texts: Applying to a PhD in Machine Learning without much knowledge of the subject

texts:
Lets suppose that I see an open PhD position in the field of Machine Learning, area whose I have only some very basic or general knowledge, but that I am willing to learn more about it. I wonder what I should put in my cover letter to show that I have a genuine interest in the subject and that I am willing to learn more about it. I mean for what I know, the first year in a PhD program is for a student to gain knowledge about the theoretical parts that will help him or her to continue their PhD studies. I have seen that also some of them receive aome training that will help them to narrow their interests into one specific topic before the writing of the thesis start.

I am somewhat traumatized after once I applied to a PhD position and in the interview when I mentioned that "I was willing to learn more, enroll into courses and being self taught for the research that they were making"; and the professor in charge reply to me in a harsh way "You are not here to begin to learn, we need people that already know what we are doing". That shocked me somehow.

So bottomline, how can I express in a cover letter my genuine interest in learning the field in which the research group is working, without being rejected?

Thanks


texts: What are the downsides of using arXiv references instead of conference/journal references for the same paper?

texts:
I read in the instructions for one conference:

  Please do not use arXiv references for papers that have been published at official venues such as conferences, journals or workshops. Please make the effort to identify these at least for all papers prior to 2017.

What are the downsides of using arXiv references instead of conference/journal references?


texts: What are the motivations for publishing new editions of an existing textbook, beyond new discoveries in a field?

texts:
In many of my undergraduate classes, professors required up to date editions of textbooks. This was across a number of subjects from Computer Science to Accounting and across introductory and more intermediate levels.

What is motivating new editions of textbooks? Are professors who published contractually obligated to publish new editions? Are they incorporating student feedback?


texts: What does "inclusive page numbers" mean?

texts: I am preparing a manuscript for submission to Journal of Cardiology. The author instructions say "Please provide inclusive page numbers, e.g., 51-9." What does that mean? How else can you cite page numbers.


texts: Having the knowledge of a graduate student but not having the degree requirements for graduate school?

texts:
Let's say that you're a 27 year old autodidact who has gained enough knowledge in a particular field of the formal sciences - like mathematics, for instance - to be able to take the highest course number from the selection of graduate courses for math.

Now this autodidact wants to enter university for the first time. However, from his perspective, he thinks that it would be a waste of time to restudy what he already knows.

I'm personally wondering if there is a way to demonstrate that he is capable of taking graduate courses so that he could apply for a graduate degree without having to study all the courses at the undergraduate level again.

Also, I'd like to add that this question is really hypothetical. It's just something I pondered on my way to school today.


texts: Academic dismissal from PhD program. What next?

texts:
A couple semesters after beginning my PhD program (in the US), I was dismissed from the program because:

My GPA was slightly below the program's minimum (after being on academic probation for one semester already).
After months of work as an RA in a research group, at the end of the semester, my adviser informed me that he was not satisfied with my research and would not continue to fund me.
After that, the department was not willing to hire me as a TA, because TA funding was seen as an "interim" measure, and having a new adviser was necessary to continue in the program.
I couldn't find a new research adviser because everybody would freak out about my GPA.

However, I have done very well on exams, and I had a great GRE score. What are my options now? Applying again? What could I say about my messed up situation in applications? What if I applied to another school?


texts: reprinting permission of an instrument image on a website

texts: I have read about reprinting other authors tables and figures, but I couldn't find anything on reprinting laboratory instrument pictures from their manufacturer websites. Can I use instrument photos that I took from manufacturer website without permission?


texts: Author attribution for books used in promotional video?

texts: I work at a University Library in Canada, we've recently produced a promotional video for a book scanner. In the video, we demonstrate the use of the book scanner using a random book off the shelf, but the focus is always on the scanner, never on the pages of the book (though there are some shots where you can see pictures, and at least one where you can read a title on the page). One of the Librarians is under the impression that we need to cite the book and give attribution to the author. Originally we thought we could probably pass this off as incidental use, but according to the Librarian it's not, because we deliberately used that book as a prop. I've never heard of attribution being given to authors of books used as props, is this really necessary?


texts: Can I contact a professor who works on my same work

texts:
During my PhD I worked on a specific topic. My thesis is published at my university website. This has been done one year ago. Today, I found that one professor (not my supervisor and not from the same institute. I do not know them personally) give a presentation on a conference about the same idea as mine. Even their future work are the same a my other PhD chapter. They expressed their idea as a novel one. Do I need to contact them? If so, what should I tell them?
I do not know if they know about my thesis or not. Also, my work was built up on existing work. They even do not cite any existing works. I do not know why, but may be they do not know about these works. So I do not suggest any bad thing about them. Just would like to know what should do for this situation.
I respect the professor so much. So again no bad suggestion about her or any one of her group. She may at the beginning of the research and did not update her literature review yet.


texts: How may I calculate Research Contribution as Per UGC rules?

texts:
The University Grants Commission (U.G.C) is the autonomous and statutory body in India responsible for governing the rules and regulations of the universities and various other academic institutions
that come under its purview.

The rule for appointment of teachers in the important academic institutes of India is governed by its rule, "UGC Regulations on Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and Other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education 2010".
It is generally taken as the order of the day.

In this regulation, there is a provision for calculating the points for research papers, research contributions etc. I tried to go through them, but feeling slightly ambiguous. It is given generally in Appendix III.

My question is in the tables given against each item maximum score is given.
But how should we take the count of each item. I tried to go through the same but did not find anything.

What is the value of each item and how does it contribute to the maximum score as given in the tables in the aforementioned report.


texts: How do I show others what I am capable of?

texts:
I just turned sixteen this January, and I have started thinking about where I will go to pursue research in theoretical physics and mathematics. I live in India, and, sadly speaking, research here in India is awful, even though many claims of scientific advancements in India are made. First, I would like to share what I do at home.

I have mastered differential and integral calculus, and I have independently proved, and discovered some of my own proofs of theorems in Real Analysis(Proofs which I haven't seen in some other source, but they might exist). I have also independently discovered the well known techniques of solutions to certain kinds of differential equations, without having any knowledge of how to solve them. I continue to explore higher level mathematics, and try my best to prove each theorem I encounter myself.

Now, the thing is, nobody at school, neither the teachers nor my friends, know anything about this. Even my parents are not fully aware about all this, but I try my best to share this with them. At school, the curriculum is such that the teachers are teaching to the test, and a heavy focus on contests and olympiads is laid, and to choose subjects of your own choice, you have to score high enough in subjects like Social Science and English, which don't even matter in research. Unnecessary debates and discussions are held, and I try my best to not share anything with these guys, to prevent getting into an hour long debate on what you should pursue.

In India, the major institutions are the Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institute of Science etc, where almost everybody focuses on getting into the IIT. To get an admission in the IIT, a standardised test, comprising of problems from Math, Physics, Chemistry and MAT has to be given. The admissions are solely decided by the score obtained in this test, which comprises of contest-like questions, which do not describe the research capability of the candidate. Even coaching centres have been set up all over the country, which train for this exam(called the JEE exam). The situation is really worse, and recently, I was demotivated by my teacher for not scoring enough in my social science exam. I have gotten used to this.

I would like to get admitted to institutions like MIT, Harvard, and I have read how I apply for them and what are the requirements for admission. The main thing is I have to distinguish myself from others, take part in extra-curricular activities etc, and maybe win math/science contests. But the thing is, I am not great at contests, which are timed, and I rarely would like to participate at school, where conditions are horrible. I have started taking leaves from school, because I think nothing productive is going on there.

Now, I would like to ask if I apply for these institutes, how do I share what I am capable of? As a young mathematician, I think I am really doing well, and will do well in research too. But, other than my notebook, where I write all my thoughts and all my findings, I don't have anything that can show my abilities. If I just tell my abilities to them, like I did here, they would not believe in me, which I understand.

So, my question is, how do I show the institutes my abilities? Is it necessary for me to win contests at national/international levels, which is not that easy?


texts: Is it OK to send email to journal asking for extension for a revision?

texts:
I am in the process of sending the response to reviews to a journal. It looks like it will take some days for the revision.
In the reviews, the associate editor had commented the following

  Finally, I would appreciate if you could submit your revised paper by Jan 12, 2018. If you cannot meet this deadline please contact us (xxx@elsevier.com) to request an extension, otherwise your paper may be withdrawn.

I was wondering if it was OK to write to them asking for an extension or should I somehow submit the revision by Jan 12?


texts: Should I get a master's in math before getting econ PhD?

texts:
I'm planning to apply to phd programs in economics and I'm hoping to eventually work in academic research on economic theory, social choice theory, welfare economics or related areas. I'm wondering if doing a masters in math before applying to economics phd would be worthwhile? Seems like it might be nice to have the math stuff down really solid, so I can focus on economics in grad school.

By the time I finish undergrad (in U.S.), I will have taken the following math courses (one semester each): Multivariable calc, linear algebra, abstract algebra, real analysis, topology, optimization, probability-statistics, basic numerical analysis with matlab programming. Econ courses that I'll have taken: year of micro, year of macro, year of econometrics, year of graduate micro.


texts: Is h-index important? Can h-index be used to classify yourself to know whether you are at a given academic rank?

texts:
Of all the statistical factors that are used for judging publication record, the h-index seems to be the most commonly used

Wikipedia says

  Hirsch suggested (with large error bars) that, for physicists, a value for h of about
  12 might be typical for advancement to tenure (associate professor) at
  major research universities. A value of about 18 could mean a full
  professorship, 15–20 could mean a fellowship in the American Physical
  Society.

I am an organic chemistry with an h-index of 16. I assume physics should be similar to (organic) chemistry. I am now applying for a tenure-track position.
I mean to be overqualified for research funds, academic and scientific honors, etc.

Questions

How important is the Hirsch index (h-index)?
How much is the h-index really relied upon?
Can the h-index be used to categorize yourself?
Can I really set a goal that by reaching h-index 20, I am at the level of fellows of my professional society?
Can the h-index be used to indicate whether I am ahead of my rivals?
Can we claim something by h-index or is it just a number?
What should be the h-index of assistant/associate/full professor in chemistry to be a leader of his own rank?


texts: As an Undergraduate student can Join at conference with Full research paper?

texts: I am Hasnain Imtiaz Sakib. Under graduate student (2nd year) from University of Dhaka. I have been selected and my abstract has been selected for "6th World media and mass communication conference 2020" at University of Cagliari. As an undergraduate student will it be a lucrative project for me? I need some valuable suggestion from you that can help me very much. Even as an undergraduate student, it is going to challenging for me to do. Should I have to attend a conference with a full paper? Thanks in Advance!


texts: Do you have to accept a postdoctoral position if the university has paid for accommodation and international flights for you to come and present?

texts:
I have been invited to give a seminar related to applying for a postdoctoral position. The professor has been very kind and seems  like a very nice person. He also helped me look for a postdoctoral position for my girlfriend. Now I have received the tickets to travel to the university with first class accommodation and luxury amenities. The trip involves  international travel and also that I have been talking with other professors to see my best options.

Does this force me to accept the position or is it common that researchers give these nice invitations?
Do I need to mention  to the professor that I am exploring other options?


texts: PhD Advisor is Inexperienced Junior Faculty, Possible Bully, Who do I Tell?

texts:
I was accepted into a PhD program 3.5 years ago. They hired a new faculty member 2 years ago and I was reassigned to this 'new' person since she didn't have any students of her own. She is interpersonally aggressive and hard to 'read.'

Over the last two years she has produced 1 publishable paper, which was rejected by the journal. I've published 2 in that same time. She was assigned 3 classes to teach by the department, and assigned me to TA for all 3, essentially leaving me in charge of all 150 students. The more work I do for her, the angrier she seems to be. The problem, however, started when she gave me inaccurate information about my requirements for graduation. She told me I had to prepare my dissertation prospectus before doing the department's 3rd core exam, which turned out to be incorrect. I wasted months writing, was then told by another faculty I had to rush my (mandatory) exam, which I failed (6 weeks ago). This is the first thing I've ever failed here.

My advisor told me all students fail the 3rd exam in order to build 'character' in them. However university rules state I am now on probation and another failure would mean I am terminated from the department. She also shared that she was a grader on my 3rd exam and had chosen to vote 'fail' rather than 'conditional pass' because "she wanted to see me do it again." There was no constructive feedback, it just seems like bullying. There was zero information on how to re-do the exam or improve. This is high-stakes.

If the department does fail all students as ritual hazing, I believe the department is doing something unethical. If that statement was false, I consider my advisor to be doing something unethical.

I would like to voice my concerns to the university. What person should I approach? Department Chair? Dean of Students? Dean of College? Office of Graduate Studies? A lawyer? I fear retaliation.


texts: can I reuse Coursera material for my lecture notes?

texts: I have some doubts about reusing some material from Coursera for a set of lecture notes that I put online as part of the courses that I am lecturing. In some ocassions I use some Coursera material, mostly exercises that are based on source codes provided by the authors, and referenced them in my lecture notes. The question that I have is that if need to ask for permission, to the lecturer that is given the course on Coursera, to reuse his/her material or only with referencing would be enough?


texts: How should I address a knighted academic in a letter or in an email? The person in question is a chancellor of a university, so the odds are that he has at least a PhD. He is a CEO of a multinational company, too, so it is difficult to guess whether he has been a professor at any given time (at least there's no search results for "prof. [name]").


texts:
I ask you this question that will seem trivial but having no experience in this regard and not having found specific information I do not know what to do.
I am writing my master's thesis in Computer Engineering, and sometimes I use short concepts (for example a 10-word sentence) reworking it and adding concepts different from those of a book mentioned in the biography.
My doubt is the following, in the biography can I also insert the books that I have read to deepen the subject without having used the concept of the book within the thesis but which have been useful to me anyway?


texts: Should I let my recommendation letter writers know that I didn't submit my application in the end?

texts:
I feel guilty and not sure of if I should inform my recommenders of this issue.

A school I intended to apply has received the reference letters from all my recommenders, but as the deadline was approaching I just found that I could not prepare something required by the school in time! So, considering the amount of application fee, I decided to close my application.

Now I feel maybe I should have told my recommenders about this issue, yet, whenever I was about to write a sorry email then I withdrew my draft.

In such a situation, am I suggested to say sorry to my recommenders formally?


texts: How to follow up the result of postdoc committee?

texts:
I have been accepted for postdoc position at university A. In the meanwhile, I applied for postdoc in university B, and I am waiting to hear from them.

I would like to write a follow-up email to my potential mentor at university B asking about the decision of their committee, because I need to finalize my decision about the job at university A. How can I express my situation in a polite email to university B?


texts: Awaiting recommendation, but before any sort of peer review

texts:
I submitted a paper through ScholarOne Manuscripts 3 days ago. The first status that I am getting is "ADM: Awaiting Recommendation" , just after the initial status which was "ADM: Waiting for Admin Processing". I know the typical stages of a journal workflow. My Q is, has anyone had any experience with the particular status? Should I expect an outright desk rejection?
N.B. I am aware that Awaiting Recommendation is generally seen post peer review. But mine is not the case as listed above. That is what confused me.


texts: Is it more ethical to hire a tutor to prepare or to cheat on a test?

texts:
This question was inspired by this fascinating discussion about cheating.

If grades, degrees, test scores are important for getting a job/internship/assistantship, even more so than the actual knowledge that they measure, I can see how cheating on a test can be considered unethical. Is it ethically better to hire an expensive tutor to prepare, say, for the SAT or for the GMAT, or for some test at school, than to attempt to cheat on the exam?

Here is some context: New York Times: Tutors Hold Key to Higher Test Scores, for a High Fee .

Assume that the tutor has no secret/insider knowledge about the test. Assume that the tutor is essentially teaching you only some tricks for beating this particular test, no real knowledge. Assume also that many people in class do not have the money to hire a tutor of the same qualification.

Conversely, is it okay to cheat for those less financially fortunate, if they cannot afford a tutor?

As further context, Princeton Review explicitly states that their SAT prep program does only one thing: raises scores. Princeton Review argues that test prep is right and ethical, because (paraphrasing) SAT is a stupid, almost meaningless thing, and those without quality test preparation are put at a disadvantage.


texts: Not sure when exactly will be applying for a PhD (and what program) - is it a good idea to ask for letters of recommendation now?

texts:
I graduated last year (MEng) and since have been working in an office software development job. I figured that I want to start pursuing research, in order to contribute most to the issues I care about (dealing with current / imminent environmental troubles). However, I am not yet clear what flavour of tech research my skills/interests are most suitable for, as this would be a career shift for me. I'm planning to quit my job later this year and get involved in various relevant non-profit organisations, personal projects/research and short internships to gain more appreciation of the current state of affairs in the field.

I'm planning to apply for Autumn 2017 entry but there is a high chance I will not have all the necessary information to apply for that date and will have to delay it for additional year. Thinking about the practical implications of that - Is it a good idea to ask my contacts from the university to write me letters of recommendation now, while they still remember me (reasonably) well?

I guess that depends on a variety of factors. In particular I am not aware at all how programme-specific are such letters meant to be. Are referrers supposed to tailor them to my research proposal or are they more generic? Will they need to be much different if I apply for, say, Robotics (applications in disaster recovery) versus research in using low-cost tech to grow food in harsh conditions?

Detail: I am mostly thinking of doing a doctorate in Europe (UK in particular) but I'm pretty flexible.


texts:
I'm preparing a submission to Royal Society Biology Letters, and they also require that each author's CRediT contribution is provided.
I'm not familiar with this (I usually publish in engineering venues that do not require detailed contributions), could someone clarify a few things?
There are four options for each category: lead, equal, supporting, and not ticking the checkbox.
Question 1
I'm assuming that not ticking a checkbox is a valid entry for "no contribution" for that category. If a category is not very relevant for the study, can it be skipped entirely?
Question 2
Are lead and equal mutually exclusive? Or can they be used to split contributions into three levels? Same between supporting and equal. (Author 1: Lead, Author 2: Equal, Author 3: Equal, Author 4: Supporting 5:Supporting)?
edit: in a bizarre turn of events, when I logged back in the CRediT accreditation was no longer in the system, and instead there was a field for freetext in which to write a statement of contributions, following RS's own guidelines. No idea what happened there.


texts: Is it beneficial to publish papers not related to your primary research field?

texts: I know there is nothing preventing me from publishing an article in a different research field, but is it beneficial other than for satisfying my own interest/curiosity? Presumably these may be added to my CV, and possibly included for funding applications?


texts:
I recently received an award. It's relatively prestigious (even internationally), but it's not well-known outside of my discipline, and its name is not very explicit (nor is it in English). Should I explain it on my CV? I was thinking of copying the one-sentence blurb on the award's website, something like "rewards people who have achieved this and this in this discipline". I don't see how it can hurt, but I have not seen anyone else do it...

(For context, I'm not applying for jobs as I have one, but I do apply for grants... All the time...)


texts: Informal Meeting with Prospective Mentors at a Conference - How to Prepare?

texts: I am currently applying to doctoral programs in experimental/cognitive psychology and have recently made arrangements with a few prospective mentors to meet at an upcoming conference. I apologize if this question has already been asked numerous times before, but I was hoping to get some advice on how to prepare for such a meeting? What questions are "appropriate" to ask (e.g., can I ask what directions they plan to take their labs in, or is that presumptuous?)? What questions should I be prepared to answer? Any and all advice is much appreciated!


texts: Is there any disadvantage to having open-access publications?

texts: Is there any compulsory rule for researchers to have publications in restricted access publication platforms? What if one has majority of his publications in open access journals?


texts: How to properly write a brand, corporations in my report?

texts:
I have a lab report where I have to show my results using PSpice simulation software. I take screenshots from my screen to illustrate my results and paste those images inside my report. Below a figure, should the label text be:

Figure 1: Schematic using PSpice

OR

Figure 1: Schematic using pspice  (without giving attention to the formatting used in the brand name)

What is the most appropriate way?


texts: Citing someone else's idea??? (but not published work)

texts: I will preface that this is in regards to a Christian devotional to study scriptures from the Bible. I was tasked to put together a 25 day devotional that will be published physically and online by my church. I was given a copy of a similar type of devotional from a friend who gave me permission to use however I would like. I basically used it as the bones of the devotional; however, I have rewritten a bit of the material with our particular "church language", as well as changed, added and removed a bit of the content and some of the ideas. All the original studied scriptures are the same. The problem is that I do not know exactly how to cite this person's work. They did indeed write the basis of what we will be publishing; albeit, I do not have a publish date from them, or even a title of their work. I just want to cite their work and ideas properly as a majority of the basic content is not my own. Thoughts please!


texts: Will publishing all my papers in a single journal endanger my career?

texts:
I am a PhD student with only two papers published in peer-reviewed journals all within the same journal.
One of them was published due to a deal between a conference I was in and the publisher. The other one is a critique of a paper that was published there, hence it makes sense to be on the same journal.
I have two other papers under review in journals. I am waiting for a first review on them for a much longer than average time. In one of them my PhD advisor is also an author. Even though it wasn't peer-reviewed yet, we are already preparing (and submitting to conferences) works derived from it. After waiting a long time for a review I mailed the editors of the journal and they say they didn't find reviewers yet.
Here is my dilemma: my advisor is pushing that I withdraw the article from the current journal and submit to the same journal I have my other papers in, but I am scared this will damage my career prospects.
If one reads my CV, in a job application for example, and realize all of my papers are in the same journal they might just stop considering me. This might damage even more since: (i) the chief editor of the journal works in our dpt (and was my professor in grad school) and (ii) even though this specific journal has good metrics (Q2 in general and Q1 in the paper's topic and higher impact factor than the journal which didn't find reviewers for my paper) I know many academics dislike the publisher, some with good reason.
Will this damage my career? Is it worse to publish again in the same journal than not publish at all? If so, how should I explain this concern to my advisor?


texts: How to stay motivated and optimistic about an academic or industrial career with an extended PhD?

texts:
I am pursuing my PhD in Canada in Mechanical engineering and will graduate this November. This brings my PhD time to a total of 5 years 3 months. I already had a master's degree. I have not yet started looking for postdoc positions but I have heard from one of my lab's alumni that they were asked about their extended PhD duration during postdoc and industry position interviews.

I had coursework in first semester, but after that, all my time was invested in my research. So, I don't have the reasoning that my US counterparts have for their PhD extending over 5 years. I was unfocused for a better part of a semester during my 3rd year, so that might have caused this delay.
On top of that, I am submitting my research to journals now, so I don't have any proof of productivity for the past 4 years.

I have two questions:
1) does an extended PhD duration really frowned upon in academia and industry (for a research scientist position), if so, any suggestions to counteract a question on that?
2) A vague question: How can I stay motivated and optimistic about completing my thesis and working towards an academic or a research scientist career in the future?


texts: I'm international PhD student and I may get terminated soon. Advice urgently needed

texts:
Apologies if this is not the right place to ask this question, but I absolutely need advice.
I am currently third-year international PhD student living in United States on F1 visa and full funding. So far I have been performing quite well, I finished almost all coursework with good grades, completed most of other requirenments, and had pretty good standing with my advisor. However, for the past couple of months I have been struggling A LOT and unfortunately, due to different reasons, I was unable to pass my Comprehensive exam last fall. My dissertation proposal was a total mess, and unfortunately, it only got worse from there. In few weeks I have to submit new proposal which is still terrible, and today I found out I have to basically re-write everything from scratch. Moreover, I am not sure if I will be able to pass the part of exam which I failed in fall (although I do feel way more confident).
It is truly difficult to explain the shame and guilt I am feeling right now. Especially since my University gave me a chance. I do not want to quit, but I feel like I may get terminated. If I get terminated, I may have to leave the United States. This will destory me, especially since I have mypartner here. I know all of it may sound silly, but I am panicking right now. I though I will be able to push through this spring, but I have panic attacks every day now.
Therefore, my question is: What happens if international student gets terminated from the program? Do you believe, if I fail comprehensive exam once again, my department may give me once more chance? What would you do in my place? Can I still transfer/change my major on my F1 visa? Should I just master-out and apply for OPT? Is it even possible?
My university does not give me any specific answers. My advisor knows I am struggling, but not the extent of it.


texts: How to not feel offended by comments/edits during manuscript drafting as first author

texts:
I work as a consultant in industry where I often get to publish scientific articles on "advanced" methods with pharma. Unfortunately, there is a often a fair amount of politics in the background that serves to (mostly) diminish the quality of the manuscript. For example, authors will simply change the wording or grammar for no apparent reason and move themselves up the author list, or insert/delete assertions without a sufficient understanding of the analysis or the results. There are also many more internal review cycles and numbers of reviewers before the draft is ever submitted to a journal, leading to a lot more frustration and indignation on my part going through the edits and comments and seeing how my precious manuscript has fallen, causing me a fair amount of anguish.
I just wanted to ask how to not feel offended or indignant as first author at comments that you have to incorporate (because they're from people above my pay grade) but would rather not.


texts: Why aren't B.Th., B.Ed., Mus.B., B.Chir. or M.B. degree holders members of Cambridge's Senate?

texts:
I don't understand the goal or reason behind B II 2 Degrees | Student Registry, but I'm even more addled by the boldened sentence below. Why aren't these undergraduate degree-holders members of the Senate? I know medicine (MB,BChir) is an undergraduate degree in the British Isles.

Holders of Postgraduate Certificates or the B.Th., B.Ed., Mus.B., B.Chir. or M.B. degrees are not thereby members of the Senate, so may still be able to receive a degree under Statute B II 2 if they are otherwise eligible and do not hold any Cambridge Masters degree or Doctorate. Holders of the LL.B. degree may become members of the Senate by having it formally re-designated as an LL.M., however, and all holders of the B.A. are entitled to the M.A. once they have held the B.A. for the required period.


texts: What are the master's degrees in engineering a bachelor in computer engineering can be admitted in?

texts: What are the masteral degrees or courses a bachelor's degree in computer engineering usually leads to? Other than computer engineering itself, that is.


texts: What is the most an international student could earn at a US grad school?

texts:
I haven't gotten any offers yet, but I just got an e-mail from one of the biggest names in my field (engineering) who urged me strongly to apply to his school. This, along with a few other factors, makes me feel it's likely I will get admitted to one of the top schools if I choose to apply. This is humbling, exhilarating, amazing, etc, but the caveat is that I have a family to support.

We have barely scraped by for too long now and it would be really nice to give my spouse some measure of financial comfort. So, counting everything including stipends, scholarships, allowances and every other trick in the book, what would be the most one could hope to get from a place like MIT, Stanford or Princeton?

I think most people here understand how valuable a PhD in engineering from MIT is in terms of future prospects in both academia and industry. Would it be crazy to consider supplementing ones income with a loan in order to live decently, if not doing so would mean being forced to decline the offer altogether?


texts:
I have had to read so many papers, and papers on writing papers, that I noticed how engaging and more pleasant to read a publication is when the author inserts the occasional funny remark.

I'm also writing so many project papers lately (mathematics bachelor) that I am actually developing an enjoyment for writing and attempting to come up with my own style. It's something I'd like to improve and I'd love to write more in the future and as I further my studies.

And so I wondered. How appropriate is it for a student to sometimes be funny in his or her reports? I have stumbled on so many half-assedly written assignments that it makes me think that many students simply don't care about nice writing at all, so I don't have any example to base an opinion on. Thoughts?


texts: Is there any way to post my code on Code Review Stack Exchange and not be worried about plagiarism?

texts:
I am doing my thesis-based master’s in computer engineering and am required to program a tool in C++ as a part of my research. I am quite impressed by the help offered on the Code Review website and am considering posting a big chunk of my code for suggestions and improvement. However, I am also worried that someone may plagiarize the idea contained in my posted code. This, in turn, might affect the credibility of my work.

I believe one solution is to post a minimal, verifiable and complete example for the code I want suggestions for. However, I am interested in knowing if it is possible to post my code as is and not be worried about it getting copied.


texts: How to refer to the empirical study involved in the thesis?

texts: Should I always refer to it as "the empirical study of/ involved in this thesis"? I found it too lengthy when I need to refer to it frequently in the thesis. Is there another shorter term to refer to it?


texts: Successful postdoc interview at an Italian institution in December by a UK citizen. Would the EU-UK trade deal have an impact on my chances?

texts:
I am a UK citizen and obtained my PhD at a UK university in August. I was shortlisted for a postdoctoral position at an Italian institution in mid December before the UK-EU trade deal was made. The interview went amazingly well and I was given a very positive feedback for my performance. Of course, the procedure was halted due to the Christmas holidays. In the new year the new EU-UK trade deal was agreed upon and I am no longer sure what my position is. I was confident of an offer, but now I am concerned I would need sponsorship, as a result of said trade deal, and fear that potential offers would be retracted.
I would be grateful for someone with more experience on this matter to shed some light on my concerns. I have read the documents in which they state the conditions for non-EU citizens, but the document was not very helpful or informative and seemed rather vague.


texts: Is a request to publish an article in Research Features a scam?

texts:
I regularly receive emails from Open Access predatory journals or conferences asking me to publish an article or attend some kind of conference somewhere. Usually, those emails are easy to identify.
Recently, I received an email from a Journal called Research Features, inviting me to publish an article in their journal which focuses more on outreach if I understand them correctly.
Does anybody have any experience with this (or a similar) journal, is this a serious thing?


texts: DBLP-like resources for disciplines other than CS

texts:
dblp.org is a free resource that lists papers from conferences and journals (including online venues like arxiv) in CS.
It also generates pages for the authors which have a publication in these venues and lists all the papers by that author.
It also makes its entire dataset available as free for download.
I'm wondering if similar resources exist for other disciplines. Search engines like Google Scholar are different because you have to already know what you're looking for before you find it.
In contrast, on DBLP you can start with a particular paper, then see all the other papers by the author, be able to browse venues which you may not have known about and see papers from those venues, and so on.


texts:
Should one include a "Last updated on [DATE]" footer at the end of an academic CV? Why or why not?

(I would imagine that context matters. For example, perhaps it wouldn't be advised for a CV that I would submit as part of a job application, but perhaps it's worth including on the version of my CV that I post on my institutional website.)


texts: How do I pick good keywords for literature alerts?

texts:
F'x has made a very informative post here about staying up to date with current research.

My question concerns the "publication alert" part of it. To be clear: I am asking about setting up an online service, such NCBI PubMed, to send you a notification (for instance, email) whenever a paper matching certain search criteria is published.

The objective is to get a decent number of notifications, but not so many that you are swamped and unable to actually pay attention to them. Also, the notifications that you do get should be prioritized the most important papers.

The biggest problem I am having is coming up with effective keywords. If I try to make myself come up with general keywords (such as those that might be given in the article's own "keywords" section), it seems that I end up with keywords so general that I would get thousands of notifications every week.

Alternatively, I could try to come up with very specific keywords, but how do I select those? What if they are too specific, and an important paper gets published without using my particular obscure keyword?

Surely people are not born with a natural talent for thinking of good keywords. So how can I train this skill?

Furthermore, is there a systematic method to deduce good keywords given a body of "gold standard" relevant literature? (I mean things such as statistical analysis of the text)

I know that it can be worthwhile to focus on certain "big player" authors. But if in a field with thousands of authors (eg. cancer), how does a new researcher map out who is important and who is not? Furthermore, the biggest players are probably PIs of huge labs, who already publish a very large volume of papers, so we are again at odds with the "not too many notifications" problem.

Another possibility is looking at citation metrics to identify the most important papers, as Google Scholar does. But clearly, this is not effective for new papers - who will cite a paper published last week?


texts: How can I find out if a student’s thesis is just the translation from his native language (Spanish) to English?

texts:
One of my student’s MA thesis is very well done. I know him and I worked with him enough to notice that something is going on. I talked to him and he always seemed confused about what he was doing and he did not seem to know the source so well.

Is it possible that he just translated and paraphrased another thesis from his native language, which is Spanish? How can I find it out?

The thesis contains citations and everything but it’s too accurate and I have some doubts.


texts: How should I use a laptop in class without distracting others?

texts:
In science/engineering subjects, it's not yet commonplace to use a laptop or tablet in class as most people still take notes with a pen and paper.

What is some good etiquette for laptop use in classes, so that I don't annoy or distract either my fellow students or the professor? Should I ask the professor if he/she would mind me using a laptop?


texts: How to show interest in a candidate when no positions are available?

texts:
I occasionally receive "cold-call" applications from graduate or postdoctoral candidates interested in working in my research group. Most of the time, they are of no interest—it's just a "form letter"-type application. However, once in a while, I get an application from someone who I would consider giving an interview to—if I actually had an open position.

What I want to do is to let people know that I am interested in such candidates, even though I don't have an open job for them. Is there a way to express this interest, and to encourage them to apply again when a new position becomes available. Is there a good way to do this—most of the time, such emails sound very trite, and that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid.


texts: how to inscribe the phd book when handing in it to the advisor

texts:
I'm going to hand in a copy of my phd book to my supervisor.
I think normally people write a small note by hand on the first page to somehow acknowledge their advisor (even though he has been already acknowledged in the "acknowledgment" section).
What is a suitable note to write for him?
Thanks


texts: Whether or should I ask for a reference from my advisor who I believe does not like me?

texts:
I have good reason to believe that my academic advisor does not like me. However, I will need a reference if I am going to apply for graduate study.

What can I do now? I got an excellent mark in my dissertation (I do not know if she marked it, or how exactly it works here in the UK), but I am pretty certain she does not like me very much. Assuming my judgment is correct, what would be the best course of action? Shall I risk asking her for a reference and hope she will be fair, or rather ask somebody else?


texts: What is the difference between pursuing Academia in STEM and the rest of fields?

texts:
everyone. A lot of times I read that there are many differences in academic and graduate life between STEM and the rest (Humanities, Social Sciences, Management, etc). I've even read many people advising not to earn a PhD in Humanities and Social Sciences since getting into a TT position is very hard and there aren't many alternative careers. What do you believe is the difference?

UPDATE: I'm talking about career prospects after completing the PhD.


texts:
What is a brief announcement in terms of accepted conference papers?

For an example, see here


texts: Can I submit a paper rejected from a tier-1 conference to a tier-1 conference again?

texts: I am in computer science (theory). Suppose, I submit a research paper to a tier-1 conference, and it gets rejected due to some issues in it. After doing correction, is it possible that I can submit it to a tier-1 conference again? Is there any rule or similar like: If my research paper gets rejected in any top conference, then I cannot submit the result in any top conference?


texts:
What is a standard way of notating sub-hypotheses? Should it be H1, H1b, H1c?
I’m revising a paper for a French author, and she’s written them with bis and ter, as in:

H1 (“cultural assimilation” hypothesis). Immigrants of Asian descent ... [then]
H1bis. The aforementioned effect is stronger ... [then]
H1ter ... .

I’ve never seen that before, but then again, there are a lot of things I haven’t seen.


texts: I screwed up the final. What should I do?

texts:
I'm a master electrical engineering student in a state university and I just took my very last final exam on Wednesday. I totally screwed up. I could not solve any of the problems (4 problems). It has never happened to me before. I thought I studied enough for it but I guess not. I'm looking at like 20 on the final which is 35% of the total grade. I had about 80% before final. What's sad is that I did study for it and I feel crushed that I couldn't do it at all.
I had a 3.5 GPA before this. Since there are only 10 classes in masters, if I fail 1 class would be fatal to the GPA. My main concern is I'm about to graduate and look for a job, but this is going to ruin my GPA. I sent an email to professor yesterday saying:

I know I did very poorly on the exam. I thought I understood the material and would be able to perform similar like the midterm but clearly I was wrong. I spent a lot of time doing homework and study but I really don't have excuse for this kind of performance.
Would you please consider withdrawing me from the class if you are able? I really can not have a D or F. . . . I understand this is my own responsibility and thank you for the semester.

I sent it Friday 9 am. Of course, I haven't heard back from the professor. My question is: should I just wait for the grade to show up on Wednesday next week and see what happens or go talk to the professor?


texts:
A bit about me:
I finished my PhD in a Machine Learning related area couple years back. Got awards for my dissertation and have a decent publication profile by ML standards. I have been working in a pretty interesting ML based startup since. Over time, I have decided I want to look for academic positions.

Recently, I was invited for a PostDoc interview, based a recommendation by my mentor who works in collaboration with this group. The position is going to be jointly supervised by two Professors, a new Assistant Professor and a senior Full Professor. Everything since the invitation email was super positive. During the interview, I gave a talk and met with few students in their lab. Had a post interview with the two Professors, the meeting went well beyond scheduled time, where we discussed open ideas, which I thought was really cool. The next day, I got an email saying they liked my visit and asked me for references, which I promptly gave them and informed my references. All this was ~3 weeks ago. I sent a reminder email inquiring about the status of the position ~3 days back. I haven't received any response since the "please send us a few references" email from 3 weeks back. I thought the whole interview and the aftermath was super positive, but its strange that I haven't received any confirmation yet.

I am getting a bit anxious since this is a very prestigious group and maybe, I just want this too much (?). Is this delay normal ? Should I send another polite email few days from now ? I am puzzled at the no response situation.


texts: Do applicants who are exempted from paying application fees get any other benefits

texts:
Several universities waive graduate application fees for certain applicants who participated in a specific program or belong to a certain organization. My question is: do these applicants get any other benefits or considerations in the application process, or is the application fee exemption the end of the story?

Example of one of the universities that offers this:
http://grad.berkeley.edu/admissions/apply/fee-waiver/


texts: Inquiry for Ph.D admissions in European countries

texts:
I want to pursue a Ph.D in Chemistry and the destinations of my choice are Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands and Sweden. Can anyone please tell me the scholarships and fellowships available to which an Indian student can apply in these countries? (I know of a DAAD fellowship for Germany)

I would also love to know if there is any centralized admission process to these countries (similar to US)?
Thank you


texts: Should I submit one strong recommendation letter or one strong letter and one weaker letter?

texts:
I'm a third year undergraduate engineering student in India.

I am applying for a research program at a foreign university which will start at the end of my third year. This internship program requires at least one and a maximum of two letters of recommendation. As is the case for many students in my college (and I suspect many Indian engineering undergrads as well), I do not have much interaction with most of my professors outside of classes. My grades are decent but nothing spectacular in my courses.

Hence, I only have one strong letter of recommendation from a professor with whom I am doing a project. The rest of my professors who I have spoken to about the same have only given me tepid responses and have advised me to come back only if I cannot find anyone else ready to give me a letter.

In this case, what should I do for filing my LoRs? Would it be better to submit only the strong LoR or should I submit a weaker LoR as well?


texts: Do you find a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis tool useful?

texts:
I do a lot of qualitative coding and assessment as part of my research activities. Usually my colleagues and I simply use generic tools for this process like text editors and spreadsheets, but I know that there's a lot of software out there (NVivo, Atlas.ti, etc.) that is designed for making qualitative data analysis "better".

If these pieces of software were inexpensive, I'd probably buy a package and try it out, but they're very costly (about $600 per seat) and appear rather intimidating.

Can anyone with experience in qualitative data analysis comment on whether these tools are useful (or not useful) and are worth the high price? (And you get a cookie if you can describe a use case that really highlights why the tool is powerful!)


texts: Editor sent a mail asking me to revise my submission based on reviewer comments. the reviewer comments were missing. What to do?

texts:
I got a mail from the editor asking me to revise my manuscript according to reviewer recommendations. There were no reviewer comments in the mail . I then mailed the editor asking about this. He replied back with the exact same reviewer comments from the previous round.
I mailed the senior editors of the journal. One of them replied saying that they apologize for the situation and the chief editor will contact me. 5 days have passed since and I have got no reply.
I have mailed the journal office now. Its a decent journal from Elsevier. I don't know what to do now. The manuscript has already undergone 3 rounds of review and 2 reviewers have recommended publication. The third reviewer was also satisfied and had suggested very minor corrections.


texts: Backing out of a verbal postdoctoral job agreement with my PhD advisor

texts:
I recently finished my Ph.D. and had a strong interest in working with a particular professor as a postdoctoral fellow upon finishing. This professor happened to be the examiner of my thesis, so I could not contact him until I completed the thesis defence.
Before the thesis defence, my Ph.D. advisor offered me to stay as a postdoc for 2 years. I agreed since it was the best opportunity available at the time. The agreement is verbal, and I am now awaiting the official written job offer.
Upon finishing my defence, the examiner contacted me and showed a strong interest in hiring me (as soon as possible). It seems that we both think that we are an excellent match. He is also an excellent professor that I think will help me getting ahead in my career. It seems to be a much better opportunity than what I have now.
The only problem is the promise I made to my Ph.D. advisor, who strongly wants me to stay with him. I have a few questions about this situation:
1- What would be the best approach to handle this?
2- How bad will I look of I back out on the verbal agreement?
3- Could this cause damage to my career or burn bridges with my Ph.D. advisor?
4- Considering that I will need recommendation letters from my Ph.D. advisor in the future, how likely will this affect my ability to obtain these letters?
5- A solution I am considering is staying temporarily (6 months) with my Ph.D. advisor so that I am not fully backing out on my word. What do you think?


texts: Getting rid of first degree to apply for second

texts:
I finished my PhD a while ago but, long story short, got screwed over by my department and wound up entering industry rather than continuing my academic career as I had wanted. My degree and background are in pure math, which industry really doesn't care about (and I'm not interested in the NSA or finance), and thus I don't see any way of moving from industry into academia. I've considered getting a second PhD, but that raises the obvious question of why the first one wasn't enough, and I'm unlikely to get into as good a program coming in from industry as I had immediately after undergrad. (My argument would be that I would have done fine if I had had a different department or even advisor, but there's really no way of proving that, or even politely discussing it, in any sort of application.) What I want is a place where I can do research and churn out papers in my field to build up a nice CV for future things, and that idea doesn't seem feasible outside of a postdoc or grad school. I can't get the former, so my thought was that I could go through grad school a second time.

So, here's my question: Can I somehow revoke or renounce my degree? It's not useful to me; and in retrospect, I should have quit or transferred instead of finishing. (I did try to transfer at one point but wasn't able to arrange anything useful.) It seems easier to go from industry to grad school than from grad school to industry back to something academic again, and it certainly looks weird to apply for a second doctorate a substantial amount of time after the first. Obviously I don't want to lie and claim that I never got a PhD in the first place, so is there some way of officially getting rid of it and forgetting it ever happened? What I want at this point is to start over from scratch, and I'm not sure how to arrange that.


texts: Research supervisor gives me no freedom-- controls all aspects of my research. Feel like a research secretary. Is this normal in academia?

texts:
I'm currently working in a computational research lab where my supervisor just hands tasks to me to do that will help him with his papers but I don't get any input in the creative process whatsoever. For example, he's asked me to transfer data and create data tables but I'm never given any context for the project scope or involved in the planning or exploratory/research process, just in the execution. When a postdoc or somebody from another research group asks for his help with a random tech-related task, like debugging some computer issue, he hands it to me instead. I've been in this lab for half a year now and have nothing meaningful to show for it, besides scattered pieces of code written here and there and essentially serving as tech support for people.
I asked for the chance to lead a project and he assigned me one, but he said that he'll be assigning me the tasks which will eventually converge to a paper. I'm not given any context or "big picture" questions or allowed to take my own approach to answer them. He essentially has a list of pipelines he wants me to run and just output the results for. I feel like I'm just getting assigned busy work and not allowed to contribute my unique background/skills.
When I've been done with all my work, I've tried taking simple tasks and making them into a larger-scale project/applying more CS concepts to them but he disapproves and says it isn't priority and hands me more random tasks instead.
He has given me tasks to do late in the evening to have done by the next morning. I asked him to give me more advanced notice going forward to which he essentially responded "People in academia love their research so much that they don't mind putting in extra hours. If you're not willing to work after hours then maybe you're not cut out for academia."
I am totally used to and enjoy working long hours on research projects, and have done so without hesitation in past research experiences during undergrad because I had a sense of ownership over my work and freedom to be creative with it, but here I'm just working for my boss to help make his name bigger. I'm not getting authorship for my work or allowed to pursue long-term meaningful projects. I could be working as a software eng. making muuchhh more than what I'm earning (turned down lucrative job offer) but I chose this because I enjoyed the freedom and creativity involved in my past research much more than being handed random dev. tasks to make money for some for-profit corporation. But this doesn't feel very different from that aside from the huge paycut and having to take work home.
He also doesn't allow me to attend workshops/conferences at the institution I'm at. Every time I've asked to attend something that interests me he says "this other task is a bigger priority" or "that's irrelevant for the task you're working on" even though I'm really interested in exploring what other people are working on and networking.
So overall I feel a bit more like a secretary and less like a valuable member of a research team. Is this what all research is like in academia? If so, I'm concerned this may in fact be the wrong path for me. Any input/advice is very much appreciated.
Update I ended up switching to another lab and my experience is significantly better here. Some of the other researchers in my previous lab that I wrote about opened up to me about their experience there and it seems like the culture in general was pretty toxic (most of us have since moved on to new labs). Thanks everyone for all of your input-- it really helped me reach this decision!


texts: Publishing figures: Serif or Sans-serif fonts?

texts:
Whenever I am creating figures for publication, I often wonder if I should be using a serif or sans-serif font. I browse the journals in my field and notice that there is no standard, just chaos.

I have typically chosen serif font to match the typography of the body text; however, I have read that sans-serif stands out among the serif body text. My rationale for choosing serif text is because it allows me to reproduce the symbols from the text exactly in my legends (and/or annotations). To me, this seems clearer.

Does anyone have a source or standard that recommends one or the other?


texts: Number of months a year that faculty get paid in UK and Australia?

texts:
I've heard that faculty usually gets paid for 9 months in the US and you need to use your own funding to pay for the missing 3 months.

Is this situation different in the UK and Australia?


texts: Should I justify an average GRE score with a good excuse?

texts:
I received a 4/6 (59%) for my GRE analytical writing score. I would have scored higher had it not been for the fact that I type on an alternate keyboard layout (i.e. not QWERTY) and had to use QWERTY to type the essays. Before taking the test, I looked into getting approved to use my alternate layout, but it seemed like a good amount of time and paperwork would be involved, so I didn't go through with it.

Should I mention this in my graduate applications? For reference, this is for application to United States PhD programs in physics. My GRE verbal / quantitative scores and GRE subject test scores are all much better (>90%).


texts:
How feasible would it be for a PhD student in physics (who is interested in teaching high school after their PhD) to receive a masters in education from the university they are receiving their PhD from?

I would think that at least during the first 2 years of a PhD program, before qualifying exams when you are taking courses and being a TA, this is in no way feasible.

What about if you had permission from your PhD research advisor to do so during the later years of your PhD, when you are only doing research and have less (or none if you're funded) TA duties?

How competitive would getting into the school's masters in education program be? I would think that being a PhD student there would help.

Would being a current PhD student help in receiving scholarships to alleviate the costs of the masters in education?


texts: Ideas to narrow down a master thesis topic within management scope

texts:
I am choosing (by myself) a topic to research and write about for my master thesis. My criteria are simple:

I should have enough possibility to research the topic within a company where I work, or company where access to data is available.
The topic should be interesting to me.

Based on both, I have narrowed down the topic of managerial span of control and possibly related topics in corporate management, e.g. unity of control, matrixed organizations, etc.

I am having a difficulty, however, to go further and design the specific question(s) to explore, or hypothesis to build and test. I asking for your help here.

While I can have a fairly good data about the span of control within a given company (or several companies) that I can research, I will for certain have difficulty to obtain other HR related data...


texts:
Suppose a patent has been filed (or is in process of being filed) over the same research that is described in a paper.

Does filing a patent application require disclosure in the paper publication process?

If so, what would be the expected format of disclosure during the paper publication process, regarding the patent pending status?


texts: Should I submit a rejected paper as it is in some other place so that publication decision comes quickly?

texts:
I am a Phd student (thesis submitted in January 2018, not defended yet) in applied mathematics. My first paper was published in February 2018 in a tier 1 applied math journal, two other papers were recently rejected from tier 1 applied math journals.

I discussed the rejected papers with my advisor, we decided that we will work on the comments of the reviewers and associate editors and then submit to some other tier 1 journals. Now that will take at leat 5-6 months and then these two paper may get accepted in 2020 in the best case, or in the worst case it could be in 2021 (generally, top tier journals take a long time).

Now, my advisor is saying that you should publish continually (there should not be gap between publications) and suggested me to submit the rejected paper as it is, but if these two rejected papers are again rejected I will be in trouble. If a paper gets rejected twice then it may be hard to get that paper accepted in future.

What should I do in this situation ? Any help/suggestions will be useful. Thanks in advance.


texts: Why are some conferences no longer indexed by Scopus?

texts: I have seen in Scopus that there are some conferences that are still running nowadays, but they not longer appear indexed on Scopus. For example, in the field of Computer Science I see that the ICCSIT conference is indexed only until 2010, but now they are in the 2015 edition. I know that some indexing units such as DBLP exclude from their current rankings some conferences when their quality has decreased substantially. Does this situation also happen with Scopus?


texts: PhD: Switching Universities and Subjects After Three Months?

texts:
I was offered a PhD place at an Institute of Technology in my hometown to do interdisciplinary work in Psychology and Computer Science. Although it wasn't my original interest, I was offered to have at least my fees covered so I took it.

Three months in however and I am having serious doubts about the program. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was registered as a Computer Science PhD student. My background is in Psychology and my supervisor's area is in Computer Science. I am working entirely alongside computer scientists and there isn't any faculty members or even other graduate students in the institute who are experimental psychologists (there a few psychotherapists). Not only has it been very isolating socially (there isn't a great campus atmosphere and the people in my lab are introverted. In some cases the language barrier has been difficult), but academically it has been frustrating also. Given our respective backgrounds, I am expected to be the expert in Psychology right away, when I always conceived of a PhD as the process of becoming an expert in a particular (sub)-discipline over the duration of the project. An example of this expectation is when I offer work to be reviewed by my supervisor, I don't get a lot of feedback, primarily because my supervisor doesn't know the relevant psychology literature (I do get on well with my supervisor however). I have also felt held back by the Computer Science aspects, as I feel I need to shoehorn in technology into any project idea I have thought of.

As a consequence of these issues, I am considering dropping out of the program and taking up a Psychology PhD at a University in my hometown. The University is considered one of the best in the country and has a good Psychology department. I would have to self-fund (unless I manage to snag funding somewhere down the line), but I would have the opportunity to focus on Psychology entirely. These last few months have really made it clear that I love researching Psychology and I want a career in it.

Some of the already practical steps I have taken is to ask previous supervisors or lecturers I got on well with for advice, and I have also sent initial inquiries into potential future supervisors at University. I am yet to hear back (which is no surprise given the year and the fact I only sent these emails a few days ago).

I would love any advice or comment on whether I should switch. Also, I guess my ultimate question is about: Would I be better of switching to the other University in terms of future career prospects (e.g. getting a Post-Doc Psychology role afterwards?) Or do you think as long as I work to ensure my current PhD is heavily related to Psychology, I should be fine? Thank you in advance.


texts: How many professors are children of professors?

texts:
I am a professor. Anecdotally, about half the people I know in academia have at least one parent who was or is a professor. (I was not born to any professors, for the record.) And then you see families like this.

I'm curious to what extent my anecdotal impressions align with overall trends. Is there data out there about which percentage of professors are children of professors, how being the child of a professor might influence your chances of getting tenure, and how such trends within academia compare to those for other professions (e.g., how many doctors are the children of doctors? do they earn more? etc.).


texts: Is it legitimate to present self-developed, but commercial, software within my dissertation?

texts: The situation goes like this: Within my dissertation (doctoral degree) I present a software library which I wrote by myself for a company I work for. Thus, the software is commercial and the rights are owned by the company. The company is fine that I present the software in the dissertation. The software is presented in the dissertation by an own chapter and used for experimental evaluations. However, is it legitimate to present such a software as part of the dissertation from an academia point of view?


texts: Can a Ph.D student change his adviser, if he is supported by a Research Assistantship by the adviser upon admission (and possibly first year)?

texts:
According to my offer, I am admitted to the Ph.D program and funded by a Research Assistantship by Professor X. Nevertheless, I am interested in other research directions, and we are supposed to decide our adviser by the end of the first semester.

Is it appropriate to change adviser in my case, as I am funded by Professor X?


texts: Is it appropriate to ask my professors what they think of me before I ask for letters of recommendations from them?

texts:
As some students know, sometimes it is not easy to determine whether a professor (restricted to the professors in U.S.) will write a strong letter of recommendation for a student. So the question is, is it appropriate to ask questions like:

What do you think of me compared to other students you taught in the previous semester?

Am I one of the best students in your class? Top 10%? Top20%?

I know these questions are sensitive. Maybe they will dislike me immediately once I ask these questions. I don't know, but I believe that most professors are kind and will be honest to students.
By the way, if I were the professor, I would certainly answer the questions honestly and let the student know if I should be in the their choices. I would not only say something like "you did well in my classes" or "you did better than most of the rest", but also tell them directly if they are in top 1%, 3%, 10% in my mind, but I still wonder what most professors in U.S. universities would think of this.


texts:
I've got an admission to Cambridge University and have been asked to attend an afternoon tea event at my future college, it is a matriculation event. In contrast to all other invitations there has been no reference towards the expected dress code.

Are there any implicit/explicit expectations on what to wear as a female attendant? In many pictures I saw people wearing hats to such an occasion. Is it compulsory?

Thank you for any answers and your help.


texts:
While researching for an article, I came across an interesting post forum post which I wanted to use as a reference.

Before I could finish my article, the forum site I wanted to reference was officially shut down, making the aforementioned forum post inaccessible.

Thankfully I was able to find an archived version of the post on The Wayback Machine, but I'm not exactly sure how to reference it.

How should I cite an archived version of a webpage if the original webpage is no longer available? Should I add a "Date Accessed" note to my original citation, or should I cite the archived version instead?


texts: Can you list a "last-minute" invited talk on your CV?

texts: A session at an annual professional society meeting that I regularly help to organize includes an "invited" talk to anchor the session. Some years, the invited speaker is unable to attend the meeting (due to illness, travel problems, etc.). If we are able to arrange a last-minute substitute speaker to fill the time slot (rather than canceling it and risking losing the audience to other parallel sessions), would that speaker be able to list the talk as an "invited" talk on her CV, even though it's not been advertised or listed anywhere?


texts: Is it acceptable to post a brief and speculative paper on ArXiv?

texts:
I wrote a speculative paper, outlining an approach to make data analysis more efficient. I am a physicist and the idea is described in words and with a few schemes. I don't have the programming skills to show that the idea works.

In terms of etiquette, would it be OK to publish the paper on arXiv?


texts: Why was I advised to contact prospective advisors when following up on my PhD application?

texts:
I applied for a PhD program in a US university for Spring 2021 in the 1st week of August, 2020. I have mentioned a professor's name and work, who encouraged me to apply and permitted me to write his name in the SOP. However, after 1 month, in the reply to my follow-up email, the graduate coordinator advised me to contact prospective advisors in the department.
Two possible things in my mind:

The grad coordinator has not read my application or has not noticed my possible adviser's name in the SOP.

The grad coordinator has sent the application to the professor and the professor declined to take me in his lab. Thus, the grad coordinator advised me to find other advisers for funding.

What might be the reason?


texts: What are the typical research requirements for an application to lecturer position to be successful?

texts: When someone is applying for a position as a lecture at an average ranking university in Sweden (equivalent to associate professor elsewhere), what is the typical number of research papers and of what quality he is expected to have in order to have a realistic chance of getting the position?


texts: Raising money on the Kickstarter or GoFundMe websites

texts:
Let's say a student is not funded during the summer months but has a cool research idea that even their advisor thinks is tractable and important to the scientific community, and this student wishes to devote an entire summer pursuing research on this topic and forgoing a summer job / internship.

Can the student attempt to raise money on the Kickstarter or GoFundMe websites?

Are there any obvious restrictions or academic violations for doing so?

To me, it seems like a creative way to raise money, and I feel people would back the project too.


texts: My paper was cited but their citation text had very little to do with my paper

texts:
My paper was recently cited but the text leading up to the citation has little to do with the content of my paper. They seem to reference some ideas I included in the "Future Work" section of my paper, but they are ideas that I never began to research, and the reference is a bit of a stretch. I'm not convinced they even read my paper.

Edit: As far as I can tell, the section where they cited me was basically a survey of techniques. The technique that they attributed to me has been around for longer than I've been alive. I just mentioned in my paper that the technique could be extended in a specific way. But they made no mention of my idea for the extension.

Should I do anything about this? Or should I just enjoy the citation?


texts:
I work in an interdisciplinary field. My input is not generated by myself, but by talented people that I trust and that trust me to analyse their data and generate fascinating insights.

But here I am, once more stuck with a project where the input is bad. There is no use for blame and finding a scape goat, we are in this together. And people learn. But I have been stuck in projects with big promises and bad/insufficient input since the start of my PhD. I moved to another place for a PostDoc now, but this situation seemingly haunts me wherever I go.

There is not much I can achieve when most of my projects stop after the input quality control. But if I want to stay in academia, I desperately need to step up my game in actual output, not just in my ability to troubleshoot, right?

How do I move on from this? What chances do I have if I can just never land a "prestigious project" that results in a valuable publication? Is there a chance to still build up a good scientific reputation without those? Should I try myself at writing a review? Take on projects until one finally works out? (But how long will I succeed in getting another job if they don't?)
I could work with published data for a bit, but it is often not comparable between studies and severely lacking metadata.

The question is, do I have to accept that success (as in, basically being able to stay) in academia is to a large degree based on luck and I am not one of the lucky ones or is there anything major I can do? I really love the work I do, I would like to keep going.

So far I have taken on additional projects, tried to do my own 'side projects' on at least roughly usable parts of the data in the hope I will find a better dataset eventually where this could come in handy and kept in touch with collaborators in an effort to troubleshoot and eventually produce better input.

EDIT:
To address some questions:
I produce analysis pipelines, partially based on my own methods. Without "real data" application it's hard to publish those in my field.
Yes, it is "real world data". I do not expect perfect data at all. But I do expect technically correct, usable data. If the input is random/to few features to be statistically relevant there is nothing I can do, though.
Imagine trying to do a statistical test on the similarity of blog posts based on word usage written by different groups of people but many "groups" only are represented by two authors, the text is sometimes just one sentence long and quite a few of the posts looking like they are produced by a random letter generator, not having any actual words in them. While I was promised at least 5 authors per group, minimum 5000 words per text and of course the post actually written by the author assigned to it.


texts:
I am writing a homework at the moment. One of the authors I cite, changed his name from A... to B... due to marriage (I know him personally).

In the Bibliography I clearly should use the name given in the papers (sometimes A..., sometimes B...). But how should I refer to him in the text?

"B... also mentioned...[1,2]" or "A... also mentioned...[1,2]", where [1] lists him as A and [2] lists him as B.

I could imagine calling him B and remark in a footnote, his former name was A. What do you expercienced authors think about this?


texts: How to write good Response Letters for the reviewers

texts:
I've spoken with many friends, and they all agree that response letters to reviewers should be written in the most kind, cordial and humble possible way.

Even if the reviewers are in an error, one should make no major strides to show it to them.

I wonder, How do you write your response letters to the reviewers?


texts: Almost identical general statement with different citations – is this a problem?

texts:
Paper X states that

  A is bla bla, but also referred to as B [1] and C [2].

I recently wrote:

  A is referred to as B [3] and C [4].

where Paper [3] and [4] are about the same topic as papers [1] and [2], respectively.

Would this almost identical sentence be an issue (in the sense of plagiarism), in particular since I cite Paper X for another reason elsewhere in my paper?


texts: Is it OK to use personal email ID for faculty job applications or should we use (current) institute's ID

texts: I am about a graduate from my university. Will it be OK to use my personal email if I am looking for faculty jobs/postdoc positions. Will it somehow give a negative impact on my application as compared to those who apply through any institution's link?


texts: Non-academic positions after PhD in computer science

texts:
With the academic job situation so tight and uncertain, I am thinking of jobs outside academia (after a PhD in Computer Science). There are plenty of programming jobs that require an undergrad or even no degree. I tried some of them and they are so routine and so narrow that one gets frustrated easily. They also involve 8-5, M-F drudgery.
Can anyone suggest better alternatives. How do companies advertise for research positions? I haven't seen many ads for those. BTW, I live in Southeast of US and due to family reasons can not relocate far.


texts:
One chapter in my thesis is going to have the following style:

3.1 Topic A
3.1.1 Problem Description
3.1.2 Proposed Solution

4.1 Topic B
4.1.1 Problem Description
4.1.2 Proposed Solution

Is it OK to have subsections with the same name? Or should it rather be something like:

3.1 Topic A
3.1.1 Topic A Problem Description
3.1.2 Topic A Proposed Solution

4.1 Topic B
4.1.1 Topic B Problem Description
4.1.2 Topic B Proposed Solution

Update:

Many thanks to all for the comments and answers. I think understand now that it's more a question about the document structure than about the subsection titles.


texts:
I recently had a paper rejected: both referees pointed to a unique issue with our work. One referee's criticism was fair, hence I feel the rejection decision was fair.

The other referee however, seemed to appreciate the paper and know the area extremely well (and thus, I expect to have them as a referee for any future submission). Their entire objection was based on an incorrect assumption -- if their assumption were true, I too would have suggested rejection. However, our results clearly showed this assumption is not true. Thus, their entire basis for rejection could be 1) very easily refuted in a response letter/revision and 2) may lead to future rejections if the referee is not corrected. I am wondering:

Would it be appropriate to write a "response to reviewers" document to one referee to point out this issue? Is this at all common? I would not be appealing the rejection per se, but rather hoping that the referee better understood our work (with respectful tone and appreciation for the thought they put into their review). If not, should I simply move on?

I should also mention, any future submission would explicitly state that this assumption is incorrect, but I would rather address point this directly with the referee, if it can be done so respectfully.


texts: Bachelors in computer science and wanting a masters?

texts:
I graduated with a 2.98gpa in computer science with a minor in math. I am currently employed as a software engineer and I am wanting to go back to school for a masters degree. I would really like to Perdue a professional engineering masters and take the PE(professional engineering exam) after I graduate.
 Is it even possible to go from a computer science bachelors degree to a masters program in systems engineering or computer engineering?  I am currently looking at the university of Alabama in Huntsville. I want a masters degree, but I don't specifically care to stick with computer science. I am wanting to broaden my horizons and prepare myself for a role in management in the future.


texts: Professor wrote me a letter of recommendation, but sent it to both me and the institute

texts:
So after all these crazy days of trying to finish my application and encouraging professors to finish the letters of recommendations (LORs) for me, there is the next thing - my professor sent the letter of recommendation (which he had to send just to the institution) also to me. I think he did it unknowingly, but now I am stressed again, because I should not know the content of the letter of course. I didn't open it, but this situation is quite crazy. If I can see that he sent it to two recipients, it stands to reason that the another recipient can see it too.

Uhh. Does someone know what should I do now?

EDIT: It was a letter related to the grant application


texts: Is it it bad to become a part-time student in my 4th year and do a 5th year in my undergrad if i plan on applying for grad school?

texts:
I'm currently a 4th-year student at a university in Ontario, Canada. Due to covid starting last year, I realized I wanted to pursue a master's after my undergrad and planned out the courses I would need. I didn't have many of the prerequisite courses needed for the master's and had too many courses required for my degree left, so I decided I'll do the 5th year (at the beginning of 4th year, I still had 6 courses required for my degree as well as 6 courses required as prereqs for the masters, and many of the prereqs are also prereqs for each other so I would have to do at least 2 extra semesters of school). Sorry, that may sound a little confusing.
Now, also due to covid I realized online school and learning through zoom was not helping my case, and I ended up dropping some courses and becoming a part-time student for this year. Due to needing the prereq courses for the master's program I hope to apply to, I ended up needing to complete 4 courses over the summer of 2020, and as of March 2021, I have been in school every semester since September 2019 and began feeling very burnt out. I decided for my mental health and to get better marks in the courses that were necessary for me to complete, it would be a better idea to go part-time.
My question is this: do grad schools view part-time studies like this negatively? I want to pursue a master's in Business/Management Analytics, hopefully in Ontario. I reached out to a couple schools who are my top picks, and they told me they have no problem with part-time studies, they just want applicants to have at least a B+/A- GPA in their final 2 years of school.
I recently dropped a course that was focused on Business Analytics because I felt very out of my depth. The course covered topics in Stats and Probability (courses I will be taking in my 5th year because I am completing the prerequisites required for them rn) and I felt extremely lost and did terrible on the midterm. The prof wasn't much help because he treated me like I was dumb when I didn't quickly understand the ideas of things like Support Vector Machines and Neural Networks (topics I'd never covered in the past). I've been beating myself up over this decision for a couple days now because I feel like I gave up on a course that introduces me to many things I planned on doing in my Master's, but I felt it was the best decision for my GPA and overall mental health.
Are the decisions I'm making good? I feel fed-up with school right now and feel like the good marks I've gotten are only because of my reduced course-load. I feel like a couple years down the line, I won't regret my decisions. But right now, it feels like I'm taking the easy way out when the harder route would result in a horrible GPA.


texts: Question about reference letters on mathjobs

texts: I have a mechanical question about the mathjobs interface (I believe this is not off -topic since there is a correct answer and this answer would remove uncertainty for other mathematicians in future job cycles). If I list a reference letter in my application to a position, but the reference letter is submitted after the formal deadline (or at least after I submit the application), will that reference letter be automatically added to my dossier at the university in question or do I have to re-submit all of my materials?


texts: Where can I find gre practice test powerprep solutions?

texts:
Where can I find worked out solutions provided by ETS for the GRE practice tests in the powerprep software?

Thanks.


texts: Turnaround time for abstract review/approval from collaborator

texts:
What is a reasonable turnaround time to request from a collaborator for review/approval of a short piece of writing like an abstract?
Context: This morning, a co-investigator asked me to review/approve a conference abstract they hope to submit by end of day today. The abstract is quite short (~ 1 page, as expected). Fortunately, the abstract looked good, and review was quick and straightforward. If that had not been the case, or if I had been out of office, this timeline could have been problematic.
Note: Though the answer to this question is somewhat subjective and situation-dependent, common/"best" practices in academia are useful for newcomers like me in setting expectations.


texts: Publishing in the lower quartile journals: better than nothing?

texts: Having a realistic option of publishing a minor study in a 4th quartile journal, is this better than nothing? The articles of many, but not all, authors are kind of pretentious and unremarkable (not being cited nowhere), but not plagiarized, or computer generated.


texts: Visiting assistant professor position vs Post-doc position

texts:
I have couple of offers for a visiting assistant professor (VAP) and for post-doc positions. I'm debating which to choose. I'm finalizing my PhD now at a top 50 R1 school in engineering. The VAP positions are at top 20 private liberal arts colleges. The two post-docs positions are one at my current university and another one at a top 30 R1 university. To be honest, I started applying for tenure track (TT) positions two months ago in February (I know it was already late! But I had some serious change of plans). I'm debating whether to go for a VAP or post-doc (at my school, since my research area is very new) position. I feel that I will get a better chance of getting some interviews during the next cycle of applying to TT positions (when I start applying in Aug/Sep.).

Here are few facts that might be useful;

My goal is to go for a TT position (R1 university).
Publication record is high (about 3 times higher than the average number of publications for a fresh PhD graduate in my field)
My current advisor is famous (he started my research area), basically I feel that my recommendation letters are good!
I'm not worried about salary/benefits (since both positions are not TT)
Received multiple awards/fellowships during my PhD
Proposal/Grant funding writing abilities - average (not very experienced)
I have heard from multiple people that getting a VAP for 1-2 years might look bad/questionable on a CV on the contrary to having a post-doc.

Any help/comments/experiences/suggestions shared will be much appreciated.


texts: What should I let students do when they finish exams early?

texts:
I organized my students to take their exams in the school’s computer labs. Some students finished well before others. In each section, I tried different policies for what students should do in this situation, but none worked very well.

I let one section of students leave when they finished, but make much noise while moving their chairs and gathering their things. Furthermore, I am concerned that students will find ways to cheat, e.g. leave and access the Web-based testing system from their iPod.
I let one section do as they like on the computers when they finished, but this made it difficult to determine who was finished and who was using resources to cheat on the exams.
I gave one section some extra credit work to do if they finished early, but many students did other homework instead, which led to similar difficulty in determining who was finished or cheating.

What is a good policy that does not cause interruption to other students but also does not hinder proctoring efforts?


texts: What incentive does a professor have to allow a student to enroll in a course that is already full?

texts:
I'm hoping trying to register for a course I need that is currently full, and am told that I can try contacting the professor for permission to enroll. Under what circumstances are such requests typically granted? More students = more work for the professor, so I'm trying to figure out why a professor might agree to allow me in.

My best guess is that I should:

Convince them that since I'm a good student, I won't create very much extra work for them.
Convince them that since I'm a good student, allowing me into the course will raise the average grade for the term and make them look good.

What else can I say that they might find compelling?


texts:
At some point in my career I would like to become an advisor (or at least have some people working for me). I would like to start learning the skills to be a good advisor before becoming an advisor. Having in mind that most skills will be similar to those needed by managers outside academia:

How can I acquire the skills needed to become a good advisor before becoming an advisor?

Here's what I've thought of so far:

Organize congress/symposium ... (Do it within student organizations)
Advise students

Some background of my situations: I have recently completed a MSc in Bioinformatics (Europe) and I still haven't started a PhD, but I already have almost 2 years of experience in research in Bioinformatics and would like to keep working on this field.


texts: Does posting paper online anonymously prevent me from publishing it in journal?

texts:
I am a high school student and I am trying to publish my first research paper in mathematics.

However, I have already had my full paper posted without author information on the website of another organization. Now this paper (in pdf) can be found by Google. Does this prevent me from publishing the paper in a journal because of plagiarism-check issues?

I can prove that I am the author in the following way: that organization where I posted the paper can provide proof that I uploaded it and that the paper contained no significant plagiarism because it was checked by Turnitin.com's software before upload. The plagiarism-check report and the paper were posted online at the same time. How can I provide a proof like this to a journal? (I have not submitted the paper yet.)

(For lack of experience, I did not know that I should not have done this.)


texts: What is the meaning of "...the cost of a 5 year R01..."?

texts:
I assume this is something  related to the US and  NIH Research Project Grant Program (R01), but I don't understand how one put value on a "single  word"
Is there anyone who understands this sentence and care to elaborate what was implied by that?


texts: Which limits to draw for speculations in an scientific publication?

texts:
Let's take an example from geology.

I describe an area (A) using a topographic map not really well detailed (50m of resolution). In this area, I study variably-sized shapes of geologic structures (e.g., volcanoes). I have also from A, an area B that is way more detailed (1m-resolution) and it has been described by direct observations (on the field).
Now, I want to do analyzes of structures within A, given the knowledge from B, and check if similar structures of B are observable in the entire area A (not covered by B) so that the observation is extrapolated over the low-resolution data. I make a description of this in a little section of a paper.

The description is important to make probabilistic estimates. The aim of the paper I have in mind, deals with estimates of (1) where are the wanted structures, and (2) what shape do they have in the entire A.

Problem:

I cannot publish all of what has been done in B (yet), but just enough details (some are published already) to make the main structures wanted being characterized in A.

I want to publish the estimates done within A, but by using low-resolution data, which means, discriminating less characterizable structures; they can still be distinguished though.

Questions:

By doing (a) extrapolation of descriptions, and (b) general estimates on low-resolution data, should I fear about doing to much "speculations"?

I am more concerned about (a) than (b), because for the latter, the results are debatable and the method used is totally new and worthy for research in general.


texts: To what depth can a new algorithm be presented while applying for PhD?

texts:
I am applying for PhD to German and Finnish universities.

I do not have any publication  date. Hence there is no direct proof that I can do the research.

However I am working on an algorithm. The work is more than 60% complete. I have a confidence that method will be accepted for publication as it is in a lower quality journal, but there exists a belief that if I push a little harder, it will be a material for a very good publication, signifying original work.

Hence, I am thinking of sending the work done up till now with the application, but I have the following  concerns.

What if people there take my work, modify it, and publish it? I have a feeling that I will be helpless even if someone publishes it as it is.
I am working alone on this project. Will my work have any importance? Because around 98% of the papers I have read were from multiple authors, belonging to some academic entity.
Is there any alternative in making person next to me believe that I can do the research, other than publication? Even though our (professor's and mine) area of interest is the same, we are targeting the problem from two different ends, and I obviously do not have time to study his entire work.

Your answer is going to be a key factor in my deciding my approach.


texts: Are there any open access databases of all (or close enough) academic papers ever published? (not full-text)

texts: Was wondering if there were any reasonably exhaustive open databases listing academic papers, with just the preliminary info, namely Title, authors, journal, etc. with or without abstract. I'm not looking for full-texts here.