texts: Did the Emperor of Japan really write a paper?

texts:
I just ask this question out of curiosity.

I would like to hear opinions from researchers in Japan about this paper:
Speciation of two gobioid species, Pterogobius elapoides and Pterogobius zonoleucus revealed by multi-locus nuclear and mitochondrial DNA analyses

The first author is Akihito, unless there is another person with that single unique name at that unique address.

Did he really contribute anything to that paper? Note that he doesn't have any degree, and he was 82 years old when that paper was published.

Updated:

I'm asking this question because the author is an emperor, i.e. somebody with immense power.

An author with similar level of power was Elena Ceausescu. She only finished primary school. However, during the communist period, thanks to her dictator husband, she had a PhD, countless of papers and awards etc etc.

That's why I'm asking people in Japan. I do know how to use Google.


texts: What do the abbreviations 2:2, 2:1, or 3:2:3 mean in terms of teaching loads?

texts:
I often see people abbreviate faculty teaching loads ("course loads") as 2:2 or 3:2:3 or 2:1.
Sometimes a note such as "3:3 with 2 preps" is added.

What do these abbreviations mean?


texts: How to find a journal for publishing my method without applying it to specific real data?

texts:
I have developed different algorithms as PhD studies. My algorithms work fine and have some limitation as with any algorithm. My work basically is developing models that help other people in their area. While, my work is very useful for many areas, especially finance and health, I had no specific real data (e.g., finance, health, etc.) to work with. Therefore I worked with general real data sets. For each model, I used several data sets.

My study was on my behalf (so there is no third-party funded project). My supervisors were very happy with my works.
Now, after I have been awarded my PhD. degree (as a monograph), I am really upset to not have published my works.

I tried to publish but all journals I submitted to rejected my papers as I do not use challenging data that they are interested in.
How can I find a suitable journal to publish my work?
Are there journals that are not interested in a specific area of real data?


texts: Can one call oneself a PhD ABD (All But Dissertation) after completing all of the course work and working on the dissertation?


texts: UK Postdoc - Is salary negotiation even possible?

texts:
I have an interview later this week and the advertisement goes something like:

  Grade 7: £31,604 - £38,833 p.a.

While talking to a postdoc at my own department, she told me that the scale wouldn't actually matter, that I'll always be placed on the lowest possible spine on that grade and it's just to show that every year I can move up a spine. She said even attempting to negotiate would be seen as a major red flag by the interviewers.

I wondered if anyone here can confirm this. It'd be amazing if you've been hiring postdocs in the UK so you definitely experienced this. Is there a way to be placed somewhere else on that scale, let's say on £35K?

Disclaimer: I'm not greedy or material-minded, but life is expensive especially with two kids and being a single parent. This position is also in a pretty expensive area.


texts: Taking into account courses from another university

texts:
I think about starting studies towards Master Degree in Computer Science abroad, I finished my bachelor studies few years ago, but I didn't stop studying, during these years I finished few courses of master degree in the domestic university, as result I have transcripts for all of them in English.

The question is what is is the common practice is there any chance that abroad university will consider credit on the courses I already finished, the point is if it's possible I want to lower the pressure to get credit on courses and mostly investing my time in research.

I checked this issue with few another universities in  my country, all of them taking into account the credit I already have with promise to give exemption from studying theses courses if there are requirement of the master degree and to give a credit for all of them.


texts: Applying for Phd at two different departments, in the same university, but very relevant fields. Would it harm my admission?

texts:
Biophysics and Condensed matter physics interests me. I am more inclined towards biophysics.
Would it weaken my application if i applied to both the biophysics program (Biological sciences department) and the condensed matter program (Physics department) in the same university? I want to apply for Condensed matter, in case i didn't get accepted in biophysics, i might get accepted in condensed matter.

P.S. I have a Bachelor's degree in theoretical physics.


texts: Converting Web of Science ID to pubmed or DOI

texts:
I have downloaded a set of articles from Web of Science using their API.

Each article contains its WOS (web of science ID), but the entries for the DOI identifier are incomplete (i.e., not all articles have a DOI).

Is there a way to convert the WOS number to get the DOI or PubMed ID for each article?


texts: Is it normal that journals strongly suggest a professional English editing service?

texts:
It is quite common for me to receive emails from the editors of a journal asking me, before or after the referees have given their approval, to review and improve my English. Then, the editor suggests a professional English editing service for this purpose.
My question is: Is this common practice, independently on the quality of the English of the manuscript (as an attempt to sell a service), or is it only for the cases where the English really needs improvement?
Here is an example of such an email where the reviewers had no further comments and recommend acceptance, but the editor asks for an English review:

The reviewers judge the technical content of your revised manuscript satisfactory. The English, however, is awkward, and needs improvement. Reviewer comments are included below and/or are attached.
The language quality must be improved. We advise that you seek assistance from a colleague or have a professional editing service correct the language in your manuscript, which can then be resubmitted to us.
AIP and the JAP recommend Edanz for authors who wish to have the language in their manuscript edited by a native-English speaking language editor who is also a scientific expert. Edanz is a global editing service with offices in Japan and China. Use of an editing service is neither a requirement nor a guarantee of acceptance for publication. Please contact Edanz (http://www.edanzediting.com/aip) directly to make arrangements for editing and to receive a quotation regarding price and time.
Please edit the ENTIRE paper.
Please indicate how the manuscript has been revised. Either include a list of changes that addresses each point indicating how the manuscript has been revised as a separate document titled, Response Letter or submit a copy of the manuscript with the exact locations of the revisions titled, Marked Manuscript. That will enable the editors to see whether you have complied with the reviewer comments.


texts: I have already received and signed an offer letter for a position as an assistant professor. This position will start next fall, to give me time to finish my post-doc. I'll be applying for a number of grants over the next year. Should I include my future position on my CV for these applications? It seems like relevant context for reviewers to have, but I've never seen anyone do it.


texts: Copyright date or publication date, which one should I cite?

texts: Can't believe I've got to the end of my PhD before asking this one! I want to cite a work whose copyright date is 1996 but whose first paperback edition (the one I'm referencing) is 1999. Which date is correct?


texts: Reproducing work of others - name them as conflicts of interest?

texts:
We are currently reproducing several papers in a specific sub-field of computer science under different experimental conditions. When we submit the paper, we will be required to declare people who may have conflicts of interest. Most of the original authors of the papers we are reproducing are aware that we are doing this work.

Should we declare the authors of the original papers that we are reproducing as conflicts of interest?

Arguments in favor:

Reviews may not be blind, as they know we are doing the work (review is double-blind)
We may be "stepping on some toes" by showing that their results do not hold up when reproduced under more realistic circumstances. Conversely, as Wrzlprmft notes, we may be biasing others in favor of accepting, if we show their results to be correct.

Arguments against:

They are best suited as reviewers. If we name all of them as conflicts of interest, we will have excluded more or less every expert in the field, thus making it much less likely that we will get a reviewer familiar with the field

Is there an established guideline for this kind of situation (in CS or other fields)?


texts: Should conference papers be counted as publications?

texts:
Is there a consensus as to whether or not conference papers are counted as publications?

I know that if something is a journal paper then that thing is tacitly understood as a publication, but is the converse true?


texts: Do US Graduate Admission Committee review and assess International Applicants country-wise?

texts: To be specific, my application field is physics. And I am from a country where students are aggressive on standardized tests like gre's since we put much emphasis on training for these tests. I was talking with peers about whether to send my Physics GRE score to my target physics schools which is 800/990(67%) as a computer science undergrad student, and they told me don't do it because, given my nationality, admission committees will set a higher bar for me and a percentile below 85% is a minus. That arose the question in my mind that I know it's normal that in US graduate admission process, admission standards for international students are set higher than those for domestic students, but do graduate admission committee View International Applicants country-wise? I asked my peers about this, and they say that's a widely accepted speculation among them, so I am asking here to verify.


texts: How can I up my confidence level in my technical skills?

texts:
Let me paint a picture of my background in brief. I did my undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering. I was a good student (almost all A's) till my high school. However, I struggled a lot in my first two years of engineering. I failed 3 subjects and had to retake them. I did fairly well in my last two years and managed a GPA of 3.7. But, my early failure played a heavy toll on my self confidence. I always felt and still feel like I am not worthy for my grades or getting a job.

I was interested in research, so went to a better school for master's degree. Again, though I had very good grades there, I struggled a lot during my job interviews. I always felt inadequate and unconfident about my ability to sustain in that job. As a result I did not get selected in those companies. I got offer in a small company which hired me only looking at my grades. My professors also said that I deserve better workplace but I didn't get it only because of my lack of self confidence and technical speaking skills.

I figured that, since I loved doing research, I should go for a PhD. I worked hard during the last five years. I tried coming out of my comfort zone, try different things, work on challenging projects. I started feeling confident midway through my PhD. However, now I am in my last year and towards the end of writing my thesis. And I am feeling the same anxiety of technical inadequacy and unworthiness.

I am again getting the feeling that I am upto no good and I can't get a decent job or postdoc position with my skillset. Only issue is that I am 29 years old and I will have to get a proper job soon to support my family. I don't know if I am capable of doing that.

My question is, assuming that I suffer from severe case of imposter syndrome, what's my remedy? How can I improve my confidence levels during an interview? I want to feel alive during job search and interviews. I don't want to feel all hopeless and inadequate during any future opportunities.

Are there any suggestions?


texts: I graduated from an undergraduate maths course from a prestigious university. However, I was rejected from attending it's master's program due to poor showing in the final exams. I'd like to study at said university again sometime within the next few years, applying for the same course. In applying though, I will almost definitely have to use the same final exam results. What can I do to show that I have improved, if I indeed have? I am not currently enrolled in any graduate level program.


texts: I have been invited to give a talk at a university in Canada, with a view to getting a postdoc job there (although there won't be a formal job interview at this stage).  I'm female and in biomedical sciences.  I'm currently based in the UK, and based on the dress code I'm used to I would go for business-casual: blouse and jumper, smart black jeans, maybe a blazer as well.  Is this what would be expected in Canada?  In the UK I wouldn't dream of wearing a suit, but I'm not sure if there's a cultural difference in what is normal to wear for this kind of thing, so I would appreciate any tips!


texts: In case I have to take a gap year before MS, what can I do in terms of reading and independent study to prepare for graduate school?

texts:
I will be graduating with a BS in Computer Science in 2017 and have applied to a couple of graduate school to pursue MS in Biomedical Informatics/Bioinformatics. I'm interested in translational research and research in precision/personalized medicine. I am hoping to apply the computer science knowledge in developing pipelines that will facilitate the process of choosing best-fitting medicine/treatment for the patients.

I understand that admission is competitive and well aware that I have a chance of not getting into any of the school that I have applied to. (I have a 3.2 GPA in my BS, 70-75th percentile GRE, and some experience as an intern in my school's Department of Biomedical Informatics.)

My question is that in the worst case when I would have to wait until the following year to apply again (international student here), what would be the best way to prepare in the meantime in terms of reading journals and independent studies?


texts: How many references should be included in the bibliography of a Master thesis?

texts:
Surprisingly, I have not found a similar question to mine - all I found was a question about the maximum number of citations per sentence.

However, I am more interested in the total number of citations that is considered normal for a paper (to be more specific, a Master Thesis, which in my case will be around 60 pages of content.)

I heard that about 1 - 1.5 multiplied with page count would be a good number of sources cited.

I am asking because I am a little worried that I might have cited too many sources.


texts: Resubmitted paper is rejected by editor after two months, what should I do?

texts:
About one year ago, I submitted a paper to a top journal in my field. After waiting for 4 months, the manuscript is rejected with one positive, one negative, and a neutral (including many revise suggestions) comments. There is one common comment: the manuscript is too long. Nevertheless, the editor kindly suggested that I could revise my paper along all the lines suggested by the referees and resubmit my paper.

I carefully modified the paper according to the comments and replied the questions and suggestions from the three referees point by point, then resubmitted it after about four months form the first rejection. This time, after two months, the editor replied us as following without any further comment from any referee.

"I would like to thank you for taking the time to redraft your manuscript, to be considered as a resubmission to xxx. I have carefully read your new manuscript, and I am sorry to have to inform you that your paper is not suitable for publication in xxx. The manuscript still lacks a clear statement of its aims and motivation. (Two example from the editor's viewpoint). While I appreciate that you have taken significant steps to reduce the manuscript length, I still found it overly long, and the writing still suffers from many grammatical errors. I am sorry not to have more positive news."

There is no any comment for us after the two+ months' review. I guess our paper was not even sent to referees (previous or new ones). In my supervisor's experience, editorial rejection is typically very fast, a couple of weeks at most.

My questions are:

Being forced to wait two months for a desk rejection without any comment, is that normal for a reputable journal? What should I do to acquire a potential comments, if any?
Is it appropriate to send an email to coordinate with the editor for a new resubmission? And how much is my chance?
What is the most probable attitude of the editor: does the editor really not like it?

Thank you very much for sharing your invaluable experience!


texts: Is it acceptable practice to make the source code of a re-implemented paper available online

texts: It is the usual practice that researchers re-implement others' work for the purpose of comparison or result verification. If for instance researcher A re-implements researcher B's paper and improves it. Is it acceptable to make his re-implementation files of researcher B's paper available as a supplementary file with his published paper?


texts: How do admissions to UK PhD programs work?

texts:
I know that in the US people apply for PhD programs, with a rough a idea in their heads what interests them, as PhD's take much longer and include time to explore the subject.

How does this work for UK students? PhD's usually last for around 3-4 years, and it seems that you would have to know exactly what you want to do when you apply?

I have completed a BA & MA in the Humanities, but I am not sure yet what to write my PhD on. I am sure though that I want to pursue this path.

How does the usual process look like? Would I first contact a professor I would like to work with and then apply to the program? And how specific should my research idea be? I have a certain subtopic of my discipline in mind, and I have also identified a few interesting potential supervisors. However, I am nowhere near having found a proper topic, or an interesting idea which I would want to develop.How do people do this? Sorry if this is a little bit general, but I am a bit stuck!

edit: Let's work on the assumption that I am in the Humanities & that I do not require funding.


texts: Asking a celebrity Prof to sign a paper they wrote?

texts:
So we are all fans of some professor at some stage of academia.

If I see one in an upcoming conference/workshop, should I ask them to sign a paper that they wrote as it's also one of my favorite papers? (I'm sure I'm not the only one who brings a paper that someone else wrote when I know they will come for the conference/workshop).

How would you respond if you were the Prof asked to sign the paper?

Has anyone done the same before?


texts: Plural-active, singular-active or another voice when writing a paper by yourself?

texts:
I'm working on a draft paper which will likely have no coauthors. I'm wondering how to phrase my paper, and the abstract especially, in terms of voice. Which of the following should I prefer?

"We present XYZ ..."
"This paper/this work presents XYZ ..."
"I present XYZ ..."

The former sounds a bit too "royal", the second is the passive voice which I tend to avoid, and the third seems overly presumptuous.

What should I go for? Or - am I missing a fourth option?

Note: In case it matters, the paper is in some branch of applied Computer Science.


texts: Strange experience in R&D / Research assistant post. Is this a red flag?

texts:
I have recently obtained an undergraduate degree in Computer Science with excellent performance and shortly afterwards got a research assistant post for a two-year industry-university collaboration project with the professors I worked with. The perks of this job are a modest salary for two years and an opportunity to get a postgraduate degree in a project-related area which will be partly covered by this post. I would be doing R&D work for the rest of my two years.

Upon joining, my professors and myself spent many days trying to formulate a research idea that makes sense in the project's context. We finally proposed an idea and loosely specified its details to our project partners and we got their approval. Work started immediately.

To our surprise, our industry partners revealed that they went ahead and implemented a massive chunk of work that was assigned to my team on their own accord. They were faster and produced higher quality work. It was later revealed to us that our partners had attempted similar endeavours in the past and had a lot of groundwork ready.

One may question the communication strategy of all involved stakeholders. We have been operating with regular meetings and on-site visits as frequent as once every week in which we exchange progress and ideas but we did not exchange any artefacts.

There is actually quite a small amount of work left from my team, but it seems that our partners did a lot of work overlapping with ours. Now that we are at the end of our project and we have to communicate with our funding agents, we must detail some results in a report and that would be the end of the project.

I feel useless and a fraud. I did a lot of R&D work on projects that are very niche and not likely to find any adoption in practice. Also, some work is incomplete. I did many sleepless nights and unpaid overtime hours on the essential parts of this project but industry partners finished the same work quickly and without my contribution, thus possibly invalidating my work in a sense. This also makes me wonder if it is justified that I feel an element of disrespect and mistrust. But worst of all, I feel scared. Many of our interactions are undocumented - it is time to produce reports for our funding agents and I can't help but wonder if my or my professor's reputation are at risk and whether funding will be questioned.

How can I act diplomatically in this context and defend funding? Everyone worked very hard. How can I maintain good relationships? Is this normal in research projects or is this form of research not for me? Is it time to quit?


texts: How to find a university without min. GPA requirement for Master degree (any state/US)?

texts:
I am an international student who is able to self-finance his master degree education in the US.
I looked at a relatively big number of schools that offer a master degree in software engineering and most of them require a minimum bachelor degree GPA of 2.5 to 3.0 .. I graduated with 2.3 from an accredited school in Egypt.
I have 6+ years of experience in the software development field, 2 Oracle Java programming certificates and passed the IELTS test (6.5).

How would I find a university that doesn't require GPA or require ones that is less than or equal to 2.3 and would get me a student visa in the US? Could I find one in the usual published university guides, or should I call/write a bunch of admissions offices or take other measures?

My desired fields of education are Software Engineering or Computer Science with a focus on software development.


texts: Finishing a Phd in two years and few months

texts:
I am a phd candidate in education. My doctoral program takes 3 years. However, I have worked very hard and got several publications that sole-authored. My supervisor thinks that I can  finish my phd in 2 years and a few months, but I am not sure about this move. Most of eminent scholars that I look up to took their time and finsihed their phds within the normal timeframe, so I am thinking that it is not wise to take the risk and finish earlier than the usual time.
I would like to have your take on this. Would the fact that I finish my phd in shorter time negatively affect my chances in getting a tenure-track academic position?


texts: How to find a job without recommendation letters?

texts:
I am currently almost homeless and without job. Can someone please help me in right direction of finding an academic or non-academic job? Minimum salary will be acceptable.

I hold a PhD in mathematics. I am 43 years old and I am from middle east but citizen of a European country (Germany). I have been away from academia for 4 years (mostly to take care of parents) and I can not get any recommendation letter.

I can teach and have experience in teaching most mathematical topics up to PhD.

I have been applying for many teaching jobs around the world with no luck. With no recommendation letter my applications don't go through.

I also have a few unfinished research projects.

Edit: addendum in response to Buffy's answer.

  If you are just four years past finishing your doctorate it isn't too late to re-connect with your previous professors, and maybe your advisor. If you wait much longer it will be, however.

In fact I got my phd before I was 30. So it was, relatively, a long time ago. Contact with my previous professors isn't a possibility.

  Another thing, not very palatable, is to get some low-level position in a decent university where you can do more than is required by the job.

I have tried applying to many "low-level" positions but recommendation letter is a real obstruction.

  Further down the list of suitable options is to look at good secondary institutions, rather than universities. There are many of them that find people with doctorates to be very desirable. The job is mostly teaching, and mostly introductory subjects, but it can pay the bills.

Secondary institution as a high school? I am trying to find a position in a high school too but a "license or teaching certificate" is needed in most cases and in my situation it takes time and money to get that.

  get connected to a research group so as to get some papers into publication. Initially they might be joint papers, of course.

I have a few publications which I guess are relatively good. I try to publish preprints too. But it is getting hard because I will be out of money very soon.

What surprises me is that when I look at my cv it doesn't look extremely bad but still I have got not even one interview or any offer. And asking people in the subject to write recommendation letter has not been successful.

I was hoping maybe someone with similar situation who managed to solve his/her problem can help me by sharing a bit of his/her experience.


texts: Is it a good idea to express my gratitude to a co-author with a gift card?

texts: I am an undergraduate level student planning to put out a research paper for publication. The second author is a PhD student who has helped me to do much editing (including re-writing my entire paper into a concise and expressive form, and also the numerical simulation part). I think he helps me a lot. My friend suggests to me to buy him a gift card at the end to express my gratitude. I am wondering would this be a good idea or not?


texts: I'm editing an interview transcript. One of the speakers mentions a concept popularized in an academic paper. Would I add the citation within the interview transcript?


texts: Including unpublished manuscript with CV?

texts:
Should I attach my soon-to-be-published manuscript when submitting my CV?

I've just recently submitted my first paper to a scientific journal and want to apply for an internship at a certain institution. I'm pretty confident that my paper will be accepted but I know the review process is long. Should add it to my CV and write "under review" and attach the manuscript along with it? I feel as if them reading the manuscript will better my chances at my getting it.


texts: On understanding the "code" of recommendation letters

texts:
This question deals with letters of recommendation written for students in the humanities, and in particular for those on the job market or those submitting to dissertation grants and fellowships. The question may also apply to letters of recommendation in the sciences.

On this site and in conversations with current faculty members, I have surmised that letters of recommendation are usually written in a kind of "code" (one post here described these letters as a "second language" you have to learn). Since most letters are invariably positive, I suppose that the code is just a subtle way of signaling the true value of a candidate's work or the true extent of their potential. Those who know the code are able to see through any hyperbolic language and decode a letter-writer's real estimation of their candidate.

A common warning about asking for letters of recommendation is: make sure you ask someone who already knows how to write them, or they could end up doing more harm than good. It makes sense that, if someone doesn't know the code, that person won't be able to communicate whatever it is that committees want to see in the letter.

This is all just my ignorant explanation of what I've observed, however, and I would like to ask for more information. I am especially interested in knowing:

-Is it true that letters of recommendation are written in such a clandestine way?

-If there is a code, what is it like? What kind of signals does it have? How do you know when you are reading about a candidate who really is great, versus a candidate who is just fine, when their letters may contain similar language?

If it turns out I am off base on this, I'd appreciate hearing about that too.


texts: I attended a doctoral program and was completing it in 3 to 4 years. I got a life-threatening sickness that set me back several years. When nearing my dissertation I was dismissed. I was told that I was let go because I had cancer. I never wanted to return to that school again, but not having completed my work has caused me great heartache and I am not able to pursue the career I desired. Is it at all possible to complete the degree elsewhere?


texts: Including reference writer titles in CV for jobs in academia

texts:
My question is about including reference writer information in the CV as an applicant.

If a particular reference has lots of illustrious titles (ex: Fellow of the Royal Society), should those be included to add weight?

The is particularly important because the person is not in my exact sub-field and hence many in my sub-field may not recognize him by name.


texts: How specific does a "Work Package" in a grant proposal need to be?

texts:
I'm currently polishing a grant proposal for the ERC Starting Grant scheme. As is typical doubts beset me. There aren't many samples available, and every one I was able to find exists in a niche of its own.

What seems to be a typical pattern is to describe at a very high level the proposed approach: for instance, we will study issue A using method B but they don't go too much in detail. For example, how is this study exactly going to happen?

Where possible I have tried to explain in as much detail my line of inquiry and the expected outcomes. However, especially for a grant with a horizon of 5 years, it's difficult to explain how the last WPs will be studied, as they might depend on the outcomes of the prior ones.

It is highly likely that these proposals I have seen were the unsuccessful ones. If you have any experience of successful ones, how much detail did you give (or make up)?


texts: Is it legal in the US for a student to download a copy of a textbook, to study?

texts:
(this is coming out of a comment thread regarding this question.)

The USA has a Fair Use legal provision restricting its copyright law:

  17 U.S.C. § 107

  Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. §
  106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work,
  including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any
  other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism,
  comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for
  classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of
  copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any
  particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall
  include:

  the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  the nature of the copyrighted work;
  the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
  and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

  The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Obviously there might be other relevant statutes and legal precedents, but  still,

Is it legal, considering the above, for a university/college student to download a copy of a textbook (say, in a course s/he is taking), for studying the course material?
Same question, for a student not enrolled in a class for which the downloaded book is a textbook?
Same question, for self-study outside of Academia?

Notes:

"Legal" in two senses: First, the sense of very small chance of being convicted of a criminal act or obligated to pay money; second, the sense of there being a solid argument for the legality of this act which is likely to hold up if you appeal and appeal and maybe get to the supreme court.
Assume it's been established that the downloader did not publish the copy elsewhere, did not cite from it extensively, etc. etc.
I'm not asking whether it's moral or ethical to download textbooks, only about the legality. I believe it is moral and ethical, but that discussion is not what this question is about; please don't start it.


texts: Would preaching in a church be advantageous for becoming a lecturer?

texts:
In general, the job of a lecturer (under Australian terminology- I think the terminology is different in America) can be divided up into two main areas of focus: research and teaching, with the latter involving writing up lesson and assessment plans, managing your tutors, delivering lectures to hundreds of students and maybe some tutorials to a few dozen students, marking and moderating assessment, etc. My understanding is that the people hired for these roles are often PhD students or postdocs who have also worked as tutors during their time as PhD students/postdocs - their tutoring gives them teaching experience, while their work as a PhD student or postdoc gives them research experience.

However, because tutorials are generally much smaller than a full lecture, and they would often be following someone else’s lecture notes rather than writing their own, I was wondering if it might be advantageous for someone in those positions to get some experience preaching in a church? Much like a lecturer, a preacher would need to write their own lesson plans, and then deliver the content of those lessons to an audience of hundreds of individuals, in a format fairly similar to that of a university lecture.

As a result, I could see an argument about why delivering Sunday sermons would be advantageous for developing some of the skills a university lecturer would need. However, I’m not certain if it would actually work in your favour if you were to list that experience on your CV.

And so, my Question: would a typical young researcher who is seeking a lecturer role find it advantageous to list experience working as a church preacher? While religious discrimination would of course be illegal, might they find it working against them?


texts: What is a "Graphical Table of Contents" Abstract?

texts:
For one of my accepted papers, the publication editor sent me this note:

  AUTHOR: Please provide a short “Graphical Table of Contents”
  abstract (maximum 80 words or 3 sentences) summarizing the key
  findings presented in the paper for Table of Content (TOC) entry.

Can someone please explain what that means? I understand the bit about 80 words max abstract but I don't understand why it's tagged "graphical". Is it supposed to be illustrated?


texts: Responding to low-key insult from lecturer

texts:
A lecturer for a course I am attending was late for a class, and as they had sent an e-mail a few days before mentioning a different classroom, the class was confused about whether we should go to this classroom or not. I decided to send the lecturer an e-mail to clarify whether the class location had changed.

In the end, the lecturer appeared about ten minutes late. That could've been the end of the story, but the lecturer sent an e-mail today (to me only) stating that I "was the only one confused [about the matter]!". I find this rude and inappropriate - they could have just let it slide, or at least apologised for being late.

I realise that I caused some minor noise in their inbox through my e-mail - but it is not enough, in my opinion, to respond rudely.

My University is running a campaign on respect among students and teachers. I would like to respond in a way that clarifies that I think they were rude, while keeping in mind that I will have the class for the rest of the semester with this lecturer.

Should I respond - in that case, how? - , or should I simply ignore it?


texts: Who to ask whether my math logic research results are novel?

texts:
I wrote some texts related to mathematical logic:
http://www.mathematics21.org/formulas.html

How to check if my ideas are novel? Where and who to ask?

The problem is that I am not even nearly a professional logician.


texts: How to select an internship topic from a set of suggested topics?

texts:
How would a student best select a topic among several suggested especially if it's her/his first time doing an internship and the internship period is short (2 months or 6 months)?

What are important things to consider?

Also, any suggestions to select an internship topic that would contribute to the skills needed to work in the industry (i.e. purely academic versus industry-related topic)?

PS: The topics suggested are accompanied with a select of corresponding papers.


texts: How to respond a reviewer's reply when he is asking about much more to be discussed?

texts:
I got review reply with three reviewers comments. Most of them are workable. I can address them while revising the manuscript. However, one reviewer is asking much more work, and based on my understanding, I feel that can be a another work. Thus, I want to politely answer that query with proper reasons. However, I am wondering if there is any formal way to address this issue?

I can say that, we totally agree with the reviewer's concern. However, this study which itself is a novel work, is a part of our future work.


texts: Am I plagiarising if I publish something that has been independently discovered since?

texts:
My field is primarily connected with computer networks. Sometime in 2016, I discovered a vulnerability which at that time was not known (I searched a lot to make sure). I experimented with it and got exciting results. However, I couldn't publish it immediately due to some-other work my prof gave me.

When I was looking for good conferences on this subject I came across a GitHub repository exhibiting the same concept but it was created just months back. The work has not appeared in any conferences/journals.

I was wondering, since I thought of it and implemented it first, can I send it to  a conference or would that count as plagiarism?


texts: Submitting a new paper just after another was accepted by the same journal

texts:
In my subfield, there is a highly regarded journal. I just finished a manuscript, which I thought would be suitable and ‘good enough’ for this journal.
Coincidentally, another manuscript that I had originally submitted to the journal two years ago, after long periods of waiting, revision, etc. just got accepted by this journal.

Should I adapt my plans in any way? Does it seem like I am ‘journal-hogging’ or gaming the system if I submit a new paper literally days after the last one has been accepted?


texts: Appropriate time for contacting professors after PhD enrolment

texts:
Assume that one has begun a PhD program at a university which allows a student to choose an advisor after his/her first year in the program and the student has narrowed down to a couple of potential advisors and has taken at least one course with each of them.

How early should one contact potential advisors? Just at the beginning of the program (early bird?) or after 6 months (after taking courses with each one) or right when you need to choose (don't make decisions till you have to?)?


texts: What does formal training in a field mean?

texts: I was curious what people mean when they say you need formal training in a field?


texts: Why some papers are retracted and others not?

texts:
Recently, in Reviews of Modern Physics, I have read an erratum which represents an apology for a copied verbatim text. The text is:

"Large parts of Sec. VI.A, “Inverse magneto-optical excitation of magnetization dynamics: Theory,” consist of text
and equations that are verbatim quotes, or very nearly so, of material in the paper by Gridnev (2008). Although this theory
was developed in close collaboration with Dr. Gridnev and jointly published in Kalashnikova et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 99,
167205 (2007) and Kalashnikova et al., Phys. Rev. B 78, 104301 (2008), we adopted the more compact and rigorous description
given in Gridnev (2008) for this review. We regret that we did not identify these parts of our review as direct quotes, and we
apologize to V. N. Gridnev and the readers of Reviews of Modern Physics for this oversight."  from here.

Although there is a copied text, from what I see, there is not a retraction. The question is: why this paper was not retracted?


texts: Will one 'C' grade due to health issues ruin my chances of admission into a top grad school?

texts:
I am in the third year of my undergraduate degree now, and in the process of applying for Graduate schools and Med schools. I have a burning questions about a creepy "C" in my transcript.

To summarize my story: I was recovering from a biopsy operation back then. Though I was advised to take one semester off to rest physically and mentally (I was extremely paranoid waiting for the pathology report, and luckily it came back benign), I still decided to take all the courses and the heavy research that I had started before. I performed so badly that semester that I received a C. That is like the most embarrassing element in my transcript.

Some told me that such a bad grade is a disadvantage for admissions. Do I still have a chance to make it to top grad and med schools?  With extra effort (I have managed to pull up my GPA to 3.8 now, I have been on the Dean's list for some semesters, have 3 publications, and 2 poster presentations at symposium, my GRE and MCAT are good too), can I cover that ugly spot?


texts: Breadth or depth in math graduate school?

texts:
I'm a recently admitted in a masters program in mathematics. My question is about "strategy" of learning. Should I focus on learning many things or should I pick an research area and start learning only stuff about that area? This is a problem because some scholars told me that if I want to get hired in academia, I must start publishing as early as possible so I better start to deepen my knowledge in certain area. However, actually I have not decided with area I fit the most, and I think that broadness is useful as well, because diversity is a necesity for creativity, just as professional musicians doesn't just hear say classical music, but rock music, or latin music to get inspiration, I think that mathematicians must not just read about their own area, but related areas as well.

In your experience, which "strategy of learning" is better for a begginer in graduate school? I must say that I have freedom for choose courses.


texts:
I'm a TA in several modules and one thing I couldn't find yet is a system to help me manage student lab submissions. Most online collaborative tools I've seen do not allow me to, or make it quite complex to receive files from students and download all of them at once.

Note that in my university, there is not such a strict discipline, in the sense that late submissions are often tolerated; if students forget to send their files, I'd like to gently remind them to do so; etc.

So far, I use e-mail for managing student submissions, but there are several limitations:

Students forget to send the e-mail, or send it to an incorrect address, or simply quit the course, but since I do not know in which case they are, I have to manually e-mail students from which no submission has been received;
Students have no guarantee I actually received the email, so I have to ACK them;
Students sometimes send an e-mail but forget the attachment, so I have to check each of them and notify the student;
Students sometimes send multiple versions, and if there is a deadline between them, it might change the grading criteria;

So far, I have to manually open each email, download the files to a separate folder, and ACK the student. This is quite boring.
Something that would help me save some time and automate things (like sending reminders, one-click download of all files, etc) would be of great help.

So far I've seen Moodle and Piazza, but none of them seem to actually help much with student file management, or I missed something. Any indications of tools for the job?


texts: How to create HTML Slides with audio for online lectures?

texts:
This follows on from a recent question about embedding audio in PDF slides. I don't like the thought of users needing to use a particular PDF viewer in order to hear the audio and I don't like the thought of needing proprietary software just to create the presentations. Thus, another option would be to create HTML slides. There are a range of HTML slide production approaches (e.g., S5, DZSlides, Slidy, Slideous).

Update:
I was thinking about  using pandoc to convert markdown into one of the slide formats. @Federico mentions the audio HTML tag. I assume that would be part of an overall solution. This presumably represents a basic answer, but I'd be keen to get some guidance about how this works on a practical level:

Are there any examples of implementing audio in HTML slides?
Are there any strategies for increasing the usability of consuming and activating the audio?
Are there any browser or operating system compatibility issues?

Thus, in a broad sense my question is

How can HTML slides be created in an effective and efficient way with embedded audio?


texts: What should physics majors work on during semester breaks?

texts: First and second year students are unlikely to get selected for major internships (right?). Given this, what can students do after freshman and sophomore years that will be useful later on. I thought of learning MATLAB, but not sure if this is a good idea or if there are better options.


texts: 4 weeks after on campus interview - ask about update

texts:
I had an on-campus interview for a tenure track assistant professor position in mathematics about 4 weeks ago.  The interview seemed to go well, I felt I was well-received.  I was told at the end of the interview that they had more interviews scheduled over "the next couple of weeks" and would then begin to make offers.

I interpreted this as two more weeks of interviews, meaning it's been two weeks since interviews have likely finished now.  I have no idea how long it takes to prepare offers or when it is reasonable to ask for an update.

Not sure if it's relevant, but I am currently a Ph.D. student in mathematics, defending this semester, and have an unusually diverse teaching background (for a Ph.D. student anyway).  This is a teaching-focused institution.  I'm sure my competition is probably more experienced (not likely soon-to-be Ph.D.s like me, but rather people who have had post-doc experiences, etc.)

Is it reasonable to ask about the status of the search?


texts: Any way to create dynamic pdf from ppt presentation? I would like to upload a pdf version of my PowerPoint presentation lectures

texts: What software can I use to create pdf version of my PowerPoint presentation slides? My PowerPoint slides have animations, where multiple pictures are shown on one slide. When I use export pdf from the Microsoft office software, it shows just the last animated image for a slide. I want the animation images to be on different pages. Any software preferably open-source for mac ? Even windows software would do.


texts: Is it appropriate for a graduate student to ask faculty whether they would like assistance in writing a grant?

texts:
I am a Ph.D. student who will be graduating sometime in May 2018. I am hoping to apply to the academic job market in Fall 2017. My goal is to obtain a tenure-track assistant professorship position at an R1 university in a field within computer science and/or statistics.

I recently looked at job descriptions, and found that evidence of grant-writing abilities is highly-valued, especially at R1 universities. I took a short course in preparing future faculty, and the instructor recommended that we ask faculty members in our department if we can help them write a grant. He said that most professors would be happy to have a student help write the grant.

I do feel that I am not a particularly competitive candidate, but that having grant-writing experience would give my CV an edge. However, I do not know what to make of this advice. I do not know if it is acceptable to ask faculty members about this. I do not want to offend anyone, and do not know how to approach it with etiquette and respect. I also do not know if faculty members would even find that advantageous to them - especially if the student is not familiar with their work or writing grants in general.

Would it be wise of me to ask faculty members in my department, as the instructor advised? If so, are there things I should avoid? Things I should be sure to do? Ways to ensure I would receive "credit", "authorship", or at least ways to place it meaningfully on my CV?


texts: What to do if a discussion letter/paper is rejected because it's not an original research article?

texts:
A while ago, we read a paper published in a quite credible journal (impact factor around 3), which we believed had a few very basic but significant mistakes in the methods and final results.

The journal's guide for authors mentioned the possibility to submit a discussion ("Discussion: A short commentary (1000-3000 words) discussing an article previously published in XXX."). Together with a colleague, we decided to write a discussion manuscript highlighting the problems of the paper in two pages. We did it twice, actually—one time very polite, and a second time more to the point.

Although each time all of the reviewers agreed on the highlighted problems and one reviewer even recommended publication "as is," both times it was ultimately rejected, because the editor focused on a comment of the reviewer like: "was not general enough", or because "it is more a discussion, and not an original research contribution." (But this was actually exactly what was intended, and fully in agreement with the objective for this type of manuscript in the guide for authors.)

It is OK if a manuscript is rejected (I am a PhD student because I like to learn new things), but it should be rejected for the right reasons. The arguments against the article did not seem to consider properly the submission type, "discussion" instead of "original research article." Furthermore we have the feeling that the editor could be embarrassed to publish a discussion highlighting a paper with such errors that could be recognized by frankly any above-average high school student. (although the paper has been cited quite a number of times, apparently without anyone noticing the mistakes).

It is probably not worth the effort, but it became a matter of principle.
We contacted a few other people (not our friends) in the field for a quick opinion about the manuscript, and they confirmed our impression that it has probably been rejected out of embarrassment. This seems quite a disgrace, but what can one do about it?

Should we publish the manuscript together with the reviewer comments on our group website? Submit the manuscript to a competing journal?  Would it make sense to contact the publisher (Elsevier) to complain about the editor in chief?

I should also mention that the writers of the original article are, according to  their group website, co-sponsored by a big company which gains obvious advantages from their erroneous findings. Is there maybe an ombudsman to which we could go to?


texts: Do Asian authors have a different style of academic writing from European authors?

texts:
I'm an Asian student working with a European prof. My adviser told me several times that when he read my writings (our papers), he just wanted to rewrite it.
He told me that my English was rather OK, but "the way Oriental people think is different from us". By "us" he meant Europeans.

My adviser could not tell me exactly what was the difference. So I would like to ask if anybody here has experience working with Asian co-authors, and has the same feeling?

Or is this only my problem and my adviser is trying to avoid being straightforward?

Note: I do have problem with my writing. My first conf. paper had been rejected 6 times before it was accepted.

UPDATE

Thanks for the answers. I just want to make clear that:

I'm asking about the narrative of a paper, and how the content is represented. I'm not asking about the use of language expressions or passive/active writing.
Judging the comment of my adviser racist is unfair to him. He treats students like friends and 3 out of 5 of his students, including me, have been Asian (and I guess he has this feeling with all 3 of us).


texts: Applying to Computer Science PhD Programs

texts:
I am a computer science and math double major, and I am applying to computer science PhD programs this fall. I have a 3.9 GPA and have done research with 3 professors during my time in undergrad. I have one publication and three poster presentations, and I will hopefully have at least one more publication before I apply (but due to problems in the research group, that might not happen). I can get two great letters of recommendation, but the third might be lackluster. I go to a regionally known liberal arts school, but it is most certainly not a household name.
With my qualifications out of the way, I want to study machine learning. My prior research was not in machine learning per se, but it did involve aspects of it. I have done work in bioinformatics, computational statistics, and computer vision. My professors are not especially well known in their fields, but they do publish frequently. What tier programs should I apply to? My advisor thinks I should apply roughly on the threshold of top/mid tier programs, but I would like more opinions.
On a tangent: Some schools have both computer science and machine learning PhD programs. Should I apply to both? And do some schools admit generally with no specialty? If so, would I have a better chance with them since machine learning is so competitive?


texts:
Normally, graduate students at my university go through three rotations. I've done two and will need to choose a permanent advisor after this next one. So choosing a rotation is similar to choosing an advisor, yet the philosophy can be slightly different.

1) Funding: Does the PI have funding for at least one year? Having that planning time to find other sources of funding without having to TA is indispensable.

2) Choosing a permanent advisor: The purpose of a rotation is to find an advisor and lab I am comfortable working with, as this will lead to a happier and more productive few years of my life.

3) New skills: Doing rotations in multiple labs will give me perspective. I should be learning different skills from each rotation.

4) Research interests: I should find a lab with research interests that align to mine. I don't want to be stuck working in a field I don't enjoy for the next X years.

5) Prestige: An advisor with strong industry connections can leverage those connections to help me break into industry or finding funding for my startup. A recommendation from a professor famous in your field can be my ticket to a tenure-track position.

How should I reconcile these different points? I'm a bioinformatics grad, if that makes a difference.


texts: What makes the difference between "summa cum laude" and "magna cum laude"?

texts:
The evaluation of PhD candidate is done based on his/her thesis, his defence presentation and the oral examination (in some countries). If the examiners do not find so much to argue about, the candidate gets "magna cum laude". In some cases, he may get "summa cum laude".

By attending some PhD examinations and reading the theses, I could not find the key factor, which distinguishes between these two academic honours. The publication list was not a criterion as well. Note that I am talking about examinations in the same faculty of the same university.

Since there is no concrete evaluation of the PhD examination, how examiners decide to give "summa cum laude" instead of "magna cum laude"? In other words, what can the candidate do to make this difference?


texts: Can I apply for a PhD in the United States with a 3-year undergraduate degree from Italy?

texts: I'm currently studying in Italy for an undergraduate degree which is 3 years long (standard BSc in Computer Science). Since I'm also U.S. citizen, I was thinking it would be interesting to perhaps apply for a PhD in the states since it doesn't require a master's degree (it does in Italy). Is this possible or are the systems inherently different?


texts: How to proceed after failing exam to advance into PhD program, and subsequently losing motivation?

texts:
I have completed masters in Pure Mathematics a year back. I was preparing for an exam for pursuing a PhD program in the same. The results came out in this year in the month of April and found that I have failed to clear it.

Most of my friends have cleared the exam and have got enrolled in it. I feel left out. Now I am simply sitting in my home and preparing for next year's program.

Since the results came out, I have hardly made any progress in Mathematics, as I don't find it interesting as it used to be. As a remedy I bought many books to bring back my old interest in Mathematics, but failed to do so. I talked to my teachers on this issue but instead they start telling success stories of my friends who have qualified the exam letting me disgusted.

Earlier I used to spend hours solving  many problems both from my books as well as on Math Stack Exchange but I don't find the urge to do it anymore. Though I open this site I feel that none of the problems posted are suitable for me to solve.

I do read books but the problems seem a distant dream. Asked many people what to do; they advised me to take decisions on your own in your life.

Really don't know if it is a good place to ask but cant find better place. Do share your thoughts if you were in a similar situation or so.

Should I change the subject or look for jobs or do something else? Any alternatives you can chalk out for me.


texts:
I am curious as to how mathematicians conduct research. I hope some of you can help me solve this little mystery.

To me, mathematics is a branch where you either get it or you don't. If you see the solution, then you've solved the problem, otherwise you will have to tackle it bit by bit. Exactly how this is done is elusive to me.

Unlike physicists, chemists, engineers or even sociologists, I can't see where a mathematician (other than statisticians) gather their data from. Also, unlike the other professions mentioned above, it is not apparent that mathematicians perform any experiments.

Additionally, a huge amount of work has already been laid down by other mathematicians, I wonder if there is a lot of "copy and pasting" as we see in software engineering (think of using other people's code)

So my question is, where do mathematicians get their research topics from and how do they go about conducting research? What is considered acceptable progress in mathematics?


texts:
Compared to writing a research paper, I found writing a grant proposal to be much more intimidating, because there aren't any finished products that I can compare to. I am wondering if there are any good samples out there so that I can see what good proposals are like, especially for social sciences. Thanks!

Related question: maybe I am naive, why don't NSF and other funding agencies publish the full proposal of the ones that were accepted, say 5, 10 years after the funding ends? It seems to me that these older projects should have wrapped up already and there are probably minimal risk of being scooped.


texts: Is there any systematic approach to select/find a research topic?

texts:
I was offered an opportunity to prepare a 2-page research proposal for a postgraduate research program in computer science.

I am searching for a systematic and step by step technique to select/find a workable research topic.

Is there any systematic procedure/strategy/approach/method that researchers generally use to select/find and narrow down a research topic from an ocean of topics that pops in one's mind?

Is this technique an standard in the academia?


texts: What is the difference between a "statistician", "applied statistician", and an academic applying advanced stats within their field?

texts:
Within academia, I am wondering how statisticians use the titles/description of "statistician" versus "applied statistician."  Also, what is the difference between an "applied statistician" and an academic researcher whose work focuses on or involves the application of (relatively) advanced stats to questions in their field (I'll call this a Quantitative ________, where the blank can be any field).  What types of training and expertise do these different titles/terms imply?

Context: I am a PhD biologist and am applying for a lectureship in a stats department and am not sure how my definition of these terms/roles compares to those of actual statisticians.  To my peers I refer to myself a "quantitative ecologist." I am wondering if I can call myself an "applied statistician" or if that would be overreach given my training (I have taken a number of applied stats courses but am mostly a self-taught user of stats and programmer).

In my mind

Academic statistician: PhD in stats, math, or biostats and highly trained in fundamental mathematics and theory of stats.  Might work on theory, methods development, or directly on applied questions.  Key diagnostic: can convey statistical ideas entirely in matrix algebra.  EDIT:Publishes all their work in statistics journals.
Applied statistician: PhD in any academic field, whose research/work is focused on development and/or application of novel or highly advanced methods to applied problems.  Might or might not have high levels of formal training in math and stats but is fluent in mathematics.  Key diagnostics:   EDIT:Publishes most or all of their work in statistics journals.
Quantitative _______: Similar to applied statistician, but whose training in math might be less complete or formal, and/or might focus more on computational aspects of statistical application than mathematical aspects (Such as development of computational algorithms, statistical packages, best practices, etc).  Key diagnostics: is fluent in a programming language and/or teaches their department's grad-level applied stats class.EDIT:Publishes their work in journals within their field.


texts: Why do top universities prefer candidates with work experience for their MBA programmes?

texts: Most top univerities in the world prefer candidates with work experience for their MBA programmes.Why so?


texts: Post-doc positions in Mechanical Engineering

texts:
What is the best way to approach professors when looking for a Post-Doc position ? Are there any particular search tools for this type of position ?

I found a similar question on this website: How to maximise one's chances of getting a good postdoc position?

My question is more directed towards the way one should contact potential advisors, specially if they are in foreign countries and a face-to-face meeting is not possible. Is it better to contact directly the Professor or rather contact fellow PhD/PostDocs of that laboratory ? Is an e-mail sufficient or should you try to contact that person through tools like LinkedIn or ResearchGate ?

What would be a good time to do so ? 3 months, 6 months, a year before finishing the PhD ?

Should one be specific on what you would like to work on or rather general so that more possibilities are available ?

I guess this is a really open discussion topic where there is not a "correct" answer, so feel free to share your personal views and experience.


texts: Master thesis advisor gave me an ill-defined question. I worked on it for a year!

texts:
My master thesis advisor gave me an ill-defined question. His expertise is in mathematical optimization, but he wanted to shift to heuristic optimization so he assigned all his graduate students topics in that field although he actually doesn't know much about it.

He assigned me a problem. I had a feeling that it was ill-defined. I worked on the problem he assigned me for a year but now the numerical results affirms that I was right.

I am not sure how to deal with the situation. Should I waste more time trying  to re-formulate the statement of the problem? I feel it's unfair for me to be both the student and the mentor! What is his job, really? If I'm to do everything on my own...

He doesn't know anything about this field he forced his students to work in.

However, if I quit probably no one is going to believe that it is his fault as a mentor and won't find anyone in the department to write me a recommendation letter to start fresh somewhere else.

So, what are my options now?

Is it advisable to tell the truth to other professors? Will they believe me?


texts: When to give up seeking justice after you've been plagiarized?

texts:
I found that a Ph.D. student, recently graduated, plagiarized over a dozen passages from a book I based on my own Ph.D. dissertation of some years ago.
Their dissertation is on the Internet, which is how I became aware of the plagiarism. I am in the US, I should say, while the student’s university is in another country (not a third-world country, as someone asked, and it is one with rules similar to those in the US about plagiarism).

In most instances the student cited me as a source at the end of sometimes long, closely paraphrased passages. I believe this still constitutes plagiarism in the form of "excessive paraphrasing."

As UNC-Chapel Hill notes, for example:

  Even if you cite your source, paraphrasing can still be plagiarism if all you do is rearrange the author's words, delete a phrase or two, or insert a few synonyms and claim the passage as your own.

When I reported the student to their dissertation committee chairperson, nothing happened.  The chairperson did not even report the matter as required to the administration.

Dissatisfied, I took the matter to the university's director of student ethics, who told me I had a strong case not only for plagiarism, but for unprofessional conduct. The director assigned a random professor to investigate, who to my surprise absolved the student of wrongdoing. The only reason given was lack of evidence of intent to deceive.

Again dissatisfied, I took the matter to the president of the university, who agreed to hear my concern.  Once I revealed the nature of that concern, however, the president no longer responded to me. Even the president's assistant, whom the president had included in the discussion, no longer responded.

I have been careful not to come across as a loon (between the president and his assistant, for example, I sent a mere four emails, only two of which were follow-ups saying "I haven't heard from you: can you confirm receipt?") In short, I think I have responded as any rational person might in such a situation.

I should add I am an experienced scholar widely known in my field. (Granted, it's a narrow field.) But because I am no longer affiliated with a university, I have no one to represent me. (My publisher did contact the student formally and threaten legal action, but, again, only if the student should publish the plagiarized text.)

I was told by an attorney friend there is no point involving attorneys because there is no material loss on my part. If, however, the student publishes the dissertation as a book, then an attorney could be involved, even if the loss involved is negligible. (We aren't talking Harry Potter, after all, but obscure academic works.)

My question is: at what point should I give up seeking justice? (I would have been content with the student merely rewriting the paraphrased material – but discussions never reached the subject of remediation. That's all I really want to achieve, and I think having been caught and having to revise the text would have been punitive enough for the student.)


texts: When to book a flight for a faculty interview?

texts: A friend of mine got an invitation for an interview late April, so he was thinking should he book the flight now, or wait until last few days, in case he was invited for another interview. However, waiting until last 4-5 days would increase the ticket price and in worst case may not have any seats available.


texts: How to put a position you could not attend due to visa problems in CV?

texts: I was offered a PhD position from university X with a research assistantship from company Y both in U.S., but I could not attend because my US visa application got refused. Now I am wondering if I can put that in my CV. And if so, how?


texts: May a piece of results be presented in two theses?

texts:
Let A be a Ph.D. student who had defined a master project for a master student called B. The topic was indeed a part of the overall Ph.D. problem statement of A. To make it feasibly doable by B, A had already planned the solution strategy, but the detailed composition of a solution and its implementation had to be handled by B. The project was indeed a small open problem whose solution was achieved by extensive participations of A, as well. The project was successfully finished, and B wrote his master thesis including the results. Moreover, a paper was published whose writer and the first author was A. When A starts to write his thesis, may he also bring those results in his own ph.D. thesis? In one hand, those results partially do also belong to him letting him logically claim those contributions. On the other hand, bringing the already-published-in-B-thesis results in his thesis may be an instance of plagiarism.

What's the workaround for A?


texts: Is it of academic value to submit two papers describing two different but somewhat similar architectures?

texts:
I'm going to submit two papers within the coming weeks. I'll be proposing two new architectures (one new architecture in every paper).

To sum up, the first paper surpasses the current state of the art.

The second paper improves some criteria above the first paper however the overall result of the second paper would degrade compared with the current state of the art by a little.

I was wondering whether it is ethical and of any academic value to submit both papers or I must just submit the first paper?


texts: References/resources on problems surrounding peer review in physics?

texts:
I was watching this video on YouTube (this is the second part of it) and it motivated me to ask this question.

From the videos:

  ....that's the good aspect of peer review. It should work to sift out problems with the interpretation, problems with the results. It should work to improve a paper. The problem is ..... there is a huge volume of stuff and we are increasingly getting swamped. .... here is one of the worst examples of where peer review has entirely failed. ....

The examples he talks about is discussed in this blog post.

When you zoom in, you can clearly see that it is photo-shopped.

  ...this is one of the top ranking journals in the fields...

  Now here is the really troublesome aspect... if they had done it better
  (you can see a much better photo-shopped image in the blog), how would we know.  Not only is money spent in that lab, other groups would chase this up and that's the worrying aspect and it builds and builds. Science is like that.

  In the past if the referees didn't pick it up, that was the end of the story. We now have something called the post publication peer review. There are sites ( PubPeer) and there are blogs (ChemBark, Chemistry Blog) where people upload paper and say well this looks like a great paper or in many cases they go "there is something I don't quite get here" and that leads to lots of comments from people in the field and I think this is where we are evolving to... away from the traditional peer review system. The publication is seen to be the start of the scientific process and not the end, where you generate debate.

My questions:

Are there other such examples in physics? Can you point me towards a blog/site or something of the sort that goes through these things?

Are there any blogs, articles or essays that discuss problems surrounding the peer-review process (in relation to physics). How it can improved, where alternative methods like post-publication review are discussed ? I know ChemBark for chemistry, I am looking for it's "equivalent" in physics.


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Is it advisable to get copyright on a research proposal and an academic article before submitting them?

Do you think there are some distinctions between the two cases mentioned (a research proposal and a scientific paper).

I refer to legislations of Western countries, mainly.


texts: What are positive and negative outcomes of requiring Ph.D. students to take a pedagogy course?

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My mathematics department (where I am employed as faculty) is considering requiring its Ph.D. students to take a two-semester course in pedagogy and educational theory. All of them also TA lower level math classes, so the proposal has some merit. I am trying to decide whether to support or oppose this proposal (or suggest modifications to it).

Although I am skeptical, I want to be open-minded. In departments that have adopted such requirements, what have been the positive and negative outcomes? Have students enjoyed such courses, and/or felt that they were useful? And has the quality of TA education been improved?


texts: Do reviewers tend to reward or dismiss the use of new languages in scientific computing projects?

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In the past I used to use a lot of Python/R/MATLAB which are the standard in many scientific disciplines. However, recently I have dived into Julia and now everything I'm doing is in Julia (including workshops, blogs, etc. to help teach and promote it!). And there are a lot of very good reasons to use Julia for these kinds of projects.

However, if I am to be publishing algorithms which have Julia code, should I be expecting backlash from reviewers? Should I have alternative versions (like a MATLAB version) also included until Julia gains more acceptance? I am curious as to whether other's past experience with using new tools was a headache, or whether reviewers tend to find it as a little extra novelty.

The field is numerical analysis, more specifically developing new computational methods for stochastic (partial) differential equations. It's written in Julia because from my experience I get massive performance increases over other scripting languages while requiring minimal coding/debugging time. In the paper, everything is written as psudocode for legibility. Note that R/Python/C have language binding tools which can allow someone (with some work) to use the code as a blackbox, but MATLAB users would have to re-implement the code themselves (the langugages are quite similar)


texts: What to do when the claims in a paper are proven to be wrong?

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What can be done to correct an error that might be hiding a certain author's sole purpose of publishing a paper, no matter the soundness of their method?

In a nutshell, the particular case that spawned this question can be summarized in a few sentences:

a paper presents a mathematical construction and proposes a numerical solution for the resulting nonlinear optimization problem
the problem has many local solutions that are not numerically distinguishable
it is impossible to ensure convergence to the real solution without actually starting near it
there are too many local solutions (an infinite set in some cases) to simply test the best sample
the authors claim unconditional convergence to the true solution, regardless the parameters
their results are consistent with their goal, but the mathematical formulation is in contradiction with the conclusions simply judging by the properties of the objective equations.
Hence, such results are, at best, a stroke of luck, if not part of a probably much different approach.

After spending almost one month trying to understand not one, but a series of three inter-linked articles on a scientific subject, I have mathematically proven that the central assumptions and claims in that series of papers were wrong and/or incomplete. As the papers were peer reviewed and even published in reputed journals or conferences, I feel there is a need of saving other people the trouble of wasting valuable time trying to reproduce a falsely advertised behaviour. What is the proper action to take in this situation (for example, writing to the editors of the journal)?


texts: Is it ok to post an abstract of a conference paper... which I will be presenting in a conference scheduled 3 months from now... on ResearchGate?

texts: The conference is scheduled on February 2021.  So far, I am not aware of any proceeding in which the abstract to my conference paper will be published.  Would that land me in trouble if I posted my work as conference paper on ResearchGate but will only place the abstract?


texts: How to ask student for more information in order to grant makeup final

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A student of mine has asked to take his final early because he is "going out of town." He has only just mentioned this to me and we are already halfway through the quarter.

I have spoken with some faculty in my department and one has suggested that if not taking the exam early would impose an undue financial burden (i.e. he bought tickets months ago and didn't know he would have a final this day) then he should be allowed to take the exam early, but if he planned a road trip with his friends last week, for example, then he should have to take the exam at the scheduled time.

I like this policy, so my question at the moment is: how can I ask this student for more information about his vacation? It certainly seems as if it will be the latter since he has not mentioned it to me until now, but I would like to be sure before I decide.

Additional comments: I would obviously rather him not take the exam on an earlier date because I am worried he might share test information with other students. This is a calculus final so it takes effort on my part to write a different exam,  and I feel a bit miffed at having to write an entire new test so someone can go on vacation.

Edit: The syllabus statement on makeup exams: "In this course, we will have one midterm and a final exam on the dates mentioned above. These dates are firm and cannot be changed except under extraordinary circumstances. Make-up exams will be permitted at my discretion.'


texts: Will time off spent doing things not related to my research interests count against me when applying to PhD programs?

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I recently finished my undergraduate degree in physics and I currently have a year-long research internship. My original plan was to apply to graduate school (physics PhD) in the fall. However, the more I think about it, the more I'd like to take additional time off to pursue non-physics related interests (think: traveling, creative writing) and also to spend time at home with family (I grew up in a small-ish city where I doubt I could get a job related to my research interests).

I have been told that I have a pretty decent shot at getting into top-tier graduate schools (4+ years research, honors thesis, > 3.9 GPA, etc.). As has been pointed out previously, there seems to be a consensus that taking time off and getting experience related to your field is viewed positively/not negatively. However, my question is, would taking additional time off for completely non-science related pursuits significantly decrease my chances of being accepted to competitive PhD programs?


texts: Reasons for not releasing mark schemes for past exams?

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On my course my university provides past exam papers but does not release mark schemes and I know this is the case for other universities. I am dyslexic which makes reading hard, and for my high-school exams I used exam papers with the mark scheme as a self-study method, (meaning I attempted questions and used the answers as a source of information on that topic). Which leads to what I see as one of the main arguments against not providing mark schemes; by providing exam papers you give students an idea of what they need to study but not the information they need to know (i.e. the answers) meaning they will spend time (which could be spent on learning other things) looking in text books for answers.

So what are the reasons for not providing mark schemes to past exam papers?

Edit

Just to clarify some points:

Firstly I am from the UK hence the phrase 'mark scheme'. When a wrote the question (which was a while back know) I guess I was more tending towards the idea of a mark scheme as example solutions rather then a 'grading rubric'. I must admit 'mark scheme' was probably the wrong phrase to use in the question. Just to keep the question consistent with the answers, the interpretation of a 'mark scheme' as "any method that allows the student to work out what they are expected to write in the exam" works best.

Also a while back I did email the relevant people at my university about the situation concerning 'mark schemes', also explaining about my dyslexia and how I learn best. They replied by simply saying that the review the situation every year, but gave me no further information for the reasons behind it.


texts: Improving conditions of a tenure-track job offer

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I have recently been offered a tenure-track position in a very prestigious northern European university. I am currently a lecturer in a smaller UK university but I have six years of experience between my post-docs and appointment as a lecturer.

The level of appointment would be as a an Assistant Professor. Here, I am a "tenured" Senior Lecturer (which should be a bit higher), however being a non-intensive research university, there were an easier set of requirements. I feel more like a glorified post-doc with more teaching responsibilities than a full lecturer (but don't tell them that!). Indeed the level of research support is non-comparable. In the two years I have been here I have not had the possibility of supervising PhD students as there are no resources, beyond a few temporary post-docs I have been able to fund. Which is my main motivation for leaving (and Brexit).

Still, I feel the experience I have accrued should be recognised a bit more. Since the assistant professorship is also something they could be offering to a very good newly minted PhD or an early post-doc.

They say that "almost-always" a five-year tenure-track position results in a promotion to a tenured Associate Position. However my negotiating experience is really low, and coming from a Southern European background, all wages seem astronomical compared to what I was earning as a PhD back home.

My question is: how should I argue my case? Should I be asking for an earlier tenure time? It could be also counter-productive, for example if all my grant applications are rejected. If you have been in a similar situation, what did you ask for?


texts: Can I post a pre-print of my paper on ArXiv knowing the paper will go through major changes? Alternatives?

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I wrote a paper with a new approach and I implemented this approach in both R and SAS. I want to put the software online on Github and ideally on CRAN too. The paper has been reviewed by my collaborators, but I was told that the structure is atypical as this is my first paper and I used a structure more typical of a thesis. The paper will need to go trough major changes and it will have the reorganized differently. Still the modelling approach itself is good and well detailed in the paper.

I’d like to release the software on Github and include the current draft of the paper with it but I’m wondering if I should also sent it to ArXiv at the same time even though it’s not publication-ready. Is putting my paper on Github (and maybe Researchgate?) enough to prevent someone from legally stealing my work? Can I and should I send it to a place like ArXiv? Should I put a license on the online draft?


texts: How is the mathematics academic job market outside of North America?

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Most of the information online concerns academic positions in math at research-oriented US universities?  In summary, it is extremely competitive.
I'm just wondering, what's the situation at teaching-oriented institutions in the US, and other institutions around the world in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, East Asian countries etc.

Thanks,


texts: I submitted my short manuscript four months ago to a math journal. I sent a tracking email about the status of my paper and I was informed that the editor has a problem with finding appropriate reviewer and asked me to send him the name of potential reviewers. Can I withdraw my paper, because it seems to me it takes a very long time and I need it too much to publish soon.


texts: Professor I applied to is about to move – can I ask them to consider my application for the new institution?

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I am in the process of applying for graduate programs at various universities. Given the importance of research in some graduate programs, I have been searching for professors/potential mentors when I came across a particular professor whose work impressed me immensely. I got in touch with the professor to discuss my application.

Now this is where the tricky part begins. The professor informed me that they will be moving to another university shortly and will not be accepting mentees anymore at their old university. Luckily, I had submitted my application for their new university a few days back. Is it okay to ask them to consider my application as a part of an application different from the one I had initially approached them for? My desire to carry work under them is genuine but will doing something like this make me look too opportunistic of unscrupulous?


texts: Do I have any legal right to fair grading by my university? (UK)

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I have recently been given a 0 for one of my online exams at university due to technical difficulties that meant I was unable to submit the exam before the end of exam time. Unfortunately this was quite an important exam and will likely have a big effect on my grade this year.
I think that although I was partly to blame, the university is also partly at fault. So currently I'm trying to dispute the issue with them, hoping they will do something to make this a bit more fair such as not weighting the exam towards my grade or allowing me to resit but they don't seem too keen to do much right now.
So if it comes down to it, given that the university was partly responsible for the fault that happened, would I be able to take legal action to get my university to do something to make this more fair?


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Objectively, is it more difficult to get published a research or a review paper?

Thanks


texts: How to request to be co-corresponding author

texts: We had a paper accepted in one of the top biology journals (IF=15). It is a work in which I participated in the part of computational biology, and was submitted by a colleague, she being the corresponding author since she is an expert on the field. We had a major revision and I had to do an outstanding work and a lot of calculations in order to have the paper accepted. I even developed a new approach. So now that we are at the proof stage, I would like to request her to appear in the paper as co-corresponding author since this is very important in my country. I do not know exactly how to do it. I will tell her to add me as co-corresponding with the text “to which all computational biology based correspondence should be addressed” since she is wet lab biologist. But I do not think this will be enough argument for her, i guess she will say initial ideas came from her side. What do you suggest for my “cover letter” to her?


texts: Is it OK to add extra paragraph to a paper during the proof stage?

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My math paper recently got accepted and I was told that I will be sent a proof soon. It's just four lines I want to add.. is it OK to add it to my paper? It's additional explanation of something, and I would tell the editor about it.

But is it commonly done or done at all?


texts: What are committees looking for in a cover letter for a faculty application?

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Several small related questions about how to present oneself in a faculty application, and in particular the cover letter:

Should it end by saying something, like "I am waiting for your call" or "I will follow up by phone or email"?  I have seen the latter recommended, but for me it seems somehow annoying.

Should the cover letter contain qualifications and skills like highly-motivated, fast learner, etc?

Some recommend mentioning potential members of the department that the applicant can work with in a faculty application. Is this a good idea? If Dr. A  is working on topic T, and I want to work on topic T, then should I say that I would like to collaborate with Dr. A, and if so, how?


texts: When data is required to be submitted, is it before publishing the paper or after paper is published?

texts: Shall I submit all my data and models to my supervisor before publishing the paper or after the paper is published? I want to submit my data and models after paper has been published, atleast abstract has been sent to a conference and accepted. Because I am afraid that my data and models may be used to publish paper in other students name. What is the general norm that is foolwed in these scenario? What should I tell to my supervisor?


texts: University policy of publishing student course evaluations: Prevalence and pros and cons

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These days it is very common to have some course evaluation towards the end of a course, in which students respond to standardized questions on a numerical scale (e.g. between 1 and 5) and can additionally give free-form comments.

Sometimes individual lecturers make student comments (and their responses) available to the cohort in which the survey was taken and the next cohort, to show that they are open to critique and how they respond to it.

I am, however, more interested in cases where there is a departmental/faculty/university-wide policy to consistently publish evaluation results for all of their courses (averages of numerical data only, or perhaps the free-form comments as well) to the current and future cohorts.

Is it common for universities to have a policy of publishing student course evaluations?
What are advantages and disadvantages of doing this?
Has this been looked at in the educational literature?


texts: Is it a must to collect resources from previous students to be a successful student?

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Last semester, I was doing well (A+) in three of the five courses I was taking, but had a problems with two others:

For one course, the professor supplied a long list of study materials of several thousand of pages. And, the lecture material was way too extensive for a four-month semester. I downloaded lecture materials from other universities to cut the load and still found it very extensive. Then, from the end of April, 2019, my brain was signalling an SOS. Finally, I failed in the theory part of this course, and as a result failed in the course.
For another course, I obtained A+ in labs, and projects. But, I found the time inadequate to prepare for the theory test.

These two courses increased my stress level, and that stress level caused an anxiety attack in the first week of May, 2019. As result I failed in four courses.

Later I found that successful students were actually massively cheating in those two courses.

For Course 1, they were actually not following materials supplied by the professor at all. they have developed a massive database of all old questions.
For Course 2, they uploaded all the assembly language programs to the server before the lab sessions. Also, they have developed a massive database of all old questions.

I have two questions regarding this:

Is my experience very common or normal?
Is it a must to collect old resources from previous students to be a successful student?


texts: Should I mention a published paper in a disreputable journal in my resumé for admission to a PhD scholarship?

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I want to be admitted to PhD studies at a foreign university with a scholarship.

I was in a team of four members authoring a paper, whose senior member (who is a professor) corresponded the publication himself from initial to final stage without letting us know the journal name. After the acceptance, he told us the journal’s name and we found that it is not listed in Thomson Reuters / ISI and its claim of an impact factor is fake. It is not even showing a DOI of the paper. Now we are thinking as if our whole struggle was useless.

Please advise whether I should mention the paper on my resumé for PhD scholarships admissions or not.


texts: When not to contact a professor for a PhD based on what is written on his web page?

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I am trying to reach out professors in my research area of interest. Some professors say on their (lab) web page that prospective grad students should submit an application for admission...

In this case, would it be beneficial to contact that professor so he/she can support my application? Does that mean that the school rules don't let the professor get involved in the process of admission? What does that mean exactly? I am asking about US schools


texts: Is it acceptable for a student to ask a professor to be included as a co-author on the professor's paper?

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This semester I participated in an independent study with a professor and one of his/her PhD students. In this independent study, I spent a very substantial amount of time building (coding) things to facilitate the research being performed by the professor and his/her PhD student. However, I did not perform any actual research (though without my work, their research likely would not have been possible).

A few weeks ago, I asked this question: If I work on a project but don't do research, should I be included as an author on a paper?

It seems that the general consensus was, "it depends, but probably yes". Unfortunately, though the professor has told me that I did excellent work and that s/he is very pleased, s/he did not offer to include me as a co-author on the paper (the topic never came up).

My question now is, is it within the bounds of etiquette to ask this professor if I can be included on the paper? If so, what is a respectful and reasonable way to frame the question? I don't want to be imposing or assuming (especially because I did not actually conduct any research myself), but realistically I put in a very significant amount of work this semester (far more than the professor was expecting) and I think it's reasonable to at least be considered for co-authorship given that my work greatly aided in their research process.

For what it's worth, the professor is a reasonable person, i.e. this is not a case of "I'm being excluded unfairly!". Rather, the possibility of my being included as an author on the paper has not been brought up by the professor, so I'm wondering whether is it acceptable for a student to ask a professor to be included on his/her research paper?


texts: What Affiliation to put for Amateur scientist who is an alumni out of school for 15 years?

texts: I am an amateur scientist who wants to submit a paper to a peer reviewed journal.  While I have an under grad degree... it was in business and I have been out of school for 15 years.  Do I put my undergraduate university as my affiliation because I was educated there?  It would be nice to put something.


texts: How to best start offering consulting services as a Ph.D. student?

texts:
I'm wondering how to best start offering consulting services as a Ph.D. student? In particular, how to think about stating a consulting business while in graduate school.

A potential partner and I have skills that fill a market need. Both of us are adamant about pursuing non-academic work after the Ph.D. We both are wondering, what are we waiting for? In addition, both of us had has smaller consulting opportunities thus far (these fell in our lap), but would be looking to take this to the next level, and essentially replace our research assistantships with this work. Actually, there's no guarantee that either of us will have research assistantships next year, so it might even be a necessity.

Graduate school seems like a great time to start doing this work. Frankly, I'm unsure about how much a Ph.D. would change this opportunity for us down the road.

How would people go about navigating this while in graduate school?

In advance of the "check with your advisor or department" responses I should add two more things.

1) There's nothing in our agreement with the department or student handbook that stipulates that we can't work outside of the department while a student. It's not encouraged when you are getting a research assistantship. This would replace the assistantship.

2) We both don't feel like our advisors are adequately preparing us for non-academic careers (frankly because they have never worked outside of academia) and are fine with what this might mean for those relationships. It's more likely that they would be supportive of us stepping out of the lab and taking an untraditional route to finishing the Ph.D.