texts: Student feedback and jealousy between colleagues

texts:
As a student, I know that some lecturers just do a better job at getting their point across than others, consequently I would give them better feedback than others. I assume that teachers receive their feedback, so they know how popular they are with students. And presumably, they also talk about it with colleagues.

I imagine this to be a considerable source of conflict between academics, so I was wondering: How do those in a teaching role at a university/college/... deal with this problem? Does student feedback create awkwardness between colleagues, or is there some kind of unspoken law not to talk about student feedback?


texts: Does an advisor owe his/her student anything? Will an advisor keep a PhD student only out of pity?

texts:
I know what imposter syndrome is. But, believe me that's not the case with me. I have worked hard for the 4.5 years of my PhD, but I feel that my research is absolutely mediocre and as a result my self-confidence has taken a toll.

Now, my advisor is a brilliant person. She is well known in her field (computational mechanics) and has many high-impact publications (IF>10). I had my undergrad in materials science and was exposed to computational mechanics in my masters. I was fascinated by it and wanted to study and work on it. However, when I joined my PhD, I was asked to learn and use a different modeling technique and a different length scale which was not in the realm of my advisor's expertise. I work in continuum while she works in nano scale. Yes, the impact-factors vary in the journals for nano and continuum. But, all I am concerned with is the quality of my research work.

Post qualifiers and research proposal (my committee seemed happy with my theoretical knowledge, preliminary work and plans), I published one paper in a decent journal. But, my work was nowhere near that being done by my colleagues. I kept on working and completed three more manuscripts which are to be submitted soon. But still, my work is just mediocre and most likely will end up in average journals (IF <2).

I feel that I should not have pursued PhD and I was not fit for producing good research. I also feel that I have screwed my chance of doing anything significant in academia.

I also feel that I am still being funded and not fired because my advisor is a good person and is allowing me to stay regardless of my average performance out of pity.

Does my advisor owe me anything? Could it be that she keeps me only out of pity?


texts:
I have recently stumbled upon this paper on arXiv:
 Stopping GAN Violence: Generative Unadversarial Networks  (mirror), which is a parody/joke paper.

Is it ok to upload joke papers to arXiv?


texts: I want to switch from medical to engineering?

texts:
I want to switch from medical to engineering.
I have a bachelor degree in medical MBBS.
I am 22 yr old and really passionate about engineering,so what are the possible and practical options I have to switch my carrier ?
I even don't have mathematics in 12th standard, i had B group in 12 std.
I am in India.
I have seen a lot of posts about switching from engineering to medical, but there are not much about this.


texts: What accounts for a good PhD experience?

texts:
We know that there are multiple horror stories regarding people's PhD experience.
I too had a minor setback : my advisor asked me to change advisors since my progress was not upto the mark.

What is it like to do good research? That is what could be the possible sufficient check marks I need to see in my program which would indicate if I should quit or strive ? I am asking this because not all challenges are positive and not all are negative.I was wondering that the more happier people might have not contributed enough on the e-community and it would be helpful to see the timeline of a successful and fulfilling PhD. ( we all know about the bigger Yes\No ( quals, defense etc) , I am more interested in the daily/weekly grind

Thanks


texts: Is it common for college students to drop a year or 2 between UG and graduate studies?

texts: I've heard of people taking a break for getting work experience or internships and jobs and so on ... is this the norm ?


texts: Shall I contact multiple faculty members in one department?

texts:
In the process of a PhD application, if contacting the faculty members are encouraged, shall I contact more than one faculty members saying that I am interested in his/her research?

Not all professor list their on-going project so a match in interests cannot usually be determinated before talking.

If I am contacting multiple members shall I disclose that I am contacting a lot of them? Is it impolite?


texts: Where to publish supplementary math intensive material for magazine article

texts:
I received a review report on my magazine article (Impact Factor 7.6). Based on magazine restriction we can not use more than 3 mathematical equations. But the idea I presented in article require some mathematical evaluation as well. The reviewer suggested that we should publish relevant result and cite them in magazine article. They didn't mention whether the results should be peer reviewed or not. My question is for such a high impact factor (in my research area the magazine is listed as 99 percentile in JCR) magazine article is it acceptable to refer something which is not peer reviewed?If its ok then what is best way to do so? I don't have personal website and my school don't have publicly accessible repository and arxiv accept only the full articles not just some kind of mathematical evaluation.
 Is it fine to use researchgate to publish mathematical results?


texts: What is this "can I hire you as a tutor" scam?

texts:
From time to time (presumably because I have an academic address, or am listed on a university web site) I get an e-mail like this: "My son will be in your city next month for two weeks.  He is interested in your subject.  I would like to hire you to tutor him.  What are your fees?"  I assume it is some sort of scam, since it does not mention what my city is, or what the subject of the tutoring is.

Does anyone know what happens to the naive academic who responds to this?


texts: Why are most of the top universities American?

texts: In any ranking system, at least 50% of top universities (top 100, for example) are American. What is special about American higher education?


texts: Paraphrasing and quantity of added material in an extended article

texts:
If I have an article that was already accepted and presented in a conference, and I would like to present it as an extended article to a journal, I was wondering two things:

How much paraphrasing should I use in my journal article?
How much "new" material should be added to the journal article?

I have found some articles in my field of Computer Science in which the quantity of added material from the original article was too scarce; and that the paraphrasing was also mostly nonexistent. It just looked like if they have added some parts only to make it to the journal. Or is it that in an extended article should I put what it was missing from the original one, i.e., limitations of space because of restrictions imposed by the conference regarding article's length.

By the way, I am considering the situation in which I submit to a journal not related to conference in which my article was previously submitted.


texts: Have made several mistakes during the course of my PhD. Can't help but feel resentment. Can I get some advice about how to move forward?

texts:
I am about to defend my thesis. My PhD journey was not a pleasant experience. I worked in an area not within the field of expertise of my advisor. Though she was present to discuss; the conception, implementation and problem solving of the projects were a lonely enterprise. This was disheartening at times, leading to poor productivity during the first two years of my PhD. In addition, my advisor was not prompt in correcting my manuscripts and thesis resulting in poor publication record till date.

As I am about to defend my Phd thesis, I feel resentful about the poor decisions I made by choosing the advisor or by not being more productive or vocal about the need of the manuscripts getting promptly corrected.

I have a postdoc position that I will be beginning from the end of the year. Thanks to lack of connections in my field of research and my poor publication record, I managed to land an okayish postdoc position. I hope to do well and get a better position after.

I don't want to be resentful and feel self loathing. Can I get some advice about how to make the best out of my position forward?


texts:
Hope this is the right place to ask this. I'm currently enrolled in a Master's Computer Science degree in Europe. I've completed most of my classes with the exception of 2 + my thesis (which would mean I'm missing about 30 ECTS from the required total of 120 ECTS for a 2 year Master program).

Due to various reasons, I was forced to keep a full time job for the past 2 years which prevented (and is still preventing me) from finishing my classes but I stayed officially enrolled in the hopes that I would find the time to finish. Next year I won't be able to re enroll with my current faculty once more due to their rules preventing students from staying too long in the same school year.

My question is: what happens to the ECTS I've accumulated thus far if I don't finish this year? I was taking into consideration further postponing school until my current job is less hectic especially since it's possible to be switching jobs at the end of the year with one in the US. This of course in the hopes that I won't be losing the 90 ECTS I have accumulated thus far.

Thank you for any information you might have on the matter.


texts: For what reasons is a class expunged instead of dropped?

texts: Instead of having a class dropped, withdrawn or set as incomplete it is possible to have it expunged from your transcript record. Why does this happen typically?


texts: Can good letter of recommendations offset bad GRE scores?

texts: I'm applying to graduate math programs and my subject test score was abysmal, but I'm very confident that I will have excellent letters of recommendation from my professors. Will these LOR offset the bad test scores? I know every situation is different, but in general what is your opinion?


texts: Is it unwise to repeat portions of a successful grant proposal?

texts:
Three years ago, I applied for and received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation in pure mathematics. Now I need to prepare a follow-up proposal for continued funding.

There is, of course much that I have to say that is new. However, I am interested in the same family of research problems, and it seems to make sense to repeat some of the text from my previous proposal, since I thought very carefully about how to describe the background and motivate my work.

Will it make a poor impression if I reuse some parts of my previous proposal verbatim?


texts: Manuscript and journal submission author order differs?

texts: PI recently submitted a manuscript we have been working on, but the author order has been swapped without our knowledge. The manuscript has long indicated the author order being A, B,... E*(corresponding author/PI), but now it was recently changed to B, A,... E* on the submission details form. The submitted manuscript title page oddly indicates the same A,B,...E* order. Has anyone else come across this before, and is it worth asking PI about it?


texts:
I am looking some papers published in IEEE which start with titles:

A Survey of IOT
Cloud Computing - A Survey

Are these also known as review papers? In other words, are they based on literature review or literature survey?

How does IEEE differentiate them?

Would you do a "literature review" for writing such survey papers? This is really confusing.


texts: Should I use reference manager software?

texts: Should I use software for managing my references?  What is the benefit of it?   I can write down the references by myself, so I'm not sure what the benefit is.


texts:
I do not ask about special cases, e.g. supervisor does not approve the thesis, there is rivalry between the supervisor and the examiners and so on.
Is there any general standard for viva, e.g. one needs to be able to answer 2/3 of the questions, etc.

I'm waiting for my viva, and I'm only worried about questions about related work. For example, my thesis only addresses a problem on deterministic programs, do I need to know all approaches to the same problem on probabilistic programs? (at the moment I don't).

UPDATE

I would like to emphasize again that I do not ask about special cases, e.g. plagiarism, wrong methodology etc. I believe theses cases are extremely rare. I just want to ask about a normal case where one managed to publish some papers, and advisor (happily) approved the thesis.


texts: What do these article submission dates really mean?

texts:
I want to submit a paper to a conference in the field of Computer Science, but I am a little bit doubtful of what information to submit. The dates are the following:

Abstract Submission Deadline: February 6, 2015
All Acceptance Communications: March 16, 2015
Preliminary Paper Submission Deadline: April 27, 2015
Peer Review Final Acceptance Communication: June 1, 2015
Final Camera-Ready Paper Submission & Copyright Deadline and Author Registration Deadline: July 10, 2015
Early Registration & Hotel Deadline: September 22, 2015

I am in the process of finishing the paper, but I think that I will not make it for the first deadline to complete it throughly. For what I know the Abstract Submission Deadline is only for submitting the abstract, am I right? I believe that is for the chair to have an overview of how many papers will they have.

The question that I have is: what does All Acceptance Communications means? Is it the submission of the full paper? Why just don't they call it Full paper submission instead of that other cryptic name?


texts: Download full journals from IEEE as pdf (ebook)

texts: I was wonder if anyone knew if it is possible (and how) to download an entire journal (as if it would be printed) from ieeeXplore ?


texts: Cite a R function/implementation from a website

texts: I am using one-sample log-rank test in my paper. I use the implementation from this website http://www.ms.uky.edu/~mai/splus/LogRank1.r. I wonder whether I should cite this and how I can cite a function on a website in Latex.


texts: Finding a Professor for my Honors Project

texts:
I am doing an undergrad in Computer Science, and am seriously considering entering in the honors program at my school.  I fulfill all the requirements (certain courses, GPA, etc) and now I just need to find a professor that is willing to work with me.

An honors project at my school is a two-part process:

First there is a Directed Study where the student and the professor work one-on-one to bring the student up to speed on the subject material that may be required for the thesis project.  This happens over one semester like a regular course
After the directed Study, the student sets to work on the actual project/research, and presents their findings whenever they have completed their project (usually two semesters).

I have read the backgrounds on all the professors in my faculty, and have identified half a dozen who do research which would be similar to my project.

My problem now is that I don't know how to "apply".  I have prepared a one page "pitch" which talks about my background, my project idea, and why I think that professor would be a good fit (based on their research interests), which I was going to email to my half-dozen potential professors.

Is this too formal?  Too informal?

Extra info:

I go to a Canadian University.
I study Computer Science.
I am away on an internship, or else I would go talk to the professors in person.


texts: Tips for a successful PhD in Artifical Intelligence

texts: I recently began my Ph.D. program in AI. Coming from a different major, I would like to obtain tips that'll enable me to leave my program with a strong background in my field.


texts: Updated my literature review for my thesis

texts: I am doing my Phd study. My supervisor attended a new conference and after that, she asked me to update my literature review based on new works mentioned in this conference. I looked at all the presented works which are relative to my work, however, I just found the abstracts of these works. I contacted the authors and they told me that they did not publish their works and hence cannot share them with me. I tried to do what my supervisor asked me to do but I really cannot read the entire works and hence cannot understand what the authors did. So, what I have to do in this case? Do I need to just mention the abstract (which is really not enough to understand the methodology of the work)? Any help please?


texts: Should major awards be included in an NSF postdoc application? If so where?

texts:
I am applying to the NSF postdoctoral fellowship in mathematics. As I understand it, I am essentially trying to convince the NSF that my proposed work is interesting, and that I am able to do it. In service of the second point, it seems like I should point out major professional awards (departmental awards, for instance). This information would appear in my cv for a job application, but the closest document for the NSF application is the biographical sketch, which has strict requirements on its contents.

Should major awards appear in my nsf application? If so, where?

Parenthetically, same question regarding invited talks (although this one is explicitly ruled out as part of the bio sketch)


texts: Under what option should i upload a revised main document when using manuscriptcentral?

texts:
[please edit this question or propose a better title, English is not my native language]

Recently my paper was accepted with major revisions in a journal using  mc.manuscriptcentral in its submission process.

I revised my paper and edited the main document, and now i want to upload it now, but there is still Authors bio in that document, so under what should i upload it, the website proposes the following choice ?


texts: Is it normal to have no publications after 2.5 years in a PhD program?

texts:
Background: I started my Ph.D two and half years ago in engineering/computer science field. I was pushed by my supervisor into a direction which he thought would be good (He switched directions and he knows nothing about the field, just because there were better prospects for getting grants). I never felt connected to the field and he never received any grants to study it.

I switched a year ago to a subject that I feel passionate about and started reading lots of literature. I have done some work and submitted (rejected at first, resubmitted and waiting).

So now I have completed 2.5 years in the program and no publications at all. I even find it very hard to find new novel ideas in my field as it is been actively researched for 10 years and it seems to me as if almost everything is already done but that is a different issue.
I am afraid I won't get enough publications in time before the Ph.D time limit expires.

Question:
Is it normal to be 2.5 years into Ph.D and have no publications?


texts: Placing a paper under review on my website?

texts: I am wondering if it would be fine for me to place my paper that is currently under review on my website? Since I did not see there is any specific instruction on this issue in the journal's website, my main concern is I am not sure if this contradicts any ethical rules.


texts: Curiosity spurred by this recent question: what were the first mega-collaboration papers (hundreds/thousands of authors)? Which institution/project/experiment started them? How were they received at first by the editors? Did some journals object to them?


texts:
The college application for the University of Phoenix asks for an employment history and phrases it this way: "Please enter your most recent employers from the last three years, starting with your current employer"

The question isn't directly asking for all employers of my last three years, right? Can I just include the last couple employers of the last two years? I would like to avoid adding an employer from three years back.


texts:
Just wondering if anyone has ever been asked this question during a PhD interview: If you get a place without funding, would you be able/willing to self-fund?

My interviewer said that it was compulsory to ask this question.


texts: E-Mailing a Professor about interest in his research group during application for a master and before admission(in Germany)

texts:
I hold a Bachelor in physics and I am applying for a master program in Germany. There is a research group by a professor, with topics very close to what I'd like to study and furthermore work on. On the group's site it is posted that there are open master-phd positions.

Should I email the professor, expressing my willingness to study and possibly work in the future under his group if I am not yet admitted to the program?

My email would contain some basic information about my choices of classes, bachelor thesis, personal studies after my bachelor and interests in the research group.


texts: How to report spam pdf links in Google Scholar?

texts:
I sometimes find that the PDF linked to a reference in Google Scholar is spam.
For example, it might have the first two pages of the journal article followed by a link to some website (often in a foreign language).

This is a bit annoying given that often users have a choice of clicking on the PDF or going to a more official publication website.

How do you report spam PDFs  of articles linked to references in Google Scholar?


texts: How to politely decline a postdoc after the interview, when another postdoc is maybe still in game (same institution)

texts:
I applied to two postdoc positions to two different groups at the same institution.

I've got to the interview stage for the first position. After the interview, they want my opinion, if I still want the job. I am aware that the topic is interesting and important but I am not so excited about the topic (and I do not need the job immediately).

How should I respond to them when I don't know the fate of the second application? I would prefer the seconds position, because it is more exciting for me. And I do not want to cause any offence to the first group. It is a research institute and I am sure these group talk to each other regularly.


texts: How do you respond when students submit the wrong assignment, but you only notice after the deadline has passed?

texts:
I occasionally get students who submit their assignments, but I only notice that they've submitted the wrong assignment when I begin grading. I can think of three possibilities to explain this:

They made an honest mistake
They are trying to buy some time to submit their assignment by making it seem like an honest mistake
They didn't do the assignment at all and are trying to get some kind of credit

Sometimes I allow students a few hours or 24 hours to resubmit the correct assignment (is 24 hours too long?). If they don't, then I usually assume they haven't actually completed it. Other times, I'm just tempted to give them a zero.
The student in question submitted an assignment that was submitted previously in the semester.
Is there a better way that you know of to confirm whether they're being honest or not?
By the way, I'm looking for a general answer that can apply across multiple situations. In this specific situation, due to many different factors, I decided to allow the student to resubmit. She resubmitted right away, which seems to demonstrate it was an honest mistake.


texts: Can I have both my supervisors write reference letters?

texts:
It seems like most PhD applications require at least two reference letter. One of my Master's thesis supervisors (a PhD) has written me a reference letter. Can I ask my other supervisor (a PhD student) to write me the second one, or would that be redundant?

The other alternative letter writers are all professors who have only seen me in class and can't really comment on my research potential.


texts: What is the proper way to reach out to a university with an academic question as a layman?

texts: I am a layman with a series of questions regarding chemical engineering. I'd prefer to contact my alma mater and contact someone there - is there a protocol for doing that? Is this an unusual thing?


texts: What happens when the information of the graduate application and the recommender does not match?

texts:
I have applied for Ph.D. positions in US universities (still applying) and I asked one of my collaborators to write a recommendation letter for me. She has my CV. Today she sent me a copy to check if everything's alright (though it was submitted in some universities already). I checked there is a mistake. I mean I have graduated in Chemical biology but she wrote Chemistry.
In this case, what should I do? I mean I can ask her to correct it. But what about the LORs that already has been sent? Will it have a very negative impact on my application?


texts:
I am working on improving an existing deep learning model which was published in last year A* conference. The code and datasets are made available on GitHub. When I ran them the accuracy was less than what they cited on paper I ran code 10 times answer changed a little(>1%) but the difference of cited score and actual scores are like( approx 5%). what should I report in my paper actual one or one I am getting

P.S: I tried contacting all the authors and also opened an issue on github repository of code


texts: My recommenders copied letters from online

texts:
I'm an international student applying for college in the US. I asked subject teachers from my current school to write me recommendation letters, specifically telling them not to just copy one from the Internet. I'm using the Common Application for four out of the eight colleges I'm applying to.

My recommenders submitted their letters to CommonApp and only then did they show their letters to me (which was okay, because I waived my right to review the recommendations) and when I checked online, they had ended up copying 99% of the letter from ones found online.

My question is, will this affect my chances of getting into these colleges? I'm not entirely sure if copying recommendation letters from online counts as plagiarism, and I'm also not sure if colleges check for plagiarism in LORs. Thanks for your clarification!


texts: Letter of Recommendation from Instructor

texts:
I am a graduate student pursuing my masters in physics, with the intention of eventually getting my PhD (just not from my current institution). This past summer, I taught a physics course, and several of my students asked me to write letters of recommendation for them, and I offered to write letters for others, too. The students who asked did very well in the course, and I am happy to write letters for them. Most of these letters are for employers or graduate/medical schools. Would it be in their best interest for me to write them, since I am not an established/tenured faculty, and, in fact, have not even received my masters? I don't want to write them letters which will be disregarded by their employers/institutions because I am not a faculty, but was just the instructor of record.

Cheers


texts: Mentioning times cited, F1000 citations in CV?

texts:
I am applying for a faculty position and want to highlight the quality of my publications.

Are any of the following appropriate in an academic CV:

citation rate (citations/year)
F1000 Recommendations
separating a 'monograph' from other 'articles'?

If so, how should I do it?

For example, should I just put the information parenthetically at the end of the reference, like:

  Author (Year) Title, journal, vol, (> 10000 citations; 2 F1000 recommendations)

note: this question Should I put my h-index on my CV? is similar, and some of the ideas from that question apply here. However, it is not a strict duplicate because the h-index addressed there is a single metric for evaluating a candidate; my question relates to publication-level metrics, and which are useful to provide within the reference list of a CV.


texts: What does "Reviews Completed" status mean in Springer?

texts:
I submitted a paper to one of the Springer Journals through Editorial Manager almost 5 months back. The status changed from Editor Assigned to Under Review and now it is showing "Reviews Completed" since past five days. Can anybody suggest what does it actually mean and is there any other stage before the decision is made?
Does it give any indication about the reviewers not rejecting my submission?


texts: How much do bench skills matter for a postdoc?

texts:
If you're hiring a postdoc, how much do you care about the techniques they've used in the PhD?

I'm thinking ahead to the postdoc search (will probably start in earnest in summer/fall). My current field is a somewhat obscure area of human molecular genetics, lots of old-school techniques. I'm very interested in moving to a model organism that will provide quick output during the postdoc and let me transition to a career at a primarily undergraduate institution. I've also had very little opportunity for bioinformatics training, which I would like to learn. (I see lots of online ads for postdocs listing a slew of particular skills, but I've heard these are less common paths compared to personal networks so I'm wondering if they're representative.)


texts: What is the best secondary language for an academic to know?

texts:
Let's say someone young (~PhD student stage, possibly earlier) wants to become a professor. He doesn't mind moving around and will go wherever the best offer is. He'll obviously need English, but he's also motivated enough to learn another language. What is the best language to learn that will open the most opportunities?

If we proxy the number of jobs available in any country by research spending, then according to Wikipedia the most likely destinations are the USA, China, Japan, Germany and South Korea in that order. The main language in the US is already English, but the other four have local languages. However, I don't know how easy it is to get an academic job in any of these countries (or the ones later in the list - India, France, Russia ...) without knowing the local language.

If the answer to this question varies by field, the I'm most interested in the sciences.


texts: Are Honoris Causa degree worth as much as PhD?

texts: Lately I have seen that some people (some ex-presidents in my country and some others) have been getting the Honoris Causa degree from some universities. Some of which have never even gone to University.  I would like to know how much is that degree worth. By "worth" I mean compared to a normal achieved PhD, can an Honoris Causa graduate give lectures at a university? Can that person be called a doctor at all? Is it possible for one to get an honorary degree in science, or engineering? How much demonstrated work would it take to get one?


texts: What tense to use in arts and humanities papers?

texts:
How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper advises writers to use the past tense when they write about unpublished research (including the research their paper reports), and to use the present tense to write about research previously published in a primary journal. So, presumably, writers should use the past tense to refer within their paper.

However, in a reply to this question, a user commented that he uses the present tense when he references within his paper.

What tense should writers use when they refer within their paper?
Do arts and humanities papers use tense differently than science papers do?


texts: How should I interpret a journal rejection of "not of sufficient interest" or "does not meet journal standards" without mention of any errors?

texts:
How should I interpret a journal rejection of "not of sufficient interest" or "does not meet journal standards"?

This is what happened to me particularly. Papers were rejected for those reasons and the journal never told me that they had found any error or that anything was wrong or inconclusive.

When a paper is rejected, do reviewers let you know if they found any error or they will never tell you even if they found one?


texts: What position should a young researcher moving to a UK university apply for?

texts:
Having obtained by PhD in Computer Science five years ago, I have been working in R&D projects for the last years. I want to pursue an academic career and I am currently considering moving to UK. As far as it concerns my academic qualifications, very roughly, I have 8 journal publications, an h-index of 8 by google scholar, and a little teaching experience in university education.

The variety of titles in UK job openings is somewhat confusing: (Postdoctoral) Research Associate, (Senior) Lecturer, Research Fellow, etc. And then, there are open-ended and fixed-term contracts.

The question is: what kind of positions would it be best to aim for? In other words, what kind of position would correspond to my skill-set, given that I am interested in evolving academically (research and teaching)? And how could I improve my CV towards this?


texts: What is a good etiquette to correct a person using wrong title for me?

texts:
I currently have a masters degree in an engineering field and I don't currently have any PhD degrees (I may study for a doctorate degree in future). It happens that when I go to conferences or scientific occasions, even in the emails I receive from people; they use a doctor prefix for my name; but I do not have a PhD degree.

What is a good etiquette to deal with such thing? Should I directly tell them that I do not have a doctorate degree? Or should I neglect such a mistake by them and don't do anything?

I think it is unethical not to correct such thing, because the person may still think that I have a PhD degree; and such wrong usage of title should be corrected some way. Once a person used doctor title for my name in an email and I just added a line in my reply to his email, stating that I have a masters degree.


texts: What field should I choose if I want to do quantum information in future but there isn't a group in my university?

texts: I'm an undergraduate student. I have learned something about research. But in my university currently most professors are working on condensed matter physics, a few AMO. I think I really need someone to guide my career because I can't get myself interested in condensed matter experiments (especially those to develop new materials or having seldom to do with the "physics things") for now.


texts:
I'm currently trying to decide what to major in undergrad and I'm between math and CS. I've taken multivar/linear alg/intro to abstract math so far and would really like to continue with math as my major rather than CS. The problem, though, is that I want to go into software engineering (couldn't really see myself in many math related careers like actuary, analyst, etc). So, does anyone know what the odds are that I'd be able to get a SE job with just a pure math degree in today's market? Should I just go for the CS major to have a better shot at landing a job?  Unfortunately, I cannot double major due to schedule constraints. I could minor in CS if majoring in math, but would this help me very much in securing SE jobs?

In future years (say, the next 30 or 40), what would you guess will be the more valuable degree in the long run?

Thanks for the help.


texts: What is the eligibility criteria for doing research in physics?

texts:
I will be completing my MSc in mathematics, in India; and have before completed my PUC (11 & 12th classes) in PCMC (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Computer Science), and BSc in PCM (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics). In the MSc Math here in India, the courses are pre-fixed, and involves uniform concentration of all the math.

If I want to switch to doing research in physics, how difficult would it be? Is it harder to change fields at the stage of a PhD or a postdoc (or later)?


texts: Is it reasonable to do number theory without active/good prof in uni

texts:
I'm from the top math university in my country (it's not really world class but on average one guy from every other batch in my uni goes to Harvard/MIT/Princeton/UChicago/Stanford/UMichigan for PhD).

I'm in my second year and I'm broadly interested in number theory and geometric analysis, but there's no "good" faculty in number theory in my university (there's only one prof and he don't do any active research and don't have much reputation outside my country), so I'm almost on my own to study number theory.

It's pretty hard to learn everything by myself with simultaneously handling the coursework, so I'm wondering whether it's a good/sensible idea (wrt say grad school application where I need to compete with many people from top colleges in USA who are taking legit number theory courses by world class number theorists) to switch completely to geometric analysis and ditch number theory ? I think I can focus more on geometric analysis in that way too -- the only thing that is bugging me from switching completely is that I like number theory more than geometric analysis.

There were one guy from my college who went to Princeton for number theory who wrote a solo number theory paper as an undergraduate, but I'm nowhere close to being that smart. Also I can do reading courses/summer internship under some active number theorist researchers in my country, but the problem is that you need to know some nontrivial amount of number theory before you can do some internship under some reknowned number theorist !


texts: Do I need to include page numbers when citing indirectly in the text?

texts: I'm referring to APA citation. Say I'm picking up a train of thought of an author and I know which book he states it in. I just don't have a page number. Is it okay to just say (Muller, 2008) without page number? Will I have to include page numbers for the book in the references?


texts: Why do papers not have a table of contents?

texts:
Most papers (at least in maths, but I believe this applies to other subjects as well) don't have a table of contents (TOC), but dedicate the last paragraph of the introduction to essentially the same purpose. What's the rationale behind this?

I think TOCs are a much better solution. They minimise the burden on the author (no need to come up with creative ways of structuring a TOC in plain text) and are easier to skim as a reader (I know precisely what information to expect in a TOC, as compared to plain text where the author might hide additional information among the TOC stuff).


texts: Is it a good idea to connect data points on a plot to increase readability in slides?

texts:
I have a graph of points from a set of experiments,
that I want to present on a slide.
The important information in the graph is both the values of the points,
and more significantly, that the green points are above the blue points.

It is quick and easy to get my plotting framework (matplotlib)
to connect each point to the next:

It should be fairly clear to anyone that the relationship between points is not expected to be linear.
I thought I could want to put the line in to make it clear that one is below the other. It can be hard to see the point markers on the projector screen.
Is this a good idea?
Does showing plots this way enhance the visibility of the them for presenting, or does the fact the that lines themselves are fairly meaningless distract too much?
Audience  concerns:
The whole presentation is for graduating engineering students and must be simple. While they would normally have the capacity to deal with complicated plots, the content of the presentation is complicated enough that I don’t want to distract them with anything that might waste thought time. I have already rejected the box-and-whiskers plot as too complicated; this is a plot of the mean values of that data.


texts: Should you list acceptance of an abstract to a prestigious conference on CV when unable to attend due to personal reasons?

texts:
I've been just had an abstract accepted to one of the top conferences in my field, but I'm cancelling my participation for personal reasons (short story: my wife is going to give birth to our first child a couple of weeks before the conference, and at that point I'd rather stay at home than spend several days in a different continent; this happened because I neglected to check the actual conference dates when I submitted the abstract; let that be a lesson for all of us). When I informed the organizers, they suggested that I still should add the conference to my CV, with an indication that I didn't actually present, i.e., under "Peer-reviewed conferences", I would write something like:

"A genius solution to an insanely difficult problem". Conference Everybody Wants To Attend XXIV, May 2014, Prestigious American University (unable to present).

What are your thoughts about this? If the organizers hadn't said anything, I would have left it out of my CV; but then, the particular organizer I corresponded with is a big name in the field and way more senior than I am, and she didn't seem to have any problems with it.


texts: How to integrate a paper where I am third author, but did a lot of work, into my master's thesis?

texts: I am writing my thesis currently and I want to include papers that I am included on as an author.  I will have a couple papers where I am 1st author, but there is one where I am third but did a lot of the work.  How do I go about integrating it into my thesis?  Can I copy/paste most of the text still or do I need to rewrite it?  I don't want to plagiarize but don't want to rewrite it if I don't have to.


texts: Master Thesis - use of cover illustration

texts:
I'm currently writing my master thesis and would like an opinion on whether or not to use a cover illustration on the thesis.

I've noticed many students around me do not take the time to make the cover page attractive (e.g. a simple title is all).

What is the "standard" convention regarding the cover page of a master thesis?

Note that I have no restrictions from my university.


texts: Debriefing participants right away or later in an online study

texts:
I am curious about this question related to ethics. Within my own online study (by the standard code of ethics), it is needed to review participants after the study. However, I am wondering whether it has to be done right away or for example within 3 days of completing the initial study. I see pros and cons of either.

For example if I consider it from the viewpoint of giving the debrief right away, then

pros are:

Participants can ask questions more easily as they remember more
Higher likelihood of being interested in the debrief

cons are:

Researchers cannot check whether any potential problems (e.g. errors, software malfunction) arose during the procedure and if it would be required to repeat the procedure.
Respondent cognitive fatigue

It would be nice to hear examples of how you would deal with it.


texts: How to narrow down focus in humanities/social sciences?

texts:
I’m looking to enroll in a social studies/humanities undergraduate course, but I’m unsure of which subjects to focus on in my studies. I have ambitions to progress on to postgraduate study, research and academia; industry and financial gain aren’t on my radar.

Philosophy, politics, history and international relations all seem good fits, that could open up lots of opportunities, but how would you decide which subjects are most aligned with your interests, and crucially which combinations would be feasible and most facilitate further study/research?


texts: I am writing a conference paper and want to cite the following report by Symantec using Bibtex (https://www.symantec.com/security-center/threat-report). I am currently using @techreport which only needs author,title,institution, year and month, but I am having trouble getting the authors. At the end of the report it has team and contributors listed, are team considered the authors ? also is @techreport the right category to use or should I be using a different one ?


texts: What's the impact of former university's transcript on PhD application?

texts:
I'm a junior majoring in chemistry and have a plan for applying Ph.D. after graduation. My current GPA is not distinct, just 3.65 out of 4 (Many people say 3.7 is competitive while 3.6 is like average if want to apply for top programs). My current school is awesome though and highly prestigious in Chemistry, ranks 10ish on USNEWS, I don't know if that helps when the GPA is not that top?

In addition, I'm a transfer student, which makes the things more complicated. Before coming to US, I spent 2 years at a Chinese university with an overall GPA 3.43/4.00 and rank maybe top 10%, which seems to be fine but not that satisfactory. The most serious problem is that I even got C for some important courses like Orgo 2 (well even I got an A in orgo 1...)and both 1,2 of p.chem. The average scores for these courses were around C and the failure rate was about 30% so luckily I at least didn't fail but just got an average score. That's terrible and I don't know if the past transcript will play extreme bad effects on my application. (Actually, I think I put more emphasis on some entrepreneur and voluntary activities, that was really time-consuming and meaningless...)

I want to do research in the biochemistry field. And it's a dilemma. The pChem seems to have no significant relation to my field of interest(ye, orgo 2 does...) but which are definitely important courses for a Chem major. And I'm wondering if sacrificing time to retake these courses is a better choice since I really want to take some grad level course during my senior year. If the good performance in upper-level courses can cover the bad grades in past?

And I know the research is extremely important for Ph.D. application. I did one in my former Univ. in my sophomore which is related to organic synthesis but was very basic. I didn't have some papers for this one I just started my second research last semester here at my current university. It's awesome the lab is closely related to my field of interest and the PI and Ph.D. mentor are really nice and helpful. But here comes the question, I think the lab is awesome and if I continue to involve there is possibility I can get some result maybe some publication? But the lab is very new and the PI just started her AP position here, definitely, she is willing to write a strong RL for me if I continue to work at her lab, but is the RL strong enough for a top program? (I know I'm greedy but... Everyone wants the best right)

I know it's a whole lot of questions and sorry for that...


texts: Can mathematics professors do consulting work external to their university?

texts:
Is it generally true that mathematics professors do not / cannot engage in consulting work external to their universities?

If I'm not mistaken, plenty of business school / law school / economics professors do consulting work, in addition to their academia work (researching + teaching).

I have heard of one reason, from one of our professors in numerical analysis:  for example, a company like eBay.com or Amazon.com would never agree to show its proprietary algorithms to a math professor, without the professor (and his / her school) agreeing that the work to be done is then owned by the company and not by the school -- and even the emails would be monitored.  In turn, the school would never agree to this sort of arrangement, and so nothing would ever get off the ground.  And that it wouldn't be worth the risk to an eBay or an Amazon to pay for the expertise of a math professor.

So, are there instances of academia mathematicians working something out with industry and doing external consulting work?

Thanks,


texts: Am I supposed to know Machine Learning before I start my PhD in Machine Learning in Materials Science

texts:
I will be starting with my PhD in Materials Science and Engineering, in Fall 2020.
My Background
I have done M.Sc. in Chemistry (focusing more on Inorganic).
I have worked at a Material Chemistry Lab before and have a paper focusing on optoelectronics.
Also, I don’t know if it gives any insight, I did C++ in school for 2 years. So I understand the basic approach towards a coding problem.
Present Situation
I started with Python and have even tried solving LeetCode questions, could do easy ones with pretty good rating.
I have done courses on ML and Data Science.
So I understand the basics of ML, but all theoretical.
I do not have any practical experience on it, though I understand the libraries and their commands (Scipy, sklearn, NumPy, Pandas). I understand Regression, Classification and Clustering (again, very basic).
I have read the review article and few of the papers published by the professor of my interest.
Questions

How much ML am I supposed to know before I start with my PhD, or before mailing the professor so that I leave a good impression.
Is DFT an important part of this field? Since I see this coming up a lot in the papers.
How much Math background should I have?
Am I supposed to know Quantum Chemistry as well?

Thanks


texts: What to do when principal investigator publishes your work without putting you down as a coauthor?

texts: Say I am post-doc in the USA, and my PI (principal investigator) just published a review I wrote, with pictures I took of my experiments without putting my name as the author. What tools do I have at my disposal to get what is rightfully mine?


texts:
I want to write three papers from my thesis. But actually I am stuck. What is the first step to do?

Do I first choose the journal (more precise scope) and then I move on to write the article according to this scope. (Of course the choice of journal is based on my research topic.)

Or do I start with writing the paper and then move to choose the journal and readjust the paper according to the template and ameliorate it?


texts: Who decides a university's stance on a topic?

texts:
To illustrate what I'm thinking of, this page by UCL on Brexit says:

Are EU students welcome in London?
Yes. In the words of Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London: "To the almost one million Europeans living in London ... you are welcome here." UCL fully endorses this statement.

There are tens of thousands of staff and students at the university, so it's statistically unlikely that they all endorse the statement. Who, then, decides that UCL indeed fully endorses this statement? He or she is speaking for the entire university. Does he/she know if indeed the majority of staff and students at UCL endorse the statement? If so, how?
If I had to guess, I'd hazard that the Vice Chancellor decides for the university as a whole, but I don't know if it is a solo decision, if the Vice Chancellor conducted a poll of the permanent staff (presumably not the students), or if the Vice Chancellor simply assumed that the university needs EU students for revenue so they had better endorse the statement.


texts: Citing a paper under review in 2 different conferences

texts:
I am currently writing 2 conference papers. One is highly quantitative in nature and the other is absolutely qualitative in nature. I am submitting both papers to conferences having deadlines in the next couple of months.

The papers present results on 3 different research questions on the same topic and are highly related with each other. You could argue that paper A + paper B together present a holistic view of the answer to these research questions. Individually, paper A and paper B show a different side to the problem since you generally get alternate points of view from quantitative and qualitative works.

Since the papers and their results are highly interrelated, there exists a compelling reason for me to ensure that they cite each other. I have seen this question and this question which are also highly related to my question. However, my question is different enough, in my opinion to warrant a separate question.

How should I cite these papers? (one paper is going to be in APA style and the other will be in ACM style)
Does it make good sense to contact the Associate Chairs of these conferences for further clarification?
The most important question for me is, is this ethical? Does it not break the double blind review system? I am ready to not cite these papers if that is the case.

I am having conversations with my adviser about this but just want some broader perspective from different disciplines if I am somehow missing something.


texts: Responding to a reviewer who misunderstood key concepts of a paper

texts:
How do you respond to a reviewer who is very critical about your paper but from whose comments you can easily see that he/she has misunderstood the key concepts of the paper?

In my case, the first reviewer had no issues with the paper and suggested only a minor revision. But the second reviewer seems to have not spent too much time on understanding the paper. This reviewer's misunderstanding made the editor suggest a major revision of the paper.

In my response to the reviewer (not sent yet), I used the sentence "This comment completely misrepresent the methodology described in the paper." Is this too much?

UPDATE: I am glad to inform you all that after the second round of reviews, the paper was accepted with minor revisions. I followed the general advice given in the accepted answer for this post. Instead of being too defensive, I agreed in my response to the reviewer that the misunderstanding may be due to wording of certain sentences and changed them. Specifically, I used the following sentence:

  "There seems to be a misunderstanding about the methodology, which we
  hope to clear through our responses below and by revising the text in
  the manuscript. Contrary to what the reviewer states, ..."

Hope this update helps someone in future.


texts:
Why do we use F for failing on an otherwise arbitrary alphabetic grading scale? Isn't E just as meaningful for failing as A is for excellent?

I'm more interested in a response on the history of how the current scale came to be.

(Edit: prompted from the comments below, I am asking about this situation within the context of the American grading system.)


texts: How to add DOI to the published version of an article in arXiv?

texts: I uploaded an article to arXiv which has been published in The Astrophysical Journal after referee suggested edits and final proof. How do I cross ref the arXiv version with the DOI of the published version? Do I just cross-ref the DOI of published version with the older version in arXiv or do I download the published pdf and upload it with DOI as a new version in arXiv? (I think the latter is not allowed as when I uploaded the published version of another paper as full-text on researchgate, I was told to remove it).


texts: What are the benefits and purpose of presenting a paper in an academic conference?

texts: If i have completed all the research work and compiled a research article then why should I present that paper in a conference and not submit it to a good journal for publication ?


texts: Could I ask my supervisor to help me coding an implementation of a scientific paper's algorithm

texts:
I am stuck at an implementation of a scientific paper's algorithm, could I ask help from staff to code a part with me or even my advisor to do so?
Thanks for the clarification.


texts: Applying for postdoc fellowship vs applying for lectureship

texts:
I finished my PhD 2.5 years ago (Computer Science), and have since been working as a post-doc at a top university. I've decided that I want to pursue an academic career, and I'm trying to decide what step to take next. I'm at the stage where I could start applying for lectureships (assistant professor), and there's a decent chance that I would be successful -- at some university at least, even if not the very top ones.

However, the other option, which I have been recommended to go for, is to apply for a post-doctoral research fellowship. These prestigious fellowships are sponsored by independent funding bodies, for people with up to 3 years experience since their PhD, and seem to be designed for the very best academics. (If you are familiar with the UK, then I have the Royal Academy and EPSRC fellowships in mind.) However, my worry is that because these last for up to 5 years, then by completion, I will then have had around 8 years of post-doctoral experience. This seems a very long time before I apply for my first lectureship -- and if I started applying for lectureships now, I could have risen to senior lecturer (associate professor) by then.

So, my question is, if I apply for one of these fellowships and am successful, why would it actually be a positive career move for me? It would give me time to focus on my research which is great, but for my long-term career, wouldn't the delay in taking up my first lectureship position ultimately have a negative impact?

Thank for any advice!


texts: How is student feedback dealt with for poorly teaching faculty?

texts:
I teach at a teaching university. Research is not a priority. I'm new to the university and am teaching full-time.  I believe I've developed a rapport with the current cohort of senior students.

During one our classes, the discussion moved to the teaching of other faculty. This is a group of seniors who are likely to graduate at the end of the semester.

The students made several very concerning things about other faculty:

They download labs from other universities and these labs cannot be run on the equipment we have. When asked about it, they state ... I'm  retiring soon, let's just do it..
They publicly abuse individual students for stupidity.
They make assessment available through the content management system without mentioning its existence to the students during class.

Apart from end-of-semester student feedback, there doesn't seem to be any way to address such poor teaching (or even investigate whether the student views are correct).

What do other places do? Is it at a department level? Dean level? Is it a separate organization?

I can't do anything directly for the current cohort of students, but it would be good to try to move towards clear mechanisms for improving faculty teaching.


texts: Using nonstandard gender-neutral pronouns to refer to myself in academic writing

texts:
I am currently preparing my first formal work for publication, which I am the sole author on. While working through final edits, I've come across a few places where I refer to myself and would prefer not to gender myself as female (eg. "the PI also presented on her research at a local event...") as I do not identify as female (non-binary), and prefer to use the pronouns ze/hir if I need to refer to myself in writing.

As this is my first publication, it feels like this may be a good opportunity to start as I wish to go on, and just go for it. But I also don't know if it'll just read as awkward, and possibly requires a disclaimer/clarifying note in institutional affiliation (eg. Author Name, University Affiliation, Department, (ze/hir) or Author Name, University Affiliation, Department; Author uses ze/hir pronouns.)

My question, therefore, is as follows. Is it appropriate to refer to oneself using gender neutral pronouns in academic writing? And if so, do I need to include a disclaimer/clarifying note somewhere?

An additional note: I've unfortunately not had a chance to discuss this with my supervisor yet. Input from others would be most appreciated!

(Note: I've read through as many similar posts as I could find and did not see any duplicates or anything that answered this question, but please do steer me towards any questions that do if relevant.)

EDIT: Thank you all for your answers. I'm in Psychology, where depending on the document, it's okay to refer to yourself in the third person. In this case, I've removed all references to myself by using the passive voice. In the future, I'm going to go for singular "they" when possible, and in submissions that deal more with identity or LGBTQ+ young people (one of my areas of research), I'll probably go with ze/hir since that's in line with my principles and the theme of the research. Unless your answer will add significantly to the value of the discussion, I think this thread is pretty complete! (other nb researchers, I hope this has been helpful. Feel free to get in touch.)


texts: Should technical research papers contain a 'Proposed solution' in them?

texts:
I want to publish a paper for the literature study that I have performed instead of the way I have implemented it (Planning to do this in another research paper). I have, however, evaluated different approaches that we can take to do this kind of work (Sentiment analysis). But when I submitted it to a workshop, it was rejected with the following,

  "However, the paper does not provide any detailed information, either
  theoretical or technical, regarding their proposed approach, how they would
  seek to evaluate this approach and the strengths and weaknesses of this
  approach as a set of interlinked concepts." and "doesn't have any experimental comparison of the methods being reviewed."

Can you please explain?


texts: Nominating my Supervisor as a Speaker in a Workshop Conference

texts:
I am interested in nominating my female supervisor to be a speaker in a workshop for women in an international conference, she is quite intelligent, helpful to other female students and that triggered why I cannot nominate her.

Currently, I am a Ph.D. student and I am one of the organizers of the workshops. I have nominated other speakers and writing an invitation email on behalf of our organizers team to the potential speakers.

I am quite afraid as I am still new in my position and maybe she could think that I am licking shoes or being a hypocrite person. I am also thinking that she could consider likely humiliating as her student nominating her.

I have never been in such position like that, but I do think she deserves, but I am afraid that this could be counterproductive in our relationship.

The question is: Is it impolite to nominate my female supervisor to be a speaker in a workshop for women?


texts: Is it advisable to talk about "learning things I don't know in the field" as one of the plans for future in statement of intent?

texts: I am going to have a slight change in my field of study which is acceptable by the faculty I'm applying in for Master's. But because of this difference, I assume, I probably know less about the field than a Bachelor's graduate of the new field. In my statement of purpose, should I express that I'm willing to take care of the missing credits and I'm eager to learn what I don't know?


texts: Fancy/pretty or concise and informative plots?

texts:
I am writing my Master's degree Thesis in Economics and I'm dealing with quite a lot of plots (my topic is more related to statistics, in particular I'm working with B-spline free knot placement) and I am wondering what's better, if to provide very fancy plots (for example using ggplot2) or instead to keep things simple and use the basic plots (from R).
What do you prefer when reading an article?
Thanks in advance.


texts: Including articles in submission in "refereed publications" section of CV?

texts:
I have a section for "refereed publications" and one for "other publications".
Where should I put publications that are presently in submission?
Is it OK to put them in "refereed publications"?


texts: Professor is upset about student comments about her lectures. What should I do?

texts:
One of my former supervisors is upset about student feedback for her lectures. There are two problems:

If she provides complete slides with information, students complain that she reads from the slides.
If she doesn't provide complete slides with information, students complain that her slides are incomplete.

And

If she provides webcasts of her lectures, students don't turn up to lectures.
If she doesn't provide webcasts of her lectures, students complain she's a bad lecturer.

I know she's upset + it's directly impacting her medium-term happiness based on what she wrote on social media. However I have not talked to her about it. Should I? If so, what can I say? Both problems look generic enough that other lecturers must've dealt with them before. How?

EDIT: Thanks for the advice. Since there's little I can do, I liked her post and left it at that.


texts: As a new grad student, should I put Masters or PhD on my resume?

texts:
I enrolled in a PhD program after getting my undergraduate degree. The program's first 2 years are geared towards getting a Masters degree after which candidates can join the "proper" PhD program.

What should I put on my resume/ professional sites? Am I a Masters student, a PhD student, or simply a graduate student?


texts: Use an experimental device in a paper and not mentioning the one who made it

texts: I had a situation in my university where one of the Assist. Prof. asked me to leave the device I made (during my Msc study) in the department by saying that he will ask the head of the department to buy it for the department. Then after a while, I found that he published a paper in a journal and did not put my name as co-author, not citing the paper I published about my device and not even acknowledge me for providing the device and the department didn't even buy the device. All experimental results were from my device. He claiming that I allow him to use the device with a Msc student. He publishes a paper with 2 other colleagues, not with a student. What should I do? I already explained everything to the journal and they said this matter should be resolved within your university.


texts: How do I check whether I retained copyright for a figure in a paper from ten years ago?

texts:
I have been contacted by a student who wants to reproduce a figure from a paper of mine in Phil Trans R Soc B (this one, in case it's pertinent) in their thesis. The paper itself is apparently not under a CCAL (I normally choose this option if it is available, but it looks like it wasn't for this one), and I can't find any record of the copyright agreement at the time - the manuscript was submitted about ten years ago.

The journal has a link to the Copyright Clearance Centre for requesting permission for reuse; I ran the form myself and it seems that the student can pay a fee to get permission from the journal to reproduce my figure. That is not my question.

My question is, how to I check whether I transferred copyright for the figure at the time? If I didn't I can presumably just send him the submission version of the figure.

I tried searching the Royal Soc website but it seems surprisingly difficult to find this (which I have noticed before with Elsevier; I think they'd rather we assume they always get the copyright).

Related: How to legally re-use images in paper and still continue to use and distribute them in slides? (but this is about a situation where the copyright transfer status is known).


texts:
As the new general data protection regulation approached, I got a ton of emails from services I'm using asking me to give my consent.

My question is, would the new law help me to get rid of the million emails I receive from journals that somehow got my contact information and want me to publish, become an editor, or speak at a conference?

To be clear, it is a theoretical question. I know that each day more and more of these journals appear and there is no way to get rid of them all. But I wonder if I could send them a standard text like "As you know the law.. please delete my contact information".

However, I'm suspect the new law doesn't apply to people that are outside the EU.


texts: I got accepted into a math PhD program but I don't feel adequate enough to attend

texts:
I got accepted into a school that I really wanted to go to for a math PhD. I finished my masters and I love math very much. It's something that I've always been extremely passionate about. I used to always go for representation theory seminars with an old professor that I did research with (we mainly did work in certain parts of representation theory) and I thoroughly enjoyed them even if I couldn't fully understand.

But I suck at math. I think I only was accepted because I'm a woman and Indian. Everyone is so smart in all my classes. During my undergraduate degree I was amongst the top of the class but once I got to a master's, I was at the bottom of the barrel. I can't understand things the way everyone else does. Everyone is always able to engage in the lesson and it takes me 4 hours just to understand the smallest thing, it's depressing.

I still got A's in almost all my classes but it wasn't hard to get an A in the classes. It's not like I deserved it and it probably deceived admissions officers.

What makes me even more depressed is that on standardized tests, I can score in the 95th percentile in english/verbal without ever cracking open a book. But it's just not the same in math, I have to try so hard and even still I don't do nearly as well as I would like.

My strengths aren't in math, I am very good with english, history and philosophy. My professors from my undergraduate degree would always encourage me to pursue these fields but I love math so much more even though I'm not good at it. I just don't know what to do, I enjoy those subjects recreationally but not something I want to pursue full-time right now. I would love to get a second master's in philosophy but it's not my priority and if I never got it, I think I'd be fine just reading the literature on my own.

Anyways, even the most basic math facts I will forget. It's embarrassing to be a PhD student and forget things so easily. I don't even want to make friends because I'm scared they will start talking about math and I won't know what they're saying

Should I just quit?


texts:
Someone at the biology stack exchange website referred me to this site.

In studying for biology courses I feel as though I have to take things at face value. Is there a way to get around this and study from a more logical standpoint? I can memorize things but don't want to because I know from experience that I will forget about them later.

I am interested in studying disorders that are genetic in origin. However, I am having difficulty in understanding molecular and cellular mechanisms regarding processes such as meiosis, mitosis, and recombination. I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to study these processes from a physical standpoint. When I took a class that discussed these principles, I felt that it was more memorization rather than a deep understanding of concepts such as these. Again to ask my question, does anyone know about a physical (i.e., classical mechanical/electrodynamical(magnetic) or quantum mechanical/statistical mechanical/quantum electrodynamical and thermodynamic/kinetic) way of viewing these interactions and the logic behind why certain things happen in the manner that they do. I know that this is vague. I wish that I had taken cell biology first, then molecular biology and then genetics and developmental biology rather than the way that I was advised to. It makes a lot more sense that way.

Thank you.


texts: Is it a self plagiarism to reuse a section of my previous paper in a new paper?

texts:
I am writing an article in which I need to reproduce a section of my previous paper. This section includes standard math formulations and very little text. Although I am including this section with some minor changes but overall structure of section would be same. I will include proper citation but still I am worried if this could be a case of self plagiarism ?

The Journal in which I want to submit my work have following clause on copyrights/permission:

  Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

The journal in which my article has been published says like this on copyrights/permission :

  Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal
  circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution
  outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations. If
  excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission
  from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for
  use by authors in these cases.

  As an author you (or your employer or institution) have certain rights to reuse your work. More information.. One more thing that this journal says on permission:

  As a general rule, written permission must be obtained from the rightsholder in order to re-use any copyrighted material. Typically the rightsholder of published material is the publisher unless it is explicitly indicated otherwise. Copyrighted material can include figures, illustrations, charts, tables, photographs, and text excerpts. Re-use of any borrowed material must be properly acknowledged, even if it is determined that written permission is not necessary.

PS. My research field is Mathematics.


texts:
Reputable academic journals have independent editorial boards, but who owns the journal? Are they owned by academic societies, universities, academic publishers? Are there several different ownership models, and are some more common than others?
This question is distinct from the question of who owns copyright on the articles, since journals can publish some or all of their work with copyright retained by the author, or with a Creative Commons license, etc.


texts: Regarding similarity index of research mathematics papers, I would like to know what is the acceptable similarity index for journals in average?


texts: Study expanded from three to five rounds: How to write this down?

texts:
Update

I will suggest treating the email communication as a figure and adding a note to the figure caption. IMO a caption is overkill when the appendix title is sufficient, but it's an ok tradeoff to cover the bases.

Would still love to have other ideas to have another option or two.

(To be clear, I am not the student.)

Short question

When a study expands beyond the time communicated to participants, how does it affect reporting the results in the examples of communications with participants?

Background

The student conducted a study designed for three rounds. During Round 3 the study was expanded to four rounds; and in Round 4 it was expanded to five rounds.

All communication with participants up to Round 3 set the expectation that there would be only three rounds (i.e., letters to recruit participants, to select pilot study participants, and to give instructions for Rounds 1 and 2 in the actual study).

The appendices have copies of all of the communications. The earliest communications mention three rounds. None of the communications mentions the reason for expanding from three to four rounds or from four to five rounds.

Do you alter the early communications by inserting square brackets with corrected text as you would for a quote, such as “the 3[5]-round study”? Replace all mentions with a generic placeholder, such as “the  study”? Add an explanatory note for the reader? Or just leave everything as is? Or ...?

If it makes a difference, the paper follows APA style. The university has no standards for this situation.


texts: I graduated with my PhD in math two years ago, and I am no longer affiliated with a university. However I am still actively researching. Often it's possible to get papers on arxiv or directly from the author's website, but sometimes it isn't (particularly for older papers). Public libraries, at least around here, don't have subscriptions to mathscinet. Do I really have to pay if I want these papers?


texts: How detailed should I be about my implemented system while writing a Ph.D. thesis?

texts:
While doing my PhD in computer science, I need a software system to perform and test my hypothesis/research, e.g. automatically perform a calculate or experiment. Even though I try to use as many existing frameworks/libraries as possible, I still have to do a lot of programming.

So, I wonder if I should thoroughly describe my implementation along with my research in the thesis. By thoroughly, I mean to provide something like database design, class diagram, etc...


texts: How should I cite something that I saw in a famous internet forum (not Stack Exchange)?

texts:
Let me tell you the story. I am a researcher in Mathematics and I have been the past months developing an idea that seems simple but potentially fruitful. The idea is so simple and straightforward from the current literature (at least for me) that I was even concerned that something like that was already (and) better studied. However, I was checking during some weeks and I am sure that nobody developed that idea so I began to write a paper that is now a long paper and it is in its 3rd week of preparation. I did already a lot of work.
I was in that situation when some days ago I entered in a very famous forum for math discussions  (not in Stack Exchange) and saw an image (not even a TeX document, it was a mere drawing) just an image and a post of someone describing something very similar to what I am currently studying. It is not exactly the same, though, but you can consider that my construction is some kind of particularization (the object is introduced in the post is so general that without particularize you can say very few things and I also use this in connection with other branch of mathematics in a way that seems original and novel and it is of course not mentioned in that post).
The problem came when I was checking more on the person publishing that idea (as I said just one post with a text of a few paragraphs, less than half a page) and this person seems like a bit of a crackpot in the sense that the only thing that seems to do is to stake territory out by publishing some unpolished and partial ideas in his/her blog (always really short underdeveloped ideas, never -not just one- long citable papers with actual developments and content). It is reasonable to think that if you begin to write ideas randomly at this rate at some point you will touch something interesting by mere casualty, and this is what happened, though the touch is just tangential.
Do not get me wrong: I want to cite this person as I consider that there is some value in the fact that he/she saw this and introduced it although very rudimentarily and not rigorously; the problem that I face is that I am not sure how could affect to my reputation or the acceptance of my paper to cite a crackpot-like person who could (although it is clearly not true) use this against me maybe saying that I stole his/her idea. I want to be morally okay and recognize to this person his/her novelty in that generalization, but I got there independently and actually working though the idea also and I would not like that this person could make a nasty statement about my integrity when I am really trying to be fully integral and actually recognize his/her part (tangential as I did not get ideas from the post because I reached my idea independently and hard-worked on it) in the novelty of the general case. How would you manage such a situation?
I am also thinking that citing such a source could not be well-seen by a potential journal and could lead to automatic rejection of legitimate work. I am thinking in some names of crackpots that got cited in legitimate work and then some undesirable things happened (I cannot write particular examples here because it could damage some -already damaged- reputations, but we can all think in some of the kings of viXra or GM in arXiv to fit into this non-hypothetical situation).


texts: How to get the address of a journal's editorial department and use it in a cover letter

texts:
I am writing a cover letter for submitting a manuscript to Computers & Graphics (Elsevier) journal. I saw a template for a cover letter of a different journal (AJPS), which goes as:

  December 26, 2007
  Editorial Department of Asian Journal Pharmaceutical Sciences
  Shenyang Pharmaceutical University
  No.103, Wenhua Road, Shengyang 110016, China

I am not sure where to get the address for CAG journal from. It’s not mentioned anywhere on the journal website.


texts: How to publish an extended version of a Springer journal article on arXiv?

texts:
Our team successfully participated in a challenge. We are now in the process of describing our approach in a paper. Initially, each team was supposed to write a separate article which would have appeared in a special issue of a journal. Unfortunately, the editor of the issue changed his mind and there aren't enough pages in the issue to cover each team separately. Instead, the organizers are writing an overview paper where each team is allowed to append 3 pages describing their approach. This will result in one paper with ~15 authors.

We sort of anticipated to write more than 3 pages. Therefore, we are thinking about writing a more in-depth article that sort of extends our part in the joint article and publishing it on arXiv.

For the sake of not confusing anyone, let's

call the joint article A. A will be published in a Springer journal
call and the extended version intended for arXiv B

Both articles are written in English and are about the same content. We basically want the content (examples, figures, screenshots, and text if possible) from A to also appear in B.

What do you think is the best option?

Create the B first and refer to it in A? There shouldn't be any problem with blind submissions, only copyright issues
Submit the A first and publish B later.
Refuse to participate in A since we only have control over 3 of the 14 pages and cannot control what the other teams are contributing to the paper. Instead, only publish B.


texts: When replicating results, what should I do when the author didn't use the method the paper said they did?

texts:
I am replicating a model to report on how well it does on a new evaluation metric I am proposing. The method/hyperparameters of the model are given in a paper about it, where it breaks all benchmarks on the tasks on which it is being evaluated.

After that paper came out, several people tried to replicate the results, and found that they could not. Their questions of “Am I doing this right?” can be found on a online message board for the project. They got several responses from the second author of the paper (very well-known and respected in the field), saying that he didn’t carry out the experiments and that they would have to wait for a response from the first author.

Eventually the first author responded with just a few lines saying: “The hyperparameters to use are ....” People ran with those parameters and replicated the results.

However, the parameters he gave disagree with those reported in the paper.
Quite likely this is through no malicious intent: possibly the model was rerun and the changes were not re-incorporated into the draft.

Now, I would like my model when I am evaluating to be as similar as possible to the one in their paper. That way, people can compare my new proposed metric to the metric that that paper uses and see that this model is good at X, but less good at Y, without having to correct for the fact that the models are different.

I have three options:

Use what I think are good hyperparameters for their model (this is what I am currently doing).
Use the hyperparameters given in their paper.
Use the hyperparameters given in the online message board post, which actually achieve the results given in the paper.

Which of these three options is best?


texts: Abbreviating the middle-name in the future publications

texts:
I have seen some of the previous Q and A regarding this matter (i.e. here, here and here). However, none came close to my specific question that I am asking bellow.

I would like to publish under my abbreviated middle-name for my future publications, starting from this year. I was wondering whether they could match my abbreviated middle-name to those previously published under my full name in SCOPUS, IEEE or ACM digital library. I am not quite sure whether or not ORCID-ID can preserve the individuality of the author in this case, as we provide this on every submissions with the name. Any thoughts would be appreciated.


texts: Should I change the title in my passport to Dr. after getting PhD

texts: In many places, a title column is asked where I fill Mr. After getting my PhD can I "officially" change it to Dr.? Is this country dependent? I want to know about India, DrUK and US.


texts: How should you approach your adviser and tell him that he has a communication problem

texts:
(Not his actual hand writing)

I am currently working under an academic research adviser who is a very nice person and very knowledgeable but I think he has problem in communicating with others (myself included) that is hindering the research progress and outputs of his group.

This problem is demonstrated on three fronts:

1. Poor handwriting

His hand writing is very very messy, comparable to the figure above. I do not understand how anyone can understand him. Everyone else in the research group communicates using Latex or some other software to make the writing neat and understandable. Further, he never erases anything but just scratches things out. Can you imagine what scratches on messy hand writing look like? Even messier.

I'd like to think that messy hand writing is linked with unfettered intellectual creativity but I just cannot understand anything that he writes and neither can anybody else.

2. Unclear presentation or slides.

In my opinion slides should be made to the point, clear and concise. I found a random example not even related to my field of study to clarify what I mean: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2011/sargent-lecture_slides.pdf

But his slides are routinely overloaded with equations and unclear graphics obviously cropped and pasted with no regard to background, positioning or anything. Simply put, the slides do not capture the main idea. And because of this reason he routinely go over time or skip large chunk of complicated equations during presentation, this causes 1/2 of the people to stop following him and it is very noticeable.

3. Unclear notation

I think this one is quite serious because he routinely uses symbols that are a little ambiguous in their meanings. In fact his symbols seems to consistently go against whatever is currently in the literature. For example, people in my research field uses Greek alphabets for one thing but he uses it for something completely different. Also there are definitions he sort of made up on the spot that I thought were standard. I am honestly not sure whether I should just adopt his conventions or keep whatever other people have been using in this field.

I think part of the reason is because he is from an older generation who is used to the paper and pencil type of work and is not very adapt with technology. I think he is also a very busy person so he has to come up with ideas and notations on the spot which causes conflict with the rest of the world.

Is there a good way I can approach him to address these problems without offending him or hurt his feelings?


texts: What's wrong with my e-mail to potential PhD supervisors?

texts:
I recently sent some e-mails to potential supervisors asking information for a PhD with them, I obtained no answers. I share my doubts and then copy the standard mail I sent.

I sent it to 5 different professors in different universities, is the sample too small to expect some answers? I know professors are flooded with e-mails so it could be normal not receiving answers.
Can you point out something I did wrong in my email such as: too long, too short, harsh, too many details, not many details, grammar mistakes (I'm not a native speaker), anything, to help me improve for future e-mails?
How do I have to take these silences? Should I solicit an answer or simply accept that they are not interested in answering?
I sent them on a sunday night, is this a bad moment to send such e-mails? if it is what are the best days and time to send them?
Feel free to give me any kind of advice you think could be helpful.

Here's a copy of my e-mail

  Dear professor XXX,
  I'm a student of XXX at the university of XXX thinking about applying for PhD in FIELD X, therefore your group at the university of YYY attracted my attention.
  I'd like to ask two questions about the possibility of being admitted at your university:

  1) Is there a good chance your group is going to look for PhD students in 2019/2020?

  2) Is the topic of the master's degree thesis fundamental for a strong application? For example, what are the chances that a student with a thesis in TOPIC Y would have his application taken very seriously into consideration by a group like yours?

  This is a very important question for me as it will have a great impact in my application strategy and maybe in the selection of the advisor for the thesis.

  Thank you in advance for your time and help if you decide to answer me.

  Best regards,

  ZZZZ

Addendum 1: as suggested by iayork I  have to be more precise and state that I'm European writing to professor in Europe and that I wasn't trying to bypass the application system by writing to them but instead following. As suggested I share the example of a  professor I didn't write to:
https://www.ics.uzh.ch/~jyoo/home.htm
In the section jobs he says he has to be contacted for information by possible PhD students. Another example from a university I didn't write to: http://www.en.physik.lmu.de/promotion/berechtigung/index.html
The point 1 is to find an advisor getting in touch with him/her

Addendum 2: Since it's creating a bit of confusion I have to precise that Topic Y in the letter is far from the research interests of the group contacted, I should have been more explicit in the mail and here explaining that the point of that question was to know if I had a chance even with such a thesis, and in case of negative answer I would change my master thesis advisor and topic to produce a thesis that allows me to have a chance to be taken in consideration by the group.

Thank you in advance for any help.


texts: How to get funding as a third year PhD student for conferences and thesis write-up?

texts:
I am a third year PhD student in sustainability assessment on energy sector.

I am looking to obtain private funding from either a company (preferably) or an organisation to finish my PhD, and hopefully be employed by the sponsor after my completion. My supervisor has not been as helpful in providing advice.

I am also looking for funding to support conference attendance.

Does anyone have any experience on how to get funding at this stage?
Where shall I look for, and how shall I approach my potential sponsors?


texts:
Let's say you are at the pub and random layperson asks you the question: "So I heard you did a PhD. What was it on?"

What do you do if your PhD was in pure maths. What techniques can you use that will convey to them what you did in your research, and that it was important?

What sort of techniques do people use in the three minute thesis competition?


texts: Advisor suggests to change my research topic after unsuccessful start, unsure what to do

texts:
I am a first-year doctoral student in Computer Vision, and have some confusion about my research direction recently. I hope I can get some help and advice there.

A couple of months ago, I was arranged to do research about optical flow, which is a kind of motion representation and can be used in many computer vision tasks. In these days, I read many papers and did lots of experiment about optical flow about its history, datasets and criterion. Therefore, I began to believe maybe I could make some contribution to that. Since some previous ideas are proved not working, the professor suggested me to give up the research on optical flow and change to another.

Now I am very hesitant about the next plan, there are two reasons. On the one hand, I am not content to give up just like that, and I think we could do more. On the other hand, I know very little other directions in computer vision, so I am not certain which direction I should choose. For computer vision, I want to try everything. Although optical flow is not my favorite one, I can insist on it. I really want to choose a research direction, and spend several years or the whole PhD stage to do some meaningful works.

What should I do? I hope experienced people can give me advice. Thank you!


texts: What figure formatting can, should, or will be done by a publisher?

texts:
Background
When preparing a final version of a figure, it appears that some changes could be more easily made in a graphics software (gimp, inkscape, scribus, adobe) as opposed to R. Such changes might be done more efficiently, and more to the publishers standards, by the publisher. Apparently, the publisher uses some such software to makes final changes to the image anyway. Presumably, these changes can do it more efficiently and to their standards. Also, some tasks would be trivial or would be done anyway by the publisher.
Some tasks that I am currently doing to prepare figures for a journal article:

move / add text
change font
change line thickness
change background color

Something that would be neat to do:

integrate figures into text, in the style of Tufte:

Questions:

What formatting is commonly done by a publisher rather than an author?
Is it reasonable to make requests?
If so, what work will a publisher be willing to do?


texts: Career prospects for a Math PhD student in pure math?

texts:
I have scoured the internet and everyone seems to be saying different things. These range from

"You will have no problem getting a job in quant/finance etc", to
"You are in a hopeless situation and are completely unemployable"

Consider the following situation:

I am at a PhD student at a mid-20s US institution studying pure math
I have very limited programming skills
I am an Australian national and want to live in Australia long term.

I am not overly optimistic about my future career prospects. Since I am near the beginning I thought I better think about this now rather than 5-6 years down the track.

Question: Is it likely that I'll be able to find a reasonably well-paid, stable job after graduation (even outside of academia)? Are there things I can do now to improve my chances (beyond "trying hard")? Would I be better off doing another masters in computer science or machine learning back in Australia instead of this PhD in pure math?


texts: Submit other people's code together with a paper

texts:
I am submitting a paper to a computer science conference. In this paper I compare experimentally a method A (mine) with a method B (from other people).

I found the code for method B on git-hub by an anonymous author, and seems ok, with very few editing. Now, I have to upload the code I used for the experiments for review, and I don't know what to do with the code for method B:

If I submit it as is, the reviewer may realize that I have taken it from an "untrusted" source, or being the author of the code, who knows.
On the other hand it seems ridiculous to me to change the name of the functions and of the variables just to make the code "more mine".

Is there a prassi in this case?


texts: Where would you publish a serious research proposal/idea that you don't have time to work on yourself, but would still like to get credit for?

texts:
I am an ex-academic (Ph.D + a couple of postdocs) who has been in industry for more than a decade. I work in enterprise analytics and data science.

My current work is fulfilling, but takes up most of my time, and along with my family responsibilities, I don't have the time to work on pure research projects, or to collaborate with an academic team.

I have a couple of serious research ideas in AI and ML, arising from my current work experience plus my previous training and some of the recent results in the literature, that I think are definitely worth pursuing.

They are not just good one liner ideas. I have a rough idea of the steps and experiments needed to implement them (roughly on par with what a serious Ph.D thesis proposal would look like).

As I said, I don't have the time to pursue them myself, but I seriously think they are worth pursuing, and I would like to get credit from coming up with the overall approach, even if can't execute the actual code and simulations myself.

What is an avenue for publishing the ideas and the approaches for investigating them, such that they would get the attention of people who actually have the time to follow through on them, and getting credit for thinking of the approaches?

Does a solid, well substantiated research proposal count as a legitimate contribution?


texts: Should I integrate the notations of different papers in the prior works section of my thesis?

texts: I am writing the "Prior Works" section of my M.Sc. thesis. In different papers I saw that there are  different notations for fairly similar concepts. Should I describe each prior work with its original notation which helps people to refer to the original works without confusion or is it better to unify the notation across all of the prior works to make the thesis easier to read.