texts: Is publishing papers with many co-authors detrimental to one's academic career?

texts:
I’m looking at some friends’ works, at good labs, in good schools, but some of their publications have 10 co-authors – I even found one with 15 co-authors.

I’m sure the lab and its PI(s) are doing well from such collaborative efforts, but at the individual level, are the PhD students being harmed, because the authorship is spread among so many people?  I wonder if this kills their chances of securing post-docs later on, because they published with a big team of people, and I wonder if this signals that they have not done enough ‘independent’ work.

FWIW, those papers are in medical machine learning.


texts: Supervisor asking me to list a co-author who has literally done nothing

texts:
I am in the final stages of writing a paper to submit at an IEEE conference. I am the primary author, in the sense that I did most of the work and most of the writing. I have three other co-authors who have contributed a significant amount of advice and proofreading (one of whom is my supervisor).

Last week, my supervisor told me I should add person X as a co-author (in addition to myself and my three existing co-authors). I have never met X and they have contributed absolutely nothing. It's not even clear if X has looked at the work we have done!

My response was as follows: "Fine, if X at least looks at section Y to make sure it has no errors, I'll put them as the last author." This has not yet happened, with less than a week to go before the deadline. My supervisor is still insisting that I add X as an author.

What should I do in this circumstance?


texts: How are PhDs from foreign universities percieved in the US?

texts: I live and teach at a university in S. Korea. I may have an opportunity to complete my PhD in TESOL or English linguistics at this university. However, I am reluctant because I have heard that PhDs from non-Western universities (in particular, Korea) are not valued or equatable to US PhDs. Anecdotal evidence from my department supports a similar notion: all the PhDs in my department were received in the US. So, my question is, how are PhDs from non-Western universities perceived? Would a university rather hire someone with a US PhD rather than a US citizen with a Korean PhD?


texts: I forgot to add preprint submission (BioRxiv) before the actual journal submission, what can I do now?

texts:
I was entrusted to do the entire submission process on my own (previously done by the PI) as a learning process, so I am learning by trial and error.
I was supposed to initiate and complete all the bits in the submission portal of the journal, submit the manuscript to BioRxiv, and then submit to the journal. At least that was the order I was advised to follow.
In the rush of getting things done, and done right, I forgot to submit to the preprint server, before submitting to the journal. Now that I check the author guidelines of the journal (ACS publishing), they advise:

... authors are allowed to deposit an initial draft of their
manuscript in a preprint service such as or including these specific
preprint servers, ChemRxiv, bioRxiv, arXiv, or the applicable
repository for their discipline prior to submission. Please note any
use of a preprint server in the cover letter and include a link to the
preprint, and as appropriate, state how the manuscript has been
adjusted/updated between deposition and submission.
Electronic posting of conference presentations or posters secured by subscription or
institutional logins are not considered prior publication works. All
other prior/redundant publication is forbidden.
Upon publication in [journal X], authors are advised to add a link from
the preprint to the published paper via the Digital Object Identifier
(DOI). ChemRxiv and bioRxiv add this link for authors automatically
after publication. For further details, contact the Editorial Office.

Since you are supposed to mention the DOI from the preprint server in the cover letter to the editor (which is already written, signed and submitted) I'm thinking that I should not just submit the manuscript to BioRxiv without somehow notifying the editorial office.
The question is how to do that in a nice way. Should I send a mail to the editor-in-chief? the managing editor? I don't want to negatively effect my chances by annoying the editors unnecessarily, but I also don't want to assume anything and make a mistake along the way.


texts: Determining the appropriate research design

texts:
I am currently working on my master's thesis. My primary task is to perform qualitative research on the development of a purpose-built software application.

I realise that I am now doing things in a rather backwards fashion, as I have already decided how I will do my research -- now I am trying to find an established research design to back it up.

My research approach is as follows:

I will first do a literature review of the current research in the field and develop a proof-of-concept mockup based on this and my own initial ideas. I will then conduct interviews (5 or so) with professionals from the field, and improve the mockup. Then I will arrange an iterative series (well, only two actually) of workshops with acutal users to determine their impression of the current design and content. The plan is to improve the mockup after each workshop. The final result will be a conceptual design of the software application and perhaps a suggestive software requirements specfication.

I have looked into different research strategies, such as "grounded theory" and "design science", but they both seem to be too time consuming. My time limit is 20 weeks in total.

Are there any developed research strategies that would fit my methodology?


texts: Finding math articles of small length in a given journal

texts:
For some reason, I sometimes enjoy reading very short articles in math.

Question: Is there a way to filter the articles of a journal (such as Journal of algebra) by their length (from smallest to largest)?

Maybe this is somehow possible using for example mathscinet when it is not directly possible at the journal.


texts: Do I need to ask permission to provide a narrative of a scholar's methods?

texts:
I am writing a secondary school archaeology and history textbook. I'm inspired to adjust the book based on two types of students:

Some are excited about what they are studying, and tell their career counselors they want to be archaeologists/historians.
Others have grown up believing scientists are liars, and are just messing around creating a big conspiracy of "Fake News".

Based on this, I don't simply want to have a textbook that says "this happened" or "this is how they lived", but I want to also show students what steps the scholars actually too to arrive at their conclusion.
That means I'm digging through journal articles to identify which scholars came to those very detailed conclusions, and converting their "Methods" section into easy-to-read narratives:
Sam Spade was an associate professor at the University of Arizona. He wanted to find out
when the Hohokam switched from eating big game to farming. He sent graduate students to
collect thousand-year-old samples human feces from various archaeological sites. The Hohokam
people tended to leave this in areas near... Back at a lab, Sam used a machine called a
radiocarbon dating...

In a traditional textbook, Sam Spade's research would merely receive a footnote, but here he's considerably elevated in status, and his work presented in narrative form. This unknown scholar is presented as someone important.
Given how I'm using this information, is a simple citation of the work still sufficient, or do I need to be sending each and every scholar a detailed letter asking permission, and describing how their name and work is going to be used?


texts: Which GPA is more important for applying to PhD programs, graduate or undergraduate?

texts:
I have BE and MS from the University of Tokyo (a research university in Japan) and
I'm planning to study and do research in US as a PhD student.

My questions is: which is more important, GPA at graduate school or GPA at undergraduate school?

I have a GPA of 3.8ish at graduate school and a GPA of 3.4ish at undergraduate school.
So this is a very important problem to me.


texts: Keeping track of and sharing what you read

texts:
Do you keep a list of all papers you have read? Are there any good tools for that? and do they allow people to publish what they have recently read?

The tool I'm envisioning would allow people to follow each-others readings. I find it hard to determine which new papers are worth my time, and one of the greatest benefits of having a wonderful advisor was to get recommendations of which work to follow and which wasn't all that important.

So, are there any tools that sufficiently many people (incl. professors) use to record and publish what they read? Or am I the only one who would find that useful?


texts: Citing Mathematical Proofs given on Math Stack Exchange

texts:
Good morning.  I recently posted a question on Math Stack Exchange here and got a fantastic solution.  The problem in question is one that I've had for some time, and both myself and research professor have been searching for proof of the claim both through papers and using mathematical techniques.
It would appear that a particular solution to the problem has been found, though I must go through the proof with my professor to verify its truth.  If it is true, what is the protocol for citing the proof and giving the author credit?  Do stack exchange contributors post solutions knowing that their work may not be credited?  I would never want to plagarize, but the information is useful for the greater problems that we have been trying to solve.


texts: Does a PhD student get paid without a TA/RA job?

texts:
Can a PhD student be paid simply for doing research?
If yes, is it applicable right from the beginning?
I am talking about UK and the US specifically.


texts: Is there a way to follow particular authors on arxiv?

texts:
I have googled and it is possible to create rss feeds for categories; nothing about rss feeds for authors.

Is there a way to automatically follow a large number of authors on arxiv?


texts: Can I help the impact factor of a journal by citing my own papers?

texts:
Lets say I have published paper A in a journal.

I am now ready to submit a new paper, paper B.

Paper A is cited in Paper B.

Since B is related to A, I will probably submit it to the same journal.  Would this help the journal's metrics?

Or, lets say paper A currently has no citations.  Would they be reluctant to accept paper B?

The reason I ask is that it seems like a single person could tackle an area of research that nobody else cares about, submit paper after paper to the same journal, and achieve a paper-to-citation ratio near 1:1 (is that  good?).


texts: I need to change PhD topics. Should I pursue one of my advisor's ideas, or one of my own?

texts:
I had an idea for a PhD proposal and found a supervisor for that topic. My supervisor is pretty busy and is reachable only once every month or two at best.

Unfortunately, I saw that my research topic could be usable only for publishing a paper, but not to develop something really novel that could justify its presence in a PhD thesis. Thus, I feel like I've "wasted" a couple years of my PhD.

When I realized that my current research was not enough for a PhD thesis, I came up with another idea related to the same field and topic, but the problem is that my supervisor is not an expert in the field that I am proposing. To discover this other technique I spent an additional year.

Now I have the following courses of action:

Since my supervisor is not an expert into the field that I am proposing, then I should try to find a co-supervisor at another university. This is not so easy because a lot of professors have their own set of students to advise.
My supervisor has a list of projects that could serve ås PhD research topics, but I'm not so interested in those topics. However, I need to graduate so I am seriously thinking of picking one of them. The problem is that I am very rusty in the background of the topics he has because since I haven't looked at those topics since my bachelor's program.
I am pretty confident that I can continue to develop my new idea by myself, even though I know that is going to be pretty difficult. The problem is that I will have to do it all by myself, and my supervisor will not be able to give me any advice because it is not his field of expertise.

If anybody is curious my PhD is in Computer Science.

So what should I do? Should I aim for a new topic or should I stick to my "feelings" that I can make my proposal work, even I have to do it alone.


texts: How can corresponding authors protect themselves from academic spam?

texts:
Almost immediately after becoming a corresponding author, my academic email account quickly become inundated with unsolicited communications from predatory open access journals and “conferences.” My spam filter does a fairly good job, catching maybe 50-75% of these messages. But now that I will be using a new academic email address, I’ve thought about what I can do to prevent this problem from recurring. My idea is to publish the following text in the corresponding author field:

  Email: myname9@university.edu (remove digit “9” for correct email address)

Will journal editors let me do this? To my surprise, I’ve never seen another author try something similar. I’m confident that no one has (or will ever have) the “fake” email address indicated above, so there is no risk that the spam will go to an innocent third party.

Previous questions on Stack Exchange relate to email forwarding; none addresses the spam issue.


texts: Economic Reviews/Journals for High School students

texts: I am a 10th grader and I am looking for a journal/review to publish my paper in the subject of macroeconomics. Is anyone aware of any journal/review that would allow me as a highschooler to publish such a piece?


texts: Rampant sharing of authorship among colleagues in the name of "collaboration". Is not taking part in it a death knell for a future in academia?

texts:
I am a final year PhD student in chemical engineering. Since the start of my PhD, I was clear on one personal philosophy. I will put my name only on those papers where I have made substantial contribution. And I will put my colleague's name on a paper only if he/she has contributed substantially. That's what collaboration means to me and anything else seems fraudulent.

However, my group members frequently put each other's name as co-authors in their papers even if they work on completely different topics and have no contribution in the paper. Now, this is unethical in my perspective, on the other hand, they have 10-15 papers by the time they graduate which increases their chance to secure a postdoc position or a tenure track position.

My advisor says, granting of co-authorship is entirely up to the first author and she doesn't interfere with the process.

I have experienced similar sharing of authorship during my masters degree as well. Past PhD members or postdocs were given co-authorship in spite of not contributing anything.

I will be getting 4 (first author) + 2 (co-author) papers from my PhD, which is far less than my colleagues' output.

My colleagues often say that I should have been more collaborative (i.e. share authorship without contribution) as that would have increased my publication count and helped everyone. I simply can't see myself doing that.

Have I severely affected my chance of a future in academia by not taking part in the authorship sharing practice?


texts: What's the best cheap printer (hopefully under $100) for printing papers? Need one because of the COVID situation.


texts: How important is primary authorship in judging someone's research contributions?

texts:
I wanted to know how the research profile of a doctoral student or a post-doc is usually judged in academia. In the list of peer-reviewed conference or journal publications, how crucial is the position in the authors list, to judge the research calibre.

I am aware that being the first (primary) author is most important. As an example, consider a case where a candidate has 4-5 publications. In all these publications he/she is neither the primary author nor the supervisor of that project. On the other hand, assume he/she has 2 highly ranked publications as the first author. Which of these two cases can be used as a comparative study of the candidate's research contribution.

I see these days a kind of rat-race for papers, where each publication has more than 4 authors. Is the "number of papers" parameter lone enough?
Agreeing that working on multiple projects is important, should the focus be more on publishing one's own work rather than collaborating on multiple papers where the contribution is not significant.


texts: What to do when a professor gives an undeserved D to a PhD Student?

texts:
If a professor gives a D for a student "just because", what can the student do?
In previous classes, this student was called ridiculous in the front of all the others, and this professor was always saying bad things about her.
Knowing that a D is a shameful, cut-off  (one can lose their funding) kind of grade, the professor just gave it to the student.

What should one do in this case? It is like someone has the power to crash one's career. It is wrong on every possible level.

Please, help.
Academia should have moral standards, and things like this should never occur.

It happened with my partner this morning. She is in shock. She is so brilliant and hardworking. She may have had her career ended today.

P.s: Sorry for the mistakes. I wrote it blindly.


texts: Recently I saw a professor advertising an open PhD position in his group. He asked students to submit CV and motivation letter. I sent an email but received no reply. Two weeks after that I sent a follow up email, but still no reply. How much time would be reasonable to wait? Should I give up already? I know the professor doesn't owe me a reply, but since the position was advertised I thought he would sent an acknowledgement that the application was received. Am I wrong? Is that the common thing to do?


texts: What time of day should I schedule my thesis defense?

texts:
With apologies for the attention-grabbing title: of course I am not actually asking you to tell me when I, specifically, should schedule my defense. But I have heard very plausible-sounding rumors that the time of day at which a PhD candidate holds their thesis defense can have an impact on the difficulty and even the candidate's chance of passing. For example, scheduling a defense just before lunch may mean the committee will ask fewer and less involved questions, because they will be anxious to finish so they can go eat. Similarly defending in the mid afternoon may lead to less complex questions because everyone is tired - or alternatively it could cause a more difficult defense because the committee members are in no hurry to get back to work. And so on; the rumors abound.

What I would like to know: is there is any research backing up the idea that there are better or worse times of day for a candidate to schedule their thesis defense? Any anecdotal experience from people who have sat on multiple PhD committees?

Of course I'm not claiming this should be a major influence on when one schedules their defense, but people do talk about it, so (as a scientist!) I can't help but wonder if there's any truth behind the idea.


texts: How to indicate when quotation marks are not used to quote someone in APA?

texts:
I am careful about placing attribution to quotes in assignments. Occasionally, in assignments, I must use quote marks for purposes other than quoting, but my instructor misinterprets this as a "quote missing a citation".

In the Wikipedia article on Quotation Marks, one can find a list of examples of other uses of quotation marks. Suppose I need to use quotation marks to "signal unusual usage" ("Quotation Marks", 2014) or show some "distinction" in "usage" ("Quotation Marks", 2014) or even scare quotes. Is there any way in which I can indicate this, in APA style?


texts: How to cite own unpublished work in text and reference?

texts:
I would like to cite one of my own unpublished work (under review). Is it okay to cite as following?

In text
According to author et al. (year of submission).................
In reference
authors list, year of submission, title, name of the Journal (status)

How about the results?

How will the reviewer access those results cited here?

Is it okay to provide them as supplements?

If I provide couple of figures as supplements, whether it will violate the copyright of the under reviewed paper?


texts: Can something published on arXiv or optimization-online.org be mentioned in my CV?

texts: I was thinking about submitting one of my papers in arXiv or www.optimization-online.org and hence I was just wondering if mentioning the same in my CV would be appropriate. Is it done usually? If yes, how should I actually mention something like this in my CV? Kindly guide me (I have no previous experience in publishing papers and I'm an undergraduate student).


texts: At the age of 27 is it worth changing graduate schools and starting again?

texts: I am interested in areas of theoretical physics/mathematics which simply don't exist in my institute. I tried 2 or 3 different groups here which were not in my interest (but I felt I had some transferable skills) and it didn't work out.


texts: Should I upload my conference paper to extended (but entirely novel) Journal submission?

texts:
I am submitting my journal article to IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.
This is a completely new work. However, initial results have been submitted
to IEEE Globecom 2018 (the result will be announced on July 15th).

My question is, should I upload my conference paper to the journal submission?


texts: How does a graduate program's admissions committee operate?

texts:
How does a typical graduate program's admissions committee operate? (In the US --- I understand that in Europe admissions are often structured differently.)

My mental model at the moment is several professors sitting in a conference room with a stack of printed applications and a few piles: accept, maybe, and reject. Three or so professors will read an application and then make a decision. If the volume of applications is large enough, multiple meetings might be required. This is purely my imagination --- I don't know how accurate this model is.

Of course, I'm sure that how admissions are handled depends greatly on the school, program, and department. I'm interested in a few data points to get a rough idea of what the average is.

A few more specific related questions:

How much time does a typical committee spend on each application? I suspect there's a distribution. Obviously unqualified applicants will probably have their applications tossed into the reject pile pretty quickly. Qualified applicants' applications might receive more attention.
Do admissions committees look online for more information about an applicant? I've read some professors (in CS --- not my field) will look at a student's research/project website, but I have no idea how common this is.


texts: How many courses should I take in my PhD

texts:
I finished my masters at University X and I am continuing my PhD in the same university which allows me to transfer up to 20 credit hours of my masters coursework to my PhD course requirements which is 27 credit hours. So now I only need to finish 7 credit hours and I will be done with the PhD course requirement. I heard from couple of friends that I should take more courses because finishing my PhD with a small number of courses might potentially hurt my future by making my PhD less in value. If this is true, how many courses should I take to make a good PhD courses count?

I am interested in both industrial and postdoctoral positions after I finish my PhD.


texts: Is it unprofessional to use graphics from Wikipedia in a poster?

texts:
Is it an acceptable practice to use simple graphics found on Wikipedia (and hence in Wikimedia Commons) in a conference poster?

From the legal point of view, this seems to be fine, as long as the image is properly attributed. Presumably it should suffice to mention the source in acknowledgements section. Or am I missing something?

How would this be perceived? Would it come across as unprofessional? The poster I am preparing is for an interdisciplinary and not too formal event, and the graphic I'd like to add is meant to illustrate a basic mathematical notion. (However, more general answers are very welcome.)


texts: Are P-hacking and hypothesising after results are known considered misconduct in academia?

texts:
This question is inspired by a comment to another question where I asked for help on how to argue against P-hacking and hypothesising after results are known (Harking). Someone questioned the classification of these two behaviours as misconduct, and my general experience (around my close academic circle) is that many see these two activities as part of the way we do science.

Here is what I refer to by P-hacking and Harking.

P-hacking is when someone collects more data, changes the specification of a statistical model, change the analysis sample, or does other changes to the study until the results become statistically significant. Many of these things can be done with a justification, but the p-hacker (p-fisher) does them solely with the intent of obtaining a significant result. In doing so, he or she risks capitalising on statistical error (type 1 error) and publishing results that are basically a false positive.

Harking is when someone generates a scientific hypothesis about the data after seeing the data. It would be innocuous if the researcher acknowledged the exploratory nature of the study and sought to confirm the findings in another set of data (or if he or she used cross validation techniques). It becomes a problem when researchers pretend that they had the hypothesis a priori and that the study was done to confirm it, hiding the exploratory nature of the study and conferring more strength to the results than they actually have.

I am not asking for opinions on whether these things should or should not be considered misconduct. Rather, I would like to know the overall position of scientists in fields where statistics are used. I know of no survey on how scientists view these two behaviours, but I welcome answers that include such data.


texts: "Will be recommended for publication in IEEE Xplore." What does it mean?

texts: "All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings and will be recommended for publication in IEEE Xplore." The quote was taken from a conference site. Does this mean that accepted paper will definitely be published in IEEE Xplore once accepted, or does that mean that there is a chance only?


texts: Can a professor ask for money directly from students to print out handouts for class?

texts: I'm currently taking a class that doesn't have a required textbook, which is why I took it. My professor is now saying that due to her scanning and printing out handouts for use we are each required to give her $15. I'm confused by this because isn't the money supposed to go through my university, as a fee for the class, rather than through her? I just want to know if she's allowed to do this


texts:
Why would a student go to a lecture at all if everything was in the
  book already? The lectures make sense if and only if the lecturer
  tells more than in the book(s) and in more detail (or at least, in a
  better/more clear way). [not my comment]

Especially in light of the Internet in general, what is the added value of a lecture over a (hypertext)book?

Reasons I can think of:

spoken word might stick better, because our language is not primarily based on text,
the possibility to ask for clarification,
some material might not translate well to media

I dislike those arguments, because a huge class can neither run at a comfortable speed for all at once nor answer everyone's questions. The expectation seems to be that the students should be homogeneous and everyone nonconforming should be filtered out.

personal contact affects us on a deeper level, role models are important

Depending on the class size, even that is doubtful.

to form communities,

which would substitute or supplement the professors, but obviously at a different rate.

This is a trick question, because it depends on the style of the lecture.  In my experience the lecturer is acting as a medium and I'm watching them half the time writing on the board, or someone is asking obvious or distracting questions.


texts: MAster's Thesis: How to find the way collaborate and consult multiple people about my work

texts:
I am having couple issues here. First I am an International student and English is my third language. I am very shy and having tough times approaching people for help. I am writing my Master's thesis (in Art History) and I am still in the beginning and while I struggle in formulating my thesis and question, I know what is my topic going to be about. There were two academics who have written about this topic and I do not know how to connect with them and perhaps ask for a help with literature or advice and perhaps discuss my topic for ideas. My thesis advisor hasn't been responsive to my emails and last semester she was on sabbatical which slows me down significantly. But he is a wonderful advisor and have given me great direction regarding the topic and what arguments would have been possible to discuss.

I would welcome any suggestions on how best to approach a professor/ academic from a different university/ organization to help me with literature choices, give me  a feedback on my topic choice, and with general help to work on a research topic.


texts: How should you respond to your teacher who cannot help you with a recommendation?

texts:
I had a meeting with my former teacher in my former school.
While we were enjoying our tea and pan cake, I saw Prof. Nickname, and we invited him to join us. An hour later, after the tea, Prof. Nickname left first and was walking back to his office. I ran after him and asked if he had time to write a recommendation letter for me, and he told me that he was busy with his teaching and could not write the letter for me. I could see on his face that he felt so sorry about it, and I wanted to comfort him but I did not know what I should say. Given that situation, how would you comfort your teacher who could not help you with a recommendation?


texts: zotero: can I manually change a citation style

texts:
I'm in the humanities, and I'm currently using zotero to cite primary and secondary materials in my dissertation. I apply the Chicago Manual Style, and don't have any issues with secondary sources.

I do have problems with primary documents. I use archival materials, so the standard practice in my field goes something like this:

"name document", archive, x, y, z, page.

However, zotero puts the archive at the end:

"name", x, y, z, page, archive.

Is there a way to change the citation code in zotero to correct it(while keeping the CM style)?

Or do I change everything manually (and risk messing up the footnotes)?

Thanks!


texts: How to get on my PhD supervisor's case without becoming a nuisance?

texts:
So my PhD supervisor is very senior in the university. This has its advantages but unfortunately this also means he's very busy most of the time, especially now that it's summer and he's been away on holiday a few times. By and large this isn't a problem; I'm quite happy to get on with my work without much supervision.

The problem I'm now having is administrative. I have a progress evaluation report due and the deadline is nearing (I've already had the deadline extended once). I've completed my section and am awaiting his comments before I can submit (formal procedure). Further, I may need to be moving to another city in ~4 weeks time to work with a partner organisation for 6 months but I do not yet know for certain and my supervisor keeps putting the issue off (this has been the case for the last 4 months).

It's come to the point where these issues are critical, I fear missing the progress report deadline and I need to know where I'll be living at the end of next month so I can sort accommodation.

I've tried sending a reminder email but have received no response. Also, I walked past my supervisor and greeted him but he seemed not to notice me. To make things worse, I don't have the relationship where I can just turn up to his office without an appointment.

I don't really know who I can speak to about this as I work alongside very few people and I don't know what options are available to me save flooding his inbox with emails.

What can I do to press these matters and how can I do it so as not to become a nuisance to him?


texts:
I was always wondering why is the impact factor of mathematical journals "often" lower than the impact factor of journals in other disciplines?  I come up with some guesses  that I would like to know your opinion about them.

Mathematics papers are so hard to read and follow (or so specialized) that only a few people can read and apply their results.
There are relatively a large number of subfields and branches of mathematics and only a few people are working in each branch.
The number of journals and papers in mathematics (divided by the number of active mathematicians) is relatively higher than other disciplines.
A mixture of these.

Please, share your insights about this issue.


texts:
I have a guest lecturer who taught me one module for one semester and graded my work. He is willing to be my referee. Would he be counted as an acceptable referee if I were applying to be admitted for a PhD (graduate admission)?

Edit: I would like to mention that I asked because I was just worried because I don't know if it's standard practice to accept such referees even if they have taught me for one full semester, and some bureaucrats who may act as gatekeepers to academic staff might err on the side of caution almost to the point of inflexibility.


texts: Receiving a reviewer comments of the wrong paper from editor

texts:
I have received a revesion in which one reviewer comments is related to my paper but the other reviewer comment is not related it is may be mistakenly copy other paper coments.
What can i do now?
Is there any reply template to editor.


texts: Why do professors list current position of their students on their webpages?

texts:
I see that most professors list their former Ph.D students and their
current positions on their web page. Is it a kind of advertisement? If so, why? If not, why not?


texts: What does "the manuscript has been removed from your Associate Editor Center" mean?

texts:
I received the following email:

  Dear Prof. X:
  You are no longer assigned to manage the review of Manuscript ID #####. The manuscript has been removed from your Associate Editor Center.

What does it mean? I sent the paper 2 months ago and just today I got the email above. Do I have to wait long as a new editor will check the manuscript?


texts: Feeling pressured to publish thesis results by advisor I don't want to work with anymore

texts:
A couple of months ago I finished my masters in computer science. A few days a go the following happened.

My main supervisor wrote an abstract of results from my thesis. He put me as the first author along with the two others, and himself.Then he sent a group email informing that the abstract is going to be submitted to a conference. In the email he refers to a previous agreement to submit a paper to this conference.

I have three issues.

I don't remember agreeing to submitting the results anywhere. We did talk about trying to publish the results and I was, at the time, very positive to the idea, but I always understood that we were going to "get back to it" at some point.
I don't want to work on this any more (Nor do I want want my name put on any thing.). There is a reason I didn't apply for any phd position, despite encouragement. Academia stresses me out. I have a job now and am very pleased with that.
His first draft of the abstract was either written to be misleading (over-emphasising a connection to a much cooler subject), or he doesn't understand the context of the results, which makes me feel uncomfortable.

I feel pressured to let them write a paper about the results and put my name on it.. but I'm worried they will misrepresent things and do a bad job. I don't want my name on something I didn't actually write.. even if the results are mine.

Am I making a big deal out of nothing? Or should/can I put the breaks on the process?


texts: How important is it for your website to have a unique domain when applying for academic jobs?

texts:
I am a PhD mathematics student in the United States, and I plan to apply for jobs at liberal arts institutions over the upcoming months.

I currently have a personal website on Weebly.com, which is a service that offers free web-hosting.  The URL they've assigned me is myname.weebly.com.

Would potential employers consider this URL unprofessional?  It would be printed on my CV and business cards, possibly other places as well.  I can pay Weebly $8/month to have a custom URL, but I'd rather not do that if no one would care.  If it makes any difference, I know that myname.com is currently available through Weebly.


texts:
I came out recently with a publishable idea. I analysed it theoretically, and now I need to simulate it - which will take huge amount of time apparently.  I wanted to publish the idea, but I can't wait until the simulation is over. My professor suggested to go for a letter journal (each paper has a limit of 4 pages). This is the first time I write a letter paper, and it does not seem easy at all.

Any suggestions or advices to keep the content within the limit of 4 pages without overcomplicating the paper?

I wish this is not a vague question, or too specific.

EDIT: my field is computer science, but the journal is managed by electrical engineers (IEEE Communications Letters - if it is Ok to name it).


texts: How do I politely and tactfully tell my advisor that I would like more consistency in meetings?

texts:
I am a PhD student. My advisor is great, but like all academics is very busy (administrative duties, other students, research...).

What happens almost every time I try to have a meeting, since the beginning of my PhD, is the following:

We set some date, say Thursday at 10AM.
He isn't in his office at 10.
At 10:30 he arrives.
It turns out Thursday isn’t great, actually, so let’s meet Monday instead.
Comes Monday morning, and the meeting is postponed to Monday evening, and then to Tuesday.
But Tuesday is a busy day too, so let's say Thursday at 10?
But at 10 there are emails to be sent, and more meetings, so let's say 5.
At 5 he isn't in his office, but at 6 we can meet, meaning I come to his office, sit, and wait sometimes half an hour until he's done writing emails, calling people...
Then we can finally start talking. Six days after the initial meeting was set, at 6:30PM.

I think over the past three months I’ve been able to have a total of five to six hours of meeting with my advisor.

Writing all this, I realize I’m a bit upset, and I’m afraid it’s going to show if I try to talk to him about it. Because let’s be honest, I don’t want to continue like this. I cannot plan my work day, sometimes I have questions that could be answered immediately but I have to wait weeks, and it’s just generally an unpleasant experience. (And while I know some people are able to work very late into the night, I basically become useless after 6PM on a normal day...)

Of course the long-term solution is to become an independent researcher and not rely on meeting with my advisor. After all, I won’t have an advisor all my life. But right now, I’m not quite there yet. How should I approach my advisor about this, without sounding selfish or upset?

To clarify: yes, whenever I have questions I try to exhaust all possibilities before asking my advisor: internet, my advisor's other students, other people in my lab (though this is a very specialized field, few people can help me if this is about my research). But for some questions, either I am not able to find an answer elsewhere, or there is no alternative to asking my advisor, e.g. "do you think I should go to this workshop", "where do you think I should submit this paper", "is my abstract ready to go", "I found this and it looks promising, should I continue in this direction or stick to the original plan"...


texts: The hiring process for a postdoc position in the US

texts:
I need a piece of advice.
I found an interesting postdoc position one month ago. I applied all required documents (CV and cover letter) and 4-5 days later I was interviewed by the group (including head). A few days later I was asked to prepare the research highlights and I did that. One week later they asked me to apply for the position via the university website if I am interested in the position, and also requested recommendation letters from possible referees. All letters were provided as I know, and they are positive. Moreover, I know I well match to that position. Of course, I do not exclude other possible existing candidates for the position and I can be not the first among them, of course. So, one month passed from the interview.
I haven't experience in the application process for a postdoc position in the US and this is for the first time for me. Thus, the evaluation and hiring process for a postdoc position is a bit unclear for me. I am not sure that a direct request to the lab head for clarifying the situation is a good idea because in this case, I can look like a hysteric or in need person, and I don't want that due to obvious reasons. I do not exclude that they must prepare for the position a justification or something like and this also needs time.
In accordance with the above, I need a piece of advice. What should I do? Is the situation normal or I'm screwed? What should I choose as a strategy (wait or write)?


texts: What are the masters funded opportunities for a British citizen living abroad?

texts:
Since I have been living in Pakistan for the past 6 years (completed my Bachelors of Electrical Engineering from here), I find myself not eligible for most academic scholarships in the UK.

For international students, the scholarship criteria usually states that I should not be a British Citizen
For British students, the scholarship criteria usually states that I should have been nominally residing in the UK to be eligible for the scholarship or even for standard UK/EU student fees

So I am at the worst of both ends! What do I do?

I am looking for an opportunity preferably in the UK but would be willing to go elsewhere


texts: Can a postdoc write a letter for someone applying for a postdoc?

texts:
I'm a PhD student currently applying for postdocs and while I have secured my first and second letters of recommendation from faculty, the professor that had agreed to write me my third has unfortunately passed away recently.

I don't have a fourth professor sufficiently familiar with my research to write a strong recommendation letter. If I were to ask one, it would be one of those "good but also kinda filler" letters written by someone who knows me but doesn't know me.

Alternatively, I could ask a postdoc I worked closely on several projects for a letter. He would be able to write a strong letter, but of course that's still not ideal because he's a "mere" postdoc.

Which one would you recommend? A good letter written by a professor mostly as a favor, or a strong one written by a postdoc?

(There are similar questions on this site, but those concern Master students requesting letters from a postdoc when applying to a PhD position. Since a postdoc is still above a PhD student, the context is different, so the answers there don't necessarily apply here.)

EDIT: I'm applying for postdocs in Europe and North America.


texts: Should I withdraw my paper if I find another paper published with the same idea?

texts: I submitted a paper and it is currently under review (submitted on 10th March and conference is on 15th October, I'll be notified on 15th July). However, now, in May, I see a paper has just published dealing with the same problem as mine. They indicate that their solution is better than mine. If my paper is accepted, do I have to withdraw it, as it seems to be out of date?


texts:
My doubt is this: if I first publish with a serious academic publisher a small book which gives an overall view of my philosophy of science proposal, could I legitimately try to publish afterwards some journal articles detailing the main specific theoretical questions touched upon in the book, or would it be a no-no and considered by the potential journals a form of double submission or attemp to publish non original content?

More specifically, I could distinguish two cases:

a) I try to submit the material to be published as a book, but I am still waiting for a response from the publisher. At the same time, I try to submit to various different journals (by the same publisher or not) some papers which describe in more detail some of the fundamental questions which are touched upon in a more coarse manner in the book.

b) The book has been already published and only aftwerwards I try to submit the detailed papers.

Would the above be legitimate practices? Or should I try only publish articles detailing questions and proposals not already touched in another publication of mine? Consider that the articles would surely add detail to the questions touched upon in the book, but that the basic lines of the arguments would be more or less the same.

I recently achieved a PhD in Philosophy of Science, and I am still not very expert in the topic of academic publications, so this is probably a naive doubt. I tried to ask my PhD supervisor but I'm not quite convinced by his answers.

Thanks in advance


texts: Submitting paper to journals and/or conferences in different fields

texts:
I know there have been numerous questions on this site discussing the submission of papers to a conference and a journal (simultaneously and subsequently), but I'm curious about a slightly different scenario. Perhaps this is a duplicate but I couldn't find any answers already posted.

If I'm working in a field where there is cross-disciplinary work, is it okay to submit a paper to a journal or conference in each field? For example, a submitting to a medical journal for a novel medical application and a computer science conference for a novel algorithm? Obviously in one the focus would be more on the application of the approach while the other would focus on the "how", but the basic experiment/research and probably most of the content would be the same for both.


texts: Peer review in Computer Science Journals

texts:
I work on both in the area of pure Computer Science and in the area of Computational Chemistry/Biology.

Till now I have submitted papers to well known venues(journals) of both these fields. I don't understand the following situations after paper submission in both these fields:

Submitted papers in non-CS journals follow a quick review procedure i.e. submission - editor assignment - reviewer invited - under review - review completed - [...] Turnaround : 3 months
But, for pure CS Journals, every step is late except the first step which is obvious. Turnaround: 10-12 months

What can we infer given such situations in peer review world?

Note: I am talking about majority of journals in both these mentioned fields.


texts: Can I invite my phd student to be a guest editor of a special Issue of a Journal I am guest editor as well?

texts: I am an Assistant Professor in the USA and I was invited to be a guest editor of a Special Issue for an international peer-reviewed Journal. I was asked to find 2 other guest editors. Can I invite my PhD student to be a guest editor? Are there any reasons not to do it? I thought it would look good on his CV. I will handle most of the papers, I will give him just 2-3 papers to handle so it won't take too much of his time. He has 2 papers published as first name on this topic.


texts: Showing proficiency in a subject without taking a course

texts:
I want to communicate to graduate admissions committees that I know the equivalent of a standard course in machine learning as a result of my self-study. If possible, I would like to avoid taking the machine learning course at my home university to prove this.

Is there any way I can show my proficiency in the subject matter? There are no proficiency tests in my college for this course.

I have a few ideas:

I could blog about machine learning
I could post solutions to exercises from a machine learning textbook
I could make a project that uses machine learning
I could make YouTube video lectures/tutorials.

How would graduate admissions committees compare the following with a good grade in a machine learning course?

Rationale for not wanting to take the course (Please do disagree if you see necessary).

I think self-studying is more efficient than taking a course. There's a lot of overhead involved in going to class, submitting assignments as per a certain format, clarifying grading policy details etc. that I would rather divert to learning more of the material.

That said, having read one of the links in the comments, I now see how unverifiable self studying can be; many students can allege to have proficiency but be dead wrong.


texts: ppt presentation for postdoc position interview

texts: I have to prepare the presentation about my previous research experience for 20 minutes. I don't know what I should include, how big and how  much specific it should be


texts: How much time does each stage of paper in Elsevier Editorial System (EES) take?

texts:
We have submitted a paper to an Elsevier Journal and now I want to know how much time each stage in article lifecycle take?

There is an article in Elsevier site which describes different status of a paper from submission to publication:

Submitted to Journal
Editor Invited (Conditional - this step may not occurs)
With Editor
Under Review
Required Reviews Complete
Decision in Process
Completed – Accept

It also noted that:

  Please Note: Most journals aim to communicate decisions to authors within four months of the start of the review process. There are a number of factors that may influence the actual time taken, most notably the availability and responsiveness of the article's referees. In consequence, peer review times do vary per journal. During the peer review process your article will show a status of ‘Under Review’.

But our paper status is Technical Check In Progress. this status is not mentioned in Elsevier site! I'm confused about this statuses. and now after 40 days the status is still in that stage. I want an estimation about time of this steps to see if I should be concern or not.


texts: Is it okay for a thesis to have sections of very different lengths?

texts:
I run into a situation where the logical division the material in the thesis I'm writing forces me to create sections of very different lengths. Matters are further complicated by the fact that the short section does not naturally divide into subsections.

Is this bad style to divide material like that? If so, what are some good techniques for correcting it?

Also, should the shorter section have exactly one subsection, or should it not have subsections at all?

The layout I have right now looks perhaps somewhat like this:

Section 1 (where I prove Theorem 1)

subsection 1 [10 pages]
subsection 2 [10 pages]
subsection 3 [10 pages]

Section 2 (where I prove Theorem 2)

subsection 1 [10 pages]
...
subsection 4 [10 pages]

Section 3 (where I prove Theorem 3) [8 pages total]


texts: What to do when you are a finalist for a tenure-track position but you want to wait until you complete interviews at other schools?

texts:
I visited a school for a tenure track position and the chair informed me that I am a finalist for that position. While, I still have interviews at other schools remaining, other candidates seem to have finished their interviews.

The chair asked me whether I would take an offer before visiting other schools but they did not give me an offer yet. Is this common?
Does the fact that other applicants have finished interviews affect the school's decisions?


texts: Why isn't implementing scientific libraries in software considered equivalent to a publication?

texts:
In academia, researchers live by the mantra of "publish or perish". This is because the contribution to society that academia gives is the expansion of human knowledge.

However, given the importance of software to conduct research, I don't understand why implementing many algorithms or building API's for research purposes is not equally relevant when trying to get funding.

See, for example, how few papers in math, computer science and software engineering provide source code, despite the entire focus of the paper being on the implementation of an algorithm and its performance in real hardware.

Moreover, see how much research relies on API's. We have linear algebra API's, calculus, computer visions, physics simulations, etc. Many of which are paid software (e.g., Matlab).

If someone is willing to spend time developing an API for a given subject (a computer vision library, a rendering algorithm, quantum physics / computing simulations) and that software provides new and useful tools in open software and for free so that researchers can conduct their research more efficiently, I don't see how this is not equivalent in usefulness as making a paper.


texts: When to follow up for recommendation letter

texts:
I asked two potential referees, 1 month before application deadline, to write me a letter and both gladly accepted, and one asked me to write a draft (which I learned was a common practice).

It has been 10 days and I have never heard from them after I responded thanking them for accepting my request (and supplying the draft to the one who asked).

What is the best time to follow up with them without appearing pushy?

Also, one of my referees had an academic email address, which means the application system sent him an automatic electronic reference form by email, and I have no idea whether it was completed or not. Should I still follow up with him?


texts: When should the grading scheme for quizzes and exams be finalized?

texts:
I am currently working as a graduate teaching assistant for a semester-long introductory physics course, aimed primarily at Biology/Pre-Med undergrads. The students usually have a short quiz every two weeks in a discussion section, along with two prelims (mid-terms) and one final exam. The TAs make the grading schemes for their own quizzes as each discussion section has a different quiz.
One thing that I find very strange with the grading (quiz or prelim) is that the grading scheme is made after seeing the answer sheets submitted by the students, not before. The intention behind doing so (at least for the quizzes) is to assign less points to the harder questions and more to the easier ones so that the average is roughly 7.5/10 (this is a soft rule).
Similarly, on the prelim, the points for individual sub-questions were decided after conducting the exam and seeing a few answer sheets (points for each question were fixed beforehand).

Is this a standard practice for introductory physics courses in the US?

What are the benefits of this practice over deciding a grading scheme beforehand?

From an answer describing a good grading system:

At minimum, a good grading system should meet three criteria:

it should accurately reflect differences in student performance
it should be clear to students so they can chart their own progress
it should be fair

On the first two counts, making the grading scheme afterwards seems to be a bad choice:

Accurately reflecting differences in student performance → making the grading scheme later may bias the grader towards assigning higher points for conceptually easy questions instead of more challenging ones.
Clear to students → the points for individual sub-questions are not assigned beforehand so students cannot judge how much time they should devote to different problems.


texts: Should I do a PhD in Sound and Music Computing?

texts:
I have recently applied to two PhD programs (in Europe) under professors working in the area of Sound and Music Computing (SMC). Both programs are very well regarded in this area.

SMC covers topics such as:

Music information retrieval
Computational musicology
Algorithmic composition / performance
Sentiment and expression modelling in music
Computational approaches to music cognition
Audio signal processing

This is not a complete list. I find the field very interesting.

However, would the industry want to hire someone with a PhD in SMC? Let's say Google (just as an example), which is known to hire many PhDs. Would they be interested in someone with a PhD in SMC, or would they restrict themselves to machine learning / web / search PhDs? And yes... I'm sure that Yamaha would love to hire an SMC PhD, but would I be restricting my options to only a small subset of the industry?

What about academia? How would they look upon an applicant to the assistant professor position who has a PhD in this area? Would they simply reject him saying "Sorry, but we don't do research in your area...", since it is true that most CS departments don't do active research in SMC? Again, would I be restricting my options to only a small subset of universities?

Secondly, how easy / hard is it to switch fields AFTER doing a PhD in it? I may like SMC enough to work on it for 5 years (and get a PhD) but I MAY not want to work on it for a lifetime. In industry or academia, could I switch to something else when (and if) I want to?

One researcher told me that I should only consider pursuing my interest in SMC after I have already established myself in some other, more fundamental, area of CS, like algorithms or AI. Do you agree?

This thread should be useful to anyone considering a PhD in a specialized or maybe even an obscure area.


texts: Is using synthetic datasets in sciences the same as using fake data?

texts:
Sometimes, there are good reasons to use synthetic data in research. In my case I am using data from Synthea, a program that simulated patient data including medications, names and addresses. I know that no hospital would hand me such real data, so there is no alternative. In my thesis I want to reveal specific patterns in patient records.
My idea is to test some statistical methods and neural networks to predict which disease a patient will have when he or she comes to the doctor next visit. Therefore a known statistical process in generating those patterns makes sense as I want to test some methods. I also want to infer which factors are the most important ones to predict the next disease. Therefore a mass of data is needed.
I am still not sure if using such data is useful in research. On the one hand, data protection or confidentiality in my case I would rate as positive cases using fake data, same as simulated data. As I have an ordinary private laptop it is a good idea to work with artificial datasets, as there is no need for special data security and data protection. Medical data are very sensitive and should not be stored on students' computers. Artificial data is also good for testing code and programs, as one knows what is going on under the hoods if the data generating source is documented well.
On the other hand, using faked data is considered as betraying sciences a lot of papers are retracted or removed when using faked data. Data fabrication is also listed as a scientific misconduct incident on the English Wikipedia.
What should I do?


texts: How to ask rejected full-time candidates to apply to teach individual courses?

texts:
My department has a number of courses we need covered by adjuncts in the next academic year. We were given permission to hire one (and only one) salaried adjunct and to cover the rest of the courses with per-course adjuncts. Salaried adjuncts receive benefits and are better paid than per-course adjuncts.

We received excellent candidates for the salaried position, only one of whom we can hire. After we close the search, (how) can I approach rejected candidates about teaching individual courses at the lower rate? Some career adjuncts have told me it would be offensive to offer a lower-paying and lower-status position to someone who applied for a better one, and I do not wish to offend anyone.

While the salaried position was publicly advertised, our institution does not advertise single courses. Furthermore, most of the candidates who applied for our salaried position were invited to by committee members or by our contacts, not because they were looking at ads.

How can I get the best outcome for our students and for teachers who would be willing to teach individual courses? I will continue to ask the administration for permission to hire a second salaried adjunct but do not expect to receive it. There is not much time to wait before starting our per-course search, as the current academic year is nearing its end (and our administration moves very slowly).

Update

Because each of the top two candidates seemed too good to reject, we proposed a second salaried position, which we made by cobbling together the remaining courses and one from a related program. To our surprise, the administration reversed its earlier decision to let us hire only one salaried adjunct, and we were able to make two salaried offers. While my question is moot, I will leave it up for future search chairs.


texts: Can I refuse a grant position I was offered and still hope to work there in future?

texts:
After an interview, I was offered a pre-doc grant for one year. Although I'm very interested in the research, I have other reasons to prefer staying in my current position: I think it would be easier for me to pursue the PhD I want from here.
Is it possible to kindly refuse the proposal and still hope to work with that group in the future, or would I burn bridges this way? If it is possible, how can I refuse the proposal without offending anyone?


texts: Why do professors take on service duties?

texts:
Why do professors take on service duties, such as reviewing papers for a journal, or sitting on university committees?

What benefit does this have to their careers?  I can't imagine they enjoy reviewing papers, at least not more than all the other things they need to fit into their busy schedule.


texts: Can I refer readers to link to a large figure?

texts:
I am preparing a journal paper and I have a very large figure in the SVG format that I would like to include in the paper. However, the figure is very hard to fit it inside the paper without affecting its resolution. I'm thinking to upload it to my website and refer the readers to it (by giving them its URL) because it will be very clear and they can also interact with it (e.g., zoom in and out). That way, I will be also able to shorten the length of the paper because right now it's longer the maximum number of pages.

Can I do that?

Thank you


texts: How should I reference my own previous work in a talk to a general audience?

texts:
I have to give a presentation to a general scientific audience (specifically, an interview talk). As part of the presentation I would like to highlight some of my previous work.

I work in mathematics, where paper authorship is always alphabetical. The standard practice in talks is to replace your own name with an initial. That is, a person with the last name Potter might present their joint work with Granger and Weasley as "the horcrux theorem, due to Granger-P.-Weasley".

Presumably this mathematical convention is not used or even known in the general scientific community.

How do people reference their own work in other fields? How do people reference their own work when talking to people in other fields? To people in a mixed group of many fields?

ETA: thanks everyone for your answers!

I’m editing to highlight a point which hasn’t been addressed yet - how does one convey that authorship in mathematics is alphabetical? (My last name begins with R so I’m almost always the last author in any paper of mine.)

I don’t want to change the order of authors in a published paper, but I also don’t want it to seem like I’ve never been a first author.

Is it okay to simply state this verbally? This seems like it could be perceived as somewhat tacky....


texts: How to get work done whilst feeling crippling shame?

texts:
In academic work, when we are writing or have written a paper for example, there might be strong feelings of shame about the work done or to be done. These feelings can get in the way of finishing or revising the paper, or sending it to colleagues. These feelings may often lead to the writer feeling, quite strongly, suicidal. For example, when shame is the first thing they think of when they wake up. Not getting work done also leads to further feelings of inadequacy and panic over the future. Hence, these feelings make writing difficult, but overcoming these feelings requires finishing the work to a good standard.

As per the title:

How can a researcher write and research when they feel ashamed?

The shame is about the style of writing and the depth of the content/research. It is not about there being something wrong with the research. For example, I might read what I have written and feel too bad to fix it. Or, I might feel that the content (the research) is simply not deep enough, which makes going deeper difficult. Through perseverance, I finish writing papers. But, it takes a long time in an environment where both quantity and quality are important.

I have in the past seen and asked a university psychologist, but they didn't have any specific advice. The psychologist was also supporting too many other members of staff and students to really give enough time to this problem, so I am not sure that this is an option to take again.

I am looking for techniques, founded in psychology, and ideally with some supporting evidence. But more general advice is also welcome.


texts: Mothers listing children's dates of birth on academic CV?

texts: I've heard anecdotally that some mothers will list the dates of birth of their children on their CV, but I've never seen it done myself. The intended effect seems to provide a kind of excuse for lower output around those dates, I suppose. Is this common? Am I totally misinterpreting the motive?


texts: How to deal with a disorganized professor?

texts:
Our class seems very disorganized. I am a graduate student in four courses this quarter. At our school this is week 3. In 3 of my courses, we received the syllabus on day 1. In one of my classes, we haven't received a syllabus yet and I am worried it will become a problem for us. We don't know what subjects we will be covering this quarter, when our midterm will be or what form it will take (our courses are remote), what we will be graded on other than the homeworks which have been assigned, or really any of the other small things which a syllabus would contain.
Every lecture we ask our professor when he will give us a syllabus. And every lecture he gives us a vague "in a couple of days" answer. Well, today we found out we will have a midterm in about 2 weeks, but he wouldn't commit to a date. I am worried that this will interfere with my other classes which are already taking up a good deal of my time, and I have no idea how to prioritize this or deal with it. I have worked in the private sector for several years and never dealt with this kind of disorganization or chaos.
I personally wrote him an email indirectly asking for a syllabus before. That didn't work. We ask him directly in every class when he will write a syllabus. That doesn't work. Several students have asked on our class discussion forum (which he is supposed to respond to). Those questions have gone unanswered.
This is tough because 1) I believe I will have at least one other class with this professor so I want to be very careful and 2) I feel like we have exhausted all of our polite options. I am considering going up the hierarchy, but I don't want to burn any bridges. What should I do?
For the record, I am attending an accredited university. Our program is listed as one of the better ones in the country for my degree, and it's not cheap either. I have high expectations, and suffice it to say, they are not being met.


texts: Are politicians attempting to destroy tenure?

texts:
Apparently, Iowa's politicians intend to enrich the tenure experience by annual gladiatorial games at state schools, regardless of tenure:

those being evaluated below some threshold shall be terminated, and
after (1), the 5 remaining lowest scoring professors will be put to a public student vote, and the one with the least student support shall be terminated.

The source looks legit - blog of the AAUP. I'm not sure if this is enacted, or proposed (I think proposed). I'm also not entirely sure how to link this to an answerable question fit for Academia.SE, but maybe:

Is this a joke I didn't get, or is it true?
Is it part of a broader wave?
Does this contradict any case law, or is being fought already somehow; or will professors just have to live with it?

If this is true, and stands in Iowa, to be worried for the US at large one just has to look at how quality of life legislation spread like a wild fire once enacted in one place.


texts: What to check when examining paper proofs?

texts:
When you receive a paper proof and review it prior to publication, what exactly should you be looking for?

The things that come to mind are any changes in the annotation of author list and the corresponding author. What else is there?


texts: Tactfully asking research advisor for a break

texts:
I am an undergraduate STEM student in an Asian university. At the beginning of the semester, I had about 7 courses which is the usual workload we need to deal with, so I gave a 'semester research plan' of sorts to the professor from another university under whom I am working as an intern.
After midsemester exams, our department shocked us by introducing 3 extra labs for the semester which have weekly assignments and quizzes. On top of that, several of the 7 other courses have their own course projects (some more than one). Not to mention the course quizzes and assignments. I am also working on a research problem with a professor in my own university. Plus, I need to secure an internship for the summer, which COVID has complicated quite a bit.
Overall, I just feel tired and demotivated to work on anything. I constantly break down and worry. I have spoken to some supportive family members about this but they don't really know how bad it is, so they can only offer so much advice. My uni friends on the other hand seem to be getting on fine and I am ashamed to seek help from them.
All this has made me want to take a break from my internship with the professor from the other university. I have barely done any work this semester and I haven't been regular at all to the meets. So I have already disappointed him considerably and I am further sad that I wasted an opportunity to learn and work under him (he is fairly popular in his field in the country).
So how do I tactfully tell my internship guide that I would like to take a break without disappointing him further? The reality is that I am already the weakest link in his research group, so I am worried that this will just convince him to let go of me from the group.


texts: How to initiate the collaboration 'talk'?

texts:
Following my question How to effectively e-mail a professor I met briefly about collaborative work? here, I managed to convince the professor for collaboration. Now he has linked me to his post-docs and a Ph.D. student (his emphasis was more on the Ph.D. student).

He told me to contact them and see how we can collaborate. (actually he sent an email keeping all of us in CC, i.e. me and his post-docs and PhD student).

Now I have an idea that I should read a couple of student's paper and then proceed in the direction. But what would the veterans in the academia suggest should be my approach so as not to miss this opportunity?

PS. Not sure the second tag is correct or not!


texts: Textbook that is a combination of other textbooks?

texts:
A, B, C are three good textbooks from the market. An author/professor translates them, taking chapter 1 from A, 2 from B, 3 from C and combining them into another textbook. The content of the new textbook is literally taken from other sources, with simple editing (cut irrelevant part that they don't teach in their class even it's in the taken chapter).

My questions are:

What is the name of this kind of textbook?
If the author of the new book is the one who makes translation and edition, then is it ethical/legal? What is the name of this action?
If the reason given is "lacking of good resources" in the country, and A, B, C are cited as references, then is this action really bad? Is there any alternative way to do?


texts: Hypothesis for an engineering project that can't be tested due to time constraints

texts:
Question: How can I formulate a hypothesis for an engineering project that I help to develop but probably won't have time to test?

Explanation: The project is to develop a system that will train clinicians to write a certain kind of research data. This type of data will be posted into a community where clinicians can discuss and collaborate on it. I am working on this project and it will be the basis for my master thesis. The value of this project for the company is to generate more of the research data and to thus to create a community that actively discusses its products. Thus, my hypothesis could be something like: The new system will help to generate more research data and support discussion about the company's products. However, I can't test this hypothesis because the marketing and acceptance of the system will take too long. Thus, probably when the hypothesis would be testable (i.e. the first people are using it) I must have already delivered my thesis. I can't think of a hypothesis that only includes the setup of such a system.

Can anyone think of something or give me some hints on how I can come up with a hypothesis or handle this situation?


texts: Consequences of a master thesis with errors

texts:
I finished my master thesis 6 years ago, since then I gained a lot of experience on my field and also in academia. I can say that in that time I was a "child" , very inexperienced. I think that also my advisor did not help a lot, and I tried to do  a lot of things by my own, without someone to really review my things. Despite that, I still received a good mention by the master committee on final results.

Some days ago, I just decided to read part of master thesis, and I just realized a big nightmare coming. I identified a lot of typos, some references errors, and some improvements that I should do, but I did not. The worst thing is that I wrote a paper to a conference with my master thesis results (and some errors are there). The conference is not a high impact conference, but still the paper has my name and is available for everyone...

As I am finishing my PhD studies for now, I am concerning a lot that situation. My dream and goal is to pursue a Professor career. So, my questions are: What are (or could be) the consequences of a master thesis and paper with errors (some minor and some major) in academia? Revoke degree after years by errors in master is possible ( I am concerning a lot this situation that I thought on it)? How can I minimize it (I thought that I can put a fixed version of my thesis and paper in the future, for instance on my personal website)? How those errors can impact me in a Professor recruitment process?

Sorry for the long text, I am blaming myself all the time, and really afraid about the possibilities since I know that Academia career is really competitive.


texts: What MA (MFA?) is needed to become an English / Creative Writing professor at a CC?

texts:
all!
So, this might be ridiculous, and you can feel free to laugh me out, but I'm trying to figure out a new life path. I've spent the last decade as a flight attendant for a major airline, and now I'm at a perfect point to go back to school and get a masters degree. (My bachelors is in Criminal Justice, but I'm working through English prerequisites for the MA below.) I also write fiction on the side--I'm agented, have one book getting traditionally published, and two more on submission with the Big 5 in NYC.
I was looking at Western Governors University to get an MA in Teaching English (Secondary), with the hopes that I could wiggle my way into adjunct or something and find full-time from there. But I just spoke with a friend who's a professor at a university in California, and she doesn't think this degree would help me. (Lacking the 18 credit hours in the core subject, for one, I think? But it's hard to tell; WGU doesn't number their classes like the rest of colleges do...)
Now I'm feeling pretty depressed. If this degree won't actually help me, why bother pursuing it? But an MFA seems like a waste of time and money, especially for someone who's already getting published through years of hard work--for free. :(
How should I proceed? I think teaching English sounds AMAZING, and I'm so ready for a career change. But I don't want to waste my time and money pursuing a masters that ultimately won't help me. This is so intimidating... I'd appreciate any insight!
Thank you! <3


texts: Should CV include special note about published 'cover articles'?

texts:
I just published an article and, when I saw the journal, I was surprised to discover that they put my article on the cover.

My question is, should I update my CV to make special note of the fact that my article was not just published but is the cover story in a particular journal?


texts: Reference request for research on images or colors used in quizzes and exams

texts:
For my exams and quizzes, I print them on colored paper, and I usually try to make them aesthetically appealing with the design. I include pictures that are usually relevant to the material they are being tested on.  I sometimes include funny cartoons.

I do this because I think it makes taking quizzes and exams an experience that is a little more relaxing and fun than if I just had plain white paper with no images.  I also enjoy seeing my students chuckle at a funny picture or cartoon.  I teach undergraduate mathematics, and given that many students have math anxiety, I like to try to take the edge off of that.

Has there been any research done on whether or not having colored paper or images on exams and quizzes are beneficial or detrimental?


texts: Referencing images found in public domain

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How should I reference images found in public domain in my thesis?

I mean, if it would be copyrighted, I would add a comment a la "reproduced with permission from X". If it would be under Creative Commons license, I would add a comment "licensed under XY license".

What about public domain? Should I add some sort of comment to make clear it is public domain? E.g. if I would like to use something from NREL website (http://www.nrel.gov/).


texts:
I propose a session every year in an International conference in USA with 3 more co-conveners and maximum 4 are allowed including me. I am thinking to drop one of them in this year and assign a new member in the list. Although I manage everything from writing the proposal until chairing the session, but still I feel awkward to drop anyone from this list. But I have also no other option, as I need to add a new member. Now following two questions are striking me:
1- Because the title and proposal are same as previous years, is it
ethical to drop one who was already a co-convener of the same
session since last 5 years?
2- How to inform the one that you won't
be in the list this year?


texts: Who determines whether or not a professor receives tenure?

texts:
Does the department determine it, or does the president determine tenure after the department recommends it? Or does the process go through both ways?

And how does this vary from institution to institution?


texts: Breaking off a collaboration/project in science

texts:
I discussed with two fellow PhD students about working together. I have been working on my project for about 8 months, and we started working together around 3 weeks ago. In the beginning we agreed I would be the first author, since I have been doing most of the work and the project is mostly done. After starting the work, however, one of the PhD students has been continuously promoting his work in the project as having more contribution (e.g. he always mentions his work first and mentions mine in a side sentence), even though I have been working on the project for a lot longer than he has.

Recently, we had a visitor that could potentially help with our project. So we decided to give our work in three separate presentations. I said that I could give the introduction for our larger project and we agreed on that (after some very small unspoken disagreement on the mentioned person's part). During the actual presentation, however, my fellow student friend announced that he'll give the introduction (to which I agreed since we were in front of an audience).

So, after this I have a bad taste in the collaboration and would like to break it off without causing trouble. My supervisor and a lot of other people know we are supposed to work together now.

Any suggestions on what I could do? They did some initial work so I am ok with putting their names on my paper if it comes down to it, but I do not want to continue with the collaboration.


texts: How should university employees address student breakups (and drama in general)?

texts:
As I was writing and revising my personal statements, I overheared what was a rather nasty breakup outside of the window shortly after midnight.

I know that personal relationships are not my business in general, and in this case, my involvement was a brief but stern question to the young couple if everything was okay and if they wanted to discuss their issues inside the lobby of the building I worked at instead of the freezing cold outside. I also offered hot coffee or tea. The ulterior intention was to insure that there was no violence in what was an emotionally charged argument.

The result was that he flipped me off and she declined. I replied if she was sure; she said yes and they went off into the night.

With this said, my questions are:

Were my actions appropriate as a staff member of the university (who was basically about the same age as the presumed undergraduate couple ranging from 18–22 and myself at 23)?
Would my actions be appropriate as a graduate student and TA in general regardless of circumstance (affiliation in my group, unknown student in general)?
Would the same actions be appropriate for a professor?


texts: How to find the Endnote template for CJPH submission?

texts:
I have been searching and trying out to find the Endnote citation style to match the one required for the Canadian Journal of Public Health submission for hours, with no success.

It demonstrated that the CJPH style here. It also mentioned that "The style for references is based on the ICMJE Recommendations." I have looked up and searched for the endnote citation template for keywords related to CJPH and ICMJE, but I couldn't find the the one that matches.


texts: What services would you recommend to ship belongings to graduate school beforehand?

texts:
I realize that this question is not exactly pertaining to academia but I couldn't think of anywhere else to ask this.  I fully expect to get several downvotes but please be kind and move my question if needed.

I will be attending Georgia Tech as a graduate student this fall.   Looking ahead at my summer schedule, I would like to ship my belongings  (several pieces of luggage as well as many boxes) to school ahead of  time and have them waiting for me when I get there.  Ideally, I'd like  the school to be able to hold my belongings for 1.5 months (~5-6 weeks)  before I arrive.  Perhaps it is unorthodox but that is the way that my  schedule will work out as I will be visiting some family before I move to Georgia.

I'd like to hear from you what your experiences have been like in  regards to shipping belongings to the school beforehand and if there are  any services that you can recommend.  I called the GATech post office  and housing office but both simply stated that they don't have any  storage space for student belongings and just said to ship my stuff a  day or two before I arrive.  This was obviously unhelpful to me so I  turn to the people here for any advice.

I also Googled around and was wondering if people had used any services like dormroommovers.com or Summer Storage | College Student Storage and Shipping | Collegeboxes.

Thank you for your help.


texts: Is it OK to update code on repository after publication?

texts:
Journals consider that is good practice to release script and codes to repeat the published results, and many of us I think agree with this practice. Code are typically deposited in software version control repositories (e.g., GitHub or BitBucket).

I wonder if updating the codes during reviewing process or after publications (which in my opinion is quite important, in general) remains a good practice.
Maybe the obvious answer is yes, but for example it is certainly not good to modify the data deposited for a published article (or modify its pre-print in a pre-print server).


texts: Is there an independent organisation that oversees the professional conduct of researchers in the UK/EU?

texts:
By professional conduct, I refer to issues related to how a researcher manages his/her research group, including funding (both research and salary) and human resource issue.

For example, there is the Office of the Independent Adjudicator in the UK that reviews student complaints against higher-education providers. But the service offered is restricted to students, and not directly relevant to the professional conduct of a researcher.

An example of such an organisation in the financial field is the Financial Conduct Authority, who oversees the professional conduct of both organisations and individuals.


texts: Masters Student in Math: Picking an Advisor

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I'm a masters student looking to graduate next school year. I've picked a masters adviser already, who's doing some things in number theory but more on the analytic side (not quite my cup of tea, but close enough). I found out recently that there is someone doing algebraic geometry in my department (which is what I ultimately want to do when I pursue my PhD). Would it be in bad taste to switch advisers? Nothing with the original adviser is set in stone, just a verbal agreement and he gave me a paper to start reading.

Also, more importantly, is the closeness of a masters project to what you eventually want to be studying all that important in terms of applications to PhD programs? That is, if I do a project in something I'm not going to pursue further in PhD, would that look weird to PhD programs I'm applying to? The reason I ask is that the professor doing algebraic geometry at my school is not a very friendly guy. Thus I may not be able to get a good rec letter from him, let alone have an easy time working with him.

[Just for some perspective, a masters project at my school mainly consists of reading a paper by someone else, studying it thoroughly, and then presenting it.]


texts: How to deal with a student who harasses the (inexperienced) teacher during class?

texts:
I am a young teacher at college. I have to go way too long, I know but I have the following problem.

In one of my classes, I have this guy who pecks at me for everything I say. He is surely conceited, but it hurts like hell when he makes fun of me in front of the whole class.

However, I take no note of it in class, but later I feel very sad. This makes me frightened to go to that class at all.

He is overconfident and imposing and seems to have got a big gang behind him. He is a threat and he disturbs me. Please help me tackle this situation.


texts: What should I do if I am asked to review a paper that should have been reviewed by an ethics committee, but was not?  Assuming the paper is missing the statement that it was reviewed, and the paper clearly states that data was collected from human subjects.


texts: Quit PhD two years ago, now I want to go back?

texts:
I quit my Ph.D. two years ago because of multiple reasons but largely due to my own naiveness over deciding to enroll for a Ph.D. I decided to do a Ph.D. without knowing anything about it. I wasn't prepared at all. I wrongly chose a lab that has a very poor vision for any scientific advancement. I foolishly chose a supervisor who had no idea what's going on in his lab. Once I understood this, I also became aware of my own weakness that has resulted in not getting me an ideal lab. This realization happened very lately and until now I had already developed a strong vision for my research project and my future career. And according to my plan, it wasn't that lab or supervisor who was going to help me to reach my goal. In academia, everything is connected, so if I wasn't going to be the best version of myself in Ph.D., the chances of finding a better opportunity after my Ph.D. was very less. So I decided to quit my Ph.D. and start it all over again; only this time knowing everything about a research career and how to excel in it. I wanted to become the best and for that, I had to work on myself first. So, a six month gap period was planned after leaving my Ph.D. But this gap time became much longer (because of some unfortunate circumstances); almost two years now and I have started feeling like a failure. I really want to go back and do some quality research. What is the best way to do it?
P.S. I am from India and I am talking in terms of the Indian research institute.


texts:
I am at the cusp of finishing my PhD, and my advisor and I have decided that it is time to publish since there seems to be no hole in the theories that I propose. I have always maintained that I'd like to get a publication in the good letters section such as Physical Review Letters and then submit a longer manuscript to a more specific journal (in my field that would be the Physics of Fluids). My advisor isn't a fan of arXiv as he see it only for preprints with little advantage as it would be easier to just circulate my manuscript among 10-15 established people in the field.

So my question is/questions are:

Is it useful to send in a manuscript to a letters section of a prestigious journal such as the PRL for quick dissemination of my work as well as brownie points for having published in the PRL despite a really high rejection rate.
Are letters section of journals really quick (with a short submission to publication time)?
As a contingency plan, a rejection would mean what exactly to my career/immediate future?
I have always had a soft spot for arXiv since several important works were first disseminated on it but I find that in the engineering community there is still some resistance to arXiv, any comments?

As a side note, I have read the several questions about arXiv on academia.SE and somehow I am not entirely convinced that a young academecian would gain much from publishing in arXiv than in a regular journal.


texts:
I have noticed many academic conferences are held in small resort town. Why? Why not held in something like a 4-star hotel in the city center?

Attending a conference is a paid job, why should we travel to somewhere remote?


texts: What are good database/grade book software?

texts:
I am in the market for a (hopefully free!) grade book software and  would like to see some suggestions. This would be used for a math class and I am planning for many grades (15+) per semester.

In particular, if a gradebook has any features that make it stand out from other gradebooks or spreadsheet solutions, I would appreciate knowing that information.


texts: Can I do experimental research after doing a computational PhD in Chemical Engineering?

texts:
I am a graduate student in Chemical Engineering at a good research university in the USA. I came for the master's program and started working with a professor from day one. It has been a year, I like the research I am doing, and am on my way to publish a paper. The research is challenging and impactful but is purely computational.

I am moving to the PhD program here. There is no issue with research problems or stipend—I am fully funded—but the idea of pure computational for the coming  years is freaking me out. I am worried because I cannot run experiments anymore and I am wondering whether this limits my opportunities after my PhD. Am I going to narrow myself in research careers if I am going for a computational PhD?


texts: What is freshman undergraduate engineering enrollment in total nationwide in the US?

texts:
What is freshman undergraduate engineering enrollment in total nationwide in the US in three most recent years?

I mean the number in total from in every discipline of engineering field.


texts: How to keep and organize a research journal/log/diary/notebook?

texts:
I have read in multiple places that it is a good practice as an academic to keep a research journal.
For example, Marie desJardins' paper How to Succeed in Graduate School: A Guide for Students and Advisors says:

  Keeping a journal of your research activities and ideas is very useful.
  Write down speculations, interesting problems, possible solutions, random ideas, references to look up, notes on papers you've read, outlines of papers to write, and interesting quotes.
  Read back through it periodically.

My first attempt was to write my ideas in a log book.
I soon gave that up because the book would not always be with me when I wanted to write something in it, and because I knew eventually I would lose it and not be able to retrieve information from it.

My current approach is to write a huge LaTeX file which I store in the cloud.
In it, I chronicle my daily thoughts about my research project, to take notes of what is discussed in meetings with my adviser.
However, I simply feel overwhelmed by the volume of writing and the amount of repetition that I find in my research journal.
I also have other files which serve similar purposes.
For example, I have a file called results.pdf where I write out all my theorems and propositions and their proofs.

What have you tried and how has a research journal been of benefit to you?
Do you do all your "rough work" in a research journal, so that you can refer to it later?
What system do you use as your research journal?
Do you log all your experimental results into a chronologically organized research notebook? (Since I am not from a biology/chemistry/experimental background, I am curious as to how people who do lots of experiments manage to organize their results and ideas.)


texts: Which software converts academic publications from PDF to Word without mangling complex formatting?

texts:
I'm asking about this in StackExchange Academia rather than a software-recommendation site because I have conversion problems specific to the layout of academic publications. I'm helping a student who has problems with their eyesight. They find it hard to read academic papers and books on screen, when distributed as PDF. They prefer to have these converted to Word, then read that on screen. This helps them because they can change the font of any part that's hard to read, as well as highlighting section headings and other cues to help them navigate. There are many PDF-to-Word converters, but all the ones I've tried (see below) have defects. Can anyone recommend something better than those I've listed? The converter must not mangle tables, diagrams, footnotes, formulae, subscripts and superscripts, or other complicated content typical of academic publications.
The student does not like to read printed text, and only has an A4 printer, so blowing up the text and printing that isn't feasible. The pandemic introduces its own constraints, since they don't want to venture from their flat to use University computers. So they're restricted to what I think is a 22-inch screen, Windows 10, and their A4 printer. I only mention these because commenters suggested them. The student is comfortable reading Word files, and I want to help them do that, rather than force them to do something outside their preferences.
Getting back to PDF-to-Word converters, so far, we have tried:

Kofax Power PDF, but it's very erratic, though. For example, when I converted an archaeological report which I had to ask Power PDF to OCR, it "thought" it had found characters in the thin lines indicating boundaries in a diagram of the archaeological site. Power PDF also mangles structural chemical formulae, even when told not to OCR. Footnotes and tables cause even more problems, as do in-line chemical formulae, and subscripts and superscripts.

SmallPDF. This claims to be "the platform that makes it super easy to convert and edit all your PDF files". It is not. It converts some so they work better than those done by Power PDF, but crashes on others.

PDF24. This probably does a better job than either Power PDF or SmallPDF, when it works. But on some PDFs that need OCR'ing, it just emits the original page-images. This may well be a bug, and I've reported it, but I've not had any reply.

Does anyone have any recommendations?


texts:
When you are doing a second round review, do you read other reviewers' comments? Why?
It seems to me that all I need to do is seeing whether the author/s satisfied my comments and whether I find any more problems in the current version of their manuscript.