texts:
How harmful is it for a PhD student to work with a supervisor whose ambition is greater or lesser than that of the student?

I can imagine that if the supervisor aims much higher than the PhD student the experience could be nightmarish for the student (and frustrating for the supervisor). Similarly if the supervisor aims too low (something like: "Just generalize this theory in way X, that should be enough for a PhD") the work could feel meaningless and the time spent on it wasted, when more challenging and maybe even more important questions could deserve the attention and resources.

Background: I am interested in a career in research. I am worried that if I aim too low in my PhD project it will hurt my career afterwards. PhD takes years and so one would ideally make most of the years spent doing it. Some supervisors are more ambitious and knowledgeable than others. I would imagine that a PhD with a more ambitious researcher (with talent and education to match) would improve one's chances of a career in academia than with a less ambitious one. I have read that the best thesis is a finished one, but surely one should think about how the PhD helps to further a post-PhD research career.

Could the difference be great enough to justify changing programs? Even if the funding is good?


texts: Possibilities of Going to Industry and back to Academia in a Different Field

texts:
I am a postdoc doing Particle Physics in a university in a small town in US midwest , and I am thinking of moving from academia to industry. But I have been facing a dilemma because I think I like academia in general and is mostly just struggling with my situation.

I was very ambitious when I was young and picked a really "bad" field. Not that I don't like it, but everyone knows that the chance of getting a faculty job in theoretical particle physics is as harsh as one can imagine. Obviously, it's a very hard subject, and I didn't get to publish much in grad school (just one first author paper). I was fortunate to get this job, but it's not a very popular school, and my current research is also going nowhere, so I think my chance of getting any faculty job is close to zero.

Additionally, my partner (whom I was in the same graduate program with but later moved to Silicon Valley) was doing quite well in industry, and the long-distance relationship is really taking a toll on us. I would like to move closer to her since in my current city there is not much she can do for her job, and there are a lot of industry opportunities in the Bay Area.

But I have been feeling very conflicted about it, because I am still very excited about research and teaching especially in physical sciences and not so much of data science jobs etc. etc. . So I just wonder if there is a way that I can switch field somehow- as I heard from friends, it's fairly easier to get a faculty job in computer science or statistics since a big number of the students just go to industry without looking back. So maybe I can apply for a job in a national lab or those big companies that have research scientist positions that allow you to publish in machine learning related subjects, and if I get good publications I can apply for faculty jobs in computer science/statistics? Is that too idealistic? Anyone on this forum has had that experience?

Or maybe I should just admit my academia career is done and just stop thinking about any academia jobs?

Another question would be, has anyone had experience applying for another PhD program when they already have a PhD under his/her belt? I know it's not a top option given the financial setbacks but I think given that I have extensive coding experience and strong math background I could probably finish a statistics/computer science PhD in a shorter amount of time, then go on to find a faculty job in that area.

Let me know of anything that would be helpful.


texts: How to effectively deal with Imposter Syndrome and feelings of inadequacy: "I've somehow convinced everyone that I'm actually good at this"

texts:
Imposter syndrome is a psychological phenomenon wherein an individual is convinced that they do not deserve the success that they have achieved despite (perhaps extensive) empirical evidence to the contrary.  Some people with imposter syndrome doubt their own ability level. For me, this usually manifests in the thought:

I've somehow convinced everyone into believing that I'm actually good at this.

followed by the horrifying notion that eventually I'll be found out and my world will collapse.
I believe that the imposter syndrome is not uncommon in academia. I'm interested to know how other people here have experienced and dealt with it.

In particular, I'm looking for actual tactics that someone might
use to combat imposter syndrome.

Why I asked this question:
Beyond the obvious reason that this is something I have struggled with for many years and only recently gotten a handle on myself, there's also some evidence that merely realizing that other people experience imposter syndrome helps fellow imposters. As a grad student, I've managed to meet a fair number of people who are in their own struggles with imposter syndrome; however, the tactics and self-trickery that have helped me don't always speak to them and perhaps someone else's methods might.


texts: Doing Math Research in a "non-mathematical" environment

texts:
I have graduated with a PhD in pure mathematics about 18 months ago and right after my graduation, I started working for a private college, teaching some low level courses such as College Algebra and Calculus. I have not done any research since my graduation but I always feel that my life is incomplete without research level mathematics. My college has a good environment in many ways but not mathematically.

But I still want to pursue my dream of doing some research in mathematics. Here are some facts about my situation:

Changing Job: For personal reasons, I do not want to quit my job, at least for now. I may consider a new job after five or ten years. But I would not mind finding a part-time job.
Funds: My college provides a very small fund for my academic usage, including purchasing books, travelling to conferences, etc.
Personnel: There are only a few mathematics teachers here and none of them is doing any research level mathematics. So I can hardly find any mathematical support in my college.
Motivation: I will not get promoted or receive any salary raise, whether I publish any paper or not. So my motivation will be from love of mathematics and (possibly) another job in the far future.
Resources 1: I do not have access to good data bases such as MathSciNet. My school library carries very limited books in my area but I can go to a good library in another university if needed.
Resources 2: There is a good university within a reasonable driving distance and there are a few mathematicians there in my field.
Time issue: During the semesters my spare time is very limited. I have more free time during the winter and summer break that I am willing to devote to mathematical research.

Any suggestions for me to do my research in this environment will be greatly appreciated.


texts:
A (master) thesis about the development and assessment of an algorithm has some limitations. The method chapter is organized as follows:

Algorithm Description
Simulated Scenarios
Evaluation method

The algorithm itself is not optimal and potential flaws exist in some modules.
The simulated scenarios were selected in order to create a representative assessment, but are not covering the entire range of possible conditions.
The evaluation method is based on a number of simplifications which might lead to faulty final results.

To make sure it doesn't seem like I'm hiding something, I would like to describe all of these limitations. Where would this fit best? In the individual sections of the Method chapter? Could I title the chapter after methods "Results and Discussion" and mention it there? Or in the conclusion?


texts: Keys to a successful postdoc in mathematics

texts:
I just finished a PhD in mathematics and am about to start a postdoc in the fall. My question is pretty straightforward (although the answer might not be), namely:

  What should one do to have a successful mathematics postdoc (apart from perhaps doing as much math as humanly possible, or more)?

I expect this will be different depending on one's goals post-postdoc, such as staying in academia vs leaving, research vs teaching focused jobs, etc.

Some possibly related questions:

What is expected of a postdoc?

Transitioning: PhD to Postdoc and Productivity


texts: High ranked college phD vs low ranked college phD, which one to choose?

texts:
Does completing phD from a highly ranked university has benefits over completing phD over a lower ranked University?
I am only talking about the college rankings and not about the advisor rankings like for eg: TAMU has better rank than UAH.


texts:
Perhaps, it's a naive question, but I'd like to have some clarification of my own thoughts on the subject. I'm curious about what is the rationale or need of 1) transferring copyright from authors of an academic artifact (paper, chapter, book, etc.) to a publication outlet and, consequently, 2) an inability for the authors to publish their work via other publication outlets.

I realize that the above is somewhat questionable from the ethical perspective of accumulating publication credit for essentially the same work. However, I think that this problem has an easy solution (which I've seen used by some people) - specifying in CVs and other materials that paper B, published in journal BB is the same (or lightly changed) as paper A, published in journal AA.

Assuming that the ultimate goal of scientific research is to enrich the human knowledge on a global scale is much more important than the above-mentioned slight ethical concerns (which can be easily alleviated), publishing scientific artifacts via multiple outlets IMHO makes quite a lot of sense from the perspective of exposing the work to a larger potential audience, which, ultimately has a positive effect on scientific research knowledge sharing and distribution.


texts: Job application with contradicting/invalid student feedbacks as supportings

texts:
I am applying for a post that requests me to provide student feedbacks. While my evaluation scores are pretty good, the feedback written by students sometime contradict each other. Some student wrote, "He is very nice and caring," while another wrote, "He is too harsh! :(" (yes, with the :( )

The contradicting one could be explained somehow, as students have different perspectives, but some feedbacks were invalid. For example, a student wrote "did not mark homework quickly," but my course did not have any homework.

I could foresee the interviewer will ask me to comment on these review—what is the best way to address them, particularly, for the invalid comments. For instance, I worry that the interviewer won't believe me when I say my course did not have homework.

(My university uses electronic feedback system so all the comments were printed on 2 A4 sheets, thus I cannot skip those invalid feedbacks.)


texts: Does my paper need to mention a hired editor?

texts: I wrote a paper intended for a conference in computer science. Before submission I hired an expert to review and edit my paper. Do I need to mention them? If so, in what way? As a collaborator? In a footnote? In a special "Thanks" section? Would it be unethical not to mention them at all?


texts: How to publish the design of a low-cost alternative for an expensive equipment?

texts:
I am a physics undergraduate. We were working on a summer research project, while this idea unexpectedly came up. We worked on it for some months and developed a low-cost alternative for one lab equipment that we were using for our project. We have performed various standard tests on our equipment, and in all of them, our equipment fares well, mostly on par with the commercially available equipment. We have done the literature review, and ours is a novel idea.
We are not much interested in patenting or marketing the product because of the huge time and resources involved. To clarify, our equipment does not have any 'breakthrough' technologies involved, it is just a handier and a more affordable version of otherwise expensive equipment, but it gets the work done.
We want to share this idea so that it may help others like us, but at the same time get us some credit for it.
We are new to this kind of research, hence do not know what to do next. Ideally, how do you go about publishing such a topic?


texts: Why does or did Elsevier make PDFs grey and therefore unfit for printing?

texts:
My university subscribes to various online journals. Sometimes I print off articles that I know I will read over and over again. (I'm all for saving paper, but some things I do prefer reading on paper. I print on recycled paper and I bind the articles, so they will last a lifetime.)

Now I tried to print an article from Advances in Mathematics (published by Elsevier) and it took me a while to figure out why part of the text was blurry: The PDF has seemingly random snippets that are not black (#000000), but in a dark grey (#231F20). On screen the difference is hardly noticeable

especially if it is text:

However, when trying to print it, the printer is trying to make it less than black, which results in blurry text:

As most other publishers manage to produce pure black PDFs, I must assume that this is intentional (it's not just "all italic text" or "all math mode symbols", the colour changes mid-sentence). The question is just why?

I doubt that this is an anti-piracy measure: surely there must be a less intrusive way of marking a PDF file digitally to record the IP from which a particular copy was downloaded. (Some journals add text like "downloaded from [this IP], [university name]", which I don't like, but at least the text itself is not blurry.)

I also doubt that it is to promote their offprint sales: Elsevier sells offprints of their articles, but only 25 copies or more and only to the original authors of the article (or someone acting on their behalf). In other words, it's not to "encourage" me to buy "quality" offprints of a single article of which I am not the author.

(Of course, it can't be to encourage purchasing of physical volumes/issues of the journal. It is entirely unreasonable to assume that researchers buy an actual volume/issue of the journal just for one article, if only because a single issue contains so many unrelated articles and researchers typically live in small offices.)

What benefit do publishers have from mutilating their PDF files?

Making a printable (= pure black) PDF would also have benefits: I'd be convinced that Elsevier is a great publishing company, publishing high-quality research papers in a good format for everyone's benefit and, as an author, would be more likely to consider publishing in Advances in Mathematics.

This also makes me wonder:

Just to check, I am allowed to print PDF files (for use in research) of online journals, right?
Am I allowed to open the PDF in some other software, modifying the file so that it prints in pure black?
Am I allowed to use another method of getting a pure black printout of the PDF (e.g. by loading a special printer colour profile that treats the dark grey as black¹)?

¹ Unfortunately, I haven't found out if this is actually possible.

Note. I have not tried to investigate this issue systematically, but I observed this in 3 articles from Advances in Mathematics (Elsevier) from around 2005–2006.


texts: Is it ethical for professors to require that students maintain a balanced and disinterested tone in their papers and presentations?

texts:
I have noticed personally a tendency toward hyperbole and dare I say anti-intellectualism within American society, along with of course a marked polarization along ideological fault lines.

Is it ethical for a professor, seeking to shape a more informed and open-minded citizenry, to dock points from students who argue a point overtly ideologically when it adds nothing to the point being addressed?

Examples I have in mind:

OK: As demonstrated by the retrospective study by Pooler, discourse in American society is beyond an unacceptably and unsustainably dangerous level of polarization along ideological, racial, and religious fault lines.
Not OK: As demonstrated by Pooler, or by turning on grandfather's favorite Fox News program, discourse...
Not OK: The progressives and their Alinksy-style tactics have succeeded in polarizing...

One more question: how do you handle edge cases, such as the following?

A gifted student submits a quality paper written in an obviously sarcastic manner without any single instance of excessive sarcasm, like the copious use of understatement, implied hypocrisy and contradiction, etc. Is that just clever?
A student submits a adequately-researched opinion paper that argues a position you find reprehensible using what appear to be sincerely-held value judgments about, say, war crimes or genocide. For instance: "When it comes to dealing with a barbaric and cruel enemy, one must have the courage and moral strength to do as the Romans did when dealing with the barbaric Carthaginians. If the women are spared, no man or boy should be found alive. In modern times, Henry Kissinger sums it up well: anything that flies on anything that moves. It may be ugly, but it is an ugliness that betrays an inner beauty."


texts: How much decision time is given for tenure-track offers

texts:
I've been applying for tenure track positions in computer science.

Recently I visited university X for an interview and they have hinted that they are likely to offer me a position after my second visit. Assuming all goes well, how much time can I expect to be given for deciding on that offer?

I have also applied to several other places where any decision won't be made within the next few months. So my worry is that I might receive an offer from X "too soon" and hence won't be able to also take into account other opportunities.


texts: Should one cite during university exams?

texts: As the title suggests, it's not a usual practice but should one do it? All I know that one can study for an exam and simply write the answers needed in order to succeed, no one tells us to include the names of authors of the ideas we memorized to write (except rarely).


texts: How to cite a paper that has compiled many others

texts: I want to reference a fact from a piece of literature. This fact has came from a literature search by the author and has used information from 150+ other sources and compiled this into a table. Now I know for most things I am to read the original paper but this literature search was part of the beginning of their research and is what they used to get all of their results from. Am I okay just to reference the main paper? Thanks.


texts: Would it be ethical for a computer science PhD student to hire an assistant (programmer)?

texts: I was wondering if it would be ethical for a PhD student in the field of Computer Science to hire a programmer in an specific domain; so that he could focus more on the algorithmic or mathematical part of the thesis. Would that be something ethical to do? Should the PhD student include this assistant as a co-author in the articles?


texts: thesis: a plethora of technical parameters, how to present it concisely?

texts:
I'm writing my masters thesis at the moment. The topic of my thesis is the evaluation of one classification algorithm. Due to its technical nature I have to give a lot of context for each experimental setup. Something like the choice of signals to be classified for example:

The signals tested in this experiment were fsk signals with the following technical parameters:

Shift/Symbolrate

500/75
500/150
500/200
500/250
350/150
350/75 Each of the signals contained 20 header information and 80% payload

500/75

Due to the thesis containing about 20 experiments of various sorts, I'm not sure on how to best present my information concisely.

Would you try and make a subsection for each experiment, use a table or present it in plain text?


texts:
I submitted a paper (Privacy-Preserving Smart Parking System Using Blockchain and Private Information Retrieval) on arXiv two weeks ago, and whenever I search on the paper using
google scholar, it shows me another paper (mobile information retrieval) which
published in 2017.

Could you please help to fix this problem?


texts: How do I know how well I am progressing in my PhD?

texts:
A striking difference between being a student following courses and a PhD student doing research is the independence and lack of rigid structures such as homework and exams. I started a PhD in biophysics in the Netherlands a bit over a year ago and so far it has been a good experience. However, I found it hard to gauge how well I am doing and whether worries about my progress are justified.

My supervisor is supportive and provides frequent feedback. Despite the clear benefit of getting feedback in person over getting it through a graded exam, personal discussions can have a subjective feel to it, which makes it less clear cut than getting a mark. As students we were used to getting seemingly objective, quantifiable measures of our progress. The academic equivalent would be papers, but my supervisor has stated clearly that he goes for quality above quantity and as a result there will likely few if any papers until perhaps the final year of my PhD (also because we are a very new group). I also support his vision of not focusing on churning out papers but on doing good quality research.

How do PhD students and young researchers know how well on track they are? Let's say that the objective is to finish the PhD on time and continue doing research (in either academia or industry, not necessarily on a faculty position).


texts: Will I need to retake my written qualifying exams?

texts:
I am early in the process of considering whether or not to return to a PhD program in mathematics.  The program consists of three parts:  a set of written exams (usually after year 1), an oral exam focused around the topics of one's specialty (year 2 or 3), and finally a thesis/thesis defense (year 4 or 5).

I stopped this process before the second and third parts, but in the process I earned an MS in Mathematics.  I'd like to return to my original university and finish what I started, but I'm hoping to avoid retaking the written examinations.

There are two arguments.

First, that I be required to retake the written exams:  It's been nearly a decade (that's right!) since I took them last, it would be justified re-preparation, and I would learn a lot by studying again to pass them.  After all, 9 years is a long time and the previous results shouldn't 'last' that long.

Second, the I be allowed to pick up where I left off.  Nine years is a long time, but it should be considered to be an extended leave of absence.  I have already proven myself as capable of passing these tests, as evidenced by my MS from the same university.  While I couldn't pass the present day equivalent versions of these exams (without much study), neither could many graduate students like me who are further along in their study.  Also, supposing such tests have expiry, what would the year-length of the expiry be?  Wouldn't any choice of length for an expiry be fairly arbitrary?

Given this situation, what can I expect?  Are there known universities with and without expiry on such tests?

What would be equitable here?  Most importantly what arguments can be made that I retake and pass these exams despite pertinent regulation?


texts: Are Mathematics graduate programs open to admitting a student out of high school with graduate work?

texts:
During my high school career, I had the unique opportunity to take multiple mathematics courses at my local university, and after graduating, I took two graduate level math courses: Measure theory, and a class on topological manifolds. This was a great experience, but it has left me in a shifty situation.

I asked the department head if I could be admitted into the program since I took a full time course load receiving a B+ and A respectively, but it was denied due to the fact that I did not have a bachelors. The only option given to me at this university would be to enroll in the undergraduate program and take graduate courses.

I would be open to that idea, but it has multiple pitfalls. First of all, I am not guaranteed any research opportunities, which view as highly restrictive on my growth as a mathematician. In addition, I am not guaranteed funding opportunities like I would be in the graduate school. This in combination with the fact that I would have to take 50% more credit hours of course work would mean I would end up having to take out more loans than I would like. This is all very disappointing for me.

Instead of enrolling in courses again, this semester I began independent study in algebra and differential topology using Aluffi's and Lee's book respectively on the subjects. In addition, I have been exposing myself to more theoretical physics, such as Yang-Mills theories and Supersymmetry. Because these subjects are capturing my interest as well, it seems natural that I take my studies towards Algebraic Geometry and String Theories. I really want to get involved with a program to help enable me with my studies, but I do not think an undergraduate program would be adequate. For those of you who are still reading, how can I work towards getting into a program which would enable my studies an empower me with supervised research?

EDIT

I did not think my undergraduate work would to be too relevant, since most of it was not rigorous; that is, calculation based. I took undergraduate courses in ODE's, PDE's, probability theory, analysis, mulitvariable calculus, and linear algebra. Unfortunately, I did not do well in the ODE, calculus, and linear algebra courses because they were during the summer, and I had not yet acclimated to the required amount of work. In this specific program, my course work is nearly equivalent to a bachelors degree, sans single variable calculus and a class in discrete math.


texts: Contradiction on indexing between the journal and MJL

texts: Parallel Computing journal, according to their website, indexed in SCI. However, master journal list (MJL) indicates that the journal is indexed in SCI expanded. Is it possible that the journal moved from SCI expanded to SCI but MJL has not update the information?


texts: Professor expects me to attend a conference. I can't afford to go,even with 50% funding

texts:
I am a first year Ph.D. student. During my master's (which was in a different university), a professor (call him M) and I worked on a paper on banking regulations. Apart from the single idea, all of the paper and results were done by me. We worked on it for a couple of months and tried to submit our work at many journals.  All of them rejected it.  Finally, it has been accepted recently at a conference. This conference is not major league but niche.

Prof. M wants me to attend, but I do not have funding. Initially, he expected me to spend from my own pocket for travel and registration (around USD 2,000). Being a graduate student and living in one of the expensive cities, I am living hand-to-mouth. So, I informed him politely that I am not keen to attend due to my inability to fund myself.  He asked me to apply to funding agencies, or else he is willing to fund 50% of my expenses.

The fact of the matter is that I cannot afford even 50% of the travel expenses.  Out of nowhere, this conference comes up and it further cripples my shoestring budget.

How should I proceed?  I am really hesitant to discuss my financial shortcomings with Prof. M, but if I don't, he'll assume that I can afford the travel.


texts: How to foster gender diversity as an organizer

texts:
I am part of the organizing committee for a workshop in a STEM field that historically has problems with underrepresentation of women (and other groups, but let me focus on women in this question). I would like to help foster an inclusive environment at the workshop and more generally in my department and am looking for suggestions for how to proceed.

The topic of the workshop is slightly out of my field of expertise and I do not have a long list of qualified speakers (of any gender) that I can offer suggestions from.

I suspect that the senior member of the committee will take the attitude that he is "gender blind" and chooses speakers to invite based only on their quality but that because of implicit biases, the invitee list he draws up will be something like 90% male. I do not think he will be particularly open to a direct conversation about gender and underrepresentation.

I saw this question which was asking whether preferential invitation of female speakers is normal; I am instead asking how to foster diversity (perhaps by preferential invitation or by other means).


texts: How can I email a CS professor looking for Phd. students?

texts:
This year I will submit about 16 aplications to different universities for graduate studies at the US. However, I found that there are new professors looking for Phd. students. So as a foregin student with only a bachelor of science in computer science, how should I approach to a professor looking for students?. My background is the following:

CS major at the first university of my country
A research thesis
3 research papers in the field of the professor's interest. (not ground breaking, the first one is in a local congress the second is in an international conference indexed by springer's LNCS and IEEE, the third is also indexed in springer.)
3.0 GPA
I will take the GRE and TOEFL the nexts weeks

After all, I read 2 papers of this professor an I would like to be his Phd. student. If he would like to know me I will take a trip to the USA just to talk with him. How can I email to this professor and let him know I am an international enthusiastic stundent that wants to extend his work.


texts: How can I make my work available to the community, when it is in conference proceedings that are not online and self archiving is not allowed?

texts:
I have two articles published in a conference proceeding which are not accessible on the Internet. The publisher published three selected articles in SCI journals, but the rest of the articles are not available online on any kind of platform except for the list of titles, which was published at the time of the conference.

I want to self-archive the article in a public library (Arxiv etc.) but the conference publisher refused and said that the copyrights belong to the publisher and I cannot make it available on any other platform.

In the given situation, how can I make my work available to the research community?


texts: How to publish superseding results without creating enemies

texts:
While working on a research paper with a coauthor, I found an unpublished paper in arXiv and discovered out that the technique we developed in our paper can be used to improve a result in the unpublished one. Specifically, we can design a superior algorithm to solve the same problem solved in the arXiv paper.
If we publish our results, then the author of that arXiv paper will have a hard time publishing his paper, since some journals will not consider his algorithm once a better one is available.
Of course, we cite the arXiv paper and there is no law against publishing improved results, but this may harm the author of the arXiv paper. Is there a way to publish the new result without creating enmity?

One potential option could be to combine the work and submit a joint paper. However, the papers do not "mix" very well since our paper is mainly about a different technique - the improved algorithm is only a usage example of it. Combining the papers will create a very large and inconsistent paper.

Another option is to wait until his paper is accepted for publication and only then publish our paper with the improved result. However, it seems unscientific to withhold results that we already know.


texts: 10 minute presentation for a PhD interview

texts:
I got invited for an interview for a PhD and they asked me to prepare a short presentation of ten minutes about an aspect of a previous research and what skills it gave me to tackle this phd project.
So I get the idea but my problem is about the "aspect". What do they mean by an aspect ? Can it be just the methods used for my research or should it be really something more specific ? All the methods I used seem important to me...

Thank you for any help or tips !


texts: PhDs in the arts - what exactly do they do?

texts:
I met someone who was doing a PhD in dance.  What exactly do those people do?  Do they do research in dance?  Conduct experiments in dance?  Prove theorems about dance?  Do they become dance professors when they graduate?

Do they mostly focus on the history of dance, and compare different styles of dancing?


texts: Can I ask for a "general" letter of recommendation?

texts:
I'm a first-year undergraduate finishing up a course that I've done very well in with a professor whom I have a great relationship with. I'd like to ask him for a letter of recommendation, but it's not "for" anything in particular. Rather, I'd like to have it "on reserve" so that I can use it whenever I need letters of rec (internships, jobs, or eventually grad school, although hopefully by then I'd have professors to ask other than this one).

Is this kind of thing normal, or are rec letters supposed to be tailored to specific applications? What exactly would happen once the letter of rec was written? I assume I wouldn't be able to look at it.


texts: Multiple (two) undergraduate degrees in Phd application

texts:
This year I will apply to graduate school in Statistic. My situation is:
I obtained first Undergraduate degree in computer science with very bad GPA (due to not focus on study). After that I worked as software engineer for one year.
Then I returned to another university and earn a bachelor degree in Math and statistic. This time I had very good record with highest GPA among math department and many research experiences.

Now my question is: Do I need to include my first degree in CS in application or I just need to use my Math degree?


texts: How do I use lemmas that are probably already proven, but including the proof myself is quicker than looking up a source?

texts:
Suppose I have proven several lemmas during my work that are neither original nor significant (these results were needed for applied engineering/CS research, not mathematics). I believe that if I spend enough time going through articles in minor journals/theses in theoretical CS/applied mathematics, eventually, I will find the statements/proofs of these results. However, it seems that finding these results may take more time than it took to prove the results.
I am curious whether there is a chance that not providing citations could be perceived as plagiarism in one form or another. Would it suffice to state that I do not claim that the results are original without providing a citation?


texts: How to introduce a "general" area into discussion section

texts:
I am presently writing up a PhD with a very imminent deadline (next week!), so please go fairly easy. My thesis is of a technical nature.

In each chapter I have a results subsection which is divided into subsubsections (I'm using Lyx/Latex) for each topic within that chapter.
For example, I vary a bunch of parameters within a chapter, and have a results subsection for each parameter.
This is mirrored in the discussion section; within each discussion subsection I have subsubsections for each relevant result.

This has resulted in my discussion subsections being essentially more elaborate versions of the results subsections.

I'd like to have a more general area within each discussion subsection - after the individual subsubsections - that can discuss things more cohesively.

I'm not sure the best way to do this - another subsubsection for "General Discussion" is a little clunky. I don't have time to rewrite everything so am looking for a solution that I can add rather than rework.

This may simply be a question of finding an appropriate subsubsection name, or perhaps there are better ways to divide my discussion up without formalising it into subsubsections. I was thinking perhaps I could use some kind of break - like a few lines of empty space after the last subsubsection, any ideas would be very well received.

E.g. I have this:

Chapter N
- Methodology
- Results
* Variation of X
* Variation of Y
- Discussion
* Variation of X
* Variation of Y
* ?? How to discuss results of both X and Y


texts: Create something impactful or just generalize results?

texts:
I am a second year Pure Maths PhD student in Asia. My research interest lies in functional analysis, particularly Banach Space Theory. My aim is to work in academia as professor.

Recently my PhD advisor told me that it is not good for academic career if I just simply generalize some results. For example, if someone has done A+, then I should not just consider doing A++, as this kind of research very hard to continue.

Instead, I should create something on my own and try to investigate it. This will make my research more doable and more lively.

Now I am a bit loss. I know that if I can create something significant then of course it is a good thing and it will impact my future academic career. But I know that it is not easy in research to just create something impactful, especially I left 2 years only for my PhD.

I am not sure whether I should follow my advisor, that is, spend a bulk of my time to think of something completely new , or should I stick with my original plan, that is, try to generalize some results?


texts: Consequences of university losing its accreditation on admission for further graduate education?

texts:
I graduated 10 years ago from a school that just lost its accreditation.

What kind of consequences can I expect from this?

In particular about that affecting admission chances for further education. Although my university wasn’t a top one, I though that my 4.0 GPA would allow me, in the future, to do a top PhD program.

But now my former school is closing down. There are, so far, no plans to try to resurrect it or reapply for accreditation. It will just cease to exist and transcripts are handled by another institution.

Do you know similar cases or have specific evidence on the matter?


texts: Is checking the format of a paper an expected part of the reviewing process?

texts:
I have some papers to review and I am wondering whether I should do an in-depth inspection over the whole paper format? I see nothing major but there might be some tiny format errors here and there..

  Does the organizing committee expect reviewers to check submissions
  against the conference format?


texts: Post Doc referees related to one another

texts:
I recently completed a PhD and I'm now applying for post docs, so I need to provide references with these applications. To me it seems natural to provide both my PhD supervisor and master's thesis supervisor as a reference, in addition to one external professor who knows my work. I will of course ask them for permission in advance.

However, in my case the PhD and MSc advisors have a close family relationship. I worked with each of them separately as well as jointly with the three of us. Is it appropriate to include both of them as referees to one application or list them both as references on my CV?


texts: Can open-source software be peer-reviewed and published?

texts:
My colleague and I have developed a software tool and intend to release it open-source.

This tool is specifically for tasks in my field but we think it would be helpful for the wider community. Our institution will permit us to release it provided we get appropriate credit.

Thus, we wish to publish it in peer-review. Is peer-review publication of domain-specific software available? If so, what is required to publish it?

In this case we intend to publish the method and tool on it's own merits without supporting data or an application.


texts: When submitting a paper, should I match the keywords to MeSH terms?

texts:
I understand the importance MeSH  had in the past when google scholar (and similar tools) did not exist.

However, with all the websites that enhance your searches, like Mendeley, Academia.edu, and Google is there any reason to stick to MeSH terms? Or should I use keywords at my will?

For example, suppose I want to submit a paper that discusses some theoretical elements of structural equation model (a group of statistical methods), however there is no MeSH term that quite represents that. The closest one, would be "linear models". In this case, should I use a created keyword like "structural equation model", or sould I stick to "linear models" wich is more general, but is listed by pubmed.com?


texts: Ethics of making students purchase lecture notes

texts:
I have a professor who has published his lecture notes in the form of a book. The only way to get access to his lecture notes is to purchase them from an off-campus bookstore. To me, this seems like a highly unethical, if not illegal, practice. Shouldn't students have access to lecture notes as part of the tuition fees that they have paid?

A common question seems to be whether we are actually required to purchase the notes. To clarify, he routinely skips teaching chapters in class and asks them to read them from the notes on our own. So yes, we have to buy the notes if we want to be taught the entire syllabus.

Edit: The notes are different from the textbook. The textbook is not really needed, while the notes are fully needed. I'm seeing people confusing the two and claiming that many professors prescribe their own textbooks for the courses. My question is to whether access to notes should be free and universal for every student in the lecture.


texts:
I will be graduating with a Master of Science degree from a German University of Applied Sciences in March 2019. My goal is to develop myself more towards research and development, and I want to apply for a PhD in Finland. Specifically, in the areas of technical computer science and industrial engineering because of my educational background.

Does anyone have some advice for me regarding the application process, funding and when best to start applying?


texts:
I recently submitted a paper for publication and received feedback that the paper was too complex. It contained two relatively independent concepts. The material would best be served by splitting it into two papers and submitting them independently.

I have to say I agree with this editorial analysis.

However, I am now stuck as to what to do. The first concept can stand on its own, but it is largely useless without the second one. The second one has to assume the first one exists so it can build upon it.

But, as I understand it, for a journal (or a good one, anyway) to publish an article, its research must be not only sound but properly justified as well. Only, I can't justify the research in the first article without referring to the second one, and I can't present the research in the second one without using the first one as a basis.

To further complicate the matters, I'm working at an intersection, and the two articles would probably work best if submitted to different journals in somewhat different fields.

How do I format my abstracts, introductions and conclusions to pass this message across and improve my chances of acceptance?


texts: I feel like my teacher is disrespectful towards me in the most subtle, Japanese way possible. What should I do?

texts:
It's hard to pin down, but every time I ask a question in Japanese class, my teacher tends to do this long pause. Sometimes she'll look around the class as if to say "What does anyone else think?" and sometimes she'll say that explicitly, and get someone else to answer it. Other times she'll answer the question, but in a flat short tone that gives me the impression I was stupid for asking it. There was one time when she asked the class "Does anyone have a question?" and I slowly put my hand up, she said "Of course you do." That made me feel humiliated and awful, and I've been reluctant to participate or ask questions since, but of course, I need to understand the lessons.

It may seem petty, but anyone else who asks a question gets a different response; she always responds straight away, or considers the question openly; she doesn't defer the question, pause, or give any sort of flat response. It all makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong. I don't know if I'm asking too many questions, or stupid questions, or if I'm being impolite somehow, if I've missed some term of address (I always address her as 先生 or say すみません.) Despite all that I've said, when I talk to her in person, in her office, she's personable, empathetic, kind and helpful. I don't know why she's so deferential, apparently just to me, in class.

I don't know what I can do about this. Would it be inappropriate to raise this issue with her in person? I don't like the impression of me it would communicate to her ("I feel like you're not being nice to me in class" comes off the wrong way,) but at the same time, I really don't like participating in class because of the way she acts every time I try, and I don't know what to do to fix that.

EDIT: I'm British and from a British university, and my teacher is Japanese.


texts:
I have contacted a professor (in Europe) informally and asked for a PhD position. She answered in positive manner and asked for a CV.

What should I include?
Do people in academia care about the usual 2-page restriction?


texts: How to engage students in oral presentations?

texts: Paper-based exams are not fully representative of knowledge, and it is good to consider oral presentations of students as a factor for the final grade to some extent. This is somehow the case in graduate courses, where the number of students is lesser, but how to follow this strategy for crowded classroom of inexperienced undergraduate students. I mean a classroom of 50+ size with students who do not have experience in scientific discussion!


texts: Should I publish findings not from my field?

texts:
I have some findings (new but nothing ground-breaking) from my master thesis in the field of A which I could publish if I spent more time on the topic. However, my PhD and future specialization is going to be in B. So spending time in A and particularly trying to publish in the field may be a distraction from the B. When applying for postdocs and tenured positions, is any researcher/application assessor going to appreciate my publications from a different field?

I know one mathematician from Princeton. He comes to workshops and always solves some problem. He would never publish it (even if nobody else did) because it is a distraction from what he is doing. Then other participants write his ideas and publish it with his name as coauthors. On the other hand, my personal tutor told me that any publications are good as they demonstrate the researcher's independence and capability. Hence it seems, that unless a person is a top researcher in the field, publishing in other fields is not a distraction, but a plus.


texts: Can one or two spelling mistakes in a statement of purpose hurt your chances for graduate school?

texts: I am wondering can spelling one or two wrong words in SOP hurt chance of getting accepted to graduate school? There might be a mistake about spelling one of my professor's name wrong.


texts: Can you still distinguish yourself at a second-tier grad school?

texts:
I have noticed while reading CVs of professors in STEM fields that universities only hire up. First-tier and second-tier universities seem to only recruit professors from first-tier PhD programs, third tier universities only hire from top and second tier PhD programs, and so on. It seems like it is very unlikely for anyone graduating from a university that's not first-tier to have an academic career. I can think of a few explanations:

Maybe everyone wants to hire the first-tier "brand." Hiring committees could be too busy to evaluate the relative merits of their candidates, choosing to trust in brand names instead.
There could be something wrong with second-tier PhD programs and below that cause them to produce candidates unsuitable for tenure track. Maybe there is something that certain universities instill in everyone who goes there that causes both increased output when they are there, and a long and successful career afterwards.
Perhaps most students bright enough to produce an impressive amount of research in grad school are bright enough to produce an impressive amount of research in undergrad. In that case, most of the good researchers get admitted to top-tier programs, making it unsurprising that virtually every tenured professor came from one. In this theory, research potential is an innate characteristic that universities have little effect on.

If the first dominates, then I should not bother getting a PhD unless I can go to a top-tier university, or unless I think it will boost an industrial career. If the second dominates, I would still want to go to the best school possible, but it would not be completely pointless to go to a second-tier institution; maybe hard work could close the gap. If the third explanation is true, the university's prestigiousness hardly matters at all, and I should choose based on factors like how interested I am in the research being conducted there.
So, in the light of these guesses, do you think it is possible for someone to distinguish themselves at a second-tier institution through hard work, high research output, and maybe a really good thesis - or is the second-to-first tier gap impossible to jump?


texts: Who, and how to write when withdrawing a submission before notification?

texts:
I have recently submitted a paper to a top notch conference. Only then, I have realized that another good conference has announced a call for papers recently.

My problem is that the notification deadline for the first conference is after the submission deadline of the second one. Given the chances of acceptance, my best course would be to withdraw the submitted paper, and then submit it to the second conference. However, I do not want to just withdraw the paper. I would rather send an email to the committee, stating the reason, and apologizing for the inconvenience.

My question is, which committee (among general co-chairs, technical co-chairs, advisory committee, steering committee etc.) should I send the email, and roughly what should I write so that this situation gets less cringey for everyone?


texts: How do I continue my PhD research project as a Postdoc?

texts:
I was wondering if I could get some advice about how to go about continuing my PhD project as a Postdoc. I'm actually from the UK not the US but I think that your answers and advice will still be applicable and really helpful.

So here's a bit of background about myself: I really enjoyed my Plant Science PhD, and even though I came out of it with more questions than when I went in, I managed to get two papers published in two very respectable journals (both of which are still cited today). At the time I wanted to get experience working in other fields, so after my PhD I found a Postdoc in a different research area of Plant Sciences; however, I didn't really enjoy this research area and due to unforeseen circumstances that were out of my control, I came out of it with only one paper, which I am still trying to finish. At the moment I'm employed in Science Services so for the first time in years, I am in a position where I can be choosy about my next job.

What I would like to do is apply for funding to continue my PhD project because I would like to get back into this area of research; I think with the new technologies that are available I could make a lot of interesting discoveries. My PhD supervisor has since retired and has given me his blessing to approach other researchers, and I assume I have to do this before I apply for funding.  Is this correct?

I have no idea how to go about this and if it is even feasible, so any advice you can give me would be great.

Many thanks,
Kate


texts: Can I write a template just like the Elsevier LaTeX template?

texts:
A scientific  institute wants me to write a LaTeX template just like the articles which are published on the ScienceDirect website, in other words, the institute wants a template like the following:

Is it OK to do so with regard to copyright issues?


texts: Could lecturing from a textbook constitute copyright infringement?

texts: If a course instructor closely follows a textbook when delivering a lecture (e.g. even listing the subsection they're discussing) could they be in violation of copyright law? What if they upload the lecture to YouTube? I'm particularly interested in the context of the United States.


texts: How difficult it is to get a TT in the U.S. after leaving the country?

texts:
I completed my higher ed in the U.S. (from B.A. to Ph.D.) and have been in this country for 12 years. I received a TT offer from a teaching university ( I didn't enjoy it but appreciated the opportunity), but the visa thing didn't work out. At this point, I'll have to leave the country because I'm at the end of my OPT.
I received a job offer from my home country. The university itself is an English-teaching institute with a decent teaching load, and they are pushing for research. As far as I know, my future colleagues are most foreigners  (Korean, American, German, etc.). The pay is decent as well.
Therefore, I have two questions:

is it still possible for me to get a TT position in the U.S. after leaving?
will my work experience outside the U.S. be counted/valued?

I have been interviewing at different universities, but my choices of the school were more out of desperation than what I wanted. The school that I loved most had to pause their search due to COVID, and I missed more than half of the applications because the former employer didn't inform me about the situation until March. After many hard and tearing days, I am wondering if I should take the job offer back home to continue doing what I do with much better support to do research. But I fear that I won't be back in the states after leaving here.
I'd be glad to know your experience or suggestions! Thank you in advance!


texts:
Open book exams are exams that are taken in a classroom, with a limited amount of time, but where the student can consult notes, textbooks, and any kind of written material. They are usually meant to test problem-solving abilities and the capacity to apply the existing theory rather than memorization.

It seems natural to allow the use of e-books in these tests as well as their dead-tree equivalents, since a student should be able to use their preferred medium to study and may have bought the e-book version rather than the paper one. Also, ecology and save the forests.

However, many modern e-book readers have 3G or Wi-Fi networking, and this would make it easy to cheat by getting external help (which is, of course, not allowed). It is not simple to make sure that this connectivity stays off during the exam: you can't just remove the SIM card and everything is ok.

  Is there a solution other than "live with the cheating" and "forbid e-book readers overall"?


texts: How to work with teammates who shoot down ideas in order to avoid work?

texts:
I am working with two fellow graduate students on implementing some algorithm for data extraction. We are in the mid-phase of our project and we still have roughly a month (20 days to be precise) to go before it is due.

However, recently I have been confronted with a pattern of negative, and frankly quite arrogant behavior.

Whenever I suggest something that can help out with the project, they will quickly shoot down the idea. It has became more and more apparent that they do this in order to avoid having to work on, or research the idea.

For example, our algorithm is very slow on a standard CPU, I told them that the algorithm may run hundreds of time faster on a GPU. Obviously we do not have a GPU, so the team will need to contact people to find an efficient GPU, which is something that is available in our school, and also figure out how to run the algorithm on it.

The idea was immediately shot down, at first they told me it was impossible to get speed up (this was at the very early stage of the project and they were not familiar with how a GPU works). Eventually, they realized not only you can get speedup, but also a significant amount. When I made the request again, they told me that it is probably not going to worth it. How can they know if we have not tried?

This came up again just today. I told them that the data extraction model is not very efficiently stored, that is, the data structure storing the model does not have a very desirable insertion and retrieval time. The way of resolving this issue in my opinion is by finding a new data structure. They immediately shot down the idea and said to me that no such thing existed. I looked online and found a blog that, in a very detailed manner, lists more than 5 ways of improving on our method of storing the model. Fine, then I asked them how would they solve the issue. They told me just to deal with it until the end of the project - out of sight, out of mind. I am afraid that when we run our algorithm on the real data set (which is 100x larger than the experimental one we are currently working with), we will again run into this storage issue and we would be out of time then, at which time they will probably say something like, "who knew, too bad!".

At this stage I am beginning to wonder if we can efficiently work together. I get the feeling that they are basically telling me:

go at it alone, if you succeed, then we will free-load on the overall success of the project without having wasted our precious time, and if you fail, then you should have listened to us.

Where should I go from here?


texts: Gifting co-authorship if the topic of research was suggested by my boss?

texts:
This is an update of a query that I had asked few months ago: Co-authorship just because a Professor provides me the employment?
In fact I have even adopted some of the suggestions given by @Magicsowon there.

I was advised to make the question to the point, and not include any extra information. This is why I am posting it afresh here with only relevant information and also some new information as the situation has evolved since then.

I have worked as a postdoc in a European university for 6 months. The topic of my research was suggested by my boss and his collaborator, Prof. M. That was their contribution. After that, I went through more than 50-60 papers to find the right paper to build my work on. I have developed the theory and I have finished the computational part. Now, I am writing the paper.

A good analogy would be, it was like going to a conference and there one hears about an interesting problem that deserves serious investigation.

While developing the theory, I sent many drafts containing my derived equations to my main collaborator (my boss), but he hardly commented on them, none useful feedback from him. I do not think he had even read them seriously. Considering that a postdoc is essentially an unsupervised position, and the potential of co-authorship dispute in the future, I sent him a couple of emails asking him to help me with certain aspect of the theory and computational aspect. But, he did not provided any help to me. He had a regular comment during every meeting we had,

"I am aware, I should more actively contribute to the work, but as you can see I am busy with meetings. And I am sure, you can fix this problem."

Also, he did not gave me sufficient freedom to collaborate with other researchers. So, having no help coming from anywhere, I resigned from the job. I had implicitly mentioned to him as well as to the head of the dept. in my resignation email that I had worked all by myself during the 6 months stay at their department, and also that I can do the remaining work by myself. No objection was raised on that from anyone.

Now, I am writing the paper, and my plan is:

1) Write the paper as a single author under the affiliation of the former department where I had finished almost 40% of the work. I cannot gift co-authorship for my hard work of 6-months to anyone as I did not received any major/minor help from anyone. I have checked, this is consistent with the Vancouver recommendations.

2) I will acknowledge my boss and Prof. M in the acknowledgement section of the paper for suggesting me the topic of research. Note: I had just met Prof. M in a conference for 30 minutes or so, we had general discussion about the topic of research. No specific discussion regarding the work I did, no mail correspondence between him and me. However if I am not wrong, he is the actual brain behind the project, and I had tried to visit him and collaborate with him closely. But my boss did not facilitated that either. Also, note that my boss and Prof. M have worked together in most of their papers in the last 2-3 years. And my boss is the director of a research unit in which Prof. M is a member too.

3) I will also acknowledge the research unit of my boss for funding the research.

Is it fair, honest and sufficient? If the paper is published, can he claim authorship by writing to the editor? I am pretty sure he can almost show nothing about the evidence of the contribution other than suggesting the topic of research, if asked.

And the traces of this problem have off shoot to become another problem. See, Acknowledgment of funding and adding an affiliation in exchange of permission to use experimental data?


texts:
I was invited to a video conference meeting by my new head to discuss an administrative task that they want me to help on.  Someone from the dean's office was also at the meeting.
I barely got a word in edgewise, because the meeting continued for about 90 minutes with each of the other people yelling at the other, with various accusations of lying or inadequate work.
From my perspective, both sides had valid points.
This is the second meeting I've been at where the head has cast aspersions on the dean's office.
I intend to perform the administrative task to the best of my ability.  However, I am unsure how to proceed should this poor relationship between the head and the dean's office get in the way.
Does anyone have any suggestions?


texts: University rank/stature - How much does it affect one's career post-Ph.D?

texts:
What I'm trying to understand is, to what degree does the status/rank of the University (where one completes his/her Ph.D) matter while shaping his/her career after graduation? I would like to know the weight given to one's school in both the following cases:

While applying for post-docs/faculty positions in academia
While applying to industrial research labs

For instance, I've read on some forums (I can't locate the link now) that while considering prospective applications for tenure-track faculty positions, very few Universities accept a candidate who has completed his/her Ph.D from a lower ranked school having a lesser "brand" value, irrespective of the fact whether he/she has published equally original work as his/her counterpart from an Ivy league college. How much truth is in this statement? It would be really great if someone already in academia, either as a newly-accepted faculty or someone on the Faculty Hiring committee could share their experiences/statistics on this regard. I'm simply interested to know the answer, without commenting at all on whether such a practice is justifiable.

Similarly, what about recruitment to internationally acclaimed research labs (like IBM T.J.Watson lab or Microsoft research lab) - what importance do they place on the pedigree of a candidate's college, before taking into consideration what they published ?

I'm personally interested in answers related to the field of Computer Science (theory), but the question is applicable to any prospective grad student in any discipline in my opinion. Feel free to share your personal experiences post-Ph.D in detail, as that would give me (and future viewers of this question) about what its like to carve a career once you are out of school!


texts: Is it common in any other first world countries besides the US to work while attending university?

texts:
I have an old family friend in Japan (born and raised). We were recently talking about academics as he is in his 2nd year of Uni and I have 1 B.S and soon to have another with the goal of moving on to a Masters this fall.

While talking he asked if I "Work or study" as he knew I completed my first degree but was unaware I started my second. When I mentioned that I both go to Uni and work a corporate job in my industry he was, no joke, speechless.

He couldn't believe someone could both attend a Uni and work at the same time without failing classes. He told me that people only work part time jobs very sparingly during school semesters and then work more during the summer but can't even begin to believe working in a corporate job while still studying.

I don't know too many people that attend my Uni and don't either have 2 part-time jobs or a full time jobs (except for those with free rides or very generous parents).

Many people I know from other countries (I try to culture myself) ask me the same question "Do you work or study?" and they get very confused when I tell them "both" and explain my situation.

Is this only common in the US? I've talked to people from Singapore, Japan, Canada, Greece, and the UK and they all can't believe working and going to Uni at the same time.


texts: I have turned myself into an incompetent researcher. I have screwed up my career, now I would like some advice how I can recover?

texts:
I hope I am not at the end of the road. I had flunked advanced engineering mathematics and applied mechanics during my undergrad second year. Though I scored decently in the reexamination during the subsequent semester, I never recovered from the blow to the self-esteem from flunking first and last time in my education.
I liked applied mathematics and mechanics, though I was never good at it. I was very good at experimental mechanics but I hated the manual process of sample preparation, lack of theoretical studies. When it came to choose a research field during master's degree, I chose computational mechanics. I figured, though I might not be good at this, I can always learn and not repeat my undergrad debacle.
My error was, not taking enough courses. My grad school courses were not mathematically rigorous enough and were quite superficial. I did not take the harder courses as I feared failure and repeat of my undergrad flunking.
My PhD advisor, committee did not force me to take the rigorous and advanced courses as I had a PhD topic that did not involve much rigorous mathematical framework development. I did not ask help and guidance from professors due to my social ineptitude, worrying about what they would think about me.
I should have taken the 3 graduate level courses when I had the opportunity. I believe, I would have had more confidence, had done better PhD research.
Now, I am doing postdoc in same topic as my PhD. I am searching for postdoc positions and industry Jobs, I find requirement for candidates with rigorous research experience and graduate level coursework. I have none. I have published papers in non-rigorous journals. I am still afraid of mathematics and numerical methods.
I have screwed up my career, now I would like some advice how I can recover? I should have done things differently 5 years ago. I am old now, and inept at my field of study. I have been trying to self study for the past few years, I still suck big time. I should have stayed in experimental mechanics research. I was natural in it. Computational mechanics is not my cup of tea. I bit off more than I can chew.


texts: Can you cite a workshop or conference in a paper?

texts:
Some time ago, I went to a workshop/conference on the specific topic in my field. It was a small event, with not proceedings published. I would like to discuss it in an upcoming paper, in order to state that:

  it was discussion with X and Y, spurred by the workshop on Z, which initiated this new direction of research.

in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due. Now, I could leave it in the text, or cite it as “private communication from X at Z”, or cite it directly in my references:

  Workshop on Z, Big City, Country (2012)

Journal style doesn't say anything of this, but generally calls for references with superscript numbers. So, what is the best option to cite a whole workshop/conference? (and not a specific presentation)


texts:
If I publish a Master's thesis, does that count as a "publication" (ie protect me from other people publishing my work as their own?)

If I think I can get a paper out of my thesis, am I forfeiting this possibility by sending copies of my thesis around to other people to look at?


texts: Leaving undergraduate schools attended off grad applications

texts: Grad applications usually list all undergraduate coursework. Is it necessary to list all schools attended, even ones I did not graduate from?


texts: PhD programs: select a very specific one in order to narrow down my area of interest? or a more general one and specialise as a postdoc?

texts:
I have perhaps a common doubt, a common conundrum. I'm an MS graduate, and my goal is to become a researcher in a very specific area in biotechnology, which is a branch of neurotechnology.

I'm currently looking for a PhD degree, and by searching through programs at different institutions, I have found that the field that I want to work in is in fact quite new, so not many institutions are currently doing research in it. This leaves me with only very well known institutions like Caltech, Yale, and Johns Hopkins that are working in my field of interest.

I do not consider myself especially above average but I'm a very self-driven person. Even so, I know it will be hard get a scholarship to study in one of these very well known institutions.

So my question is, what is most advisable?

To spend one or two years studying in order to get the scholarship (and I might not get it), and focus my research into this one narrow specialism early on;
or, to enter a less demanding program, less expensive, still focussed on biotechnology, but not at all that narrow, perhaps in the Netherlands or Switzerland, and specialise later in my career.


texts: What to do when PhD is becoming hell due to non-cooperation from supervisor?

texts:
I have a nightmare adviser, who is also the head of the Department. The problems are:

he has too many students,
never reads my chapters,
he is trying his best to sabotage TA or RA opportunities that are my only source of funding,
he discourages me from attending conferences, and
refuses to introduce me to anyone in his network.

The worst thing is that I am an international student in the social sciences in Germany where professors have too much power, and there is no system of redress.

I have a second supervisor from another university, but he does not want to get involved as he is not the primary adviser.

I am three years into the program and have a nearly completed thesis. Without his comments on my chapters, I fear that I will end up with a lower grade (PhDs are graded here) which marks an end to my academic career.  I was the top student in the Masters program and that is why I was offered a fully funded PhD. My adviser was very happy with me until I spoke to him about trying for a job in Germany or in Europe. Since then he is distant because I think he expected me to go back to my Third World country and create links for him.

What can I do?
Should I drop this PhD and apply for another one in the US or Canada? (I am not sure he will give me a recommendation)
Should I complete this PhD in a multi-disciplinary field (Global Studies/Global Integration) and start another one in a related discipline such as Political Science or Geography or another traditional discipline, in Canada or the US?
Should I apply for post docs and hope he will give me a recommendation?

Any other ideas. Please help. I am severely depressed.


texts: Is there a convention for referring to a scholar's academic status?

texts:
I'm currently preparing an online tool for scholars, and part of that work involves creating a database with different categories for students at different stages of their college/university education (i.e. freshmen, second-semester juniors, first-year graduate students, etc). I'm struggling to find a standard classification system to use that would allow distinction between all of the stages in an undergraduate and graduate education. I could just use "first-semester senior" and the like, but if there's an existing standard - particularly one that even allows for students that don't use semester classifications - I don't want to complicate things with my own classification scheme.

Is there a convention, especially an international convention, that distinguishes between all or most of these stages in educational progress?


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Imagine an education model in which teacher/supervisor/mentor does not teach the syllabus to students. Instead, just pushing them towards key topics, and students must study by themselves. The teacher only control/supervise students to keep studying in right direction, but no professional teaching.

This is something like supervising academic research projects at graduate level.

I am curious if there is a pedagogical model/category/method of this kind for education (at lower levels)? For example, is there any example for teaching by this method in any school or university around the world? If yes, what is it called? I had no appropriate keyword to search for it.


texts: Should I highlight one of my old papers in my last 5 years research achievements, if the old paper got printed recently?

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It is general that most of the journals now a days publish article in online first and later give the volume and year name when they print it.

I have many papers in such case. However, I am confused to list them in recent publications. For example,

I had published 2 papers in 2012 which were in online until 2014. Then the print version came and I could see the volume name as xyz and year name as 2014.

Now I need to highlight my last five years publication in an academic form and that is also in online. As it is a mandatory case to provide volume name and year name, so my old papers are getting highlighted in my recent achievements.

I am wondering how the selection committee will look into  them?

In general which year should I write while listing those old papers in my CV?


texts: got a TAship award- is it a difficult task

texts: i am awarded TAship to fund my phd studies although i know TA roles and responsibilities and actually quite excited to carry out these tasks but on the other hand i am dreading a little that what if i can't manage my duties along with my PhD studies and start doubting myself, which is wrong. so is it really tough that you can't manage it along with your coursework especially when you have never done this before? i would appreciate any advice from someone who have experience in TAing. Thanks


texts: How hard is it to get into a good Postdoc position (or advance in Academia generally) after coming from a generally mediocre place?

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I am a young theoretical physicist who's currently enrolled in his final year of masters studies and I've started searching for doctoral programs.
I've started applying to PhD programs which have a starting date after my graduation date. So far, I've gotten zero positive feedback which is disheartening to say the least - during the entire course of my studies, I've only ever had one grade which wasn't an "A" and I also participated in several workshops and even held two talks at different occasions.
I can't help shake the feeling that it's due to me coming from a relatively poor European country where there's five serious researchers in theoretical physics in total, one of them being my thesis advisor. As much as I love working with him, I am "afraid" that I'll get stuck in this country (not an issue) doing bad and irrelevant work (definitely an issue). I don't see anyone pushing any boundaries.
I wouldn't be asking this question if I didn't hear multiple stories of and by people who decided to pursue a PhD here and either abandoned academia or are now just treating it as any old job, with zero interest or motivation.
I live for this. I want to pursue, explore and uncover.
Can I hope that if I don't find a PhD within a year or two somewhere else, that I'll be able to do so with a Postdoc some 5 years from now? Are the criteria for post doctoral study even "stricter", or are PhD students "filtered out" and it becomes easier to end up somewhere prestigious?
Please refrain from motivational talk about how I can definitely find a PhD in a prestigious university if I push hard enough - I know this to be not true from almost first hand experience (unless you're an absolute born-once-every-1000-years-genius, but then one wouldn't even be asking this question).
How hard is it to get a "prestigious" Postdoc after a "mediocre" PhD?


texts: Is it acceptable to drink alcohol in front of senior staff during semi-official occasions?

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I am a graduate student, and because of the department's projects, partnerships with other institutions, and conferences, I am often out of office with the senior staff (supervisor, department head, other senior researchers and management, etc.).

After the work (e.g. meetings, presentations), it is often the case to attend social events (e.g. conference dinner or reception), or simply spend the free time with my colleagues (e.g. dinner in a hotel or somewhere out). During such events, which I consider also as partially work but not that official, people drink alcoholic beverages. Since I am often the only graduate student and the youngest person in the group (and usually the difference to the next person in age is >15 years), I am worried that in my case it might not be acceptable to drink and that it may project a bad image about myself. So I am wondering whether to always abstain in such occasions.

Of course this is not about getting drunk, it is about a glass of wine or two along a meal.

This also includes flights. When flying I always have a beer or glass of wine to fall asleep easily and to mitigate my fear of flying, but sometimes I am seated close to my supervisor or colleague.

I am not sure about the customs in academia, so I am asking: is it acceptable to drink alcoholic beverages in front of senior staff? (Again, to a limited extent.)

I could have asked in the Workplace SE, but I think that academia has a different etiquette.


texts: Is there an unwritten rule against quoting literally in some fields?

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During most of an aspiring academic's schooling one (at least in my experience) is repeatedly told that quoting/reproducing other works is fine, if given credit. As long as you cite your sources, all is good. And of course this is true, in the sense that you will not get penalized for plagiarism.
But today I was left wondering... is it true? I had a think and in my field (computer science) I can not recall any quotations or reproductions of graphs/tables in essentially any of the works I have read, other than perhaps some quotes at chapter starts for entertainment value.
Whenever one references another work in my field one always seems to reword or summarize the reference, even if a direct quote is perfectly functional. Which leaves me wondering, is there an unwritten rule against quoting literally in some fields?


texts: Is it ethical to host ads on an institute provided homepage?

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I am affiliated to an institute and they provide each student an opportunity to make their own homepage, which they can put up as www.[institute-webpage]/[username]. Now, this webpage is not reviewed by the institute. I made my homepage recently and I am wondering if it is ethical to put ads on it.

On one hand, it is my own website, while on the other hand, it is hosted on their server and I don't have to pay anything to get this.


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Often, college students do not always know what kinds of notes they should be taking.

How can I encourage students to take notes more efficiently and more effectively?

In one of my lecture-style courses, I have lots of organized information on my lecture slides for reference purposes. This allows me to introduce more material and work through more examples than I would otherwise be able to do. The lecture slides use signposting in order to give structure and to help students organize their notes logically. I post the slides to our course web page before class so students can use them in class to aid their note-taking. I have discussed with my students that I do not intend for them to copy my slides into their notes and that the slides are meant to used as reference. I've mentioned that I want them to be more strategic with their note-taking: they should be taking notes on major themes, key ideas, and processes, as well as on things that we discuss that are not in the slides. This works for some students, but I want to do better for all. The current semester is almost over, and I'd like to specifically address this for next semester.

Note that I am not asking how to take better notes, as others have asked here (example), but rather how I as the instructor can address this in the classroom to improve students' note-taking skills.


texts: How to politely follow up after contacting potential postdoc advisor?

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After sending an unsolicited email to a potential postdoc advisor, and receiving no response for a while, what is a very polite way to follow up?

Based on past experience lack of immediate response does not necessarily mean a lack of interest, they might just have been too busy at the time.  This question is about how to best phrase the followup email to be as polite as possible, and not to seem pushy.


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While peripherally related to Flying with a poster tube as a hand luggage, I am trying to avoid this. I would like to print my poster at the conference. I am considering this for two reasons. First, it means I don't have to fly with the poster. Second, it gives me a few extra days to work on the poster.

I can see three potential drawbacks.

Being unable to print the poster when you get to the conference. I
have lots of experience printing posters at my university, but no
experience in the conference city
Not being prepared/able to return with the poster to hang in the lab
Getting reimbursed for printing charges

As for point 1, the conference is in a major US city with at least 4 Kinkos (large scale professional print shops) within reasonable walking distance of the venue. My poster is not until day 4 of the conference and I am arriving 1 day early. On point 2, I do not plan on hanging this poster in my lab. I am a little worried about getting reimbursed, but our on-line reimbursement system has a category for printing charges. If I cannot get reimbursed, I am willing to pay out of pocket.

Am I missing anything that can go horrendously wrong with this plan?


texts: 3+ month delay in reviewing the revision of paper, what can we do?

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I had submitted a paper in an ISI journal, i.e. in Taylor and Francis. The first submission date of the manuscript was 30-may-2014. We received the first revision result on 27-July-2014. Hopefully, the result of reviewing our paper was optimistic as the paper status was accept with change; we had only some minor comments. We submitted the answer of revision on 15 Aug. They didn’t reply our revision yet. How can we write to them to review our paper faster?
Note: Its 2-Dec Today.


texts: How competitive is it to become a tenured history professor at a four year institution?

texts: I am a current history undergraduate student who would like to teach someday! I would really like to teach at the collegiate level but I hear that it's becoming very competitive to find a tenure track? How come?


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It looks like everyone has it's own theories on what's the function of a defense. People say that it has to be a contribution to knowledge, other people say that it has to reflect 3 years of work, other say that it has to be a work of publishable quality.
Given that "contribution to knowledge" is kinda a difficult ground to judge for some humanities, how are examiners approaching a PhD defense in the humanities?


texts: Co-authors/PIs in a grant are misrepresenting their CVs. Any suggested actions?

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I am currently part of a larger and quite broad in terms of expertise research group that is preparing a proposal for a grant / research center. Part of the proposal is a summary of the CVs for the co-investigators (CIs) of the project which also includes successful grant applications and previous funding.

There I noticed that some of the CIs have included grants and funding from foreign agencies (some of which more than a million dollars) that were not awarded to them or they were not involved in the application, they were just part of the research center that the grants were awarded to, or grants that were awarded to their supervisors.

This obviously makes their CV appear a lot stronger than it actually is in the application but it appears to be quite unethical to include them like that (the phrasing in the CV does not state that they actually got the grants but does not represent their actual contribution). As these are CIs that I do not directly work with and, for example I have not met one of them, I am not sure what the best course of action would be.


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As someone who conducts research that is unlikely to be of any relevance to the common man, I would like a little perspective on the impact that pure research plays in society, and how I can, in some sense, feel better about my research contributions.
In a field such as pure mathematics, one can argue that most people are unlikely to understand, or even be interested in recent results. In my opinion, pure mathematicians are attracted to the unhindered joy of research and the challenges it brings, and this is a major factor in the field being active today. (For the record, I am not a pure mathematician.)
In contrast, research in fields such as medicine and environmental science seem to have a larger impact on the common man. A simple example would be the Covid-19 vaccines that will play a major role in bringing the world back to a semblance of normality. Even if it can be argued that today's mathematical results will shape the science and engineering of tomorrow, I continue to feel that these will not have as large an impact as medical research will continue to.
My question is simple: Though I am someone who conducts research motivated simply by the challenges it brings and the joy of achieving a solution, I do occasionally feel that I would like my research to have a larger impact on society (which it really does not). I would like to know if there are others that feel the same way, particularly from a field such as mathematics, and if so, how I can obtain a new perspective on this.


texts: Usefulness of research paper(s) of another discipline for PhD

texts: Consider the scenario in which a PhD student of the subject X published good research papers on subject Y. X and Y are not related. Will those papers any way useful for getting PhD or any benefits related to PhD?


texts: If a thesis committe member asks for changes in my thesis does that mean I'm not getting a PhD "summa cum laude"?

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I am a PhD student in Germany. I had a question regarding the summa cum laude mark for my thesis.

To open the examination procedure, I asked three reviewers to read my thesis (my main supervisor and two external reviewers). Now it seems my reviewers evaluated my thesis and they sent their mark to the university. I received a letter form the PhD committee that now the chair of my oral examination will fix a date. Together with this letter, I have received another letter from one of the reviewers. The reviewer asked for some changes in the introduction part of the thesis.

My question is:
If the reviewer requests for changes, does it mean that he did not give the best mark? I know that all three reviewers of the thesis, beside four members of the examination committee, should gave me the same (best) grade to receive the summa cum laude mention.


texts: Applying for postdocs and for Postdoctoral fellowships at the same time

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On my hunt for a postdoc position, I have applied for some postdocs at many universities, but also I am applying for a postdoctoral fellowship (result date in July 2021) with a professor X at University A.
I can't help but think of a scenario where the two events will clash. Suppose I found a postdoc (university B) and started working on it, then a few months later I got the research fellowship with professor X. What's the right and "responsible" thing to do?
I can't do both because the fellowship doesn't allow it.
The applicant must not hold a permanent academic position before the start of the postdoctoral research fellowship

I know there a lot of assumptions going on here. But I'd like to know the answer for that particular scenario, should I quit the postdoc or let go of the fellowship?


texts: PhD advisor wrote a review of my PhD work without me, any grounds for complaint?

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My relationship with one thesis advisor was not good due to various issues including previous authorship problems, his rampant drug use and bullying behavior. Nonetheless I wrote six or seven papers with him during my PhD, all of which are now published. I was working in my home institute for six months after PhD completion but with one of my other advisors. Now I find out my advisor has published a high impact review paper which basically summarises all my first author papers from my PhD and little else. Of the 8 figures reproduced, six of them are from my first author papers. The remaining two are not data and are just wikipedia copies. The paper uses the same references I used in my PhD, it has a dozen ideas I came up with during my PhD, and basically tells the narrative I worked out for my thesis. Nonetheless, my suspicion is there is nothing I can do under these circumstances except kiss goodbye to any citations my papers were going to get as people will now refer to the review.

Any ideas?


texts: If somebody receives an email from a journal stating that their paper is accepted for publication, should they write back?  If so, what should they say?


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I'm a graduate student and I am really worried about the quality of my master thesis. It's my second year in graduate school and I've already done some pilot studies. But, entering the school, I was absolutely new in the real science (cognitive psychology) and now I'm afraid that data I collected is too dirty and statistical analysis I provided just incorrect. I have to present and publish my results anyway if I want to end graduate school and become a phd, but I feel ashamed of them.
So, I wonder is it ok to have problems with data when I'm just studying or I should refuse to publish or present these results?
My supervisor thinks everything's great and local journals will accept papers, but it is just bad, isn't it?


texts: Describing graduate certificate in written bio (US based)

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I have a graduate certificate from a US school (i.e. - Master's level work) and this program, in addition to offering graduate certificates, also offers graduate degrees.

Is it appropriate to describe myself in a written bio (rather than a resume, in which the certificate would be listed as given), as a 'graduate of the XYX school of economics'?


texts: First year Math PhD student; My problem solving skill has been completely atrophied and continues to decline

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I'm a first year PhD student in mathematics and I'm in a pretty bad spot.
Over the last year or so of undergrad and first semester of grad school, I've completely atrophied my problem solving skill. At some point I became more comfortable with looking up a solution than trying to solve it myself. At this point my first instinct is to google something instead of trying to solve something. I need to fix this; it's already been affecting my performance and well being across the board. I'm almost instinctually aversive to trying to solve a problem by myself at this point. I feel like I've lost the ability to actually do math. I initially justified it by saying that my interest in math stems from my interest in the theory, and that I'm not particularly interested in problem solving. It's clear now that that was just cognitive dissonance. I need to fix this.
I know what the obvious answer is- don't look stuff up. And try to do problems on my own. Practice, practice, practice.
But I feel like it's not so simple either. I'm doing graduate level math after all. I managed to get into a fairly top level, rigorous program. I have performed well enough in the past that I managed to place ahead of my peers, and am doing relatively advanced courses (after all, I wouldn't have resorted to looking up stuff if it wasn't working well for me, until recently). As such, it seems like I already need a solid, strong problem solving capability in order to deal with my classes, which are quite demanding. So when I'm faced with HW or other problems, I'm unable to solve most of the problems even if I try really hard, because my problem solving skill is just so bad at this point, and I have to resort to looking things up once more. This further worsens my skill and on and on. It's a negative feedback loop. And I'm struggling to break out of it. I wanted advice on how to escape this loop especially. The idea of simply not looking stuff up is sound, but it's hard to follow through when I have only a finite amount of time before I have to stop thinking and submit my answers, or when I simply don't possess the capability anymore to try and solve the problem.
These days the idea of solving a graduate level HW set seems impossible to me, and I'm just incredibly lucky graduate level courses tend not to have exams. It's reached the point where it's threatening my future in my PhD program so I really do need to fix it. Googling my way through life isn't possible (or desirable either). I really am desperate now.
I feel like a lost cause at this point, like the damage has already been done to me, and I can't really fix it without going back to undergrad or something.
I was just hoping for concrete advice and from people who have had similar experiences, and what I should do.
Clarifications:

I am referring to problems/solutions in my graduate courses. The research portion of my PhD has not started yet.
My advisor and I are not particularly close (only interacted a few times so far due to the pandemic), so my awkward attempt to bring it up with him didn't really go anywhere.


texts: "Due to many requests, the submission deadline has been extended" is this real?

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following different CS conferences I see the following phrase very often:

  Due to many requests, the submission deadline has been extended.

Or something similar to this.

I won't overestimate if I said 80% of the conferences (I have followed) have this attitude. This brings me to the question of whether this is true or people (conference organisers) admit a lie when say this. Why does this attitude exit in CS conferences? Do other fields experience the same thing?


texts: How to describe this type of a scholarship?

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Hi I'm applying to grad school and was writing my CV for the first time in my life, so had a question...
How do I describe a scholarship that was given upon entrance and lasts for four years and pays for 100% of the tuition? I've heard that a full scholarship refers to getting paid for 100% of tuition, but I couldn't find whether it refers to scholarships that last for four years or that last for one term.
I've written
"Samsung Science Scholarship (4 year full entrance scholarship)"
Would this be the correct way to put it? Or is it too formal? Is there a better way to put this?
Thank you in advance :)


texts: Intellectual Property Assignment Agreements for Ph.D. students - What is normal?

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As an incoming Ph.D. student I was asked to sign an intellectual property assignment agreement in addition to an employment contract as a condition for receiving a tuition reduction and a stipend.  The wording was rather vague, and contained 'legalese'. I have no experience with this. So, I do not know anything about it, and I do not know if the "agreement" I signed contains anything abnormal, because of the way it was written.

Is this normal practice?

If so, what is contained in a standard intellectual property agreement?


texts: What is the reason that some departments do not allow PhD students to be instructors of record?

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It is common that PhD students have teaching duties as TA. In this case, the person ultimately for the course (the instructor of record) is a faculty member. I should note that I am talking only about enrolled PhD students at the same university as where the undergraduate course is taught.

In some places, it seems that PhD students can serve as the instructor of record, but at many other places they are not.

What are the reasons why PhD students are not permitted to be  instructors of record at some universities in the USA and Europe?


texts: Can the chair of a conference's panel be reported to the organizing institution?

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I was recently attending a scientific conference, held online due to COVID restrictions.
I chose a panel that interested me.
The organization behind the conference made the rules clear: 5 minutes per presenter, 20 minutes for the discussant and the remaining minutes for the questions from the audience.
In the panel I attended the chair did not enforce the rules at all. Each presenter took as much time as he/she wanted.
Then the discussant complained about never having been in a conference where there was no time rules. He then asked to be allowed to  skip a few slides himself in order to make up for the loss of time. When the discussant was still arguing about the first paper, the technician from the organization body came in announcing that the session was to be closed in 5 minutes. The discussant then was forced to jump directly to the conclusion, skipping a lot of the slides he had prepared, and a lot of the arguments he wanted to make.
Then the chair said that he allowed everyone to talk as much as he/she wanted because the chair didn't feel like 5 minutes were enough.
The session closed without a proper critique of the papers by the discussant, and with no questions from the audience whatsoever.
I wanted to make a question or two to one of the presenters.
Can such a chair be reported to the organizing institution?