texts:
I asked some conference organizers whether authors may submit papers to arXiv before submitting to the conference, and got the following reply:

  though not encouraging it, [conference name] allows archiving pre-submissions on platforms such as arXiv: therefore you can upload there your article before submitting it to the conference.

Why would a conference discourage authors to submit their papers to pre-submissions platforms (e.g., arXiv) before submitting them to the conference?

The proceedings of the conference are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, so
the license isn't an issue. The only issue I can see is that it may jeopardize the anonymity of the authors (the conference review process is double blinded). Is there any other downside?

I asked the conference organizers why they do not encourage archiving pre-submissions on platforms such as arXiv, but I haven't heard back from them.

This question is different from the question Submitting ACM Conference papers to ArXiv: the latter focuses on licenses, whereas here the license isn't an issue.


texts: Would it be ok/wise to end my PhD contract after submitting my PhD thesis in order to be able to start a new job at that time?

texts:
I would like to start looking for a job in the period preceding the submission of my thesis, so that if I’m lucky and I find a job, I could end my PhD contract (around PhD submission time) and take on that job.

I am asking because my PhD contract allows me to remain employed until my defense date (already fixed). During the time between the submission and defense (around 2.5 months), since the work expected to be done during my PhD is already done, I would be spending this time doing tasks I’m not interested in, just to fill this gap. The thing is I’d rather spend this time working on something new with a new employer.

Worth noting is that in our lab there is a history of other students ending their PhD contracts at early stages or mid-way (for different reasons) but not at an advanced stage, like I’d like to do.

Are there other considerations I should take into account if I do something like this (Besides the risk of being unemployed if I’m not lucky enough to find a new job) ?


texts: How can an undergraduate student conducting mathematical research with a professor expect to contribute?

texts:
I am currently an undergraduate student majoring in Applied Math. I have been reading recent papers published by two of my professors who I admire and I'm wondering what it would be like to conduct research with them. In what ways can an undergraduate student contribute to mathematical research? In what ways could I prepare myself to conduct mathematical research?

To be more specific, my academic background is in History and Social Sciences which I studied intensely from High School through my first two years in college. I conducted research at University of Arizona my junior year of high school analyzing a large set of longitudinal data on a group of high schools in NYC.
My interest in math, specifically applied math, started when I took a Computer Science class because I was curious. Since then, I've taken calculus courses, applied combinatorics, probability courses, and I'm currently enrolled in a computational geometry course and an operations research course. The reason I'm interested in pursuing undergraduate mathematical research is because I enjoyed the experience a lot when I was studying social sciences. My concern is that I don't have a strong enough background to contribute to the research my professors currently conduct. I get good grades in my classes, but I'm concerned with my lack of background for a Junior in an applied math major. Recent publications from my professors are difficult for me to understand, so I'm questioning whether I'm ready to conduct research with them.
I'm hoping you may be able to offer insight into whether my background is sufficient for conducting research and how I may be able to strengthen my skills. I take my school work seriously and think I have a good understanding of the material I'm taught. Thank you for your time.


texts: Passionate about a PhD in math, but unsure how to explain my chaotic transcript due to mental illness

texts:
I'm passionate about getting a PhD in Math for a career as a research mathematician and then as an educator working at a community college.

I got A's in community college. I transferred to our local University and for my 1st semester got a 3.67 taking science courses and 300 level math courses. The next semester I got a 4.00 taking more science and math courses. The next year I started exhibiting symptoms of bi-polar and my grades tanked pretty hard. After that I muddled through, graduated with a total GPA of 3.5 and started on a long journey of learning to live and thrive with bi-polar and depression. However, I did probably the dumbest thing ever. I convinced myself that getting a C.S. masters was a prudent idea and proceeded to re-enroll at our University and fail a bunch of CS classes. Now my overall GPA (despite already having graduated) is 3.19. Since then I went into the workforce, decided I really just want to get my PhD in math and teach a community college and have been pursuing that for a year now. In working toward that goal I took an independent study course with one of my professors to refresh my linear algebra and got an A. Then I took graduate level analysis (B+) and graduate level applications of linear algebra (A-). I'm currently in the 2nd semester of graduate level analysis and feel like I've gotten the hang of graduate level course work (I'm confident I'll get an A in this one).

So despite having early success in math (A's in the Calc series and A's in several 300 and 400 level courses) I have what looks like a really really confusing transcript because I tried CS, actually hated it, and go F's in two of those classes. To add to my transcript/GPA concerns I have C's in the undergraduate analysis courses from when bi-polar threw my life off the rails and around the same time got a D in diff-eq (which I retook for an A) and a C in combinatorics.

Now that I'm looking to apply for grad school in Fall 2020 (possibly out of my small state if the program is good) I don't really know how to communicate what probably seems like a very confusing academic record. For what it's worth I have 1 math professor that will write me a good letter of rec, a retired math professor that will write me a good letter of rec, and the P.I. from my internship at a big name research institute that might write me a letter. So at least I have that. But damn, my transcript looks like something that will hurt me without explanation. How do I explain it? Is it possible? Should I reconsider my path? I'm very dedicated to this path but I worry that despite my passion current and ability to pass graduate level courses it won't be enough. Any suggestions on how to explain my transcript would be so wonderful =)

TL;DR - I got good grades at my local Uni in nowhere USA. Then I got bi-polar disorder and so did my grades, then I graduated, then I tried CS and got even crappier grades still. But now I'm doing well and getting better grades in grad-level classes but have no idea how to explain all of this to grad programs I apply to =/


texts: Are there any issues with submitting conference papers in one language and publishing them in a journal in a different language?

texts: I have some research I want to present at a conference in my native language but I would rather submit for publication in English after finalizing it. Are there any ethical issues with this I am missing?


texts: Working with two different set of colleagues on the same problem

texts:
I am a Ph.D. student working on Computer Science. This is the situation. I thought of an interesting problem, and had a discussion about it with someone (call this person A) I wanted to establish a connection with. We discussed some ideas but they failed. We then stopped talking for a while.
Few weeks later I discuss this problem with another person, B, a postdoc at my group. We see no way of making progress in the first meeting. Then B tells me that C, a PhD student at my group, is also interested in the problem. We start having regular meetings the three of us (B, C and myself) and slowly make progress with the problem.
Then, after some months of silence, A contacts me proposing some early solutions to the problem that seem promising, clever and way more sophisticated than what B, C and I have been thinking of.
At this point I don't know how to proceed. Ideally, we could work on the problem the four of us, but it is unfair in light of the fact that the deepest contributions come from A, and the other three of us would be around just to help establishing the results and presenting them (A is an expert in a different field so it does need the help of one of us to make their techniques relevant, but three of us is too much I think). On the one hand, I have held discussions with B and C, which have led to essentially zero progress, but they have been interested in the topic nevertheless. Leaving them to (re)join A also sounds a bit inappropriate.
Any suggestion or advice is more than welcome. I can help clarifying the situation even more if you feel it's needed.


texts: Meaning of 'scholarly approach' for graduate award nomination

texts:
I have been nominated for an award to PhD students. I have first been asked to submit a CV and a description of my research project(s). After that, I have been asked by the organisers (directly by email) to submit "a short statement about your research experience and scholarly approach (not more than one page)".

I would like to know what kind of information I am expected to include in that document.

There is not a public announcement of the award describing the requirements, and I feel a bit concerned about asking them directly for more information, since they might consider my ability to write that document on my own (without further description than that above) as something to qualify.

Any suggestion will be appreciated.

(English is not my mother tongue. I believe that's why the terms "scholarly approach" don't say anything specific to me)


texts: If a paper cites a work and its translation, is it counted as two citations for calculating h-index?

texts:
If a bibliography mentions a work two times, once in its original and once in its translation, how does this count in the author's H-index?

E.G.:

Everyman, J. (2000), A work on citations, Cambridge.
Everyman, J. (2001), Un lavoro sulle citazioni, Roma.

The (2) is the italian translation of the (1).
This means that the author gets 2 citations, but they actually refer to only 1 work. How does this affect citation count and metrics?


texts:
I am currently doing research for my masters and also doing a full time job from 10 to 7 excluding the weekends.By the end of our research ,all of the students would get at least one good paper. I am also expected to get one. I have two more opportunities for research.
One comes from one of my semester projects on computer simulation.My professor told me that I might get a good publication out of it if I extend it a little.I have done most of the work on this project.I only have to do about 20 or 30 percent more work on it.
The second opportunity is regarding GPU acceleration.I haven't started work on this one.
I was wondering that will it be worth the effort if I choose to go ahead with these research opportunities? I am free on the weekends but I am worried that I might get burned out if I work all the time. Would it be beneficial for me if I plan to go into teaching in a few years? Would it be beneficial if I plan to go for a PhD?


texts: Is there a community driven unified article database?

texts:
I am using Mendeley to keep track of my papers. It allows me to group the papers in folders, and I can easily export BiBTeX for a folder which I can include in a paper I am writing.

However, almost always I need to fill in all the details when I add a new paper to my library. "Search by Title" feature does not do a great job.

I think everyone around the world is creating their BiBTeX (or any other format) entries by hand. Is there a community driven (wikipedia like) website/service that unifies this process?

What I have in my mind is something like this: People add article meta information (title, authors, year etc.) to this public DB, if they see a mistake they correct it, if they see duplicates they prevent it by deleting one. And one can export entries as BiBTeX, etc.

The closest thing I saw is Google Scholar. But because it tries to automate nearly the whole process there are still lots of mistakes.


texts: How do I politely decline a professor who's really keen on having me for a PhD position?

texts: I wrote an email to my potential advisor, politely declining an offer for a PhD position. And he has replied saying that he's sad to hear that, and asking if there's anything he can do to convince me otherwise. How do I reply to this?


texts: Is it ethical to tell my teaching assistant that I like him?

texts:
I, a twenty-year-old female, have come to admire the graduate teaching assistant for my summer course quite strongly. I'm extremely interested in what he has to say, I always pay attention, never use my phone and use eye contact to show interest. I do like them very much and I think about them with warmth often. I want to know about their work, I want to know what he is interested in. I would like to at least be their friend.
Despite my strong admiration I must emphasize that I have not and do not plan to cross professional boundaries until the end of the course.
I have spoken to them though it was only a short conversation about the work that was assigned to us the following weekend, however he did seem quite warm and open to conversation. Specifically he emphasizes in his syllabus to not hesitate to contact him with any questions we may have at all. I would like to be able to talk to them more without bothering them, and over stepping professional boundaries. I hopefully plan to ask them out once the course has ended, but I would still like to be able to have the chance to talk to them too as friends outside of course hours about the course material. Would this be ethical? Should I just back down? Specifically I wanted to thank him for giving me a very positive, in-depth feed back in the essay assignment that I had turned in that I got a perfect grade on.
I've been going through a really rough time in my personal life. Despite having flunked before, I made a promise to myself to work harder and to never give up on my goals. Truly their receptiveness, warmth and passion has genuinely inspired me to keep going and to study harder. I would very much like to thank them for inspiring me and being a good teacher which has helped me understand the material.

Would it be ethical to express these sentiments of admiration and gratitude to them during their office hours?

Would it be possible to date them after the course has ended since he is essentially a normal graduate student instead of a true professor?

*edit
Class has ended and we have a date planned! Thanks all for your advice!
*edit #2
We are still dating and our 9 month anniversary is coming up soon! The relationship is going really well and it is the best and most loving relationship we’ve ever been in! We are excited to grow together and the mention of having children someday has come up occasionally.
Sometimes he jokes about being my TA but he is very adamant about making it clear he didn’t like me during the course, but in conclusion we are both doing fantastic!
Thanks for all your help ! (May 7th 2020)
*edit # 3
Not sure if anyone comes across this anymore but our one year anniversary passed a few months ago and we're growing strong! I'm really happy that I went out of my comfort zone and found a lasting relationship. (10/28/2020)


texts:
I am in my 3rd year of the PhD program in theoretical physics. Although I would love to stay within academia, my hopes of obtaining a good position are dwindling because of various factors. Given that, it seems wise to be get prepared to leave academia after I get a PhD. My work has nothing to do with coding/programming, and I have zero experience at that. If I leave academia, I want to get into the field of data science/machine learning. Is it possible/advisable/reasonable to work on a side project within physics but in an unrelated field which allows me to gain experience in data analysis and programming? Would I be able to handle it? Would it be a reasonable thing to do without upsetting my advisor? Also, if I do intend to stay within academia, would the experience of working in a different field count, even though it doesn't appear in my dissertation at all?

I do want to mention that I am certain that I do not want to change my field of research for my dissertation just because of the possibility of moving away from academia. I really enjoy working in my field and wouldn't give that up for anything. So switching to the other field for good is not an option.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: I could also work on problems that are a little more closely related with my work that involves numerical computation through which I could learn to code but I wouldn't be working with data. However, I don't know if that would help in terms of getting into industry.


texts: Why are journals used in modern scientific academic research?

texts:
I am new to research and I have yet to internalize the concept of journals and their utility in archiving scientific literature.

Almost all the papers I have read recently are from this website called arxiv. Arxiv calls itself to be a preprint archive. Anyone can upload a PDF file to the repository and it counts as a valid research. Large companies like Google and Facebook post all their research here. The research is peer reviewed, It does not have the tyranny of a fixed format and the publishing is instantaneous unlike journals which are painfully slow. It is also open access and unlike open access journals it does not cost a fortune to publish a paper.

My question is, why were journals used to begin with? Why are they used now?

I have heard some people say that if a paper is not published in a scopus indexed journal then it does not have any value. Then why are so many people publishing here? As far as I know citations from arxiv are picked up by google scholar.

EDIT: Ok, so the entire system is a huge mess.

https://gowers.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/elsevierstatementfinal.pdf
http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1439
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.1351.pdf


texts: My research area has very few research positions, would it still be possible for me to stay in academia?

texts:
I am a PhD student in mathematics.  I felt quite lucky that I got into this program.  My research is also going ok, and I got some confirmation from my advisor that I should be able to graduate in a year or two if I keep up with my work.  So things were mostly good.  But a recent conversation with my advisor completely changed my view about my situation.

We just finished one of our projects and naturally got to the question of when I should graduate.  Then We start to discuss my plans after graduation.  He asked me whether I want to find a job in industry or stay in academia.  I said I want to remain in academia, find a postdoc, then a tenure-track position, etc.  He then told me that there are very few places that have postdocs in my area, and indicated maybe I should look for schools that majorly focus on teaching.

I was very shocked.  I always wanted to stay in academia and thought about going to good research schools.  In fact we talked about this when I first asked to be his student.  But for some reason, he kept asking me the same question every once in a while.

I went home and start search on mathjobs.org for positions in my area, which I probably should have done three years ago.  There were almost nothing.  There are two postdoc positions, both are from not very well-known schools, I don't quite have interests in applying to either one of them.

I am quite lost.  On one hand, I wish I knew this much earlier on.  I wish my advisor would have told me before he helped me pick this area.  I also should've done some research on that myself.  Now I just have so much regrets in my heart.

On the other hand, I think it's time to be realistic and rethink my plans.  I wonder if it is still be possible for me to get a postdoc (possibly in one of the two places) and later go to a top-ranking school for tenure-track positions?  If a school don't have anyone in your area, would they hire you as a tenure-track AP?  I am not quite fond of teaching, I can bear it if it's part of my job being a researcher, but I would not want to do this as my sole job.

If that is not possible, what kind of job can a math PhD get?  I had some experience in industry before as well, but I don't quite like that job.  Are there research-type positions in companies that would appreciate a math major?  If so, what kind of knowledge/skills should I pick up now?


texts: Why is it bad to judge a paper by citation count?

texts: I hear a lot from the experts that citation count is a bad idea as a measure of judging a paper. This seems simply counter-intuitive to me. I would like to know if any study has been done in this direction?


texts: What lesson plan is best for mandarin tutoring?

texts:
I am currently employed to offer private tutor to two children, five and nine years old. My job is to provide their parents with a lesson plan and some sets of exercises to complement their material at the Chinese school. I've tried the two websites below for the lesson plan, any more recommendations?
https://www.education.com/lesson-plans/?page=3&q=lesson%20timetable
https://www.twinkl.com.hk/resource/editable-lesson-plan-template-us-e-3
Thank you very much!


texts: Academic home page with low maintenance burden

texts:
It's been mentioned before on this site how important it is to have a webpage.

Most academics don't have a lot of experience with web development, and do not realistically have time to learn it and keep the knowledge up to date.

What are some good ways/tools to create and maintain a professional website when the priority is minimizing long term maintenance burden?

My experience is that it's not uncommon that people will put in the effort to build a very nice website once, but they simply won't be able to maintain it long term.  Either it's too much effort to add new content (too busy to do it), or they change institutions and it's too much effort to migrate the site (because e.g. the new institution's hosting doesn't support some of the necessary tools, such as PHP, etc.)  Even if I put in the effort to learn a bit about web development today, I won't be using this knowledge contiually, so I'll forget how to do it.  At that point it might become too much of a burden to keep a website up to date, so eventually I'll neglect it.

This question is about how to avoid this situation, and what tools or hosting methods to use to minimize maintenance burden so a home page can realistically be kept up to date.

The simplest solution seems to be to only use basic (static) hand-written HTML and maybe a simple CSS stylesheet.  Many (most) academics are doing this.  The result will probably not be very beautiful and will look like webpages 15 years ago, but it can serve the purpose.  Are there any better ways?  (Typing all that <p> and <em> and <pre> and <ul> is in fact still rather tedious and error prone compared e.g. to writing MarkDown here.)


texts: Things to do before submitting a manuscript

texts: After having written a manuscript and formatted it to the publishers specifications, are there any additional things you do before submitting it (or right after submitting it) that make the review process easier. For example, for journals that I know the approximate time it takes to review, I make a note in my diary to check on the manuscript around that time. I also print out a hard copy and move the digital files into my lab notebook. Are there other things that I should be doing?


texts: Are there guidelines that say if post-submission publications must be cited?

texts:
I can see from this question Can I cite a paper published after the initial submission of my paper? asking if it is okay to cite papers after submission is answered as, yes- and sometimes you need to.
Alternatively, the question here Recently published paper deliberately not citing our very relevant work -- anything to do? suggests an answer to not citing a paper was because it was found out during the revision.
I think the question is a bit tied to my thinking and past experiences that I have seen in which the idea of citing papers that were published after the submission easily leads to abuse through long reviews. Meaning, if a reviewer sits on a paper for a year while publishing related work, it becomes an easy argument to make that the paper is now outdated and does not have significant contributions.  Likewise, one could wait until their own paper is published first to then say in a review that there is some paper that is relevant and should be cited.
Besides the malicious aspect, it also seems to open the door to never-ending reviews. Say a researcher creates something, does an experiment, and compares against other work. Then during review a paper appears. A reviewer then asks to compare against this new work. The person compares against that new one, submits, and during review a new paper shows up and repeats the cycle.
I know there are guidelines and ethics statements that say a reviewer delaying a manuscript for their own benefit is unethical, but are there guidelines that look at it from a timestamp point of view (e.g., papers are reviewed on the merits at time of submission)?


texts: How to grade unequal contributions to group work as a TA bound by instructor's rules

texts:
I am a TA for a freshman course in the humanities at a US university. Due to pandemic restrictions, the class is entirely online and the medium through which students learn is Canvas. Lectures are pre-recorded by the instructor and posted to the course site, as are any reading documents or assignments. Students contact me in "real time" through email, course messaging, and virtual office hours (held via Zoom).
Students complete some individual assignments and upload their work to the course site, but they have also been broken up into project groups and complete group work. It is their job to contact their group members and work together to submit assignments.
I am not sure how to grade group work when:

It is clear that only one or two students did all of the work
Each student receives the same grade as everyone else in their group (something I cannot change per my instructor's request)

I cannot force students to learn and I cannot change how learning outcomes are assessed. But how can I reward students for meeting objectives while not punishing them if students in their group do not contribute?

Restrictions:

Changing the course gradebook and ways that assignments are graded is not a viable option because the instructor has asked me not to.
The instructor is very clear that neither they nor I are to intervene in group disputes. According to the instructor, "Students need to learn to work with difficult people."
I do not see the value of group assignments in this course because (in my opinion) students aren't meeting the learning goal if they only think about certain parts of the assignment. I also think it is unhelpful and difficult to put the burden of communication on the students during a pandemic with asynchronous learning.
I do not want to encourage the "good" students to do all of the work for the group just to get a good grade because I do not think that promotes healthy behavior toward group work.
The instructor is not open to negotiating how the course is run.

Freedoms:

I am the only one grading assignments, meaning that I can come up with whatever grading scheme I want and have the entire class graded with the same metrics.
I can create content (handouts, etc.) and post to the course site as much as I please.

Note: I've looked at this question, which does not answer my question here but might help when I run a course as the instructor.


texts: Patent agent work from the research career perspective

texts:
Recently I ran across a number of patent agent positions, which seem to require significant scientific research or academic skills and experience, up to a Ph.D. level. After reading some patents, it is pretty clear to me that such role is anything but an easy job. Nevertheless, I am somewhat attracted to it due to the fact that it combines scientific research and innovation with intellectual property and entrepreneurship areas. I am curious about the following two aspects:

How the time, spent in a role of patent agent, is considered by the academic community from the overall academic/research career perspective? While we cannot talk about pure research productivity in that case, since inventions are made by other people, I am wondering about whether helping those people to formulate their ideas in a clear and defensible manner can be counted as an informal co-authorship of some kind. In other words, is there some ethical authorship credit that would be attached — again, informally — to patent agents' research portfolio and enable them to further return back to mainstream academia at some point?
Considering the above-mentioned point and, perhaps, other aspects, how difficult would be for a Ph.D. graduate without significant research portfolio (at the moment) to return to academia (as postdoc, then faculty) after having worked as a patent agent for some time?


texts:
What is the more efficient way of self-teaching, when the return is diminishing? Keep on trying? or study more basic stuffs?

I am currently teaching myself a few subjects, but I have noticed that the learning curves are quite tricky now and then. Sometimes, it gets steep at the beginning, then it gets quite sucky later on (especially when I am in lack of some background knowledge. usually, I have to either look it up or make my own assumptions). Some other times, I have a humble beginning, but then it goes like rocket (e.g. for mathematics, when I tried to understand it, instead of memorizing it).

More specifically, I am learning writing in science on coursera. I am quite satisfied by the general tips (e.g. one main idea in each paragraph, and I had not known that at all), but when it comes to how "abstract", "method", "result", etc. The tutor's suggestions sound quite alien to me (I have little experience in research); furthermore, I am also not making good progress. Therefore, I am not sure if it is normal for someone learning something completely new, or simply because my English is too lousy (even as a non-native English speaker; hence, I had better to switch to other basic English writing courses)

So what is the more efficient way of self-teaching, when the return is diminishing? Work harder as no pain no gain? or switch to more fundamental things? While I am looking for a scientific answer (backed-up by researches), I would also love any personal experience or insight as an answer.


texts: Shall I include a list of workshops and conferences attended during my UG in my 4 page CV?

texts:
I'm currently applying for US graduate programs (doctoral study in Molecular biology). I'm asked to submit a maximum of 3-4 page CV. I have  participated in nearly 20 workshops and conferences in my 3 year undergraduate  period. As the list is big I didn't include in the CV.

I would like to know how to prove or tell to grad committee members that I'm ardent on learning techniques and that is the reason I went beyond college curriculum to learn it individually and in depth?

Thanks.


texts: How could I become a mathematician with only a bachelor's degree in computer science?

texts:
TL;DR My bachelor's degree didn't leave me with a solid education in mathematics and I'm not sure how to start a career in pure mathematics from there.

To start with, I'm 24 years old, living in Indonesia in Southeast Asia, and I just graduated from a low-ranking university (even for this country) with a bachelor's degree in computer science. I want to pursue a career in mathematics even though I've also enjoyed programming immensely (see all my posts on codegolf.SE) because I've loved mathematics for much longer and I feel like I wasted this first opportunity for education on a less-than-stellar degree. (Note: this less-than-stellar degree didn't even have a linear algebra course. Make of that what you will.)

I figure that a good path to a career in mathematics academia is to at least work towards getting a Master's and PhD in mathematics. The trouble is, is that even this is very broad. What topics/fields should I pursue (first) when looking for graduate programs? If I email professors, what do I tell them? "Hi, I'm looking for a graduate degree, but I don't even have an undergraduate's understanding of mathematics and I have no idea what path to pursue. Can you help me?"

Another hiccup is that I've just started a job as a software developer here in Indonesia to support my family, and I don't think I can leave that job to pursue academia for however many years, until I've worked there for a few years and saved up some money (especially if I pursue these degrees abroad). "Hi, I'd like to join your graduate program, but not till 2023." doesn't seem like a great thing to receive in your email.

This delay does give me time to give myself an informal refresher in undergraduate mathematics, but I have no idea where to even start. Read a textbook? Join an online course? Find a tutor here in Indonesia?

This is not to mention that I'm not sure how on earth I'll pay for everything, or that for most master's or PhD courses (or a combined degree) expect you, quite reasonably, to have a bachelor's degree in mathematics.

And lastly, my main mathematical interests are in number theory, algebra, and calculus, in approximately that order. I was thinking of applying to a North American university (maybe the University of Waterloo in Canada) before applying to Australian or European universities. I have US citizenship, which should help a lot.

In short, I have a myriad of choices and a bad starting position. I understand this is a very general question, so I thank you for any advice you can give or resources you pass along.


texts:
I currently work for the small institutions that doesn't have a digital repository, so we begun the process of digitilising current research data: sensitive data (raw data in a form of pdf surveys, audio interviews, administrative data etc), as well as the data we would like to open for the general public (research papers linked with their anonymised datasets). We would like to store it on a local server and describe all data with the metadata and link DOI with the datasets, so DSpace seemed as a good solution.

However, I am not familiar with the DSpace paradigm - is DSpace made exclusively for storing open access data? Main goal is to make repository for every finished project that would be stored on a local server and available only to the research staff, where only a part of a project repository (datasets, papers, some pictures) would be open to general public.

Is DSpace good solution for storing sensitive data in general? If not, what do you recommended in this case - uploading the data we want to share on Zenodo or Figshare and making custom solution for the sensitive data? Can you recommend an open source solution for storing sensitive data (Pdf surveys, papers that are not yet to be shared, books etc?) that can be described with metadata (Dublin Core)?

Thanks!


texts: Should I take a Certificate for University Teaching while doing a postdoc?

texts:
I have just gotten a 2.5 year postdoctoral fellowship (philosophy) to do my own research project at a University (I am connected to a relevant research group and professor, but basically the project is my own and I have secured funding for stays abroad). My department is now offering me to also take a University Teaching Certificate (200 hours spread over 1 1/2 year). After completing my PhD I was teaching as an adjunct for 2 semesters, so I have teaching experience (designed my own courses etc), but not an official paper on it.
My friends in academia tells me I should go for it, and some even say I should ask for more teaching and try to get my department to change my title to "assistent professor".
I, however, am thrilled to look forward to 2 1/2 years with just doing research and getting some more publications done. I only have a couple really good ones at the moment (I have two small kids, so time is limited already). Also, the job market here is not very good at the moment, so I don't think there is any chance I will stay at this university anyway, and all though I would prefer to stay in academia, I have to be prepared to look for jobs other places when my contract ends. I might also have to leave my country, if I really want a tenure-track job, and then I wonder if the teaching certificate will be considered legitimate anyway.


texts: Do most customers choose predatory publishers knowingly?

texts:
In this comment, it was claimed:

  Predatory publishers thrive because when you apply for a job or a grant, few read your papers. They check the papers you pinpoint and the number of publcations. That's where these publishers step on and that's why people choose them. Not because they don't know. Of course there might be a few accidentally doing it, like the OP in this question, but most of the people who are in academia for a while select them only to increase faster their publication list.

By contrast, I cannot remember a single case of somebody reporting their experience with such publisher on this very site that submitted a paper to a predatory publisher knowingly (except for exposing them). Now, there is no denying that there is a strong bias here since people who intentionally choose a predatory publisher are less likely to admit it or ask questions here.

So, I am curious: Is there any data or good argument to support the claim that people who publish with predatory publishers are aware that they are not publishing with a regular scientific publisher?


texts:
I am writing an application where I should indicate my relationship with those that provide references for me. How should I describe the following: the person has never been my supervisor, however as he knows my PI very well, he is familiar with my work and we also had several lengthy informal discussions. How could I summarize that on an application?

Thank you for any help!


texts: How to become competitive for PhD in data science?

texts: I want to apply for Ph.D at a good Western university (e.g., in the UK or US) in data science. I have a master's degree (no thesis) and only one publication in a local journal. Will I be competitive for such spots? If not, how can I improve my profile?


texts: Is it plagiarism if I don't mention where I found a quotation originally?

texts:
Say author A writes on Topic B and in this context uses quotation C which is not from the same field and appears highly original in Topic B. I then read this article, and I am myself writing on Topic B. I find the quote so useful or relevant, that I quote it myself.

Am I obliged to mention where I found the quote (namely in author A)? Or can I just use the quote? Where are the boundaries here, what do you think is acceptable, what is not? Also, if it is not ethical, that's one thing - but is it also plagiarism?

PS: If anyone has a good title for this sort of question, please feel free to edit. Not sure how to name this.


texts: What are the available non-academic careers to a newly-minted PhD in theoretical condensed matter physics?

texts: Prior to completing my PhD degree, I used to hear, rather very often, that working in finance is the most non-academic viable career option for newly-minted PhDs in theoretical physics. But, now that I am actively searching for such jobs (any job, to be precise), it appears that employers in finance expect qualifications that practically all newly graduates like me lack. I might be wrong on this, but I don't know of anyone using SAS or R in their PhD research in theoretical physics. So, I was wondering what else is out there available to a newly graduated PhD with mostly a pen-and-paper background in theoretical condensed matter physics.


texts: Should you always use appropriate letter conventions when emailing a teacher?

texts: Usually, when I send an email to a teacher/lecturer, I always start "Dear Mr. Atwood" and end with "Regards/Best wishes (etc.) Leo". If I have to send a followup email after they have replied, I omit the opening and closing sections entirely, and just write my message. Is this considered rude? Would you prefer that a student always lead an email with "Dear" and signed their name?


texts: Want to change university, but concerned about "downgrading" from institute head, and about colleagues learning about my job search

texts:
I got my Ph.D. in Chemistry in an eastern European country in 2008. The same year I got a lecturer assistant position in a university in the same country.

Working there, I got promoted, first to lecturer (2010), then to assistant professor (2012).

From 2012 I started thinking about moving to another country: academic salaries are quite low and the political situation became very unstable. I even started to send my CV to several positions, and there was one offer. But due to some management changes, I became a department head at the end of 2012, so I refused the proposal and stayed in the university. A year ago I became an institute head inside the university.

Every year from 2012, I thought that it's not the best year to leave my position because my resignation would put my department/institute into a difficult position. There is no open job market for academic positions in our country (due to the ridiculous salaries) and it would be difficult  to find a replacement for a head of an institute in our city.

I can't say that the management position is very unpleasant for me, but I feel that I'm not a good fit, and I would prefer to stay in an assistant professor / professor position. Today I feel that the bureaucracy takes over and I can't get time to do research or to teach. When I raise these concerns with the management of our university, I get a response, like "When did life ever run smooth? You need to concentrate, and you would be OK. Now, take this new project."

Moreover, I can't openly submit my requests to positions in other universities I like, because it will require me to provide a set of recommendation letters. All colleagues who know me well and who can give me such a letter would be VERY surprised when they will find out, that I want to change my occupation. The sphere of chemistry academia in our country is very small, everyone knows everyone.

So, what should I do next?

Should I try to make an open statement to the university head
that I think the position is not for me and I want to leave? It
would be a very tough conversation, I would become a "lame duck" in
the university without any guarantee of finding a "job of my life".
Also, this conversation would be very unspecific, because I have no
other proposals. From the other side, then I would be able openly to ask my colleagues to provide a recommendation letter for me.
Should I try to find another academic position without informing the management? But I don't know how to provide a good set of recommendation letters then: people would start talking about my activity, and it would become public.
If I send a CV to an assistant professor/professor position, should I mention, that I am a head of an Institute? I'm afraid that it can raise a lot of questions like "why do you want to downshift from such a good position to become a teacher/researcher".
Maybe there is something that I am missing?


texts: What is the typical flow chart for college mathematics courses?

texts: I know that college mathematics typically start at Calculus I (Differential Calculus) and then Calculus II (Integral Calculus). Then after Calc II, it starts to branch off a little. One option after the first two semesters of Calculus is Calculus III (Vector/Multivariable Calculus). Another option is Linear Algebra, and then the next course is Differential Equations. I know that other, more advanced math topics exist like Number Theory/Abstract Algebra, Discrete Mathematics, Partial Differential Equations, Geometry Topics and Topology. I was wondering what order the above mentioned math topics go in and what their prerequisites typically are. If anyone can provide me with a flow chart, then that would be great.


texts: Possibility of skipping lower level prerequisites for graduate math application?

texts:
I am a non-traditional student interested in entering a graduate program in statistics or applied mathematics (to study probability / complex systems modeling). I have an undergraduate degree in a liberal arts subject - little to no technical coursework.

My question comes in two parts:

If I self-study and score well (90%+) on the GRE Math Subject Test, would I be able to take advanced undergraduate courses as a non-degree student with prerequisites waived?
Would your typical graduate program consider a student with only advanced courses but not the "basics" (calc, linear algebra, etc.)?

Certain life restraints (financial, geographical and existential) make it difficult for me to go back and take the classes.

Thanks in advance.


texts: How can I ask an unacquainted professor to collaborate with me?

texts:
I have read several papers written by the professor and want to ask for him to collaborate with me, that is, to help revise my paper and finally make it publish.

I'm concerning with:

1) is it okay to do this?

2) how to effectively ask for help?

3) is it safe to deliver an unpublished work to others?
If not appropriate, what can I do?

Any suggestions and help will be appreciated. Thanks!


texts: Can I get a Master's degree without a Bachelor's?

texts:
I have over 15 years experience as a software developer. I completed 2 years of undergrad, but have been too busy to go back.

Now that I have the time, I looked into finishing my computer science bachelor's program. They told me I'd have to take English 101. (I'm too old for that)

Is there a way to skip the bachelor's program and go directly into a Master's program considering I have extensive CS experience and have been doing the same work as a bachelor's program graduate?


texts: What steps can faculty and staff take to promote excellence in, and importance of, teaching?

texts:
tl;dr

Faculty don't think teaching is as important as their other responsibilities; how do we change that?

Long version

I've been working in academia for a long time and whenever I see instructors half-assing their teaching the go to excuses are that they have no time, or that it doesn't get any respect/grants/promotion/tenure/etc. I don't doubt they're busy, and I know departments don't typically reward teaching excellence (or punish teaching mediocrity...) but the students are suffering as a result.

How can we (faculty that care about teaching and staff supporting faculty) change this situation? What can we do short-term to make faculty care about teaching now and what can we do long-term to make departments care about excellence in teaching, and not just in research?

Note: I'm aware research brings in money. Keep in mind most faculty are adjuncts who aren't doing research but still have tenured research faculty that don't care about teaching as their role models.


texts: What are some practices for getting a name change so that people can find me more easily?

texts:
For a similar thing, see this thread, where Jay Wacker managed to get people to call him by the name Jay even though he didn't need to get a legal name change. I'm not sure how to go about this though.

The main problem with me is that I have such a frustratingly common name that a lot of people cannot find me when they google me. So many of them simply don't notice the middle initial that I always use in between my first and last names, and this could actually become a major issue in academia, since people have little time and are prone to giving up quickly if they want to look for me (or for my papers) and can't find me at all (I know this having seen how several academics use the Internet and how they look for people's names). This, in turn, could easily ruin my citation count in the future (it's not just that - it's helpful to others when I have a less common name so that they can more easily locate my stuff). I already know at least several people who specifically told me that they tried to find my email but that they couldn't find it (and this isn't limited to just them - there are many, many more - including long-lost friends who have wanted to talk to me for a long time, but who couldn't find me due to said ultra-common name). Of course, people can go through the respective university directories, but how many people really do that? From my observations (when I've seen people look for someone else), very very few do it. Hell, there are even several people at my OWN university who share the same exact first+last name as me.

In Academia, this is even a bigger problem because the vast majority of your connections will be people who only vaguely recognize/know you, so they may know most of the search clues. Even a "full name" + university won't solve all the problems, because I may switch universities and people may only remember the old university that I was in. I'm also very very interdisciplinary, so I want to be searchable to people outside my field as well.

And even if I fix the issue for Google with a massive SEO operation or whatever (that may even be impossible for my ridiculously common name), it's still not going to fix the problem for all of the other ways that people use search.

I'm currently transitioning between undergrad and grad school, so now may be the perfect time for a name change? But I don't know what to do. Is it better for me to change my first name or my last name? The problem is that a citation like "Chen 2011" is going to produce so many entries that no one will ever find them, even though they frequently do google things like that (and I simply cannot prevent people from googling something like that). Chen is so frustratingly common that even a "Chen and Name2 2011" paper could come from some random medical paper rather than from something I wrote.

As an additional complication, the % of Chinese people using the English Internet is exponentially rising, and I can only expect the problem to get worse in the future because of that (and not just for my first name, but even variants of my first name too).


texts: Should I mention this health issue I had on my graduate school application?

texts: Towards the end of one particular semester, I had some health issues which forced me to travel in order to get treated. This resulted in me missing the last two weeks of courses and all my final exams. I arranged so that I got grades of "incomplete" in all my courses, until I took the exams and finished my coursework after my recovery. I ended up doing okay, but I did get a B+ in a very important course. It's hard to say whether this was the reason for that, though. Should I mention this on my graduate school application, or will it look like I'm just making excuses?


texts: Can I still publish my thesis elsewhere if I publish it "closed access" with ProQuest?

texts:
My university requires that I upload my PhD thesis to ProQuest. ProQuest charges $95 for "open-access" publishing, while "traditional" publishing is free. I want to confirm my understanding here. "Open access" in this context really just means that ProQuest will make the PDF available in perpetuity for free. However, it does not mean that I cannot host or disseminate my thesis myself or use other open-access services, such as my university's library or arXiv. Does anyone know if this is correct? I’m pro-open access publishing, but I’d like to avoid paying this $95 fee.
Clarifying edit: This is not a duplicate of this question. That question is about the distinction between two different grades of open access publishing. My question is about whether or not I am interpreting a specific (and massive) open-access publisher's policies correctly. I've also edited my title to be more clear.


texts: Is it bad form to use the word exciting in a paper, when discussing other people's results?

texts:
When writing a paper with a collaborator, they didn't like that I used the word "exciting" in the abstract since they said that they don't like when people use personal personal qualifiers in writing papers. In particular my sentence was

"With these exciting results in mind, we study..."

(where the 'results' I am referring to are from a few recent experimental papers which I had nothing to do with). I initially wrote it in this way to emphasize that the recent results are interesting. Is this truly something that should be avoided?

Note: If it makes any difference I work in physics.


texts: Is it advisable to mention the dollar amount for grants on a CV?

texts:
I'm a soon-to-be post-doc and am currently sending my resumes to people and applying to places. 4 years ago, I applied for a grant and got funding for 3 years for everything — meaning my tuition, pay, research, travel expenses, university overhead and then some more, all of which totals to a large $ amount.

My question is: Is it advisable to put the actual $ amount on the CV (to show I'm capable of getting and handling funds) or would that seem like showing off? I've seen some people (usually folks with more experience) list it, but they're also ones that have won several grants and fundings, so there's stuff to list. In my case, this is the only thing so I'm afraid of it standing out and attracting unwanted attention.


texts: Who to contact when handling editor is anonymous and manuscript is delayed?

texts: Here a question has been asked about the ethical grounds for an editor to be anonymous from a reviewer point of view. I am facing similar problem but being an author my concerns are different. I have submitted an article to a prestigious Elsevier journal. The article went through two revisions, one major and one minor, and still under review. During all this process the handling editor never showed his identity. Currently I am facing unexpected delay in review process (5 months after minor revision). I want to send email to associate/handling editor but whenever I send email via Elsevier system I receive an unsatisfactory response from journal manager not from editor. I am not sure if he/she is seeing my emails. Is it an appropriate approach for associate/handling editor to hide the identity from an author? Is it appropriate if I write email directly to Editor in Chief? if yes, then how should I compose my email?


texts: What should I do if my thesis advisor keeps insisting on making changes that are scientifically inaccurate?

texts:
My thesis advisor keeps proposing changes that are inaccurate (e.g change a scientific definition) or simply wrong. I have already gone through over 70 papers in order to find evidence and information about my subject. Still, when presented with evidence, my advisor keeps rejecting some ideas and has been rude at times. At the beginning of our collaboration she presented me three papers, out of which only one was relevant.

Her English is also not very good, so I'm starting to think she doesn't really know what she's talking about at all. Should I ignore her proposals completely? Anyone with similar experiences?


texts: I've found a error in my thesis recently, after its submission. I made a mistake that wrongly accepted the hypothesis which should be rejected. What should I do??


texts: Finding a journal for specialised, interdisciplinary research

texts:
Assuming I decided what specific thing I want to research, how I can find journals suitable for my research?

For example, I am interested in query by humming in computer science. Will a signal-processing journal accept such a paper? Will a pattern-recognition one do, assuming I actually use pattern recognition algorithms?

Seems like there are very few (2–3) computer-science–music journals available. Can I only publish in these?


texts: When can I ignore related work in my paper?

texts:
In many fields it is conventional to discuss related work in your paper.
This lets you show where this new contribution sits in the literature, as to what novelties it adds over existing works; and to introduce works that you will later show how their techniques were adapted for the new work.
One can certainly have papers rejected because the related work section is not up to scratch.

My question is can one draw a line as to what works are worth discussing based on the quality of the work in question?

Obviously, if a work is not closely enough related, one does not need to discuss it.
If one is contributing to a well established area, then there is no space to discuss every work, so many can be skipped.
But what if there is only a small number of works, that are related?

To use as an example what is prompting me to this question,
the current work I am on is fairly new.
There are only 5 related papers that I am considering discussing.

2 on the inverse problem, 1 on a more general related problem, and 2 that are closely related.
Of these all baring 1 are published in top-venues
The remaining one, looks like it was an assignment.

I found it, via google scholar, at the URL: http:://www.<famous-university>.edu/<unitcode>/reports/<title>.pdf
It is formatted like a paper, which tends to make google scholar index it.
It may have been in preparation for a smaller workshop.
It was fairly well written; but lacked any kind of quantitative results, or even many qualitative results

However, this remaining one is one (of the two) closest related works.
I feel like I could include it, but if I did I would have to be quiet cutting as to its limitations.

I am in Computer Science


texts:
I've heard that salary inversion is a problem in academia, and it happens when Universities continue to hire new and highly qualified people at higher and higher salaries, but they don't increase the salaries of the existing faculty at the same rates.

I want to ask - why is this actually a problem?  Shouldn't salary be based on merit and qualifications, not how long you've sat at a particular desk?


texts: How to advise a student looking for an under-grad thesis topic?

texts: There are some good answers here on how to find an masters thesis topic, but I am looking for advice on how to advise undergrad students who are looking for a thesis topic. Finding a thesis topic is a little bit different at undergrad level because it is the first time. How can I best help a student find a good thesis topic at undergrad level which will help them to get into a good university for masters and/or PhD?


texts: Requesting a trained Neural Network model from an author?

texts:
A bit of background: I am working in a R&D department of quite a big name in the IT industry, and we are trying, clashing and combining different ideas and cutting-edge inventions to tackle our engineering problem.

Now the problem itself: There is an excellent paper from CVPR 2017 that I want to try for my project. However, the authors did not publish nor their code, nor their trained FCNN (Fully-Convolutional Neural Network). Now, the project that I am working on is only on the infancy stage, meaning that we need to make some Proof-of-Concept product as soon as possible. Obviously, for this stage, training a deep CNN is a relatively very time-consuming and expensive process, so ideally I would want to ask the authors for the trained model of their FCNN. Of course, if the concept works, we will re-train and fine-tune the whole thing for our specific task, so the author's CNN will not end up in the final product.

Question: How to correctly ask the authors for it? Or is it correct to ask researchers for their results for a project at all?


texts: Is it ethical to reach out to other postdocs about the research project before the postdoc interview?

texts:
I have a postdoc interview at the end of the month. I found a researcher's profile that's been working on the same research project I applied for. I am thinking of sending her an email or a LinkedIn message (I've already connected with her). But I don't know if that's ethical to do that or not, I am afraid that it will look like I am asking for more information as an advantage on other candidates.
I want to basically ask her a particular question about the project. The job's description mentions that they're using a method X on a tool Z. But this confuses me because I know it could mean a lot of things. I actually emailed the PI (*) way before I applied asking for a clarification and the potential similarity with an approach I have already used. I needed that information to decide if I'll apply or not, but she didn't reply to me email and I applied either way.
Now that I am invited for interview, I still need to know more details about the method X and the relationship with tool Z. Is it unethical to send such detailed question to a researcher working on the same project before the interview?
(*) Her email wasn't listed in the job description, so I used the one in the department


texts: What to do with repeated rejections for PhD position

texts:
Background:

I have been applying for a PhD in the last three years to more than 150 positions, very much specific to my skills and background. I only applied when I found positions' requirements matching my skills and experience.

I got the same response for all those positions. I almost gave up and went offline. After few months, I noticed a couple of emails from a professor, who liked my profile very much and was very interested in contacting me. I responded and got interviewed. However, he didn't find me suitable for position and advertised again for the very same position.

After a couple of months I applied to another project/position of the same Research Centre, thinking I may have chance in this group, but as usual they rejected but they said I came second.

After a couple of months, they said they are advertising again and I should apply since I was in top three. However, as usual, they got better candidate this time as well.

In a nutshell, I have been rejected for more than 150 positions and only one group who found me very suitable candidate rejected three times. While I cannot describe how I am feeling I also don't know whether to take it as positive that they interviewed me three times or that even they didn't find me suitable for something which I was very much capable of.

My question Is if it's all normal, or should I give up on looking for PhD positions.

With every day I am not getting any younger and my chances are decreasing. It has been around 3.5 years since I have done my master's. With every rejection, I have been trying to rectify errors and mistakes and improvements but all in vain so far.

Thanks in advance.


texts: What is the status of foreign cloud apps in German universities?

texts:
From what I heard, in German universities there is a push against foreign cloud applications such as Microsoft Office 365, Google G Suite, Github, and even Doodle. The DFN offers some alternatives, encouraging (or forcing?) university staff to switch to them.
Could someone inside the German system describe the state of things in more detail? Are there web applications that one should steer clear from when working in a German university? Are those just recommendations? What platforms are affected? What are the alternatives suggested? Are they all self-hosted open source applications?
I tried googling, but I found little information about it around.


texts: How to get postdoc funding without a mentor

texts: I see that many people say the easiest way to get a postdoc position (in US) is to come with your own funding. Some postdoc "openings" are only contingent on self-funding. But all the postdoc fellowships I see require a mentor to design a project with, so I'm confused about the process here. Where can you acquire postdoc funding without having a position already?


texts: Will getting rejected from a graduate school affect my relationships with the faculty members at that school?

texts:
I recently got rejected from quite a few grad schools.  Will this make it harder for the faculty at these schools to take me seriously if I interact with them?

In particular, I'm interested in having a particular professor at the school I will be attending as my advisor.  However, until a few month ago, he was a professor at a school I got rejected from.  I'm afraid that he will refuse to work with me, knowing that I wasn't qualified for the graduate program he was recently at.


texts: How to earn a Bachelor or Master without attendance?

texts:
This might sound like a strange question, but I was wondering, if you can skip the whole studying part at university and jump right in to the finals and the thesis?

I know, that you have to have a certain amount of credits, but can you get them once and "use" them to get multiple bachelors?

Let's say for example, I want to get Bacherlors Degree in Completely unrelated fields like in Engineering, Orchestration, Computer Science, Aviation and Medicine.

Can I (for example), just study Medicine and use the credits I earnd there to also earn the other ones (so I just have to write the thesis)?
Because a lot of courses don't have minimum attendance.

I don't want to discuss whether something like that (getting degrees without studiing at the university) makes sense or not. (Because it doesn't).

The Idea is more like, go and study something for your self and then go to get the degree without having to attend the full number of years, it would take to study.

Do you get what I'm trying to say?


texts: Etiquette for attribution when applying concepts in industry

texts:
I work as a software developer in industry, but I like to read various academic papers to get exposure to ideas that may benefit my work.  I may not apply exactly the technique described in a single paper, but my work is certainly influenced by the ideas I've encountered.  My question, though, is what is the proper way to provide attribution for the papers that have influenced my work?

If the product of my work were an academic paper, the rules would be quite clear, but here I'm making a product that is ultimately my employer's IP, for which the implementation details may even be considered trade secrets.  I'm struggling to find the proper ethical reconciliation between my professional obligations and the spirit of academia that favors free dissemination of knowledge in the hope that it encourages more of the same in return.  I don't want to steal anyone's work, but neither do I want to shut myself off from valuable lines of thought.


texts: Is it Unethical to Work in Two Labs at Once?

texts: I am a post-bac who is looking to gain some more experience doing psych research before applying to PhD programs in the fall. I am currently a lab manager at a cognition lab, but am essentially part-time until the fall due to COVID, so I have a bit of free time that I can dedicate to other things. As such, I went out looking for labs that I can volunteer a few hours at. I found one that piqued my interest, and after reaching out, I landed an interview. However, now I'm sort of worried that my other PI might get a bit upset, even though I'm only looking to volunteer until the end of the summer. I know working under two labs is technically not a taboo, but I don't know if doing something like this would be considered rude/unethical (since I am hired at one position and not the other)...


texts: Is it considered plagiarism when you modify your professor's proof when solving a problem in a homework assignment?

texts:
I have a homework wherein a problem is eerily similar to a theorem we have proven and discussed before in class. Since we have a policy that the only concepts and theorems that we can apply to our homeworks and quizzes are those discussed in class, I figured that if I slightly modify a set defined in the proof of a previously discussed theorem, I would be able to prove my homework (I managed to prove it following the proof of the previous theorem).
Can I do this? Is this considered plagiarism?


texts: Accused of cheating because math proof is similar to online solution

texts:
I am taking a math course this semester and the problems that are given to us on a weekly basis require less than half a page to solve. The path to the proof is relatively straightforward, using the things we learned in class. However, my professor is accusing me of cheating because my proofs look very similar to online solutions. I don't know what to do because the proofs do look similar, even if they aren't word for word, but I wouldn't know any other way of solving them using the information we learned in the course.
Because the problems were relatively simple, there doesn't seem to be many places where I could "branch" off and do something completely different from what can be found online. What do you think is the best course of action in the face of this allegation?


texts: Is it considered a self-plagiarism to reuse (published) abstracts for talks?

texts:
When writing an abstract for talks at conferences, workshops, etc., I often wonder if it would be considered a self-plagiarism if I copied a few sentences from a paper that is already published. Sometimes those abstracts are "published" in one form or another (proceedings, workshop schedule in print and/or on the web, etc). What is a general guideline?

Can I copy and paste an abstract from a published paper I wrote, and submit it as an abstract for a talk at a conference? Or is it necessary to paraphrase my own writing?


texts: Is it fine to ask my advisor if I can appear as first author in our paper?

texts:
My situation is the following: I am a prospective graduate student and recently worked with a professor and a high school student on writing a physics paper. This will be my first paper, and since I intend to apply to graduate school, I would like to appear as first author.
I know from other students who have worked with this professor that he gives them the opportunity to be first authors. However, this time I am not the only student collaborating with him.
Therefore, I was wondering if it would be appropriate to ask my advisor if I can appear as first author. After all, I was the one who contributed the most to the project (although the high school student also made some contributions).


texts: What is research misconduct of Xuetao Cao about?

texts:
Recently on social media, news broke that Xuetao Cao duplicated or manipulated images in more than 50 papers of his. These accusations were brought to the public by Elisabeth Bik and explained in great details in following article

using social media and pubpeer website they notice duplication in images.

as someone who finished MSc in Immunology I can't understand what is wrong with images, they look credible to me, although there might be some software that can tell difference. How is possible that so many figures got duplicated and no-one from peer reviewers noticed? What is this scientific misconduct about? If it is really one after all.


texts: Did BSc, doing MSc, applying for PhD. Is it frowned upon to not have a letter from my BSc advisor?

texts:
I am currently pursuing an MSc and am preparing my PhD application. For this reason, I reach out to professors I know well in order to ask them whether they would be willing to write recommendation letters for me. I got a BSc from a different university and I obtained it by writing a final thesis.
My question is:
At the time of the application, I will only have written a BSc thesis and not yet the one for the MSc. Would it be considered a "red flag" if the professor who supervised my BSc thesis is not one of the three references I provide with my application?
The reasons why I hesitate to ask that professor is that even though my thesis turned out fine, I entirely interacted with one of her PhD students during the process of completing it and not with her personally (there are other professors who I know personally). Also, because she teaches at my old university and not at the one I am currently studying at, I question whether she might have lower incentives to positively recommend me.
Related: here


texts: Author list mismatch; should I recommend rejection?

texts: I am reviewing a paper for a journal. However, the author list in the submitted pdf file of the paper is different from the author list in the submission website. One of the authors is not appearing in the online submission website. Though, it is possible that some of the conflicts have been ignored (I am not in conflict with any of the authors). Should I recommend the paper to be rejected or just inform the editor about this (or any other solutions)?


texts: Teaching visual tools for visually impaired students?

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I am teaching a module related to data visualization. Thus, of course, most of the tools are visual tools, that is, tools for visualizing summaries of the data.
I have visually impaired students, which makes it really difficult to teach them these tools, as it involves two- and three-dimensional plots and graphs.
Creating an audio substitute for these is very complicated, but of course it is essential to make the teaching material available.
What are the main rules for making this kind of material accessible?


texts: How to start an academic career after 5-6 years in industry, without an undergraduate degree?

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As an undergraduate, I wasted a ridiculous amount of time due to a combination of being distracted by part-time work, lack of focus, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, and just plain being stupid and lazy.  Several times I tried to "get it together" but by then it was too late as my grades were ridiculously low (mostly around 0) and I could never have gotten into grad school anyway.

Eventually I dropped out as I realized I wasn't getting anywhere.  I had a lot of awards from things like programming competitions, so I used that to get some decent jobs.  My intention was that I would work for a few years, clear my head, save up some money, and go back later.

Well, later is here.  After 5-6 years work experience doing mind-numbingly boring menial programming jobs, I applied for and got accepted into a master's program at a fairly respected university.  It's only a 1-year program, but if it goes well I'd definitely consider applying for a PhD.

Obviously it's very important to me that I do things right this time around, so my main questions are:

Will the total lack of a BSc degree be a problem when applying for a PhD program?
I spent the last half a decade mostly doing tasks which required no creativity or deep thought.  Sometimes I feel like my mind is like an ex-boxer who has been sitting on a sofa eating KFC and donuts all day for 5 years.. completely out of shape!  How do I get the gears spinning smoothly again?
I need a plan for making the transition into "research" mode.  To be honest when I was at university I never paid attention to what any of my friends were doing when they were reading papers so I have no idea how the whole thing works.  e.g. Do I start by making friends with some professors?  Should I volunteer to be a TA?
At what point will I be able to apply for a PhD?

Master's degree will be in Computer Science.

Several people have expressed doubts about the legitimacy of a degree program that gives you a 1-year master's degree with no undergraduate degree.  I just want to clarify that it's not some "IT shop under the railway bridge" giving the degree, it is a very respected university.  It's a 1-year degree because masters programs are generally one year in the UK.  Also, I didn't just walk in with nothing.  I demonstrated in my interview that I had knowledge in CS topics, I had a couple published papers, as well as half a dozen international awards from my time as an undergrad, and work experience from top-tier Fortune 100 companies; I just never finished my degree.


texts: Dealing with poor management, lack of supervision, and the desire to move into a different field

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I am halfway through the 4th year of my PhD and I have grown to find that I dislike the direction of my dissertation and the project that I am working on. My supervisor is extremely absent as he is running another research group overseas (bigger budget there so he puts his time there). On our side, we have little to no post-docs, and those that are around are trying to use the students to publish more papers for themselves to get faculty positions.

I have found a distaste in my current project and research subject and hope to move to another one that I have found more interest in. I find it mentally taxing to work in this group, as there is no help from seniority and there is a complete lack of focus (for myself and for many other group members in my situation). I am thinking about leaving with an MSc and pursuing a PhD elsewhere, but I'm worried about two things:

1) Will the fact that I took 4 years and quit my PhD for a Masters look bad when applying to a different school? I think I have legitimate reasons but I'm not sure if that is enough.

2) I imagine my supervisor will not write me a good letter for wanting to leave to pursue other interests.

Unfortunately I think this is a bit of a dilemma as I don't think I can graduate in 1.5 years (members in our group typically take 6 - 7 years), so stretching it would be hard. The lack of supervision, direction, and interest all make it hard for me to want to stay, despite my deep interest in research.


texts: Is reapplying to the same PhD program looked down upon by admissions?

texts: Do committees look down on a candidate reapplying to a PhD program one year after being denied? My field is social science, if that impacts anything. I currently work at a research org and am wondering if it's worth it to apply this year, although I know my CV will be stronger the following year (theoretically given my current position the CV will keep getting stronger every year, though). While I feel very ready from a personal standpoint and want to go now, I'm debating if it's worth applying now, with the potential ramification of re-applying should I not get in anywhere.


texts: Undergraduate research: confused about my role

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I'm a sophomore student studying Mathematics and Computer Science at an US college. Since I'm considering applying for a PhD program after graduation, I've connected with a professor to work under him. In particular, I'm working more closely with one of his PhD students. My plan is to work for them for a year. I have good background knowledge in the field and even some previous research experience. We've been working together for a month.
Today, the PhD student received a warning from his advisor (i.e., the professor whom I made contact with) that he's progressing a bit too slowly - he published last year, but it looks like he's not ready for publishing this year at all.
The PhD student told me this and he said he's not sure about his directions, and would welcome my input. Although it's nice to have my input, this makes me very confused about my role in this project. Our field of research is a little theoretical, so I'm certainly not as qualified as him to lead projects and to come up with novel ideas (since he knows the literature much better than I do), but if I don't do this I risk having no publications (which is very important for machine learning PhD applications) at all during this research experience.
I would appreciate any thoughts on my situation.


texts: Corrigendum submitted by my PhD supervisor 1.5 years after I left?

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During my PhD studies, I published a journal article (1 of total 4) in a prestigious journal of my field. My PhD advisor wants to commercialize my PhD work and wanted me to help him without willing to credit me for my efforts.
I found his emails harassing, malicious and blackmailing and have stopped responding him by directing his emails to spam folder. I have long left his lab after getting PhD and am currently working in industry. Suddenly, I received an email from the Journal that a corrigendum to my paper is submitted with me included as an author.
I think there are some new experimental results that my advisor want to publish. Should I write to the journal and request to withdraw my authorship from the corrigendum?


texts: What's the proper way to list authorship of appendix to a publication on a CV?

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I'm collaborating with some others on an appendix to a historical paper for submission to a high profile journal. In the field the convention for authorship appears similar to mathematics (see also this discussion) in which authorship can be split between the main paper and appendices. Since the basic rule of thumb is that the CV should include all intellectual products what would be the proper way to include the appendix? Would it be appropriate to just include it as a publication, e.g.

Author, A., Author, B., Author, C., “Appendix: Neat Computer Simulation Justifying Historical Argument.” Appendix to Author, C., "Historical Argument." High Profile Journal, vol. XX, no. XX, pp. XX-XX, XXXX.


texts: Should I review papers for a nameless conference?

texts: I received an invitation to review papers in a conference that is not very famous. However, the conference has a web site, and it has been held less than 5 times. Should I review papers for this conference? What is a judging criteria for deciding whether or not do the paper review for conferences?


texts: Identifying the common online source of mathematical work

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Students A and B in my physics class turned in identical solutions to certain homework problems on two problem sets in a row. My policy is not to give credit in situations like this. The similarities are far too extensive and idiosyncratic to be explainable if the students had really done their work independently. Normally this kind of thing is not a big deal, because the assignments are only worth token amounts of credit. The students get the message and change their behavior.

But this particular case is becoming more of a big deal because A acts very upset and claims he did the work totally independently. I asked B what happened, and B said he found a solution online and copied it down. This seems plausible: A and B both copied the same online solution.

How could I determine/prove whether this is what happened? I have heard that there are web sites that students can use to access materials like these. Is there a small enough number of such sites that I could check each one to see if this work originated from materials provided there? To gain access to these sites, would I have to upload materials that they wanted, which could be onerous or unethical? If this was an English paper, I could google for the plagiarized text or use a service such as turnitin. There are also tools for use with computer code. But AFAIK there is no way to do this with mathematical material.

Please do not post comments or answers about whether it is a good idea to count homework in students' grades, or whether I can really tell that two students' work is too similar to be explainable if the work was independent. These could be worthwhile things to discuss, but they are not the subject of this question.


texts: Food for comprehensive or qualifying exam?

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So it's pretty much an unwritten rule at least in biology departments in the USA that when a student is defending his or her thesis/dissertation that they provide some sort of food or refreshments. There has been at least coffee and pastries provided by the student for their committee and audience at every defense I've ever attended.

My question is, how often do students do this for qualifying or comprehensive exams? Since they are private I have never attended one to know... Would committee members expect at least some coffee?


texts: What is an endowed chair exactly? How does it compare to a “normal” position?

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US universities have a tendency to name chairs after people. Just to give a few examples from Harvard: Hollis Professor of Divinity (love that title), Steven and Maureen Klinsky Professorship of Practice for Leadership and Progress (too long to fit on business card), Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr. Professor of Teaching and Learning, etc.

I understand that the people whom the chairs are named after are rich and donated money to the school in the past. What I do not understand is in what aspects it changes the nature of the position. Are these chairs more highly regarded that just being "Professor of Divinity" for example? Are they better paid?


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I recently gave a entrance exam for a graduate program, MS (by course) in computer science. Since I did well in exam, now I am being offered for MS by research. In first semester I can attend 3-4 subjects, at the end of my semester I have to chose my research area and a adviser. I do not have prior research experience nor have published any papers, so I believe it is a wonderful opportunity for me to get into research.

My question is, what exactly constitutes an MS by Research? What are my responsibilities? What should be my minimum contribution for thesis to graduate?


texts: Checking/Ticking all the fields on a recommendation letter as "Exceptional"

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My student has given me a recommendation letter form for the studies he is applying for, and the form has a part where I should simply "tick" the options. For example: Maturity, Motivation, etc. I can check these fields with "Exceptional", "Excellent", "Very Good", "Good", and so on...

When I think of it, I really want to tick all these fields as "Exceptional", because this student is my best student, he has been the top student in his class for all the courses I have taught and he is one of the best students I have known throughout the, at least, past 10 years. Do you believe that checking ALL the fields as "Exceptional" would look very bad to the admissions committee? I do not want to ruin his chances by my recommendation letter.


texts: I got some admissions offers from Ph.D. programs in the United States. In the near past, I worked as a research assistant for a professor. The advisor was completely unethical and abusive. All his past students without exception say bad things about him: he writes negative letters of recommendation to his students even after agreeing to write strong letters and in some cases, he did send negative letters un-invited to schools that accepted some of his M.Sc. students. I am very happy now that I left him. I mentioned in my CV that I worked as a Research Assistant but I did not back it up with reference letters of course. In case this professor finds out that I received offers and tried to contact these schools, is there a possibility that they might decide to rescind their offers?


texts: Is education in Europe really this cheap?

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Is tuition in Europe really US$300 or €200 a year? That is one tenth the cost of the tuition in the developing country university where I took my bachelor's and master's.

Is it really true that some developed country universities charge that much to non-scholars? Why? I heard of universities like that, but everyone who goes to such university is considered a scholar of his/her state due to such universities being heavily funded. Is that the case? Does Europe invest a lot in education, or something?

I find it very hard to believe. How do people get paid? The school has to consider food, maintenance, utilities, salaries of janitors, funding researchers and professors, etc.


texts: In what order are graduate application materials reviewed?

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Graduate applications consist of a number of components, such as a statement of purpose, a transcript, letters of recommendation, etc. In what order are these components reviewed? Of course I don't expect all institutions to follow the same order. Those that have GPA or test score cutoffs, whether they are official or unofficial, will obviously first go through the GPA and test scores of the applications.

I think many people would like to know the answer to this general question, though the reason I am asking this is because when writing my statement of purpose (SOP), I don't know if it would be best to assume that all of my other application material has been reviewed. If all of my other application components have been reviewed, then I could save time in my SOP by just referencing those other parts.

If it helps, the specific field I'm interested in is theoretical nuclear physics.

EDIT: I see that this question has already been voted to be closed twice. I suspect this is because some people think it's obvious that there is no specific order. If this is so, I urge those people to post an answer outlining their specific knowledge of the/a graduate admissions process. It is clearly not obvious to me that there is no specific order that the bulk of universities follow.


texts: What are some innovative publishing layouts to depict a scientific debate?

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Typically, scientific debates are published in the form of "letter to the editor" to comment on or criticize a previously published paper. Alternatively, papers within the same volume can refer to each other. In both cases the actual nature of the debate that takes place is rendered incompletely.

Are there some viable alternatives or experimental forms of publishing scientific discourse? Maybe on the level of layout and typesetting?


texts: Confused between applying immediately to graduate school and taking a break for research experience

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I am a junior undergraduate student (will be starting senior year in July) pursuing electronics and communications engineering. However, my interest and most of the work done till now in college is in the field of astronomy/astrophysics, a subject I am very passionate about. In terms of experience, I have been selected for some good workshops, summer/winter schools in a variety of areas in astrophysics, am currently doing summer research in a reputed astronomy department abroad and will be working on an interdisciplinary project(involving my major and astrophysics) for my bachelor thesis. In terms of coursework, I don't have any physics courses to show except for Physics 1 and 2 from my freshman year, as my college is very inflexible when it comes to taking courses outside one's department. My GPA is 8.2 on a scale of 10. I'll be appearing for GRE General test and TOEFL in July and haven't started preparing for GRE Physics yet.

My problem is that I don't know how to go about applying to graduate school. From what I've gathered, there are 2 options for me:

1) Apply to a Masters program next semester that doesn't require GRE Physics score. I'm willing to consider a not so reputed graduate school. The primary aim is to get some coursework.

2) Taking a break for year after graduation. I plan to do the following in that period:

a) Prepare for GRE Physics.
b) Build a stronger research profile by doing more projects. There are good research institutes in my country that offer upto 6 months project positions like research assistant-ship.
c) This also gives me 2 more semesters at college to improve my GPA further.

So my questions are:

1) Which option is more suitable for my situation?
2) Will the second option increase my chances of getting selected for a direct PhD?


texts: How to teach to an adult person that is not used to study?

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I'm trying to teach some basic things to my mother, such history, basic math and basic physics so she can attend a test.

But because of my mothers personality this has become pretty hard , since she has been influenced from the childhood by sayings  like "I can't study and can't learn", and trash like that.

This is so obnoxious , because to learn a small thing (v.gr.: add fractions) she takes a lot of time (2 or 3 hours) and the next day when trying to recall it, she don't solve the same problems of the day before and she fall in despair and trow out what already learn and stop to study.

I don't think the problem is some kind of disability, I'd rather say she can recall perfect it, but I have seen too that she doubts almost of all the things she knows, and don't write a thing because before she write down something, she believes its wrong!!!

I think too she has a hard time trying to focus on the themes explained.
I have exhausted each idea about trying to explain things: cardboards, games, using the videos of youtube, reading along the books, talking about the themes instead of a serious lecture.

Of course I'm aware I'm not a teacher, but whats does really matter is that she learn a bit of things, that's all.

This is more of pedagogy, but since there is no stack for that I have come here to ask.
Thanks in advance.


texts: My lab achieves better results than another lab on the same problem – should we collaborate?

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Recently, in my research lab we were able to achieve a performance of X % for some problem. This X is far better than the performance Y which was achieved by some other research group for the exact problem, very recently (two months ago).

Yes, we can always compare X and Y and publish the paper alone. But, I was thinking that it is better to collaborate with that research group and share with them the results of our approach.

Should my research group collaborate with them?
Is this a proper way of collaboration?
Should they feel that our group is weaker than they are and that this is why we are trying to collaborate (a feeling of insecurity)?

Could I get some suggestions on this?


texts: justify the interview development, and validation or testing methods

texts: Is it common/reasonable for reviewers to ask for including a justification or clarification of interview scrip development, and inquire about piloting, or testing the interviews?


texts: Prof says he'll write only limited number of recommendations

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I have a Master's degree and I am working as a project associate in an university. When I asked the Professor I am working with (PI of my project) for recommendation(for PhD applications) he said that he'll write only 4 recommendations.

What should I do now?


texts: Colloquial term for relationship between postdoc and phd with same advisor

texts: Colloquially, two phds from the same advisor are referred to as academic brothers/sisters, i.e. if i am a phd student with advisor X and someone else is a phd student with advisor X then we are academic siblings. In this framework, how would one describe the relationship of a postdoc to a phd, both having the same advisor?


texts: Tool to manage and/or make available a list of my publications on the web?

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This some kind of follow up question to How to prevent plagiarism of my papers?, since I've been clearly convinced that it was in my best interest to put my own papers on my webpage.

Now, since I need to make the effort to put them, I might as well try to do it in a nice way. Right now, I'm using bibtex2html, which is a tool I can run locally, taking a bibtex file with my publications (that I create manually), and that outputs the resulting HTML, that I can copy/paste to my webpage.

I like it, but it can sometimes be complicated to use, so I was wondering if there exist some other tools? My ideal tool would be some tool where I could put the bibtex (one for each publication) and the pdf, and that would create a kind of database, such that I could sort my publications easily.

(Note: Right now, my webpage is hosted directly on Wordpress, so I can't host directly a PhP script, but if there were a really good tool, I could try to host my webpage myself.)


texts: Is my mathematics "folklore" paper worth publishing?

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I wrote a math paper a while ago which was initially mainly for my own attempt to understand a topic/theorem in algebraic geometry. The methods and results are kind of folklore (not well-documented in literature). Although the ideas presented in my write-up was sketched in a recent and well-known conference report, the details and the proof of the main theorem were not given. My write-up did the job to give a detailed treatment of the theory and gave a proof of the main theorem. So this is kind of something between expository and research (I think?).
Now I'm wondering if this paper is worth to be published?
P.S. The main result was also proved by someone using a different approach and got published in a good journal this year.


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I'm a Msc student, and my project is to develop a novel software tool for use in neurosurgery.

There is a current tool that is considered the standard of care for the procedure, but it has low rates of clinical adoption (~45%) due to archaic technical limitations. We propose that we can develop a new system, exploiting advances in available computational power and state-of-the-art image processing algorithms, that could improve the rate of adoption for these systems.

My question: Does development qualify as research? Or does research begin after development? My intuition tells me the latter.

For example, a hypothesis I could have would be "We propose that we can develop a novel system that overcomes technical limitations of traditional systems". However, this seems to be a weak hypothesis to me. Could we ever say that it is theoretically not possible to do that?

However, if research begins after development, we could propose that "our tool has increased usability compared to traditional systems". This seems much stronger to me: we can test whether our tool leads to significant improvements in different measures of usability.

I am unsure which path is more suitable to present in a formal research proposal, after all, at the stage of the proposal, we have not developed anything.

Maybe I'm not even formulating the initial hypothesis correctly.

I've looked at other dissertations in the field, and have noticed that some do not even attempt to structure the dissertation around a hypothesis, but rather say things like: "The goal of this thesis is the development of such techniques utilizing prominent HARDI data models", "This thesis presents the development of a 96-well plate culture system that allows 4-color, flow cytometry based high throughput screening of defined, serum-free hESC differentiation conditions". It seems that they just present the outcome of development, rather than test some constructed hypothesis.

I ask because my courses and committee seem to desire a formal hypothesis and I am hesitant to provide something weak.