texts:
As students we have the right to choose our semester subjects (for the new semester beginning in 2019)

So we went send an email to the department chair indicating what subject we would like to take.

We received days later the notification about the courses to be open and my course was not there.

I went to talk to him and his justification in summary was this "He did not read my email and now it is too late to propose the course and he already did his plans".

But that's not true at all and I can prove it.

So he clearly has another reasons on why to not open the course for me.

So I think I have 2 options about how to deal with this:

To go and talk about this with the Academic Vice President.
To do nothing and to take one of the courses that are going to be open the new semester.

If I do 1. ' I'd win ' for sure and the course would be open thought the department chair would not be happy at all.. so I'd possible get into trouble with him because I know he is a vengeful person and I might not be the only one possible affected but my sister as well (she is a freshman) in the same institution.

If if do 2. I'll be an unhappy student the whole semester, studying something that I don't like at all but there won't be problems with
 department chair.

Could someone tell me what should I do?

What would be the best to do in this situation?


texts: Does a degree in economics/corporate finance from an Italian university prepare me for a PhD in economics?

texts:
i am a master of corporate finance student in Bocconi. i have a bachelor degree in economics and wanted to continue on it but decided to switch to finance due to some restraints (my scholarship from European Union only allows me to register in one year programs; and as you know msc in econ programs are 2 year)

i do not hate finance but i do not love it as much as economics. besides, i beleive that that business life is not suitable for me. i have a great interest in economics which -unfortunately- revealed in my last years in bachelor degree. therefore, i do not have a high gpa.

so i have some concerns about for pursuing a phd degree. i will be very happy if you can help me.

although i have taken some math courses (calculus, statistics, linear algebra, econometrics), i am not sure that it is sufficient for a phd in economics. plus, i do not have very shiny grades on math (because i was not studying at all, i mostly entered the exams mostly 1-2 hours of study and survived with my previous high school math knowledge. as i mentioned above, i was not a hardworking student in my first years do to my lack of interest in economics).

calculus101: c+ calculus102:c+ statistics1: c statistics2: c econometrics: c linear algebra: b+

so do you recommend me to get a phd? can i survive a phd program (especially the math part)?

thank you for your answers which will help me to shape next 50 years of my life


texts: How can I adapt my scientific writing for the modern web?

texts:
Papers written for conferences and journals are today mainly available as PDFs. There are several usability issues with the PDF format, one of which is that it is not especially well suited for the modern way of reading on screens. Unlike e-book formats such as epub or mobi, it doesn't adapt to a for the user desired text size, and is especially broken for e-ink readers that cannot rely on zooming and swiftly moving around as you scan for referenced figures and tables.

Thus, I would like to contribute to the death of the PDF to the best of my ability. All my scientific writing is already done in either Markdown or LaTeX which can then be exported using Pandoc to several different formats, but this only works as long as you don't try to use anything beyond the most basic of features in LaTeX. I guess I could in this manner upload all of my papers to a blog for general consumption, but I'm not sure this is the most appropriate way. One problem is that I won't actually use a lot of the power the web brings, e.g. direct links to cited sources, without requiring extra effort in the conversion step.

I am sure I'm not the first one thinking about this. Are there already people doing this, and if so how? Is there an ongoing discussion about the future of academic publishing in the age of the modern web?


texts: Good idea to start PhD with a potentially obstructive medical condition?

texts:
[EDIT] I have a medical condition, diagnosed after I received and accepted my PhD offer. I am wondering if i should defer or have the surgery in the middle of my program. [/EDIT]

The condition makes it difficult  for me to stand for long periods of time (due to vertebra slippage). I'm still able to function on my desk job. Taking classes should not be an issue. However, working in the lab (somewhat unavoidable in my field) might be challenging.

There is surgery to fix this issue, by fixing the vertebra. But that is not the first line of treatment and is used only if the problem gets worse.

I'm unsure if I should start the program and then take a quarter off for the surgery or wait for the surgery and then start my program. Your comments/ideas/advice on evaluating my situation are welcome.

P.S. It might be relevant, I am an international student accepted at a US university.


texts: How to manage the structure of a masters thesis and what mistakes to look out for?

texts:
I'm writing my master thesis at the moment in the area of cyber/computer security.
However, I'm having real trouble in keeping a good structure in the thesis.

What I mean with structure is that my supervisor has commented on several occasions that the order of subjects should be changed and that some parts should be switched or explained in less/more detail.

Although my supervisor has been incredibly helpful and has provided good pointers, I was wondering if the community here could give some ideas on:

How to keep the structure of a thesis in line and what mistakes to look out for?


texts: Advisor wants me to take ownership of my projects, but shoots me down whenever I contribute my own ideas

texts:
My advisor says I should take ownership of the project I'm working on, so I can get to the point where I know more about it than he does.  But it seems that every time I do something extra, that I do in addition to (not instead of) what he told me to do, he finds something wrong with my idea, and wants me to do exactly what he told me to do instead of letting me carry out my idea.  How can I take ownership if I can't contribute my own ideas?

It seems like if I wanted to contribute my own stuff it would be an uphill battle, and I would need to defend my ideas very well, and fight him every step of the way.  It's a lot more work than just listening to him, and half the time he wouldn't let me implement it anyway.  So frankly I do not see the point anymore.


texts: Gre sub math score is low...Should I send to schools that strongly recommend ?

texts:
I got pretty bad Gre sub score,which is 51%. I am applying a couple of graduate programs in math, but most of them are masters. So should I send my Gre sub score to those who strongly recommend it ?(but not required) My other information:I come from a pretty good public schools, but not famous for math, GPA is 3.67, two REUs, and I guess my three letters are good.

Thanks !


texts: What are the potential benefits and pitfalls of leaving tenth grade early to pursue an internship at a prominent research lab?

texts:
I'm a tenth grader in high school and I'm passionate about my research in computational neuroscience. I'm in a unique situation, and I'm wondering whether I should leave tenth grade early this year to accept a research position for four months at a leading university.

I am a deep thinker and am profoundly miserable because my present educational environment isn't intellectually stimulating, growth oriented, and I'm worried I'm not accessing my potential. Because of this, I'm going to be leaving high school next year and hoping to attend the visiting students program at a nearby college. I don't think not being in traditional high school will be a hindrance to my college admissions; on the contrary I think what I do outside of school will boost my candidacy.

I've recently been offered a research-internship position at a lab at: Cornell, Princeton, Oxford, and Rockefeller. If I wanted to attend any one of them I'd need to leave high school early this year.

This is an extraordinary opportunity which will take me to new and incredible places and I don't want to let my schooling interfere with my education. I am positive leaving school is the right choice. Of course there are considerations but I've taken them into account; I'm not afraid of being unconventional.

Just to be clear, I'm wondering whether I should leave for the last two months of tenth grade. Secondly, I'm going to attend a visiting students program at an Ivy League University next year which is designed for high school students to attend in lieu of traditional HS.

Are there other benefits or possible pitfalls I should be taking into account?

Edit: Thank you all for your guidance which is helping me see the situation more clearly.


texts: Value of scientific community statement on brain training

texts: Recently the "scientific community" made a statement on brain training to inform users that there is little evidence to support benefits from the games. With such an impressive list of signatories wouldn't a systematic review and meta analysis that was peer reviewed be a much stronger statement? What is the purpose of scientists issuing such a statement and what effects will it have on funding to understand how brain training affects, or doesn't affect, the brain?


texts: What is total number of PhDs globally? How many graduate each year?

texts:
I am interested in long-term dynamics of the number of PhDs, having recently received a PhD myself. So far, I have only been able to find bits and pieces, mostly pertaining to USA (see e.g. here, which says that there are roughly 40k PhDs awarded annually in the United States).

Any input is appreciated.


texts: Can a poorly done second degree ruin one's academic record?

texts:
Currently I have a BSc degree in Computer Science, and in the future I plan to get a Master degree in Computer Science. In my opinion, my BSc grades are good enough to help me be accepted at good universities in my country.

Also I'm considering doing a second BSc degree (in Electrical or Mechatronics Engineering), but I don't think I'll have enough time to study in order to get very good grades.

Could this ruin my academic record? Would it lower my chances of being accepted in a Master's course in the area of Computer Science?


texts: How much should we trust that the approach described in a paper solves the problem that it addresses as well as it claims to?

texts:
To be honest, I'm not sure how exactly to word my question in order not to cause any miss-understanding.

During my literature review sometimes I encounter with researches which propose an approach with promising results. Then when I try to use it or to investigate its theoretical principles I notice it is not as straightforward as it was mentioned in the paper to expect such great results. Then I contact the guy asking for more details about the method or even for the code to implement the approach and reproduce the results, but I hear no answer from them or some thing like "sorry we do not know where the code is now!" or "we have no right to give the code" or some vague answer which is not helpful.

Well, these papers always have tables and numbers related to real data to support their hypothesis, but sometimes I wonder if it is even rarely possible than the authors were faking something? or I'm totally wrong about it?

Even some of these papers are published in high ranked conferences which makes it harder to be skeptical about them!

So my question is how much should we trust works of others in academia even if they published their work in well-known conferences?

p.s: my field is computer science and mostly about algorithms and methods and the implementation results which can support the claimed performance for the algorithm.


texts: Should I decline authorship over the quality of a paper?

texts:
I've been collaborating on a project with a researcher in another field (I am being vague on purpose here in case they read this), which so far has pretty much gone nowhere.  I've done a few preliminary calculations, though, and they want to publish them - I suspect they are under pressure to up their publication count.

I don't think that what we've done so far is worth publishing; there is nothing actually wrong, but I don't think there is anything new or interesting.  I could imagine developing this into something useful, but it is not a high priority for me, and this collaboration does not seem to be working out, so I don't think pushing to hold off on publication would do more than draw things out.

The possible paper is in a field which I haven't worked in previously, but which I could see myself coming back to in the future (it is interesting to me, it is related to my main field, and I've picked up a fair amount about it by osmosis).  I'm worried that if I approach other people in that field in the future (and I would need collaborators to get started effectively) the one thing of mine that they will see will be this paper, which will reflect poorly on me (in a way I would like to think is not accurate).

Should I decline authorship of this paper?


texts: Is it reasonable for an author to withdraw an accepted paper because they have since done better work?

texts:
I submitted a paper to a good journal, it was refereed, and after a year it got accepted for publication.

But now that a year has passed, I no longer find the results or methods of that paper to be that great (novel?). And much of my more recent work, which has been submitted to other good journals but has not yet been published, is of greater quality and improves on the earlier methods.

Should I withdraw the paper, or just go ahead and publish it? To me it seems that there are negative consequences either way:

If the paper is published, then the readers may perceive the author to be shallow or inferior in some ways. Also, if the more recent work is published then people may think I'm over-using a particular method, or "salami slicing". Of course, the latter would not be accurate, as the most recent work was begun several months after the first paper was submitted.
If the paper is withdrawn, then the referee and editor (whom are very respected) may hold a grudge, or simply have a lesser opinion. That could impact future submissions and my reputation.

Although, if I formed a habit of submitting and withdrawing because of better and better results... my work would eventually be so wonderful that nobody would know about it!


texts: Got denied authorship on paper; neither university nor publisher feel responsible

texts:
I helped another graduate student with her work. We were testing how long certain drugs lasted in mouse organs. We dosed three drugs and sent them to some collaborators for analysis.

Time passes. My PI and I have a falling out, and I leave to finish my PhD in another lab. Before I leave I have to fight to prove I deserved at least a co-authorship on the drug paper (I did a ton of work for it, the lab manager did nothing and was automatically put on). Get the authorship and am relieved, but cannot figure out why the paper only includes two drugs when we tested three, all at the same time. Oh well, I’m moving on with life and way happier in my new lab.

Cut to two years later. My old lab is publishing the third drug! And guess whose name is the only one missing from the authors list. I met with the university’s research-integrity officer, and she tells me there’s nothing anyone can do. The university considers it a publisher issue, and the publisher considers it a university issue.

What would you do?


texts: How to handle colors of photorealistic images in publications

texts:
A long time ago in a classroom far, far away, I was taught that printed media should be understandable also when in monochrome, e.g. when printed out in black and white (cf. the issue specifically for logo design). This could naturally be seen as also applying to academic publications (journals, books, conference proceedings, etc.), but judicious use of color can be effective when accounting for e.g. colorblindness and vision impairment. How, then, can I best include photorealistic images with many colors in a way which retains meaning both in cases where colors are available and where not available?

In my specific situation, I am illustrating sample items used as stimuli in an experiment which is strongly but indirectly related to color (i.e. models I've conditioned on the data include features which encode color). For this reason, it would be helpful for readers to get the best possible perception of what the stimuli look like in real life. Unfortunately, however, some of the colors are hard to discern from others even on an RGB monitor, let alone printed  in black and white (which is actually part of the reason for doing the experiment).

Currently, I've tried adjusting brightness and contrast measures for the images, which has helped to a small degree, but I'm afraid to try anything more radical out of fear of misrepresenting the sample items.


texts: Merging ArXiv paper and conference paper on Google Scholar

texts:
In my Google Scholar profile, I have a paper which I uploaded to ArXiv a while ago, which has a few citations. Since then, that same paper has been accepted for a peer-reviewed conference. It was only uploaded to ArXiv to bridge the gap between the paper submission date, and the release of the official conference paper after the conference.

How can I merge citations for my ArXiv paper and my conference paper, such that there is only one entry in my Google Scholar profile, where that entry is listed as the conference paper rather than the ArXiv paper?


texts: Is writing a paper worth it if I don't really have any motivation and it would potentially make my application to a future PhD marginally stronger?

texts:
The title says it all. I already have a published paper and soon will have two published papers related to computer science. I was entertaining the idea of doing a PhD in cognitive science (or computational neuroscience).
An opportunity has come up for me to write a philosophical paper related to computer science. I started reading the relevant materials, but I found it superbly boring. Maybe having a paper related to philosophy would make my application for a cognitive neuroscience PhD (or computational neuroscience PhD) look better, but how much better, really? My PhD application is far into the future and I don't even know what PhD program I will enroll in, so it's not like I can look up some particular program and see if I get some bonus points for papers in diverse fields.
What would be your advice on this matter? Is the potential payoff in the future worth me trudging through this or no?


texts: Are unimpressive grades in core courses an indication of not being competent for a career in the field?

texts:
I have recently passed my qualifiers and research proposal. My research is in computational mechanics. I had two courses (continuum mechanics and finite element method) as part of my research related courses. I will be using the concepts learnt in the courses in my research, though my research will be more applied than theoretical, so will involve utilizing a commercially available software and develop few additional routines for it.

Now, I scored B+ in both the courses (the minimum grade required for being eligible for qualifying exams was a B-). I struggled through few concepts but fared fairly well in the qualifiers and answered most of the questions asked by the committee.

However, I am concerned that my average grades might be an indicator that I might not be fit for the field I have chosen to build a career in. Now, I am confident that I will manage to adequately complete my PhD thesis and publish papers as required.

But, I am worried that academia is going to be a closed door for me. Eventually, if I get tenure track position after my PhD, I will have to teach these subjects (There's no teaching assistantship opportunities in my department for me), and how will I be able to teach something in which I fared poorly? Also, I will have to do theoretical research work after my phd, and I will not fare well in that. What should I do?


texts:
Suppose that I have an idea "not fully developed" of course but a sketch somehow. If I want to convince an advisor by it and let him take me seriously. What should I do?
My field of study is Mathematics. I only got an intuition that might work or not. Should I make sure that the proposal is valid before I talk to my advisor or what should I do exactly? any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks!


texts:
I am preparing my math research monograph for publication.

In the current draft there is certain conjecture.

This conjecture was proved in my drafts (available on the Web) of the second volume for this monograph.

Should I:

just remove the conjecture from the book because it is proved?
leave the statement in the book titled as a conjecture because it's proof is not yet officially published (and also may be not enough checked for errors)?
write in the book that I am going to publish the proof (either in a separate article or the second volume of the book)?


texts: Is original research required for an undergraduate thesis?

texts:
I am currently in my final year of BSCS. And we have the option of pursuing a thesis or do a Final Year Project (FYP). I asked a professor related to my field and she told me that It's really hard to write a thesis as you need to pick an original research paper or area, reproduce the work done in this area, work on the limitations mentioned and add your own new findings which I think is really hard for me at this stage since I'm in the phase of understanding existing knowledge.

My main interest is in Computer Graphics and I was thinking to create a path-tracer, have already created a gpu ray-tracer, and use different acceleration data structures and profile the increase in speed obtained.

The thing is, all of this has already been done so I'd just be reproducing the work already done and implementing it and highlighting conclusions already drawn with just a little talk on the limitations and what could be done. Does this qualify as an undergraduate thesis or should I give up on it and she is right in assuming that thesis needs to have some new findings?

Also if it qualifies as a thesis what are the chances to getting it published since there are no new findings?

The reason I was pushing towards the thesis more as I am from a South-Asian country and the standard of education is "pretty" low here. Research is like a godly word for people here and we have zero exposure to research/conferences/seminars etc. I aim to do my masters from abroad and was thinking my bachelor's thesis would be a valuable experience.


texts: How to obtain average and total impact factor of publications for an academic?

texts:
For a while ResearchGate provided something called impact points. It was calculated as the sum of the impact factors of all the publications an academic had. For example, if an author had been an author on four papers with impact factors 0, 2, 4, and 3. They would have 0 + 2 + 4 + 3 = 9 impact points. They've recently stopped reporting this value because supposedly they no longer believe impact factors are valid indicators of an individual article (of course, as a side note, they continue to report their own mysterious ResearchGate points which in addition to publications also weights things largely irrelevant to the research community, but relevant to encouraging behaviour on the site that they desire).

If you also knew the number of publications someone had, you could also quickly determine their average impact factor per publication.

I found the combination of average impact factor and the sum of impact factors to be a really useful metric when getting a quick feel for an academic's publication track record. In addition, I think that impact points seemed to provide a reasonable starting point for discussing some of the trade-offs in publication strategies between quality/significance and quantity.

Given that this site includes many who are mindful of the problems with metrics for evaluating academic output, allow me to justify why I like the combination of average impact factor per paper and the sum of impact factors (i.e., impact points):

Person-specific citation based metrics (e.g., h-index, total citations, and so on), which are often cited as preferable, are heavily influenced by time. Citations accumulate over time. Thus, a young researcher a couple of years out of their PhD may have been publishing high quality work in top journals, but may have very few citations. In contrast, a researcher may have been publishing lots of publication at the mid-tier level for many years, and may have a lot of citations. This connection with time is more than the linear increase in publication output you might see given a research with consistent output each year. Instead, In a simplistic model, it is a multiplicative effect of average number of publications per year, time since first started publishing at that level, and average time between publications and now.
While journal impact factor is field dependent, you can start to adjust for this mentally, if you know your field. For example, I'm in psychology, and it tends to have lower impact factors than psychiatry due to various citation practices. As an aside, it would also be useful to use other journal impact metrics to form the average or sum that are less field dependent (e.g., the SNIP or SJR).

Probably the biggest issue with impact points is that some authors have publications with many more co-authors, or have more or less first-author papers, although this is less of an issue if you focus on average impact factor per paper.

So my question is, given that ResearchGate has stopped reporting impact points, is there an alternative provider where you can quickly obtain the sum or average impact factor of the publications of a given academic?


texts: Does every professor need to do research?

texts: I wonder if there are some professors only focusing on teaching or management but no research. I think this may be feasible.


texts: Can I submit my old PhD thesis to arxiv with the date set to its original submission date?

texts:
I have completed my PhD 10 years ago, and back then I was not sure if it was ok with my home institution to have it in arxiv. I then realized it's fine and it would actually be good as my institution never cared to set up an open database of their own PhD theses. My question is: is there a way to post it on arxiv with the proper date, so that it shows on a search but it does not show among the most recent ones?

EDIT: given the popularity of the question, would it make sense to allow the ability to backdate ONLY PhD theses? It seems like my experience is a shared one, and I can't imagine anybody in her/his own mind lying on when she/he got her/his PhD.


texts: How to formally report database literature search results?

texts:
Years ago, I seen an interesting article that made reference to database search results. The author run a few queries through PubMed and reported on the number of records. This was a neat introduction to the wider discussion on the state of the scholarship in the given field. I'm interested in doing something similar. I would appreciate if someone could point me to out to papers or notes on how such findings should be reported. For example let's say that there is x amount of articles on Term A and y amount of articles on Term B. Consequently, the one could assert something on the lines:

  Contrary to common expectations, it seems that relatively little is published on Term A in relation to the Term B. For example, both terms appear only on n occasions in the Database D.

I'm interested in how to state such results in a non-confusing manner, in particular I would like to know:

Where and how would it be appropriate to search the nature of the query
Presumably, the date when the query was applied should be stated as well?
Should the reference be introduced to the bibliography? If so I would be grateful for sample entry in APA or any other common style


texts: What does a research proposal for PhD applications consist of?

texts:
Am presently trying to get PhD admission in somewhat reputed universities in India. However most of their application ask for a research proposal about which I have no idea. What does that mean and how should I write one in about 500 words?

Any guidance will be very helpful! Thanks in advance!


texts: Applied math PhD programs - no. of courses to counterbalance low GPA?

texts:
I’m about to turn 38 and after much research and consideration I have decided that I need to return to school. My goal is to apply to applied math PhD programs and work in industry, ideally working on problems in computational science or fluid dynamics.

My major (economics and math) GPA from a good public school was around 3.03 and my GPA for my math courses fell at 2.88. Previously I experienced some very serious issues in my life that played its role in this (not an excuse but just an unfortunate fact at the time).

I’ve reached out to some professors about my background and have been told that my GPA, though not considered the sole factor in determining admission, is a problem. I plan on applying to and enrolling in a post baccalaureate program at an Ivy league college near my home and plan on sitting for the math GRE subject test but I feel like I need to take more courses than I can afford to even be considered for such programs (the courses for the post bac. program are around $6K each).

I’m prepared to use a good bit of my life savings and working part time to fund this but I would like to learn how I can get a better sense of how many more courses I should take to counterbalance my low GPA.  Would graduate committees be open to giving an unofficial assessment of my background before applying? I don’t plan on applying to the elite schools because I feel that my GPA would knock me out regardless.

Some background on me:

Since graduating I’ve had varied work experience such as working as a math tutor to working in finance in the last 10 years. I also have a good bit of experience programming and have furthered my education to some extent for what it's worth: passed an online specialization course in R programming that spanned roughly 9 months, picked up a number of financial licenses, and even passed an actuarial exam when I was considering that route.

I do have course work in calculus, econometrics, ODEs, linear algebra, and an intro to analysis course.

Any thoughts/insights are definitely much appreciated.


texts: In Germany there exists the title Priv-Doz before the name of some professors. What does it mean? Do these professors allow to hire postdoctoral applicants?


texts: Should textbook acknowledgments be included as publications on a CV?

texts:
I've worked through a major publisher to contribute applied portions to several textbooks, and am listed in the acknowledgements sections. These were not one-day content reviews and singular practitioner projects, but ongoing contributions spanning over a year. I currently have the books cited under the work experience section in my industry resume, via employment through the publisher while citing the primary authors and disambiguating my role in the bullets. However, as I apply for a second graduate degree, I am wondering if the books should be moved up to the publications section (still citing the main authors and not myself, of course).
In case this is relevant, the publications section currently has four direct authorship items, so isn't empty. Still, they're nothing special, and I'm concerned about down-playing the textbook work in my apps.
Similar questions have been asked about generic contributions in papers, minimal contributions, and paper authorship as an anonymous team, but I am unsure if this advice applies to textbook-scale work.


texts: Conclusions section in a letter: To give a peek into new findings (not reported in letter) or not

texts:
Perhaps because this is my first letter, that I am writing independently, I don’t have a good grasp of the amount of significant results that need to be in the letter, to be published in the journal.

Because this is a letter, I cant just go all in to describe every possible result we have obtained, so I only showed a small portion of the results.
While, in a certain light the results shown in the result are small, extrapolating it to a larger problem, the results are way more significant.
For example, in this letter, I present the first model for a certain device. I experimentally validate the model and show the variation of a certain parameter on the performance of the device. A 10% variation in the parameter has a 10% impact on the performance of the device. However, the 10% is a hard-limit, and you cant really optimize that parameter beyond ~10%. However, there are a multitude of other parameters which can be similarly optimized, and I have obtained theoretical results showing >50% and 1000% theoretical improvement in the performance of the device based on 2 performance metrics.

However, going into details of these individual parameters and their optimizations is almost impossible in this short letter.

I know that conclusions are not supposed to have any results, but are supposed to discuss the implications of the results. Can I consider the broader results (50% and 1000% improvement in theoretical performance), as implications of the current study? Can I report this performance improvement in the conclusions section (without giving too much details of the study), as a study we have done and mention that we are going to report it in future publications?


texts: Letter writer snapped at my reminder email. What can I do in the future to prevent this, and should I still accept his letter?

texts:
I sent a reminder email one day before the due date for a couple of my applications to grad school. It said something along the lines of

  This is just a reminder that first due dates are tomorrow: [list of a
  couple of schools]. Hope you aren't too busy to write still. If you
  haven't received an email from these schools on instructions let me
  know.

I also sent "resends" to this professor's email via the schools' application portals. The professor responded with something like

  You've already sent a list of deadlines [I did, but this was about a
  month ago]. It is NOT helpful to send repeated reminders.

I thought it was standard to send reminders before deadlines, especially if due dates are tomorrow with no letter sent. I feel that I have said or done something wrong. How can I prevent this from happening in the future?

I am now not only reluctant to send reminders for January schools, but I am now worried about the strength of this professor's letter. I have four letter writers, and I am tempted to drop his letter on some January schools. The reason for this is that this is not the only time he has been a bit snappy with me, although never like this. But I did tell him a while ago that I did not want his letter if it would not be strong, and yet he still agreed to write for me. So assuming he is honest about that, I feel I should maybe keep his letter.

This is all a little confusing and stressful. Thanks for your time to read.


texts: How soon after the application deadline do search committees start looking at the applications?

texts:
I notice that a lot of academic faculty positions have deadlines that are on a weekend, or during a holiday. It seems reasonable that an application will not be read until the holiday is over.

How soon after the application deadline do search committees usually start looking at the application?


texts: What should I do when I would like to move to a new lab because my current PI is abusive?

texts:
I started to work in a Lab as a Researcher 4 months ago, with the prospect of being a PhD student. This Lab carries out research topics I am interested and passionate about but when I started there was only one PhD student working, so most of the research projects were stuck.

I am a very proactive and energetic person and I always try to give suggestions or ways to optimise experiments but my PI never listens (that's another issue, he does not like to optimise any new experiment, he thinks it is a waste of time and resources, and we actually end up wasting more resources in repeating experiments that are not working). He gets easily angry and just wants us to do exactly as he says (even though he usually forgets what he said).

I am not sure how to proceed. Should I just wait a little longer to see how things continue? should I enrol in a School before switching? or something else?

I feel depressed and no longer feel like the happy and passionate student anymore. I have a deep love for research and I don't want someone to interfere negatively on this.


texts: How to survey recommended course readings?

texts:
I am interested in analysing the selection and distribution of course readings given to students of middle eastern studies in universities internationally.

By course readings I am referring to subject bibliographies given to students as background reading to accompany lectures, etc. I suspect this would be difficult to investigate, since most course readers are not available online.

Does anyone know of lists, bibliographies, methods or other resources which may help to conduct such a survey of course readings?


texts: How do judge the quality of your own PhD?

texts:
I'm close to finishing my PhD and I'd like to evaluate the quality of my PhD. I'm doing my PhD in the field of software engineering at a Central European university. My PhD thesis consists of published conference papers and a synopsis. I first-authored two papers in the top conference of my field and I also had a few other papers.

The problem now is that I'm unsure how good of a PhD this actually is. My PhD thesis gets graded, but I noticed that every PhD student gets something between the very best and the second best grade, independent of the quality of his/her work.

If I can't rely on the grade, and if I can't compare the number of publications to other PhDs, how can I best and honestly assess the quality of my own PhD?


texts: CV for PhD application with little relevant professional experience?

texts:
I'm currently applying for a PhD at my institution. Part of the application requires an academic CV, however I have no professional experience that is not retail work (I have volunteered as student support at my university but don't think that's very relevant), and as I only recently graduated from my undergraduate degree and started my masters, I do not yet have any publications and have not spoken at or attended any conferences apart from attending a postgraduate conference at my university last year.

Are there any ways of getting around this? I received a very good grade for my undergraduate dissertation and have a good idea of what my masters dissertation will be, and I am trying to use those to my advantage.


texts: Applying to schools in the US - Theoretical fundamental physics

texts:
I am a theoretical physics masters student, currently on the process of applying to universities. I find it incredibly hard to gauge which universities I'm most likely to be accepted in. All the professors I asked, suggested me the top universities in the US.

With my grades being a first class in my undergrad(standard for theory?), and my physics GREs being about 670(kinda bad..) I find it really unlikely for me to be accepted in these schools(Princeton, Harvard, etc.)

Since I already have taken modules in advanced theoretical subjects, that might give me extra credit, but I don't have much research experience(at least in theoretical physics).

What kind of schools would be a more suitable choice for me?


texts: Moved to a new city – how to start academically networking?

texts:
I have recently moved away from the town and university where I completed my masters degree to another city for personal reasons. Now I work here in academic information services and part of my work is research.

However, I would like to put a stronger focus on research and concept-level work rather than doing tasks in technical services. To achieve this, I feel I need to do more academic networking outside of work which is quite difficult as my employing institution does not like being mentioned as affiliation in professional networking.

The problem is: How to (re-)start academic networking when I don't really have an institutional or project affiliation?

I know this can be seen as a workplace-related question, but I am specifically interested in academic networking - participate in research discussion groups, maybe get to teach a small Bachelor course related to my work, possibly find a partner for collaboration on a paper... The city I now live in has some universities, but there does not seem to be any connection to the university or institute I graduated in.

I really feel stuck in this situation. Any suggestion on this would be welcome!


texts: Can I write that I had a phobia in my personal statement?

texts: I am writing a personal statement for a Ph.D. position. I had phobias of animals earlier which I overcame during my in-vivo lab experiments (for which I am really proud of). Do you think its a good idea to include that I overcame my phobia by myself?


texts: How do you keep track of papers during a brainstorming literature review?

texts:
I am often in charge of researching new sub-topics in my discipline for short papers. I find my default technique is:

Search Google Scholar for best-guess keywords
Open relevant-looking resulting paper, skim
Find new references in that paper, open new tabs for those papers while reading first paper
Look at new papers, find new references and key words. Open new tab for new Scholar searches
Decide those key words aren't useful after all
Make valiant attempt to figure out which of the 20 open tabs are still worth keeping open, which papers are worth adding to Zotero, which papers are worth downloading.

Clearly, I am not of a methodical mindset. I'm beginning to wonder if I took 5 sec to add each paper author-year-keyword to a small notepad app on the side of the screen before I opened the article, that might help me keep track of the mess. Or something. Does anyone have a simple workflow for this "brainstorming" phase that would work well for the non-methodically minded? I'm a Chrome/Google type rather than an Apple type, if that matters.


texts:
I'm a master degree graduate student from a school of engineers in computer science. I'm so passionated by researches and continuous learning, and i want to do a PhD
However, my master course wasn't too specialized, and thus i don't consider myself having enough knowledge in the field that i want to persue researches in as a PhD
I'm thinking about doing a new Master more specialized in the field that i want to study. Do you think it's necessary to do that or i can enrol in a PhD and discover the field more once enrolled ?
Thanks.


texts: Withdrawing from course in a PhD Program (i.e. W on PhD Transcripts)

texts:
I'm already in a PhD program and, just one week after Add/Drop, both my teaching and research loads increased due to unforeseen circumstances. I have a course which would be helpful for my area exam, but I'm confident I can just teach myself and am considering withdrawing from it since it would be nice to have fewer deadlines looming over me. It's this weird grey area where I could probably make it through the semester, but this would basically require I get less out of my other 2 courses (which are exactly in the area I want to specialize in), not be able to teach as well, not be able to focus as much on research, and just be overall slightly more stressed.

Are there any repercussions to having a W on my transcript as a PhD student?

The only thing I can forsee is maybe external fellowship applications, but I am in my first year so I'm hoping they'd be understanding (it isn't like withdrawing makes it so that I am taking fewer classes than most grad students).

Thanks!

tl;dr:
Would having a W on your PhD transcript be problematic in some way?


texts: My advisor signed a contract to hire me, but then external funding fell through. Should I force him to take me anyway?

texts:
I'm in a very strange situation. I have been accepted to a PhD program in the UK which was supposed to be financed by an external company (this was arranged by the advisor). I've already accepted and met my conditional offer and stipend but the external company withdrew their support and I (implicitly) understand from my advisor that without funding he will not be able to take me on.
From what I understand the accepted offer and stipend are considered contractually binding and that the lack of finding is not "my problem" anymore. Is that so? and if so, can I and should I really insist that my advisor take me on regardless of finding new funding sources?
Clarifications:

I have discussed this with him already; he is actively looking for positions for me elsewhere.
My contract does not say anything like "contingent on availability of funds."

Edit:
My goal was never to litigate the matter or get some compensation out of it but to find a way to do the PhD program. As many said in the comments it is not realistic to force such a relationship even if "i am in the right". He is already doing his best to find a solution and I will work with him to that end. I guess that if it fails I will simply move on.


texts: What is the definition of a selective survey?

texts: Is it similar to a narrative review? I’m looking at a survey of a sub-field of computer science and it’s defined as a ‘selective survey’ however I can’t find a definition of this anywhere.


texts: For Grad School Statement of Purpose, do I have to precisely state what research theme I'm interested in?

texts:
I am applying for a MSc research degree. So far, I haven't secured a supervisor, but I am interested mostly in cardiovascular research and there are only 3 of them in the entire department.
Since they might not agree to take me (I've spoken to them), the program advisor suggested that I still apply anyway and hopefully some other PI will accept me (essentially I'll accept the offer to work in any other research theme as long as I get admitted to the program).

Then comes the statement of purpose, my friends in grad school recommended that I make it generic. However, a generic letter must still include my specific research interest, right? and If I were to write that I am solely interested in cardiovascular research, other PIs in the department may pass on me.

I googled and searched for how to write a proper statement of purpose but haven't found a clear answer to my question. From your experience, how long was your letter of intent and what exactly included ?


texts:
I am a Master's student doing a research internship. I do not have to defend the results of my research at the end of the internship; however, I would ideally get a publication out of this.

I am working with a well-respected professor in applied mathematics. When he suggested a research topic, I quickly agreed. At first I found the topic a little bit strange and uninteresting, but I thought that I didn't understand it well. It seemed like he had not thought about the topic a lot, but he seemed enthusiastic about it.

After learning more, I confirmed my initial impressions. This problem has been studied extensively before, and my special case doesn't seem all that special. I reported my findings to the prof and he seemed to agree. Yet he suggested that I perform several numeric experiments to further investigate. I did so, but didn't get any definitive results. My supervisor had said that if the experiments failed, we would change the topic. But now he just keeps suggesting new ones.

I do not like the topic and would like to change topics as quickly as possible. However, I do not want to be seen as one who just jumps from topic to topic when something doesn't work. During our last meeting I attempted to "corner" the professor, asking for the interpretation of the possible outcome of the experiment in advance. Also, I was seemingly displeased by the idea of more experiments because I was arguing about their meaninglessness. The supervisor said something like "you seem to be looking for the excuse to not do the job." I definitely want to do the work as I want to get results. Yet, I think our current efforts will be fruitless.

What should I do?


texts: For undergraduates, is publishing "weak" research better than not publishing?

texts:
As an undergraduate student, I have worked on some projects for my own interest, and recently a professor said that one of these works can be published (in a Elsevier journal with impact factor of about 2). I personally think that this work is not strong enough to be published and included in my resume. (I don't have any prior experience in publishing and related stuff.)

Can a weak research article published in a journal affect my application for graduate school in a negative way?


texts: Does how I got my understanding of an article need to be cited?

texts: Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but I just want to make sure that I’m taking the appropriate steps; I’m a student in University, and I write a lot of essays/reviews throughout the year. I like taking breaks and reading fictional stories to relax, but of course my brain sort of travels a lot to various different places, which includes school related tasks. I wanted to take a break from trying to understand one particular article that I was reviewing, and I only fully realized how the article’s thesis related to its conclusion while I was in the middle of reading one story (I had stopped to process it and I was about to go back into it again). However, it wouldn’t make sense to reference the story in my review, since I didn’t take any information from it, correct?


texts: Using pictures of 16th–18th century paintings in PhD dissertation?

texts:
Can someone please help me get an insight into the use of images, specifically paintings from the 16th to 18th century that reside in churches, museums, etc., and how can one use them in a PhD dissertation without falling into copyright issues?

I am aware there are different options. For instance it is legal under German law to use a picture of a painting if it was taken by you and in a place that allowed it. However, I’m not sure about the following in German law:

Is it legal if I use an image from a book or catalogue?
Can one claim a “quotation” of a work?
Can one claim “fair use”, like in the US, since it is part of a critical/review/academic/research type of purpose?


texts: Should we use the rest of a grant that we have achieved its goal to make further research not very useful in the direction of proposal?

texts:
Imagine that we have achieved the goal of a grant before the money runs out. Should we use the rest of money to make the research more advanced even though it won't be useful in the direction of the proposal?

For example the grand is for computer science research with a specific application to medicine. Should we use the rest of the medical grant money in advancing the research in computer science even though it would not be much needed in that specific medical application?


texts: I have an article in the field I am just interest and has no overlap with my major. Should I mention it my SOP?

texts:
Related questions:

Should one mention multiple, albeit somewhat unrelated research interests?
Should I talk about a unpublished paper in my SOP?

Besides physics as my major, my other interest is linguistics, and as you can see, there is no overlap. When I was in high school, I wrote my first article in linguistics. It hasn't been read by any professor or published in any specialize journal, not because it was rejected, but because I haven't tried to do so. I had a graduate student in linguistics review it for me, and it seems that she finds it interesting. As far as I know, there is currently no material on the topic I researched available on the internet, which indicates that the topic is new.

Because (1) it is the first article I have ever wrote, (2) I did it when I was 16 or 17 (although I have updated so much it lately) and (3) the topic is new so far, I consider it my proudest scientific activity. I think putting it in the SOP will make a steady point that "I was born for scientific research." Will it be useful if I do that, or just mention the latest article in physics I wrote?


texts:
Selecting members of one's PhD committee is an important part of a PhD student's academic  development. Committee members can have considerable influence on a student's PhD program, such as determining what topics are on the student's prelims exams. However, sound advice on this process can be hard to find.

What are some guidelines to keep in mind when selecting members of one's PhD committee?

(This should be a generalized question useful for many different student-selected committee systems)


texts: How many hours do PhD students work as a TA (total)?

texts:
How many hours do you work as a graduate teaching assistant and what is the breakdown? (This might include actual teaching hours, office hours, grading, tutoring center hours, etc).

I am in a Statistics PhD program and am receiving support (tuition plus a stipend). My department has assigned me a full 20 hours. I understand that the support is technically for 20 hours of work, but my understanding was that this was rarely assigned in full having talked to friends at other schools and in other departments within my school. Still, I'd like to hear from a wider pool of people.

Here is my assignment:
one recitation, 40 students (1 hour)
grading for recitation (2 hours)
weekly section meeting (1 hour)
prep for recitation (1-2 hours)
office hours (4 hours)
tutoring center (10 hours)

The worst part is that I wasn't allowed to choose my own office hours (and why do I need 4 for a one-hour recitation) or the tutoring center hours, which include evening hours. I highly regret choosing this program. The other program that I wanted to go to assigns two recitations (1 hour each) and ONE office hour, plus grading.

I look forward to hearing your input. Even if you've graduated, if you remember any of your past teaching assignments, I'd appreciate hearing it.


texts: Withdrawing conference submission before notification

texts:
Is it unethical thing?
It's been a week since submission and a month left until the final decision.
I'm so worried about it.


texts: Repeated demand for citing a certain paper in the referee report

texts:
I submitted a paper to a journal and got the referee report. In the first referee report the same surname has been repeated 10 times, and since then the referee has insisted on a discussion about that paper.

I've read the paper, and the paper is dealing with a different subject. It can seldom be considered as relevant. The demand for commenting on that particular work was declined by us and the paper was eventually rejected. Apart from the editors, should there be a way to control this excessive use of the refereeing power?

After putting the paper on the arXiv, the lead author of that paper already contacted me to cite some the related works (of course mostly his works). Interestingly, the citation in question is not even regarded as relevant by the leading author.


texts: Second PhD vs PostDoc - Math vs Theoretical Physics

texts:
I'm about to complete my PhD in mathematics. I've been working with Group theory (Representations). Besides the PhD I also did a master's in theoretical physics (I took much more courses than necessary to earn the degree and all of them were in advanced level, and did really well). The thing is: I would like to work in Theoretical Physics, and I'd like to use my Math background and apply it to theoretical physics. I love both subjects and I think they are like brothers in a sense. So my question is:

1) Should I apply for a second PhD (In physics)? For me it would be the worst option, since I'd have to spent a lot of time in things that I already know, and I don't see the point of writing another thesis. I heard that in Europe some universities "hire" PhD students as Research Assistants, so maybe this wouldn't be so bad. What you think?

2) Apply for a PostDoc position in theoretical physics? This is the best option in my opnion, but I don't know if physics departments welcomes mathematicians applying for PostDocs positions, Do they?

Observe that this question is not answered in another post, my question is specific to math/theoretical physics research. Besides I'm not thinking in getting a second PhD to "learn" physics, I am asking about what is more reasonable when considering to do research both in math and in physics.


texts: How to structure a Research Proposal for an MPhil

texts:
I'm in the midst of applying for an MPhil in the UK and the terminology for this application is a bit different than what I'm used to. The course website is asking for a research proposal, and I'm looking for some advice on how to structure this. They're asking that the proposal be between 600-1000 words, that it include a 'rationale', a brief 'historiography', and an indication of sources likely to be used.
What I'm wondering specifically is how to format the "sources likely to be used" section. Am I supposed to do this in full bibliographic format? Or is a simple "Author: Title(Year), Title (Year), Title (Year); Author: Title (Year), Title (Year), etc." good enough. I find putting my sources in full bibliographic format is putting me way over the word count, and making it so that the sources likely to be used is larger than the rationale and the historiography combined.
A second issue is that I'm not sure if I should have a works cited for the proposal itself, for points I've made within. If so, there's so much overlap between it and my "sources likely to be used" that I figure I should just combine them? Everything I've cited in the proposal I'm likely to use in my research.
Lastly, in terms of number of sources, is one supposed to be quite thorough, listing all of the primary and secondary sources they think they might use? Because in full bibliographic format that itself is about 600 words when I do it, if not more. And if not, how does one possibly limit themselves to 2-4, or even 5-10, potential sources for an entire masters thesis.
Any input appreciated!


texts: Is it polite to ask for your potential supervisors to help get the scholarship?

texts: I am applying for a PhD at a new university. But my grade is a little off to the scholarship line. The student service told me that I may get a scholarship, but not for sure. Now I have found two potential supervisors now. I have been working with one for years but he doesn't have much power in the university. However, another one, who he is working for and will be my main supervisor, weight a lot in the faculty. I am not familiar with the latter. Just met him once through the Skype interview. Is it polite that I ask for their help? How should I ask for the help? I am in Australia, but an international student.


texts:
I am an incoming freshman and I am in a tight spot in terms of picking my major. I personally want to work with companies like Tesla and SpaceX who use code as a basis of physical things.

I want to double major in Physics and CS, but is that a good idea, or should I minor in one?

I do not just want to be a programmer sitting in an office coding all day, I want to build software that creates actual physical things like Tesla cars (fully electric car, everything from suspension to performance is powered by code). When I get a Masters, what would be most appropriate? A degree in Applied Physics or Computational Physics?


texts: Should I retake my A minus class in my last semester?

texts:
I am a senior who is planning on applying to psychology graduate program after a gap year.
In the past three years, I have been involved in research projects and also internships that greatly enhanced my understanding of the subject matter, and I believe going to a graduate school will definitely equip me better.

I am wondering if it is a wise move to retake a class (not a core class by the way) that I got A minus in. I have 4 other advanced classes that I am taking and I thought why not shove that A minus class in and get A. My intention is to see whether I can do better (slightly better...) this time.

What are the pros and cons of doing this, particularly when I apply to prestigious and competitive grad programs?

I appreciate harsh snaps as long as they are provided with reasonable explanations.

To add more details,

Yes, my university allows students to retake classes regardless of the past grade obtained, and while it will still be showing the retaken classes.

I am an international student from a (Far) Eastern country,
I have been studying in the U.S for 8 straight years, and I believe, in regards to psychology, the U.S appears to have the most leading programs in the world. (this might be debatable so please excuse me if my conviction is terribly wrong.)

Also, I aforementioned prestigious and competitive graduate programs.
What I meant are Research 1 universities.
Obviously, schools like Harvard and Stanford are in that long list of schools, but so do Arizona State University and University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

To be clear, my goal is to expand my knowledge and deepen my comprehension of the subject in where I have access to Professors, colleagues, connections, and resources with qualities. Eventually, I wish to obtain Ph.D but if it is too competitive and I fall short, I will go for Master first.

In completion of Ph.D, I hope to bring those experience back to my country where the discipline of cognitive psychology has been stagnant in general.

So, back to my original question,
I am wondering if I should retake the non-core class that I got A minus in my last semester as an undergraduate, when I have a room for another class to fill in. If I get that stupid A, I will be able to set my GPA to 4.0.

But that is all I get and if this works against my graduate application, I will reconsider.

Thank you all for these valuable comments.
I will take each and every one of that as a useful advice.


texts: I'm Applying for mech eng MS as an undergrad in pet eng, will it matter if i take another mech eng course my last sem or not?

texts:
I'm an undergrad in petroleuum engineering applying for mechanical engineering MS in graduate school

I have two options to graduate:

Take 23 credits (I take 20 almost every semester anyways) and enroll in an Applied Thermodynamics course so it appears on my transcript as having taken one more mech engineering class
Don't take applied thermodynamics and have all general electives and pet courses my last semester (which would still be 20 credits).

I'm trying to weigh the benefits to the costs and I'm not sure admissions officers seeing one extra mech engineering course outweighs the negatives of 23 credits... but some input would be nice!


texts:
When searching for graduate schools, I've found Professor A of University X with whom I'm interested in working. I'm also interested in working with Professor A's advisor, Professor B, who is at University Y.

Is it considered socially acceptable or a conflict of interest if I ask Professor A about how it was like to be advised by Professor B?


texts: Is it appropriate for employers recruiting students to ask professors for syllabi of their classes?

texts:
Since graduating I have maintained contact with a number of professors at my university and have gone back on recruiting trips. I check in on the courses being offered from time to time and have noticed several have changed.

Can asking for information or syllabi on classes be rude or inappropriate now that I am formally recruiting at the university in a professional setting?

EDIT: To clarify, I am not recruiting for the University, I am recruiting for a private company at the University's career fairs, etc.


texts: What to do if I am on a hiring committee and I am aware that a candidate has exhibited unethical behavior in his previous position?

texts:
After a series of unethical incidents that affected me directly in my previous academic institution, I managed to move to a higher ranked department in my field about seven years ago. I am now in the hiring committee in my current institution and one of the candidates who is being considered is from my former institution.

There are two unethical practices that the candidate performed that I am aware of. One is that he managed to squeeze in as a third author on a finished paper and he thus made no contribution. I did most of the work for the paper and the paper was finished when my co-author added this person's name and submitted it. The second incident is that the candidate has announced in the past how he has changed his research results before submission to please the editor of a top journal in my field. He did this in the early years of his career. There are others in my former institution who know about it but they find this to be no big deal.

I am considering doing one of the following:

Discuss this with my current dept.
Keep quiet and stay in the committee.
Keep quiet but step down from the committee

For your information, I am a foreigner whose work is appreciated by everyone. However, I feel that I will not get much support if I open up. I had tried this in my previous institution and I realized that only a couple of people supported me. What should I do?


texts: Is it normal to not understand things from undergrad?

texts:
I graduated from college with a physics degree faster than my peers (because of various reasons: financial constraint and ambitions as well as near-burn-out state). My undergrad is a decent research university, not the best of the best, but many well-known researchers. I did well in most classes but I sometimes think it's because my classes are not rigorous enough. Just saying my thought is not out of thin air because I attempted to take a graduate course at the time and I had to work really really hard for it. I don't think I really understood many things from undergraduate classes, even though I'm really good at solving problems from examples. Now I think many of the basic things I didn't understand before start to haunt me in my graduate program. Just to emphasize, the gaps I'm talking about is not just some details but in some occasions the whole subject. I still have many gaps from my peers at graduate school. Even though I'm finally filling in the gaps starting grad school, I still feel like there are a lot I need to revisit.
Perhaps my state is a result of me graduating early and pushing my schedule to a limit where I can barely sit down with a class and understand it. Perhaps I fooled everyone in grad admission into thinking I'm some sort of smart student. Perhaps it's because my undergrad didn't really have the best structure preparing me for what I'm doing now. Or perhaps I didn't really know how to learn effectively before graduate school. I don't know.
I feel worrisome sometimes about my abilities, but relieved other time when I revisit what I didn't know and finally understand it. I want to ask if other people experience similar things about not understanding many things and eventually filling in the gaps later (I mean a lot of gaps :)? Or is it a debt of a student who didn't properly go through their education?
As a final word, I know about imposter syndrome. I think I have evidence in my lack of qualifications as said rather than only disregarding my achievements. And thank you in advance for reading my long concerns.


texts: How to avoid arxiv converting http URLs into "this http URL" link in the abstract meta data

texts:
I have an abstract that contains URLs which I would like them to appear "as-is" as they are part of the content. However, arxiv automatically modify the URLs (in the meta data) that I included in the abstract to a link with the title: this http url.

Is there any way I can prevent this and make the URLs to appear as they are? Because they are part of the story and asking the user to click on the link is not what I want.

I looked at arxiv and found this here:

  We automatically convert these into an active link reading "this ftp
  URL" and an http URL into a link reading "this http URL" (try for a
  grammatically sensible substitution). The location of related files or
  information should be given here. Also, you should add a space to
  separate any periods or text following a URL from the URL itself, so
  that it is not interpreted as part of the URL. For example, the
  comment

Is there anyway to avoid automatically converting the URLs in the abstract?


texts: I need resources regarding the history & meaning of a PhD

texts:
I am taking over the position of program director for a relatively new PhD program, at a college which has only one PhD program (mine).

The students are generally mid-career public health types, all are post-masters.

I'd like to expose them to something about the "meaning' of the PhD, its history, roots, something like that.... I remember in my program we got a lecture about the monks in medieval times, protecting knowledge and books, something like that. It had quite an impact on me at the time (long ago now).

Does anyone have any ideas about a resource, perhaps readings or other media, that I could assign to them which might instill this same value?


texts: Where should figure captions be placed if the journal asks you to place each of them on a separate page at the end of the article?

texts:
I want to submit my article to a journal that states

  Tables and figures should have captions and legends. Each of them should appear on a separate page at the end of the article.

Does this mean that every figure (I have 15) should be in jpg with captions below deleted?


texts: Are there actually students who learn by watching?

texts:
I'm a PhD student in physics, and I sometimes tutor undergrads in introductory physics classes on the side. Now, there's widespread agreement among people who teach or tutor physics that the only way to effectively learn the material is to use it, generally by working through practice problems in homework assignments and sample exams.

But recently I was contacted by a student who was interested in "tutoring," where by use of the quotes I mean that what she wanted was for me to do problems, and she would watch and ask questions when she was confused about something. At one point this student wrote a long email full of what seemed like psychological mumbo-jumbo trying to justify her assertion that she actually learns that way, and that the normal method of having her do the work would not be effective. I didn't believe it (thus I declined the tutoring assignment), but was I wrong? Are there actually students who don't learn by doing the work, and for whom it is a more effective strategy to just show them how to go through a problem? I would definitely appreciate pointers to educational psychology research on the matter, if anyone knows of any.

Note that I'm not talking about how to teach a topic for the first time, to a group of students who have never seen it before. In that case I know a bit of demonstration is necessary. The situation I'm asking about is reviewing for a final exam, where the student would (or should) have already learned the material in class and completed a homework assignment or two on it.


texts:
My two questions are about the English PGCE (in my case, I would be interested in Physics).

1) I did a bit of research online (and also know the Italian and French education system from direct experience) and it seems to me that the PGCE is not very useful in order to teach abroad. What about English speaking countries (Australia, Ireland, USA, etc.) and International or British schools?

2) I understand that the PGCE carries the credits of a master degree. Does this make it useful or "spendable" in any other sector? If, for example, after my Teacher Training Year decide to do something different from teaching, would the fact that I acquired a PGCE give me any advantage in comparison with another way of obtaining QTS?


texts: How do you avoid favoritism and personal relationships from affecting grading?

texts: Universities do encourage close cooperation between students and faculty. However, how does one prevent close working or personal relationships from affecting grading, so that it can be carried out fairly and uniformly? Is there a method of avoiding "playing favorites" with students a faculty member has a "closer" relationship with than others?


texts: How to deal with a setting where some students come to synchronous class unprepared?

texts:
With Online Learning, I have prepared recorded videos that are equivalent to lectures. Therefore, I was planning to make the module more interactive. However, it is often the case that only 15% of students watch those lectures, 35% have watched some of the recordings, 20% attend online but have not watched any videos while the rest just never attends (until the last couple of weeks just before the coursework submission and they start to stress) a synchronous session in the morning.
Although I always send emails informing students that it is quite important to watch these videos so that the class discussion will be positive and impactful for their understanding, I always end up with some students who have not done their homework essential for our synchronous discussion.
Now, I know that some of you will say that it is those students responsibility to worry about their learning outcome. As a teaching lecturer, those students' satisfaction is important, and if they are not happy with such an arrangement, I am worried.
The problem is like in all democracy areas, and some students love this approach others do not. I find it difficult (and stressful) to please both extreme parties, especially that many do not wish to show their faces in online learning.
As you know, some like to be passively taught, i.e. using old lecture-style way where the lecturer do the thing online without student interaction unless they have a clarification question. I am currently having this issue where I do not know how to make the majority of students happy and learn actively.
I really value any good advice, suggestions, previous experiences you may share are highly appreciated by both students and teachers.


texts: How to build a better positive image of yourself to your Ph.D. advisor

texts:
I am currently a first-year Ph.D. student taking a course sequence with my Ph.D. advisor. The first class of the sequence went really well, however, the second class is not going as well.  The most notable instance is I copied down a problem incorrectly from the homework prompt.  This is the first time in my life I have ever done so, and I was extremely embarrassed about it.  An embarrassing instance outside of the class was during a one-on-one discussion.  He asked me a question, and I froze and could not think correctly, and said a factually incorrect thing.  With the combination of these things, I am beginning to worry my advisor thinks I am stupid, and thus not cut out for a Ph.D.  I think one aspect of why I am so nervous around him is he's extremely famous and I think that gets to me.
Anyway, I was curious if anyone had suggestions on how to proceed with any of the two instances I mentioned to help me improve my situation.


texts: Should I resend CV if I just have an accepted paper after submitting the application?

texts:
I recently applied for several assistant professor positions. Today I was just told the paper I submitted was accepted. Also, I just had a presentation accepted by a conference.
In this case, should I contact the universities I applied for to update my CV?


texts: Is it mandatory to declare conflicts of interest?

texts:
I know some journals require authors to declare conflicts of interests as a matter of policy; even if there is no CoI, a section title Conflict of Interests is still included which declares that there were no conflicts.

However, I notice that for some journals this is not the case. For example, this paper in the Journal of Organic Chemistry does not appear to have a CoI section.

Is declaration of conflicts of interest considered optional for scholarly publications? Is it possible to ascertain whether CoIs exist for a paper like this, where nothing is indicated?


texts: Changing fields from Mathematics to Biology/Chemistry

texts:
I’m currently in my penultimate year of an undergraduate degree in mathematics. I’ve been thinking about changing fields completely. I love maths, so I intend to graduate with this degree and I’m certainly not considering switching subjects. However, I’ve always been drawn to biology and chemistry.
Note: I am currently studying in the UK. (I would be prepared to study in another country, e.g. in the US or somewhere in Europe)
I have two questions:

How do I figure out whether this is really worth it and whether I’d be happy studying biology and related subjects?

I’ve read some biology undergraduate texts (and enjoyed every second), but is this enough? And chemistry was my favourite subject at A level (equivalent to the AP or SAT in the US I think).

Now suppose I had decided to change careers. Suppose I wanted to become a biochemist and do research in say genetical engineering (pardon my lack of knowledge in this area if ‘a biochemist doing genetical engineering’ sounds like gibberish; I hope the overall meaning is clear). What steps would I have to take after I get my maths degree to achieve this goal?

I have thought about

Taking a gap year to learn the undergraduate biology/chemistry needed for a masters in these subjects
Explaining my situation to the university that I would want to attend (to study biology/chemistry) - perhaps they would let me attend some lecture courses.

I could try but I’d rather not attend biology & related lectures in my final year at uni (as the workload will already be huge).
What would you do?


texts: Saying thank you to professor & asking for a reference at the same time?

texts:
I would like to say thank you to a professor for a conversation we had when I was not in a good place. However, this is > 2 years ago now. I also have not been in touch, so I'm not sure he will remember.

Lastly, I will need a reference at some point in the future, and I am going to ask this professor.

I am worried that saying thank you now will look like I am just getting in touch because of the reference (which I will possibly have to ask for in already a month or two).

Could it be interpreted this way, and should I maybe just leave this now? I am worried it will look very fake and like I am only emailing now to secure that reference. At the same time I would like to say thank you, which I was not ready for before.


texts: How to explain blackballing by previous program in PhD application?

texts:
I was recently forced out of a PhD program at XX early in the dissertation stage. Without going into details, XX acted in bad faith and also broke the law. So even though a good academic case can be made for re-admitting me, XX won't touch me.

The problem is that in order to avoid a lawsuit, XX manufactured a story about how I repeatedly failed to make progress despite their leniency. All additional information contradicting this story was deliberately omitted from my file and the people who know what really happened will not go on record about it.

So the only option is to enroll somewhere else. But it looks terrible to have been thrown out of a program after several years, with the official reason as failure to make progress on a dissertation. It probably also looks terrible say that XX lied about that, even though that's exactly what they did. I have good evidence, but an admissions committee is not a courtroom jury and will probably not want to hear that XX broke the law and lied to cover it up.

What can I do to address doubts about my ability to complete a PhD? Do I tell them what actually happened?


texts: My advisor said he has to mention my mental health condition in recommendation letters. How much can he say?

texts:
During my PhD I suffered from Generalized Anxiety Disorder, that was officially diagnosed. I had to stay away from the University for a year, however this issue didn't affect at all my productivity and I carried on my research with several publications.

When asking for recommendation letters, my supervisor told me he is forced to mention my problem, underlining my health issues.
I would like to know how much he can write about my mental health, also considering that the academic work didn't suffer at all from this.


texts: Are there Conference Proceedings that have impact factor?

texts:
In Medicine, an Impact Factor of a journal is important indicator (IF) of journal quality.

Are there examples of conference proceedings that have a formal IF figure computed?


texts: Cleaning up/Uniformize bibliography for long document

texts:
I was wondering whether existed some software that would take as input a text file bibliography (for instance a bib file if you use bibtex), and that run it through google scholar (or any other database), so that it can return a uniformized bibliography.

As an example, suppose you have two items from the same conference

@inproceedings{mpi,
   author       = {Surname1 Name1 and Surname2 Name2},
   title        = {Some nice work},
   booktitle    = {Editor of the Name of Conference},
   year         = {2004},
 }

and

@inproceedings{RRnrj,
  author        = {Name3 S. and Name4 S.},
  title         = {Some nice work},
  booktitle     = {Name of Conference (Acronym)},
  year          = {2020},
  publisher     = {Editor},
}

and you would want it to return:

@inproceedings{mpi,
   author       = {Surname1 Name1 and Surname2 Name2},
   title        = {Some nice work},
   booktitle    = {Name of Conference (Acronym)},
   year         = {2004},
   publisher    = {Editor},
 }

and

@inproceedings{RRnrj,
  author        = {Surname3 Name3 and Surname4 Name4},
  title         = {Some nice work},
  booktitle     = {Name of Conference (Acronym)},
  year          = {2020},
  publisher     = {Editor},
}

(or whatever is the norm on the database).


texts: How can I earn a professor's attention if I am not his/her student yet?

texts:
I am trying to find a professor to do my first research under his/her supervision. I am a high school student. However I have already self-studied all the BSc and MSc (Pure Mathematics) books [based on Melbourne Uni]. But I haven't done any research and I need to have some professor to help me to choose a topic, access to non-free-papers, publishing, etc. Most probably I won't need for the learning part, i.e. to ask professor
on more understanding the texts (i.e., tutoring). Although not asking for teaching Mathematics to me may result in much less taking professor's time compared to professor's student, but professor
prefers to not spend on someone off the street asked him/her to do research with.

I already have asked two professors to do research under their supervisions and in reply I have been rejected, saying "I would prefer to supervise my students" or similar, (one was just yesterday).

I am interested in doing research on Real Analysis and I know there might be some other professors to be interested in guiding me even a lot but they are not specialized on Real Analysis.

I should also add here what I am saying when approaching:

As I quickly rejected in the first try by emailing, I decided to go to a professor's office in person with no previous meeting time; the result was a bit better in the beginning but no success.
I speak: "As I found Mathematics the most supreme beauty, a true Paradise, I started and committed to Mathematics. I had a consecutive study plan and I have studied ... [name of books]. As I was keen to have a big impact on Mathematics, so I decided to analyze books (like what a critic does with a paper to publish) rather than studying. I know that I need a lot to learn before doing research (which I don't know what to study next) and afterwards I don't know how to proceed in research. It would be a great honor if you please help me in my journey..."

My questions are: What's wrong with my actions and speaking? and, what should I say or do in order to 'win' a professor's heart?

PS - I took your kind and helpful advises in the other question, and I decided not to be isolated from 'the system'. However, it's not that easy to find my way on my own. By the way, I truly appreciate for all your guidance.


texts: Why are there regional differences in research interests in mathematics and similar areas?

texts:
It's not very uncommon that only people in some particular part of the world are working on a specific area of research.  For instance, there's a considerable difference between the styles of philosophy studied in English-speaking countries and the continental Europe; the difference can be explained by that in the languages the researchers use.  It is also conceivable that, in experimental sciences, doing research on some field is impossible without using special apparatuses or organisms that exist only in some specific part of the world.

However, I also observe such regional differences in research interests in mathematics (, theoretical computer science, and possibly more).  In these fields the explanations I gave for the example above are not really applicable: they effectively use the same language, and you don't need anything except commodity items to do research on these fields.

I vaguely see the influences of socio-political factors, of course, but I cannot tell what exactly they are.  What are they?  (I would like to know how this works to make a best choice, as a graduate student, in regard to the field I work on.)


texts: Students using the same flawed online solution sheet as the grading TA

texts:
I am in a small electricity and magnetism class, and I have recently become aware of other students using an online solution sheet (on slader.com).  On the most recent homework, I (who didn't use the online solution sheet) got a significantly worse grade than I expected.  When I read the TAs posted solutions, I realized that he had made all of the same mistakes (the primary one being assuming that the parallel impedance formula is 1/(Z_1)+1/(Z_2) when it is actually 1/(1/(Z_1)+1/(Z_2))) and all of the exact same approximations as the online solution sheet.  It is clear that he basically copied from the online solutions.  What's worse, he marked many of my solutions wrong: both the ones where I had different (more accurate) approximations and the ones that were correct, but different from his incorrect solutions (the professor confirmed that my solutions are correct).

I'm guessing it isn't against the rules for a TA to use an online solution sheet, but the fact that he has been using the same one that many of the students are using means that this entire semester I have been at a significant disadvantage.  I have done well, but the class is curved so there's that also.

What do I do about this?


texts: Can I use published data to do my analyses and publish?

texts:
Nowadays, there were many data published online and with papers, such as PLoS journal. I am wondering can I use those data to perform my analysis and if so, do I need permission of those authors to publish my results? Thanks.

Edits: The data I am trying to use is the supplementary data that provided by the article. The field I am working on is epidemiology. All comments are appreciated.


texts: Who Is To Find Research Ideas in Computer Science Research: PhD Student or Adviser?

texts:
Is a PhD student in Computer Science always expected to come up with new ideas or it is the responsibility of the adviser to provide some idea and guide the student to solve the problems in achieving that idea?

My PhD adviser wants me to give project ideas all by myself. He is not very good with new ideas and if he comes up with an idea he becomes the first author. So ideally to become a first author and complete my graduation, I've to find ideas all by myself and I don't get any useful suggestion from him either. I understand as a PhD student I should be able to find out problems but at the same time I expect some input from him. At least guide me to some specific direction or help me from a high level. Am I expecting too much or is my adviser's action appropriate? FYI, I'm at the end of my 2nd year and I've been working with him for 1 year. My major is Computer Science.


texts: Optimal reference letter writers for permanent positions: Senior experts or younger, more active researchers?

texts:
I work in pure mathematics. I have wondered for a while which kind of letter writers might be best when I apply for permanent jobs in US and UK: Roughly speaking, I am weighing up two options:

Try to get letters from the "big names" in the field. They are senior professors who made influential contributions themselves that helped shape the field. Main pro: Name and opinion carries a lot of weight. Cons: Can perhaps only endorse my work in a broad sense and you worry that their recommendation will not be really emphatic; not super active researches still today.
Try to get letters for younger more hot-shot researchers. Main pros: They are more active at the moment, my work is much closer to what they do and they might well have a high opinion of my work. Cons: Their name doesn't necessarily have the cut through that a big name does

Does anyone from their work on hiring panels have good advice/insight on this?


texts: Ph.D. studies in Management field after Masters of science in Mechatronics from German university

texts: I am a student of masters mechatronics and during my course, I attended many elective management classes. I am even allowed to write my thesis in strategic management and I'm interested to continue my career somewhere in teaching in this field. Am I allowed to pursue Ph.D. studies in Strategic Management after completing my bachelor in Mechanical Engineering and Masters in Mechatronics from German university?


texts: Does anyone know how to change SERB NPDF user profile?

texts: Its really important for me. I applied for SERB NPDF this year and for that I used my institute's mail ID. But as I completed my degree, the institute is changing the Mail domain to an alumni one and I will not receive any further mail to my current account. So, basically I will not be getting any updates from SERB. Please help me finding a solution. Is there anyway one can change the user ID details which is a mail id? I am in desperate need of it.


texts: Top-down vs Bottom-up approaches in describing an algorithm in a research paper

texts:
When writing a (computer science) research paper, I have to describe my method in term in pseudocode. Because of readability and reusability, I want to break my method into smaller pieces. However, I don't know how to present them in my paper. As far as I know, there are two approaches:

Top-down: first, present a main pseudocode which calls/invokes other smaller ones which will be explained later.
Bottom-up: present and explain all the smaller pieces first, then combine them together into a bigger one.

For example, in my paper, I'm presenting a method to solve to a problem, this method is describe by a funtion, named SOLVE_PROBLEM, as follow:

SOLVE_PROBLEM(input) {
    if CHECK(input) then:
        FUNCTION_1(input)
    else:
        FUNCTION_2(input)
}

As you can see, SOLVE_PROBLEM uses other functions (CHECK, FUNCTION_1 and FUNCTION_2) to find a solution. My question is to how to presents those functions in my paper. Should I present i) SOLVE_PROBLEM first (as it is the solution to the problem, which is the main point of the paper), or ii) other methods fisrt (as they are the building blocks to a solution)?


texts: Identifying students' purposes and institutions' purposes

texts:
I don't necessarily consider it a hardship to teach calculus or the like to students whose preparation in prerequisites is weak, but but I am offended by the practice of making it a personal policy to treat learning the material ONLY as a price paid to get a grade to put on one's resume, rather than as the thing they're there for.

I'm wondering how to identify instances of such behavior quickly when they occur.
How can one identify institutions that tolerate or encourage my position as outlined in my first paragraph above, and those that are hostile toward it?  I think the latter---where that hostility may exist---often include respectable institutions in which lots of students want to get degrees in law or business or the like.


texts: Why are positions in math so hard to come by nowadays?

texts: Whenever I've heard math professors talk about job prospects in academia, they indicate that the job market has gotten much tougher over the years. Is it true that it is harder now than it used to be to find a good position? If so, why is that?


texts:
I'm wondering are there any PhD programs (specifically in machine learning) in the US that are structured more like the European ones, i.e. where you immediately start doing research and don't spend your first two years or so on something very similar to Masters' program (lots of coursework, less research).
I have already a Master's degree and research experience and would like to start working on my thesis from the start.
Also I'm wondering are there any non-university research institutions in the US that grant PhDs? (For example, something like German Max Planck research institutes)

Thank you!


texts: Is an original refinement of a theorem eligible to be published on some journal?

texts:
I am an undergraduate student majoring in math and economics and I managed to prove a theorem (10 page long theorem) that was only stated for functions in the real line with valures in the real line, and I generalized the whole (pretty convoluted structure) to a general topological space. The proof is pretty the same, but what I am showing is that all the passages can be done and my original contribution is to justify all the passages that in the real line were for free, while in a general topological space they needed at least 2 or 3 intermediate lemmas that actually account for 3/4 pages of original proofs. Working it all with the nitty gritty details, the whole paper becomes 30/40 pages long (with intro and related literature, proof, lemmas and conclusion).
My question is the following: My field is mathematical economics. How can I be sure my generalization can be submitted to some academic journal? I am sure no one has ever done it before but I do not know how important my contribution can be. Probably it is not worth to be published in Econometrica or Journal of Economic Theory (two of the best econ journals), but I am asking here:

How can I understand if my generalization deserves at least a try to some medium/low-rank journal?
How can I understand which journal best fits my work?

Please, do not answer referring me to some professors in my department, since I would rather not risk to go to their office and feel ashamed to have proposed a work that actually is not worth publishing (I mean, I do not want to be "that one" with too much self-esteem). Thanks in advance!


texts: IEEE membership for academic and professional career

texts:
I am currently studying for a master's and I will continue my academic career to post-doctorate. I am involved in the research projects of my organization and I will continue my research and development on my organization as well. Now I want to make the IEEE membership account where I can access related research papers for research and development.

Which type of IEEE account is suitable for both an academic and professional career as in my case?
Can a student account also be used in professional research and development?


texts: How much time do MS/PhD computer science students spend in internships, and when do they do internships during the year?

texts:
Is there any research/study/survey that tried to quantify:

How much time do MS/PhD computer science students spend in internships?
When do MS/PhD computer science students do internship during the year? (i.e., which months?)

Ideally, I would like a breakdown by country. I am mostly interested in PhD students in machine learning / natural language processing.


texts: Best practices when allowing exam cheat sheets

texts:
Context: I am an assistant professor of mathematics at a small liberal-arts college in the US.

I am currently teaching an applied mathematics course for about thirty students with business-related majors, and I want to give them the opportunity to use a sheet of notes (a.k.a cheat sheet) on their first exam.  I am concerned about the implementation of this policy; specifically, I want to ensure the following:

This policy is as beneficial to student learning as possible.
I close any loopholes that could lead to unfairness or some other unforeseen problem on test day.

Some things I have already anticipated:

I will give the students some starter material that they should include on their note sheet—important formulas, critical concepts, examples they should definitely be prepared to see, etc.
Rules regarding the size of the notes are precise: Students may have a single sheet of 8.5" × 11" paper (or smaller), and they may write on either side of it.
The notes must be handwritten as this requires the students to process the material. (See this question for more discussion on why I believe that ultimately helps my students.)
I will not give a student their exam until they have removed everything from their desk except their note sheet and calculator. (I do not want them searching in their bag/book/folders once they have begun the exam.)

That leaves me with the following questions:

Should I require students to turn in their notes to me before the exam?  After the exam?  Is their anything to be gained by me reviewing their notes?
Would it be better for me to simply give them a formula sheet that I’ve prepared?  I know that this will help the students who are too lazy to bring a notes sheet, but I feel like that’s on them.
Are there other problems I should be prepared to confront?  I want to do everything possible to avoid difficulties on the day of the exam.
Is there research that supports/discourages the allowance cheat sheets?  Am I actually doing something that’s ultimately beneficial to my students?