texts:
I started my PhD not long ago, and I have heard some of my colleagues something to the effect of since they did not get their submission to some conference accepted, they will not be going to that conference.

This made me wonder whether it is normal for academics to go to conferences or workshops even if they didn't get anything accepted by that conference or workshop. Obviously, the organisers and committee members could still have a reason to go, but what about other people? As a PhD student, I would think that it's a good idea to go to conferences that are relevant to your area of research, whether or not you actually have anything accepted by that conference, just to make connections and hear about the latest research.

So long question short: As a new PhD student, should I go to relevant conferences and workshops even though I have no publications accepted at that conference or workshop, or would this be seen as a waste of time and weird?


texts: How to ask my advisor from another department for research assistantship?

texts: I'm a first-year Machine Learning PhD student supported by a TAship offered by my host (non-ML) department that does not have much funding. I have heard that RA is uncommon in my host department. A professor from the CS department (renowned for its ample funding) has recently committed to be my thesis advisor, and I was wondering if he would be able to give me research assistantship in the future if my research becomes successful. To be honest, I am not 100% sure whether a professor can give a RAship to a student from other department. If it is possible, could you describe how to ask, so that I can follow the advice once my research becomes successful? Is there any general understanding about from what year it is reasonable to have RA in CS and what the reasonable RA duties in CS are? Is RA something to be offered rather than to ask for?


texts: Should I wait patiently if the professor asked me to wait for a few weeks?

texts:
I am in my final year of PhD and submiting thesis in June. I had an interview for a Postdoc position about 2 months ago and gave an on site talk to the lab. The professor asked me to talk to each lab member individually to ask about lab culture, salary and so on. The professor and I then had  another interview and she briefly talked about the project I would be doing. When I asked about when I can know if I can get an offer, she asked me to await for like a month. She told me it's quite positive and very keen on taking me. But she has to think about grants and funding as she will be taking a couple of postdocs. After waiting for one month, she requested to wait for a few more months for her to be certain.
Only a few labs are available in the country I am applying for. So I don't want to apply for other labs and get rejected or rejecting their offer if any.
So should I just wait and see how she will reply before applying more? What is my chance of being accepted? Thanks!


texts: What to include in a letter of support for an academic assessment?

texts:
I have been asked to write a short note that includes comments about the impact and importance of a colleagues' work over the course of the past year - for a pre-tenure review.

I could discuss a notable recent publication, a conference he is organizing, inspiring discussions we have had over the past year, and his public outreach at a recent conference. But it is not clear how I do so in a way that most effectively supports his work, and would appreciate advice from more experienced academics who request and review such letters.

How can I most effectively frame and focus these points while keeping the letter brief and genuine? In addition to these points, what are the key features of such a letter?


texts: How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?

texts:
When applying to a PhD program in the US, how does the admissions process work? If an applicant is weak in a particular area, is it possible to offset that by being strong in a different area?

Note that this question originated from this meta answer. Please feel free to edit the question to improve it.


texts: Publication of review's comments on scientific papers?

texts:
Personally I believe publication process is not optimized at all and is too wasteful. There are numerous problems associated with it, however, here I just point out one of those.
Due to formal presentation of papers, usually reading a scientific paper especially in field of science and engineering is time consuming. There are some points in the paper that only a specialist of that very field would notice. This is why the journal editors assign reviewers to judge the paper quality. Usually these expert reviewers would see insightful points on the paper, which would take a newbie months to notice.
Having said that

I wonder why the publication does not provide review comments alongside the paper? does it harm anything?
Would be OK if we ask the editor for the comments of an specific paper? if yes, how?

I think it would be a good idea for publishers to publish reviewer comments of papers as well, they can even make more money and reading and understanding papers would be easier.


texts: What to do if a team member does not work but they have to answer committee questions?

texts:
I am a master student in a French university and the university states that for a project students must form a team. However, I ended up doing the whole work by myself (They always come up with an excuse to avoid working). We have to present the project in a French, the committee will ask us questions.

My French level is at best A2 on CEFR. I am afraid that when they ask questions I won't be able to answer them due to my language skills also my colleagues probably would not be able to answer since they have not done any work which would result in a poor grading of our project.


texts: Is there a generally accepted format for submitting papers to journals?

texts:
I believe in Mathematics and Computer Science journals usually accept LaTeX documents. In fact, the AMS has a number of packages and document classes for just this purpose.

What about other disciplines? I'm not particularly familiar with the humanities. Would a Microsoft Word document be unacceptable?

Does it vary from subject to subject, or even journal to journal?


texts: How to equitably divide the economic benefits of a licensed patent among academic inventors?

texts:
I am PI of a research group and in different projects regarding sample analyses, it looks like we will be able to license 4 patents to 4 different companies. I can tell you this success was not neither expected nor planned. And now the problems come; the money we receive from each patent, how to distribute it among the different participants. In order to avoid problems, I decided to distribute it equally between the number of people involved on each patent, which varies from 5 to 7, including me.

But some people are disappointed because they consider that other people did much less and should receive less percentage. In addition, I do not like this completely since I got all the funding for the projects, infrastructures and negotiate it hard with the companies, so I think I should deserve it a bit more, but I know that with this I will have problems in the group. Of course, I should have written everything down, the regulations, before starting the projects, but now it is too late. In order to solve this I thought about preparing a document, in which everybody writes down what they think they did, and how that part contributed to the invention. Then I think we could start a reasonable discussion, so people that did less, could not say the opposite, and finally we would reach an agreement. Another solution I thought would be to leave my University to decide on this.

My questions here is, how would you solve this problem, and if you think (and why) that a PI should get more part of the contribution.


texts: Master's thesis, should I inform my supervisor about the mistake?

texts:
Please hear me out first,

I am one week away from submitting a manuscript, the deadline is in one week.
The supervisor has reviewed my thesis and is happy with my results.
He is writing a paper based on my work.

Now I used a technique in my work that is fairly different is almost never used, but it yielded good results so I went on. I told my supervisor during earlier days that I using that technique and he said it's not the norm, but whatever you do just document it. He never questioned my decision or said it doesn't work.
Fast forward 13 months, and I've come to know that you are not supposed to use that technique as it introduces some bias in the results, which is not discernable.
Now I am more than willing to inform my supervisor, but this will have a domino effect and I might have to start my experiments again, which will take more than one and a half months at least, and I have been working on my thesis for 18 months now.
Why should I not tell my supervisor:

He has reviewed my thesis and he is happy with my results.
My student visa expires in 21 days, and another thesis extension (if it happens) with the university would be whole another hassle, and I am not sure if I will even get the extension.
No money to pay the rent. this is a big one, up to this point I have survived by a very little margin, with no funding from the department, and I have no work now, another one and a half months would mean at least 70K $ which I cannot arrange.
Visiting parents after 2 years of not going back home because of masters, and short on money.
18 months of already working on a thesis, having done my very best, I am f****ng tired now. I just want to hand in the thesis and sleep in peace. Every single student in my class has given their defense I am the only one left.
I want to move forward with my life, get engaged and find a job. 4 years of master's school, with zero
funding from my department, even when they were happy with my work.
Getting rid of my supervisor for good, he was always pushing me and
pushing me, and I worked my ass for this thesis without any returns.
Not dealing with him would be the highlight of the year for me.
It is a 100+ page thesis, from a different perspective, it shouldn't
nullify all of my work.
I can always plead ignorance in the end. Since I am not from a
computer science background, this thesis is at the CS department
though, they know I am always learning or whatnot.
I can defend it, my supervisor is one of my graders, and he is on my
side.

Why should I tell my supervisor:

It's eating me up from inside. It is my baby, my work, I've put 18
months of work into it. It only deserves to be 100%
My supervisor is writing a paper that he wants to submit to Nature
based on my results, and it has that faulty method I used. This kills
me.
I feel like a fraudster/criminal.
Scared my work will be thesis work might get canceled in the future.

I would be happy if you can help me solve this quandary.


texts:
I submitted a paper to an economics journal. They have promptly replied to let me know that the review process generally takes 12 to 18 months. I also have to give them a go-ahead confirming their policies before they can begin the review (so I could effectively withdraw at this point). Since this is my first paper, I do not want to be too picky about journal timelines. However, I also planned to apply for a PhD at the end of the year (less than 12 months), and was hoping for a better chance to be able to put a publication on my CV.

My question being: should I attempt to get published faster with a different journal, or is this timeline of 12-18 months acceptable to stick around with?


texts: How to quickly get complete list of citations to all my papers?

texts:
I need to get citations (with complete info including authors, journal, date) to all my papers.  What's the best way (hopefully without too much manual copy & paste) to do this?

What i so far tried:

Google Scholar seem to give more complete list of papers that cite my paper that it includes papers in non-English language journals etc.  But i can't see how to get authors, journal title, volume number etc quickly from the Google Scholar search output.


texts: What if the lead author disagrees with the coauthors on manuscript content and target journals?

texts:
The lead author has conceived the initial idea, developed the methods, the experiments, the analysis, and has written the draft. Coauthors have contributed to that draft mainly by rephrasing and restructuring it, in a way that lead author disagrees.

Additionally, coauthors insist on submitting to a journal which lead author disagrees with, but also the coauthors do not agree for submission on journals which the lead author prefers.

Lead author wants to stop collaborating with the coauthors, but doesn't want to leave this work unpublished (coauthors say they will ask for retraction if work is submitted, since they believe they contributed considerably). Would it be possible for the lead author to omit the coauthors' contributions by rewriting the manuscript, and submit it as the only author?

Given that the solution of negotiating and finding a middle way is excluded, do you have any other solutions to propose?


texts: Applying for PhD programs before finishing your honours, when admission requires a first or high second honours?

texts:
I want to apply to a bunch of PhD programs, particularly ones in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. All of these list a "High honours degree" for admission into their programs.

I will be finishing my honours in November, and will almost certainly be getting first class. The problem is that I'd like to apply to these programs before finishing in order to be eligible for certain scholarships.

Is it normal for applicants to apply for a PhD program while still finishing their honours year, even when a high honours is specifically stated in the admission requirements?

If it matters, my transcript is all A's or A+ for every year except my first year, and all A+ for my 5 honours courses I've taken, with 3 left to go this semester.


texts: Should I do another master followed by a PhD or do a PhD directly

texts:
I hold a Master's degree in computer science (machine learning) and I am published (not in very top conferences).

During my Master's studies, I found out that I am more interested in the theoretical aspect of machine learning instead of the application. However, it requires more knowledge of maths, which I am lacking.

I am thinking about following another Master's degree in applied maths, perhaps that available in Netherlands. The courses include measure-theory based probability and more challenging statistics, in which I am interested.

I might also consider following a PhD (directly) in data science or applied machine learning,  which is consistent with my master's study.

which track should i consider ?


texts:
I'm trying to put a reference for article at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27894279 using APA format.

Is this the right way to do it?

Tadaka, E. Kono, A. Ito, E. Kanaya, Y. Dai, Y. Imamatsu, Y. and Itoi, W. (2016, November 28). Development of a community's self-efficacy scale for preventing social isolation among community-dwelling older people (Mimamori Scale). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27894279


texts: What do you say to a professor/potential advisor when you accept the offer from their school?

texts:
Is it common to contact professors you've been in communication with to let them know that you're accepting their school's offer? Do you usually contact the professors that met with you on a campus visit?

Is it usually just a brief FYI type email or a longer/introductory letter? I've already visited campus and spoken to my potential supervisors/advisors.

How does this sound?

  Dear Professor L,

  I hope all is well. I'm writing to let you know I've accepted School's
  offer for the PhD program. I am grateful for this opportunity and I
  look forward to working with you and the rest of the faculty in X
  Subfield!

  Best regards,

  Pomegranateseed15

Anything I should add?


texts: What should I write in the experience section of CV?

texts: I have recently graduated with a BSc degree in Physics. I haven't had any internship before. Well, all internships last summer were cancelled because of covid. Now, I am applying for few internships for the summer of 2021. What should I put in the experiences section of the CV? Or, should I remove the whole section?


texts: Model for the number of citations an article receives over time

texts:
Is there a standard model for the number of citations an article will receive over time? If not, is there a good source for data on citation counts for articles divided up over time? Furthermore, does this vary by field

It seems plausible to me that the number of citations decays approximately exponentially, with the rate of decay depending on the article, but I have empirical evidence for this conjecture.

Such a model would be useful because a few years after an article was published, one could use the MLE method to estimate the number of citations the article would receive over any time period. This would allow us to count citations in a way that does not bias older articles, one of the chief problems with straight citation counts. Additionally, it would give us a better idea of the inaccuracies of metrics like impact factor.


texts:
I was conditionally accepted to an MSCS program. My conditions are: Must maintain a 3.2 GPA and Complete 2 specific classes with a B or higher. I have till the spring semester to complete those conditions. I'm very likely to make a C in one of those conditional courses I'm required to make a B or higher in. I was wondering how those are conditions are generally evaluated?

Edit- And it rounded to a B, but thank you for the responses!


texts: What is standard record-keeping like for a journal editor?

texts:
I'm developing an in-department certification process, with multiple faculty members assigned to assess each new certification, and it occurred to me to model the overall process on the (familiar) cycle of submitting articles to editorial review at a journal.
Not having been on the backend of that, it's dawning on me that I don't know what the usual record-keeping looks like for a normal journal editor. Is there some standard software platform to keep track of who is assigned to reviews, deliverable dates, status, feedback, etc.? Can it be put in a simple spreadsheet or database? Is it usually accessible by multiple people at the journal, or private to the one editor?
I've searched online and not found anything in this vein. Any advice or examples of "best practices" in record-keeping for the editorial process would be helpful.


texts: Providing Students Formal Exam Feedback?

texts:
I'm in the process of finalising my exam for my unit in second semester (based in Australia).

The exam will have 3 essay questions out of a total of 6 that students will receive prior to the exam. They will be asked to prepare responses to these 6 essay questions, but only 3 will appear on the exam (originally I had wanted to do 3/10 as a former professor of mine had done, but was asked to reduce this to 6).

These exams will be assessed against a qualitative rubric with no comments provided.

Other than considering faculty rules/procedures regarding whether or not students can receive feedback from formal examinations (which I still need to inquire about):

Are there any downsides in providing students qualitative rubrics from their formal exams after final marks have been posted?
Does the term/nature of a 'Formal Exam' mean that students should not receive feedback?

(As a side note my course has to have an exam as its listed in the 2015 handbook, but next year this has been removed to be 100% in-class assessment).


texts: Assistant Research Professor in a prestigious university or a tenure-track assistant professor in an R2 institute?

texts: I'm debating over two positions to choose from. One is an Assistant Research Professor (fixed term, huge potentiality to be continued for at least another year or so) in a prestigious university. And, the other one is a tenure-track assistant professor in an R2 institute. Which one is better for the long-term? Do people treat assistant research professor position as a glorified postdoc? I don't like a lot of teaching and my offer from the R2 institute involves a lot of teaching. I aspire to move to a BIG research institute in the future. So, what would you advice?


texts:
In a paper I want to state that a certain course of action increases the "chances of success" - with success defined earlier in the work.

In my field, words like "probability", "odds", and "likelihood" (and the associated variants) have certain connotations, and are likely to elicit semantic arguments, so I'd like to avoid those words.

The word "chances" seems colloquial.

Are there any other phrases that connote the idea that a certain course of action is more likely to lead to optimal outcomes, while avoiding any words that have mathematical or statistical connotations?


texts: Does consistency in how my name is presented/abbreviated as author on a publication matter?

texts:
Assume I have the name: "First Middle Last". I have been publishing as "First Last."

At my current job (postdoc) my adviser prefers that I list my name on my paper as F. Last (or F.M. Last), and I'm afraid that the change in style will make it less obvious that all the papers I've written are from the same person. Is this an issue that matters? If so, does it matter enough to insist on using "First Last" in spite of all other names being abbreviated on any papers?

P.S. If this is a community dependent question, I'm a physicist in the AMO physics and optics communities (e.g. APS and OSA).  I'm asking about how my name appears in the list of authors on the paper I wrote (not about how citations are formatted).


texts: Including link to professor's page in resume

texts:
I am applying for PhD positions in computer science. I have been fortunate to get the opportunity to research under some really good professors (specifically, one who has a high h-index, another who is the academic director of a large scientific institution). While these professors are respected, they are not pioneers in the field and so not known to everyone.

Thus, while mentioning that I worked with these professors (specifically in my resume, but in general wherever it's required), I usually include a link to their profile. My question is, is there a specific format or convention that people follow while providing more information about a professor?

For instance, many professors have multiple profile pages across different institutions that they're associated with---which one should be used then? Sometimes, they have poorly maintained profile pages but have really good research work, which makes their Google scholar page much more impressive. Some even have Wikipedia articles about them.

If I want to highlight different aspects about a professor, can I link different pages against their names? In my case, that would mean linking the Google Scholar page for the professor with the high h-index while linking the profile page of the professor holding the important position.


texts: Can I publish research in a peer-reviewed journal if parts of it have previously been published in a self published book?

texts: The book was not published in English, and I am using a different perspective in the paper, but the same qualitative data.


texts: Create YouTube videos on exercises of a University level course

texts:
Is it acceptable to create YouTube videos about exercises of a University level course ?

I struggle to follow a quantum mechanics course I need to take and thought about making YouTube videos where I explain the exercises and their solutions provided to us step by step. I already did that for two math courses last year, and not only did it help me a lot, it also helped other people that watched my videos. But some people told me to be cautious, because after all I did not create those exercises by myself and thus I have no right to talk about them in a YouTube video.

What should one do in those cases ?


texts: I'm working as a TA now, and I've found that I'm spending an inordinate amount of time on my TA-ship. Is this normal? Furthermore, is this expected? I'm worried that my research career will suffer because of my lack of research productivity.


texts: How to deal with a nosy fellow graduate student?

texts:
There is another graduate student at my school working in the same area as me that is extremely nosy about my work. His curiosity definitely goes beyond the normal amount of "What are you working on?" chit-chat that I have with other graduate students. He frequently asks me to list exactly (his words) which papers I'm reading. If I walk past him in the hallway holding a book or a paper under my arm, he'll (very obviously) contort his neck to see what it is. If I'm working somewhere public, he'll walk up to the table and start reading what I'm working on.

This may sound silly, but I really feel like my privacy is being violated. I think this guy's behavior is creepy and rude. I could never imagine doing any of the things I listed above. What I do with my time is my business and no one else’s, and what other people do with their time is not my business. How can I deal with this guy without appearing unfriendly?

I don't want to appear unfriendly because this other graduate student works in the same area as me and I don't want to burn any bridges. In my very short time in academia, I have also never witnessed anyone acting unfriendly. I have no idea what is appropriate or how to calibrate my response. It is also difficult because the other student is not the same nationality as me, so maybe there are cultural things that I don't understand.

I can't merge my accounts to comment. I am indeed a woman.


texts:
I am really LOST. anyone can help me sharing his/her experience would be great.

I am currently a PhD student and I changed my advisor and minor 'research field' after one year of my program. This is a new research field to mine but I have the ability and confident to conduct research and go through but the big problem I've never been exposed to this field before and couldn't find a solid topic/idea to consider for my research. my advisor asks me to find a topic in my own. any tips guys!!


texts: Registering for a math conference with no publication record in this field

texts:
I’m pretty sure that I’ve solved a certain open problem in mathematics. My solution is currently in its third week of peer-review at some journal that is known for rejecting cranky papers within five days of submission.

I’m currently searching for the next relevant conferences where I can present my paper. The thing is I’m not yet a famous person in the math community, hence it might not be easy to convince the conference organisers. Can someone kindly advice me on how I can go about it?


texts: "You are one of our top candidates." How many candidates are there likely to be?

texts:
I have applied for a Ph.D. position at a research group in a European University and gotten an acknowledgement from a research unit member. His reply states "... you are one of our top candidates and we would like to pursue your application further. Can you provide us with some of your program codes and two references we can contact."

I have given them some of my codes and details of two of my professors for references. Its almost two weeks now and I've not received any feedback or rejection from them. He/They usually replied back within two working days during our earlier correspondences.

My question is "Am I rejected already?" and how many candidates are usually in a  'top candidates' list?
(The Ph.D. position is to get the degree working with the research group and develop softwares for the group, etc.)


texts: Who should write a recommendation letter?

texts:
When applying for a faculty position (from assistant to full professor), the search committee asks for 3 - 5 recommendation letters by people who know the applicant professionally (and probably in person).

The first factor for choosing a reference is his/her relationship with the applicant, but another important factor is the (academic) position of the writer. Possible references can be:

Past PhD student/post-doctoral fellow who is now an assistant professor: probably he is the best person to describe the
applicant's attitude towards students and education (something that
is critical for the search committee).
A faculty colleague: closely witnessed the applicant works, but not directly involved.
Department chair: supervised the applicant, but probably his view is just the standpoint of a boss.
Dean: had less connection with the applicant, but can provide a top view about the applicant.
Provost/Vice Presidents: very little direct connection, but can show the applicant's relationship with senior people.

The point is that how to balance the level of relationship and the reference's position? Normally, recommendation letters by people with higher positions are more reliable, and can be trusted search committee, as a colleague may bias the letter for a colleague, but a provost will not do this for an employee.

Is the position of a reference more important than his/her direct connection with the applicant (considering the fact that a senior person has no reason to write a recommendation letter for someone he does not know personally)?

UPDATE: Some commented that references should be not-related peers, not people who know the applicant. It seems I'm a little bit confused.

Do you list references who do not know you at the end of CV/resume? References named in the applicant CV can be contacted for a job application.
Some job ads ask the applicant to arrange submission of three letters of recommendation to the search committee (for example, see a job ad at UC Berkeley). Do you ask people who do not know you to submit a recommendation letter about you?
Nowadays, most job applications are via online systems. When the online system requests a recommendation letter just send an email to the named reference to submit his/her recommendation for Mr./Mrs. X (but will not attach his/her resume or works). How one who does not know the applicant can then submit a recommendation letter.


texts: How much background information should I provide in a paper if it is a follow-up to a previous publication of mine?

texts:
I have recently published a paper in which I have identified a problem and developed a potential methodology for solving it. In that first paper, I included a fairly extensive literature review of the subject so that I could support my proposed methodology. The primary goal of that review section was to introduce and elaborate on all of the variables that would need to be accounted for in the model.

The paper that I am currently writing is a follow-up to that original publication where I have gathered the data I need to test the methodology. In this paper, do I need to re-write the sections that introduce all of the elements of my model (the literature review in the first paper), or is it acceptable to state that this is a follow-up to a previous publication and refer the reader back to the initial paper?

Of course, I will need to provide enough information in the second paper so that a reader will be able to understand the model. However, if I can simply provide an abbreviated explanation of the background and the elements that make up the model by citing my original paper, that would save me a great deal of work. It also would likely improve the second paper, since I will not have to spend several pages explaining things that I have previously established. However, I wanted to check to see if it would instead be wiser to just re-word the material that is present in the first paper.


texts: Do I have to do a Masters and a PhD thesis?

texts: I am currently perusing my masters degree in engineering, and would like to continue that with a PhD, and it was my understanding that I needed a thesis for my masters in order to get into the PhD program. Is this true? I'm beginning to reach out to professors to see if they will take me on, and when I mentioned a masters thesis to one of them, he said it would be better just to take the class requirements for a regular masters degree, but I could start looking at my PhD thesis now. Does this sound right? Thanks for your input!


texts: When writing a peer review is it better protocol to quote parts of the orginal work or paraphrase?

texts:
I am writing a peer review exercise and I am not sure when referring to specific parts of the paper whether it is better to quote or paraphrase them. What is the correct protocol on such this?

The review decides whether the paper gets published in a small magazine, whether that makes any difference to these things, I am not sure.


texts: Diversifying the academic institutions one attends

texts:
I am planning on doing research mathematics at a university or similar institution as a career. I have heard that it is important to diversify your studies (not attend the same school for undergrad, masters, and PhD). Is this true? What if I am already going to a good school, with the potential to work with people in the forefront of my field?

I am currently doing my undergrad degree, but when it comes time to do my masters, is it important to find a different school, or will staying in the same place hurt my job prospects? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!


texts: Can section numbering depth exceed table of content depth in thesis?

texts:
I’m writing up my thesis and use two levels of structure in my table of contents, which looks something like this:

  Table of contents

  Introduction

  1.1 Subsection intro
  Methods

  2.1 Methods subsection

  2.2 Etcetera

However, the section numbering in my thesis has three levels, so for example section 2.1 contains a subsection 2.1.1

  2.1 Methods subsection

  blablabla

  2.1.1 Methods subsubsection

  More bla bla bla

I don’t want to have three levels in my table of contents because that really clutters it up. However, I don’t want to reduce the number of actual levels to two because I refer to the subsubsection in my text as well. Is this OK or is there some convention that says you have to have the same numbering depth in your table of contents and text?


texts:
This is a question about whether I should leave academia. I understand it's very hard to answer the question, I would nevertheless like to know every opinion.

Some background: Got a PhD in pure math at 2012 in the US. Due to family reason only looked for jobs in my hometown right after graduate. Worked as a lecturer (teaching staff) in the department of mathematics for 8 years but never did a postdoc. I like doing research and teaching. Teach 6 courses per academic year. Have 9 papers, 7 of them are single-authored (I would like to say in my hometown no one is in my research field, so it's very hard to find coauthors). Due to workplace politics my contract as a lecturer does not get renewed. I hate corruption in academia very much.

I still have the heart and energy to learn (especially new things, like Physics), do research and publish papers. If you are talking about research resources, there is no problem for this because all my publications are not research-funded. Perhaps what I think I don't have is the heart and energy to work in academia and deal with all the non research things, like meeting people, writing research grant proposal (yes, perhaps my definition of research is very narrow).

My PhD advisor (who is a really nice guy, by the way) encourages me to look for academic jobs in some other countries. But after working for 8 years at university I have seen enough corruption in academia and ugliness of the people who are fighting for their tenure positions. I am very sick of it. Sometimes I do think of applying academic jobs in some other countries but I am afraid of falling into something I know I hate. Of course, I understand there is no free lunch.

If I leave academia, I could just find some part-time teaching jobs or private tutoring to make a living. Sometimes I do think of taking a master course in Physics or even doing a PhD (if I am able to do so). Leaving the possibility of having such an offer, if I do so it seems I am pushing myself back to academia.

Any opinion and suggestion is welcome. I can also provide more information (as long as it would not reveal my identity) if you need.

Thank you.


texts: Free ways to automatically get notified if new papers are published on ACM or IEEE?

texts: I'm looking for a way, tool or technology that allows me to define keywords and/or authors and/or conferences for which I want to be notified if a new paper is published on ACM or IEEE. I couldn't yet find a way to achieve that. What are my possibilities? It shouldn't cost any money.


texts: Deferring a PhD to pursue a masters after accepting it. Advice?

texts:
I have accepted a fully funded PhD offer from a very good university. In the meanwhile I have managed to secure a masters offer from another very good university. (I applied to both at the same time, but was given a masters offer a week after the funding acceptance deadline for my PhD)

The opportunity to attend two of the worlds best universities is a huge decision that will affect my future in a very significant level.

Especially given that if something where to happen in the 4 years of my PhD (change in supervisor's or personal circumstances) which would prevent me from completing the PhD, I would still have a Masters under my belt if I pursue both opportunities.

I would therefore like to defer my funded PhD start date to next year, in order to do the masters. Rather than do one or the other.

I would like your opinion and I would also like to ask for possible consequences of such an action, and how best to approach it.

(I note that suspensions of studies can be available for exceptional circumstances(including work/career opportunities). I would class the masters as a career opportunity, given that is at one of the world's best university and career focused with many industry links.)

How do I very nicely request to defer my studies by one year to pursue a masters opportunity - which will enhance my career prospects greatly?


texts: What is normal pay in U.S. for RAship in STEM field?

texts:
I am a PhD student in statistics/math in the U.S. I go to a large, state run institution. I am currently hired for the summer as a research assistant for a professor.

On the department website, an RAship is listed as being a 20 hour a week job, paid at $21 per hour. This is what she and I agreed to before my starting researching with her. However, now my professor wants me to work 40 hours a week for $7.34 an hour. (She is actually going to pay me $14.68/hr, since only 20 hours are bookable for legal purposes. Well, and the fact that $7.34 is below minimum wage). I never got the $21 in writing, so that is my error.

Working 40 hours per week is in essence requisite to retain the job (since the workload she requires to keep the job necessitates such). She is offering me no dissertation credit for my work, only this pittance of a grunt wage. Outside of a weekly hour long meeting via Skype, she does not have any time to mentor or guide me. Her promise is that at some point the research I do for her will become a dissertation topic. But, as of right now, I am just reading papers she is too busy to read and then telling her what they say.

This professor is not from the U.S. and I believe is somewhat unfamiliar with U.S. practices in fair wages. (For example, she offered me $10/hr to do some other things related to her research for her. I earned more than that as an undergraduate TA for a sophomore level class). I am not asking for $15/hr for flipping burgers, just a fair compensation for the work I am doing for her. She has a large NSF grant that she might end up losing if I do not produce results for her to show them.

She justifies requiring these hours at this pay because she says that I will end up possibly, maybe, hypothetically, if the moon lands on earth, theoretically finishing a third of my dissertation.

I am aware that I need to pay my dues so to speak. Naturally, I know that I need to put in a lot of time to a PhD that is not monetarily compensated. Nevertheless, I feel a bit like I am being taken advantage of. Is this pay structure/workload normal for an RAship, or should I take it up further with her?


texts:
I am an undergraduate student, and I am trying to learn more about the PhD process. Based on speaking to my colleagues and research including reading many thesis the process is as follows:

Apply to a school
Get accepted
Work with your group of advisers to determine a PhD topic and course (that may or may not just ba a professor's project)
Do the research
Write a thesis
Defend thesis
Get PhD

(If I am wrong on anything above please correct me)

I am still fuzzy on what constitutes an acceptable PhD topic, most sources I found quoted the same thing:

  Independent research on an original topic.

Can someone break that down for me? (I am mostly interested in the US context for Engineering/STEM fields)

It seems that incremental improvements in methodology are ok, does research need to be groundbreaking? or are you just demonstrating you can do "PhD level" research?


texts: What is the difference between a plenary and a keynote talk?

texts: I am organizing a workshop and have invited a featured speaker to give a synthetic talk. What is the appropriate term for this role?


texts: Changing Phd topic in between because of lack of 'usefulness' of current research

texts:
In my current study. I am trying to solve a problem A by using a technology B. My supervisors consider themselves as experts in B. I have a scholarship for 3 years and 1.5 years are over. I have passed my exams and my Ph.D. proposal presentation was passed 6 months back.  But now I realize that B=evolutionary computation is not a useful technique and is incapable of solving any real problems in the industry. I have a first-hand experience with that, now.

I wish to explore C and D as techniques but my supervisor is totally against it stating he cannot help me in that. Considering I am using a scholarship I am under additional pressure to do only what his 'vision' states. Any other technique I propose is challenged vociferously by them even in the inception stage.

What should I do? I can confront them and say that EC is useless and I wish to explore techniques which actually do something. There is no top conference which will accept my work but it lead to extreme pressure and  argument. My supervisor is only interested in his growth within the academic community of EC and has no concern about what industry does. I do not wish to be an academician and investing my time on training myself in such a work is not in sync with my aspirations.

Kindly suggest as to what I should do? Should I give up the scholarship and look for other Ph.D. opportunities? That is a huge waste of time and effort, though. The scholarship is given by university and not through my supervisor's funding.

What is a good way out here?


texts:
I am a Computer Science PhD student in the US about to graduate this year and want to contact a few professors; say, A and B; in my field to know if they have a post-doc position available.

Should I wait until A replies before sending out inquiry to B?

My concern is that if I ask A and B at the same time and end up securing a post-doc with A, and B later says yes he has an open position, will B regard me as unprofessional since the inquiry is a waste of time for both him and me? If yes, I have to send out inquiries sequentially, which greatly reduces the efficiency of the hunt process.


texts:
I write a mathematical paper. Do you capitalize "subsection" when you refer to a specific subsection? For example, I would write:

"In Subsection 3 we show ..."

But I would write:

"In the previous subsection we showed that ..."

What is the consensus on that issue?


texts: Is it ethical to limit marks based upon past performance?

texts:
A professor has a habit of starting oral examinations by asking for or looking up grade averages and grades from other subjects and then taking them heavily into account when evaluating the student in question. For example, I was allowed to be even considered to get an A in Real Analysis III, because I got an A in Real Analysis II and had a good overall grade average.

Is it ethical or helpful to ever consider student's performance outside the course? If not, what about subjects tightly interconnected? But then, most mathematics is interconnected in one way or another...


texts: Do you not belong in a PhD program if you don't live and breathe your field of study?

texts:
In my PhD program everyone talks about how passionate they are about their field of study, and how they go to seminars because they're fun.  Is it expected that PhD students truly love their subject, or is it enough just to do good work and publish papers?

This thread was prompted by discussion here.


texts: Why are research papers written in language that's difficult for undergraduate students?

texts:
As an undergraduate student, I find it hard to understand research papers on any particular subject.

Why don't researchers use simple language for their reports, so that everyone would understand?

Update: I will leave this post as a general discussion on this topic. Feel free to edit question.


texts: Prestigious institutions with open admissions policies

texts:
Has any college in the US managed to unite being prestigious and being open access, at undergrad or grad level. I mean open enrolment in the European sense, where they have kind of minimal requirements (language cert, high-school and not much more).

I wonder, given that they could charge thousands $/year, what's the problem with admitting mass-wise new students (and provide them with decent teachers, materials and the like). Why limit the number of clients you get?


texts: Citing an unpublished paper? plagiarism?

texts:
Here is the situation: I am working with 2 others on a paper A, and simultaneously by myself separately on a paper B (which is a thesis).

A and B are on very much similar topics.
I started with paper B slightly before we started working on paper A, but the ideas in paper B build upon the ideas in paper A.
Moreover, paper A will very likely be published sooner than paper B. My plan at first was to cite paper A in paper B.
However, my other 2 co-authors have now started to shift their idea about what domain of paper A should be, and they are shifting towards the topic of my paper B, and have even started to reinvent some of my ideas in paper B.
Therefore, I am very concerned that this will cause a plagiarism issue: If we decide that paper A should contain many of the ideas in paper B, then ideally, I would want A to cite B: I came up with these ideas independently and for a different paper, so if A wants to use them, paper B (i.e. myself) should get credit for the work (since I put in all the work and came up with it first, and we originally didn't plan to put it in paper A). But paper A will likely get published before paper B is handed in as a thesis.

Most importantly: I need to hand in paper B as a thesis, and I cannot afford not to hand it in, or to make a completely different thesis. Therefore I need to be sure that paper B does not commit (self?) plagiarism.

Is there a way for paper A to cite paper B (my thesis), even though paper A will be published before B?
If no, how to avoid (self?) plagiarism in this situation? (somehow integrate parts of B in A while still recognising B as the original work that is a separate thesis and gets credit as such?)
Is it generally stupid to work on two papers simultaneously like this? Did I make a big mistake...?


texts:
As a Mathematics student or a student in general wishing to go into research in the future, does being a member of the executive committee for the relevant club matter that much in terms of gaining positions in the future in research?

I have generalised anxiety disorder, and as a result I find it extremely difficult to join such clubs, and some of my fellow students who are on my level are gaining these positions with ease. Will this give them a large edge over me in the future?


texts: Do “researcher degrees of freedom” invalidate my analysis?

texts:
I tested a hypothesis using some observational data, but did not find support for the hypothesis (the difference was not significant at the p < 0.05 level). I subsequently realised that the inclusion of a certain subset of individuals was dubious, since there was some doubt over their measurements. I filtered out those individuals (on objective criteria), and lo and behold, I now find evidence to support my original hypothesis.

I am acutely aware that, had the original hypothesis test returned a significant result, I probably would have found justification to support the inclusion of those doubtful measurements (or perhaps never even stopped to think about removing them). Although this wasn't my deliberate intention, what I have done seems a lot like I have employed my “researcher degrees of freedom” to find a version of the analysis that supports my original hypothesis.

I realise that what I should have done was to plan out my analysis more carefully in advance, and decide whether or not to include the doubtful measurements before carrying out any analysis. But I can’t change what has already happened, so my question is, what do I do with my data/analysis now? I can see a number of options that vary in their sensibleness, but none of which seem ideal:

Continue to use my updated analysis and present a clear argument for why those individuals should be excluded (i.e. ignore the RDF issue).
Continue to use my updated analysis but, in any write-up/publication be fully open about the less-than-ideal path that I took to reach it.
Conduct some kind of multiple-comparisons adjustment to take my multiple different analyses into account (I don’t know if this is even a valid approach in this context).
Sigh and throw the analysis in the bin.

How (if at all) can I make good use of my analysis while still adhering to good research practice?

My field is Ecology, in case that makes any difference.

Edit, in response to close vote: I did consider submitting the question to Stats.SE instead, but I felt that this is more an issue of research philosophy than a detailed statistical question. The answers that I am interested in (and indeed have already received) are connected with a general research strategy, and how to present results, rather than details regarding particular statistical methods, and so I felt that it was appropriate for this site. Having received very useful answers and comments already, it won't make too much difference to me personally if it ends up closed (and I can understand the argument for doing so), but I think the material could be useful to others in a similar situation to my own.


texts: What is a good academic word for "verifiable by scientific data or experiments"? Is "empirical" a suitable word for that?

texts:
What is a good academic word for verifiable by scientific data or experiments?
Is empirical data a suitable word for that?
P.S EDIT: my question is what is A single word for "derived through experimental data" (opposite to derived through observation)
I mean that word should explain that it can be precisely reproduced by others as well because it's experimental data.


texts: Is computer science worth double majoring in for an aspiring Data Scientist?

texts: I'm currently a computational Statistics major at UC Davis and have my eyes set on becoming a data scientist. I like both fields of stats and computer science, but not sure if I want to put in the effort to double with computer science, since my only career goal is to become a Data Scientist. How important are the set of skills taught in comp science and not in statistics to Data Scientists? Is it worth the double major effort?


texts: Reference on how often "To the best of our knowledge" assertions turn out to be false

texts:
Quite often authors make some claims with some "to the best of our knowledge" disclaimer.

Example:

  "To the best of our knowledge this is the first time this approach has been used to address this problem".

Is there any research/study/survey that tried to look at how often such claims are false? (e.g. some counterexample can be found)

I am mostly interested in the field of machine learning / data mining in English-speaking venues, however any reference on occurrence of such false assertions would be of value.


texts:
I already have a BS and MS of a certain degree. I am contemplating going for a 2nd BS or 2nd MS, in which my employer is willing to provide financial aid. The employer is generally supportive of me getting a 2nd degree with the belief that I will become a better employee, and I am interested in the fact that I can put it on my resume to potentially be more desirable to companies.

So there is the option to get a BS for this 2nd degree, or skip the BS and go directly for the 2nd MS. I'm not sure which option would benefit me more. I believe I have done enough related real-world work that I could easily stomp out the BS (though it would take longer), or at least not struggle too badly if I skipped the BS and went directly into the MS.

Would an employer see more benefit in having 1 BS and 2 MS, vs 2 BS and 1 MS?


texts: Professor said we should meet again, but never answered my email

texts:
Recently I tried to join a lab as an undergrad and do a research project next semester. I e-mailed the professor and he arranged an interview. Interview was pretty normal, and we talked about an available project he had. At the end, he said we should meet again in August to talk more about the project.

Since the interview I have followed up several times, trying to arrange this meeting. But he never responded to my e-mails, and now I'm just confused... Should I keep waiting? Or did he just change his mind and decide to ignore me instead of telling me that. (If this is the case then it is really a d**k move. I have been spending a lot of time reading relevant papers and studying his project for the past month or so.)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions


texts: Are the peer-reviewers of papers submitted to a conference that took a place in location X from X too?

texts: Generally speaking, are the papers submitted to a conference (Scientific conference, say) that took place in region/country X reviewed by peer-reviewers in region/country X?


texts: Why do US/Canadian universities make you do master even if you have a first class honours from Australia?

texts:
In Australia, when you want to do a PhD, you only would need first class honours (some universities even accept second class honours upper division). For instance, please see the self assessment for the Australian National University:

I guess that most of the UK universities have the same requirements (at least Cambridge and Oxford).

Why do almost all US/Canadian universities make you do a Master's (before doing PhD) even if you have a first class honours from Australia?

I think the time that is spent for studying masters, can be saved for postdoc; on the other hand, UK/Australian PhD programs takes 3-4 years but US/Canadian PhD programs are much longer.


texts: Contract versus ongoing positions in academia

texts:
Why are a majority of jobs in academia offered on a fixed term basis?

I have noticed that most teaching or researching positions have a contract term (e.g. 3 year contract). Some contracts may be renewed, subject to additional funding, while others simply end.

I am wondering if there is an academic reason for this system (akin to the system being designed to compel the incumbent to continually publish in order to remain in a position).


texts: Who typically serves on a graduate school admissions committee?

texts: Suppose a student is applying to a graduate school. Who is typically on the admissions committee? Is the chair of the department on the admissions committee?


texts: Should you contact professors at universities you plan on applying to for graduate studies in mathematics?

texts:
I am currently applying to graduate school in mathematics. In the last year of undergraduate study I have read many papers and books by experienced mathematicians, and with the help of my honours advisor, I have a list of potential PhD supervisors at universities in the USA and Europe.

I am wondering if it is good form to email mathematicians (or more generally any faculty) at graduate schools you are applying to, just to assert your general interests and/or goals to work with them.

I'm definitely not planning on spamming hundreds of mathematicians with a generic email, but there are a handful who I think I can say a few words to.

Is this type of think considered annoying? Does it help the application process in anyway? Does anyone else do this?


texts: Do I need to keep my high school transcripts?

texts: I graduated high school in the United States and I have a bachelors degree from an accredited university in the United States as well.  Would I need to keep my high school transcripts for any purpose?  For example, Grad school in the US or abroad or any other need?


texts:
I'm hoping to start a PhD, I had been planning to do application this year and start next year but I've now been laid off with no real prospects of getting more work soon.

Wondering with all the travel bans and people leaving cities if previously filled places might become available this year in the US? Obviously universities are in disarray so don't want to bother them at this time.

Is anybody aware what happens when people pull out of programs or defer?

I am in NYC and hoping to start a programme in CS, or statistics in NYC or the east coast anyway, my partner works in the city too so I can't go too far. Just wondering if there's any scope to start this year as now I have no work. Any ideas if this is feasible? If I'm already living here so I'm able to attend with very little hindrance compared to those in other parts of US or coming from an international location. Better to fill a place then let it go to waste?

Has anyone one some insight in to what happens in exceptional times such as these?


texts: How do I create a diagram in this specific style?

texts:
I am unsure if this is the right place to ask this but I have seen this style of diagrams (shamelessly stolen from this question):

mostly in an academic setting, i.e. assignments, exams, publications, etc. Anyone have any idea how these diagrams are created. Are they created in Latex/Tikz/PGF, illustrator, paint, something else?


texts: How can I validate a citation that is genuine in google scholar but as a *?

texts:
Google Scholar may mark citation counts with an asterisk (*), meaning:

  This "Cited by" count includes citations to the following articles in Scholar. The ones marked * may be different from the article in the profile.

How can I validate citations in my Google Scholar account that are genuine but are marked with a *?


texts: Would an honest researcher actually have to pay back their salary?

texts:
Recently, I read the answer by Hexal to the following question here: Not including student who contributed very little as coauthor of paper and I was scared. Much more than scared, I could not sleep the following night. In the question, a project leader asks whether or not he should include a visiting student who showed "good motivation", but did not contribute anything to a certain project as a coauthor (to one of the project's papers).
There is a downvoted answer with -40, saying that if the student writes that she wants to be a coauthor, the project leader should write her an e-mail:

[...] Therefore, we would appreciate it if you return the salary you received for the internship. Please transfer USD ... to the account ... until .... If we don't see a reverse payment, we feel necessitated to undertake legal steps. Thank you for your cooperation.

Now, this answer is downvoted. I am also not sure if the downvotes/comments are because this approach is not appropriate for the given situation or not appropriate in general.
This scared me a lot. I always thought that one would never have to pay back earned money (except for extreme reasons, like fraud probably?).
Now, I do not plan to not work. But I know some asshole professors who, when their students say that they do something else on their weekends than working, they tell the whole faculty that their student is not working. I've never heard of someone asking back for money, though. However, I am scared now that I will work for such a professor, we do not manage to write a paper together and then they make me to pay my salaries back after some time, which I cannot afford.
So, my questions:

Are such threats something that happens sometimes / often?

(I would probably be scared enough if I got such a letter since lawyers are expensive but) Did students ever go to court because of such a letter and do judges approve this?

Are things like this supported by universities or their legal departments?

I would be interested in answers about the situation all over the world – if this is not possible, I would be interested in Europe and Northern America.


texts: Do I need to cite an artwork? How would I do it? Is permission needed?

texts:
In my academic paper, I have well over 100 figures, and would like to use an artwork I found online in one of my figures - it is not published in any book, it is just something they made and posted online. I would be using 1/6th of the author's artwork figure, and it would be so heavily modified it would barely be recognizable. The modified artwork would take up 1/40th the space of 1 such diagram (out of 100+) and used once only, it is a minor element of my figure.

(1) Do I need to cite the artwork in this case?

(2) Can you give any guideline on when an artwork citation is needed?

(3) Am I required to get permission from the author, or is it a courtesy to the author only?

(4) How would one cite an artwork in their dissertation?


texts: How to get a mentor or supervisor for PhD studies in Computer Science?

texts:
If I have already completed a master's degree, but  no longer belong or have contact to the institution in which I followed my master's degree; how to approach one professor to see if he or she wants to supervise me? Actually I see lots of different areas that I would like, but I feel afraid of not having the enough background (I can only contact the potential professors by email because well I am actually in the North America area, and I would like to aim for an European university)

I know that some times there are some published open positions, but in those cases mostly the competition is really fierce.

Any advice, mostly based on experience, will be very useful.

Thanks


texts: Submitting to conference without intention to present

texts:
I did a master's degree in computer science and wrote a thesis. I'm interested in submitting the work in my thesis to a second-tier conference in my research area -- if it is accepted, it will be a stamp of quality for my work.

Nevertheless, I'm not really interested in presenting the work in case it is accepted, because (i) I've moved on to a PhD somewhere else, and it would be troublesome to ask my former advisor for travel funding or presentation advice, and (ii) I've moved on to a different research area (still within the same broad area.)

Can I submit to a conference and choose not to present? If not, what can I do?


texts: As a student, should I offer alternative ways of understanding a point in lectures?

texts:
Often, I’ll be in lectures and the lecturer will explain the point to me, and I make a comparison with something else that helps me understand the point, and it clicks. For example, in Syntax, the lecturer was talking about the difference between a noun and a determiner phrase; how the former describes a set of things, and the latter points to a specific thing. This reminds me of computing, so I think: ‘Oh, right. Nouns are classes, and DPs instantiate those classes.’

Is this type of rephrasing ever a useful thing to vocalise in lectures, for other students or the lecturer? I do sometimes vocalise these thoughts, usually in a smaller class setting though, not lectures. I usually try to keep quiet because I feel like either people won’t understand what I mean, or the teacher doesn’t consider it relevant or useful. So, my questions are: Is this kind of contribution in lectures valuable? Or do lecturers prefer that you ask questions instead of making statements?


texts: Need help with linear dynamics and kinetic frictional force question

texts:
I have went though my course notes a number of times and have still cannot solve the question below
A penguin slides at a constant velocity of 1.52 ms-1 down an icy incline.  The incline slopes above the horizontal at an angle of 6.3° At the bottom of the incline, the penguin slides onto a horizontal patch of ice.  The coefficient of kinetic friction between the ice and the penguin is the same for the incline as for the horizontal patch.  How much time is required for the penguin to slide to a halt after moving onto the horizontal patch?
I worked out the Uniform  horizontal velocity of the penguin to be 1.511 m/s however I cannot find a way to get acceleration even when I derived:
a = μg
From
F = ma and F= μmg
Am I missing something or is the question not got enough information to work with?


texts: How do I get out of my overly vain 'trophy' mindset when it comes to universities?

texts:
I have friends who went to pretty good universities (world top 10), and I would love to apply too after my Masters although I am not sure how realistic this is, as I also had some personal problems during my undergraduate degree affecting my grades. However, I feel bad every time I think about it and realise that my university right now is not Oxbridge / Ivy League -although I too ultimately am interested in a career in academia.

One of my friends got into Oxbridge and I don't think he's more intelligent than me or particularly gifted at all to be honest, -but I just don't understand? - And: yes, I should know that it doesn't matter that much, and that I should not compare myself and not let this take over my thought processes. But I cannot seem to help it, it's on my mind a lot. And it's even keeping me from studying. - any advice?


texts: Do you let Google Scholar index popular science articles, conference abstracts, etc.?

texts:
I enjoy that Google finds things I've written that I would never bother to link on my own web page, just because it's nice to have all my writing collected somewhere given I've made the effort.  But given that academics often assess each other from Google Scholar, I'm worried that my "year" index is getting cluttered and makes it look like no one cites my recent work.  Of course, some people allow Google to automatically list discovered works and have their indices full of articles that aren't even theirs, but that's obviously unimpressive.

If you are the kind of person that clicks "year" on Google Scholar to see what an academic does lately, and you were checking the Scholar page of someone you were thinking of hiring, funding, or working with, would you be put off by fluffy articles like book reviews, conference abstracts, and popular science mixed with good ones?


texts: Desaturation of academic (TT) job market in Mathematics and the Sciences

texts:
Although this question doesn't pertain to me so much, and I have my own suggestions, I wanted to ask this general question to the community. What solutions can be (relativity) easily implemented, to cure the problem of a lack of TT (Teaching + Research) positions in mathematics and the sciences? This is a major problem in academia now, and we can see individuals with PhD's in Mathematics (for example) who struggle to find suitable employment, end up in postdocs for many years, etc.,

I ask this because these solutions can hopefully be looked over and possibly implemented in the future, if we have an idea of what they are.


texts: How to deal with insignificant work / wrong methodology in papers, when it is discussed correctly?

texts:
I had a strange situation a few months ago:

I was reviewing a paper which was on an interesting problem and the authors used machine learning to solve this problem. Unfortunately, they seemed to have little experience with the methods so they obviously ran into the problem of overfitting without noticing this. Therefore, they drew wrong conclusions from their experiments. (Short summary for people not familiar with machine learning: They did not use the methods correctly and so their results were invalid).

I elaborated on the problem in my review and stated that the result cannot be generalized due to this problem and that the methods were used wrongly.

I was a bit surprised to receive a revision of the manuscript, where my remarks were just included in the discussion section: In fact they did not improve the experiment, but in the discussion they more or less stated that:

  it is possible that everything we wrote in here is invalid due to the problem of overfitting.

So in the end they had a paper with a good justification for the project, a maybe working method which was not applied correctly, and they interpreted the results correct – so all in all it was a well documented example for a failure, and it was formally correct.

Still, my recommendation was to refuse the paper, but I was considering if it might be helpful to others because they could learn from the mistakes. On the other hand, publishing such a paper would not be a reference for the authors since this is a severe flaw in the use of methods (and readers might skip the discussion and think the results are valid).

Did you have similar experiences before? And how did you react?


texts: If I take a PhD from a not so well standing university, will I be less respected in science?

texts:
Let me give you additional context on the question.

I am a master student in Computer Science (hopefully graduating this year). I want to do a PhD later on (after working in the industry for a bit). I am currently writing a paper with an aspiring associate professor. He doesn't have a lot of heavily cited publications yet, but he is aspiring to go to more prestigious conferences and pushing himself. The university I go to doesn't rank high in the world ranking of the universities, but in my country it is one of the top universities.

My question is, then: If my advisor isn't a star scientist (yet) and if my university isn't some worldly famous one, can I still be a well-respected scientist, provided that my work is actually good? I guess that the broader question I am referring to is: Is there elitism in academia, or is it merit based?

Thank you in advance!


texts: Respected researchers giving imprecise or misleading explanations in casual conversations

texts:
I have attended quite a few large conferences in mathematics where experts from different fields participate. Naturally I talked to some people and asked them a very basic question: what they are working on. In some cases the answers were not very precise and even rather misleading. I had the feeling that these people tried to make an impression that they work in one field while they work in another one.

One of the worst examples of such discussions was as follows. The person said that he works in interplay of random series and quantum fields. I never heard that there is a connection between the two subjects and asked to elaborate.  His explanations were chaotic: he started to explain on random series without any mention of quantum fields. I asked again how it is related to the latter. He said something about quantum field without mention of random series. After a couple more questions he continued to jump between the two subjects without explaining the relation. The funny thing is that after this discussion I found his list of publications and realized that all his publications belong to a third area which has apparently nothing to do with the two above topics. To my greater surprise, this person is actually a respected mathematician from a good math department.

  My impression is that the situations as above are not exceptional. Am I wrong? How typical they are? Is there any rational explanation of such a behavior?

My question might be non-appropriate for this site, sorry about that.   Personally I find the situations I have been in quite strange, and I would like to have any comment if it is something typical in academia (at least in mathematics) or not.


texts: For how long is research considered valid for publication?

texts: Does a research/study have an 'expiry date' that prohibits it from being published in a journal after it has been completed?


texts: Best way to cite collaborators that are unaffiliated with an academic institution or business?

texts:
I am the lead author on a journal paper to the IEEE, and I'm trying to figure out how to cite other contributors in a way that makes sense.  Two of us are affiliated with a university, one contributor is a wonderful and knowledgable mathematician whose "real job" is in the service industry, and the other contributor is also a math nerd who is a barista in another country that did all of the proofs.

Would these non-conventional authors be "independent" or "unaffiliated" or some other term.  The affiliation is required by the journal.  Any suggestions (or a definitive source) of how to handle this issue would be appreciated.


texts: Does the candidate usually get notified when a request for a reference letter is made?

texts:
I applied for a university position and gave the named three persons as a reference: A, B, and C. I am not very much in touch with A, B, C, but I already have permission to use their name as reference.

Would the university I applied to let me know that they sent a request to those persons – and whether they answered or not? For example, would they state that they contacted A and C and only A has sent us the reference letter?


texts: Can intentionally omitting related work (citations) be considered as misconduct?

texts:
I've seen a recent journal paper that presents a solution to a problem, and it in the introduction it has a statement that the problem has not been solved yet.
That wouldn’t be very strange if I didn’t publish a paper with a solution a few years ago, which is not cited.

I understand that no one can be aware of all papers published so there can be honest omissions, but these authors were aware of my paper because we talked about it at a conference held before the submission of their paper.

Another case which I have noticed is that some papers avoid mentioning other related papers which present similar methods but perform better than theirs.

Is this considered as misconduct, and is there something one can do about it?


texts: Popular Science References in Statement of Purpose for Ph.D

texts:
I am currently in the process of writing my SoP for applications to PhD in Physics programs starting Fall 2018 (in the US schools). I am definitely writing about the content that I have studied rigorously as well as about the research projects that I have been involved in and so on. But I also want to involve something about a paragraph (not a specifically small one) about some of the colloquial talks and articles that I have read during my undergraduate years that have played a significant role in shaping my interests inside theoretical physics. I have been quite a YouTube buff and have watched a lot of semi-popular level talks and have been quite motivated by them in my interests. These talks have been very useful in making me aware of the current frontiers of research as well as in narrowing down my interests for good. Of course, these are not the only factors but these are among the non-negligible factors. So, I wanted to ask whether mentioning this part would be considered good or it would give my statement a non-serious and a childish tone. Or worse, might it look like I am confusing real physics with what is shown in the popular level talks?

Along with anyone interested or knowledgeable about this kind of a situation, those with a first-hand experience of looking at someone’s statements with such references or those with a first-hand experience of writing such a kind of statement are particularly requested to comment/respond.


texts: possibility of paying fees by bitcoins in IEEE transactions?

texts: Is it possible to pay IEEE transaction fees/charges by bitcoins?


texts: Early career advice for Jr. Researcher on selectivity of authorship credit for collaboration in areas outside one's specialization

texts:
I have a problem...Once folks learn my academic specialty within the medical sciences and of my strong background in statistics, they often want to form a collaborating - mostly they want me to conduct analyses, develop the study methods, write methods, results and discussion sections of their manuscripts. All this in exchange authorship credits and no actual pay. More often than not,  these offers come from clinicians with  little experience in human subject research and statistics, who specialize in research topics vastly different than my area of focus.

These days I am weary of getting involved in these projects because when I did do so a few years ago, I became very worried about the integrity of the data and the scientist with whom I worked with. More importantly, I worried the work would at some point be retracted and consequently tarnish my reputation in the future.  These concerns arose due to the fact that I had many questions about the data the study was based on and had limited access to the raw data.

The above-mentioned predicament worries me as I am at the beginning of my scientific career and I suspect that many of these clinicians are only temporarily vested in research to amp their publication records for the purpose of promotion. For them, these publications are one-offs and would have less devastating consequences on their careers if retracted. For me, its very different as I am strictly a researcher. It worries me that working on projects where I do not have full control/access to the raw data, and by working with clinicians with little scientific training in human subject research will result in catastrophic outcomes for me.

My questions to the forum are:

1) am I being too picky about who I collaborate with at this stage of my career?
2) should I relax my standards?
3) what are the consequences of being included as an author in poorly conducted research early on in one's research career for an aspiring academic?


texts:
I am currently finishing my MS in Economics and Finances and I intend to apply for a PhD in statistics. There are many reasons why I did not make an undergrad and grad in statistics but in economics, first of all the fact that in my previous university there was no statistics department.

I'm searching for some advice regarding my statement of purpose since my previous experience is not necessary connected with Statistics. Should I make more emphasis on my quantitative background, on my motivation, on the reasons why I want to apply for this particular program, even though my background might not be entirely relevant?

Is there some advice you can give a student making this sort of "field-shift"?


texts: Can a PhD thesis consist of "exploratory research"?

texts:
I am a physics graduate student at the stage where I need to come up with a PhD thesis proposal.

I have an idea for a thesis project that I think is very interesting and has not been explored in the literature. Specifically, the idea is to take a powerful new numerical technique that was developed in a completely different field and try to apply it to problems in my own field. If it works, it could greatly impact the field by drastically reducing the computational cost of calculations, which is one of the biggest limitations of current research.

The problem I face is that this research would be exploratory in nature. By this I mean that I do not have a well-defined problem to solve beyond "attempt to adapt it to my field and establish how well it works on some basic problems". In contrast, every thesis I have read has consisted of applying known techniques to new problems. My approach would be to do the opposite: apply a new technique to known problems to establish whether it could be feasible as a new tool in my field.

So my question is: can exploratory studies such as this one constitute a PhD thesis? In my experience, I have never seen a thesis of this type, and I am worried that this is because it is a bad idea.


texts: What do polarized student evaluation results say about my teaching?

texts:
I taught my first class last quarter. The results for evaluations are very polarized. The raw data shows that my scores are either very high or very low for a majority of items. That implies some students loved the class and some hated it.

Honestly, this teaching experience has been so tiring that I am seriously thinking teaching is not for me. My colleagues tell me it will get better but I am not sure how I feel about my average performance. I wish the evaluations weren't so polarized so I could know if I was overall an effective instructor or not.

How would you make sense of the results?


texts: Are studies centered around one's own students regarded as publish-worthy scholarship within educational research?

texts:
I have read a number of papers within the field of educational research where researchers simply used their own classes for testing. For example, they test one of their classes with a certain type of instruction, but leave another class without this instruction, then: (1) test which group of students did better and (2) collect student opinions about the lesson.

While I can understand why a teacher might conduct an "informal" study on their classroom, I cannot understand why this would regarded as publish-worthy research. It is possible that I am simply misunderstanding the benefit and purpose of publishing such studies?

  Within educational research, is it regarded as acceptable practice to publish research which is only conducted on such conveniently available groups?


texts: Should I apply for a master's or PhD if changing to a related field -- linguistics coming from B.A. in Spanish and Chinese?

texts:
So I applied to a linguistics PhD program my senior year of undergraduate studies in Chinese and Spanish. I wasn't accepted, and the university provided the explanation that essentially I didn't have enough background/research experience in the field. I am reapplying to this graduate program now five years later, and I am wondering if I should apply directly to the PhD program again or to their master's program. My career goal is a professor, so I know I will need the PhD for that. I also know that funding preference is given to PhD admits, but I just don't know if I have a strong enough background for them to consider me.

There are prerequisites to the program that I still only fill one of unfortunately, but they do allow you to take them your first year if needed. What is new to my application is that I've taken three linguistics MOOCs (massive open online courses), audited a phonetics course in the speech language pathology department, and completed a TESOL certificate program. My work experience is as an ESL tutor. I do not have any research experience.

Thanks in advance for your time and help.


texts: Are there any great researchers who are terrible teachers?

texts:
I'm curious if there's been anyone who's really good at research but also really bad at teaching - for example traditionally, Nobel Prize winners are required to give a public lecture related to the topic that won them the prize. For the hypothetical winner, nobody would look forward to the lecture (or the requirement is even waived entirely).

I'm asking this because I've attended many lectures given by well-known researchers and somehow they're all surprisingly good. Some are better than others, of course, but nobody is so bad that people fall asleep during the lecture (which I've seen happen in high school). It makes sense that there is some level of self-selection, because universities would not hire really bad teachers, but presumably research output is also valuable, and one does not have to be at a university to perform research.


texts: What is a Scientific approach to Law and Epistemology?

texts:
In an extended discussion in Law SE chat, there was a description of the legal approach to epistemology, namely one that is dependent upon the findings of the various actors of the criminal justice system: police, defendants and plaintiffs, judges, lawyers, and juries. The specific quote that I wanted to touch upon was:

  It means that science and law fundamentally (and, one could argue, incompatibly) disagree on the nature of truth. In science, no group exists that can declare something "fact". In law, that's what juries and/or judges do. Asking scientific questions about something science considers impossible is akin to asking what color the most magical unicorns are. - cHao

But despite this, I know that there is a distinct gap in my knowledge of both realms to conclusively address the issue.

  How would you test it? It is fundamental that juries decide what is fact from disputed evidence (juries have nothing to do when the parties agree what the facts are). How do you set up your double blind experiment when there is no way of telling objectively who the guilty and not guilty defendants are? - Dale M

Taking a research-approach to the question, I posited a rough sketch of how I would've approached the topic.

  @DaleM complete taking a guess here, a control (12 jurors) and different experimental groups consisting of different sizes. A known “case” where it is known with a p value of <0.05 that the defendant is X (can be real or imagined). The prosecution (study confederate) would present evidence systematically and equally to all groups but without knowing actual case X. Based on experimental results, determine optimal jury size. - Me

So I ask:

Why is there a fundamental gap between law and science?
Can the two ever be 'merged' or 'reconciled'?
How would both realms work if they adopted attributes from either realm?


texts: How do we know if something relevant is already published?

texts:
I keep reading European Conference on Computer Vision, International Conference on Pattern Recognition, and others, and I find so much in common in those papers.

For example, half the papers seem like: X Algorithm combined with Y algorithm tested on Z database and was better than A in this category but worse than A in that category.

There are many top journals and top conferences with > 1000 papers, in a year, in this field. In addition to this we would have to go through all the tier 2, tier 3 conferences for lack of a similar piece of work.

While working on organic solar cells I found the same problem. I saw 20 different papers on extracting parameters from a single-diode/double-diode/XYZ model.

So how do we know if something relevant is already published?


texts: How does computational learning theory differ from computational complexity, decision theory, and information theory?

texts: I am very interested in bringing mathematical clarity / the abstraction of the big philosophical questions of computation and learning (or computational learning theory). For example, proving mathematically why neural are easily confused by small input changes or, in general why certain learning structures like neural networks, transformers, etc actually work / don't work. How do the other areas I listed differ, and how are they related to learning theory? How is studying the theory behind neural networks or adversarial machine learning different from abstraction in reinforcement learning?


texts:
I have worked as a mobile dev in a small creative software company for a year, and I'm preparing to apply for CS masters in US as an international student (for AI-related field).

Question: Do you think it's good idea to use a letter from my employer?

I only have one strong letter from my senior project supervisor and I can't find another strong (and personal) one from my undergrad university since I've never really been close with the rest of faculties.

I think having one letter that talks about me personally (like work ethics) would be great. With this I'd have 2 letters from professors (1 strong, 1 generic), and 1 letter from my employer.

However, I've heard that it's not recommended to use a letter from someone not in academia, especially someone who's not in the field I'm applying to (more like in business). My current job title is also not related to AI at all, as I'm doing mobile app development.

I'm thinking that since I graduated last year, and didn't have nice projects to show in my portfolio, the letter from employer will at least demonstrate the work, or fill the gap of what I've done in the past year.

Thanks for reading! Any suggestion is welcomed.


texts: What are the most important things to include in your thesis defense presentation?

texts:
If you are creating a simulator of the existing system then should you present the details about the system or your simulator? or both? How technical you should go in your defense presentation?  I have so much stuff in my report that I don't know what to put in my defense and what to leave out. I wanted to show my slides to my supervisor but he is very busy this week and I doubt he will have time for me.

I am doing a post-Masters degree known as a Doctorate of Engineering or professional doctorate and I will have 45 minutes for the presentation and 15 minutes for question. Then I will have one more hour for my defense.


texts: Increasing the number of authors in the research article after uploading it on arxiv

texts:
I have done some work and want to upload that research work on Arxiv. The problem is that the second author wants to work more on this and doesn't want to upload the result to Arxiv. I am thinking that I will upload the result on Arxiv and then I will keep doing research on that thing, so if get more results, then along with the second author I will submit the result to a conference.

Question: Suppose I upload an article on Arxiv as a single author and after that I work on the same problem and get some results. Will it be possible to submit again the additional result with two authors on Arxiv and to a conference? Is there any problem with the process I have described above?


texts: Can i use the same Method Section for two different papers?

texts: I did a survey on the demand for complementary medicine among patients of the gynaecologcial department here in Munich. We collected a couple of hundred questionnaires and I am currently writing two different papers: one dealing with our findings concerning the cancer patients and another about the results from our patients in pregnancy and after birth. I finished the first one and I am currently sitting on the second one. I am wondering now: obviously, the introduction and discussion sections are completely different, but my method section is more or less the same. Can I simply use my method section verbatim also for the other paper? The papers will be submitted to two different journals in the end.


texts: Can you do paid external work under a PhD contract in France?

texts: If someone has a PhD contract in France and wants to work during summer for instance, is it fine if that person receives any external support during that time, outside the PhD contract support?


texts: How to figure out if a certain algorithm has already been discovered or not?

texts:
Suppose that I make a new algorithm to calculate something. How do I know that the exact algorithm has been found or not? I know that I can check scientific journals to figure that out. But surely checking every single journals available is not a feasible way to figure that out, especially since I'll have to read them before I can tell whether they use the same algorithm or not as the title can only tell the general idea of how the calculation is done. Also many journals requires one to subscribe or pay for their service. It'd be ridiculus to pay huge sum of money just to ensure whether my algorithm has been found or not.

So, how do I figure whether a certain algorithm has been found or not?


texts: Should I suggest to use version control for writing a paper with new collaborators?

texts:
I will soon write a new article with new collaborators (my first paper with other people, I'm in math). For some context, I know one of them well, but I've never met the others in person.

I use Git to manage all my papers. I'm wondering if I should suggest the use of Git to them? If so, how much should I press the issue, what should I say when suggesting it?

I can use it alone and apply their changes manually, but it would be infinitely easier if everyone just used a VCS -- and not just for my own personal comfort, because Git (or any VCS) does make writing the paper easier, IMO.

The main issue is Git's learning curve. I can offer to make everything as simple as possible (set up the repository myself, help out with technical issues they might have, direct them to tutorials), but academics are busy people, and they might not want to learn a whole new system for just one paper (even though I believe that were I they, I would then use Git for everything...).

I've gotten a lot of answers that don't apply at all to my situations, so to clarify: I'm in (pure) mathematics, where all manuscripts are written in LaTeX. So

version control using, e.g., Git, is appropriate, since LaTeX is a plain text format (and not some WYSIWYG thing), and
it requires a little bit of technical know-how already, so it's IMO safe to assume that other collaborators are not completely tech-illiterate.