texts: How desperate is too desperate when it comes to contacting supervisor?

texts:
I am trying to create a solid basis for applying for a highly competitive PhD position in the field of CS.
I am now getting as much research experience as I can by doing internships in academia and companies, I also do a lot of networking and get myself introduced to people in the field. I try to keep in touch with my former supervisor (MSc). For example, now as a result of my recent internship I am working on a paper, and he agreed to co-author it. Also, I am starting to work on another project on my topic, and I am planning to inform him as well. I regularly (once in a couple of months) write him telling him what I am doing and asking him whether my new step (application for a new internship etc.) is advisable.

He is always nice but I am wondering whether it is actually good practice to keep bothering your supervisor after you graduate from an MSc, even if potentially you want to apply for a PhD after his supervision. Doesn't it seem to desperate or pushy?


texts:
I am in a situation that I would like some input on.

I am currently a 2nd year MS student.  I took a class last semester that resulted in a C+. The final project was worth 40% of the grade, and I received a 70% on it (I disagree with the grade, but that is for another discussion).  I, stupidly, signed up for the advanced class on that same subject because I knew that I could get a grade better than a C+; I thought that this would erase any questions about the previous grade.

The problem is that this added class (I don't need this class to fulfill my requirements for my degree) is turning into a lot of extra work that is cutting into time for me to be working on my thesis.  The drop date has already passed, so I would be taking a W ("Withdrawn") if I drop.

My question: How bad does it look when I apply for employment with this on my record?  If it was just the withdrawn grade, I would have no problem with it. The previous C+ is what concerns me more than anything.  Thoughts?


texts: My grade was penalized because of a technical problem. Who can I contact?

texts:
Last year, I did an exchange semester at a foreign university as part of my master degree. I was lagging behind on homework in one of my exchange courses, and wouldn't have been able to get a good grade. Since this university allows students who fail courses to attempt them again in the next term, and I expect this grade to be important in a future application, I chose to not pass the course last year, and enrolled in its next round, which is now.

I cannot attend lectures since I am in my home country, so I depend entirely on the university's online course tracking system to follow the course and assignments. From the beginning of the term, I visited regularly the course's page, to make sure I could start working on assignments early. Since I didn't see this year's assignments appear, I assumed that they had not yet been given, and focused on my schoolwork at home.

I have discovered today that the system did not show me any of the assignments or announcements from this semester, even though I have registered correctly to this year's course round. I was only informed by a student I kept contact with on social media that there was in fact an assignment to be handed in, and that the deadline has passed a few days ago. This means that, whatever I do, I won't be able to get more than a passing grade. I still don't even have access to the course material, announcements, discussions or assignments published for this year's course round.

I contacted the teacher, who said that they could not account for technical problems, and would not grade me higher than a passing grade if I handed in this assignment now, as for the other students.

I feel that I am getting penalized for technical problems outside of my control. Since the teacher used the term "cannot", I assume that there is a rule outside of their control that prevents them from making an exception. I suppose that there is someone in the university who can make these exceptions, and would like to contact them and explain my problem.

The problem is that I don't know who this person might be, or if it would be wise to send them an email. The IT support can probably fix my problem with the tracking system, but has no control over grading. The international relations office usually directs this kind of inquiries to the course's professors. Contacting someone high-ranked such as the dean seems ridiculous to me, and I would expect no answer at best. There are various offices such as the "office of student affairs", and several contacts listed on the department's web page, but I don't know which one to choose.

At large universities, what office or person typically deals with this kind of complaints? Is it worth trying to contact them and get an exceptional deadline extension?


texts: GRE Math Subject Test Overkill for Statistics MS?

texts: I got a degree in Applied Mathematics, but while I aced my Statistics courses, my performance in my math courses was weak. I have retaken some of the courses but will not be able to retake them all. Is the Math Subject GRE, though difficult, worth the effort of preparing and doing, hopefully, well on it?


texts: Is it possible to submit a thesis to a univeristy without having been enrolled while writing it?

texts: My partner wrote a thesis at a university which closed his faculty. Is it possible to submit this thesis through another university? Can you suggest a university which may be open to this? It is 50,000 words relating to angloshere involvement in the Indochina war, particularly Laos. Two chapters were cut out to turn it into an MPhil in an attempt to satisfy another university. Thanks for any suggestions.


texts: Does engineering undergrad performance matter for masters in management admission?

texts:
In Masters in Management (MSc Mgmt/MIM) admissions, how much weight is generally given by the Adcom to the applicant's undergrad performance, especially if it's an unrelated one like engineering?

Does it have any bearing if the applicant's undergrad performance is poor but his other credentials are excellent?

What kind of credentials should such an applicant aim to acquire before applying (Other than the GMAT, TOEFL, etc)?


texts: How do employers verify academic transcripts?

texts:
Employers often ask job candidates for their transcripts (official or unofficial). How can employers truly verify that what you have submitted is in fact real? Will they send your transcript to the university for them to verify?

It seems to me that the only way to verify academic records would be to send the copy of the transcript they submitted to the university for verification.


texts: Post-doc independent money/grant (astrophysics/computer science) in the US (travel expense/workshop)?

texts:
I am currently a postdoc in a US University (I'm French).

I am in between astrophysics and computer science.

My work is currently funded by NSF (work related to the Dark Energy Survey).

Are there some program/award/grant out there I could apply to, to gain some autonomy (additional funding I could use in the way I want to for travel expenses/collaborations/organizing workshop).

Because my problem is that most program I've found are either for PhD students or for professors. What about post-docs?


texts: How to delay a potential advisor without burning bridge?

texts:
I am talking with a professor ("Smith") in my department about doing research under his advisement.  He seems like a friendly, helpful person, and I think he has tenure.  So maybe the pressure would be lower than for an academic struggling to make tenure.  He has met with me multiple times already, way before the fall semester has even started.  Also, as far as I know, he is also one of only two faculty in the specific sub-specialty I'm interested in, NLP (Natural Language Processing).

The only issue is I jumped the gun.  I have not talked extensively to the other NLP professor ("Jones"), and briefly glancing over their papers, I think I may prefer doing research under Jones.  But I have already chatted with some of Professor Smith's Ph.D students, and again, they all seem like nice people.  It feels like every time I meet a new person and take up someone's time, I'm just going to look like more of a flake if I "ghost" them, even if I do it politely.

I have TA funding for the upcoming semester, and it's my 1st semester.  Obviously there are reasons to try to convert that into an Research Assistantship early instead, but I am worried that Smith wants more of my time than I am willing to give; I have a research passion in NLP I'm also trying to work on, one that doesn't require getting paid immediately.

So the tl;dr is:

I want to be free right now
I don't want to limit my options with Smith down the road (he may be one of the people I need to convince to get my Ph.D in the end, or he may even end up being my advisor instead of Jones)
I feel guilty about the whole situation, because it was my fault they think I want to get started right away.

I feel I should have already nipped this in the bud, but I don't know how to without burning the bridge.  I have a few ideas, but I've definitely regretted past decisions where I've just gone with my gut without discussing with others.


texts: Transitioning from engineering to research as an undergraduate RA

texts:
I'm an undergraduate about to finish my first year of undergraduate research in CS. This past year has been mostly engineering-based as I learned how things worked in terms of implementation.

I'm looking to move from engineering / implementation of others' ideas into creating my own novel ideas and research, but I'm not sure how to best bridge this gap. I'm going to be attending a conference in my field soon, but I'm sure there are other things that I can do to help me along this transition.

I'd imagine its beneficial to read papers, but one of the issues that I am facing is that I'm not really sure what problems I want to work on, and thus don't know what area of research publications to focus on. Additionally, I'm finding it difficult to find the "core papers" of a problem, e.g. papers that present significant advances and are quite important. How would you make the transition between a more research engineer role to that of a research scientist?


texts: How far back do Chinese universities go?

texts:
Europe has many universities founded in the Medieval period; in the United States, universities started to be founded almost as soon as English settlers arrived. China, however, I know very little about.

I do know that China has a millenia-long history of scholarship and science, but that is not the same as organizing academia into universities or university-like institutions.

When did "universities" in the modern sense (i.e., permanent institutions that gather scholars to conduct research and provide higher education to students) begin to be founded in China?


texts: Should I email old supervisor about my progress?

texts: I might collaborate with an old supervisor in the future and would like to keep in touch. Is it a good idea to send an email to him about the progress I've made in my career?  Also, what's the best way to approach this? I feel like emailing just to talk about myself is a bit narcissistic -- is it?


texts: Funding for writing a computer science dissertation

texts:
When I look around, most of the funding opportunities in computer science require a PhD to hold.

Now, I have finished the courses part of my doctoral school and have a reviewed research proposal. Are there funding bodies that allow to apply for a grant to work solely on my journal papers and dissertation for a year?

I think I could make an advance, not having to teach classes what I otherwise do for a living.

I work in the EU.

Is this highly unusual, or there are organisations who would support this?


texts: Do I have to acknowledge the company where I started a project when I later publish related research in college?

texts:
I completed an internship at a company. During the internship I worked on a generic and publically well-known problem statement and delivered its solution to the company.

After the internship, I wrote a research paper under the guidance of my college professor on a similar problem statement (a kind of subset of the problem statement) with a very different solution as compared to the solution delivered during the internship. The paper was accepted at an A+ international conference. When the company got to know regarding the paper, they demanded an acknowledgment towards them in the paper.

But I feel that the only role of the company was to give me the problem statement. The paper was made possible only because of me and my professor's hard work. And the solution developed by me during the internship was also due to my skill and hard work.

So, how legitimate is the demand of an acknowledgment by the company, should anyone demand such acknowledgment in someone's work? Am I obliged to acknowledge the company in my paper? As an ethical practice I can show gratitude towards the company by mentioning in the paper that "the company gave me an opportunity to work on the statement etc". But it should be my decision that I want to or not?

What are the consequences if I don't acknowledge the company.


texts: Studying for the exam or for learning? Is there time later?

texts:
I don't know if there's a correct answer to my dilemma, but I'd like the opinion of other people, in and outside the field, maybe older and more "experienced in life" than me. This is my situation

I am a graduate student in theoretical physics, I started my undergraduate courses in an extremely humble way, looking at professors and physicists in general as some kind of superhumans I would have been unable to match. Thus my only intent was to exploit them and get from them as much knowledge as I could, before coming back home and looking for a job, even totally unrelated with physics. So I always studied for passion, taking exams just to be able to be get the degree and then follow graduate courses to extort more knowledge to the professor. Without taking the degree my parents wouldn't have allowed me to stay here with no "tangible results" while receiving their financial help, so I couldn't just follow lectures and study without doing exams.

During the years I kept studying for passion, the results at the exams where excellent and I started considering the fact that maybe I wasn't that bad. Then I started to get closer and closer to professors and assistants, and my view of them changed, they became mere mortals, I thought I could fit there and actually become one them one day, maybe not a great one, but still a person who can be properly called a physicist.

That's the birth of my problem: I decided I can become one of them, I still know quite a lot excellences that I think I can't reach but I can definitely be an average guy in the field, in my mind that's a fact now, and I want to be that guy.

This semester I started graduate school. To stay in the field after it, you have to keep the highest marks and all sort of things in order to get the PhD and to keep working with people better than you who can teach you and make you a better scientist.

This is changing the way I study, I started studying for the exams, and not in the free and careless way I used to do before. A problem is that in Theoretical physics there are a lot of different approaches, styles, conventions and notations to do the same stuff. Two years ago I would have taken 3-4 very good books, my notes from lessons and then I would have mastered the subject in the best possible way for my level. At this point I would have taken the exam mainly careless of the mark, especially if positive. A negative one is a sign you probably didn't master the subject at least at the level required, so I would have cared about it.

That's what I'd like to do now, but I have to be realistic, graduate school is a little bit harder (at least for me) and doing that would require me a lot more time than it used before, slowing down the pace at which I take exams and making me finish graduate school later. But now I suppose I have to care about the exams and taking them as soon as I can. And if doing as I always did I don't master the subject good enough to take the highest marks? I could have prepared that exam in less time just focusing on it and take the good mark that would allow me, in future, to stay in the field.

I have a lot anxiety for the upcoming exams, they never scared me, but now they do.

I don't like the situation, but should I maybe just accept it, swallow the bitter bill, study just for the exams, stay in the field, getting the Phd, and then and only then studying what I want more freely?

In a line: Time and marks has never been a problem for me, now they are a burden.

PS:
I don't consider myself able to do decent research on my own staying out of the academic world, far from better minds I can get help from, so studying just for me and then doing my own research isn't an option here.


texts: Potential issues with uploading copyrighted material to TurnItIn?

texts:
My university uses TurnItIn to check student's work for plagiarism and collusion. I think the underlying TurnItIn database includes both submitted work and material it has found by crawling the web, but not material behind pay walls. One major issue with TurnItIn, and presumably all plagiarism detection software, is that it can only compare submitted work to material which is in the database. This means that TurnItIn either misses when students copy from textbooks which are behind a pay wall or matches other sources which have plagiarised the textbook.

My department's academic misconduct committee is thinking about seeding the TurnItIn database with the textbook chapters that are most often used by the students by submitting a number of "assignments" that are copies of the textbook chapters. This would require an individual member(s) of staff to submit assignments that contained copied copyright material. Is it possible that this could get the staff member in trouble in the future? We were thinking about adding something like:

  The following submission is intended to seed the TurnItIn database and is an exact copy of FULL REFERENCE.

Would this work, or would TurnItIn realize that it is being given copyrighted material and purge it from its database?


texts: How much is the relevance of a synthetic benchmark?

texts:
Often researchers verify their proposed algorithm or techniques using standard benchmarks. My question is related to performance of a benchmark application.

If a researcher propose a new performance optimization or analysis technique optimizing based on a particular factor, is it enough to only use a synthetic benchmark for verification. If instead a standard benchmark application is used its performance may be subjected to multiple factors. It will be difficult to argue that improvement is only due to the particular factor, the researcher optimized for.

Let me give an example. Often a synthetic benchmark is used in synchronization lock related research. Psuedocode of benchmark:

In every thread

For N times // where N is in millions
       //do something in the non-critical section part
       acquire a lock
          // do something in the critical section
       release a lock

Such a benchmark has been used in some notable paper's of the field. But now most of the research use some applications that uses the lock.

The problem is, it is difficult to individually identify and quantify each factor that affect a benchmark lock-sensitive application performance. Despite the application being lock-sensitive there are a host of other factor that affect the application performance. It would be easier to do for a synthetic benchmark, where a researcher can limit the code.

How convincing an argument in a research paper is if it is solely based on analysis on synthetic benchmarks?


texts: Some co-authors unresponsive when I asked for consent for submission to biorXiv

texts:
In short - wrote an article, sent the manuscript to all co-authors and asked for consent for submission and for feedback, if any. After most of the co-authors replied, I made some small tweaks to the manuscript that improved it, but I'm still waiting for consent from 2 co-authors. I sent the e-mail 2 weeks ago, and that should be enough time for them to at least acknowledge they received it, right? All other co-authors replied within a few days.

What makes this especially interesting is the fact that the 2 co-authors that didn't respond were the ones not actually super involved in the experiments, they just provided the transgenic model that I experimented on. I included them as authors on the first (published in a journal) paper because my PI told me we should include them because of that and ok. But now they aren't responding at all, so I'm wondering how to move forward. Remind them? When? Just submit without their consent? Remove them from the author block (and risk a clash with the PI)? I want to submit this, but have no idea what to do.


texts: Toxic former PI trying to block me from presenting work after I quit my PhD

texts:
I was a PhD student and forced to quit as my PI doubted the new work I did and this PI did not mention any constructive feedback or comments. I signed a resignation letter. Then, I submitted my work to a conference and it was accepted to be published, despite the fact that this the supervisor did not help me at all in any step of this proposed methodology that I proved.

The PI found out that I am going to present my work and threatened that (s)he is going to block me from the research field unless I put their name on my work, even though I resigned and they doubt the work. It is clear that (s)he is very appreciated in the field and no lab could accept me if (s)he blocks me. (S)he suggested that I will it does not help me to present my work alone.

Another question is from where does one get the money to attend a conference without the support of a supervisor. I am really shattered and see this as clear bullying and retaliation. By the way, this PI has forced another student who also did great work and published in top tier conferences and journals to leave after four years of hard work.

I don't know what to do. This is work that I did on my own, and he has not the right to be co-author.


texts: How to professionally deal with sexual harassment in academia

texts:
I am a first year PhD student, and there is an older (by which I mean further ahead in his PhD) student who has been rather unperturbed by me asking him to stop flirting with me. This has been going on ~6 months now after I first met him (we don’t work at the same institute but see each other reasonably regularly due to the collaborative nature of the work).

At first it seemed like he was just being friendly and we chatted a little over social media, nothing more than two friendly work colleagues. Then he started flirting, and very obviously. I told him to stop flirting and then we could just carry on having a normal conversation instead and he did. But then after a couple of weeks he started flirting again, so I again told him to cool it. He kept flirting, and I started just responding less, and flat out ignoring any flirty messages.

He didn’t seem to take the hint (unsurprisingly given that he didn’t take me outright telling him) and started messaging me repeatedly until I responded, more than 20 messages per day from him. I kept on ignoring most of them and sending some blunt messages that did not ask any follow ups when he really would not stop messaging. I have only contacted him first when it is required from a work context.

Over the course of about 3 weeks he finally started taking the hint and only messaging me a couple of times a week, but there was still undeniable flirting and it was making me feel really uncomfortable.

I have now unfollowed him on social media, something I know I should have done much earlier but the issue is he is in a more senior position than me in the collaboration and I was afraid of making a bad working relationship by angering him.

I’m worried now what will happen when he notices I’ve cut off social media contact and I have to see him in person again soon. Additionally there is a chance that shortly I will be working more directly with him, and thinking about this possibility is making me really anxious.

I’m unsure what to do in this situation as he is not in the same institute as me. I am nervous to tell my supervisor as I don’t want this to tarnish my professional reputation, I’m at the very start of my career.


texts: Authorised agent for joint authors in publication agreement

texts: For the publication of a paper each of the joint authors needs to sign a publication agreement with the publisher. Instead, only one author can sign as an 'authorised agent for joint authors'. Ignoring the specifics of this particular publisher, how does an author become an authorised agent generally in this respect?


texts: Can a university suspend a student even when he has left university?

texts: If a student is supposed to be punished with something like suspension, but he has finished academic requirement and left the campus(not officially graduated yet). Can the university still do anything to him?


texts: Feeling incompetent about a written exam scheduled for today. Should I skip it?

texts:
I have a written exam scheduled today evening in 2 hours for a research scientist position at a major British company. They want to check competency in theory and programming for a position.

My PhD thesis has been broadly on the topic they have advertised. So, I applied for the position as I was interested in the job description. However, the outline of written exam scheduled today demands heavy mathematical and programming expertise. The written exam was scheduled within a week of resume submission. There's no sample questions or preparation materials available on the internet.

To be honest, my research was not mathematically or computationally intensive as what's expected from me. Now I am dreading to appear for the written exam. I am afraid that I will not be able to answer anything.

What should I do? Should I skip it? Doing poorly will create a bad reputation. I am afraid that would affect my future chances of working with the company.


texts: Why do I have access to Springer articles/books using a laptop when I am not logged in?

texts:
I have several laptops and I noted that with one laptop (and only this one laptop, and no access at all with other laptops) I have access to all Springer articles (at least in mathematics) and seemingly even to all math books (such as this series of books) in the Springer website without even being logged in any account.
How is that possible?
I have access to the journals in my university computer, but even there I do not have access to the books.
When I go to a journal website like this one, I see on the right of the page "You have access to our articles". I am not logged in there (at the end of the page, above the copyright, it even says "Not logged in") or have ever tried to log in. When I click "My account" on the top right of the page, I'm told to login and thus I assume I'm not logged in in any kind of form. (I only log into Springer journal sites when submitting or checking the status of an article and then logout, but that is not via any university system that grants access).


texts: Should authors be required to report a paper is being resubmitted?

texts:
This is probably more relevant to conference submissions than to journal submissions, but still.

Some CS conferences have recently started to employ a resubmission policy: if your paper got rejected from a prior (relevant) conference, and you are resubmitting,  you have the option of attaching your previous attempt’s reviews and a cover letter explaining how you addressed them.

You don’t have to do this. There are very good reasons to believe that doing so is beneficial. For the authors, it offers a chance to show improvement and a willingness to improve (thus deflecting potential repeats of prior criticism). For the community, it prevents p-hacking of the review process (resubmitting until you luck out and get your paper accepted).

What are the potential downsides of making this process mandatory?


texts:
I was offered a tenure track assistant professor position in China. However, I am not familiar with the admin culture and academic environment of China. Is it difficult to cope with the university admin in China? Does the acadmics 'interact' with peers and students differently in China? More importantly, is it going to be a very steep transition in migrating to a Chinese university?

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!


texts: Why do we put names first in bibliographies?

texts: While adding references to a .bib file the other day I found myself putting the title field first as it provided more information about the citations than the author names. After some thought, I wondered why most bibliography formats don't do that to begin with; if the primary goal of references is to provide support for the topic at hand while also giving proper attribution to existing works and to provide avenues for further research by readers, would it not make more sense to put the titles of papers/articles/etc. first and then the author names? It seems to me that the important thing (in terms of the work being written) is not who wrote the cited works but the works themselves, and if citing multiple papers by the same person putting the name first provides somewhat of a distraction from the actual content of the citations. Particularly in the case of collaborative efforts, where a work may have been written by a multitude of people, the title of the work can get pushed aside by the multitude of names (at least when using a format that doesn't just collapse the names to "et al"). What are the underlying reasons for this, or is it just a social thing that happened because researchers like having a significant effect in their fields/their careers depend on it?


texts: Can I do my graduate studies in Computer Science with computational physcis bachelor degree?

texts: I have graduated in computational physics with gpa 3.1. I need to do my graduate studies in computer science in USA or Europe.


texts: Is taking a sentence in English language and reformulate in french, a plagiarism

texts:
I am writing my PHD thesis in french, sometimes I took some sentences, phrases from english references and try to rewriting them in french so that the meaning is close.

Is this a plagiarism?


texts: How much time of unemployment after PhD in order to still be competitive in postdoc application

texts:
So I uploaded my PhD thesis about a month ago. I am trying to switch academic fields at the moment, and I applied to about 20 postdocs. However I am considering the possibility I may not get in for this application cycle, which would mean roughly another year. I was wondering how long can you be unemployed without your CV becoming uncompetitive. I am just balancing whether after this cycle I should give up and go to industry or whether I should keep grinding.

I am applying to earth sciences actually. My original affiliation is physics.


texts:
I am currently writing my bachelor thesis and since my results were really good, my advisors encouraged me to write a paper about it. The paper was accepted at an international conference and will get published and in the corresponding journal.

I've really invested much time in the paper and the results, thus my thesis fell a bit short. Additionally the topics are identical, because I wrote about the results that I achieved during my work for my thesis. Therefore it is really hard to write a "completely different" text in the thesis compared to the paper.

Moreover the deadline of my thesis ends in 3 weeks...thus, my second advisor suggested to mostly copy+paste stuff of my paper, because it is good and was reviewed several times.

However, my second advisor is always relaxed and calm. I haven't talked to my first advisor about this so far...but I suspect that he would not be too happy if I copy & paste large parts.

What is the "standard" in academia for comparable situations?
Would you feel OK with copying certain parts of your paper?

Any advice would be great and really appreciated.


texts:
There is an article which contains a section describing preliminary materials, that is, results which have already been published elsewhere and on which the current work is based.

This section is not supposed to contain any new result.

It appears that part of this section (one to two pages) is, up to minor modifications, a copy-paste from another published article.

The other article is from a collaboration of the author of the present paper with other authors. It is cited somewhere in the current article but not as the source of the copied part.

The context and methods of the articles are very similar (hence the need for similar tools), but beside the copied part, the contents and results are different.

In particular, there does not seem to be any plagiarism in the actual novel part of the article in question.

Is this a case of acceptable self-plagiarism?

There are a lot of questions in academia.SE about self-plagiarism but I couldn't make my mind about this case from what I've read.

EDIT: Thank you for all this helpful contributions. As referee for this article, I've chosen the option to ask directly the editor's opinion.


texts: Is it difficult to be fully funded for PhD in STEM field in US?

texts:
I have reached out to some professors for my research interest.  I am wondering whether it is difficult to be fully funded for my PhD program in civil engineering.
Is it appropriate to ask the professors whether I will be fully funded for my PhD?


texts:
How/where does one get hold of the arguments put forward by lobby groups?

I am currently researching the topic of advertising as it relates to junk food. There are many arguments in favour of regulation/ban in books, papers and websites; however, I am looking for responses to these arguments by the industry. I keep coming across articles claiming that lots of money has been spent lobbying against regulation, but these are almost never referenced. Where should I look for the arguments of lobby groups? This seems like the only place to find the other side of the debate.

This is an area that is quite alien to me so any guidance is appreciated. Also, I'm interested in lobbying in any English-speaking country.


texts: I have to leave my PhD program with a Masters degree. What are my options?

texts:
I started out in one of the best PhD programs in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (at an American university) two-years ago. I took my qualifying exams last month, which I could not clear (twice) and will have to leave with a Masters degree instead. I do not have a good relationship with my advisor and was having a hard time coming up with a convincing "story-line" for my thesis, so the outcome is not all that surprising... but I am certainly finding it incredibly difficult to look for non-academic opportunities for myself.

I don't want to try getting into another PhD program because my experience here was incredibly stressful, and took a toll on my mental health. And because I spent the last 8.5 years following my research interests, my profile isn't well suited for industrial jobs either. I do have a knack for coding though, but I don't have necessary experience/ coursework to account for it.

I have been thinking about my options a lot lately, and am hoping to get advice from anyone who has gone through/ seen someone get through a similar situation as mine.


texts: It is alright to include students' first names in a teaching statement?

texts:
Is it alright to include students' first names in a teaching statement, or would this come off as weird and too personal? Or a privacy concern?

You often hear the advice to include specific stories that exemplify some of the things you claim about yourself in your teaching statement. I've got an anecdote involving two students I want to tell. My thought is that including their names will demonstrate that this wasn't just some frivolous incident that I'm talking up; that I honestly got to know these students. Also, I think the story would read more clearly if I can give them names rather than pronouns.


texts: Difference between contributed and invited talk

texts:
I am a second-year PhD student.

Through a grant I was able to organize a scientific visit for myself to another university. The aim of this visit was just to talk and discuss with some of the staff there about their research.

Prior to my arrival, my host notified me that they frequently hold internal seminars/colloquia etc. and would I like to give a talk. I obviously accepted this offer.

My question is, when listing this talk on my CV, should I list it as contributed, invited, or just a 'Talk'?

I only ask as typically I think of the term 'invited talks' for more senior, established academics and it was I who petitioned my host in the first instance for a visit.

Any input welcome. Thanks


texts: How to approach a mistake I made in an abstract for a Conference?

texts:
In about a month I will be presenting a poster among 100+ people in an international congress. However, I'm just realizing that I made a huge mistake in the abstract I sent (accepted of course), concerning a whole phrase (15 words) with numerical results. This doesn't change my overall conclusion, because combined with the other numerical results that I offered (which are fine, no mistakes), I reach the same observations.

I'm a last year undergraduate student in STEM, and I'm about to tell my advisor hoping for the best. But before I tell them, should I be prepared to send a correction to the organizers? I've been browsing the stack for a while and people seem to be super light on posters at conferences, so what are your thoughts?


texts: How to introduce multiple authors of a research paper in content?

texts:
I want to introduce the findings of a case study in my report, but it has four authors and I would like name them in when introducing it.

What would be the best way to do this, or is the below perfectly acceptable?

  Andria A, Paul S, Derek B and Howard C provide an interesting insight in their case study...


texts: Does graduating a UK PhD in 5 years look bad (with circumstance)

texts:
So in UK, people generally complete their PhD in 3.5 to 4 years.

Before, I intended to finish in 4 years as I wanted time to publish everything before writing up. Towards the end of 3rd year, I applied for a grant to do research abroad which could be anywhere between 1 and 12 months which I got accepted for earlier this year. I originally planned to do 2 to 3 months for experience (and a mini-holiday), but in the end decided to work for 12 months as it is in a good research group and I would like a publication out of it.

For this to work within the time period, I have decided to start this position 2 months before the PhD submission deadline, in which I will come back to UK after to submit - meaning I have put my PhD on suspension for a year (which has been accepted). I will not be able to finish my thesis before I go so that is why I am doing it this way.

The position itself counts as a post-doc, even though I have not graduated my PhD. I understand this may look good as I have applied and got my own funding for this, but also thought it might look strange in academic bios, as graduation years are usually listed. Therefore people see that I took 5 years to complete it (whereas in reality it is 4 years + 1 year suspension).

Any thoughts on how academics may perceive this kind of bio?


texts: After initial contact, how long should I address a professor as "Dr. Smith" or "Professor Smith"?

texts:
Let's assume that I've contacted professors in the United States and referred to them appropriately as "Dr. Smith" or "Professor Smith" based on their having attained a Ph.D.

If they respond to me informally, should I continue to address them formally? If so, for how long?


texts: Quitting undergraduate research internship

texts:
I am an undergraduate in theoretical chemistry, and I am currently having a summer research internship at one of the top institutions in the world. I was dreaming about this experience for a long time, but now I think that I can't handle it.

I started to feel drained of energy six months ago when my family had serious problems in their relationships, finances and health. Now, it's two weeks into my 8-week-long internship and I am unable to focus on anything at all. The only hope I have is that intermittently I have bursts of energy, when the idea of leaving seems preposterous, but they only last 1-2 days max. I also have troubles sleeping.

I have always been a diligent student coming in top 1-5 in all examinations I sat. My internship last year also went quite well and my results from it resulted in a publication. I have never felt as I do now, and even though I'm trying really hard to pull myself together, I'm failing.

I wonder how much quitting would affect my reputation, especially if I'm being honest that the issue is about my mental health. On the other hand, if I stay but am utterly unproductive, would it be worse?


texts:
Let me begin by saying my Ph.D. program has been a disaster. I'm 26 and I'm finishing up year 4 in a physics Ph.D. program. I have no publications and I'm completely burnt out. I have no idea what to do.
I went into a physics Ph.D. straight out of undergrad. My advisor told me to focus on coursework to get a master's first so I did. Right around year 2 I got my masters and was ready to start research, but my advisor's wife suddenly died and he was gone for almost a year and a half. Money ran out and I had to get a teaching position to make ends meet. I tried my best to do what I could, but it's very hard to be an experimental physicist with no money. I actually got a small grant on my own that helped, but it wasn't enough. Additionally, our university grad student union went on strike for a month or two that slowed everything down.
About a year ago another professor joined the department and hired me on. It was ok for a while, he had money and I was finally getting paid to do research. Since he was building up a new lab I was helping put together all the equipment.
Now there are a few more students, all at least 2-3 years behind me, who are in the lab. I'm still expected to put the machinery together while they are getting data from experiments and actually contributing to research. They aren't collecting data, they've been given older unpublished data to analyze. Every time I bring this up I'm just told to be patient.
As of right now, I'm going into year 5 with my name on absolutely nothing. I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel anymore. My department claims 5-7 years is average but there are a lot of 7,8,9 year students here. If this would only take 2 or 3 more years I'd consider staying, but it feels like I basically had to start over halfway through.
I have one patent application in progress, one fifth or sixth author paper in progress, and a completely written review paper that I was told to not publish. My advisors won't even let me propose a thesis, saying it's "too early". I guess I just want to hear what other people would do in this situation. I was recently offered a job in industry by an old friend that pays pretty well (~$85K) which seems so tempting right now. I feel like such a failure and I think I've wasted the past four years of my life. Does anyone have any thoughts on my situation? I'm very lost in life right now.
Update: thanks for all the responses. It helps to hear other perspectives. I talked to my advisor and he keeps telling me I can graduate in two more years if I focus. I don't think I believe him. I have until Monday evening to take this job offer and I think I need to.
Update 2: I think I just quit. I spent 80 hours in the lab this week (again) only to be told I'm still not doing enough. Every day I got more and more projects piled on my plate and they all involved putting equipment together for other people. I was told by my advisor that he doesn't believe my project will even work anymore. It's just not worth it


texts: The full understanding of my bachelor's thesis requires the reader to watch a movie, how do I deal with that?

texts:
I'm currently putting the finishing touches on my bachelor's thesis. One part of that thesis is an analysis of a movie. I have written a short synopsis of the movie to go with it, however that is probably not enough for a complete understanding of the points I make in my analysis. I can't make the summary substantially longer as I have already reached the upper character limited set by my university for the bachelor's thesis. But I also believe that a written summary, however detailed, can not replace having watched the movie, as I'm talking about fine detail of the graphic style and aesthetics which can't be fully described using text only. In my analysis, I also reference other movies of the same director and explain how some topics and metaphoras are used in those as well as in the movie I'm analyzing.

I am not sure how to deal with this. I can't just ask my professor to watch several movies in order to understand my analysis. But I also don't want to be graded badly because my analysis requires the reader to have watched the film (I believe that this is true of any detailed analysis of any work, so it's not just a flaw in my thesis that I should correct).

Here's what I have done so far:

I've included screenshots of the Blu-Ray release of the movie to illustrate some of my points.
There's a footnote at the end of my summary of the film that explains that this summary doesn't replace watching the actual movie and having not watched it might hinder the comprehension of the following analysis.
At the first mention of another movie, there's another footnote that contains a link to the official website of the director, which has detailed synopses of the mentioned movies. However, those can't replace the actual movies either.

I have thought about including a digital version of the movie when I turn in the thesis, but I don't think it's a good idea. I don't know if the assay office would even accept it, and even though I own the DVD-version of the movie, it would probably not be legal to give out copies. Also this wouldn't solve the problem when I put the thesis up on my website.

So how do I deal with this? Do I just ignore it as there is no better solution? Or is there a standard way of mentioning prerequisites for the understanding of a thesis?

I understand that I can include the movies in the list of references or just make it a separate list. However, the books that I reference in my thesis are not required to understand the points I make, as book references usually include the relevant quotes or repeat the points made by the authors. So I am not sure if this is sufficient.


texts: Is it possible to confirm if someone is enrolled at a particular school?

texts:
So I know there's roadblocks like FERPA (this is in the United States by the way), but if I already knew:

Full Name
Date of Birth
Name of school (obviously, since I'd have to know who to ask)
(Supposed) Major

Would a college/university be able to confirm or deny that the student is enrolled, since I'm only asking to have information I already know confirmed or denied, and not asking for any new information? If so, which office/department at a given school would I (generally) direct a question like this to?


texts: Why would I want to register with ORCID?

texts:
I've noticed that in the ACM article document class you can now list authors' "ORCID" registration key.

I've not heard anyone mention that to me before. They Orcid website says:

  ORCID provides an identifier for individuals to use with their name as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities. We provide open tools that enable transparent and trustworthy connections between researchers, their contributions, and affiliations. We provide this service to help people find information and to simplify reporting and analysis.

Whenever someone tells me they want to "enable trust" or that they're "trustworthy" I get suspicious...

So, is this about disambiguating researchers with the same first and last name without relying on their affiliation? Or is there something else to ORCID?

More specifically - if my name is rare and I don't expect there to be another academic with this same name in the foreseeable future - are there benefits for me in registering?


texts: How to deal with a research internship manager with very bad English?

texts:
I am a computer science student in a research internship. My superior is technically a professor, but I work with a PhD student. My goal is to help them run experiments to finish their thesis. They are not my manager, but I am still supposed to do what they want, and I could not find a better term, hence the title.

This PhD student's English is very bad, to the point that I sometimes cannot make sense of their messages and instructions, though I'm close to bilingual (neither of us is a native English speaker). It is slightly better in person, but I don't have many occasions to talk to them since they are working remotely for the time being.

Constantly asking them to repeat can get tiring for both of us, and I don't want to start a conflict. Pointing out that their English is simply unreadable is likely to come across as insulting too. Furthermore, I know that their experiments have a tight deadline, and I would like to help them meet it, but this constant miscommunication prevents me from working efficiently.

If it matters, the professor who oversees us agrees that it is difficult to communicate with this student. I worry that coming to the professor to complain about it could be seen as agressive by the student, and as an attempt to justify delays by the professor.

How can I deal with these unreadable messages and very unclear instructions?


texts: How much do teaching responsibilities hinder a researcher at a small university?

texts:
I would like to consider physics (theory) or math. I have two questions, but in general I would like to understand more about the following.

If a researcher joins the faculty of a small (not top-research) university, will his/her administrative or teaching responsibilities be much greater than those of a researcher at a top university?
If so, does this hinder his/her research development to an appreciable degree? Or perhaps this is not worth worrying about, and a good scholar will find a way to produce good research regardless of circumstances.

Any perspectives or evidence would be appreciated.


texts: How much political influence is involved in the academia in Poland?

texts:
I heard that Polish national politics influences the appointment of tenured positions in their universities.

E.g. if some party is in power, they would like to see somebody loyal to them as the head of a faculty or even the rector of the university. Also, if someone is loyal to the party in power, his PhD students have better chance of getting into the university and obtain tenure.

I also heard that, even getting a "Habilitation" requires a lot of political backing.

To what extent is it true?


texts: How big of a deal is it if I abbreviate a school name?

texts:
I am writing some thank you's for interviews I had recently. How big of a deal is it if I write UCLA instead of University of California at Los Angeles, for example? I have always spelled things out in cover letters and CVs and stuff, but especially at this point, it just seems like I should just be able to write UCLA. Would anyone not think kindly of this?

Some school names are short/you should always write out like University of Michigan instead of Michigan, or University of South Carolina instead of USC, but when there's no ambiguity like UCLA, it seems silly to write that out every time.

Thanks for the help!

P.s. these are for math positions if that matters.


texts: Publish more in less cited journals, or publish less in more cited journals?

texts:
Grad student just getting started here, this question popped in my head this morning when stumbling across a former colleague that has already published a lot but in journals with low h-indexes.

Generally, is it better to publish more articles in journals that are cited less often/have a smaller reputation, or publish less in higher impact journals?

Bonus question : does the answer changes if considering early-career scientists vs later stages?


texts: Academic Freedom for students re: advisors and solo papers?

texts:
I'm familiar with the general notion of Academic Freedom.

But I just ran across the phrase "given his/her academic freedom", which is a concept I've never run across before. It seems related to students writing solo papers, and etiquette around a student publishing without their advisor.

In general, are there aspects of academic freedom that don't exist until they are be bestowed on people? Tenure is about the only thing that may fit that bill, but that seems typically framed in terms of job guarantees. Do students pass any similar hurdles?

Update: The reference is from Wikipedia: Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski - Wikipedia

  As a sophomore, Pasterski worked on the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.[8] She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in high energy physics under the supervision of Andrew Strominger[16] from whom she was given her academic freedom in the Spring of 2015[17] based upon Pasterski et al's 2014 discovery of the "spin memory effect" which may be used to detect/verify the net effects of gravitational waves.[18] After being granted that academic freedom, she would complete the Pasterski-Strominger-Zhiboedov Triangle for electromagnetic memory in a 2015 solo paper[19] that Stephen Hawking cited in early 2016.[20]


texts: Is it common to be given 6 months for a minor revision outcome?

texts:
I received a paper back with a verdict of minor revisions on August 30th. Both the letter from the editor and the scholarone submission system states 'minor-revision.'

I've read the reviewers' comments very carefully, and everything is, as the editor states, a minor revision. Nothing requires me to re-analyse the data, or engage with new work. Rather, most revisions are of a small nature, such as fixing up some grammar and clarity errors, ensuring consistency with terminology, and further developing a couple of sections (drawing out the analysis a bit more, being more specific about methodology). This would at most, take a week or two, and then an additional few weeks to get a peer to proofread for me one more time before submission.

However, I've been given until February, 2016 to complete them! For a minor revision that seems like a lengthy amount of time. So now, I'm unsure as to whether they've just given me a lengthy timeline because the journal itself articulates a 6 month turnaround time for peer-review (it took about 5 for this article), or if the revisions are meant to be more substantial.

I read this What is a reasonable time to resubmit revised papers after they have been peer reviewed? but didn't find it helpful.

Is it common in some fields to be given 6 months for a minor revision outcome that will only take a few weeks? I'm concerned that I should be making substantial revisions despite the letters indicating otherwise due to the time-frame provided.

My field: Social science


texts: How does accepting a full time lectureship position at a top 15 University affect one's chances of future employment?

texts:
I have recently seen several positions titled something like "Senior Lecturer in [insert field]" at top notch universities such as MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, etc. The job description usually includes curriculum development for the department and advising undergraduates and early career adjuncts. The position is always full time with full benefits and usually has a fixed multi year contract with a high course load. Are such positions looked highly upon when seeking future employment? Ideally please answer the question for people with the following potential career goals (as I believe the answer would be different for each one, as I want this question to be valuable for as wide an audience as possible)

If the career goal is:

Tenured Professor at tier one research university
Tenured Professor at school that highly values research (but not a T1 research University)
Tenured Professor at a Liberal Arts college or state university (Wants some research but main focus is on teaching)
Tenured Professor at a purely teaching focussed Liberal Arts College or community college

I suspect that the position would be looked highly upon for career (4) and lowly upon (assuming you don't publish much) if career (1) is the ultimate goal. It is, however, unclear to me how these positions would be seen in an application corresponding to the middle two careers.


texts: Academic discretion: Should one participate in online forums or Stack Exchange sites anonymously?

texts: As we may ask and answer various questions on online forums or stack exchange regarding teaching, research, publishing etc; it may reveal our lack of knowledge on any basic topic. This might hurt us in the future as an already established academician. So, should we participate in those online forums or stack exchange sites under pseudo-names to remain anonymous?


texts: How much public funding do private universities in the United States receive, directly or indirectly?

texts:
I am trying to assess how much public funding private universities in the United States receive.

I found a study that partially answers the question:

Taxpayer Subsidies for Most Colleges and Universities Average Between $8,000 to More than $100,000 for Each Bachelor’s Degree, New Study Finds
 (published in 2011):

  Washington, D.C. – Taxpayer subsidies that cover the operating costs
  of most colleges and universities ranges from around $8,000 to more
  than $100,000 for each bachelor’s degree awarded, with most public
  institutions averaging more than $60,000 per degree, according to an
  analysis by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Nexus
  Research and Policy Center (Nexus).

  Among elite private universities, like Harvard and Yale, the average
  taxpayer subsidy is $13,000 per student per year, while the annual
  subsidy at the most selective public universities, like the University
  of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the University of California, Los
  Angeles is more than $23,000 per student annually.

  The financial figures reflect the amount of money colleges and
  universities receive in direct government support and tax breaks. They
  do not include loans and grants provided by state and federal
  governments to help students meet tuition costs.

However, this leaves out how much public funding go into loans and grants provided by state and federal governments to help students meet tuition costs in the United States.

I got interested in that question reading U.S. to Forgive at Least $108 Billion in Student Debt in Coming Years (published on November 30, 2016).


texts: What should I do when getting a C in a core graduate course as an undergraduate planning to apply for grad school in applied math?

texts: I'm a third year undergraduate student planning to apply for graduate school in applied math. I have done REU in applied math and had one conference paper. I had decent grades in my undergraduate math courses: mainly A's and A+'s and only a few A-'s. However, I ended up with a C in my first graduate course(Real analysis), which is really discouraging to me. In fact, out of all 20 people in the class, including all the graduate students, only 2 ppl got A and the rest are split into B's and C's. I was originally planning to continue with the sequence (the B part of the course), work harder and get a B or above grade, but after the professor told me that he is going to have even higher standards this semester, that being said, only people who get nearly perfect scores deserve to pass the course, I'm not so sure now. Based on his new standards, only the two people who got A last semester can pass the course and the rest of us would have failed, which is totally insane. I wonder if I should continue with this course, study really hard and try to pass the course, and hopefully get a better grade, or simply drop the class and try some other grad classes? Also how bad does getting a C in a core graduate class hurts and how else can I make up for it? I'm going to apply for grad school next year so I'm short on time, any advice will be appreciated! I'm really desperate right now.


texts:
I've heard that in some social science departments, simple survey-based "experiments" are done by distributing a survey packet to some population (e.g., students in an intro psych course).  This packet may contain questions from various researchers.  They put all the questions into one packet to cut down on costs and logistical hassle, the idea being that for certain kinds of broad, simple data collection, possible interference effects from other items in the same packet can be an acceptable price to pay for easily getting a large amount of data.

Nowadays, a lot of researchers are also doing surveys online, using sites like SurveyMonkey.  What I'm wondering is whether any research practices/resources have developed that are akin to the "packet-sharing" shortcut described above.

For instance, SurveyMonkey Audience apparently charges $1 per response for a survey with up to 15 questions.  If one researcher were doing a survey with 10 questions, and another were doing a survey with 5 questions, they could be combined into one that would only cost half as much as doing them separately.  (I haven't looked at what other survey sites charge but I wouldn't be surprised if similar opportunities exist.)

I could imagine that this sort of thing would just be handled informally within departments, by people asking around to see if anyone else had a survey they could combine with.  Is that the only way this happens?  I know that in similar domains (e.g., running experiments on Mechanical Turk) researchers have developed and shared software to make the process smoother, and I'm curious whether anyone has created anything like a "survey cost-sharing clearinghouse" where researchers doing surveys could be matched up in a way that minimizes costs for all involved.  It seems like it would be a useful resource for those doing this kind of research.


texts: What to do when you find out your research result is wrong because it's based on wrong methods/results, after years of works?

texts:
This is not my current situation. However I've heard similar stories from different people (along with my own past experience) a few times. Therefore I want to ask a general question(the title).

For example, suppose you're a graduate student in one of the following scenarios

You believe you prove a theorem but later find out it's wrong because one of the lemma/theorem you cite from another published paper is wrong.
You spend long time setting up experiments and finding out an published experiment result is not reproducible and is likely to be wrong.
You rely on co-workers' code to run simulations but it turns out that there are errors in the code that makes the simulation inaccurate, therefore the conclusion based on that is wrong.

and let's further assume you find out those problems when it's closed to advancement or dissertation time of graduate study. You've spent a few years, only to get a faulty result that is not likely to advance you to the next stage of a researcher.

Q. Are these scenarios hopeless (i.e. a student in that scenario must terminate graduate study)? Should the student be the only one responsible for the issue?

If not, what's the best thing one can do in those scenarios?

If so, how to prevent them? (You can still answer this question even if your answer to Q. is no.)

Highly appreciated if anyone can discuss this from either student's or advisor's point of view.


texts: The Formality and Informality Relationship in Academia

texts:
To the point, I think I am suffering from the lack of the interpersonal skills and especially while working with supervisors. My character is quite good, I can make good connections and etc, however, I looks dumb while dealing with supervisor and I think this would leave a negative impression.

My new supervisor asked me to call him with Dr.X, and I felt so much shy to call his name directly, he didnot comment later, but I do think their actions said I am boring, dull, and maybe end hating me as happened in my previous PhD, my ex-supervisor commented once time, that he didnot like that I am using " kindly" in email,  in the end , I feel I am not likeable even if I did a good work.

Another issue is my tone of voice shows that I am arrogant person, and this happened today, another senior professor had a facial expression which wasnot good, although I would like to deliver the idea, but I fail apparently.

I am so afraid to commit another inadvertent mistake and it seems academia policy is harsh. I dont know whether with my personality I can keep in academic world, I dont want to be an ordinary lecturer, I want to be a leading researcher in my research field, but given the facts, I am way off.

The question:Is there coaching techniques that could help me, I am very sensational, kind, but supervisors apparently see me dull, boring, and arrogant which hinder me to deliver my ideas and suggestions.


texts: Editor refuses to handle my paper for “lack of expertise”

texts:
Let’s say a journal has many editors. I tried submitting to one editor (the journal uses an email submission) and he replied:

  Dear Authors,

  This submission is not in my area of expertise. Therefore, I regret to inform you that I will not be able to handle it.

Is this a subtle rejection from the entire journal?

Do I still have chance if I submit to another editor from the same journal?

Thanks.


texts: Talking about works under submission without breaching anonymity

texts:
I work in a medium/small-sized field within Computer Science. In this field, there are three major conferences. I'm currently submitting my resume/statement to one of these conferences as part of an application. I want to talk about my current works which are under submission to other conferences because they are very relevant to the application. I also want to include where they are being submitted because it adds a lot of value to the quality of work. However, I'm afraid that if I mention what I'm working on + where the works are submitted, that it would be really easy to link me and my group as the authors. This I think could potentially breach the anonymity of our submissions (double blind peer review).

Is this a reasonable concern? Or is this still done?


texts: How can I remove a verified google-scholar account?

texts:
I have moved to another university and created a new google scholar account here. However, my old account which was verified with the academic email address of the former university still shows up. I am no longer at my old university so I CAN'T LOGIN to that old account in order to delete it. I tried to remove that verified google scholar, but I could not. I also contacted google scholar via google scholar support email, that is ‘scholar-support@google.com’ but nobody answered me.

So, I'm wondering how to delete that old account?


texts: Students changing the result of an investigation

texts:
It is common to see students at the laboratory (electronics, specifically), altering the values or disregarding them trivially just because the values won't fit into the other data, instead of reporting and documenting them and disregarding them using a proper (statistical is an option) method. Disregarding the data almost randomly could lead to misinterpretation of it, and loss of important information and knowledge for the student.

On the other hand, when the laboratory practice is similar (or the same) to the old semester one, they will just come into the lab to show they are present (and avoid being marker as absent), and ask the students of the previous semester for the data and document it that way.

How can one deal with this type of students?
Is there a book/guide for some sort of "Research Ethics" that deals with these kind of issues and could provide more examples and situations like these?

   (This could be out of topic depending on how the reader see it)

 There are another less common examples, like when a student reads an article and when referencing, instead of citing only this article, cites this article and the articles cited in this article, like if he read them all.


texts: How can I tell whether it is the volume or the issue number that is given?

texts:
If I'm reading a journal article for which the reference for example is stated as "Journal of Examples 3, 74-78 (2014)", how can I tell whether it's the volume or issue number that is given? In many circumstances, I understand that it's quite easy to tell. For example, if the number is quite high, it's probably not the issue number. And if it's a journal which I know have been in existence for long (for example Science), I can surmise that if I'm seeing a low digit, it's probably not the volume number.

However, sometimes it's not unambiguous. In the example given above, is it a new journal which  has only released three volumes? Or is it just issue three of some, unknown volume number?

Is there a system to all this madness? Is there a way to always tell what you're actually looking at?


texts: Do One-year MS/MEng Programs Prefer Candidates With Research Experience?

texts:
I am a first-year undergraduate student studying mechanical engineering in the U.S. I want to either do the 5-year BS/MS program at my university, or - preferably - do a 1-year non-thesis MS or MEng degree from a top university such as MIT, directly after undergrad. I am already in a design team as well as Engineers Without Borders, and as such my schedule is quite full already. Research is interesting to me but not as interesting as my current extra-curriculars, and I would have to give up at least one of those or get worse grades in order to pursue undergraduate research.

I was reading an article written by an MIT student that said graduate programs look for undergraduate research experience when considering candidates, and strongly prefer candidates that have some, but don't really care about any of your extra-curriculars. However, this was discusssing 2-year MS degrees with a thesis. Since I'm only planning on doing a 1-year non-thesis degree I'd like to know whether it would be worth it to pursue undergraduate research, or whether it won't make much of a difference to my chances of being accepted into a 1-year masters program.


texts: Is research in private industry more result-oriented than research in academia?

texts:
I have been working for a year and a half in a lab doing research in applied computer science. Ever since I was a kid I had dreamed with being part of a lab and do research. However, I have now experienced what I believe a great majority of research is like. Particularly, I feel that everything is about funding and the "publish or perish" thing. It seems to me that the scientific community is too influenced by doing what funding organizations conceive as favorable just to get more points from evaluation committees to eventually obtain more funding.  I get the feeling that this situation only degrades the quality of the research performed, and eventually, the reputation of the authors, while also keeping researchers completely focused on hot topics (e.g. big data before, now neural networks) instead of what their curiosity leads them to.

These reasons have motivated me to believe that maybe academic research is not for me, and that I might should try to move to private and applied research (such as working in research departments at private companies). My impression on private research is (also based on some articles I read, in particular "The effect of government contracting on academic research: Does the source of funding affect scientific output?" Goldfarb, 2005) that the goals are oriented to get results (i.e. carrying out the actual research), whereas in academic research the only goal is to get the article published (and thus spending eventually more time on writing the article and/or applying for grant calls than on real research).

Is this just my impression? Are all labs like mine? Is applied research in private companies the way I am picturing it in my mind?

Thank you for your time!

(Remark) I have managed to get an article published in a good Q1 journal, so it is not about internal presure from the advisor, nor bad relationships with the team - I actually feel very confident and have good relationships with everyone


texts: When submitting an extended version, is it mandatory to include all authors of the original paper?

texts:
In my field, it's a common practice to publish a work at a conference first, then extend it (typically with 25%-40% more content) and submit it for publication in a journal.

Often the extension is driven by a subset of the original authors, for example, because the remaining authors lost interest or don't have time to develop the extension. In this situation, the question arises whether it's mandatory to include the non-contributing authors as authors of the extension.

Arguably, the authors have already received the credit for their contribution with authorship of the original paper. On the other hand, their contribution to the original work is still a contribution of the extended work.

Is there any official guideline of how such cases should be handled?


texts: Am I allowed to use published research in building an industry project?

texts:
I am a graduate student of Computer Science and am currently building an advanced project based on a paper that was released earlier this year at a major conference. I originally undertook this project as part of a course I am taking, but based on some initial testing results it looks like it has potential to make an impact in industry. That being said, I would like to continue working on this project and possibly market it in industry.

My questions are:

Am I legally permitted to build and market this project without notifying the paper authors, or am I legally obligated to include them in this process?
Assuming I have no legal responsibility to notify and include the authors in my endeavor, would it be unethical to omit them from the process, or is applying research in industry par for the course (i.e. the original researchers need not be and often are not involved)?
Business ventures aside, should I reach out to the authors and let them know that I am working on this project, even if it's just in an academic setting? I have no need of their technical insights or expertise, but I would like to know if it is common practice to notify a researcher that their research is being applied and practiced (I know if it were my research, I would appreciate being told just to know that it was making a difference).


texts: How free are you to take mathematics courses as a computer science graduate student?

texts: Does anyone know the restrictions one might face if they are a graduate student in a computer science program (let's say doing theory) and they become interested in taking a course from the mathematics department or become interested in working on mathematics problems? Is this something where you need to full on change departments or is it generally more acceptable?


texts:
I currently work at a research org, and will be applying to PhD programs soon. For my CV, I am a co-author on a few publications that I'll be able to add, but have been recommended to add some in-progress or under review reports.

While "under review" is pretty straightforward, I'm curious what the cutoff should be for a report that is "in progress"? I have some projects that still have a year remaining, but we've written roughly half of the report. For others, we have less time remaining but have only written the introduction, or something like that. I'm guessing people will have very different opinions here, looking forward to seeing what you all think.


texts: Online Postgraduate (Statistics / Mathematics)

texts:
I decided to begin an european online Postgraduate (MA, MSc or none) related with Statistics or Mathematics. The restriction of european ones, is because I'm spanish, and the tuition fees are way cheaper that way.

The problem I found is that the Universities that offer these kind of postgraduates are pretty unkown, to the point that I feel a bit doubtful about what I could learn there.

I tried to find some Postgraduates through internet Master searchers, but I found almost no information about online Postgraduates, either because the searchers ignore most european Universities, or because they don't distinguish between online and presencial studies.

My question, therefore, is, what would be the best way to find a Postgraduate of such characteristics.


texts: Is it normal for an instructor to refuse to tell students their current grade?

texts:
I want to know what my current grade in a particular class is. The professor says she refuses to tell us our grades. The syllabus mentions the same policy.

Is this normal? What should I do?


texts: Why do some mathematics professors teach more/less courses than others?

texts:
At my school, I see some professors, associate and higher, teach only 1 course per semester while others, assistants and full, teach 3 or 4 per semester. Some semesters, the ones teaching only one course may teach an upper PhD level course, while other semesters they'll teach a junior or senior level undergrad course, but it's never more than 1 course. Meanwhile, the ones teaching 3 or 4 teach all levels of undergrad and grad.

Why is this?

Do professors earn less salary if they teach less courses?


texts:
I'm reviewing a paper after minor revisions, and can partially see another reviewer's comments in the response letter.

The other reviewer asks the authors to do X, but the authors argue that it's not worthwhile doing X.  I've done things like X myself, and have found it not worthwhile (for the precise reasons the authors state).  Thus, I strongly side with the authors on this matter, and I'm thinking about whether I should inform the editor.  I'm not sure if I'm meant to do this...

Question: As a reviewer, is it inappropriate to make unsolicited comments on another reviewer's comments?

A related question is In peer-review, is it common for a reviewer to be shown and asked to comment on other reviewers' reports?  However, I have not been asked to comment on the other reviewer's comments.


texts: How can I migrate a library from Calibre to Zotero?

texts:
I've got a well organized Calibre library, but due to full text PDF search, web clipping and basic bibliography management, I decided to move to Zotero.

I can import .bib records easily, but is there a way to have them linked with corresponding PDFs?


texts: I start an Assistant Professor position in August (in USA). Is it better to hire a Phd in August or January?

texts:
I start an Assistant Professor position in August at a USA university (ranked between 30th and 70th). I am already advertising the two PhD positions I got in the startup, and for one of the two I already have a list of good candidates, in particular I like a lot a specific candidate. Which one do you think the best move is? Asking the candidate to start in August with me (beginning of fall) or in January (beginning of spring)? Which are the pros or cons? I spoke with the graduate school coordinator and he said both options are possible, I have to choose. And also the candidate said he has no particular preference, he finishes the Master in June and he might do a short internship until December (or take a break and visit family) if he will have to start  with me in January.

Note:
I will hire the second PhD in August 2018, cause it comes from different funds, available only in August of each year, and the deadline for those is past.


texts: Will it be too late to start looking for postdoc positions once I am about to submit my thesis for review?

texts:
I am going to submit my Mechanical engineering PhD thesis in July, with defense probably scheduled in September or October this year. I am about to submit few papers and I was thinking of applying for postdoc positions after submitting them.

My question is, as I am already late in applying for postdoc positions, will it be wise to wait till June before searching for the positions?


texts: I hold a PhD in political economy, and am outside academia; what route might I take towards researching for a PhD in canine psychology and behaviour?

texts:
I hold a BA in a language and area studies (history, politics, social science) and a PhD in political economy (touching on social science), both from British universities belonging to the (research-strong) Russell Group, and I have been outside of academia for many years.

What route might I take towards the goal of researching for a PhD, preferably again at a Russell Group institution in Britain, in canine psychology and behaviour?

(I have read the help file, and felt that giving details of the fields was necessary in order to make clear what I am asking. Advice that is not specific to these fields is very welcome, especially if the size of the gap between them is similar to the size in my case.)


texts: What is Post Secondary Education? Does it include only PhD (or) any degree lower than PhD?


texts: Where does the remaining money of FP7 projects go?

texts:
'Framework programmes' (FPs) are main financial tools through which
  the European Union supports research and development activities
  covering almost all scientific disciplines.

I am a fellow of FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN) project. As a hosting institution, the faculty I work at got funding to support me and related research. Where does the non-spent founds after the project ends? Do they stay within the university or are they returned to the European Commission (EC)?


texts: Can you submit to journals after presenting cases as eposter in conferences?

texts:
I had a few medical cases that I presented in conferences as an eposter, I sumbitted the case as eposter, It was presented as a slideshow in big screens in the conference
My understanding is that eposters are not considered publications; so can I submit these cases to journals?

Some journals specify as a requirement that the case submitted should not be published before on other journals or electronically. Where do cases presented as eposter stand on this?


texts:
A lot of academics like to complain about the academic publishing industry and its questionable practices (e.g. not paying reviewers for their work, overcharging universities for subscriptions, preventing public access to publicly funded research etc.). The answer seems to be moving to open access journals/non-profit publishers.

My question is: can anyone share the story of a reputable scientific community (of reasonable size) that has made a full switch to open access publication? What made it work?


texts: I've been admitted to multiple PhD programs, how should I choose between them?

texts:
I've been admitted to more than one PhD program, and I'm having a very hard time making a decision.

The programs I'm accepted to have advantages and disadvantages with respect to one another. How do I weigh the relative importance of difference aspects of the program in order to make an optimal decision?

Ultimately, this is not a decision that anybody else can make for me, because everyone has different values and priorities, and the right decision for me may not be the right decision for somebody else. However, you can help  by giving me more information about how different features of a program will affect my experience in graduate school and my future career.

The offers under consideration differ in a variety of ways:

Ranking
Advisor
Research group
Funding
Other considerations

I need to know more about what kinds of things are important and how these will affect me, so that I can make an informed decision about balancing competing criteria.

Note to readers: These answers quote extensively from other answers on this site (and link to them). If you read something quoted here that you find helpful, please follow the link to the original source and vote it up!

This is a special community wiki 'canonical' question that aggregates advice on a very broad topic - see more information in this meta post.

Each answer here relates to a different metric that one might take under consideration. If you have a new "critical" metric not in the list above that you believe should be an important part of the decision, post a new answer. If you want to add something related a metric that's already represented in its own answer, edit that answer.


texts: How do undergraduate theses affect master's application?

texts:
I am an undergraduate student and have a plan to apply to a master's program.

I am about to start to work on my graduation thesis for graduation at my university.

Question: How does my graduation thesis will affect applying to master's program?


texts: Volunteer undergraduate research system feels wrong?

texts:
I am a PhD student at a large state university system. The system hosts a program that encourages undergraduates to get involved in research on a volunteer basis (suggested weekly commitment: 6 hours during a 'regular' academic semester). The projects hosted on the system varies greatly (from data collection to data analysis to manuscript preparation), and I am considering using it to recruit an undergraduate to assist in a systematic literature review. If I recruited a student, they would stand to gain:

Practice in conducting data extraction for articles for a systematic literature review
Practice manuscript preparation
Authorship (nb: if it leads to an accepted publication)
etc...

When I was an undergraduate, I greatly appreciate the opportunity to participate in the research process. However, I was paid for the contributions (in both cash and credit-hour situations). I feel extractive utilizing labor that is volunteered. I have spent considerable time trying to find an in-house university scholarship/funding source for this activity, but to no avail.
While I realize this system must have been vetted and supported by numerous academics with research experience, I feel strange using it. Is it ethical to use this volunteer system? Or should I simply put more time into finding a funding source for the student?
I was also considering setting aside part of my PhD salary for the undergraduate student, but I realize this has tax and legal ramifications beyond my knowledge.

Updates from initial comments:
In general, I agree with the answer posted by @AnonymousPhysicist here. So the question really is, should I still make use of this resource? I would be interested in prioritizing the student well-being, uplifting their success, and trying to leverage the project into tangible monetary and career-advancing rewards for them (conferences, presentations, thesis project, references, etc).

All the projects (nearly 200 in the 2019-2020 academic year) on this system were based on the premise of volunteering (no cash payments or course credit)
The primary purpose of the program is to foster undergraduate interest and participation in the research process, and to encourage students within the university to pursue careers in research
My PhD stipend is meager, but I can't complain given what's going on with COVID-19


texts: What to do when the potential supervisor does not respond after initial positive response?

texts: I contacted to the potential supervisor and got his reply after 3 days, saying that he is available to be my supervisor. Then, I contacted him again whether he would like to have meeting with me (which is part of admission process) or proceed the formal application. Now after 1 week, I didn't receive any of his reply. Should I send follow up mail or call him?


texts: Why would a journal force me to register on ORCID?

texts:
I recently got a paper accepted as a co-author in a relatively good journal. Now that we are at the finalizing phase, I got an email prompting me to give my ORCID identifier and to create one if I don't already have one.
Here is an excerpt from the email (emphasis mine):

Note that unless we have ORCIDs of all coauthors on file we will not be able to publish the manuscript, in case of acceptance. To avoid a delay in processing this paper, please take care of this at your earliest convenience.
You will receive this reminder on a weekly basis until you have authenticated your ORCID

I find this to be very annoying. It doesn't seem like I have suffered from not having an ID until today, why does that journal absolutely needs me to register on that thing?


texts: How to write a Ph.D. thesis Introduction chapter?

texts:
I am in the process of writing my Ph.D. thesis and struggling with the introduction chapter, what to cover, what not. This is a technical thesis. The broad area is molecular simulation in statistical mechanics.

There are lots of tips available on Internet, but those are very general often. I have found few theses also searching on Google. All those tips and theses vary in style and content and it is difficult to decide which one to follow. Please provide tips on how can I write a good introduction chapter of high academic standard.

EDIT: After reading your valuable inputs, I am adding here few more points. (Thanks everybody). Your comments on these points are highly appreciated.

I have seen theses where people include background theories. On this matter, I have read that the theory should not be something which others know. Now this is difficult to predict what to include as background theory, what not. I have seen people including theories which are widely available in textbooks.
The chapter 2 is dedicated to literature review. It is also important to briefly mention background and relevant research works. Here I have found people are giving a little elaborate technical details.


texts: How do you refer to someone whose title has changed?

texts:
I am writing a personal statement for a PhD application and I’d like to refer to my previous lecturer.  He was a Dr. at the time he taught me but he is now a professor at another institution.

Is there a neat way of referring to someone like this or do I have to go with something clumsy as:

  I was taught by Dr. X (now Prof.) on his course about Y.


texts: Publishing phd work after joining another institute for job

texts: I recently submitted my phd thesis and immediately joined as a faculty member in another institute. My final phd viva will be in around 3 months time. Now, I need to publish some of my thesis work which I haven't published yet. Do I need to give my affiliation from both my institutes? Can I give both??  I will be the corresponding author.


texts: I am unable to submit online quizzes on time due to technical difficulties, and it is negatively affecting my mental health. Can I get extra time?

texts:
I am an undergrad student taking a chemistry class. We have a 50 minutes quiz every week during the discussion section. The TA usually emails this quiz to us, and while my class is at 1:00 pm, the TA usually emails it to us at 1:01 pm. So, once I get the quiz on the email, I need to print it out (it takes some time to print out) then I start working on it. Usually, I try to finish the quiz by 1:48 pm so I can camscanner it, then email it or airdrop it to my computer, and then send it before 1:50 pm, because after 1:50 pm it considered to be a late submission which results in a zero for the quiz.
This is challenging:

One time, I finished it at 1:48 pm, and at 1:49 pm I emailed it back to my TA. However, for some reason, the email was received late, and the quiz appeared to have been submitted at 1:51 pm. The TA gave me a zero for late submission, and I had to go to the professor to receive a full grade.

For the next quiz, I thought writing an exam on an iPad would be much faster instead of printing, scanning, and emailing it. But, the file was too big for Gmail, so it took some time to upload. So I airdropped it to my computer and emailed it to the TA. My exam was 1 minute late again. I sent him an email right away with the screenshot that the file is big so it took a long time to upload.

Today was the third time that this put me into hysterics. I went back to printing, camscanning, airdropping, and emailing. But, airdropping didn't work, so I emailed it to myself and sent it to the TA from the school email. Once again I wrote him a huge email with explanation and as well with proofs with time. My hands were shaking so as my head, I started crying because this was my third time when the devices are glitching, and I was going to get a zero again.

How can I get more time for the quizzes?


texts: Second PhD or postdoc and their effects on tenure track position

texts:
I am going to finish my PhD in the Netherlands within one year. Ideally I would like to get a postdoc here. However, due to competition or other factors I might not find a postdoc position. Then, there are two options:

1- Searching for a postdoc outside of the Netherlands which is not the best option for me currently.

2- Doing a second PhD here.

I want to know if doing a second PhD makes it harder to get a tenure track position later.

Edit

I am asking about the effect of doing a second PhD after I finished my first PhD regardless if I extend it for some period of time or not. Will people see it as a failure? To me it does feel like failure!

One good point in the Netherlands is that PhD students are employed as research assistants. Thus, I think when I am able to search for postdocs in other countries it might not look as bad as I think.


texts: Applying for multiple lecturer posts in the UK

texts:
There are multiple lecturer openings in the UK that are very relevant to my work, say posts A and B. I prefer B over A, but B's application deadline is a about 2 months after A's.

If I apply for both posts, there is a chance I might be accepted for A while I am still waiting for a response from B. In that case, how should I react and what should I do if I get a positive response from B after I have accepted the offer from A?

My question is particular to the UK. In Germany, for example, I know that people openly apply for multiple positions and leverage this for negotiations. But I am not sure if the process is the same in the UK.


texts: To whom is title "Professor Emeritus" given in the US?

texts:
Is the title given to those professors who have had a huge impact by their research and/or teaching and now on reaching the autumn of their career are less active in teaching and taking students but attend seminar and give talks? (The description is from personal experience)

What does this title mean? Does the title depend on age? Being as reputed as he is, is Terry Tao a possible candidate at UCLA? Or is he too 'young'?

Is this a nominated position or do they have to apply? I haven't seen any university policy about this.


texts: What do you call a professor that is hired by two different departments?

texts:
What do you call the professors that are hired by two different departments? Say, a history professor who is also a chemistry professor.

Also, in reality how would one do that?


texts: Are there grants and fellowships for PhD students past the first year, but before candidacy?

texts:
Effectively as per the questions title, are there grants and fellowships for PhD students past the first year, but before candidacy? From what I have seen, most are intended for first year students (i.e. those with no more than twelve months of study), after candidacy has been achieved, or are finishing fellowships for the last semester of work. For example, the Hertz Foundation says the following:

  We generally do not award fellowships to students who are already
  beyond their first year of graduate study except in cases of
  "exceptional leverage".  Such awards are very rare—only three have
  been made in the past 10 years. (Leverage here means what difference
  the award of the Hertz Fellowship is likely to make in the kind,
  quality, and/or personal creativity of the student's graduate
  research.)

Which seems to be a fairly common theme. As such, I'm looking for answers in two parts:

Are there open grants and fellowships for PhD students past the first year, but before candidacy?
Are there field specific ones (computational social science or computational science & engineering) that may apply?


texts: Is it allowed to include graphs in a thesis without explicit permission?

texts: In a thesis, is it allowed to include graphs from other papers without an explicit permission from the publisher? (assuming citation is provided)


texts: Can I cite a URL only instead of author, title, etc. in a research paper?

texts:
When writing a thesis, is it acceptable practice to cite only the URL of referenced research papers where they are published electronically? Or is it compulsory to give proper authors, title, year of publication, etc... information?
Example:

Data mining is the process of analyzing large data sets in order to discover hidden patterns within these data sets.[1] Stock market prices do not follow random walk.[2]
[1] http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5FIEAwyn9aoC
[2] http://rfs.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/1/41.short


texts:
I am talking about computer science. Recently I did survey on my own i mean informally. I find out that there are some researchers who were able to do PhD in same area in 4 year as compare to other researcher who did their PhD in 6 or 6.5 year's in the same research area. Is it depends  upon the duration of the PhD of supervisor or it depends upon the country etc.

Question : Why does a PhD take a longer time in some countries? What factors affect this? Does it affect the research quality? I mean if I am taking more time I should have more quality research.