texts: Was a professor correct to chastise me for writing "Prof. X" rather than "Professor X"?

texts:
I emailed Professor X regarding typos in, and questions on, his book. I've never met and contacted him. My email commenced with this salutation:

  Dear Prof. X

He replied

  It is customary to address professors by their title in full, just as most people would not abbreviate the full names of people whom they do not know well.

His unpleasantness startled me. Is he correct though? If he is, wouldn't we have to write Mr. in full as Mister or even Master?

My response to comments:

I'd rather not impart more particulars on Prof. X, in case he persecutes me! I'll just say that he's Caucasian, and in Australasia, North America or UK. English is definitely his native language.


texts: scientific plotting software like Excel with more functionality without coding?

texts:
Is there any (popular) software for Mac that generates high quality scientific plots for publications without needs for coding? Specifically, I am looking to generate sub-plots or panels where Excel does not have such functionality.

Seems Plot is one good choice:

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/20194/plot


texts: Paper rejected based on one very short wrong comment

texts:
My paper is rejected based on a wrong (I am almost certain that it is wrong) comment of a single reviewer and the content is as below

  The manuscript focuses on the problem of "Some Technical Things". This problem has been solved in several papers of "Mr. X" : See, for example "This Article".

But "This Article" of "Mr. X" is totally different from what we have done, and addresses a completely different problem. I don't know how I can show my objection to this unfair review that has wasted my time for two months!

I sent an e-mail to the journal's editor but he did not respond.

Do you have any suggestions that one can do in such situations?


texts: What does assigning the copyright of a paper mean?

texts:
I have been reading that a publisher called WIT Press has the following copyright agreement:

http://www.icsis.org/WITcopyright.pdf

It has one part that says:

  We will not withhold permission for any reasonable request from  you
  to publish parts of this paper in connection   with any other work by
  you, provided the  usual acknowledgements are given regarding
  copyright notice and reference to the original  publication.

What does it really mean? It means that if a paper submitted to that publisher gets accepted I cannot put it on my personal webpage or in the repository of the university that I am?


texts: Postdoc interview - somewhat positive reply but no news?

texts:
UPDATE:
I have decided to provide an update in order to show other job seekers how confusing these things can get. Plus, show people that patience and respect are very important during your job search. Long story short, I have got the job. I am informed that an official job offer is being prepared for me right now. I will likely accept it, as I really like this research group and what they hope to achieve in their field.
I would like to thank everyone for their replies. I believe it actually helped. I really think if I didn't follow some of the advice here, I wouldn't get the job.

Cheers!

I am in a weird situation that I don't really know what this means.
I had a postdoc interview on-site late May. It was two days long. I gave two presentations and a 6 hour long hands-on lab demonstration. Prof. seemed satisfied with the results and said "thank you for the successful demonstration."

Fast-forward to a month later, no news. So I send a follow up and get this reply "yes, we are positive on you for a position and we are still checking for some internal part for further official process." prof also send some questions about when is the earliest I could start and if I can abide by this and that lab rules, etc...

This was almost two months ago. Still no news. Did I get it, did I not? What's the hold up? I am very confused.

EDIT: I am located in Canada and this is a Canadian university.

EDIT #2: I wanted to give you guys an update. I emailed the prof based on comments here and relayed my concerns over the lengthy process with no updates. Well, long story short, the prof avoided giving an explanation and threw a distraction. Final communication was a conduct document that team members supposed to sign and abide. I requested a day and emailed back confirming that I can abide by those rules. But the way I see it, I am being stalled. My money is on non-availability of funds or something. I don't understand how it is acceptable to leave someone in a limbo like this. I am pretending I won't have the job. I have already begun applying other positions. Thanks all.


texts: Where can I find information about the demographics of Finance PhD applicants to US schools?

texts:
Where can I find information about the demographics about previous majors of Finance/Econ PhD applicants to US schools?

I mainly want to know what are their undergraduate/graduate majors. I assume most of them would be Econ/Finance major, but how many actually comes from a different major? How many of them carries a math double major?

Even information of a particular school would be helpful.


texts: Non-degree courses and Masters admissions

texts:
I had a low Undergrad GPA, around or below the cutoff of most of the masters programs that interest me. I have since started pursuing a graduate certificate (Mining Massive Datasets from Stanford) and am doing much better (A's) than I did as an Undergrad.

What should I expect in terms of how universities look at the non-degree courses I have taken towards the certificate? I realise I could draw attention to the grades in my personal statement, but is there any precedent for including post-degree courses in the GPA calculation for cutoff purposes? How might they be weighted? What can I do to emphasise them?

A few more specifics for my case if the question is too general: I did my bachelor's in Math and graduated in 2012. I am interested in a Machine Learning-focused Masters in the US, UK, or Canada.


texts: My bosses force me to add an author to my paper who didn't contribute to it

texts:
A, B — my current bosses. X — my ex-boss.

A — I've spent a semester on sabbatical at the institution of X. Here is some data I produce. You have to write 2 papers.

Me (after 3 month, working completely independent; I am on the stage of the scientific career that does not need any supervision) — Here is your paper (it will be probably submitted to a top journal).

B — Very good, only 2 corrections. Add this to the acknowledgements and X to the authors list.

Me — X contributed nothing to the work. Besides, (s)he has already taken advantage of my dfg project and made everything possible that (s)he becomes the formal supervisor of the phd student funded by my project (see this post). Why should I add (her)him?

B — I need a paper with (her)him so that (s)he writes me a reference letter, don't you know I am looking for a prof. position.

A — You have to add X to the list of authors, haven't I told you that I spent a semester there. Besides, it is good for B's career.

With uneasy mind I have done what I am told to do. My health is more precious to me... However, I am recurrently coming back to this issue. Have I done everything right?

Comments in response to questions (edited)

Thank you all for very active participation and numerous questions.
Unfortunately, I cannot provide more information as requested. The question can be closed as unclear, however, I do not want to reveal my identity.


texts: How to quote passage with literal error that changes the meaning?

texts:
I have the following problem:

I want to write an indirect citation of a passage in a specific book. The problem is that there is a literal error. Normally this would not be much of a problem (if I would quote it directly I could also write [sic!] to tag it as an error).

But the thing is that the literal error changes the whole meaning of the sentence.

To provide an example of what I mean (obtained from [1, p. 497]):

  Nonpolynomial approaches, like dispatching, may not work well.

The thing is that dispatching is a polynomial and not a nonpolynomial approach.
Two pages before it is even described as a polynomial approach (obtained from [1, p. 495]):

  For comparison, we now consider problems that do not grow
  exponentially. These are called polynomial problems because [...]. As
  a specific example, consider the job dispatching problem [...].

What would be the proper way to handle this?

Edit:

Because some made the valid supposition, that this is just a bad wording: As it was ascertained in the comments below this question, it is indeed a literal error.
The error was not documented in the Errata of the 2nd edition (can be found here). But in the subsequent edition (the 3rd edition) on page 525 the sentence was changed to:

  Polynomial approaches, like dispatching, may not work well.

So the example above is indeed a literal error.

[1] Wallace J. Hopp and Mark L. Spearman. Factory physics; foundations of manufacturing management. 2. ed. McGraw-Hill international editions: Management & organization series. Boston, Mass. [et al.]: Irwin McGraw-Hill, 2001. ISBN: 0-256-24795-1.


texts: Meeting with professors in other universities

texts:
I am a second year PhD student. I am still in the process of finding a research topic. I have a couple research ideas at early stages with two different professors.

I will be in another country for two weeks, for personal reasons. I want to meet with several professors when I am there. First, I believe it is a good opportunity to network. Second, there are a couple professors with very interesting research areas and I can see myself working on one of these areas.

Since I do not have a concrete research area, is it still a good idea to meet with them? How can I make sure that they will not feel like I wasted their time?


texts: Is it possible to get research experience between undergrad and grad school?

texts:
I will be graduating from my undergraduate with a B.S. in Computer Science & Applied Mathematics with a ~3.25-3.30 in less than 2 weeks from now.  I'm taking at least gap year and a half after I graduate and am planning on applying to PhD programs in CS in the near future.  I have a semesters worth at my institution as well as an REU from this past summer, though I wouldn't say they are terribly related to what I may want to study towards grad school.  Aside this, though, I've looked at a couple other professors more towards my area of interest that I was considering trying to do research with (NLP/ML/Performance Analysis), but didn't, partly due to me taking three graduate-level courses this semester while finishing up my studies.

I have debated working in industry vs. trying to bolster my application profile for when I apply, and want to be able to do research in the time between undergrad and graduate school.  I've seen this is common in fields like Bio/Neuro, but haven't seen too much for CS aside from a couple of positions in national laboratories, has anyone gone through getting post-bacc research in CS?


texts: Government versus Private Institute as a Faculty in India

texts:
I am from India. I have two different offers for Assistant professor (computer science) positions in India. The one of the institute is government funded and second is private college.
The main advantage of government college (or semi government) is job security and no work pressure as per my observation in India. I want to join this institute but there is one problem NIRF ranking (link)  of this institute is like 100 (getting low from last 4-5 years) but of private college is with in 40 (as per last 5 years)
My goal is to join  a college where there is a growth in terms of research and teaching. On the basis of this criteria I am not sure which institute I should join as a faculty member. Suppose that the only thing which I care is research and teaching then kindly suggest me which one will be good for me.
I am in confused which would be a better institute to join as a faculty member.
I know it is not possible to guess future but it is better to take decision on the basis of some analysis.


texts: What to do when you are a promised a research-based research associate role but are required to act in an IT support role?

texts:
First some background. Two years ago I joined a research group as a research associate. My intention in obtaining that position was to publish with the group and build some academic capital, but in the two years I have been there, I have been steered toward support work and software development, and away from research.  I have not been included in any of the group's publications and have had to publish unrelated work on my own.

I subsequently found out that to justify the Ph.D. requirement for the position I hold, my employers added a few sentences to the job description to suggest that research would be the central focus of the work. Within my group I am seen as a system administrator and IT specialist. This is apparently what my employers really wanted.

I’m also acutely aware that I lack the superior eloquence of my more persuasive colleagues. (This inability would hamper me not only in academia but in virtually any career.) My superiors cannot be persuaded that the system I have been assigned to create, intended to demonstrate (nonexistent) technical capabilities to a skeptical funding agency, has already been executed by several competent, experienced and well-funded teams of more than one person. The project is an all-consuming, deeply anxiety inducing death march for which I am underqualified. Against this, I have at least three competing projects which cannot receive the exclusive, full-time attention each deserves, and I am continually interrupted with trivial software installation requests and technical failures rare enough not to have been documented in the ever-expanding global online archive of technical minutia, to which StackExchange is a prominent contributor. The perspective is that information technology hasn’t specialized in the past 30 years–nothing is too trivial to undertake (except for them) or too specialized and technical to require immersion and consistent practice. It is the menial and urgent work of cleaning digital bedpans.

I don’t have a family or children–I did not want them. I wanted to work in an environment where I could be paid for research. The compensation is $24K less than the administrative position I previously held. I feel that it is self-defeating for me to continue supporting professors, postdocs, and postgraduate and undergraduate students. There is little incentive to promote an individual assigned to projects that provide funding for the group, and to activities that support the research efforts of others, but which are unlikely themselves to result in publication.

But since my work as a mental technician is valued, I'm wondering whether I might as well seek better compensated employment outside of academia, where I would not have the indignity of supporting persons whose career opportunities are foreclosed to me.


texts: Do teaching evaluations improve from high participation rates

texts:
Do teaching evaluations tend to improve from high voter turn-out?

I think that teaching evaluations are naturally answered by people with strong opinions or who are invested in the class. Many students don't answer the evaluations because they don't care.

I presume that if you could force them to answer the evaluation questionnaire, then many would just be yes-men and answer favorably.

Is there reason to corroborate or invalidate that line of thought?


texts: How to respond to the trivialisation of one’s work and unjustified demands for a considerable extension of the research?

texts:
I am a graduate student in engineering whose work includes a lot of programming and implementation of the developed theories. I am not a computer scientist, but I am a fairly skilled programmer, at least when compared to other people in the field.

In the recent months I went to a few conferences and to meetings with partners participating in my research project. In most cases my supervisor attends these events as well. We do not have the same background, and while I get a lot of support from him, there are some gaps where he is not proficient and does not have a good overview, especially about the amount of work required to get something implemented. In such tasks we have a relation that is based on trust that I am doing a correct job, which gets disrupted when other researchers are involved, as described in the continuation.

At such events I have encountered the problem that some people boldly enquire why I did not research or develop a particular (usually irrelevant) feature, and give suggestions for the extension of the work which are far beyond the scope of my project and time. This is especially the case about programming, and it comes from people who have never implemented anything. For some of the suggestions, I would need my own research team and a few years of funding. And sometimes the people asking such questions try to show-off in front of others by trivialising my research. This is annoying. And this situation gets worse when I give a simplified presentation of my work in order to make it more understandable to a wider audience. On conferences I see that other young researchers experience the same problem.
Indeed I am a young researcher and it may look like I am overestimating my work, but I have a good overview of the field and I have no issues with suggestions that require an additional but reasonable amount of work. My papers so far all got good reviews, and at my department I am one of the most productive graduate students, which makes me confident that I am on the right path and do more than enough work.

While I tend to ignore such demands, this puts me in a difficult position when it is about a topic where my supervisor does not have expertise. My supervisor gets a wrong impression that I am not doing a right job, and that my work is basic touching only the tip of the iceberg. Other people in the audience instantly get such opinion as well. This escalated today when I have received a very good review of a paper that I have submitted with my supervisor. From the beginning I was very confident about the work, however, when presenting it around, I run into issues described above. So the comment of my supervisor on the review was “I am happy to see that you have improved your work after the initial hiccups and confusion. You did not research what others told you to do, so we have been lucky here.” This was really annoying because my work was never in question, and from day one I have followed the same path and did not encounter any difficulty. So this gives you an idea how much such comments on conference may influence one’s opinion about a work.

Is there a general way how to deal with such situations at conferences and meetings?  Luckily I have not encountered this behaviour during peer-reviews, but if I had, it'd be easier because it doesn't require an instant reaction.

I have some generic answers such as:

“Thanks for your suggestion. I have been thinking about this, but it requires too much work, and that is outside the scope of my project. Further, it would not significantly contribute to the value of the work.”
“I have considered it, but I don’t find it of interest, so I have decided not to do it. If you are interested in this topic, I invite you to collaborate.”
“That seems to be an interesting point. We can discuss this at the break in further details.”

but sometimes they do not give the desired outcome because people can be persistent.


texts: How to get a list of researchers ranked by their h index?

texts:
One way of identifying influential researchers in a field is to rank researchers by their h-index.

I found only a list of researchers ranked by h-index for those with very high h-indices ( >40). However, I cannot see the ranking researchers that are under this number.

Is there a way to get a complete list of researchers in a field classified by their h-index (e.g., h-index > 5)?


texts: Is it okay to change the research area of interest that I specified in my statement of intent after submitting an application for a PhD program?

texts:
I had submitted my application to the PhD program in Statistics, and in my statement of intent I specified that I would like to do a PhD research in Computational Biostatistics. I am in a Master's program right now and in this my last term I am taking a course in Statistical Learning. The problem here is that, I really like the materials covered in my Statistical Learning course, and now I want to do my PhD research in Statistical Learning / Data Mining, rather than doing Computational Biostatistics.

I already have exchanged few emails with a Biostatistics Professor at the university that I applied to, but no official contract was made between me and this Professor for me to do my PhD under this Professor's supervision. Also, the policy of this university is that new PhD students are initially not assigned a supervisor, but each new student will be choosing their supervisor towards the end of their first year, after taking the mandatory PhD reading course with a faculty member(s) that the student is interested in working with.

Is it okay for me to change the research area of interest that I specified in my statement of intent after submitting an application for a PhD program?

Thank you,


texts: Is it plagiarism if someone else came up with something before you did?

texts:
Say you come up with an idea, but X already has written about it before, even though you don't know about this.

Is it plagiarism to then publish the idea, even if during publishing you still are not aware that X came up with this idea first?

That is, can you accidentally commit plagiarism in this way?


texts: Letter of recommendation from non-native speaker

texts:
I am currently a PhD student in theoretical computer science applying for postdoc positions in Europe and the US that will start next year. Apart from my advisor's, I will also include a letter of recommendation (LOR) from a professor with whom I have published several articles. The problem is that while he is an accomplished researcher in his field and let me know that he thinks highly of me, his command of the English language outside the scientific realm shows some major flaws and I have reason to expect that this will also reflect in an LOR. Now I am worried that this will affect any impression the LOR will make towards the negative.

Is this justified? How likely is it that an otherwise excellent LOR will be viewed negatively by a selection committee because of bad grammar/clumsy expressions?

Edit: A good answer for the US has been given, but I am also curious how it differs from Europe.


texts: Extent of reuse and reanalysis of data published by others

texts:
There are a number of questions about accessing the data corresponding to publications. In the recent years, many journals have improved their data availability policies and this is less of an issue. On the other hand, I do not find much about the extent of exploiting these data that is thought acceptable.

Firstly, I believe most scientific communities accept that other's data are replotted along with similar data acquired by the authors (showing repeatability) or along with similar data from yet other groups (meta-analysis type of figure). Still, I have the impression that in many communities people rather plot only their own data and comment that this is the same behavior as reported by so & so. So is there a policy? Should one ask for author's permission? Should one specify exactly what data of theirs will be shown along with what other data?

Then, there's the question of data re-analysis. For instance, say authors have published the time evolution of several variables of interest, and Methods make clear that these were acquired simultaneously on the same sample. Is it OK e.g. to publish separately from them a figure which plots one variable from their dataset against another? I guess the answer to this question can be yes or no, depending on the way this is done. I expect that in most cases, having this plot with only their data as my Fig 1, possibly overlaid with a model prediction, and being the main result of my paper, will be judged problematic. Is it? If yes, what is the red line between acceptable re-analysis (e.g. I've already seen data re-plotted in log scale, but the figures with this data were in supplementary materials only). And of course, same questions as above apply.


texts: Can I still publish a paper in an IEEE transaction journal after uploading it to the arXiv?

texts:
I read often that preprint servers such as arXiv are changing how we publish. However, no one in my area of medical imaging uses them and they are regarded in my lab with suspicion.

I currently have a finished manuscript that I am about to send to an IEEE transaction journal. I would like a preprint of this manuscript to be publicly available for several reasons. However, my supervisors are worried this might invalidate my ability to publish this manuscript. They don't want to take the risk that I do this wrong and can't publish.

So here is the simple question I never seem to see a simple answer to. Here is a finished manuscript, fully formatted for the journal I am going to submit it to, in PDF. Can I submit this  PDF as a pre-print to arXiv right now, or not? Will the publisher still consider publishing it? To play devil's advocate, why wouldn't IEEE say, this has already been published in the arXiv, it is no longer new work?

Edit: Here is what IEEE says: "Does IEEE consider an author posting her paper on preprint servers or on her company's web sites to be a form of prior publication, which may then disqualify the paper from further editorial consideration? No. IEEE policy allows an author to submit previously posted papers to IEEE publications for consideration as long as she is able to transfer copyright to IEEE, i.e., she had not transferred copyright to another party prior to submission."


texts: After finding the topic how to discover research problem in Mathematics

texts:
I am at an early stage of my research in Mathematics. Recently I have found some papers related to my broad interest that I think I will be able to work on.

However I am clueless how to find the research problem or in which direction I should proceed . Is it okay to mail the author asking for research problem or at least asking for the direction in which I can proceed. More generally how should I approach to some experts via email asking for such stuffs.


texts: What is the typical cost of Summer Course education in the US?

texts:
I would like to pursue summer college courses - particularly a creative writing class and a computer science class - to help broaden my knowledge and improve upon myself as a person.

However, looking at some college courses in the local city, tuition alone for a single undergrad course is upward of $800 for a three-credit Summer class.

This seems a little excessive.  Is this a typical cost for college summer courses in most areas?  And is there a cheaper alternative if I'm seeking to expand my knowledge pool, and not necessarily seeking academic credit hours?


texts: Citing Data That Was Compiled From Many Sources and Then Summarized? (Updated)

texts:
The Problem

The author of the dissertation (PhD) collected publicly available raw data from the websites of over 40 universities. The data itself spanned 40 years. After compiling the data into a spreadsheet, the author diced it and sliced it to create well-summarized figures and tables. For example, one figure is a graph of the number of hires over time; a potential figure is a map showing where the hires occurred. And a table shows the hires by name, year, and location. (Anonymity at this point is not an issue. All data are publicly available.)

The manuscript needs to comply with APA 7 standards. The APA 7, 6, and 5 manuals go into great detail with examples about meta analysis for experimental purposes, but nothing I read "clicked" for how to deal with this situation.

Based on other posts at this site, the author's summary is a type of meta review (not a deep-dive analysis as described by the APA standards). The purpose of the data is only to present the situation as it has been over time to put the background for a qualitative case study into context. Maybe you'd call it a demographics meta review or demographic meta report?

Potential Solution

Given that the guidance in the APA manual did not seem to fit this situation, my inclination was to suggest the following:

an appendix that lists the university names, locations, and URLs, with an explanation that the data shown in the tables and figures were compiled from data at the university web sites
figure notes and table notes that refer to the appendix.
a entry in the References for the manuscript author (i.e., the author citing himself because he compiled the data in unique ways).

The Question

Would the above potential solution be APA compliant?
If not, what is the APA solution?

Whatever the answer, it would be helpful to have a pointer to the page or pages in an APA manual (version 7, 6, or even 5) that support the answer.


texts: Contacting a Potential Supervisor about Funding (after agreeing on project)

texts: I am in the process of contacting a potential supervisor to pursue a PhD in his group. We have agreed on the project and that I am a good fit for the project. However, there remains the funding issue. The professor is only granted funding for a UK citizen (since it's a university in the UK) from the department. But since I am an overseas student (the fees are double that of UK/EU citizens) he has to make a case to convince the department to fund me. I emailed him once, a week after our agreement, asking about updates regarding this situation. I got an update but no definitive yes-no answer and I am still waiting for more information. He said he would contact me when he has more information. But it's been more than 10 days since our last contact and I haven't received anything. Should I email him again? If so, what should I mention in the email (without seeming too pushy)?


texts: Why do Computer Science degrees contain a high proportion of mathematics?

texts:
About 17 years ago I attended a top 10 UK university to study for a degree in Computer Science.

Mathematics had never been a particularly strong point for me. However I (just) had the required A-Level qualification to be accepted for the course without any issue.

After two terms I dropped out and switched to another top 10 UK University to study for an Information Technology degree. The reasons I dropped out from the former were simply because I found the Mathematical lectures unbelievably difficult. The university did not (in my opinion) provide good support to people who weren't strong in this area. However I also never understood why this level of mathematics was being taught in the first place.

I recently looked at some lecture notes provided on the former universities website for the current year. And sure enough, the level of complexity seems the same.

When I switched to doing an Information Technology degree part of my logic was that the outcome would be a more practical/useful set of skills to actually develop software, along with the logical thinking required (which in my view requires little mathematical knowledge). For me this has worked well as I've had a good career as a software developer since graduating. I've never found any of my work requires much maths, beyond that of a GCSE/A-level level of complexity.

Interestingly, looking on LinkedIn, a huge number of people at the former university went on to be software engineers or similar roles. The salaries at the organisations these people work seem commensurate to the role I am currently in.

Given this, I'm wondering what the end-goal and purpose of teaching that complex maths is on CS degrees? I understand some people will go into roles working with hardware, or even producing software where there are complex mathematical elements. But this seems to be in the minority - by a very big margin - in terms of what people actually end up doing. I have also spoken to people about careers they've gone into as opposed to just looking on LinkedIn etc.

It seems to me that CS courses are teaching skills which - whilst relevant - are not as relevant as they might once have been. If this is the case then why has nobody addressed it? It seems absurd.

My experience of this is based on two top 10 UK universities but having looked at some others (in the UK and USA) this seems to be a general case.

If people are going into roles which require that level of mathematical knowledge, what are those roles? Because I can't see a lot of evidence of this actually happening after people have graduated.


texts: Can I remind a professor that I submitted a "good" essay in her class? (LOR request)

texts:
I would like to ask my former professor for a reference, I'm not sure how to formulate it and am worried the professor won't remember me. I submitted a good essay in her class though (got an A).

Can I write:

  Dear Professor,

  I studied with you 2 years ago, I don't know if you
  remember. In any case, I submitted a good essay in your class and
  wanted to ask you for a letter of recommendation?


texts: Found an error in a paper I presented at a student engineering conference. Should/can I talk about it in my MS applications?

texts:
Some background information: Found an error in a paper that I already presented at a student engineering conference; what should I do now?

I am inclined to talk about the paper because I was awarded the 2nd best paper. And although it isn't published (only printed in conference proceedings) and it was a student conference, I still made a big error.


texts: What happens if there are conflicting opinions on a specific paper under review?

texts:
In ScholarOne, if there are conflicting opinions on a specific paper under review, would several other members of the editorial board (not just the assigned reviewers) converse on the given article?

I think that if a paper has aroused several conflicting opinions by the assigned peer-reviewers, several other members of the board would participate in the conversation, discussing with each other "behind the scene" by emails etc. on whether the paper should be published or not. Would this happen before the editor-in-chief's decision? I have a fourth article under review and would like to know the general prassi behind the scenes.

In short, what I am thinking, would, in a conflicting situation, some other members of the board participate to a kind of an unformal, "virtual" conversation inside the ScholarOne, and then the last decision would be made.


texts: Being incorrectly assigned as a thesis reviewer?

texts:
I am 3rd year PhD student now. Today I was approached by a master student from my lab asking me to be his external reviewer. There are several things that bother me in that situation:

To my great surprise, education department did not object when he filled my name into 'external reviewer' field in his form about a month ago. My personal suggestion is that they did not check that I'm from the same lab.
I was acknowledged of that situation just now, not when he filled the form.
His defense is within a week, so I'm not sure if he will be able to defend without external review.
I actually helped him with advises being unaware of my role as external reviewer.

Q1: Would it be considered as an academical dishonesty if I write my review for his work as external reviewer?

Q2: How should I approach that ugly situation?

P.S.
I am not inclined at all to ruin his last two years of study, but even if I make a review of his work, it will definitely not be good.

Edit:
The formulation of who can be an external reviewer from education department is extremely vague:

  The External Reviewer can be appointed from among Faculty or Researchers of /university name/ outside of the Students’ Educational Program.
  The Reviewers can also be expert representatives of other higher education organizations or employees of other organizations from the professional sphere corresponding to the topic of the Thesis.


texts: MHRA: citing texts from foreign language - original in footnotes?

texts:
I often insert quotes from foreign languages in my undergraduate essays. I translate them in English in the main text, but do I have to put the original text in the footnotes? It will make them long and unpleasant.

I'm currently working with the MHRA referencing style, but I wasn't able to find any information online. Any suggestion also from other referencing styles (MLA, Chicago, APA) will be appreciated.

Thanks

EDIT: I'm asking here because my teacher has not replied to this question and I cannot go to see her.


texts: University I rejected is asking which other one I chose over them; should I tell?

texts:
I got PhD admission offers from 2 Universities (say A and B) and yesterday decided to accept one of them (University A).
Today I decided to  let University B know that I would not be able to join them. After they acknowledged my refusal to join, they asked for the name of University A since they keep track of the same for statistical purposes.

Is there any harm in letting them know? Or is it better to keep it private?

Edit

I guess I was fretting over nothing. I sent B a brief reply saying that I was going to accept the offer from A (I've already signed documents with A so I'm reasonably confident they won't leave me in the lurch). B replied wishing me the best of luck at A.

Thanks for the comments! I wasn't sure this was a common thing to ask for universities.


texts: Accepting offer from one place while waiting for answer from another place

texts:
I have received an excellent job offer from institution A. I have also applied to institution B, which I would likely prefer over A if I had the choice. I believe I have a shot at getting an offer from B, but it is far from sure, and they will only start making offers well after I have to give an answer at A.

Suppose I accept the job at A and subsequently I am offered the job at B. Once I accept A I would commit to staying for at least 1 year, but starting one year later at B should not be a problem.

My question is: how and, more importantly, when should I tell A about B? I can think of three possibilities:

1) I tell A even before I accept the position at A (and before I get the answer from B). I believe in honesty so I would prefer this but there are the obvious risks that A will withdraw their offer or assume that I will leave at the first chance I get (which is not quite true; if I don't get B I'd stay at A for at least a few years).

2) I tell A right after I accept the position at B (this would mean I would start my job at A with everyone knowing that I'm leaving after a year - awkward).

3) I tell A at the very latest legally allowed moment. This would seem best from a selfish point of view, but in addition to having to lie about my future plans there is a risk A will find out I accepted the job from B anyway (it's a small community).

Any additional thoughts are very welcome! In particular, how would you react in each scenario if you were a member of A?

Edit: Thank you all for the comments and answers. In my situation A is not able to wait until I get an answer from B; I agree this would be the best solution. Although I haven't made a decision yet, I'm leaning towards avoiding all the scenarios in the question and either accept A and withdraw my application from B, or reject A, wait for B, and keep applying next year if I don't get B.


texts: How to answer questions about whether you are taking on new doctoral students when admission is determined by a committee and a competitive process?

texts:
Because I teach at a doctoral institution, I get plenty of e-mails from prospective students asking me if I'm taking new doctoral students in the next academic year.

I'm not always sure how to answer them. Because admissions are done as a committee of the whole, I might have a student, I might not. It depends on my colleagues and on the applicant pool. I also don't want to encourage or dissuade prospective students too much either.

Do you have a phrase or response which encapsulates this complexity?


texts: Making the most of writing a review paper

texts:
I am currently employed as a postdoc in Europe.

I am writing a survey paper reviewing the literature on the topic I am investigating as part of the project I am working on.

A member of faculty in the lab said that I should try and find ways to get the most out of the survey paper, in addition to publishing it in a journal. He wasn't specific as to what else I should do with the work.

My question is therefore, how can I get more out of the work that I am putting into a review paper?

Does he mean to use it as part of a funding proposal or to publish a short version in a conference followed by the extended full paper in a journal?


texts: Harvard reference list for citing disjoint passages from the same text

texts:
I'm writing something in which I want to cite page 50 of Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times at one point, and page 83 of the same text at another point. This is no problem for in-text citations, since I say "(Kline, M. 1972, p. 50)" when I want to cite page 50, and "(Kline, M. 1972, p. 83)" when I want to cite page 83. However, it presents an issue in the reference list, since I want to indicate the pages I have used from each text in the reference list. I could write

"Kline, M. (1972). Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 50 - 83.",

but that would imply that I have used every page from page 50 to page 83, which is not true and I do not want to be implied. I could also create two references for the same text, one citing page 50 and other page 83, but I don't know if this is the proper thing to do. I want to be able to write something like

"Kline, M. (1972). Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 50, p.83.",

but again I don't know if this is the proper thing to do. How do I cite disjoint passages from the same text without implying that I have used everything between them?


texts:
This is a question that has been in my mind for a long time. Now I am a M.Sc. first year student  in mathematics and planning to apply for graduate school next year in Europe. But for applying to graduate schools, it is written that first I have to write an email to a supervisor along with a idea of a research project and I have to convince him that I am well prepared to work under him as a PhD student. Also,  it is recommended that you should study the papers of professors to whom you are applying.
Now, I am interested in a topic. My college does not offer that topic. So, I have learned the topics on my own. Also, at this moment I do not participate in an internship program because of this pandemic situation all over the world. That is why I have decided that I will read some papers of the professor to convince him that I am well prepared to work under him.
My question is as follows: How do I demonstrate that I read and understood a professor's paper to the professor?
Please advise me. Thanking in advance.


texts: How to deal with my own sloppy research published when I was an undergrad?

texts:
I am a grad student in computer science. Having read many research papers and having worked with an adviser has made me much more aware about best practices concerning presentation and reporting of results in published research.

I have also published a paper when I was a junior in college. Looking back at it now (its been around 2-3 years), compared to the standards set by papers I have read, my work is very sloppy.

More specifically, I have typos in one or two places and an equation is incorrect (I maximize for x when I should be maximizing for x and y). Also, my evaluation is based on very little data (though I do point out that it is very preliminary and further evaluation is needed) and the metrics I have used to evaluate the described technique do not adequately demonstrate that my method is correct or better performing. The evaluation was added after the reviewer comments and therefore was not checked.

Typos aside, as an undergrad, I was ignorant about best practices when it came to reporting results in that specific area. This is partly because me and a friend of mine wrote the paper over the summer without any involvement from our university or professors (I am not making excuses and I do hold myself accountable for these mistakes).

The paper is rather embarrassing since it does not really represent a significant step forward and is presented very sloppily. I love research (I'm planning a career in research) and I feel that it does not accurately reflect my current research rigor. I don't like it showing up in search results associated with my name.

What would you suggest is the best way to deal with this situation? I'm most worried (been stressing about retractions and the like...) by my lack of sufficient data and invalid metrics, as well as the possibility of future employers seeing it.

Note: I just want to point out that I do not believe that the core idea of the paper is wrong, but the way it is presented along with its evaluation. It's also been cited a few times (I fully understand that this is no guarantee of validity).


texts: Is it appropriate to suggest to a professor how to communicate more clearly?

texts:
I've recently began working as a research assistant (in the humanities), mainly helping a professor with a book she is editing and with lecture notes for a future course.

The problem is that it is sometimes very unclear to me what she wants me to do. For example, when communicating by mail (which we do often), instead of saying "Please do X" (which I realize only after asking for further clarifications), she might say "We will do X" or "There is some importance to doing X"...

It is quite obvious that she has very little experience in this kind of work relations. I, on the other hand, have some experience in managing people (i.e. in telling people what to do), and I think she could use a few pointers.

The question is, is it appropriate (and if so, how) that I give her some specific suggestions (such as the above) in order to communicate with me more clearly?

I'm on good terms with her and she will possibly be my advisor quite soon, and I don't want to ruin this.


texts:
I would like to publish my work which is a chapter of my doctoral thesis.
One chapter has already been published with myself as a first author and my advisor as an second author.
Since I'm working in a private company as a full time employee, I wonder what should be my affiliation.
The work was completely done when I was a graduate student, but now I left the school.
I'm a full time employee now, but this work has nothing to do with my current employer.
What should be the my affiliation in my paper? The school I graduated, or my current employer?


texts: Does the Online Learning Platform bring down the importance of Courses and GPA in terms of PhD Admits? (CS USA)

texts:
Background: CS undergrad applying for FALL 2022 CS USA PhD Programs
By the time I apply for the programs, I will be finishing 3 and a half years of coursework/labs/tests. Out of this, 2 years of coursework/labs/tests has happened through Zoom and etc.
Main Question: Does this bring down the value of coursework and GPA for a PhD Panel?
Sub-Question: Does it provide more importance for other things like research/projects/internships than from before?
Note: Please assume standardised tests are not required for admissions. (Many programs have told that they will not be required)


texts: Secure backups of PhD and journal-research

texts:
Common sense dictates that any and all work/research/drafts/etc that we do in our journal-research and PhD ought to be backed up and backed up again.  Most of the time, this is constrained to laptop/desktop, USB memory and perhaps a copy in your own email - one disaster could wipe all that out (almost happened to my MSc research - got caught up in a severe natural disaster).

My question is, is there a more secure and 'safe' means to save/backup our PhD and/or journal-research work? Do universities offer such services, or is it up to individual researchers to find their own solutions?

I should note that I have no illusions of any system being completely 100% safe and secure, but are looking at ways that are more secure than the 'traditional' methods listed before in the first paragraph (2nd sentence) of this question.


texts: Contact previous postdocs of a potential postdoc supervisor to receive feedbacks

texts:
I have been offered a postdoc position in a very good university.

However, I had a quite negative impression from the PI, who looked a bit bossy. Also, I had the sensation that he is looking more for a manger of his phd students (who btw have a better CV than me) rather than for a researcher.

Given these doubts, I would like to contact a previous postdoc of this professor, to have a feedback on his experience.

Is this a bad idea? Or is it something common?


texts:
I've been thinking of publishing a subset of my work in fluid dynamics to arXiv. I realize the following about arXiv:

ArXiv isn't a journal
I would need to be endorsed to submit an article on arXiv

The reasons I would like to submit a subset of my work to arXiv are:

It would only be a subset of my work thereby NOT negating my chances of publishing work in a regular journal.
I would like to disseminate information to the society as soon as possible.

Does anyone have any thoughts or comments about this? Is there something that I'd need to feel uneasy about?

I realize that there has been another question regarding submission of work to arXiv and I read it here.


texts: Ask opinion about situations in which researchers/non-researchers get involved in projects (externally) and the best way to avoid strange situations

texts:
I'm junior researcher so I'll appreciate your understanding on my very short 'experience' for the things I'm going to explain:

I'd appreciate your comments regarding two relatively similar situations I've experienced recently:

Situation 1)
Recently I was contacted by a professor who asked me to give him a hand with a student who would be working on one of the topics of my expertise. While I'm not affiliated to the University where they work, I'll be collaborating with them in few months (all fixed already), so I agreed thinking that the experience would be useful for me and to build some good relationship with them from now. From the firsts conversations with the student, an idea for a working plan came up, even if they had some previous idea of 'what they wanted to do', I definitely helped them to define the main plan. After the 'draft' of the plan was set, few days of silence went by, later on, I received an email from the student telling that from now on, he would be working with Researcher-A and Researcher-B in this project and he would ’probably' contact me for some questions in the future.  Since this is a multidisciplinary project, I knew that Researchers A and B would eventually have to join, but, I also had a bitter taste since I was 'kindly' kicked out of the whole thing.  I guess the best I can do now is to track the progress of this study and eventually request to be part of any publication that they plan to do.

Situation 2)
I had to contact a group of 'computer scientists' (a group 'devoted' to innovation, who offer their services to researchers independently -not belonging to any university-), to help me to build up a part of a project in which I'm not really expert (basically setting some experiment using computer devices and programming).  They said they knew somebody doing similar things and asked me to send them my working plan to get a better idea of the whole thing. Of course I just sent them a short & very basic description of the plan, with mostly the things that I'd need from them and some general explanation to help them understand the project. After that, I had no news from them for weeks, I tried to contact them several times and there was always something getting on the way (unexpected meetings and trips, incoming second calls…I never got a call back).  Later on, I saw in their website that they were recruiting students to help them to do something very similar to what I requested but with few variations. I don’t think that this was an advance of my work since they never reached to me to work on the details, I never received news from them about when were we going to start, what was the plan or anything! I’m confident that eventually I'll get them to help me if I push some buttons with the main bosses there, but again bitter taste here.

Regarding both situations: Is this common? What can one do to avoid these problems? How can a researcher (especially those not-yet affiliated) protect his/her ideas/work from people who would be somehow involved. I try not to judge, not in all cases there is bad intention, but in some way, they seem to bump into random situations and behave in tricky ways. I don’t know how both stories will end up, I trust that there will be someone in the head of both offices that will show some common sense, but I want to learn something from these experiences, what to do to prevent these kind of ‘bad moments’.

Thank you in advance.


texts: Publishing similar but much longer article "again" in different journal?

texts:
I am about to submit a 3.000 words article. It needs to be submitted soon, and I will have to submit it, but I know that I could flesh this out much more, and arrive at something with around 7.000-10.000 words, if I had more time. However, the basic idea would remain the same. It would be much more detailed, but I would not be making a completely different point.

Could I publish the 3.000 words article in journal A (if accepted), and then later this year publish the 8.000 words version in journal B?


texts: Should I send an email to the author of a book/paper asking for clarification?

texts:
I am currently reading a book on a research-level science topic. But there are some concepts that aren't properly explained in the book and are stopping me from proceeding. I have tried the following:

Searching the Internet and the library for these concepts
Asking about these problems online

But these attempts haven't been very useful. And I am quite desperate now. I am now considering writing an email to the author asking for clarification directly. Yet I don't know if this is an inappropriate or rude thing do? And if I do do that, how to avoid being impolite?


texts: Is this a realistic salary for China postdocs/ assistant professor?

texts:
After reading this (Persistent issues with salary pay as a postdoc in China: What can I do?) I am kind of worried about working in China with regards to pay.

On paper, the type of salary advertised by some universities is fantastic for Chinese standards, even Western standards.

For instance, on https://www.mathjobs.org, postdoc/assistant professor salaries are in the range of 200k-500k RMB per year. For Chinese standard of living, this is considered very good.

Is this a realistic salary? Any experience to share? I am a foreigner and do not know much about Chinese academia.

Also, this salary does not tally with what I read elsewhere online and speaking with some Chinese friends. According to them, 100k RMB per year is more of the norm in China for postdocs and junior faculty. The Chinese universities do give some other benefits like housing/research funding though.

Thanks.


texts: Longer PhD with a deeper result vs a shorter PhD with a sufficient result

texts:
Some people try to complete their PhD asap, others try to make major breakthroughs. I think these aims are mutually incompatible, one is going against the other.

What are pros/cons of each for somebody whose intended career is research in academia?

The answers should be general, but I myself am interested in pure mathematics.


texts: Should I use ‘adapted from’ in an illustration of conclusions based on the results of others

texts:
Suppose, you cite some particular ideas, analyze them, and come up with a few conclusions, which you illustrate in a figure that is totally yours.  The labels or conclusions represented in the illustration are neither other people’s work nor my own primary empirical findings. They are somewhere between: my own conclusions, yet based on the data of others. In the caption of the figure, should you write adapted from to show that the figure was ‘sourced’ from other studies (i.e., the conclusions and analysis were built on other resources)?

For example, assume that Study X claims:

  Helping people leads to profitability.

Based on that, I conclude that companies should adopt the notion of social responsibility. Among other conclusions, I represent social responsibility in a schematic. Should I write adapted from Study X to say that the conclusion of social responsibility was built on the material from Study X?


texts: Infrastructure Expectation of University

texts:
Some grants limit spending of funds, for example, on buying a computer. Others are a little more open.

I have heard from colleagues that some funding agencies want to see that the university supports the researcher, so offering grant matching or access to facilities is a way to demonstrate this.

At least in the U.S., are there any written expectations from agencies of support for researchers (otherwise, are there standard practices)?

For example, is it expected that researchers buy chairs and desks through their grant?  I can see an argument for large equipment, then possibly computer components, etc., and at some point it moves to furniture, light bulbs, window shades.


texts: I wasted a lot of time during my PhD. As a postdoc, I don't see much progress in my abilities. How can I make progress?

texts:
I made several mistakes in my PhD:

Joined a PhD advisor who didn't have direct knowledge/experience about my PhD topic. She worked with nanomaterials, my work was on continuum mechanics. I had both experimental and computational experience during my master's degree, but my PhD thesis was completely computational research.
During the first semester, I was not focused in my work and classes. I thought I was in the wrong place.
Feeling pressure from my colleagues who published 6 papers during their PhD, I was more focused on getting published, rather than getting knowledge. I did not take more courses as necessary. My research turned out to be less rigorous.
I got overwhelmed with my low output during by 3rd year, as a result I lost almost 4-5 months as completely unproductive.
Even though I was no longer foreseeing any advantages of doing this mediocre PhD, I did not want to leave my PhD halfway. The more time it took, the more I lost confidence in my abilities. The available jobs in my field required high level of expertise, and I had very limited experience.
However, I got a PhD earlier this year after 5.5 years. And unsurprisingly, I did not get any job or postdoc position. Also covid struck, so that didn't help either. So, my PhD advisor offered me a postdoc position for a year and I had to take it as I didn't have anything else.
Now, for the past 4 months as postdoc, I have made some progress on my knowledge, publications and research experience. But still I don't think I can get a job in my field.

I think I am in a loop. I don't know how to progress. Based on the facts above, do you have any suggestions/advice on how can I improve my career?


texts: Putting an affiliate professor in statement of purpose

texts: I was just wondering if, when discussing professors who would be interesting to work with as PhD advisers in the statement of purpose, one can also mention a professor who is an affiliate of the department but primarily a professor in another department?


texts: Why do some fellowships require "leadership experience"?

texts: The fellowship I'm about to apply requires me to express my past leadership experience in the personal statement. Why? I understand that leadership is a soft skill that everyone should have, but this is academia, not business. People in this environment put cooperating before leading. Of course, even in business, there is no group that work like in military, the person in low level still can suggest idea and change the leader/manager's mind. The role of the leader is inspire and amalgamate separate people to one united unit. But in academia, everyone should inspire themselves, and the science itself are the glue to attach people together, right? So why don't these fellowships require me to show my past cooperation, rather than leadership?


texts: Career options after teaching oriented position

texts:
How commonly do professors at predominantly undergraduate institutions transition to different lines of work? What do they wind up doing?

I have a PhD in mechanical engineering and I focus on mathematical modeling in biology. I'm currently a postdoc looking at working at a predominantly undergraduate institution in the US. I love teaching, I just want to know what my alternatives would be in a few years if I wanted to go in a different direction.


texts: Is mentioning submission rejections in SOP wise?

texts: I kind of want to mention in my SOP that I have been through rejections many times so as to hint the reader that I have a more mature mentality to persevere when I am a professional researcher. But, a question that naturally follows is: Would this act instead backfire?


texts: Is it permissible to request a new reviewing editor?

texts:
I submitted a manuscript to an established ecology journal and received reasonable reviews. The reviewing editor requested a revision. However, the comments from the reviewing editor were abysmal. First, the literacy and analysis were, in my judgment, poor by high-school standards. Second, based on the comments, I seriously doubt the reviewing editor read the manuscript. I have published 10 papers (mostly in higher impact journals than this one) and this reviewing editor stands out. I think I would rather withdraw the paper than deal with this person. Is it possible to request a different editor? I have never heard of that, but I have no desire to work with this person.

EDIT: The email from the journal contains 3 sets of comments. They are labeled "Reviewer #1", "Reviewer #2", and "Associate Editor." I am referring to the comments from the Associate Editor, who is not named. The comments from the AE synthesize the comments from the reviewers, which is his/her job, of course. However, it reads like the AE was busy and let his 12 year old son write it for him.

EDIT 2: Thank you for the input. I asked this question because A) the comments from the AE were unusually bad and B) it will require more finesse to deal with a bad editor than a bad reviewer. However, I have decided to proceed as normal anyway. I have already invested the time to get reviews and I need to deal with reviewer comments regardless. Once you are halfway into the forest, forging ahead is the quickest way out. So I will play the journal-review roulette even though I think it will be more random and aggravating than usual.


texts: I got a B- in Math. How bad is that for Econ?

texts:
So the title explains why I'm posting. I'm a masters student in economics at a pretty prestigious university and one of the courses that you're required to take as a first year is called Math Methods for Economists. It covers topics from Calculus to Linear Algebra and Differential Equations. I really wanted an A in this class because I'm hoping to have the option of applying to a really good PhD program (although I'm not sure yet), but I got a B- in the class.

I'm pretty upset by this. I really thought I could get an A. I took Calc I and II as an undergrad and I got halfway through Linear Algebra- I dropped out because it was the last semester of my senior year and honestly I was just lazy (but I still remembered a lot of the concepts from the class).

In the class I did really quite poorly on the first exam and I do blame myself for not preparing enough for that one. I was going to drop the class and retake it in the Spring (because you have the option of taking it online with FULL internet access during the exams) but then the professor said that if you get an A on the final he'd just give you an A in the class. I was determined to use that loop hole and get that A on the final.

I spent the 5 days before the exam studying so hard- I mean every free second that I wasn't eating or sleeping- I was up until 3:00am every night studying. I don't think I've ever spent so much time preparing for an exam.

I kind of knew it was hopeless though. This professor gives insanely hard exam questions that he does almost nothing to prepare you for. As aforementioned, I have quite a bit of background in math and I have never seen math problems like the ones he puts on his exams.They're not conceptually hard to understand but he tries to trick you using the most obscure algebra techniques that even software has trouble finding a closed form solution for. I've tried plugging some of the problems into symbolab.com and multiple times I was told "can not be solved" - which I didn't even know was possible.

I ended up getting an 82 on the exam and I just think its so unfair that I have to have a B- on my transcript. I've never blamed a professor for my own grade but this is ridiculous. I know some students complained about the professor directly to the program advisor before and nothing resulted from it.

Is there anything I can do about this? Does the B- condemn me to eternal graduate school hell? I'm really just looking for some peace of mind.


texts: Is it a minor or major revision, if only one of the reviewers asks for major?

texts:
I got a review from a reputed Elsevier journal. There're three reviewers, one decided recommend acceptation, other recommended a minor revision and the last one recommended a major revision.
Overall, is it a major or minor revision then?


texts: Is ps preferred over pdf format in some cases?

texts:
Some people use ps over pdf format for their paper.

Are there some advantages of ps format over pdf format?

Thanks!


texts: As an instructor, how to use the first day of class?

texts:
I found some relevant advice on the first day of teaching online (e.g. here, here, here, and here). Common themes include setting expectations, motivating the course content, and having two-way interactions with students.

Besides for reviewing the syllabus (and relevant university-wide policies referenced but not located in the syllabus), how can an instructor most effectively use the first class session? Are there any especially effective ways to do these things on the first day of a class?


texts: I studied physics at a German university and encounter frequently in application regulations for universities from abroad (US/CA/AU) the wish to have research experience. I don't really know what is meant by that and guess there might be some cultural differences and suspect that many universities might generally not have a well designed curriculum. I personally did quite a lot of research intensive coursework. Particularly I did about 42 lab exercises with 12 being exercises with advanced difficulty concerning topics of modern physics. Both of my thesis projects required me to team up with local research groups and independently research and work on a suggested problem. Further I did seminars in which I was trained in scientific writing and presentation and was required to spend about an half year on writing a research proposal and getting it examined to get allowance to work on my master's thesis. I think my university did quite a good job at preparing me for research. But otherwise, I did not do any research outside of university. Also no publication. Both are not very common in theoretical physics before PhD studies. I would be glad to hear your thoughts on this.


texts: How to know whether a Faculty member has done good work or not

texts:
I have completed my Masters in Pure Mathetics in India and I want to join a Ph.D. program in Algebra and Number Theory.

For that reason, I am checking the profiles of the faculty members of the different institutes where I can join.

But the problem is I don't understand how to judge the profiles of the faculty members and what are the parameters.

Should I look into the following:

From where the faculty member has done his Ph.D., is it from India or from abroad.
Under whom has he done his PhD
What are his publications? Where has he published them?

Though I can check 1 and 2 but how do I know about his publications?
How do I know that he has done good work in Algebra and  Number Theory or not?
It's not possible for me to know about all journals in Algebra and Number Theory as I have not done any publication before?

I really need some help as I don't want to join an institute where no good faculty members are available?

How to judge? Please help.


texts: How can I gracefully exit my current post-doc position for a new one?

texts:
I'm a post-doctoral research fellow and I've just been offered another post-doc position at another university. I still have a year and a half left on my original contract, but it's not going as well as I'd hoped and ultimately is not going to lead me to a place I want to be in my career. The new position is at a better lab with many more PhD students to work with, somewhat less research freedom but more resources and support, and also genuine guidance to prepare for life as a professor. As an added bonus, the new position is in the same city that my partner lives in, and we will be able to live together.

The problem is, for the sake of professional etiquette, I can't tell my current advisor that this position was offered to me, as my new advisor doesn't want to be seen as poaching a post-doc from another university. I don't want to burn any bridges or cause ill-will at my current position. I'm at a bit of a loss now, trying to figure out how to approach a conversation with my current advisor to tell him I'm leaving, and I would really appreciate some advice!


texts: How do I deal with a candidate mentioning God twelve times in their application?

texts:
My group (engineering) is highly multicultural and diverse. Some of my students come from adversarial ethnic/religious groups, so I made it “set in stone” that politics and religion do not belong in the lab. We respect each other and sometimes discuss cultural differences and habits politely.
I recently received some applications for a new PhD position. One candidate started their C.V. with a huge “in the name of God” and continued throughout their application discussing how God will guide or guided them or God will make sure they get good results and finish their PhD. Overall, I counted the word God in their application twelve times. This left a bad taste to me.
In the particular case, the said candidate was classified much lower that the chosen candidate merit-wise (scores, research experience, etc.).

Is it acceptable to disclose and declare vividly religious preferences in academic applications?
Is this a sign that this person will also be as vocal in the group, thus creating issues?
Should I simply ignore this information, even if the candidate decided for some reason to vocally disclose it? What should I do with it?

Clarifications:

I am in the EU.
There is nothing religious about my university.
The candidate in question is from the Middle East.


texts: Matters Arising: Nature Communications post-publication commentary

texts:
Nature and Nature Communications recently started publishing post-publication commentary in specially published peer-reviewed comments called as "Matters Arising"
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/submit/matters-arising

It's a great initiative.

Does anyone know how often these commentaries lead to changes in the published article?
Any stats on how often authors respond with new data/analysis.

I could not even find an example.


texts: Am I conveying disrespect if I omit my gender pronoun from a conference nametag?

texts:
Situation

I have an academic conference coming up, and on the registration site we are instructed to optionally enter a personal gender pronoun (PGP) to appear on our name tags. To enter it or not to enter it?

Thoughts

My personal view is the following: if someone does include a PGP on their tag, then I understand that they'd like me to know something about their identity in order to respectfully converse with/about them. In the case that that person does use an non-standard pronoun (if that's the right terminology), then this offers them what is already privileged to those whose gender is aligned with societal assumptions (e.g. a white male who identifies as a man and uses the PGP "he/his", like me) to not have to make their identity a point of conversation at the outset of any interaction. So, I respect and appreciate that the organizing committee is being progressive and inclusive in this sense.

As for myself, I don't have any desire to include my PGP on the name tag. I simply don't have a very strong sense of identity, and don't think of the self in those terms. I realize that there is a painfully obvious response to this; I don't have to worry about it because I already conform to societal assumptions about gender anyway. I have the privilege of knowing that no one is going to call me "she" by accident. But, if I ask myself if I would strongly object if someone did... I dunno, I suppose I'd prefer that didn't happen.

We can look at another dimension of identity, ethnicity, to try and isolate exactly what I'm saying. I'm Italian, which means I have dark skin and hair. Fairly often in life I've encountered people who make the false assumption that I'm actually Mexican or middle eastern. I may correct them if it was appropriate to do so, but really I've never been offended or uncomfortable by it; I simply don't care enough about identity. If there was an optional field for filling in your ethnicity on a conference nametag, I wouldn't have any desire to complete that either, even though I do know that mine is often mistaken.

A potential flaw with this analogy is that gender is ubiquitous in conversation. The same is not true of ethnicity necessarily. Still, all I mean is that I don't feel compelled to broadcast anything about my identity as a pretext to interaction. If someone wants to learn about who I am, they can speak to me. It wouldn't make me more comfortable to walk around knowing that information about my identity can be obtained on sight (be it gender or anything else).

Note:

I do not want to be misunderstood as attempting to assert my beliefs onto others. Even though I don't put strong value in identity, I'm not saying that identity is objectively not valuable; I respect that to some people identity is of enormous value, and I appreciate that those people put their PGP on their name tag so that I can treat them the way they'd like to be treated.

Question

Now, my real question is not necessarily about the agreeableness of the position I've described above (though I'm happy to discuss it). Rather, I'd like to ask if the act of omitting the PGP from the name tag itself, even if well motivated/justified, is inadvertently signaling any disrespect. At the last one of these conferences, the vast majority of people did include the PGP. Now, I don't feel compelled to conform for conformity's sake, but I also don't want to give the false impression that I'm a proponent of gender binarism.


texts: do American engineering students build projects at the end of their bachelors degree

texts: In my country Nigeria, Engineering students make projects along with their thesis in order to graduate.... is this the same for Americans ?


texts: How to ask, if at all possible, what part of my CV interested the interviewer to interview me?

texts:
I'm having a postdoc interview coming up, which is not in my doctoral topic or not so closely related to my previous postdoc research. While applying for it, I thought I'd not called for an interview, but luckily enough, I did. The reason I didn't think I'd get called for an interview, as I can see that I'd need learn quite a few things that'd take me easily a minimum of three months to get the hang of.
So will it be rude to ask my interviewer her/his motivation to interview me or what (s)he thinks I can do for her/him, or if not, then what's the best way to formulate my question, without sounding like I'm trying to hear some good words about myself from the interviewer? I guess one of the option might be "What part of my backgrounds can be useful to your project?" but I'm looking for a sincere, honest and a genuine reformulation of this. I'm interested in the project but my concern is it might take me at least 3 months to get myself up to speed to start to solve the problems.


texts: Having decided to become a researcher after long career in industry, should I work independently or start a PhD?

texts:
I'v been doing software development work for almost a decade. I really love doing research work but I am always doing programming work in companies. I could join a PhD program 15 years ago after my MS. degree in US. But I did not continue at that time for reasons (want more money, find a job for green card, etc.).

Recently I decided to follow my true heart on sciences, instead of being a "seasoned company guy" all the way to my retirement.  The machine learning/deep learning/big-data are thriving in these a few years. I cannot sit here just watching this big revolution in computer science.

Money is always an issue but will not be a big issue for me. I have accumulated quite a bit of money in the past 10 years hard working.  I can be mortgage free in a few years even in this most expensive city (Vancouver, Canada). My wife has a good job too. She “granted” me 2 years to do a starter’s non-profitable work on my own.
Hear is the plan: Doing part-time work to earn half salary to support the living cost and the remaining mortgage.  The rest of my band-wise will be dedicated to my research work. The question is, how to start?

Option 1: be an independent researcher and developer. Spend the next year to do online study including all the necessary math/statistics skills. Become an expert on certain field. And starting to publish papers, contribute to open sources or have some software inventions/products.

Option 2: apply a PhD program and spend the next 5+ years with professors to build up the foundation to become a truly powerful researcher. I am 42 now. Do I have that much time to spend?

Option 3 is to dedicate the first year to invent and develop a software product (iPhone App, Cloud service, etc.) and try to make money on it. And use the earning as the funding to support myself on the research work. In the mean while, try to get some investment and government funding.

None of the above will be an easy way. It is not a common career path, especially for a forty years old guy with a job/salary, wife and a kid...etc..  This will be a venture. I will spend years being dedicated /obsessed ( hopefully not half-crazy) in a house at the foothill of Canada north mountain, learning/reading/drawing/typing.....

Which way to go...?


texts: Is it better to request a recommendation letter in person after class or by email?

texts: I am planning to apply for a PhD program and would like to request a letter of recommendation from a professor. However, I am quite hesitant about which way is better for me to make the initial request: asking the professor during the break of the class or just sending him an email?


texts: Crediting sources one has found citations from

texts:
Suppose that I am doing a literature review on a topic, and I read paper A, which makes an interesting claim and references paper B as its source. Naturally, as paper B is then the primary source, I will look up B and possibly cite it in my own paper if it seems relevant. And suppose that it turns out that paper A says nothing else that's relevant for my topic, so I say nothing about paper A.

And this seems fine if I only discovered one citation from paper A. But if I find several useful citations in the same paper, it starts to feel like plagiarism if I just ruthlessly harvest it for citations without never citing itself.

Sometimes it's easy to work in a citation in such a case. For example, if it's a review paper I'm reading, I might be able to just write in my own paper something like:

  Qwerty (2009) reviews a number of a results in this field, such as the finding that over 99% of the people who contract cancer wear shoes (Keyes 1999), that pink aliens from the sixteenth dimension dislike chocolate (Pinker 2001), ...

But often there isn't really any reasonable way to work in a citation, especially not if you wish the citation to make it clear that this is where you found useful sources from. I could include a footnote or a thanks in the acknowledgements, but I've never seen anyone do that for such a reason. Are there any rules of thumb regarding the correct etiquette in such situations?


texts: How can I effectively challenge a final grade?

texts:
I'm enrolled in an honours philosophy program (taking premed prereqs and maths as electives), going into my fourth year. I had a 3.9 until today when I got my first B. I made a point of kicking the crap out of the final essay; Nevertheless, the TA crushed me on it. I received less than 60%.

I'm applying to med school in the fall. Given the way that the schools that I'm going to apply to weight the grades of applicants, that B is going to be considerably damaging to my application.

There are two phases in the univeristy's process for appealing a grade.

Talk to the professor
Appeal to the university for an independent evaluation.

To the best of my knowledge, independent reviews are usually kangaroo processes that just confirm the original decision. Fortunately, the university's process isn't the only way to resolve the problem. The TA, the professor, and the department head all could change the result.

I don't suspect the TA will change his opinion.

The professor is good friends with the TA. Generally, people tend to defend their friends when someone accuses them of making a mistake. Ultimately, if I appeal to the professor, no matter how I approach it, the appeal will amount to an accusation that her friend made a mistake. Accordingly, I don't believe that I would succeed if I were to do that. Moreover, if I were to appeal to the professor, she would need to justify her decision, and by doing so, would become convinced her TA got it right.

Accordingly, I see three ways I could go about it:

Write the professor (I can't meet with her, I'm out of province this week, and need to contact her within seven days) and hope it works out (I'm pretty confident nothing will happen).
Write the professor and, using all the tact I can muster, gently allude to the escalation process, and the fact that it would just be easier to give my essay a fair shake. I saw a lawyer use the 'it's just easier to say yes' approach with a judge once. It worked surprisingly well. Nevertheless, it's kind of a jackass thing to do, and could backfire if my tact fails me.
Approach the department head: I'm in his good book. I first got to know him after he emailed me to talk about pursuing work in philosophical research. It was out of the blue, so I figure that's some sign that he'd like to see that happen. (I'd like to help solve some of the conceptual problems that predominate psychiatry.) He and I have spent about ~20 hours working one on one to solve some philosophical problems. I've done well in his classes. So, he knows I generally do good work and he seems to want to ensure things work out well. I suspect that he would doubt that the TA could justify giving me <60% on the essay. Perhaps he might suggest some way to fix the problem, or might offer an alternative if I can't fix it (e.g. 'Try this, and if it doesn't work, come back and talk to me.')

How can I effectively challenge the grade that I've received?


texts: What is the purpose of dissertation embargo periods?

texts:
I just heard about "dissertation embargoes".  My institution recommends that every graduating student place an embargo on their dissertation.

What is a dissertation embargo, and what is its purpose?


texts: Journal copy-editors: why is their work productive?

texts: You worked on your manuscript and its language for a year and a half, carefully choosing every word; what is there left to do for the journal's copyeditors after acceptance? What is the point of copyediting your manuscript?


texts: Can you get statistical data on research paper submissions and publications?

texts:
For a class project in machine learning, I am considering building a set of predictors where the feature set includes information about the topic, keywords in the title, the authors, the date, etc., and the outputs are probability of getting published, expected citation impact, etc.

I would like to choose a single journal such as Nature for example.  Will it be possible to collect the necessary data to accomplish this? Anyone have tips on where I can find statistical data about particular research journals?


texts:
For sufficiently small subfields, the number of jobs is small enough to count manually. For example, the HEP rumor mill counts all high energy physics jobs in the US. The number of jobs per year is in the very low double digits.

Are there statistics on the number of postdoc/professor positions per year in specific subfields? I'd be particularly interested in the fraction of interested undergrads that get into grad school in that subfield, the fraction of grads that get postdocs, the fraction of postdocs that get tenure-track positions, and the fraction of those professors that get tenure.

I'm aware that these statistics exist by scientific field, and the AIP has counts of graduate students by physics subfield, but I'd be interested in postdoc/professorship stats too.


texts: How to ask what my salary will be for German PhD position

texts: I am a biomedical engineer; I was offered a PhD position in Germany. They already prepared my contract but never mentioned my salary. I was wondering if there is a polite way to ask how much will be my salary.


texts: Should I cite a source for a direct quotation separately if it is inside a paragraph with the same source?

texts:
Assuming that Adam conducted an interview with John Doe and Adam is the only source.

Should I source the direct quotation separately?

  The chocolate rain machine was invented by John Doe in 1980 and was regarded by Doe as "the most significant invention of the 20th century" (Adam, 2017). He constructed it from wooden bars that were...[several sentences] (Adam, 2017)

Or is the source at the end of the paragraph enough?

  The chocolate rain machine was invented by John Doe in 1980 and was regarded by Doe as "the most significant invention of the 20th century". He constructed it from wooden bars that were...[several sentences] (Adam, 2017)


texts: How does one go about doing a Ph.D. in Europe as an American?

texts:
I'm entering my senior year of college in the US and I'm starting to consider my options for graduate school next year. My field is kind of blurry, in that I have certain research areas that I'm interested in, but researchers in those areas often fall into many different fields (linguistics, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, psycholinguistics, etc.)

I have some faculty that I'm interested in working with, but I have a dilemma because some people (and schools) I'm interested in are in the US and some are in Europe.

I've been reading about how graduate school typically works in Europe, and it seems to be quite a different beast from the US. Many (practically all) Ph.D. programs in the US that I looked at are entered immediately after a Bachelor's degree, they're fully funded, and the two years of course work at the beginning is to earn the Master's degree. On the other hand, all of the European programs I looked at vary greatly on how their funded (I'm so confused), and require a Master's.

So this brings me to a lot of questions.

Are Master's degrees in Europe funded? And what would happen if I would decided to get a Master's degree in Europe but then come back to the United States for the Ph.D.? Is it possible to go straight into a European Ph.D. without a Master's at all? (I'll be graduating with 18 credits of graduate coursework and 27 credits of independent research).

Does anyone know of any good resources so I can figure out this situation?


texts: Including non first author papers as "sample papers" on academic job application

texts:
Academic job applications often require one to submit a few recent papers in the application. I have been a postdoc for the past couple of years and my role has primarily been advising: coming up with research problems for the PhD students and guiding/helping them to write a good research paper. As such many of my recent and current papers have a student as the first author, with me as the second author (or third author in the event that I am advising two students on the project).
Is it okay to submit some of these papers as part of my application? Or will it look bad since I am not the first author?


texts: How to find out people interested in the same paper and discuss?

texts:
I am reading an academic paper, but I cannot understand a lot of things in the paper, especially some proofs. If I ask someone else who is not reading the paper, or who is not studying the similar research field, then he/she might need to spend much time and may still turn out to not understand the paper either. So is it possible to find out people who are also interested in the paper or have read the paper, then to create a discussion group? I think this will definitely accelerate my understanding of a paper and make research easier.

Most of the time, I find out that I am the only one in my research group to study on some problems, and it is difficult to discuss with others on specific research problems. How to seek help from others who have different research topics? I do not want to waste other people's time if they cannot help eventually.


texts: How to deal with poor teaching evaluations on academic job market?

texts:
I will enter the academic job market after having received poor teaching evaluations for my first and only independently taught class. Some of the criticisms were well founded, and I am trying my best to improve the class in the future. The teaching evaluations for the next (and hopefully improved) installment of the class will not be available in time to include them in my job applications.

While I am still inexperienced as a teacher, I don't think the evaluations are entirely fair. My predecessor agrees with me that the class is one of the most challenging classes to teach (it's a mandatory statistics class for terminal masters students without a mathematical background).

How should I deal with these teaching evaluations in my job application? Is there any way to provide context for the hiring committee?


texts: Academic writing: Referring again to the works of authors et al. Does date need to be included every time?

texts:
If I were to refer to the work of X et al. [YYYY] several times within a paragraph does one need to write the date every time? It appears to disturb the flow of the writing and reads better without, however I'm unsure of the convention.

I've never taken notice either way when reading papers and cannot find an example. Perhaps it is bad form?


texts: About a problem with finding potential referee for my manuscript

texts: I asked this question About withdrawing manuscript in academia about one month ago. At that time, I decided to wait more and sent the editor in chief the name of three potential referees. Today I sent a tracking email. The editor in chief said that none of them accepted to be the referee and he told that he sent to more potential referees. ( I am sure one of the potential referees has not received any email to review my paper, because I asked him). Now I need your guidance in this regard, what is the best option for me now? Shall I withdraw the paper?  Now it is about 6 month that I have submitted my paper and unfortunately they have not found referee for that!


texts: In September I got a (permanent) junior faculty position in France. The academic year is about to finish and I am taking stock of the year to see if that is really the right place for me to be. Before moving onto this position, I was doing a postdoc in the US and confess that I accepted this position in France mostly because was permanent. Now, if I look back over the year, the main thing I did not enjoy was the teaching load I was given, it was absolutely unsuitable for someone that is starting as a junior professor, but this is the way it is in France and it is not going to get any better. So I was thinking whether I should try to look for other opportunities back in the US and wondered perhaps someone with a wider view could provide me with some tips on that.


texts: Will a research proposal of looking into applications of current technologies be frowned upon because it does not deal with fundamental research?

texts:
I'm interested in robotics and particularly in how we can use autonomous systems to aid with environmental conservation. I'm currently looking into PhD programmes but it seems to me that the vast majority of research happening in the relevant departments covers pretty fundamental, low-level technologies which might sometime see an application if they get a whole lot of development.

So, what's the deal with research in technology? Are universities/institutes not a place for, say, researching "Using Reinforcement Learning in Methane Monitoring Drones?"


texts: How to find credible sources for a general reference?

texts:
I am currently writing a paper in which I have many topics to describe. It would not be productive to read and cite papers or even books on the topics because I just have to describe them very briefly as an introduction to some follow up topics.

For "private" use I would just use the corresponding Wikipedia articles but that is considered bad practice in academic papers.

So do you have any tips how to get credible definitions of and/or short introductions into (in my case computer science) topics without searching through dozens of papers/books for some useful/credible parts?


texts: Is it possible to work on my thesis on my home country?

texts: I was wondering if it's possible (and how frequent it is) to work my (math) PhD thesis in my home country if I am an international student?


texts: What is an "author's novelty file" in journals?

texts:
Recently I submitted a paper in a journal then after a few days I got following comments:

Your submission of the manuscript  has been unsubmitted. This is because your "Author's Novelty File" was not detailed enough. In order to proceed, please briefly describe, in a few lines, the new contributions of your paper to the field. Do not repeat for this purpose the content of your abstract. Instead, provide a brief itemized list of these contributions in a separate file.

I don't understand what I have to write now. What he is asking for? I need help with this.

Thanks for giving me time.


texts: How to advertise the grad course that you teach?

texts:
I accepted an offer to teach a graduate course at the university, as an adjunct professor. This program has a minimum threshold for number of students signed up. In other words if not enough students signed up by the deadline, they won't offer it.

I wonder how do you advertise the courses that you teach? I think the subject and content will be very interesting to many students, so the question is how to disseminate the information about it to potential students outside the graduate program that it is part of?

It's a national university in USA, ranked in top 100, not top 20 or Ivy league type. I believe that this course will be available for students of a regional consortium of universities to which this uni belongs. The course is elective, and a part of a small Masters level program, but will be listed in the catalog and should be available to students outside the program. The course is a STEM subject in STEM certified program, so it should be compatible with similar programs


texts: Is it acceptable to say that a reviewer's concern is not going to be addressed because then the paper would be too long?

texts: It is my understanding that philosophy papers have less chance of being published if they are over 7,000 or 8,000 words long. But at the same time we philosophers often complain that a given author's work was not considered in a manuscript. So what should one do when a reviewer asks for consideration of a whole additional facet or philosopher in a paper? Is it understood that in that case, the author can substantially increase the wordcount of her manuscript? Even over the limit stated in the submission guide? (I've seen published papers of 13,000 words in a journal that indicates a limit of 10,000).


texts: Ethically, should you report cheating that you learned of indirectly?

texts:
Six classmates and myself have been in the same program for the past 2 years and one of them just informed me of another classmate that sits beside him of cheating on exams, so I informed the professor, and now that person may be kicked out of the program.

Did I do right?

Why did that classmate inform me of the other persons cheating? I felt an ethical obligation, because of the program we are all in too disclose this information to the professor and did not want the burden of knowing on me.


texts: Can I perform psychological experiments at home and be taken seriously?

texts:
I've just finished my under-graduation in psychology in my country and I'm very motivated to start publishing and making my own experiments.
Following this answer: Does one need to be affiliated with a university to publish papers?, I've discovered that I can publish papers without institutional affiliation. Is it the same with experiments?
How can I prove that my experiments were rigorously conducted and that I'm not faking documents or participants?  how can I show that I didn't induce some answers to the participants to prove a given hypothesis?
If I can publish without an institutional affiliation, would my results be taken seriously in academia?