texts: Can I submit a paper to two or more journals at the same time?

texts: Assume I am submitting my paper to Journal X, which rejected the paper. After making modifications I am going to submit the paper to Journal X again. At the same time can I also submit the paper to another Journal Y (which has a lower impact factor than Journal X). As the Journal X has rejected it the first time, I think it may be rejected again. So I want to publish my work anyhow in a journal.


texts: How should I share (cite) my datasets and R analysis/code files in my thesis?

texts:
I'm trying to follow some of the best practices of the "open science" movement. In my thesis, I've performed all of the analyses in R (a non-proprietary, open-source program for analyzing data), and my datasets are in the non-proprietary CSV format.

I would like to be as transparent as possible, by sharing my datasets and R analysis/code files with my thesis committee, and ultimately with the public once my thesis is finalized and placed in a repository. How can I best do this?

I was thinking about uploading my files to the Open Science Framework (http://osf.io) and citing them with a regular HTTPS link. Once my thesis is finalized, I would then "freeze" them on the OSF website (as I understand, this would prevent post-hoc changes), then get a DOI that points to the frozen files and cite that.

Are there any better options?


texts: Medical student being cut out of a project by fellow unbeknownst to supervisor

texts:
At the beginning of an academic year I approached a physician at my school and requested to do a research project with them, as I was interested in their field of medicine. The supervisor was agreeable, and paired me with an international fellow to work on a small project together. I don't believe the fellow had a choice in this, so in a sense I was forced upon her.

Throughout the entire year I attempted to get more involved with the project and the fellow consistently cut me out. I collected about 1/4-1/3 of the data but she often wouldn't tell me when new charts would come in and would do them instead of me. I would often email her and she would not respond, and at one point she purposely switched direction in a hallway to avoid me.

I consistently asked for more work and conveyed I wanted to be involved with the writing process. Despite asking, I was never cc'd on emails to the supervisor and not informed about many meetings with the supervisor. When I emailed the fellow to schedule a  meeting to talk about the abstract writing she emailed back and said she had already written it but asked me to do a literature review chart for the paper which I did within two weeks.

At this point in the year I was very concerned about the supervisor's opinion of me but did not want to complain about the fellow. I finally managed to attend a meeting with the fellow and the supervisor which was very brief but I did not get a negative reaction from the supervisor. I sat down with the fellow after the meeting and requested to PLEASE write the introduction for the paper over the summer. She assured me yes I could, and to take my time as we wouldn't be finalizing the paper until after the summer. She also told me she would update me over the summer with the statistical analysis etc.

I recently contacted the fellow to ask for an update as I was about to start writing the introduction and she told me she had written the paper as it was due September 1st and already sent it to the supervisor for edits.

My concern has nothing to do with authorship but purely for my reputation with the supervisor. Residency programs are notorious for asking around about students they are interested in. Although I am no longer interested in this speciality, I am frustrated that the supervisor may think poorly of me when I fought all year to be involved. I am unsure of whether I should approach the supervisor about this or let it go, as she has given me no sign that she has any ill will towards me.


texts: How to overcome feelings of incompetence/failure in a PhD programme?

texts:
I've recently quit my job as a maths teacher after doing it for 3 years and I have been incredibly lucky to be offered a fully funded doctoral training course at a top university. This is an extraordinary opportunity for me, especially given that I previously withdrew from a PhD, and this time I really want to make it work.

I am quite rusty on some things that many other starting students will not be, not because I can't do them but because it's been a very long time since I needed to apply them. I am currently a bit worried that I may be the weakest in the cohort or that it'll take me a very long time to understand simple things and that I may feel incompetent and like I don't deserve to be there.

What are some good ways to overcome these feelings of idiocy?


texts: What kind of papers is it acceptable to read during working hours?

texts:
In academia, one is forced to read papers that come out. Some of the papers I read are directly related to my work and then it is reasonable to read them in my working hours. Others are completely irrelevant and I read them just for the pleasure and to broaden my knowledge in other areas. These, I think, should be read in one's free time.

But then there are papers that are not directly related to what I am doing but may turn useful for my work, e.g., they may use a method that might come handy although they deal with a slightly different field. Should I read such papers at work as well or should I read them in my free time? How do I decide where the border between work-related and leisure-read papers lies?


texts: How to teach from someone else's material?

texts:
This semester I've been teaching a few hours for another professor (I'm a Postdoc). The idea is that I get some teaching experience while he gets a few precious extra hours for his research.

His slides didn't come with any notes, and he hasn't been very responsive in answering my questions about exactly what he said when he delivered the content. I revised the material and edited the slides in preparation. But, after the first hour of class, I've covered about half the material, which was supposed to last three hours. So, I guess either I've missed something implicit (not on the slides) or I've just not paced the material well.

Short of practising in full, how does one take, adapt and own somebody else's lecture materials?


texts: Should I tell my professor of my crippling anxiety?

texts:
It's really hard to admit, but I have a crippling anxiety when it comes to criticism from people of authority, especially university professors (at least I think so). This is currently negatively impacting my performance writing my thesis, as I would rather postpone indefinitely sending my thesis supervisor anything that could be wrong than face criticism, which makes me look lazy. Especially if I have encountered something that I don't know how to approach, I'd rather keep looking for answers myself for an impossible amount of time than ask for help (as I'm irrationally scared that I should be in a position to finish said task, since it was assigned to me).

I doubt that there is anything he can do, and I don't want to impose or require special treatment, but I feel like I have to be honest about why I'm not meeting deadlines as of late. My problem is that I don't know how to remedy this issue, and even if he knows about it, it's not magically going to stop impeding my work.

In addition, in case that I get anything along the lines of "I don't care", I'm pretty sure that I won't be able to handle it and I really don't want to give up my degree.


texts: Are extended periods of unpaid leave compatible with an academic career?

texts:
In Academia, a sabbatical means a leave to do only research, as opposed to an unpaid leave to do anything you want.

A recent question over on The Workplace SE raises the situation where  someone has too much money and just want to have more time. — like working for 6-9 months per year, which would earn one enough to spend the rest of the time travelling.  Regardless of the relatively low pay in parts of Academia, the same situation may apply, in particular to DINKs.

The answers mostly boil down to: be a consultant or freelancer..  That may work in the software industry or other private sectors, but it doesn't translate very well to academia.

Is a career which includes one or more extended unpaid leaves, such as sabbaticals in the classic meaning of the word, or unpaid leaves in the order of 3 months or more in a row, compatible with working in academia at all?  If yes, how?

Clarification: I am interested in answers considering either a career that contains specific gaps (such as a year to see the world, either between jobs, or interrupting a job), or a fixed job that contains less than 12 months per year (minus holidays) of work.


texts: Can I describe in my own word few experiments from some academic papers to write a popular science book?

texts:
My book is about a theory that is based upon existing theories and recent experiments in biology. Since biology is not my main field, and since my theory is interesting to the general public, I self-published my book.

The response to my book has been good.

But now I am afraid because I have described several mainstream biological experiments in my book, which although I accessed through my institution, and are not in the public domain. I was careful to cite the original research and describe results in a short, non technical way, in my own words. I also included several graphs in my book that I drew myself in a qualitative way, based upon the diagrams of the research papers.

So, can there be any legal issues with my book? A friend of mine is suggesting that I need to get permission from publishers of the research papers before describing the content of their papers, because I used their material for commercial purpose (to write my book).

I must clarify that the experiments that I have described are only a part of my book, about 20%, and the rest of the book uses the experiments to develop a semi-original biological theory of my own. I needed to describe the experiments to let the readers know the basis of my arguments.


texts: Can I be a good scientist if I only work in working hours?

texts:
I am doing postdoc in developmental biology. Recently I started to leave work at the lab, meaning that I don't work at home anymore. Before I spent many hours at night (at home) analyzing my data; now I spent that time on my side project not related to science.
I would like to ask if that kind of schedule is sustainable? Can I be a good scientist if I only work in working hours (now and later when I have a long term position)? Other scientists seem to work both at the lab and at home.


texts: Should I wait for the editor's response to my pre-submission inquiry or should I just submit the manuscript anyways?

texts: My supervisor suggested that I sent a pre-submission inquiry to a journal editor about the potential suitability of my manuscript. I wrote to the editor last Friday and still haven't heard back from them. I am wondering if anyone who has previously done so could let me know how long it took you to get the response from the editor? I am hoping that I could submit it by the end of November (which is already here) and just don't know if it's worth waiting for the response or maybe just submit it anyways. Would love to hear about your thoughts on this. Thanks!


texts: How many faculty positions should one apply to?

texts:
Since the start of the hiring season, I've seen around 20-30 job openings that looked interesting for assistant professor positions in my area of computer science.

However, it's somewhat awkward to ask my recommendation letter writers to send letters to 20 different places. (Is it not?) How many places do people usually target simultaneously?


texts: TA salary between different university departments

texts:
Recently, I was talking to some fellow grad students and the issue of money came up. I was shocked to find out my two friends who are TA's in the philosophy and physics departments at the same university make $600 less than I do per month. They make about $1100/month while I make almost $1700/month as a TA in the math department. I know $600 doesn't seem like much, but I make roughly 1.5 times as much as them! All three of us get the same tuition waiver and pay roughly the same in fees. Also, my previous roommate who was a TA in the music department got paid about $1100/month, but this was over two years ago while I was still an undergrad. Is this consistent with all other large universities, especially at this magnitude? If it is, why do you think so?
My explanation  is that the math department has more "power" and can fight for better paid TA positions. What I mean by "power" is that despite the relatively small size of the math department, math is more central to other majors. For example, everyone in STEM and many people in economics, business, finance, etc. take a multitude of math classes and give the math department more leverage when it comes to funding. Also, you don't need expensive equipment to do math research so essentially all funding goes towards salaries.
I could also be completely mistaken so if someone would kindly explain how universities generally fund their departments that could also help enlighten me.
Thanks


texts: When do I let other places I applied to know I have an offer?

texts: I currently have a job offer, but I have had two other campus interviews.  The other search committees often mention that I should update them on my job search.  I am not sure what this means exactly.  Of course, if I know that if I take another offer, that I should let the others know. What I am unclear on is if I have an offer, but no offer yest from the other institutions, should I let them know about this?  Or do I wait until I have an offer from them to say anything?


texts: Introduction to how journals and other research publications work?

texts:
I need a comprehensive introduction to how research journals work and conferences relevant to the point of view of a student, and as a researcher.

Although I have read many research papers, I think I still don't understand a lot of the basics. I googled my problem and maybe I am not searching it right but I came to know what the volume number, issue number, etc mean just yesterday from here: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/nmp/sonet/rlos/ebp/journals/what_are_journals/index.html. This was helpful but I still need to know more e.g. what does impact factor mean, how important is this metric, who has the right of distributing the article considering I want my research to be publicly and freely available, what is general process of writing and review, etc.

Maybe I am not searching for the right terms. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks.


texts: How could a postdoc look competitive against a tenured professor?

texts:
I am a postdoc in mathematics (US) in the process of applying for tenure-track positions. The job market was very competitive and I only ended up with one interview so far. But I found out that for the position that I am being interviewed for, there are several other interviewees, and one of them is a tenured professor.

To me, the competition seems unfair because obviously the university wants the best candidate, and since the tenured professor received her PhD 10+ years before me, she has a lot more publications than me. And there is only one position for the university.

The situation looks hopeless to me. Is there anything that I can do or say during or before the interview that will make the hiring committee take me seriously? I have of course read several posts on here before asking this question. The answers seem to say that the "promise" is also taken into account. But will it actually be taken into account when the tenured professor has fifteen more papers than me? Since she also has more experience speaking in conferences and knows what to say or do during interviews (since presumably she has also served on hiring committees), I think her job talk will be better than mine, too. I just don't see how I could even be called a serious candidate when she is interviewing for this position.


texts: Do German universities take mid-career international students for PhDs?

texts:
Do German universities (specifically, Technical Universities) take mid-career professionals from other countries (i.e., the USA) for PhD studies?

I am trying to grasp how that process would work - or if it would work - for someone with family & in their mid-30s.

N.b., I am aware that the system is different, i.e., Funded PhD position chances for international students in Austria.

My field is computer science, if that matters.


texts: PhD in a science with a professional MS degree

texts:
In the future I am hoping to pursue an PhD in computer science, however I am still very early in my career and want to get a master's degree and work a while before I pursue a PhD. I am strongly considering cyber security for my master's.

The only issue I have with this is that cyber security is a professional degree, I should also mention that I have a BS in computer science so I do have some knowledge of the subject.

Would getting a professional master's degree (cyber security), rather than a research oriented degree (computer science) hinder my chances, or make me look less favorably to someone who has a MS in a research heavy field? Would doing a master's thesis as a part of a master's degree improve ones chances of being accepted into a PhD program by demonstrating some research?

Thanks.


texts: Are you aware of any business schools that have age limits when considering MBA applicants? Schools that specifically state that candidates above, say, 35, need not apply?


texts: Does an admission committee assess Verbal/Analytical Writing scores differently for International applicants?

texts:
I have always wondered how admission committees in the US look at the Verbal/Analytical Writing scores for international applicants.

English is my third language, although the primary language of instruction in college. As I have studied in an engineering field, some of the words I encountered in the verbal section are completely new to me.

My verbal scores are what one would call "average", although being an international student I felt I did quite well considering my background.


texts: Why do some universities not provide marking schemes for mock exams?

texts:
When I was a maths undergrad, I did some mock papers. However the lecturers did not provide the marking scheme for us to learn from model answers. The reason given at the time was a mumbled 'university policy'.

My question is, why would a university have a policy of not providing the marking scheme/model answers for a mock paper?


texts: How to put in acknowledgments a research department of a university or an internship?

texts:
How can I put in the acknowledgments section of a research paper to a research department of a university or an internship awarded? If there is an example paper, please show me.
regards,
Alex


texts: Manuscript transferred from editor to editor

texts:
I recently submitted a manuscript for publication, and soon after received a message saying that it was "with Editor".

A few days later, I received a message saying it was "transferred to Associate Editor", and a few days after that "transferred to Subject Editor".

My question is about the different levels/types of editors in this process, not about the acceptance/rejection of manuscripts in general.

What does this mean?


texts:
I am a new postdoc (finished my PhD a few months ago) who started with a new group during COVID-19.
In my field collaboration is the norm and solo-author papers are rare. I need to start approaching people (both within the group and external) to collaborate on projects, but I am very nervous, and even after reading several existing questions on approaching collaborators I am not sure what to do.
There are two professors I might collaborate with. For each scenario I have also included some specific questions in bold to address the things I'm struggling to figure out.

Working with a professor in our group who has a very impressive track record in creating new methods/tools. I have an idea for a method that could build on some of his work to address a different problem (about 30% his existing code/method and 70% new things). He liked the idea when I met him a year ago during my postdoc interview, but I'm not sure if he knew that none of my prior experience involved developing new methods. I would probably need a lot of help/guidance on this.

He is friendly and approachable with PhD students, but I'm nervous because as a postdoc I'm not sure how much help/guidance I'm still allowed to need. How should I go about approaching him, and what should I say to define potential roles/how the collaboration would work?

A professor at another university I have previously exchanged a few emails with to ask question that fell within his area of expertise (my postdoc mentor introduced us). I am thinking of doing a paper that builds on my dissertation using a different type of data. He wouldn't be familiar with the method I'm using, but he is very familiar with the question and the literature, and I could use his advice on different ways to define/measure the outcome in the new data. The reason I want to invite him as a co-author (if there is a paper) is because his expertise would be helpful for the discussion section, and once there's a paper draft the whole thing could benefit from his input.

It may or may not be possible to do this paper - I can't check statistical power until I ask him more questions about defining/measuring the outcome. When and how would it be appropriate to transition from asking questions to inviting him as a co-author? And what should I say (and when) to discuss defining what his role as co-author would be?


texts: How to convince my PhD advisor to keep working with me if I am switching university?

texts:
I am in a low ranked US math PhD program. I generally get along well with my advisor and like my research area (complex algebraic geometry). But the objective of my PhD program is to get low paid math teachers. We are overloaded with TA assignments.

So, I could get into a foreign math PhD program in South America. I am starting next July. Those foreign institutions generally offer full scholarship through the their Federal Government without any duties, free tuition + living expenses. No Duties Attached.

The thing is that I want to keep working in collaboration with my current US advisor, but he got mad and upset when I told him I am moving to another university.

How could I convince him to keep working with me? I mean there is internet and Skype. But I have not talked to him since the time I told him I am moving abroad.


texts: Has a doctoral degree any value outside of its main area?

texts:
The phd area is Computer Science and the other area can be anything - if this info makes any difference...

I am asking from the practical point of view, specially something that can be evidenced by real examples. Some career that requires/rewards the degree despite of being completely outside its scope would be a good example.

I was worried about asking something a little open, but I see it is pretty common by here, e.g. - the opposite of other more harsh communities.


texts: Is improving a simple algorithm without beating the state of the art still publishable?

texts:
In a particular field there are two algorithms being used:

Algorithm Simple: you understand it in five minutes, you can implement it in fifteen.
Algorithm State of the Art (SOA): requires very specific mathematical knowledge to understand and is hard to code. Beats Simple by a big margin, both in terms of speed and results.

However Simple is more popular because of its simplicity and not-so-bad results. Simple has 130 citations, SOA has 80. In 2016 Simple had 20 citations, SOA 17.

While trying to use the Simple paper, our results were so bad we spent more than a week looking for a bug in our implementation. Finally, we discovered a one line change that makes it work much better, improving a mathematical approximation in the Simple paper that is easily overlooked. After reviewing recent literature, it seems this is not known (we can reproduce recent papers).

We can prove that the one line change is statistically better and equally fast as Simple but statistically worse and slower than SOA. We also have a 5-line-change improvement which makes it both better and faster than Simple, worse results than SOA but slightly (10–20%) faster than SOA.

What should we do? Since we are not beating SOA's results and it is a one line change it may be hard to publish, but it is clearly something people in the field would profit from.

Edit: some have noted it's similar to this question. There are two differences:

We are not coming up with a different algorithm, just making a small modification.
On the other hand we are a simpler algorithm than SOA, and there's value in it. In particular the 1-line change is as simple as the Simple algorithm and the 5-line change is still much simpler than the SOA algorithm.


texts: Can an article "in press" (available online) be withdrawn/retracted?

texts:
Nowadays, many journals publish articles online ahead of print, in a state that is given various names by the various publishers: in press, ASAP, just accepted, ahead of print, etc. The final printed paper will be identical with the online one, except maybe for page numbers and color figures… They can be cited through their DOI.

But if somebody, author or reader, were to find a fatal flaw with one such article, what should happen? Would the article be withdrawn (or retracted) before printing, or would it be printed nonetheless, then retracted later? And in any case, would the resulting paper be considered part of the scientific record, or not?


texts: Why do some reviewers mention their decision explicitly?

texts:
Recently, some of the reviews I received mentioned their decision at the end of the review (i.e. 'I recommend acceptance of the paper'), while others do not have such statements.

What is the point of adding the decision statement while the overall evaluation (i.e. on EasyChair system) explicitly says it? Is it just the reviewer's habit?


texts: What are your recommendations to organizing online streams of lectures?

texts:
What are the aspects you would recommend to pay attention to?

Specifically, we're organizing a seminar series, where we would also like to make the streams available online. It is not so important that the online observers are able to interact, so there could be some lag with the display online. In fact, having full chat interaction with observers like in "hangouts" could be risky, as someone from outside could interrupt the flow.

What are your recommendations on how to organize it? The aims of the stream is to allow people not attending to follow the discussions too and perhaps get more people interested through the shared link. It would be nice to know how many people are observing the link at the time. Otherwise, any ideas would be useful.

For example, we have been thinking about the balance of interaction and visibility of the online stream - it could be that if the stream is too comfortable, the participants might bother to show up, and just observe from home thus potentially unintentionally working against the seminar.

What are your recommendations in how to go about it?

Thanks!


texts: Importance of peer-reviewed proceedings in particle physics

texts: How important can be peer-reviewed proceedings based on talks on work-in-progress? Do they carry equal importance like a publication in a journal and count as an independent publication even though the full work is later published as a paper?


texts: A few days ago I was approached to write a 10-20 page long chapter in a book in field of mathematics. I did a little research.  Authors are well known and no scam there. The issue is that this is my first experience and  would be great to know some of the charactristics of a book chapter in math ( research level).  How is it structured? Should one provide more background than typical academic papers?


texts: How do applicants for an NSF fellowship come up with a research plan for the research statement part of the applications

texts:
I understand reviewing literature is an important part of completing the application. Do most applicants develop a plan independently solely based off of the articles they read or do faculty advisors usually give students a specific question to write about? How feasible are the research plans written by say a first year grad student who is new to their field? Is the intent of this part of the application just to demonstrate that the applicant is familiar with their field and can formulate a research plan or is it meant to be an actual plan of action for their grad student career.

The context of my question is I am considering whether to apply to the nsf fellowship this year or next year. I would say I have done enough literature review to identify holes in the literature that I could possibly propose a research plan for, but I am not sure if it would be something I would actually study or not because there are many things up in the air in my lab related to available facilities/research direction, etc.


texts: Where should citations be placed relative to punctuation (e.g., full stops and commas)?

texts:
This question pops up every time I write an article (in the computer science domain), and I am unable to find a British English style-guide providing a proper answer.

Where should citations be placed within the sentence and its punctuation?
Where to put white space?

E.g., which options are preferable:

More coffee is always better. [XY]
More coffee is always better [XY].
More coffee is always better[XY].
More coffee is always better.[XY]
According to [XY], more coffee is always better.
According to XY[XY], more coffee is always better.
According to XY [XY], more coffee is always better.
According to XY, [XY] more coffee is always better.
According to XY,[XY] more coffee is always better.
According to XY, more coffee is always better [XY].
According to XY, more coffee is always better. [XY]

In the IEEE editor's style manual it says on page 34:

  References in Text: References need not be cited in the text. When they are, they appear on the line, in square
  brackets, inside the punctuation. Grammatically, they may be treated as if they were footnote numbers ...

I would interpret "inside the punctuation" as ruling out options 1, 4, and 11, even though the grammatical treatment of footnotes is not quite clear to me.

The Springer guide does not appear to comment on the question.

Any other hints / links / viable styles?


texts: What are some red flags that even the professors cannot help in the admission?

texts:
According to Wolfgang Bangerth's answer to Can a professor influence the graduate admissions committee if he or she is interested in a particular student?:

  If a professor sends us a note that they'd like to have a student admitted and state that they will take on their adviser role, we [the adcom] will only not admit that student if there are any red flags in the file.

I want to elaborate this more. What are the red flags that he mentions?

I know that they will look at these things: the transcript, the LORs, the SOP, the GRE and TOEFL scores. What is the threshold of them? At the 50% bottom of the applications or what? Is the threshold different from top schools and low tier ones?

I have applied to a top school, to a leading professor, who says that I "would be a terrific addition" to the group. If I can avoid the red flags, how much chance that I will get an admission?


texts: Can I invite myself to a lab to give a talk?

texts: I am a postdoc and will soon(er or later) begin a faculty position. At the moment, due to a rough academic job season and an increasing sense of feeling limited in what I can do in my current postdoc, I am feeling very closed off from others in the field and a strong desire to make connections. Today I had the idea of inviting myself to give a talk in a lab that does research I am very interested in. I am not seeking a position in the lab but rather just want to make connections with others, learn more about the work done in the lab and how it's done, and suss out potential for future collaboration. It is the 'off season' for conferences in my field and I don't have work that I am ready to present in a conference setting, but I do have a talk that's ready to go. Would it be weird to offer to give a talk? I would pay my own travel/hotel expense. It wouldn't be a complete cold call because we have a mutual colleague that I could mention.


texts:
If an undergraduate in medicine and surgery(MBBS) from India wants to practice in UK, the person will have to register with NHS after the licensing exam. And after that the student is put through FY1+FY2 or directly speciality training. And the student will work in the hospital and simultaneously give exams to start working as a consultant.
In India, there's a completely different process. After undergraduation, the student gets licensed as a doctor after which the student does a speciality by enrolling for a postgraduate course at a university.
And attends patients during the postgraduate course just like during the undergraduate course.
If you notice the difference I'm trying to point out...
I want to understand about the following:

What would be the difference between the speciality training in UK and a postgraduate in India?
Why are there not many similar postgraduate courses available at UK universities? (Like it's more of research or only partially-taught courses. It's not like India i.e. fully-taught.)
Will I be missing out on something if I choose to enroll for speciality training in the UK instead of the postgraduate in India?


texts: What can I do if the reviewers' comments on my manuscript are not correct?

texts:
I sent my paper to one journal, which took about 3 months to respond to me.

They decided to reject my paper, and gave me some comments and reasons why my paper was rejected. The first reviewer said a little about my paper and he/she wants to reject my paper because I do not have co-authors with me. I did the paper by myself.

The comments of the second reviewer seemed disrespectful and misinformed.

His/her comments were written in a way that suggests that I am stupid and what I did is just rubbish. He/she gave me some comments (the reasons why he/she wants to reject my paper). When I read the comments, I found that all the comments are useless and wrong. For example, at two simple points (very known in the area of my topic), she/he said these points are wrong. All researchers in this field know that what I wrote is completely correct. All other comments were just written with very low respect.

What can I do? I did this hard job alone, so why do I need to find someone to be a co-author? I feel that they rejected my paper because my name is not known in this area (I am a student).


texts: How to show patents in my google scholar profile?

texts:
I have a Google Scholar profile where my conference papers are located.
Google automatically added one, while I had to manually add another.
See https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ZveOfZYAAAAJ&hl=it
I'm also inventor for a few patents that appear on Google Patent.
See https://patents.google.com/?inventor=alberto+soragna&language=ENGLISH
I wonder why Google does not show the patents automatically in my Scholar profile. I see several users that have both papers and patents there.
BTW since a couple of weeks I also have a personal website where I listed the above publications (patents included), as suggested by Google scholar guidelines.
Thank you


texts: Asking for an REU recommendation letter from a professor in a different discipline

texts: I am applying to a number of Physics REUs that require 2 letters of recommendation. I am having my Physics Lab professor write one, but am considering having my linear algebra professor write another. Her class was smaller than all others (besides lab), so I think she can provide the best representation of my academic skills and personality. She was also the only professor who graded work other than my exams, so she would be better able to speak of the quality of work I produce and my growth over the semester. Will it hurt my chances that she is not a physics professor? I am only a sophomore, so I don't have many other professors who I feel could write a strong, personal recommendation.


texts: Once you have a faculty job, how do you ask for a raise (beyond a yearly university-wide cost of living increase)? Is there any way to negotiate, short of soliciting outside offers? What should someone do if they are not willing to uproot their lives and move to a different city?


texts: Will doing a chargeback on tuition hurt my chances at getting into the same university for grad school?

texts:
I'm taking an independent phys ed course at my local university. I'm also currently studying for the GRE and I'm hoping to start grad school here in a totally different department in fall 2021. There's a professor I really like and have a good connection with here so I'm pretty set on this university.

The instructor cancelled the course after one class due to low enrollment, and the university is saying that since it started, it's too late for a refund on the $650 fee. I've called and tried to get a refund but their HR/registration department won't budge.

I paid with a credit card and I'm considering doing a chargeback. Would this hurt my chances at getting into the grad school later on, and I should just let myself be robbed?


texts: How should I structure my CV since my degree doesn't reflect my primary studies?

texts:
As per the title, how should I structure my CV since when I'm done with my course of study my formal degree (PhD, Computational Science and Engineering) will not reflect my course of study and research (environmental modeling and sustainability). Based upon my projected coursework I will get a graduate certificate in sustainability along the way. Furthermore, most of my publications will be related as well.

Currently my goal is to secure role in academia, ideally a professorship, but my background is industry so I'm used to automated application filtering, it is a concern of mine. As such, how should I structure my CV to reflect my actual research interests, or is this effectively a non-issue in the long run?


texts: Is it rude to ask a professor you do not know and in a different department to borrow equipment?

texts:
I am a grad student in new lab and my PI like to pinch pennies a bit. I want to purchase an accessory for use with an already purchased piece of equipment. I have emailed a few vendors about getting free samples,but I do not think I will be successful. I was thinking about emailing a few professors based on their area of research and the high likelihood that they may have a similar product that will allow me to perform a quick trial and build a case for my PI.

I would need to borrow it for like 2 weeks and I can autoclave it to ensure it is well cleaned prior to returning.

Is this considered rude?


texts: How do I refer to my own work in an anonymous abstract?

texts:
I am currently working on an abstract for conference submission. The contents of the proposed presentation build heavily on part of my master's thesis.
Since the abstract has to be written anonymously, however, I am struggling to find a good way to refer to the work I did in my thesis.
Some thoughts on a few options I had so far:

Although my thesis hasn't been properly published, simply pretending it doesn't exist feels weird and academically questionable.
I'm worried that, by citing it using my last name while making no connection to me as the author of the abstract, I would make it seem as if I did significantly less work myself, minimize the apparent impact of the presentation, and thereby drastically reduce the chances of getting accepted.
Referring to the previous work I did using "in my master's thesis..." seems like the best option so far, but citing work without providing author and title feels odd too.

Is there any established way of going about this?
In case that makes any difference, I am working in the field of linguistics.


texts: Could undergraduate degree be revoked for minor noncompliance in human subjects research?

texts:
With the understanding that universities define "minor compliance" in various ways, I'm curious about whether an undergraduate degree could/ever would be revoked for the use of interview data gathered prior to receiving formal IRB exemption.

In the particular case I'm interested in, interview subjects were current and former elected officials and other "elites" accustomed to speaking publicly about the questions raised during interviewing but nonetheless granted anonymity. The student didn't initially realize he needed exemption given the subjects' backgrounds, but he ultimately sought it from the IRB. His thesis adviser approved the exemption request and said he could still use the interview data already collected for his thesis, although this was contrary to the IRB's stated policy.

The exemption was only granted after the student submitted the assignment, but the student was still awarded his degree. Could the student face revocation of his degree or other repercussions if something like this resurfaced? My sense is that such an extreme outcome could only apply to PhD students, but I'm curious to hear what others might think.


texts: Can I copy the "background" and "related work" part of my published paper?

texts:
For example, I want to propose a new algorithm for an existing problem, and I already have published several papers about this topic, they share exactly same background, is it OK for me to copy the "background" and "related work" part from my published paper?

The background contains some already well-studied techniques, in order for the paper to be self-containing, they should be briefly introduced (instead of just being cited).

I don't see the meaning that I have to express the exact same thing in a different way for every new paper


texts: Why would an international applicant with a perfect GPA and an undergraduate thesis get rejected from 16 grad schools?

texts:
I applied to 16 graduate schools for this coming fall. I am a transfer student at a Top 10 Public US school. I had GPA 4.00 at the time I applied (Not yet took graduate course yet, but I wrote that I would have taken 8 graduate courses at the time I applied).
I didn't have the REU (but I was proceeded algebraic geometry research thesis), and a few experience of presentations. I am an international male applicant.
The person who wrote my letter of recommendation is famous/reputable (one Fields medallist and one very famous mathematician of algebraic geometry). But, I couldn't hit any of the graduate schools (including the Top 50-60 US math department schools). I am not sure what was the reason I can't get into any of the graduate schools to which other students in my school were admitted.
What can I do to improve my prospect of getting into any graduate schools?


texts: What do people with bachelor's degrees in humanities actually end up doing?

texts:
If someone majors in political science or international relations or history, what do they end up actually doing as a career?

I've found numerous sites that give the obvious answers what they can do, but to date no site that says what they actual do.

It's all fine and dandy thinking that an International Studies degree will prepare you for a career as a diplomat, but if 95% of graduates end up selling life insurance, or filling out form 2773A-11 for some bureaucracy, I may want to make a different set of choices.


texts: How to Make up for Mediocre STEM GPA? Will Postbac Help?

texts:
I am a senior in college majoring in cognitive science and considering grad programs in neuroscience/cognitive science. Long story short, I didn't do super well in a lot of the STEM classes I took. Specifically, I got a B- in intro programming and C+ in intro computer science, C in gen chem (A- in lab though), and C- in orgo. I've gotten B's and B+'s in every math class I took (intensive intro stats and calc up to multivariable).

I've gotten A's in most major classes (related to cog sci), A-'s and B+'s in biology classes.

Overall, my GPA is hovering around a 3.3.

I definitely tried hard in my classes- I think some of the bad grades are due to mental health struggles related to personal and family crises, others due to me turning in problem sets late (i.e. would've gotten A's on most of them but got points off for lateness). So the problem was rarely me struggling with the material.

I don't feel confident in terms of applying to grad school, so I'm seeking advice from anyone who's been in a similar position. Can a good GRE score, research experience, and good rec letters make up for these bad grades? Will I need to do a postbac or something extra to enhance my chances of getting into a neuroscience/cognitive science PhD program?

Also, will the fact that I am at Yale make any difference or not really?

Thanks!


texts: Solutions to the lack of code transparency in economics?

texts:
Like most fields that rely on statistical analyses, economics has suffered from a few well-publicized coding errors (most notably the Foote and Goetz finding that when correcting Donohue and Levitt's programming error in the abortion/crime paper the conclusion is reversed), and likely suffers from far more which are never discovered.

What solutions have other fields used to ameliorate this problem, and how might the incentives of researchers be changed to encourage them to submit to these changes?


texts: What is considered a reasonable length for a math research paper?

texts: I've read that many mathematics journals have page limits. What are they, roughly? I think in one of Steven Krantz's pieces he says that if a journal is going to publish a 50-page paper, then "it had better glow in the dark." A friend of mine heard that more junior faculty (straight out of grad school) should avoid publishing papers more than 30 pages long.


texts: Do grant proposals with no funds for faculty members have higher chances of being accepted?

texts: Some grant proposals mention that they only want funds for students and no funds for faculty such as summer salaries. Would this point increase the chances of being funded by some agencies? Specifically, if two similar competitive projects were proposed and one asked for faculty salaries and the other didn't, would this make the difference?


texts: Transferring to a new PhD program. How to explain lack of ability to find funding in application?

texts: I have completed 1.5 years of a PhD program and I am told now that there is no funding left for me to continue. I am looking for new departments to apply to. How should I explain this situation in my resume and interviews? Should I be upfront and simply state that there is no money left or should I frame it more like it is my decision to leave because I think the research at the new place is amazing or something?


texts:
I'm writing an article that has something to do with the multipole expansion with irreducible tensor operators. The topic is old, and I only find books talking about it.

So is it OK to cite tertiary sources (books) in scientific journals? or must it be a primary source source article? Or does it depend on the journal?

The question I'm asking is general about citation rules, and not for this specific case, though this specific case with irreducible tensor operators is what I'm facing right now.


texts:
In order to get feedback more quickly, I've seen some teachers run a quick (certainly no more than 5 minutes), entirely optional, anonymous survey for students at the end of each of each class, meeting, or session. The idea is to get feedback on what is working and what isn't on a per-week basis before mid-term or end-of-term evaluations. What are good questions or prompts to use on a survey like this?

For example, I am currently planning to ask something like:

  Any feedback on the BLANK? (e.g., was it rewarding, challenging, about the right about, etc.)"

Where BLANK will be the readings, lecture, and discussion for the class session. I will also ask a general question like:

  "Any other feedback or things you think I should know?"


texts: (asking for a friend) I'm currently teaching at an undergraduate institution with a Masters in leadership. However, for accreditation purposes (and making the higher-ups happy) they want me to get a Ph.D.. I'm not interested in getting one, and honestly it won't help my courses. In short, are there any post-graduate alternatives to a Ph.D. in leadership that would satisfy accreditation statistics?


texts: How to mention a recently dead scientist?

texts:
I would like to mention in an article a scientist that passed away in 2015 and was universally recognized as a pioneer in his respective field. Since many knew him personnally, I would like to mention him respectfully, such as 'the Late Dr. XXX' or 'Honorable Dr. XXX'.

I am afraid it would be unethical, especially considering that many other authors that I mention are also gone (but few people really knew them) ?


texts: How do you know your paper is ready for submission?

texts:
I am writing a 3 page letter and my advisor basically told me to prepare it by myself and send it for submission.

I have written papers before, but in most of those cases my advisors helped me a lot in revising the papers. Perhaps my advisor wants me to see how much trouble it is to publish a paper lol

I have revised and re-revised and re-re-revised my paper, but I am never sure whether my paper will get rejected because my logic is not perfectly right or maybe its horribly wrong.

When do you know you are ready to submit your paper?


texts: Confusion regarding manuscript status in IOP's article tracking system and ScholarOne Manuscript System

texts: I had submitted a manuscript in an IOP journal a month back. In the IOP's article tracking system, the status changed from "1st reviewer agreed to report" to "Editorial Assessment" instead of "All reviewer reports received". However, in the ScholarOne Manuscript System, the status changed from "Awaiting Referee Reports" to "Awaiting Decision". What should be the interpretation of the current status of the manuscript?


texts: Sense of humor allowed in academic writing?

texts:
I'm reading a paper at the moment and very bored and then I thought if I write a paper, I would like the writing style to be not so boring or having some kind of humor. Is that allowed in academic writing?

"Why so serious?" - Joker.


texts: What is scholarship score in paper review?

texts:
I got paper reviews and I found there is an item scholarship,

Can anyone tell what is scholarship score mean in paper review?


texts: What is - if any - the difference between PhD and doctor?

texts:
In a Simpsons episode of season 25 the dialoge

Monsarno Rep: Say hello to our chief scientist.
Everyone: Augh! Sideshow Bob!
Sideshow Bob: Dr. Sideshow Bob.
Homer: Real doctor or PhD?
Sideshow Bob: PhD.

takes place. In my country there is only a doctor and I thought a PhD would be exactly that in Anglo-Saxon countries. I would like to know is there a difference in the USA between a PhD and a doctor?  Especially: What did they mean in the dialogue?

Edit: In hindsight this may be a duplicate, but originally it wasn't because I did not know that the "doctor" of the dialogue was about a medical doctor.


texts: Are students allowed to read recommendation letters written for them?

texts:
As a relatively new assistant professor,
I'm beginning to write recommendation letters for a few students.
Recently, a student asked me to write a recommendation letter for him.
The web link which was sent to me contains text which reads:

  Please note that, under the provision of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance of Hong Kong, information contained in your reference report will be shown to the applicant upon request.

This was extremely surprising to me,
because it was my impression that in the US,
all recommendation letters are private
(i.e., the student is not able to read them).
Even though I am employed in Hong Kong, not in the US,
I had expected that this practice would be the same in my current country.

Questions:

Am I correct in my understanding that typically students are not allowed to read their recommendation letters?
If it is the case that the student would be able to read the letter,
should that affect what I write in the letter?


texts: My manuscript is rejected by the editor after receiving the reviewer's comments. The rejection is based on the comments from the reviewers. Two reviewers rated my manuscript as important. I received a full 2-page long comment from reviewer 2, which after all recommends re-submission after extensive revision. The problem is that one of my data is not relevant to the rest of the manuscript. So the manuscript needs extensive re-write, re-collect of the irrelevant data. The rest is ok. This is the reason for the rejection from the editor. So if I revise and re-collect the data, should I re-submit it to the same journal with a rebuttal letter?


texts: What is the meaning of "review is overdue"?

texts: I have a status for my paper " a review is overdue"  after 20 days of reviewing my paper, however it is mentioned in the web site that review takes 1 month. What does this means?


texts: How should I address other people in languages with a tu/vous distinction?

texts:
For some context:

  In sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction (from the Latin pronouns tu and vos) is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, age or insult toward the addressee.

So for example in French there is "tu" and "vous", in Spanish there is "tú" and "usted", etc.

In general one uses "tu" (I'm going to use French as an example throughout) for peers or friends, and "vous" for strictly less or more senior people (so for example a professor would use "vous" with their students and vice versa). As a general rule of thumb, if you would call someone "madam/sir", you would use "vous".

In academia however, interactions are usually more relaxed: it's not unusual to call everyone by their first names, even as a PhD student addressing a professor. Similarly, I would expect that use of "tu" would be more prevalent in academia.

But as a new PhD student, it would have been unthinkable to use "tu" with a senior professor just three months ago, for example. And using someone's first name doesn't necessarily imply that I should use "tu" with them.

Should I use "tu" or "vous" to address more senior people? I guess it's probably safe to use "tu" with other grad students, postdocs or young faculty, but what about other people?
Does the answer change depending on if you see the person face-to-face or if you write them a letter/email?

PS: This is all probably language-dependent. I'm mostly interested for the answer in French, if it can prevent this question as being closed for being "too broad", but if it's possible to answer it in generality that would be great too.


texts: Half points and IELTS overall band score categories

texts:
My IELTS overall band score is 8.5 and I am wondering what to call it, i.e. what's the name of the category for this score. Rounding rules of half scores in terms of categories is not explained in The IELTS 9-band scale and I have not found any other resources regarding this specific question either.

Possible options are:

Rounding it up and calling it an "expert user". This makes more sense as there is no score or band above 9.0, so the "expert user" band could be interpreted as anything between 8.0 (exclusive) and 9.0 (inclusive).
Rounding it down and thus calling it a "very good user".
No rounding and calling it "expert / very good user".


texts: How do I turn down an internship offer by a professor because I have a better offer in a corporate research lab?

texts: I applied to several corporate research labs for internships. Seeing no progress on my application, I emailed a professor in a top university asking for an internship. He was impressed by my work and agreed to accept me. Now I got an offer from a top corporate lab in my area of research. How do I politely decline the professor's offer, given that I might want to do a PhD with him in future?


texts: Is a post doc advisor who makes superficial contribution entitled to authorship?

texts:
I am a postdoc with two advisors (not something I would recommend for everyone). I would describe the involvement of my two advisors in the project I undertook as quite superficial. I met and discussed a lot with them, they gave me some useful ideas, but they didn’t contribute much to the core of the project.  I didn’t even feel they put genuine effort to understand what I was doing.  Most of their feedback was related to ideas that didn’t work or was not implemented. If the right for authorship is defined by a significant intellectual contribution, then I wouldn’t really describe their role as such.

Is it ethical to include them as coauthors in the article summarizing this project, with an author contribution statement that describes each one’s role?

In this case their role will be something like giving useful tips, analyzing the results, ..etc.


texts: Professor wants my "non-funded" master's data

texts:
I have recently abandoned my master's program. Long story short, she was a very strict director who always put me down. I didn't get along with her, and she never gave me any emotional or financial support. Now that I have quit, she asks I do a backup of all of the work I have done for her. I don't think it is fair that I have to give it to her, especially since there was no funding AND she kind of forced me to quit. I can't find any rules that adresses this type of situation.

Should I give her what I have done since I produced those results while being her student?

Here are more details: After 4 semesters, she told me that I didn't have the abilities to complete the masters program, and that she didn't know what to do with me. While it is true that my work wasn't the best, there also were a lot of problems with the actual project which explains why we weren't going as fast as she would have liked. She went on to talk to the dean, and I went to see my co-director for some alternatives so that I can complete my studies. He came up with a new project,with less interactions with her and more with him, which she rejected. She said that seeing how I have "not produced a single result", she won't start a new project. if I want to continue with her, I have to complete a number of tasks (on the original project) within the semester, and if I fail to complete them, the project is over. Since I was (still am) in a deep depression from working with her, I refused to continue seeing how I don't want to get psychologically weaker. I left school and hoped to get all of this behind me, but she then writes to me saying that since I decided to abandon, I need to give her my all of the data, articles, and other works. I don't understand why she wants my work when she says that I was an incompetent student who hasn't produced any results.

She never did any investment apart from giving her time, I paid for all of my studies and did my own research alone. I don't think I owe her anything.


texts: Could an inexperienced advisor hurt my career?

texts:
I have been offered a PhD position by an inexperienced professor in a great institution in Europe. Despite the fact that the institution is very strong in my area, since the position was offered by this particular professor, I would have to commit myself to working with him for my thesis. This professor is young, and relatively inexperienced, but I enjoy the things he works on, and we seem to get along well.

My question is, would having an inexperienced advisor hurt my growth as a scientist, or my career in general? Will I have the time during my PhD to also work on the side with other, more renowned professors in the department, or is one usually focused in a single research project?


texts: How to start doing significant research?

texts:
I'm a graduate student in applied math (applied probability, asymptotic etc.). I have written several articles on either solving "small" problems, or developing particular methodology/techniques towards certain type of problems. I'm at a stage where I have lots of ideas and if I want to I may be able to work out the details and write a few papers based off of them.

But none of these things are anywhere near significant much less ground-breaking etc. My advisor said a really good PhD is supposed to make ground-breaking contribution in just one problem/direction, instead of doing petty works in three and put them together to form a "pseudo-thesis". I know what exactly what he is referring to but have no clue where to start to searching for those ground breaking ideas.

My advisor does not like to suggest ideas/problems to me because he said he doesn't know what would be ground-breaking either or else he would do it himself than gift it to me.

As of now, all my ideas do not seem to carry much strength in the sense that they do not withstand much investigation or turn out to be "paraphrasing" classical paradigms. I suspect that I may need to probably read beyond my field because I reckon everyone in my field pretty much is familiar with the same set of literature and has a similar way of thinking. So they have exhausted great ideas that are possible under that mindset over the decades and only leave relatively small "fruits" for me to pick up.

My advisor said it may be good to read quantum physics as he himself is reading that and sees "lots of potential" in cross-disciplinary investigation. It would be a big investment for me because I don't know nothing about physics beyond Newton's law. But I'm in my second year so there is still time for lots of things and I think I'm tempted by the idea of learning physics and do cross-disciplinary research, although I'm keenly aware of the risk. Is learning a completely new field a good pathway towards big discovery? Should I take the risk as a PhD student? How do people stumble upon big discoveries? Is there general guiding principles behind this?

Thank you.


texts: The difference between "reviewed by" and "communicated by"

texts:
I´d seen the phrase "Reviewed by (someone)" and also the phrase "Communicated by (someone)" in published papers, what they refer to or the difference(s) between them?

Thanks


texts: I've observed that many PIs are especially prone to having favorite students in their research group, and will treat these students differently than others. Most of the time, this isn't so obvious and doesn't cause problems. However, from time to time, this will be made extremely clear as the time spent on the "favorites" are orders of magnitude more than other students in the lab. This also includes assignments of better projects etc. Of course, I realize that as humans, everyone has favorites, and it is unrealistic to expect manager figures to treat everyone equally. However, I have noticed that in the few groups I've worked in, some PIs will make it embarrassingly clear. For instance, it will often lead to hurt feelings and lost productivity when something essential is not done for one student's project (i.e. read over drafts, provide necessary components of experiments) while the advisor runs to help another student with mundane aspects of their experiment (i.e. actually helping them do the experiments, or spending a lot of time talking with them while telling others they are busy). This is of course common in all workplaces, but I do feel that the advisor/trainee relationship is different in that in many ways the success of the student is very much dependent on the advisor.


texts: What to consider when presenting without PowerPoint?

texts:
(I hope this question is not off-topic, if it is, maybe you can suggest how to make it on-topic?)

I am in the biological sciences and I'd like to present my research (in front of colleagues who know about our research area but not specifically about my topic) without using PowerPoint (or slides created by a similar tool). I have about 30 minutes for the presentation which is supposed to be the basis for the subsequent discussion of my work.

There is the possibility to use a whiteboard and/or flip chart. And of course I could provide my colleagues with some printed material before the presentation starts.

My motivation for this kind of presentation is simply to move away from the expected and conventional PowerPoint-presentation and try out some different techniques.

What should I consider to make it easier for my audience to follow, and what should I avoid?


texts: How to cite my own report that hasn't been published?

texts: I wrote a research paper in high school in the field of lasers and optics but did not get published. It is on the internet open for anyone to read. How should I go on citing this? I want to refer to it in an application where it asks me to cite all works I have been a part of.


texts: What citation style is this? It has numeric reference, title in quotes, "Last, F.F." name style

texts:
A style I'm required to follow, unfortunately unnamed:

  [1]   Last, G.L., Loo, B.F., Mooo, C.C., “My wonderful title” Int. J.
  Heat Mass Transf., 32(19-21), pp. 234-245, (2001).

  [2]   Moobar, A.D. and Been, D., Book about pink ponies, New York:
  Wonderful publisher, pp. 34–41, (2003).

Features....

numeric numbering in []s
First, L.L. name style
article title in quotes
year in braces at the end

The closest I could find is MLA Seventh edition, but it never does numeric references.

To answer some suggestions below: I didn't find a style file with the publisher. And no clear style description exists, other than the examples provided. (There is a few more, but the features I listed are the main thing in common.)

Again more information: http://spie.org/x14101.xml#Word is the instructions to follow. They provide an example MS Word file with manually typed citations. While I can use the LATEX file, I already have the paper in .DOC and need a citation style for that. So this is a question of its name.


texts: How to effectively respond to harsh suggestions from the faculty of review committee?

texts:
As generally expected the doctoral review committee has to evaluate the PhD student by asking questions, by debating etc.,

Faculty in doctoral review committee can give soft suggestions and are capable to provide grade for student for that particular semester and can even fail the student.

All the above are not insulting since all are dependent on performance of student.

But how to respond to the intimidating comments by faculty in the committee that are harsh and targeting personally, which are not deserved for a doctoral student?

  Example for harsh suggestions includes follows:

  1) Don't roam outside too much, sit and do work silently;

  2) Better to eat less and work more;

  3) It is not worth for you to do this degree;

  4) Can't you understand the content that bachelor degree students can
  understand?

  5) The work done by you in this semester can be done by masters
  student in a week.

  etc..,


texts: Interview for postdoc position via Skype

texts:
I was wondering what type of questions an applicant should expect from a Skype interview for a postdoc position (in theoretical physics). I understand they must depend on the interviewers. But I am looking for a generic answer. Here are some specific questions that I have in mind.

How long will it be?
Will it be a Q&A session? In that case, what type of questions are usually asked?
How to react if the position is offered directly and the applicant wants some more time to decide?


texts: Extremely lost and unmotivated in new lab, what am I supposed to do?

texts:
I'm currently in a Ph.D program for pharmaceutical sciences. Long story short my background is cell biology and I originally worked in a Cancer lab. My lab relocated and I could not follow. I was placed into a medicinal chemistry lab. This is how things work here, we get little choice. Anyway, I love my PI hes great, and my lab mates also great. However I have no clue what I'm doing. I have a project thats moving along nicely but once again . . . I don't even know why it's moving along.

I don't understand chemistry, I have a mere 8 credit hours from my undergrad in chemistry, and now I am asked to operate under conditions that would require a significant chemistry foundation. In my eyes all I have been doing is mixing what I am told to mix, run it through a column, perform TLC, NMR, and mass spec, and that's it. I don't know why I'm using one solvent over another. I don't know the mechanism behind any of my reactions, and hours and hours of googling has yet to teach me anything about them. No matter how many questions I ask (and I ask a lot) I don't retain anything or understand half of it because it's all upper level concepts to which I have no base to put them on. How am I suppose to defend any thesis like this? How could I ever start a career? I have no motivation in lab because I don't understand anything,at all. I don't have either the time or the drive to teach myself years of chemistry I never learned. Moving labs is 100% NOT an option here. I don't know what to do, any advice is appreciated.


texts: Using a figure from a PhD thesis, but changed slightly. Copyright?

texts:
I am using a figure from a PhD thesis in an IEEE conference paper.

I have changed it slightly, mainly by adding text.

Though I will cite the author and publication, do I still need to pay the (what I am quoted as) $100 for rights from Springer? They have published the thesis under SpringerTheses.

How much can I use without paying the fee?


texts: Rules for notifying co-authors about re-presenting a project at a conference

texts:
I am a PhD student in molecular biology & bioinformatics in Australia. I have previously presented one of my projects as a poster at a conference. This was sent for review to all co-authors, changes made and presented.

A couple of months down the line, I was asked to present a poster at a local conference. I re-submitted the poster abstract, which was accepted. I did this without consulting my primary supervisor as I thought any dispersal of the work would be welcome. Since then, she has started to dislike the results of that project. When the conference was around the corner, and I told her I was presenting, she accused me of bad scientific conduct for presenting something in her name. I apologized, explained why I had not consulted her and retracted the poster.

She’s not dropping the matter though and seems to be using it as a target for some larger disagreements she has with me. What are the rules for re-presenting work or posters? Are there any guidelines and how serious was this accidental transgression?


texts: Professors meeting undergrads in social events

texts:
I know a professor in my university that I was close to when I was an undergrad, not in a academic setting, but in a social setting (church in my case). I did not take his class, but I do know that he is close to many other undergraduates in the social circle, and many of them do take his class.

While I'm fairly certain that he does not play favoritism, I'm unsure if the professor should withdraw himself from such social circle because he is bound to have his personal friends take his class, and that might be a potential conflict of interest. However, the town is a small college town, and it's unreasonable for him to switch to another social circle (church) since all churches are full of undergrads, and perhaps that is asking for too much.

How should professors behave in this situation? Is it ok for him to be part of a social circle with many undergrads, knowing that some of them may take his class in the future?


texts: What can I do if I want to publish my PhD thesis work as is, but my advisor wants months of additional work?

texts:
I recently completed my PhD thesis with minor corrections and I presented most of the data in international conferences (posters and talks). Now I am focused on writing up the data for publication in a journal.

For the publication, 2 of 3 supervisors want me to change the direction of the analysis from data driven to theory-driven which will take several months and still might be rejected. They say the data is publishable as it is but that they want to fit the data to a theory that they are pursuing for other research grants (i.e. independently from me), and it may (or may not) lead to a better cited paper. I want to try to publish the data as it is, because that is what is in my thesis, I have presented these results before and they fit with my career interest.

I was wondering whether it is acceptable to push for publication how I want it, i.e. if we do not agree on this, who takes the lead decision? At the moment, I am in danger of not publishing this work because we cannot agree, but I don't feel this re-analysis is to do with the quality of my thesis work, and is more of a hidden agenda. My supervisors had involvement and that is not the issue. If I were still a PhD student, a re-analysis would likely happen (out of interest) but since I am a post-doc in another research group, I'm not keen on a re-analysis for the fun of it.


texts: PhD supervisor (who I use as a reference) is the department director for position I am applying for. Should this bias be avoided?

texts:
I am applying for a position at a University. The director of the department at the University I am applying to was my PhD supervisor.
Is it still proper to ask them to provide a letter of recommendation? Or is this a bias (conflict of interest) I should try and avoid?
EDIT: The director IS involved with both the interviewing and hiring process; however, they said to still use them as a reference.


texts: Decline fellowship offer after writing proposal together

texts:
I am PhD student in my final months, and I know that I don't want to stay in academia forever. However, I wouldn't mind doing a postdoc for two or three years, because I really like the academic work.

I have written a postdoctoral fellowship proposal together with my potential future host. The host has agreed to fund 1 year from her own funds, while the fellowship pays for another year. A few days ago, I have been awarded this fellowship.

In the meantime, I have also applied for industry positions (as I wasn't sure whether I get the fellowship), have recently had an interview and just now I got a job offer ready to sign.

Now, I have to choose between the two, and I am inclined to take the industry position and to leave academia for good - because the company has been on my "wish list" for many years and I potentially might regret having declined the job offer in a few years.

However, I am not sure whether this is fair towards the professor, as she has invested a fair amount of time into the proposal. I have not told her anything about the fellowship outcome nor the job offer. Could I still decline the fellowship without bad feelings, or have I already committed myself into this postdoc?

somewhat related:
How to politely decline a postdoc job offer after signing the offer letter?
Please note, I have not signed anything yet, so I am asking from a moral rather than a legal perspective.


texts: Ethics of Accepting Unneeded Merit Based Scholarships

texts:
I come from a fairly wealthy background, and am lucky enough to have parents who are both footing the bill for my tuition, as well as providing a very comfortable living stipend while I'm in school.

Without thinking much about it, I dropped a resume to be considered for one of several merit-based scholarships awarded each semester by my college. Short story short, I've been awarded a partial scholarship for next semester, but I've come to wonder whether it's ethical to accept it.

On the one hand, the criteria for the scholarship makes me as deserving is anyone, and that's of course why it was awarded to me.  But I can't help but wonder if that doesn't ring a bit hollow.  I don't even have to work while I'm in school, and am starting to feel as though I'd be taking the money out of the pocket of someone in a rougher spot.

It may be worth noting that my parents consider this money earned by me, and will simply pass any tuition savings directly to me in cash.

Is there a generally accepted view on this one?


texts: Listing an offered (but not taken up) position on CV

texts:
I was offered a lecturer (assistant professor) position which I decided for personal/professional reasons not to take up. I therefore remain currently a postdoc. I have seen people listing such offers on their CV, with the addendum "not taken up". I guess the rationale is to convey the message to future prospective employers that "someone already deemed me good enough for this kind of job".

I was wondering if while I am a postdoc it is a good idea to list said lecturer offer on my CV, and if so, whether I should drop it once I manage to secure a lecturer (or equivalent) position elsewhere.


texts: Responding to doctoral offer letters - What questions to ask?

texts:
'Tis this season of doctoral offer letters. I have been accepted to a few of the institutions I have applied for thankfully and now I want to ask the deans questions about their offer letters. For context, these are U.S. and Australian mathematics doctoral programs. A few I thought of are:

Is there a healthcare plan included in the offer letter? Subsidized by the institution?
How many hours do other students spend on their TA duties? How many are formally requested?
What is the average housing price of the area?
Does the department have a tea time? Regular seminars?
Does the department have regular funding to send students to conferences such as the Joint Math Meetings?
What is the passing rate of students for Quals on their first try?

I should also note that, unfortunately, I have not heard back from my top-pick school where there is a professor that I very much want to work with. The schools I have been accepted to do not seemingly have a person that does the research I am currently interested in. Can I ask how they would see my future pursuing research in XYZ at that institution? i.e, advice on who to work with there to do that sort of work.


texts:
ZbMATH sent an article for post-publication review. As of a little more than a month ago, I worked at the same department in the same university as one of the authors. We have not cooperated on a paper, but have otherwise interacted.

Should I decline to review the paper due to this conflict of interest (as I would do with a peer review for e.g. a journal article), or do zbMATH reviews have more lax standards for conflicts of interest? The reviews are post-publication, and for a review database and not a journal, and furthermore they are not anonymous, so they are quite different from journal peer reviews.

The review guidelines of zbMATH did not mention conflicts of interest.


texts: If the same paper had many contributions in many fields, can I cite each contribution separately?

texts:
I am writing my thesis in computer science and have some issues.
I have several papers with more than one contribution in many fields (enhancement on several algorithms).
I want to mention each algorithm with its enhancement separately. Can I cite the same paper in different paragraphs in the literature review?


texts: Is using an answer I posted online on Math.SE considered plagiarism?

texts:
To expand on the question, I recently (as in yesterday) posted a question on Math.SE and also wrote my answer in the post, claiming that my answer was wrong. One answerer pointed out that I was correct, but simply needed to do a quick deduction step, after which I edited that question with that deduction step.

So if I use this answer now in my assignment, will it be considered an academic offense? None of my university's resources are helpful at all in this regard. I'm a student in the sciences, and all the 'resources' of the university are towards arts students. I'd like a clear cut answer because informing my instructor that I posted my own interpretation of a question on an assignment is really out of the question, since I don't know if consequences exist for that.

I'm already looking for an alternative answer, but I'd like to know if using my current answer would be an academic offense. Thanks.


texts: Writing an open-source software and publishing it, for the sake of getting cited

texts:
I have some specific knowledge in a software widely used in experimental condensed matter physics. Currently, different groups implement their different programs using this software. I plan to write a "universal" program that might be used with little to no modifications by researchers worldwide. I plan for it to be free and open source, but I would like to publish the work in a journal for the sake of getting citations.

Question: since writing such a program requires time and effort, I think it makes sense to request researchers who would use the program to cite my paper. Right?

Note: I know that many people do this, but I would like to hear different viewpoints.


texts: How would you write an ethics approval for a study conducted on human data, when the dataset is publicly available?

texts: The dataset was not collected by the authors, but the study was conducted on a publicly available dataset. The source of the data is cited, but the source does not have an ethics statement itself. The data is heartbeat time series.


texts: How to add mathematical rigor to systems research?

texts:
My research focuses on wireless networking and designing various protocols. I primarily build systems. I, sometimes, analyze the performance of those systems, using techniques from probability, statistics, and algebra.

I want to improve my understanding of the mathematical underpinnings of my work. Specifically:

Derive and prove theorems on properties of a system and prove it;
Model a system.

This post differs from SE posts like this and this because I'm looking for concrete steps to incorporate math rigor into my systems research. I found the answers in those posts to be too abstract.

Other posts, such as this and this, provide concrete but scattered advice, suggesting:

take theory courses;
read math-heavy papers and learn.

For (1), what types of courses are likely to be useful? Is Great Theoretical Ideas In Computer Science a good source?

For (2), I find it difficult to lead from reading a proof to writing one of my own, or from reading about a model to creating my own model. Input is easy, output is still hard. Any good examples (papers, books, or online courses) to learn how to output theoretical results?

Besides these two lines of suggestions, any other specific suggestions on how to be a more mathematically fluent researcher for someone like me who is from systems background?

Some more context for the whole question: I'm working on my first theory-oriented paper and I have great difficulty in proving the optimality of my proposed protocol. Thus I'm asking to see if there is a general way to hone my proof skills in the short term and my general math skills in the long run.


texts: Will once turning down Master's admission impact a PhD application in the same department

texts:
I notice there have been some similar questions, like Will turn down a graduate (Master's) program have effect on my application for the same program?.
But my situation is a little bit different.
I once turned down a Master in statistics admission at University A and accept another Master in applied mathematics at University B.
At that time, I think the Master program at University A focus more on the applied statistics but I want to learn more math and theoretical statistics to prepare for applying for statistics PhD program.
So I accept the applied math master program at University B.
I plan to apply for statistics PhD program at University A this fall.
Question 1
Will I be put into a less favorable place compared to other applicants because of this?
Question 2
Should I mention that I once turned down the master's admission?


texts: Is there a problem with citing an article that cites a retracted article?

texts:
I'm looking through a few journal articles and I notice that they have cited an article that has been retracted (based on invalid conclusions).

If I cite that article that cited the retracted one, would that be valid? Moreover, should I check the references of every article in that article to see if they cite any retracted articles?


texts: Should considerations be made if half of a project group drops the course?

texts:
I am a student who is completing a course where the major assessment is a Project where you work in a team of four to complete it in different deadlines (Draft and Final).

However we have been informed that two of our group members have dropped the course and no considerations will be made. We are expected to work as a team of two when everyone else has a team of four (with some that I know of experience one person drop outs).

Would it not be ethical to make some sort of consideration? Maybe splitting my two person group and placing us in other groups that have had one member drop out?

The Lecturers reasoning is that "If someone is sick on your team you are still expected to make deadlines". However I know that if I had a deadline for a project and half of my team was off the entire time with some sickness then some sort of consideration would be made.

Is this ethical or am I looking at this wrong?

Thanks.

EDIT: The students are NOT COMING BACK

EDIT:
I just got back talking to him. He does not plan to change anything, stating that some people only have one person in their group now.

I said I would be happy to take them into our team but he said that was not an option. I emailed my unit coordinator as I believe this is unfair but I doubt anything will come of it.

At this stage we are just pushing on ahead but I am keeping my emails in case we fail and need to apply for a review.


texts: Is it possible to change paper title after send back from reviewers for revising?

texts: Me and my supervisor were written a paper on medical imaging as a part of my master thesis, we sent a paper to a journal for publishing, after a period of time the journal send us back the paper with some comments from each reviewer. In our perspective a number of questions from reviewers comes from a word "Novel" that we wrongly put it in a title. And I want to ask you professionals that is it possible to change the title? is it a good or bad idea? this will make our paper to be refused by reviewers or not?


texts: What can happen to a paper submitted without co-author knowledge

texts:
Every answer in this related question has some phrasing about it being unethical or, as the first answer "does not have the right".  Does a supervisor have right to submit paper without consents of coauthor students?

Another similar question and answer states simply "No" to being 'allowed' to do this. Co-author blocking publication . Some comments suggest it is extremely rare and unlikely someone would do this.

This question is similar Paper submitted by co-author without authorization, but about how to handle the situation as they still wanted it to be accepted.

Yet, the one case I can find in COPE, the self-described Committee on Publication Ethics, does not seem to consider this a journal issue.

  • The corresponding author submitted an article without the knowledge
  of all or some of his co-authors.
  • The corresponding author was under contract with research centre X at that time.
  • The scientific content of the article is correct. A minor error that occurred since publication can be corrected by an erratum.

The result/answer to this problem:

  On a show of hands, half of the Forum suggested that the editor do
  nothing further, a few suggested publishing a correction or some form
  of note on the paper regarding the authorship dispute, and only two
  people suggested a retraction.

Are there any reasons, legal or society-wise (does IEEE or some groups have specific information related), that this is not the standard?  This is not a question on if someone is allowed to just publish, it is literally asking, so-what if they do? What can possibly happen (to a paper or person) if someone publishes a manuscript without their co-authors permission?


texts: Are PhDs from former Warsaw-pact countries recognized in North America?

texts: Is someone completes a Ph.D. from a former Warsaw-pact country, would her Ph.D. be recognized in North America as in the same status as a North Americal Ph.D. in case of academia related career?


texts: Can I disclose a conflict of interest with some professors from a particular university in responding to comments?

texts:
I have been given comments for a major revision from a respected journal. But suddenly, I guessed with a high probability that a person who is a long time adversary of my supervisor may be behind this comments and he won't be satisfied no matter what I do.

What should I do? Can I disclose a conflict of interest with one or two professors from a particular university not to be a referee? What may happen?


texts: Is it ethical to require students to participate in an ongoing research study in order to graduate?

texts:
My university requires Computer Information Systems majors to complete the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) through SkillsOne (CPP online assessment system) as a part of an ongoing research study, in the university's terms "to help advise incoming freshman". Completing this assessment is mandatory for all graduating seniors - i.e. you cannot graduate unless your name appears in the list the department receives from the testing site at the end of the semester.

The paradoxical thing is that the institution requires informed consent from participants, as required by the Institutional Review Board (IRB), yet participation is a requirement, which goes against the idea of voluntary participation. IRB quote from the informed consent page (emphasis mine):

  Potential participants must be provided with information about the research project that is understandable and that permits them to make an informed and voluntary decision about whether or not to participate.

So, forced participation in this research study violates IRB requirements, yet it is required in order to graduate. Is this ethical on the part of my institution?

Aside: Personally I have no problem with such an assessment, but I have no choice but to agree to participate which bothers me slightly, given that my identity (first name, last name, institutional email) is tied to my responses. I am inclined to think that others feel the same way. However, this question is not about my personal opinion, but on the ethicality of such a graduation requirement.


texts: How to learn technique from papers (technical fields)?

texts:
I'm an incoming PhD student. I did some research during my undergrad and master. One of the things my advisors told me was to read papers but not too focused on "technical details". This did help me navigate literature faster by just skimming for the "main ideas" in the paper. But is this the right attitude when the purpose of reading papers is to learn techniques (e.g. how to prove certain bounds, how to analyze certain matrix operations)? I felt that understanding an overall "strategy" or "essential ideas" has not been very effective in advancing my own research. That is, I'm still not very good at doing those type of complicated analysis and my research effort remains "elementary". It's like taking a math class without doing any homework: I feel that I know what is what but tend to struggle when actually sitting for an exam and solving problems.

What is the most effective way to cultivate technical abilities as a researcher, without the aid of textbooks and problem sets?


texts: Creating compound alerts with Google Scholar

texts:
In Google Scholar, I want to create a compound alert, which returns papers that are relevant to two concepts. Concept 1 is all about a branch of machine learning, which can be triggered by the words "deep learning" and "neural network". Concept 2 is all about a branch of robotics, which can be triggered by the words "navigation" and "localisation". Furthermore, the article must definitely include the word "robot".

How should I express this as a single alert?

I know that an AND is implicit, such that:

"navigation" "localisation"

will only return articles which contain both those words.

I also know that an OR can be define, for example:

"navigation" OR "localisation"

will return articles which have either of these words.

But in my case, it is more complex. I basically want to say:

("deep learning" OR "neural network") AND ("navigation" OR "localisation")  AND "robot"

These brackets are just to illustrate what I want to achieve, but I'm sure that they're not interpreted in this way by Google Scholar.

Any ideas? Thanks!

Edit: My current solution is to just have four separate alerts:

"deep learning" AND "navigation" AND "robot"
"deep learning" AND "localisation" AND "robot"
"neural network" AND "navigation" AND "robot"
"neural network" AND "localisation" AND "robot"

However, most of these papers are triggered by three or four of the conditions, and it is very frustrating getting several emails for each one! So I am hoping that there is a way to express this all with a single alert.


texts: Should a marker TA handle students' marking issues by email?

texts:
I am a university marker TA. The instructor requires TAs to meet students if they have marking issues. But I found most students just come to meet me for better grades, not to ask questions, and some are tough to handle; they just insist they should get better grades.

I feel that is annoying. Is it a better idea to handle the cases by email, and let them talk to the instructor if they have further questions?


texts: Are American universities letting international students start their PhDs from their home countries?

texts: Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, not only international traveling but also obtaining visas is very difficult and sometimes impossible, depending on the country. Are American universities accepting international students that are in such predicament and allowing them to work from home (in this case, their home country)?


texts:
I have finished 5 years of my PhD, and I have 5 publications in top tier (A* computer science) conferences based on work done during PhD. However, most of the publications are in unrelated areas. I am finding it almost impossible to compile a thesis from all my publications.

All my publications have me as first author and my advisor as second author. My advisor hasn't read any of the publications, and he is incapable of judging them even if he reads them. I know that the work I've done can't be compiled into a thesis. Due to the completion of PhD duration, I have stopped receiving scholarship from my Institute.

Even without my PhD degree, I can easily get a high paying job. My other option is to compile my work in the form of a thesis and hope that the thesis reviewers accept it.

What should I choose?

Update
I have got several brilliant answers and I wanted to accept many of them. I have decided to complete my PhD without antagonizing my advisor. He has agreed to grant me permission for submitting my PhD thesis, if my two papers, that I submitted recently, get published. If they indeed get published, I will have 4 related papers, and hence, I will be able to compile a thesis. I won't be able to add my other papers, which doesn't really matter. I told him that I care about my PhD and not the best thesis award, but he is hell bent upon it. He has agreed to provide me a project assistantship salary as long as I am pursuing PhD.

Despite what @einpoklum said, it doesn't seem fair to leave without a PhD after working for so many years. Thanks everyone for the help.


texts: How to find size of academic literature in a given discipline?

texts:
The question is related to the trend of research and focus on different disciplines.

Is there some trend assesment which shows the number of articles or conferences on a specific disciplines?

If someone would like to see the trend of research on let's say Nano Technology or Semantic Technology is there some source of information which shows the number of conferences related to the discipline and the number of articles tagged for these disciplines?


texts: Can an acknowledgement section of a thesis contain names of music bands?

texts: Can I add some music bands in the acknowledgement section of my bachelor thesis? I used to listen these bands during all my 3-year long studies and during all the writing of my thesis, so I think they helped me quite a lot.


texts: What resources do you use when developing a new course from scratch?

texts:
I am in the process of developing two new state-of-the-art graduate courses. In the past five years I have been heavily involved in these fields and will use my own research and research from other relevant groups. I am also looking at new course developments in other universities.

Are there any other resources that you use when developing a new courses from scratch? Can anyone give me additional pointers?


texts: Is a German Hochschule able to offer a Ph.D.?

texts: Can German Hochschule offer a Ph.D.? I know that some of them can't, but does this apply to any hochschule or does it differ from one to another?


texts: Maintain scientific output after having a baby

texts: I could have written this question in some other stack places, but prefer to do here because the affinity with the audience. I am the head of a research group, 38 years old, engaged in a lot of things and working on average 12 hours per day on research and all related stuff. My son (first one) was born last week and we really enjoy it. My only concern is: how will I be able to cope with my workload and scientific output after my paternity leave (in two weeks)? I really never thought about this and wonder whether other academics could give advice.