texts: I feel like I'm in a wrong place, should I quit my PhD?

texts:
I started a PhD program recently. I never had any doubts about the fact that I want to do a PhD and I still don't doubt it for a moment. I love working in the area of my interest, but it seems like the department I'm in isn't what I expected. Things are going very poorly for me. I'm losing my confidence, my passion, my self-esteem, my "good reputation", and I think my CV could be destroyed soon. I'm thinking about quitting the program, but I don't know how, and I don't know what the consequences could be. I very much appreciate any help or advice.

First, about the department: It's a small department at a top institution, with excellent faculty, but their approach to research and even the topics in the courses is vastly different from what I imagined. This is in the US, so the program starts without an assigned advisor and with course requirements. The courses are on the topics that my undergrad background is the weakest in, and before starting them, I was kind of happy about it, because I always knew I eventually need to learn them for my research as they are very useful tools, even though not even remotely my area of interest. But now, I can see the approach is very different from what I expected. It also seems to me that this approach represents how the professors in the department approach research problems in general.

I'm also extremely overwhelmed by the expectations. Everyone else in our very small cohort (we're only a handful of PhD student), seems to have a very strong background on the topics. They find the courses to be boring reviews, while I struggle to catch up. I was a very strong undergrad at a top institution, but my plan was to complement my undergraduate education with my graduate education, not to do the same thing again. And given the courses we have now, my strengths don't show themselves at all before I start working on my thesis (where I think I'm going to rely heavily on my undergrad background). This has shattered my confidence into pieces. I'm by far the weakest student of the cohort in the courses, and I need to work so hard to barely catch up with what others find easy and boring.

On the other hand, soon we should choose advisors. The competition for working with the advisor I came here for seems to be unexpectedly tough this year. An unusually high number of us want to work with him, and I think I have the lowest chance for that.

All of these combined, makes me think I chose a wrong program for my PhD. I'm starting to think about a way out, but I'm afraid of talking to the professors here about that, because our financial contract is renewed every year for a year, so I'm afraid I might get into trouble or at least, they may become overly sensitive about my performance and review my exams and assess my academic performance more strictly if I tell them about my struggles, my issues, how their expectations about my background are false, and how my expectation about the program was false. I'm also worried about my alternatives after quitting the program. How can I explain to other schools that I just chose a wrong program?! I just misunderstood what the department expects and what they do! Everyone told me since a a very long time ago, that PhD is flexible, and that a lot of people switch fields even without a proper background for their PhD. Now I entered a program that has very little flexibility, and it seems like everyone has done exactly the same topics for their undergrad!! How can I justify that I just want to start over in a different environment?!


texts:
A colleague of mine had an excellent PhD project and she published good papers during her PhD. When I asked her to give me her PhD thesis, she told me she can't because her PhD project was confidential (commercial, military, ...).

I wonder if a PhD thesis can be confidential? Isn't it available in her university library?

Can a funding organization set this limitation for the data included in a PhD thesis?

Anyway, what if her future employer asks for her PhD thesis?


texts: Interactive poll during the presentation - worth the hassle?

texts:
I recently attended a lecture where the speaker used piece of software to add interactive results to poll audience. As a presenter and/or audience - what is your opinion on added value of such exercise? Worth the hassle?

What are the benefits? What problems can it get you into?

In my particular case for example - you could answer via smartphone (app or website) or laptop (website), both of these had to of course be connected to Internet. So automatically - the poll excluded all those who didn't have this option.


texts: Plagiarized programming assignment - How to proceed

texts:
I'm a fourth year student earning a degree in computer science. I have a fairly high gpa, completed two research projects, and have conducted myself honestly through my entire career. A few weeks ago, we received an assignment comprised of 3 sections. My class partner and I decided to work separately on a single module and then collaborate on the last section. After a few days, my partner brought it to my attention that he had found the entire assignment on Github. This bothered me, but I ultimately made the decision to not back out if he decided to plagiarize his section. After completing both of our sections(I did mine honestly) we began collaboration on the final part. At this point, I made the regrettable decision to mimic a significant portion of the other programs structure.

I feel incredibly guilty about this. If this were an individual project, I would fess up to the professor and accept whatever consequences. However, since my partner(who I also consider a friend) is graduating, and starting a well paying job in a nearby city, I feel obliged to hope for the best and see things through.

I do not consider myself to be an unethical person, but high levels of stress and a bad influence caused me to make a bad decision. This I realize is my own fault.

We have not yet received a grade for the assignment, but I'm expecting the worst. How should I proceed? If I do get caught, what will the consequences be? If I don't get caught, is there anything I can do to relieve myself of guilt without ruining my partners career?


texts:
I learn and produce mathematics. In that process, I had to read quite a number of research articles.

Question :

  What are some efficient ways to keep a note of results of a research article in mathematics?

I keep a note of definitions (in detail) and results (with out proofs) for each paper I read.

Are there any other efficient methods to keep track of what results does a paper contain?

Reading introduction or abstract of a paper does not count as they are written in cryptic manner.


texts: M1 or M2 for masters in Mathematics for Engineering background

texts:
I want to apply for master's program in mathematics in France. I have a dual degree (M.Tech+B.Tech in 5 years) in Electrical engineering but my master's thesis was complexity theory in learning machines and most of the course are in applied mathematics.

I graduated 5 years ago and now I have been doing pure math since the last 3 years on my own, attending different course in different universities while doing job as well. I have applied to US universities for PhD but I doubt will get in. So, now I am looking for master's options in France and Germany. For Germany I think I can clearly see that I can't do masters due to the fact that I have missed the scholarships deadline. I had applied to University of Bonn but they outrightly rejected me saying that your first degree must be in mathematics.

So, I am hoping for masters in France but I am not able to find scholarships and I am not sure whether the same condition applies to French system as well.

[Q-1] Does one need to have a first degree in Mathematics to apply to M1 or M2?

[Q-2] In case if I can apply, can I directly apply to M2 without applying for M1? (I have seen some of the answers which says that they require you to go through M1 before moving to M2. It is a must. If it is, then I have no issue going through it)

[Q-3] Does anyone know of scholarships that's available to Indian nationality for applying to the above programs.

Which universities in France or anywhere (decent enough) can I apply to for master's? Any help would be appreciated.

Edit 1: My Interest is in Algebraic geometry and Complex geometry.


texts: When should a professor recommend a student drop out of college?

texts:
I am a college professor, and sometimes I learn of a student's career goals.  I think some should drop out despite having good grades.  If they do not learn much (because they are advanced or because they do better on their own), or if a degree will not help them with their specific career goals, I think that they should drop out.  College is not cheap, and I can tell some students do not enjoy going to class or doing homework.  I am afraid if I suggest a student leaves the school without a degree, I will be fired.   When should a teacher recommend a student leave the university without a degree?
I am in the U.S.


texts: How do I survive academia as a Trump supporter?

texts:
Academia is highly liberal - which is fine. I don't mind liberals in general. However I voted for Trump.

I had a weird experience recently. I was chatting with some people at a conference at dinner and one older, well established, professor started talking about Trump supporters. He talked about how awful Trump supporters are and started naming names. He said that such and such person at such and such university was a Trump supporter. As a Trump supporter this made me nervous. I try to hide my support for Trump but of course some people know.

Given that there are a lot of people who think Trump supporters are evil, and given that people have no problem naming names, and given that people know I support Trump, how do I best control the damage? Should I "repent" so to speak? Should I just keep my mouth shut and hope for the best?


texts: Letter of recommendations from instructors at a coaching institute

texts:
Currently I'm doing an automation course in a coaching institute.

We need to submit three letters of recommendations for a masters programme. I have one from my previous college, and another one from my previous employer, but I still need a third one.

Is it acceptable to submit a letter of recommendation from the coaching institute where I'm studying, instead of from a regular college or university?


texts: My advisor completely ignores me what should I do?

texts:
My advisor became an assistant professor nearly two years ago. I worked with him for one year but did not publish a paper, and he thinks my progress is too slow. He asked if I want him to assign a new PhD student on this project. After that, he completely ignored me and stopped funding me. I also find our research interests are not a good match. The project he gave me requires something new to him and me, and I think that’s a hard problem which needs more time.

What should I do? I want to change advisor and don’t want him hate me. Should I go to his office directly to talk with him, because he did not reply me after I send him several emails. I am just afraid the bad relationship will influence my reputation in department.


texts: Professor wants to submit paper, but no real results

texts:
I am an undergraduate student who is working on some research projects applying machine learning to medical problems at a small, primarily-undergraduate college.

In one of these projects, a Master’s student suggested a feature extraction approach and wrote some code based on it. Unfortunately,  I couldn't reproduce the results. I tried to talk to him about it, but we couldn’t reach an agreement. I showed the professor leading the project that the results were not trustworthy, but she wants me to write a paper based on the method, where the other student and I would be listed jointly as first author.

In the meantime, I do not have any alternative results in hand. The problem we are working on is very difficult and has never been attempted before, and I am still developing the codebase for my own approach.

This conversation has been going on for a while, and my professor is getting impatient and wants to publish quickly. She says that some people within the department are pushing for her resignation (for reasons not pertinent to this question), and I think that may be the reason.

I am unsure of how to handle this situation because

I do not want to get the professor in deeper trouble
I want to remain a good member of our team
I want to do good work

I do not really have anyone who I can go to for advice without getting this professor in trouble, and I have no idea how to navigate this situation.

Why I couldn’t reproduce the results:

The model only performed well when trained and tested on all data, but under those circumstances, almost any model could, and many silly ideas can even outperform it. The technique didn’t really make sense within the domain, either, and I am not sure the student understands what it does.

Similar Questions

I have looked online for similar situations, like these ones, but I am still not sure what to do.

professor pushing me to get result when nothing is right!

Paper on project without any result - how to conclude

What to do with a result too small to be publishable, but interesting nonetheless?

How to proceed when the baseline (state-of-the-art) published results claim much better performance than I can reproduce?

Problem with undergraduate research supervisor, how to proceed?

Informing my supervisor of discrepancy in the results

My Professor is pushing me in a problem that isn't solvable for the deadline

Is it good to publish a research paper with many partially answered questions with sub-optimal results?

Is it morally correct to submit a paper to a conference with wrong results?


texts: Impact of slide quality on student learning

texts:
I'm working on improving the contents of a university level introductionary course.

Has there been done any research on the impact of lecture slide quality on student learning?

My assumption is that slides that are well structured, follow a theme, spread content over slides in a thought through manner, etc. will give the students better learning. I feel like this is a safe assumption but I've learned not to trust assumption, can this be backed up or contradicted by research results?

The question at hand is whether or not refactoring old lectures is worthwile, as they stand they are sort of hap-hazard and glued together of slides from various lecturers.


texts:
As a very new researcher who is exploring the best way to generate ideas, some guidance on this question would be very helpful. I have found that this is NOT easy. Ideas seem to pop out of my Professor every day and I wonder how he does it. This question is broad;

How do you tend to come up with initial/seed ideas? What is your search method (if you have one)?
What proportion of your ideas for past papers come from; (i) colleagues, (ii) intentionally browsing the literature for ideas, (iii) on the spot inspiration, (iv) conferences, (v) other?
How do you prioritize research ideas?
Is there any special, generalizable method that you've discovered to sift out those ideas that are likely to be unrealistic early on in the process of idea generation?

Based on small amounts of anecdotal evidence I have reason to believe that there is vast heterogeneity among professors regarding the above questions. For example, economist Steven Levitt says he works on 22 papers at once. A professor I know will have maybe 25% of this at any one time.

Related but not duplicate: Is there any software or tools for managing developing research ideas?


texts: Do school-wide holidays count against personal vacation time?

texts:
I keep hearing different things from different people and it seems there is no clear policy laid out at my institution regarding the definition of graduate student vacation days; I'm curious how PIs and students handle this issue at other places.

At your institution, do University-wide holidays (such as "Spring Break" or "Winter Recess / Christmas holiday") count towards a graduate student's two weeks vacation?  I always thought the expectation was just that you should be working most of the time, regardless of what day it is, and that seems reasonable to me as long as students have flexibility to take leave when they want/need to without somebody nagging them about the specifics of when/how much time off.

However, recently there's been the assertion by certain bean-counting PIs in my department that students should be working 6 days a week (including nights) and only taking 2 weeks of leave in total (including major holidays).  Most people probably work about this much anyway, but being told that it's required leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  If people want to get really specific about the "number" of days worked/not-worked, there should be a more standard definition of what comprises a work day (i.e. 9-5, not 9am-12pm).  Am I way out of line here?


texts: In a research group, is it better to have few post-docs and many PhD students, or viceversa?

texts:
I work in computer science, and am wondering what is the right balance between PhD students and postdoctoral fellows in a lab.

In the previous research group I was, there were one principal investigator professor, one researcher (~ assistant professor), zero post-doctoral fellows, and nine PhD students.
In my current research group, there is one principal investigator professor, one post-doctoral fellow, twelve PhD students, and no researchers.

I recently visited a research group in a university where, surprisingly, there are one principal investigator professor, ten post-doctoral fellows and two PhD students.

What do you think is the best ratio between the number of PhD students and the number of post-docs in a research group? Why?

Would you prefer to spend your funding for having more PhD students or more post-docs? Why?


texts: What topics should one master if one wants to pursue a Master's degree in mathematics at a top university?

texts:
This fall I am starting the 3rd year of my bachelor's degree and I intend to continue my studies with a Master's degree and possibly a PhD. The university I study at is a respected institution in my country but not particularly focused on my area of interest (algebra). I had a first contact, at a summer school, with students from top universities in Europe and I realised I am under prepared for a Master's at one of these universities.

I have a good academic record and did some undergraduate research but there are topics I know nothing about. For example in algebra I had only 2 undergraduate courses (vector spaces, groups and rings- basic definition, properties, isomorphism theorems), no linear algebra aside from the matrix of a linear transformation.

So my question is: what courses are essential to someone who wants to go to graduate school in algebra at a good university and what should I study to bridge the gap?

Edit: I already took all the undergraduate and graduate level classes available in my field,at my university, but all those were still under the level of preparation of my peers from other universities. So I was asking for subjects I should know in order to study by myself.


texts: How to use footnote for shared affiliation in ACM latex?

texts:
I'm using \documentclass{sig-alternate} to write an article. The thing is, we should use \author and then add \alignauthor, \affil, and \email for each author. Two authors has affiliation1 and the others has affiliation2 and I want to save space by creating a footnote. How can I do this?
Note that the new format doesn't let me use sharedaffiliation as used by many users before.


texts: How to handle a situation where you are part of 2 competing projects?

texts:
I am part of 2 collaborations which are more or less competing (in a friendly way though). Since I am the only one direct connection of these two groups (apart from the topic of course) that has now put me into a somewhat strange situation:

Both collaborations are about to submit a paper to an important journal in our area. In one of papers I am actively involved in the writing process, in the other I am actively involved in correcting what has been written by a collaborator. Particularly in this journal, I have the feeling that the paper which is submitted later might be rejected as being no longer the first one - although both papers are using different approaches to get to a similar result. (Of course, I might be wrong and everything goes through smoothly).

My question now: being part of both collaborations, can I tell the other collaboration that their colleagues/competitors are about to submit a paper where I am also involved ? Or would that be ethically not OK ?


texts: Taking individual subjects not related to my career

texts:
I would like to ask for advice in this particular situation of mine:
I am a Mexican medical doctor, and I am applying for a Master Degree in Biomedical Engineering at a german university. The program offers bridging subjects for students from non-engineering students in the first semester, however, when I e-mailed them about more in-depth information to prepare a more robust application, they told me that mathematics, physics and chemistry subjects are compulsory requisites for this program.

At medical school, I took chemistry and statistics, which may suffice the chemistry and maybe maths with a little bit of imagination, but the physics one eludes me. They specifically required for it to be taught at university so I am struggling a little bit.
As a solution I have tough I may ask for a physics course at my home institution and maybe they will allow me to take it and it may be shown in my transcript (even though I have already finished my career). I don't even know if it is possible to this yet.

I have studied maths and computer science on my own and I have held a chief developer position at a software company for two years now, however, no university is backing up my knowledge on math nor computer science. This at no point does anything for the physics requirement though.

Can anybody offer advice on how could I overcome this complication?


texts: FERPA alternative for German universities

texts:
Is there anything similar to US Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) that is valid for German universities, or education system of Germany in general?

I mostly concerned in preserving student's data in electronic form, e.g. am I allowed to share and collect assignments and test results, say, via Dropbox or own server? I hear in US the online data storage must be FERPA-compliant to preserve privacy in the first place, but I don't know what acts and policies govern this case in Germany.

I understand that many universities use own platforms, such as Moodle, adapted for the current needs, but what should I pay attention to if I want to go beyond?


texts: Should I say anything having found out (accidentally) problems with my teaching?

texts:
I started teaching as a part-time hourly paid lecturer in September at quite a prestigious school. I had no classroom experience and had just returned from a long break off career with depression (even did bar work to get back on feet). I am completely over depression and a new person (in early 30s and more confident).

It was also a return to a subject I had not done properly for 10 years but had conducted research in a different area when working (and in the 9 months preceding teaching). I did desperately want to go back to the subject though having done very well at it when younger.

The university was short staffed so gave me 8 groups (118 students) to teach and also the chance to lecture in a subject I have never studied before (the lectures being masters level!) I had to design my own lectures - this was all hourly paid.

I taught the first 2 cycles of classes (16 2 hour lessons) without meeting the course leader for any guidance nor even introduction/welcome. I was just emailed handouts with the questions on.

I was neither issued a contract for the first month (written one) and asked to work without one on grounds I'd be paid later due to admin delay (I was paid!!). Due to this I had no library access, ID card, printing nor login to university facilities. This made it hard to teach.

I was there 2 months and taught 5 cycles of seminars to 8 groups (a lot of teaching). Also delivered lectures in the subject I have never studied (and they didn't give me a textbook for this and I had to borrow one off a friend).In the meanwhile I got a full time job at a less prestigious university (usually lucky given hard job market and timeout).

I felt like my teaching was always very good in the second week (last 4 groups) of the circle, but the first two groups it went badly and I learnt from teaching the first groups and remembered more knowledge as I went on (noticed more what questions needed). Most the students never prepared either which did not help.

When I said I was leaving some groups said 'you cannot, why?' and I received a few thank you emails when I left.

I logged into my uni email today (not cut off yet and I needed to access it to write a student a reference). I saw an email sent to all students on the courses saying 'all' my lessons would be repeated and taught again by the other two (more experienced staff) apart from one of them with the polite note 'for obvious reasons as discussed with you all in the last lecture'.. This lesson was my strongest for sure.

I've just found out basically my teaching was considered so crap they are teaching everyone again, but worse of all they didn't warn me - if my first lessons were awful, then complaints will have been made earlier.

This didn't happen overnight so I am embarrassed nobody said anything to me so I could try and resolve it or just step in and help me (easier than reteaching everyone).

Some students really did like my class although it was hard returning after time out.

I am worried about my reputation. Obviously I won't apply for a job there in future and I had no awareness that things had come to this and feel I should have been warned or told. They must have been discussing me (negatively) with a large group of students.


texts:
I'm a typical student in a 3rd world country working to pay for college. My monthly tuition is about 300 USD. Internships average pay is 450 USD for 30h/week of work...
As I get to end of my bachelor, i'm required to write a dissertation, and when i start looking for articles and references if found this amazing paper: "QODM: A query-oriented data modeling approach for NoSQL databases" which lines 100% with my thesis. But it costs whooping 33 bucks! for a single source that might turn out to be not useful at all...

Are there alternative sources? (besides piracy, which i'm strongly against but is becoming really tempting right now...)


texts: Does the journal Physical Review require an institution in the affiliation field?

texts: Does anyone know what politics or rules the journal Physical Review follows in regard to not writing an institution in the affiliation field?


texts:
Long story short, I am a PhD student at a University and I want to leave and start a PhD somewhere else. I am in the process of applying right now.
I do not think it is super relevant to this question as to why I want to leave my present PhD education, but let's just say that is has economic, political and scientific reasons
economic - I am not getting paid enough to make ends meet,
political - my country is going down a dark path and I want to get out asap,
scientific - in all honesty, I am not interested in my current research to the point I am getting significant burnout from it and I don't want to risk getting stuck in this specific area  (I would imagine jumping ships for PhD is easier than for post-doc since before PhD most people don't do that much actual research) + my university is not super-prestigious and I hear that a lot of post-doc applications just get thrown out if you don't have a PhD from a top university

So anyways, anyone who does a search on my name will see that I am a PhD student at my present place and I don't even want to keep it a secret, I just want to know how likely it is for this to affect my impression negatively and whether I should mention this/go over the details as to why I want to leave in my motivation letter.
On the one hand, a PhD is basically a job and people leave jobs all the time, on the other hand, one can also view this as a kind of commitment to my group that I am breaking by leaving and thus I have no idea if this is frowned upon or even a common thing or not.


texts: Effective use of a "learning narrative" assignment in a gen ed science course

texts:
This spring I will be teaching a physics course that is new at our school. Titled "Relativity for Poets," it's a nonmathematical freshman gen ed course on Einstein's theory of relativity, and cosmology. There is no lab, and there will be only a tiny amount of traditional-style problem-solving. I'm looking for things I can have my students do that will (a) give them some practice wrestling with the (difficult) concepts, and (b) give me something other than just exams on which to base their grades.

A possibility that I've thought of is something I'll refer to as a "learning narrative." I'm sure I'm not the first person to come up with this. The idea is that the student is assigned to write a 1-2 page paper on a topic that they initially had trouble with. They describe the topic, what they didn't understand, why (in hindsight) they didn't understand it, and how they overcame the difficulty. This should be written in such a way that a future student could read it and benefit from it.

Have others done anything similar to this? Was it successful? Any tips for implementing it effectively?


texts: Cannot attend CS conference but coauthor isn't registering

texts:
The deadline to register for a peer-reviewed computer science conference with proceedings is in three days and I cannot attend despite being the main author of a paper there since I am leaving the current institution for non-academic employment. I cannot afford to lose this job and losing it will have catastrophic consequences. I have discussed this issue with the coauthor for many months, and they kept saying "I'm pretty sure that I can go, but if not we'll find a solution". At least one author of the paper must be registered and at least that person must present it at the conference or else the paper will not be published.

There has been still no tangible proof of the coauthor either definitely going to the conference or registering, and I do not know this person well enough to trust them. The publication is critical as it is the only proof of me producing anything in quite a long time, so I cannot afford to lose this publication. I cannot take the stress any more. How do I ensure that someone registers for my paper so that it appears in the proceedings?


texts: Applying for funding when you can self fund

texts:
So this is the issue... There is this university that I’m interested in applying to for my PhD. I think the chances of me getting an offer to carry out my research there are very high if I let them know that I will be self funding; which I could do. It won’t be easy but I should be able to make it work. The thing is that, the university also offers PhD scholarships which I am eligible for, but these funded places are more competitive and although I’d stand a chance, it could go either way. My thinking is, why pay all that money for this degree if there is a chance I could get funding?

However, the problem is that I’ve been told by people I know who work in university admissions that it often happens that even if a university likes an applicant but can’t offer funding when the student has asked, they reject their application outright.

My questions are, should I just apply for the funding only and say nothing about my capability to fund my degree? Or should I let them know that I can self fund but still apply for the funding (which I think is counterintuitive)? Or forget about funding altogether and self fund?


texts: Is it usually allowed to use lie detecting technique (maybe using neural activities) during post-experimental inquiry?

texts:
When an experimenter want to find out about e.g. what is the hypothesis perceived by the subjects via post-experimental inquiry, if the subjects answered that they did not perceive any hypothesis, it might be helpful to find out if the subjects are speaking the truth or lying out of good intention (so that the experimenter would not know that he/she has wasted time on a potentially useless data point) with lie detecting technique.

Aside from the effectiveness of lie detecting technique, is it allowed by e.g. ethical board?


texts: Which free online academic plagiarism checker is closest to Turnitin?

texts:
Which free online academic plagiarism checker is closest to Turnitin by quality  standard of rigour?

Turnitin features that even somebody plagiarize the context of a passage by use synonyms or simply rephrase the sentence, it is still able to catch the student cheating...

Please notice that Turnitin is not free and some of free software are not rigorous enough or even people called it a joke!


texts: Software for submitting and testing programming assignments

texts: Can anyone recommend an open source system for students to submit programming assignments? Ideally it would be something that would run on the web, do some level of testing on the server side, and provide feedback to the students based on testing.


texts: Does a Ph.D. dissertation usually have an ISBN?

texts: ISBN is for books. Is it a standard procedure to assign an ISBN for a Ph.D. thesis?


texts:
I've searched the Stackexchange sites and found several potentially good places to ask this question but I have eventually chosen here as here where I personally found it best fits.

I'm an academic student and a language learner, autodidact, researcher, enthusiast and translator. Theoretically, I like philosophy, literature, culturally and mentally enriching works of writing, knowledge, books, etc and etc; but as mentioned, all just theoretically, not practically at all, and this is because of one reason, and that is I dislike reading; most of the time I just hate the idea of "what about reading that book right now" or "I must read this article on Stackexchange, it includes exactly all I need to know of a very valuable information that matters so much to me". Reading bores me way too much more than merely sitting on my a** for an hour doing just nothing. Reading makes me very nervous that, no longer than a couple of minutes after I start reading something, I start scrubbing my scalp, vibrating my legs and wonder when the time will come where I would have finished whatever I'm reading. Also, I feel that my eyes start confusing the lines sometimes, and because I wear glasses, when I'm reading off a screen, I find myself reading from above my glasses because it seems it practically comforts me more, and that is not medically good of course. I think I sometimes even get heavy breathing reading because I don't have enough patience and it seemingly makes me too nervous.
Now that's exactly what I don't need in my career and my field of study, I have so very big ambitions and dreams that require me to sit still and READ, and just read; and that obviously, I can't do.

My question is, if there's a method or a solution that somebody knows, scientific (I'm physically a very active person by nature) or practical, to solve this misery of mine and save my future?


texts: Where to get help when we can't understand something done in a paper?

texts:
I often face the following situation:

I am reading a technical paper, and I can't figure out a calculation shown in the paper, whose details are not given. There is no reference in the paper about the exact calculations. It is not possible to get an answer from the author(s), either they are dead or they don't answer even if I did (even if they did, it takes a lot of time for them to respond). I can't write to my advisor; for him to help, he also needs to read the paper and practically this is neither ideal nor realizable in a short amount of time. I can't write to my friend because I don't have any friend who works in the same field as I do. I won't ask the question in one of the stack exchange websites, because it is often the question is too field-specific and technical that I don't receive any helpful answer in a considerably short amount of time (assuming that I will get a helpful answer, which is not the case most of the time).

So, in the end, I try and try to understand what the heck author did in that part of the article that I couldn't understand, and it takes a considerable amount of time for me to figure that out (if I can).

Question:
Assuming that I am not the only one who faces such problems, where can we get help in such situations?

Note: I am working in a field of Physics.


texts:
What are good ways to explore/discover literature visually, e.g. a visual interface for Google Scholar? There are a few tools to explore the citation graph ("which papers cite which papers"). Some are described here:

http://proto-knowledge.blogspot.de/2015/02/tools-to-visualize-connections-between.html

There are a few more with a different focus:

Graph of patents (but not papers) - "PatGraph"
Only for own local library (not for discovery of new papers) - "Action Science Explorer"
Old limited version from 2004 (no way to go backwards through citations) - "TouchGraph browser for Google Scholar"
Limited database size - https://nlp.fi.muni.cz/projekty/visualbrowser/#sec0403

Do you know others? Which ones do you recommend?


texts: Should I mention my co-authors while tweeting about our publications?

texts:
Assume we have a paper published in a conference or journal. Should I mention my co-authors while posting some content of the paper (or just paper's link) on Twitter or Facebook?

Let's assume I am aware of their Twitter or Facebook accounts.


texts: Upcoming dismissal as supervisor no longer wants to supervise me - should I just withdraw?

texts:
Basically my PI dropped this on me last week and said that my work is not up to PhD standards. It's pretty frustrating because seemed like I was on track to graduate this year. That said, my PI has brought this up before - since then I had shown I was improving and had met his standards, or at least I thought so.
My school's official policy for my situation is that

A Student will be withdrawn from the University, if he or she obtains two unsatisfactory Graduate Student Research Progress Tracking Reports and the academic unit in which the student is registered recommends that he or she be withdrawn
The Student’s transcript will thereafter indicate that the student was withdrawn from the University.

Regardless I won't be able to work with him anymore. I've been looking for someone to finish under, but it is looking a bit hopeless right now. If I cannot find someone else to work under, should I just request to withdraw? If voluntarily withdrawing is an option, it seems better than being dismissed/kicked out.
In the future (specifically in interviews) I'd rather say "It wasn't working out for me so I withdrew" than "I was kicked out" to people.
I'm meeting with my department chair next week, but hopefully someone can give me an opinion based on their own experiences.


texts: Conflict of interest -- recommendation letters

texts:
I recently got asked by a professor who is also one of my recommenders to apply for a PhD in their department. This professor is also a co-chair of that said department.
Would I be incurring some kind of a conflict of interest by asking the same professor to also write me a recommendation? Or should I look for someone else to replace them as my recommender? The problem is that I met this professor through work and they can really attest (more so than others) to my critical thinking abilities as a prospective grad student.


texts: I've emailed over thirty five potential supervisors and did not receive any positive response. Should I keep emailing?

texts: I've sorted out a list of professors from few Canadian Universities and I've sent customized emails after reading their papers and detailing in short on why I am particularly interested in their research and how it relates with my goals. This took a lot of time for just one email. Most have replied by saying they don't have suitable projects in their labs or are not accepting Masters students. I am bit worried now that I am nearly towards the end of my list of potential supervisors. Should I find more professors and broaden my research area of interest, as suggested by some senior friends? I am an international student and don't have any publications although I do have research experience. Could my lack of publication be a factor for all the rejections? My average GPA is  3.6/4.3 and my field is Biology.


texts: Citing one paper in consecutive paragraphs in a thesis

texts:
I dedicated one subsection of my thesis to a very new topic from a 2020 paper so I had only one reference. I wrote the subsection in this way:

paragraph 1: Introduction to the concept of X and the framework
containing five dimensions
paragraph 2: dimension 1
paragraph 3: dimension 2
paragraph 4: dimension 3
paragraph 5: dimension 4
paragraph 6: dimension 5
paragraph 7: Wrap up and conclusion

Everything has been summarised (not copied) from one 2020 paper. My question is: what is the best way to cite that paper? Does it make sense to add one sentence to paragraph 1 and say that contents of this subsection is a summary of [reference]?
P.S. this new topic is not the core topic of my thesis


texts:
My partner is currently interviewing for tenure track positions. I am a first year PhD students and We would ideally like to be in the same city. Ideally I would like to find a co-superviser to continue the path of my current PhD or find a new PhD that I like and start over.
When is the best time to mention this two body problem? ( It is not mentioned in his application)
What is a good way of phrasing it? The positions we are talking about are in the UK and Denmark.
p.s: Is it possible that mentioning the two body problem will reduce his chances of getting the position?


texts: Academic Job Interviews for Asst Prof Positions in Ireland

texts: I have an upcoming interview for an asst prof position in a university in Ireland. I am wondering what questions are asked in such interviews. I am used to the hiring process in the US. It will be my first time being interviewed for a university in Ireland. Thanks!


texts: Is it acceptable for professors to listen to music using headphones in the workplace when expecting student contact?

texts:
In my institution, I see a lot of research students and staff members listen to music using headphones in the workplace. It is a matter of personal preference, and I cannot see a problem in that while it doesn't interfere with communications at work.

Is that behaviour acceptable for a professor during a time in which s/he expects students to approach her/him?


texts: Are alternative metrics taken seriously by hiring committies?

texts:
Knowing that there are some members of hiring committees here, I am hoping for some insights.

Having read Rise of Altmetrics, I started to wonder what would be the best way to measure the impact on my publications. I do care for many reasons but one of the reasons is to impress others enough to be able to get a job/promotion/tenure.

So, my question is, do hiring committees take alternative metrics (Facebook likes, mentions in blog posts, etc.) seriously when trying to measure the impact of someone's work or are other issues like impact factor more important?

This question is related but is more about measuring the impact of a journal but my concern is measuring the impact of my own work (which might be in several journals).

This question is also related by asking how impact measurements affect job prospects and has some excellent answers but my question is specifically about 'unofficial' metrics like tweets, downloads on SlideShare, etc.

This question is also related asking how to measure readership of journal articles but my question is whether alternative measures are taking into serious consideration but those making hiring/tenure decisions.

I know there is the h-index (with its own flaws) but that seems to measure my publications as one unit (all publications taken together, therefore measuring me overall). I'm more interested in measuring the impact publication by publication in order to show an improving trend.

On a side note, it seems that there is a general feeling that a publication in a high impact factor journal equals a high impact publication. This feels a little off to me since one might convince the editor their work is important while at the same time fail to convince their academic community of the same.


texts: Advisor ignoring his Ph.D. student after getting tenure

texts: I am Ph.D. candidate, and my advisor got his tenure about 9 months ago and called me on zoom and said no one could fire him anymore, and that was the last time we talked. Since then, he has completely ignored me as his only Ph.D. student. He does not read or comment on my papers(2 paper drafts were sent five months ago). My results get continuously beaten, and I have to make changes to keep my papers state-of-the-art constantly. He refuses to set up a zoom meeting since no one is going to school; that is the only way to meet him. He was active with fundings, papers, and proposals before he got tenure.  He responds to my emails with irrelevant suggestions, or he says he will read my papers sometime next week(he expects 2-3 papers to graduate me). He is not supporting me financially anymore since his fundings are over, and I pay for my Ph.D. from pocket.  School officials can not do anything, and changing my advisor after four years of hard work will result in a complete reboot. I'm an international student and can not just quit. My goal is to get my OPT and a job. It looks impossible to graduate with this advisor... What would be the best option to do in this situation.


texts: Finding academic collaborations by location

texts: What is the best way to find academic collaborations between two locations (e.g. Berlin and Australia) occurring within a certain field / topic?  Some variety of massive, searchable, citation / co-author network map would be ideal, but the examples I can find so far seem quite limited.


texts: Contact Professor before applying for Phd scholarship?

texts:
I am applying for Phd. funded scholarship in Australia here is the link, in this link it is mention that you should contact professor before applying for the scholarship. I emailed him and his response was "There are selection criteria.  It would be worth responding to each of these as well as providing a CV".

My question is how can I provide proof about the selection criteria. Should I provide a cover later about that or just CV.


texts: Why do tenured professors at high-ranked universities move to lower-ranked universities?

texts: I have seen some tenured professors at top ranked universities move to lower ranked universities. Why do professors do this? At lower ranked universities there are less resources and the graduate students are weaker.


texts: What do you do when you don't know how you came to know something?

texts:
In the field of computer science a lot of times there are things you do that you just acquired during your years of studying in the field. Be it random tutorials you found on the web but of course never wrote the URL down and now you can not find it anymore. Quite probably the website doesn't exist anymore. Be it stuff your professors taught you in their freshman classes but you are pretty sure they did not invent the concept, be it stuff that came up through mere experimentation and it somehow "worked" and years later you find out that actually everyone is doing it that way. You have absolutely no idea how you came to know about stuff, yet now you want to write about you using this knowledge to achieve some goal, for example explain a procedure that you used to acquire some data. In the most common case it would be something like "I read about it on Wikipedia a few years ago." - Wikipedia is not a citable source and the article by now looks nothing like you remember. You can follow the citations in the article in the bottom, but:

It is considered very bad practice to search for literature about something after the fact that you used it in your work. How do you deal with this conundrum of knowing stuff that needs to be explained to someone but having no source you can point to that supports your explanation? The problem isn't knowing stuff, the problem is not knowing where to look for the knowledge you already have.

An important addendum to the problem is: You have never read a textbook about anything. You are 100% sure your personal sources of knowledge do not include reading a citable book.


texts: Should I list my work as dissertation or conference paper?

texts: I have a dissertation under the supervision of my advisor. Then my university hosted a conference and we decided to make it a paper. The paper will soon publish on the conference's website, but it won't have peer-review. Should I list my work as a dissertation or a conference paper?


texts: Do I have to wear academic regalia to a student's graduation?

texts: I have been a postdoc and including occasional lecturer for the last several years. A former student just invited me to his graduation. Would someone at my career stage at an American research university typically be expected to wear academic regalia at a graduation ceremony? I have not seen any specific guidance for this.


texts: Quitting physics master's degree for another physics MSc. degree due to family/financial-health reasons

texts:
I'm now enrolled in the first semester of my first year in Germany (ranked in the best 100 universities) and I haven't taken any exams yet, since there's still at least 2-3 weeks for it. I never had any problem with the assignments on the courses, on the contrary, I always get the highest marks.
I have a decent CV with teaching experiences, grants, internships and 2 years of research in my bachelor and bunch of other stuff too but now I have to choose another master's degree program because my mother recently got diagnosed with last stage cancer and I can not finance my education considering the living expenses in Germany and relatively low (but high) tuition fees of the university.
I've already applied for the universities (for physics msc) that offers full scholarships (no tuition fees+scholarship). I was just wondering how bad it would look to quit one msc program for another program in the same field? (taking into consideration that I have a very solid reason)


texts: Can you do a PhD solely on repeating experiments of others?

texts: In here, they say there is a problem with results not being replicated. I know a PhD is supposed to be "original" research. But could you do a PhD solely on replicating the results of others? Especially given that there is a problem with results not being replicated, I believe you would be contributing a lot to science. Even if it is not "original research".


texts: Courses outside colleges and do they count?

texts:
My undergraduate college does not offer the flexibility of attending courses outside my department, sitting for exams there and including the grades in the official transcript.
But I have learned a fair amount of advanced math from YouTube on my own, although I guess I would not be able to add that to my CV or even provide any proof of that to admissions committees for higher education.
I was wondering if there are online courses/ other such facilities where I can learn and sit for exams and that carry near equal weight to actual courses in college.
For example, if I am from the Political Science department, and the Mathematics department offers a course on "Advanced Probability Theory", but my college does not allow me to enroll for it, sit for this exam and include it in my official transcript because the departments are different.
Are there online facilities where I can learn "Advanced Probability Theory", sit for exams and attain grades, and that has from an admissions point of view (suppose I want to go for a Master's/ Ph D in Economics) an equal value as that of enrolling for the course in college (which I couldn't because of the lack of flexibility)?
I know of platforms like EdX, Udemy etc. but I am not sure if they provide near equal value to actual college courses.


texts: Applying to graduate school in an unrelated field after a year working in unrelated job?

texts:
I'm in a predicament.

I majored in Computer Science as an undergraduate at a top university, and landed a job straight out of college at a web development firm. After a year of working at said company, I am itching to get back to school pursue a study of a topic in college that I found fascinating, which is East Asian Studies.

My problem is that the only experience I have with EAS is the minor in it that I acquired during my undergraduate career. The list ends there. I fear that I won't be able to get 3 recommendation letters from the professors that used to teach me (it's been a year, my study was only a minor, the school I went to didn't have the strongest faculty supporting the focus in East Asian Studies I wanted to pursue, etc), and that there isn't a strong enough background of experience, research, or published works to make up for it.

Is a graduate program still something I can think about pursuing? I am more than willing to spend a few months patching up my resume and my background to not only better my application but also actually get involved in this topic of research, but I am not sure where to start...

Any thoughts?


texts: How can you best answer when a Scholarship proposal asks for your objectives?

texts:
I come from a developing country and I got admitted to a UK university in MSC, Computer Science. As I am not financially strong, I am also applying for a fully funded scholarship. There is an online form I need to submit for the consideration of this scholarship.

There are some questions that I can't answer them in the way the needs to be answered and convenes the scholarship organization. One of them is:

  What will be your objectives during the award?

If I answer this question it would be simple like the following:

  My main objective during the period is to get more and more knowledge and to learn new technologies that will give boost to my career.

I'm guessing this answer isn't viewed positively from by a scholarship committee.

What content do scholarship committees expect to see in the "Objectives" section of an application?


texts: What are the most important questions to your phd professor after the proposal stage

texts:
I am a newbie in the PhD world (just started out). I have just finished my proposal and therefore committed to a problem I want to research and solve. However, my professor does not advise me much. However, when asking him he always tries to help me as good as possible, but that`s only the case if I am directly asking him about something. We have irregular meetings and I would like to use these meetings as good as possible, because I am fearing that organisatorial issues may come up later if I do not ask him now.

I was wondering what are the most important questions to ask him after the proposal stage? Any organisatorial stuff that will later be important for me?


texts: Ethics: Is it ethical for a professor to conduct research using a student's ideas without giving them credit?

texts:
I pointed a professor (my major advisor) to a resource (a data set), in an email exchange during the beginning of the semester, he published a paper based on this data set several months later, however I had no idea he was working on the project. He did not notify or mention to me about using the data set.

The email that I sent to him earlier when I pointed out the resource had no reply back, however it did indicate in his response that he did not know about the existence of this data set.

When I had a brief (15 minute) meeting with him, he denied that the data set was my idea and said that it was his research colleagues who he got the data set from. I must mention that this data set is freely available and open to the public (online).

My questions are: Is this professor's behavior ethical? and Would I be able to bring this  as a complaint to a higher person in the department (since I have email evidence that he did not have knowledge of this data set prior to my informing him).

My final question to you all is whether I should stay with this person as a major advisor because I am having trust issues with sharing my ideas. The only problem is that anyone else I might choose as my advisor would result in me completely changing my area of research. Thank you.

Edit: Responding to the commenters, when I met with him in person, I he mentioned a paper which he authored, and when I asked for the citation he refused to give it to me saying, "I'll think about it". While my gut feeling is that I should change advisors, the other people in the department are not involved in my area of interest, and the other person who is conducting research in this field refused to be my advisor. What would you do in this situation?

Edit: Thank you for everyone's responses. Perhaps this was just a misunderstanding on my part.


texts: Should I just move on if a professor doesn't answer my emails requesting a letter of recommendation?

texts: I've asked a professor who I did research with over the summer to write me a letter a recommendation for graduate programs, but he hasn't responded for over a week. I've resent him an email and have received no answer, but a peer who also worked in his lab over summer got an almost immediate response when asking for a letter. We have both done the same research in his lab and known him for the same amount of time. I don't mind if he declines, but I haven't received any word from him. Should I just move on and ask another professor?


texts: Physics Talk by an Undergraduate Student -- Preparation

texts:
I have been asked to give a talk by one of my undergraduate professors. The talk shall be based on the research work I did over the summer. Since this'll be my first shot at giving a talk (as an undergraduate), I'm a bit nervous. Suggestions on how to generally go about talks?

Also, I have to make a presentation for the talk. Most of the work I did is in the form of Mathematica notebooks/LaTex drafts. Is there an efficient way to incorporate them into slides?

Also, I'm wondering how to get my hands on the slides of design as shown in: http://www4.stat.ncsu.edu/~reich/st810A/oral.pdf. I have seen professors present there lectures on such slides. How can I access this template?


texts: Publish collection of papers into a book?

texts: I have a very general question. Say I have written 10 papers, published them independently in different journals over the years - could I then just take these papers and make a book out of them and publish that, or is there then a copyright on the published papers which would prevent me from doing that?


texts: What does potential PhD adviser want to see from a candidate that is applying for a second PhD/restarting a PhD?

texts:
I'm about to (not) graduate from a grad school. I've put "(not)" intentionally.
This is my situation. I started working on a project that was new to our research group. The new topic only remotely related to what has been done before in the group and by the supervisor. The project was presented as a hot topic where I can "make my name" and graduate fast.

As far as I now understand, my supervisor didn't have much experience in this field although he's been around for some time - he is not a new professor. At the time when the project was assigned to me, my supervisor was trying to bring a new faculty (who has extended experience in this field) to the department but it didn't work out - this person didn't get the position, although he did help me with the initial experimental setup and some consultations. I'm really grateful to this person for that.

The topic turned out to be pretty well developed, not much room for wandering around in hope to bang into something big. Besides that I was left completely alone to work on the topic - no relevant classes, no seminars, no advice from my supervisor, no one else in the university working in this field. I ended up making my own experimental setup, fabricating samples, running simulations, writhing data processing scripts and looking for the objective for the project completely on my own. The supervisor's approach was to find something interesting but his planning didn't go any further than that. He never showed in the lab during my PhD.

When I raised my concerns about the direction of this activity he would just either mention some irrelevant anecdotal stories or say that others working in the field have better tools but we have ideas and that's why we are better.
During our latest conversation he just said "I cannot help you with that." The funding for the project was over and I had to TA classes that are not related to my undergrad field or the current project - getting some knowledge in the subjects takes additional effort. I had to RA initially.

My work resulted in several papers (not with me as the first author) that were from side projects. I also spent one summer doing an internship at a big company. Trying to overcome the circumstances I put more and more work basically working 80 hour weeks (no weekends or holidays). But I find it extremely difficult to reach a goal when this goal has never been even discussed. My productivity went down. When I asked my supervisor about what the objectives of the project are his response was: "to find something interesting." I feel utterly unsatisfied.

I feel completely drained right now, and in a pretty bad mental state. I applied for several post-doc and industry positions without much success. I feel that I have to compete with the applicants that didn't have to reinvent the wheel every time to get something done. One rejection was due to the lack of the first author publications.

During my PhD work I steered the project towards more fundamental research. Right now I'm applying for another PhD in more fundamental field that I studied by myself. It is rather remotely related to the current PhD topic.

Defending where I'm right now is quite doable even with what I have and my current supervisor is willing to write a good recommendation letter for me. My concern is getting a second PhD and funding issues related to this. What would be the best way to approach potential PIs for the second PhD? If a professor reads this post: how does he/she perceive this situation and what he/she would want to know/get cleared before considering an applicant like me?

I'm currently in engineering and looking to continue in physics. Changing the project doesn't appear as an option to me. I raised my concerns about the current project several times and it didn't result in anything. Besides, this is my 5th year and I should graduate (or not). On top of that, the situation as a whole must be changed, I'm not happy staying here.


texts: What should I do if I've enrolled in a badly organized course?

texts:
I am nearly finished with my master's degree. Recently, I enrolled in a required course that is a terrible mess. I'd like to wait another year, and take it again with an instructor who has their stuff together and will actually answer student questions and prepare lessons that match the exams. Delaying graduation seems preferable to wasting more time on this course.

Some classmates gave the teacher what I believe are reasonable suggestions, but the instructor just gave excuses.
I looked all through the course catalog, but only see policies that assume students are the problem-makers. For instance, after one week into the term, students get no tuition refunds and a "W".
I'd rather not create problems for the instructor, who is new to this job.

Are there any steps I can take to clear myself of this mess?


texts:
Which country or countries inspired the post-communism Polish higher education system?
Is the current Polish higher education system modeled after the German system of higher education?


texts:
How do academics (faculty members, PhD students, etc.) balance their work and life?
I am a PhD student and I find myself spending at least 10-11 hours working everyday.
Sometimes even 10 hours is not enough for the day, I need to burn midnight oil.
However, everyone (mostly my parents and friends, who are non-academics and do not have PhD degree) is telling me that I am working too much and that I shouldn't burn out myself by doing so much work. When I hear these comments, I can't help myself but thinking 'Yeah, but that's only because you are not working in academia...you don't really understand my situation'.
For those who are working in academia, do you think I am working too much as a PhD student? How much time do you typically spend a day working? If you think that I am working too much, how can I possibly strike the balance between my academic work and my personal life?
I am genuinely asking because I really do not know "how to take care of myself properly" while I am constantly facing a huge workload. I do think that this will hurt me in a long run, especially if I am to pursue a career in academia.
Thank you,


texts: Asking for a letter of recommendation from someone on a hiring committee that is also reviewing your application

texts:
I applied to a job at university A.  It happens that a life-long friend (and, much later, professional colleague) is on the hiring committee for that job.  Yay for that job.  It's for my secondary field though, so while I can see myself getting an interview, I don't realistically see myself getting the position unless everyone else screws up horribly along the interview process which is of course possible as I've seen it happen.
There is also a job at university B that I'm going to apply to.  My friend/colleague at A is one of the people whose letters would be optimal given college type, subfields, etc.  Except that I also applied to the job at A, and it now feels awkward to ask them for a letter for B.
Were the job market not as awful as it is in COVID times, I would just go with "get a letter from someone else", but the market crunch means I also need to be able to put my best dossier together.  So, would it be unreasonable/overly awkward/etc to ask them for a letter, or is this a normal(ish) enough situation to not be concerned about its potential impact on getting a job at A?


texts: Sharing referee/AE report online to point out a grievous error in refereeing

texts:
I submitted a short note to a math journal providing a counterexample to a result in literature that had first appeared in that very journal.

After eight months, I heard from the journal. It was a rejection. The associate editor based his rejection on one referee who had clearly misunderstood my counterexample.

I framed a polite email to the editor-in-chief (EIC) arguing why the referee was wrong in claiming that my counter example was not valid. I don't have high hopes of hearing back from the EIC. He never responded to my emails asking for status updates in months 4, 6 and 8.

For the sake of science (the algorithm to which I propose a counterexample is used by folks in my area of applied math), I intend to upload my paper, the referee report and the covering letter of the associate editor (all of whom are anonymous) on my website and on Research Gate. Alongside this, I plan to upload an explanation explaining why the journal was mathematically wrong to reject my work. I essentially plan to simply upload the letter that I have written to the EIC where I argue why the referee/AE are wrong.

Is there any legal reason why I should not upload the referee/AE reports?

How else can I handle this messy and depressing situation?


texts: What are the duties of the reviewer when reviewing a literature survey/review paper?

texts:
What are the minor and major concerns that the reviewer should be concerned about and what improvement suggestions should they take in mind when reviewing a survey/review paper?
Are their duties for checking the language of the writing? Are they to check for the figures are in sufficient resolution?


texts: Should one put their Master's thesis online?

texts: I think of a thesis as sort of an immature document, by definition.  It delineates the university era from the professional era, and is bound to lack some practical elements.  Should a student refrain from publishing his or her thesis on the Internet, for this or any other reason?


texts: Trial (test) lecture as part of the interview process for a tenure-track position

texts:
I have been invited to give a trial lecture for a tenure track position in Norway. This is part of a hiring process that three top candidates have been shortlisted for the interview.
The lecture should be at master level and I already figured out that the lecture will be open for all interested people. This means that my colleagues including my direct supervisor in my current work (research in a company) will get the invitation link to attend the trial lecture as well. As a result they will know that I have applied for a new position and I have intention to leave my job. This is not a problem per se but the problem is that if I don't get the position, I am going to stay in my current job and my colleagues will know the all story.
I am wondering if anyone had the same experience and also is it OK to ask the selection committee that I would like trial lecture to be addressed just for the committee rather than public?


texts: How do you differentiate STAT/ML/DS in SOP?

texts:
I'm going to apply to graduate programs in both Statistics and Data Science. To me, Statistics, Data Science, and Machine Learning essentially refers to the same subject, but some universities are offering different programs. Still, it's rare for a program in Statistics to not mention DS/ML at all, and vice versa.

My undergraduate major is in Statistics, but my research experiences is mostly concerned with Machine Learning. When writing my Statement of Purpose, I'm struggle to justify why I'm applying to STAT programs with a background in DS/ML. Yeah, they are closely related, but wouldn't it be weird to say "Through my research experience in DS/ML, I developed an interest in STAT, so I'm applying to your STAT program"? The reason I'm applying to a STAT program instead of that in DS when both are offered is that the former is generally more academic, theoretical, and in-depth. (AFAIK there are no Ph.D. programs in DS, but it's hard to find a STAT Ph.D. whose research interest is not related to DS/ML.) I cannot say for now whether I'm going to work in academic or in industry, but I believe a sound theoretical background would be helpful in either case.

I don't think claiming STAT, DS, and ML are the same in the SOP would be a good idea either, as the Committee probably won't agree with me. How do I address the issue of terminologies, then?


texts:
I am a Master's student in math who is doing pretty well so far.
I aced my first two classes (real analysis)
and my summer session in probability theory is going well, too.
Even before my Master's study, I already thought of a PhD.
Nonetheless, there are concerns:

My good grades were the result of grit, not brain,
meaning that I had to spend time to understand what the book is telling me.
Furthermore, a lot of times during exam and homework,
I had to try and fail a few times before arriving at the solution.
I did not study math during undergrad.  Before my Master's study,
I gulped down three semesters of calculus, plus LA and DE in one year.
So compared to other students, I am already behind.
In the next two months, I will learn complex numbers on my own
and review my linear algebra.
I am a professional in a field that has nothing to do with math or research.
After the holiday, I will speak to my advisor about taking a thesis class.
It's not an insurmountable obstacle,
but, in an unrelated field, I do have less time to concentrate on math.

At the end, how big is the jump from Master's to Phd?
Especially after what I said in (1), I do worry that it is beyond my ability.
I do not hold anyone responsible for my decision.
So, please kindly offer your best assessment of my situation.


texts: Suffering from a third world country academic culture

texts:
I live in a third world country where I have no chance of getting into good graduate schools in my country for MS CS which are tickets to US Ph.D  programs. I am not a perfectionist but other schools have no connections with current research community or professors there have no idea how to write a recommendation letter.

Problems:

Working full time, no chance to relocate to other city or job. I always get a biased approach from professors here when I approach for collaboration as an outsider. Impossible to get into their MS programs for me so I have no chance for getting some research experience or any recommendation letters.

What should I do ? I am continuously doing self study on some topics but biased approach and discrimination in my country gives me no chance. I have started to think of completely burning all my books and other stuff because all my efforts are useless going nowhere purely based on where I live.

Do you have any suggestions? Is there a way to find a professor outside this system lacking funding or student, with whom I can work remotely? I can work for free if it comes down to it.


texts:
I am looking for US equivalents of Russian academic titles, such as "Kandidat Nauk" and "Doctor Nauk". I've done my research and come up with a list of translations of these terms. I'd like to know which of these translated titles are the most recognized/appropriate in the US academic world and whether they carry the full meaning of the Russian titles.
Кандидат наук (Kandidat Nauk) – Ph.D./Doctoral Candidate/First Doctoral Degree
Доктор наук (Doctor Nauk) – Grand Ph.D./Senior Doctoral Degree/Higher Doctoral Degree/Second Doctoral Degree.
Here are some of the Internet sources I used:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidate_of_Sciences
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doktor_nauk
https://www.englishelp.ru/translator/articles-for-translator/288-translating-academic-degrees.html
http://www.aic.lv/ace/tools/leg_aca/guid_rus.htm


texts: Is the expression "Deputy Head of Research" correct?

texts:
In my university department there is a professor who holds the position of Head of the department, and then there are also several Deputy Heads, who are in charge of different management areas  —more precisely: Research, Teaching and Infrastructure. Notice that, in our case, the Head and the Deputy Heads are not necessarily 'senior professors' or 'full professors'; they can be also (young) 'associate professors'. They are in fact elected by popular vote within the teachers belonging to that department.

My question is just this: What is the right way to refer to the Deputy Head who is in charge for the Research matters of the department?

Research Deputy Head?
Deputy Head for Research?
Deputy Head of Research?
...

Actually, I am not sure whether the term 'Deputy Head' is right or not, in this context.

I would appreciate your feedback on this terminology question.


texts: Using color in figures for economics journals

texts: Is it common for economics journals to publish figures in color online and black and white in print? If so, would it be best to submit the color version? And, in the color version, should I differentiate lines in ways other than color (making the color differentiation helpful but redundant) so that the differentiation is still clear if the reviewer prints the article in black and white?


texts: Is there a lot of writing in PhD programs in top-rank US schools?

texts:
I am an M.Sc. student in a university in a developing country, and I am  frustrated with the volume of useless writing that we are supposed to do in my program. Every single course has a class project, in which we need to do a literature review a project and then at the end need to submit a 10-15 page report. We also need to submit a thesis progress report every three months and a lot of other writing matters that I am sure will not be read by anyone.

I have no problem with writing real papers that help other researchers to improve the field. My problem is with writing useless course reports without any innovation (because of the time limits) or Progress Reports, which I am even not sure that will be read carefully by the instructor or the grader! At first I considered these things an exercise for real papers, but now I think I don't need this type of exercise any more!

I am wondering: is this large volume of writing in U.S. top schools too?


texts: If a professor is not offering funding to a PhD applicant, does it mean that he doesn't really want to be his advisor?

texts:
In some countries, it is required for students to contact a professor and find an advisor before they start their application for that university. I have heard from some of my friends who are studying PhD that if a professor is eager to advise a student who has contacted him (because of his outstanding vita, publication, etc.), he will help that student to find a good scholarship or even offers some scholarships from funding providers he knows (maybe from industry, research institutes, etc.).

I am asking this because after I heard this comment, I feel that if a professor does not show support for scholarships, or if he says in emails

  I will be happy to advise you on your PhD, please go to admissions webpage, also visit scholarships webpage and apply for one you are eligible for receiving.

it means that this professor is not strongly interested in advising me.

I mean, if the professor really wanted to have me in his research group as a PhD student, he would try to help me finding scholarships. If he is not helping and is not talking about it, he is not really interested in having me as a PhD student. He believes that I am not a strong student and I will not find any scholarships. So, this is a way to politely and automatically reject a PhD student. Is this really true?


texts: What should I do when I do not get a reply to an email?

texts:
I have sent out emails enquiring about academic positions in departments active in my field. I did my best to write them properly, consulting websites and more experienced academics.

However, it has been a week since I sent them, and have not heard back.

Should I do something? Or wait?

Clarifications:
I am in Zoology, and have enquired about potential applications.


texts: Searching for academic jobs within a specific city

texts: I am currently in the job market and due to personal issues I am geographically limited and cannot relocate. I was wondering what would be a good strategy to go about the job search. There are only 3 institutions that I could potentially work on. Realistically I know that it might take a while for opening to come in my field but I was wondering if there is anything I can do in the mean time. I know this is not common in academia, and we go where the jobs are. I really want to continue in academia but I am unsure how to move forward.


texts: Should I order references on surname or paper title when using Harvard style?

texts:
I use the harvard referencing style.
One of our assignment instructions is:

  The reference list should be in alphabetical order

Lets use the following references as an example

  Kopecky, J. and Simperl, E., 2008. Semantic Web Service Offer
  Discovery for E-commerce.

  Sanvido, F., Sanchez, D., Mendoza, A. and Lopez, A., 2011. Dynamic
  Negotiation Layer for Secure Semantic Service Oriented Architectures.

Following the instruction I was given to order the references, is it generally implied that I should order the references by the first authors surname: Kopecky then Sanvido.
Or is it implied that I should order by the paper titles: "Dynamic Negotiation Layer..." then "Semantic Web Service..."


texts: Problem formulation, definition, or statement

texts:
When writing a technical report in computer science (Bachelor level), what is really the correct expression out of these:

Problem formulation
Problem definition
Problem statement

Do they mean exactly the same thing?

My university uses the first expression (formulation), but it doesn't feel right to me, but I am not a native english speaker.


texts: If I work on a project funded (for example by Ministry of Transportation) through my supervisor, is he legally obliged to pay me?

texts:
This question is specific to Canada (but you could also say North America)
So if I am a sponsored PhD student (externally from my government), and I happen to work/research on a project funded through my PhD supervisor (for example by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation), is he legally required to pay me (regardless of my external sponsorship)? In other words, if my supervisor gets funding from a certain organisation, does this organisation stipulate that whoever is working on this project get paid because it is illegal to work (even if it's part of a degree) for free? This is what I understand from current PhD students, so is this understanding correct?
What are your experiences, particularly if you were sponsored?


texts: Is it legal to upload preprint on ResearchGate?

texts: I have few papers already published in certain journals which cannot be uploaded on ResearchGate due to copyright issues, now is it legal to upload my own version of the paper formatted in LaTeX or in other words the manuscript I sent for publication that was not typeset for journal publication?


texts: How to judge whether my application for the NSF graduate research fellowship is competitive?

texts:
The rules have changed recently, and students can only apply for the fellowship once.  I've done some interesting research over the summer with my advisor and we got some interesting results, but I don't know how "small" or how "big" my research progress is for the fellowship application.  I don't feel that I have additional ongoing research ideas that can stretch out to a 2 or 3 year time scale, at least not without my advisor's input.  Basically, I still feel too inexperienced to have that kind of foresight, and I'm wondering whether that means I won't be able to send in a bona fide, competitive application.

I could, however, use my advisor's ideas for future work on our summer project, and those ideas would conceivably take a couple of years to work on and materialize.  But would that be stealing from my advisor, and me taking his ideas to another university / lab?

I haven't had this conversation with him yet, because I want to think about it a bit on my own first.


texts: Is apprenticeship/reading the only way to learn experimental design? Are there books/papers about the theory of designing a sound experiment?

texts:
I am slogging away at grad school and I have a nagging feeling I can be more efficient. I feel like a person who cannot see more than a foot in front of them so I hit a lot of walls. My planning and experiment design could use a lot of work but interacting with my PI only gets me but so far. I am in a new lab so I do not have senior students to consult with either. Are there any good written resources about how to design experiments in a general sense?

Thanks in advance.

UPDATE

I am in biological sciences, but if the comments/answers could be broadened to include all STEM it would be much appreciated.

2nd Update

When I refer to experimental design I am referring to something broader than setting up controls or statistical power. I am doing a poor job of alluding to something broader and more general. What is a good research question and the transition from a neat idea to a framework of experiment that addresses such a question.

To use a chess analogy, I am learning tactical play, forks, skewers, pins etc.... I am getting better at moving pieces, but what is preventing me from taking the next step is the absence of a strategy  How do I string these tactics together to win? I come up with cool ideas but I cannot grasp molding and shaping that idea into a series of experiments that tell a short narrative.

I would like to know different styles of this process and strengths and weaknesses of both. I am not getting very far with my local dialogue options so I was hoping people may write about this subject. Hopefully that clarifies my question.


texts: What type of books to read to improve Academic English?


texts: Report written alone, but graded identicaly to those who wrote it in groups of 2

texts:
Our biology professor asked us to write a report. We had one week to hand it in. Groups were formed. Being in a class with an odd number of students, I was the only one left, and so wrote the report alone. I was however graded identically to those who wrote it in groups of 2.

When the professor gave me back my report, he simply said that (this report)" does not fulfil the criteria. One cannot grasp the meaning of what you wrote."

I have two question:

Is that fair ?
What should I do ?

Thanks for your help.


texts: What are academic resources that provide open source lecture notes?

texts: I have just answered a similar question on ResearchGate website and thought that it could also be beneficial for the Academia.SE community to share my answer here as well (as a wiki). Obviously, corrections and contributions are very welcome. Please see my answer (initial wiki post) below.


texts: pros and cons of submitting a conference paper in first round vs second round

texts:
I am not very familiar with the pros and cons of submitting a conference paper in the first round vs second round. In particular I am referring to the dates given for FG 2021 here -  http://iab-rubric.org/fg2021/important_dates.html.
I would prefer to submit in the second round as it gives me more time. However, is there a chance that there would be no second round if sufficient papers have been accepted in the first round? Could someone briefly explain to me the first round and second round process. Thank you!


texts: Is it acceptable to mark off or comment on someone's presentation based on their non-standard English accent?

texts:
I am working as a TA for a seminar course and class presentations are considered a significant part of the total mark for the course.

Some of the students in the class — who mostly happen to be international students — do not perform the best presentation in terms of the communications of ideas with the audience.

It is mostly because of their thick accent and other flaws in their English, making the presentation hard to understand for the audiences.

What is the best marking strategies in these situations?

I am skeptical about commenting on this issue and discussing the problem with the students or reducing a part of the mark for the lack of communication quality, as I am afraid it would come across as racist.

The university is in North America and about 80% of the students are native speakers of English.


texts: What to do when my course-mates are making up research results for a class paper?

texts:
My course-mates and I have a scientific paper to do for a class and, despite having had almost 3 months to do it, no one has done anything (or at least tried to do anything) on the research, and now they're starting to fake the results of the research (which hasn't even been done), and I know that this falls under scientific misconduct.

Since I'm planning on moving to another college (not related to scientific research, because this is not what I want), what should I do in this case? Should I stay in the project or should I ask to have my name removed from the authors' list?


texts: Is it in poor form to write a paper on the same two texts that someone has already written about in a published article?

texts:
I have a proposal for a comparative literature paper that I hope to publish and/or include in some form in my dissertation. I’m discussing a wide variety of texts in my article, but the primary focus is on two novels. I’ve been planning to build upon the central thesis of one academic, but not especially well-known author’s argument in my own paper to an extent.

I later realized that this author has coincidentally published another article that focuses on the same two primary texts that I’m writing about. Although the author’s argument in this other paper is largely different from mine, and I’ll certainly cite them if any of our ideas sound similar, would it be in poor form to analyze the same two texts that this author has written about?


texts:
My question relates to the following thread I posted some weeks ago:

How to publish a paper that does not seem to be within the scope of any journal?

I have written the paper mentioned in that thread, which I HAVE NOT PUBLISHED YET (see the history there; I was entertaining the idea of uploading it in Arxiv, but right now it seems more reasonable to me to keep calm and do not risk anything in any dumb move which might cost me dearly; there is always time to upload it or publish it later on).

The thing is: as of late I have received very positive feedback from some mathematicians and / or computer scientists which read the paper I sent them privately. The paper provides some very fruitful clues for further practical implementation which engineers or computer scientists might undertake. I myself could give them the indications to do it, at least at the beginning. It is not far-reaching to think that some application (algorithm, software  and the like) might derive from that. I would like to be legally as assured as it gets, so, the question is twofold, I guess:

Could I patent the basic findings from the paper, without waiting for the specific applications?

Should I necessarily be part of the application in order to economically profit from it, or does any other form suffice (say, the people taking up the task signing their intellectual dependence on the paper or the like?).

I would like to know how to proceed so that the transition is smooth and no one gets busted in the process (neither me nor the others).


texts: Visiting Student for Graduate Studies in Mathematics

texts:
All,

I am currently a student at a small liberal arts college which does not offer the courses that would make me more competitive as an applicant to Master's or PhD programs in Mathematics.

Since I am ready to move on, my first thought was to continue as a visiting (non-matriculated) student after graduation at a different university for one or two semesters before applying to programs.

It seems however, that few of the top universities have visiting students programs and most of the ones I've seen are geared toward undergraduates looking to go on exchange.

Does anyone know of programs aimed for people in my situation? Is it common? On NYU courant's site, for instance, they offer the non-degree option, but the major disadvantage is cost of living and lack of campus.

Thanks!


texts: Is material produced for a course considered property of the department?

texts:
I was asked last year to set up a completely new course, far from my expertise (say, you work on differential equations but they ask you to teach general relativity). The department did not give me much space/resources to do so but anyway I did it very successfully and on a very short notice (based on student's evaluations etc.)

Does the department have the right to take all the material I developed and give it to a new instructor, say next year?
Do they need my agreement and do I have the right to refuse to do so?
Can I take the entire developed course in, for example, a new institution in case I move away? Or the department can claim that it was part of my paid job so it is theirs?

On an ethical level I find it unfair that I had to put an insane amount of work only for the department to come and claim my work and give it "for free" to a new instructor. But I am not sure if legally I can do anything about that.
For what is worth, I am in an academic institution in the Netherlands. I am assistant professor (UD) and, according to the rules (at least in my institution) my job is not to develop new courses, but only to deliver/maintain existing courses in the curriculum.


texts: Becoming department chair while being good friends with some but not all members

texts:
I am considering becoming department chair of a small department (10 people, not including adjuncts), and not because I really want to, but because no one else wants to and I like to be a good member of the department in terms of service.

Here’s my concern.  I am close (platonic) friends with a couple of adjuncts in our department - I hang out with them socially outside of work, and just chat about personal things like my mental health.  In my current position, I have no supervisory role over their positions. But I am worried that once I become chair - and so I will become their supervisor - the power differential will affect the friendship - I would no longer be so comfortable being so emotionally open (and perhaps I never should have been so open with coworkers in the first place, but I never envisioned becoming chair, also I have had trouble making friends outside of work). Also, it would be very hard for me to not give a favorable preference to my friends in e.g choice teaching assignments, raises, etc. And that if some other faculty members see that we hang out outside of work (e.g. through Facebook posts), etc they may feel I favor my friends for teaching assignments and so on. And they would be right.

Any advice? Am I over thinking this and being too cautious or careful?
Should I tell the current chair that I have changed my mind and no longer wish to be chair?


texts: Is it OK to ask a professor if they have a postdoc position available?

texts:
I am a PhD student working in applied probability theory. I have submitted my PhD thesis and started to apply for postdoc positions.

Is it OK to ask a professor whether they have a position available? If so, what should such an e-mail contain?


texts: Will getting a PhD close doors for working as a software developer?

texts:
I am trying to decide whether I should continue with a PhD (in a field closely related to computer science) after my MS. I will be finishing my MS soon and have an opportunity to continue for a PhD.

My question is will getting a PhD close doors for working as a software developer? Are the opportunities for PhDs' only based on research? Even after a PhD will I still be able to compete with people with BSs and MSs for Software Engineering positions? Finally, during the PhD will I be able to apply for internships that deal with software development than pure research?


texts: What constitutes a unique research paper?

texts:
I have been working on a particular algorithm. It has many applications and I have found one for which a dataset is available as well as other algorithms used to parse that dataset. But the algorithm I am studying hasn’t been applied to that dataset as far as I know. If I implement that algorithm on the dataset, I don’t think I will be making significant changes to it. Will it still be considered as enough of a result to publish a paper?

I am an undergrad; if that is relevant.


texts: Reusing figures from other articles in one's thesis

texts: I obtained the rights to reuse some figures from other journal articles on my thesis from the publishing company. Is it sill a good idea to email the authors of the figures, do I need their OK before I include it in my thesis ?


texts: What is the differences between purchasing Harvard Business Review PDF and reading the article?

texts:
I was reading this Harvard Business Review article, The Making of an Expert and they were offering a PDF purchase.

Are there major differences between the content of the PDF and the free article?


texts: How can Springer and Wiley put a 12 month embargo on posting post-review revisions to the arXiv and similar?

texts:
This question was inspired by the recent question on posting to Academia.edu.

The general copyright policy for Springer, as listed on SHERPA/RoMEO, is that one can post a pre-review version to the arXiv but one must wait a year after publication before posting an post-review copy to any open repository (and one can never post the final publisher's copy):

This seems to precluding posting a post-review update to the arXiv until a year after the journal article is published. Wiley appears to have a similar policy.

To me this policy seems crazy, because it means that if you actually obey it, you cannot post a revised version to the arXiv for over a year -- and thus you are obliged to leave uncorrected any mistakes that are uncovered during the review process for a protracted period of time. That's bad scholarship at best. I don't see how anyone could comply with this policy in good faith.

It also raises a major issue for peer review. Why one should review for free for a journal that won't let the author share the results of your review with the community in as timely a fashion as possible?

Moreover, I don't see how this policy could possibly be enforceable, due to the timing of the copyright transfer agreement. The author does not transfer the copyright until after submitting the final revised version to the publisher. I am no lawyer, but it seems to me that the publisher has no copyright claim over the post-revision version of the manuscript until the author has actually returned the signed copyright transfer agreement. As best as I can tell, this leaves a generous time window during which the author can freely submit a post-review version of the manuscript to the arXiv without committing any kind of copyright violation whatsoever. The only option open to the publisher would be to refuse to publish the paper in retaliation -- which they are extremely unlikely to do.

So my question is simply this: Am I missing something here? Is there any way that such a policy could be legally enforceable if one posts the post-review version prior to signing the copyright transfer agreement?


texts: What does it mean - status changed from "with editor" to "decision in process" directly in Elsevier within 10 days of submission?