texts: Should I apply to schools I am not sure I would attend?

texts:
I graduated 2 years ago. I am now seeking to apply to a Master’s degree in Finance. I am currently applying to 6 universities.
My letters of recommendation are from renowned professors who are really putting time and effort to ensure i get approved in a top program.
The thing is I currently have a very good job. I love what I do, compensation is great and the company’s culture is great.
I am sure I would attend 3 of those 6 schools I am applying, but I am a bit unsure about the other 3, as my opportunity cost is high.
The most common advice is to apply for all programs and reject them afterwards if that is the case. However, I fear the scenario in which I get approved only to the schools I am not sure I would attend and decide not to do a master’s at all.
I think that this would hurt the professors who wrote letters for me. What should I do? Is this really as bad as it sounds? Should I only apply to schools I am sure ( as of today) i would attend?


texts: Final graduation thesis - Team members won't cooperate anymore

texts:
My friends and I are doing our graduation thesis so we can finish our engineering course here in Brazil. There are two main problems:

My buddies are not in the same step than I am: Basically, they have not that much of interest that I have for the title. I'm doing all of the major research and work so we can continue to follow our semester with no problems. They can't even read some pages and also are not following the schedule I've set.
I do have some more interests beside only "to graduate": I really want the thesis to be presented in a future congress, or to publish it in a scientific magazine. Since they do not have this goal, it is clear that they want only the document to finish the course.

Since we are huge friends, and there has been some conflicts already, I am afraid this could harm our friendship. Is there any way to align this situation?


texts: Is studying past exams I found online cheating?

texts:
I had an exam this morning. Last week the teacher had warned us that her exams are tough; this scared me. I wanted to see what her exams were like, so to study I searched through the exam repository at my school for an old midterm. Unfortunately, the exam repository only has final exams (including this course). Then I googled "(course code) (school name) midterm", and a couple of links came up. One was an online repository (not associated with my school) where people can upload old exams. I found a lot of old midterms for this course. These midterms were all in the same format but the exact questions were different in most cases. These midterms also had the answer key. I studied them to get an idea of how much the professor expected of us and to help resolve my confusion about some concepts. The practice midterms REALLY helped clarify things for me.

Last night, a student in the class posted a past midterm in a student-run Facebook group for the class. This exam did not have the official answers on it, but it did have the ones given by the student who took the test that year. After taking the test today, I noticed that some of the questions on this midterm were identical to the ones I studied online. It dawned on me that I may have committed an academic offense.

I am wondering, is studying past exams given in the course cheating? What if those exams are found in an non-school-sponsored repository online?


texts: Thesis' "Future Work" section – is it acceptable to omit personal involvement in a mentioned project?

texts:
So I've been doing my bachelor's thesis. Alongside my bachelor's thesis, I've been taking a course that trains students in working in teams for projects. Let's call this 'course X'. Coincidentally, the project that I'm working on in course X happens to be very similar to my thesis topic. So, in the Future Work section of my thesis, I wrote about the project that we're working on in course X. Except I didn't mention that I'm working on the project. Rather, I mentioned that this project is an example of something that can be worked on (since it has similarities with the concepts implemented in the thesis).

Now, I recently passed my thesis. However, my examiner is oblivious to the fact that the project that I mentioned in the Future Work section is something that I'm actually working on in a different course. And this is stressing me out. Soon, we will be writing a sort of report on our project. I'm worried that my examiner will find out about this project someday and accuse me of lying in the Future Work section, since a project that I'm working on doesn't really count as 'Future Work'.....but does it? Should I be worried about this? Because I'm really worried about this. Should I tell my examiner or supervisor that the project that I mentioned in the Future Work section is something that I'm actually working on in course X?

And for the record, that's not the only thing I mentioned in the Future Work section. I mentioned other potential areas of research in that section, but these aren't bothering me as much. Am I overthinking this?


texts:
During my ongoing academic job search, I'm seeing that some universities require a job market paper as a part of application package. While I read a bit about the meaning of the term, I'm still somewhat confused about it and hope that more experienced people on this site will clarify that.

Question: What exactly is a job market paper? Is this term interpreted differently across disciplines and fields of study (and to what degree)? Is it closer to research statement or writing sample?

Note: my main discipline is information systems (a multi-disciplinary field of study with a focus on management science and other social sciences; in addition, my own current focus is computational social science, complex socio-technical systems and data science) and I do have both research statement and writing sample (a slightly abridged review of literature from my dissertation).


texts: How might changing topic affect a career in academia?

texts:
I am curious whether it is common working on different subjects in an area throughout an academic career. I think life is long enough to work on different and interesting subjects, but how common is that?

Particularly, let's consider area as computer science. Topic X and topic Y are not totally unrelated, but it is hard to find people who list X and Y together under his/her interests. For my situation X is software engineering and Y is computer architecture/embedded systems. How might pursuing masters on a topic X and applying to PhD on topic Y look like?


texts: Price difference between master's and phd programs

texts: I heard from a friend that master's programs tend to be more expensive because master's students don't have advisors or as much university funding for their time in academia. However, sources online seem to only indicate to me that the PhD is more expensive. Can someone clear this up?


texts: Is it possible to get second master while I already have one?

texts:
I am in a difficult situation and I am looking for some guidance. I have done my research and I have come to the conclusion that it is best for my mental health to take master and leave. Unfortunately, I already have a master's degree (in another field) and I am a 4th year PhD student and have only one year left to complete my PhD. Also, I am the first PhD student of my adviser. I realize that, I am extremely close to finishing and will probably be encouraged to continue. However, my mental health has been declining over the past several years.

Earlier this year my dog (who was everything to me) passed away from cancer and I never really had a chance to grieve and have been continuously working since then. His passing caused me to spiral into a much deeper depression than I was in before and in the past several weeks, I have been had episodes of de-personalization, where I have a memory of something that I have done in the past but I was proud of that. But, then that memory is not mine anymore. It seems it's a different person. I know this is related to the stress that I have been accumulating over the past few months and it is getting worse now. The only thing that alleviates my depression is that the thought of leaving academia and this town to move on with my life. I can honestly say that after finally deciding that getting master degree and leave out, is what I want to do now and I haven't been happier in years. Even though, it isn't finalized I think this is a good indication that I am making the right decision.

I have also realized that I don't want or need a PhD to get a job that I want. I really just want to go into forestry or be a greenhouse manager. I am burnt out, unhappy, unmotivated, and uninterested with my research because I can't get anything to work and don't expect to be able to complete my research in the next year. The main reason I feel I'm in grad school at this point is that I feel like I would disappoint my adviser. I know that's not a good reason to stay, especially since staying might be more detrimental for her chances for tenure than just finding another student to replace me on my project. I have decided to tell her that I am thinking about getting master degree and leave tomorrow to gauge her reaction. I need to have her approval before I do leave because I have been her student for 6 years now and need her reference. So if she is not on board with my plan to getting master degree and leave out, then I think I have to stay, but I know my work will suffer a lot in the next year and I doubt my ability to finish my research on time.

What I am wondering is whether or not I am justified in wanting to getting master degree and leave out, if it is bad to have two masters degrees? Will I still be able to find a job if I leave with a second masters?


texts:
If I call a person doctor, instead of Doctor XXX, will this person assumes that I forget his name?

When I talk with another person, I said:" I wish to study in doctor's lab." At that time, the doctor is just next to me.


texts:
In my area (computer science) it's common for a paper to be posted on arxiv, then appear in a conference a few months later, and finally appear in a journal several years later. This raises the question: which version should I cite?

The general practice I've seen is to cite the latest version. However, I do not agree with this general practice for several reasons:

The chronology becomes unclear. e.g. I might say "Bobson [Bob14] builds on the seminal work of Adamson [Ada15]" It looks like the chronology is backwards, but the correct chronology is that [Ada15] appeared on arxiv in 2013 and then appeared in a journal in 2015.
The most recent version is often not the best version to read. For example, the conference version of a paper is usually heavily abridged (due to a page limit) and the journal version is hidden behind a paywall and strangely formatted. Thus the arxiv version is usually the best version to read.
If I am citing a specific part of the article (e.g. "Theorem 4.2 on page 23") that only appears in the arxiv version or has a different number in the journal version, then it doesn't make sense to cite the "wrong" version.
It means I have to keep updating my citations as the paper moves through different versions. And this leads to inconsistent citations.

The only advantage I see to citing the most recent version is that it  indicates how "good" the paper is, as indicated by the prestige of the conference or journal.

I am often tempted to cite the arxiv version in these cases, as it is gives the best chronology and is usually the most readable version. (I can justify it by saying that this is the version I actually read.)

Is going against this general practice acceptable? Might I annoy someone by not acknowledging that their paper appeared in a very prestigious venue? Or would someone be unhappy that I don't have the venue information in my references?

How should I cite articles that have multiple versions? In particular, how do I communicate (i) the correct chronology, (ii) the version with the right information, and (iii) the conference/journal that accepted it?

One solution is to cite all the versions, but I think that is impractical and confusing - and I have never seen it done.


texts: Funny 5th option in multiple choice exam?

texts:
I came across a multiple choice exam paper where the professor had included a funny fifth option in almost every question. There was also a bonus question at the end, where students can earn 0.5 extra points for writing their own humorous multiple choice question.
It was the final examination of a bachelor-level course, though I have no reason to believe that the professor does not do the same in master-level exam papers as well.
For example, the fifth option for one of the questions was, “I don’t know, but a vanilla latte would be perfect right now.” Another one was, “Come one man, stop it with these lame jokes.” On a question regarding why someone might have a conditioned taste aversion to sushi, the fifth option was, “They certainly did not try sushi from [popular local sushi place].”
The exam papers I saw were those of students who had done well in the exam, and they seemed to appreciate the humor, since they provided their own funny question at the end for the extra 0.5 points. However, I did not get the chance to see the rest of the papers.
Also, the questions did not cause any disruption during the exam itself. No student was visibly laughing or trying to communicate with another student.
On the one hand, I myself find this hilarious and it seems others, including students, find it too. It might help lighten up the mood and ease anxiety during the exam.
However, I am afraid that it might be a distraction, especially since it was not a single joke but a running joke throughout most of the questions in the 33-question exam. Students might lose time reading these responses, or they may feel that the professor is belittling what is otherwise an important and serious exam for them. Is this, perhaps, unprofessional?


texts: Which is the correct term, supervisor or coordinator?

texts: When someone is a postdoctoral researcher, is the person directly "above" him in the hierarchy called his supervisor, or his scientific coordinator?


texts: So here's a funny thing: I have 3 Fs and 1 D on my transcript, but my GPA is ~3.8, which is "high" because I double majored in math and computer science. The reason for those 4 bad grades is that I had 2 bad semesters where I suffered from depression; I didn't drop the classes before the deadline so I ended up failing the classes. However I retook the classes and got As in them (hence my GPA), and in fact got A/A-s in all subsequent classes (quite an improvement). I plan to apply to a master's for computer science, and eventually a phd. However I know the admission officers eyes will bleed when they see my transcript, despite my GPA, because my school keeps ALL grades on transcripts, even if the grades were replaced by retaking classes. Do I still have a chance at top-10 graduate school for computer science even with these grades (which were retaken and then aced)?


texts: Holding positions in industry while being a professor

texts: I have seen many professors also hold positions in industry, say Data Scientist at Uber or Machine Learning Manager at Google. How does this work? Do professors apply for these positions or do the companies reach out to them? Also, I know some of these professors take a break from being at the university and go work full time for a while before coming back, while others split their time between both. I am just curious if anyone knows/experienced how this process works.


texts: Citing two authors with the same surname – is it worth noting that they are distinct people?

texts:
In the paper I am currently writing I cite works by Bill Smith and Fred Smith.

I refer to them both several times, as several of Bill Smith’s papers provide the basis for some of the techniques I am using, and Fred Smith’s work provides origin for the dataset I am using.
This dataset is commonly called The Smith Corpus.

Currently my paper has a paragraph (boldface mine):

  We use the Smith Corpus (Smith 2010), as prepared by Johnson et al (2015).
  This corpus is partitioned into test, development and  training subsets, and has minor clean-up from the original data collected by Smith (2010).
  It is also used by Smith et al (2016) and Otter et al (2016).

Where the all uses of Smith, except the last refer to Fred Smith.
Only Smith et al (2016) refers to Bill Smith.

Anyone who checks the references section will realize that these are different people.
But the citation style I am using, is a surname–year style.
So on a casual reading, one might expect the dataset in question to have been introduced in one of Bill Smith’s papers. However, this is incorrect: It is first used in this area by a third author, John Johnson (whom I also cite), then later by Bill Smith, and Sam Otter.

Bill Smith he refers to the corpus as the Smith Corpus in his paper – without qualification in any way.

Is there anything I should be doing about this possible confusion?
Or can I trust the reader to check the reference list if they want the details on who actually did what?

The ~5 page style guide for this conference says

  Citations: Citations within the text appear in
  parentheses as (Gusfield, 1997) or, if the author’s
  name appears in the text itself, as Gus-
  field (1997). Using the provided LATEX style, the
  former is accomplished using \cite and the latter
  with \shortcite or \newcite. Collapse multiple
  citations as in (Gusfield, 1997; Aho and Ullman,
  1972); this is accomplished with the provided
  style using commas within the \cite command,
  e.g., \cite{Gusfield:97,Aho:72}. Append
  lowercase letters to the year in cases of ambiguities.
  Treat double authors as in (Aho and Ullman,
  1972), but write as in (Chandra et al., 1981)
  when more than two authors are involved.
  ...
  We will reject without review any papers that do
  not follow the official style guidelines, anonymity
  conditions and page limits.

This level of guidance is typical for CS conferences in my field.

While I can of-course decide to make up my own rules for what to do in this case that is not covered clearly by their style guide -- and they probably won't desk-reject for it -- what additional rules should I use (if any)?


texts: What to do if you have a troubled relation with your postdoc supervisor?

texts:
It seems my relation with my postdoc supervisor has hit troubled waters after an amazing start. Things started to turn towards the worse since our first publication together, particularly after I took a parental leave. I'm not sure, if I could do my second paper, as my post-doctoral fellowship is coming to an end by the end of this month.

I'm worried about my career, as his reference would play a big role. Any ideas on how to deal with a bad reference?
(In the time remaining, I hope to fix our relation as much as possible...)


texts:
I have applied to a PhD position some weeks ago. After thinking about the given topic and institute for a longer time, I don't want to do my PhD there anymore. They want to interview me but since I would not even accept an offer, I don't want to do the interview (additional stress).
How can I politely decline the interview?


texts: We do citations when we refer to someone else’s papers but what about lecture notes? If I come across someone’s lecture notes which has a different way of presentation of a theorem or some problem and I wish to expose my students to it, how do I make use of it? Can I use the other person’s diagrams or solutions and give them the credit?


texts: If a journal publishing an article about a software tool requires the software to be freely available, must the article be open access?

texts:
I am interesting in publishing a Bioinformatics software as a paid access article in a journal where they have open access as well as paid access options (Oxford's Bioinformatics).

But it stated at the journal's website that

  Software If the manuscript describes new software tools or the implementation of novel algorithms the software must be freely available to non-commercial users at the time of submission, and appropriate test data should be made available. Availability must be clearly stated in the article. Authors must also ensure that the software and test data is available for a full TWO YEARS following publication. The editors of Bioinformatics encourage authors to make their source code available and, if possible, to provide access through an open source license (see www.opensource.org for examples). Authors should make every effort to use URLs that will remain stable. At the minimum, authors must provide one of: webserver, source code or binary. The name of the software should be included in the title of the paper wherever possible.

Does that mean the article publishing that software must be an open access article?  or can it be a paid access article?


texts: Apply for NSF postdoc in mathematics: question about SAM

texts:
I am applying for the mathematics NSF postdoc, and when I click check, I get the warning:

Organization-DUNS Conflict - The identified organization cannot be found in the System for Award Management (SAM) as the organization is either: (1) not registered in SAM or (2) the record in FastLane Research Administration (including the DUNS number and address) does not match the data in SAM. Proposers are required to register in SAM prior to proposal submission. Failure to complete the SAM registration process prior to proposal submission may impact the processing of the proposal.

However, it will still let me submit.  Do I need to register in SAM?  I am not really sure how to do that.

Thank you for your help.


texts: Do I need to ask permission to use image from a publication

texts:
I am involved in an EU H2020 project in which we are developping some educational and support material for companies to support them in implementing energy effeciency measures. Factsheets will be made available in the form of Powerpoint or Word documents on a platform that companies who have signed up to the platform will have access to. The documents will be made available under a Creative Commons license, so the companies will be able to adapt the documents (Powerpoint, Word) to their specific needs if they need to (e.g. add their logo, simplify or reformulate some parts).

I would like to know how best to proceed to be able to use images (graphs, diagrams or other) from scientific publications in these factsheets. Can we simply use them in our documents by citing the reference, but without asking permission? Or should we ask permission to the author?, university? or publisher (e.g. Elsevier)?


texts:
I have got accepted for an SPIE conference. However, right now they are awaiting a manuscript for the SPIE Proceedings. Their webpage states that this manuscript has to be at least 6 pages.

The problem is that SPIE Proceedings are not peer-reviewed and most of the material I want to present in the conference is already published in a high-impact-factor journal.

My question is: what is the actual policy of SPIE (the one they really apply, not the official one). I want to present the results in the conference but I don't care about the publication. Does anybody have any experience it it is acceptable to skip the manuscript or make it just an two-pages extended abstract? My presentation has already been accepted for the conference based on the one-page short abstract.


texts: I am currently in graduate school but need to ask my previous professors for a letter of recommendation. I am worried this will be awkward

texts: I just started grad school this semester. But as part of my stipend contract, I am required to continue to apply to scholarships (although I don't need to win them). I have not been in grad school long enough for my advisor to know my work (in fact, we haven't even started on the research yet). So I would have to ask the two professors I previously asked for a LoR last year to write me another one. But I am afraid this will be really awkward since I haven't spoken to them in months and I feel like I'm just asking them to do me favours now. Especially since they are already aware that I am in grad school, and I will just be asking them to write me another letter. How do I phrase this email to them to prevent the awkwardness?


texts: Requesting LORs from the same recommenders for a different field

texts:
I might be in a rather unique situation. I earned my bachelor’s degree from my university in May 2014. Since my junior year of university, I was convinced that I wanted to take the LSAT and apply to law school. I had originally planned to apply to law school in the first semester of my senior year and start attending in fall 2015. However, after taking my first LSAT in October 2013, I decided to focus on my senior-year GPA instead of spending the entire fall semester studying for the LSAT. I retook the LSAT after graduating and applied to a few different law schools. I always knew that law school was expensive, and I heard that it is useless to go to law school these days unless it is a prestigious school. After getting accepted to a law school, I made the ultimate decision to not pursue a legal education mainly due to financial reasons and job prospects. The school only offered to give me loans and gave me only two weeks for an enrollment decision after emailing me the acceptance letter.
I changed my career path and will apply to a few different master’s programs in the field I would now like to study.

Currently, I am working at a part-time job, while making preparations to apply to graduate school this fall. When I was applying to law school last fall, I had requested recommendation letters from two different professors. I am just wondering, but would it be possible to ask these same professors again for recommendation letters? Would they think that I look like an undecided, wavering person and thus, be reluctant to write another letter for me? Also, would I just candidly explain my one-year gap after my graduation in my statement of purpose?


texts: How should one proceed when they receive no job offers after a considerable amount of applications?

texts:
I'm getting way ahead of myself, but being nervous on the job market I asked an advisor what happens should a candidate receive zero job offers. To which the reply was, "That never happens."

I'm sure that some people have had this experience before. I'm in the social sciences in a discipline that is very competitive with fewer than normal options outside of academia. I still have a ways to go time wise for job expectations, but I am curious about what options others may have gone for in situations where they either received no offers or none that were more appealing than something else that wasn't planned.

My assumption is that people will shoot for adjunct positions or similar options should nothing else come along, and try again in following years. Can anyone speak to being in this kind of position, or knowing someone who has gone through it?

Of course I expect and hope not to be in this position, but I am planning for everything. Others have told me that they apply for upwards of 70 positions in a year, which to me is insane (I don't know how assured I could be in the quality of that many applications). I have probably applied for 20-25 positions thus far, so I don't know if I should be approaching the process differently. And in the worst case situation, where to go from there?

Edit: Thanks all for your sensitive and helpful comments.


texts: Difference between Poster Session and Oral Session

texts:
I'm a student with a question on conferences. What is the main difference between an oral session and a poster session? I want to know the difference in detail.
I can understand the meaning a little bit, but what else can you tell me about the differences in the details?


texts: What kind of content should one avoid when publishing (math) notes online?

texts:
I am a math undergrad doing an independent study course this semester, and I want to practice my math exposition skills by publishing some reading notes online.

I'm guessing I shouldn't publish my solutions to problems (or examples) from textbooks, and the notes I publish should be made from more than one text to avoid ethical and copyright concerns, respectively. I'm assuming coming up with similar but distinct problems and examples will at least address the first issue.

That is my situation, but to make this a broader question, what things in general should one avoid including when publishing notes online? By "notes", I'm also referring to lecture notes as well as other expository articles published for free access online.


texts: When summarizing my sources methodology for my literature review, must I add a citation?

texts:
My professor told me to critically summarize and evaluate each work (for its premise, methodology, and conclusion) I am including in my Literature Review. I understand that I should provide in-text citations when mentioning the source; however, I'm not sure that I should write an in-text citation for every sentence describing how the study was conducted.

Ex: A study by Lina Aldén and Mats Hammarstedt examined cohorts of refugees who migrated to Sweden between the years 2005 and 2007, tracking them longitudinally up until 2012. Data used in the study was obtained from the LISA database at Statistics Sweden, which included information about refugees national origin, age, gender, educational attainment, number of children, employment status, and taxable income, all of which are influential in determining migrants economic contribution. The results from their analyses reveal that the average refugee had public sector net costs of SEK 142,250 (13,714€) during the first year of residency (Citation). After seven years, this cost was halved (Citation).

I added citations to the last two sentences where I mention the results of the study, but I am confused as to whether I need to add citations following each sentence describing the study. This will be in MLA if that's relevant to the question.


texts: Is it appropriate to include declined post doc offers on your CV?

texts:
I have recently got several postdoc offers and two of those were really nice. I have accepted one of them and I am thinking whether I can make some use of the second one that I have turned down.

I traveled quite a long distance to give a job talk, that was pretty successful, and a famous professor in my field made me an offer. Maybe the fact that this famous professor was ready to hire me would make my CV look better (I plan to apply for permanent positions in Academia in Europe/America(s) in future).

So, the question is: would it be helpful and generally acceptable to add to my CV words like "job offer from "Professor_Name" lab, refused in favor of anther offer"? Or it would look like an act of excessive inappropriate boasting?

In general my CV is quite OK even without that so these words would not make a crucial difference anyway, but still.

UPD. My field is applied mathematics/computational neuroscience.


texts: Choosing between a funded PhD offer and a possibly funded one

texts:
I have been admitted into two PhD programs at universities A and B. A offered me funding, however B asked me to apply for state funding before discussing internal funding. The deadline to accept the offer from A is early January, and I will not recieve the results of my application for state funding at B until February. I really want to go to B, but I am afraid of rejecting A's offer and not getting state or internal funding at B. What should I do?
I was thinking about:

Asking A for more time to consider my options before taking a decision.
Contacting B and explaining that I have a fully-funded offer from A, but however, they are my first choice and I need to know whether they will give me funding if I do not get it from the government before rejecting A's offer. A is really prestigious and well placed in rankings, so I though that bringing them up while contacting B would play in my favor.

Would this be a wise approach to my problem? May this just worsen my situation? I would greatly appreciate any advice or suggestion. I am desperate about what to do, this is a really important dilema that I have never faced before.


texts: Our faculty voted last year to allow any teaching faculty member to request going from being non-tenured to tenured.  Our dean has now denied this request.  Are there other universities offering this option? what are the pros and cons? and should we attempt to fight this?


texts:
On Workplace Stack Exchange, one answer to the question
https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/124329/bullying-group-work
says "Speak to your personal tutor. Immediately."
I remember to have seen the word "personal tutor" also here on Academia Stack Exchange. (As I do not remember having seen a country mentioned (also not on the linked Workplace Stack Exchange question), I believe this is a US-concept.)
So: What is a "personal tutor"? Who is this (undergraduate student, graduate student, administrative personell, post-doc, professor, somebody not related to one's university) and when do you as a student get such a tutor? What are their roles?

Thank you!


texts: Recognition of my diplom degree which is equivalent to masters by Trnava University Slovakia

texts:
I graduated from Trnava University Slovakia with a diplom(mgr) in public health which is equivalent to a masters in public health. However I want to equate the same qualification in my country Kenya but the university is is refusing and they don't even want to acknowledge that we studied there. This was long time ago - between 1999-2002 - and it was done through distance learning through a project that the university was operating in Kenya. After 5 year study 14 of us graduated.
How can I compel the university to acknowledge and write a letter to recognise us that we were students there? We have our Diploma and evidence but the university is really ignoring us. Can we sue? I am asking for guidance. It is painful to study hard and get rejected. Even the Slovak embassy here is not helpful after writing many mails they have not followed up to confirm. One of our supervisors wrote to in support and acknowledgement.


texts: Distinguish opinion from suggestion while reviewing a manuscript?

texts:
First time reviewer here. My purpose as a reviewer is to make recommendations on how the manuscript can be improved, right? In this effort, should I distinguish my solid expert opinion from mere suggestions?

For example, if I see an error, then I believe I should professionally but firmly point it out:

"X is not a valid conclusion because of y. It should be removed."

However, what if the issue is not a clear-cut error but rather a matter that, in my opinion, would strengthen the quality of the manuscript?

Should I use the same firmness? (Option A)

"X should be added because of y."

or distinguish this as an opinion (Option B):

"Perhaps it would be beneficial for X to be added. Consider including x due to y."

As an author on the other side of things, I would appreciate the distinction so that I understand what either needs to be changed in a revision (or needs to be strongly justified why the reviewer was wrong) versus what I can freely disagree with the reviewer about without having to make a strong justification about why I disagree.

This issue is giving me pause because I've rarely or never seen Option B in reviews of my own manuscripts. All comments by reviewers are similar to Option A.

My apologies if my examples are too vague. I tried to make the applicable to the whole community here which requires ambiguity unfortunately.


texts: How to find the number of one topic in academic papers and some others' statistic data

texts:
I am searching for one review paper about hand pose estimation, so i like to know some statistical data like shown above to build some chart:

How much paper has been by this topic( "Human pose estimation"
and "Hand pose estimation".
First year of this kind paper published and if possible the
Numbers of publications for every year.

so i asked here how to find these data?
DO you know any website to sort and give these data?
Or i must do it by myself to search via some main sites like GoogleScholar, IEEE, Sciencedirect, Springer and ...


texts: How do PhD admissions committees view double majors?

texts:
I have read and heard conflicting opinions on this topic, and would like to see what some of you have to say, particularly related to CS.

Does earning two bachelor's degrees as an undergrad, considering all other things equal, provide any advantage over another applicant? That is, saying that this person earning two degrees is still able to participate in quality research throughout their undergraduate degree and is not slave to the curriculum.

Would, say, a MechE/CS student maintain a leg up applying to a CS program related to robotics? A Math/CS applying to theory-based CS? Does it vary between fields?


texts: Differences in student load at liberal arts colleges vs. research universities

texts:
Do students at liberal arts universities have 'harder' courses than students at research universities?

Computer Science curricula at large research universities have 5 to 6 courses per semester. The Liberal Arts model dictates roughly 4 courses per semester. If the load on the student is considered to be equivalent, there must be something special to the teaching in the Liberal Arts model.

How is it that a 4 course Liberal Arts semester is as intensive as a 6 course research university semester?

UPDATE: Many of the comments below say the course load I mention above is inaccurate. I have obtained the figures as follows.

The Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium (LACS) has released 3 LACS curricula in response to ACM/IEEE CS curriculum recommendations. The first in 1986 in response to the 1978 recommendation, next in 1996 in response to the 1991 recommendation and the most recent in 2007 in response to the 2001 recommendation. The 4 year course breakdown in all the LACS recommendations is roughly the same:

4 courses per semester
30-35% CS courses, 10% math, 5% science, and the rest, i.e. 50% or more courses on arts, humanities and social sciences.

A typical graduation requirement at a research university is at least 120 credits, which comes to 5 3-credit courses per semester. Many require more than 120 so 6 course semesters are not uncommon.


texts: How long should a personal statement be for a UK New Route PhD programme?

texts:
I'm applying for a few New Route PhD programmes in the UK. The way they are different from traditional PhD's is that they are preceded with one year of Masters in Research which gives you a good foundation in your subject, before you choose your exact research subject.

I was wondering what is the expected application personal statement length for such programmes. I don't want to flood the application commission with words but I also don't want to seem like I haven't put effort. Currently I'm aiming for 4000 characters, which is the same as the upper limit for UK's undergrad applications. On the other hand, undergrad applications aren't supposed to contain academic CV so I might make it shorter to avoid repeating information.

Most of what I could find online about personal statement length related to either US Application Essays (much longer), UK Research Proposals (very specific) or UK undergrad personal statements (simpler). I was wondering what others think about this particular case.


texts: Consequences of quitting a graduate-level Research Assistant (RA) position mid-semester, with little notice?

texts:
BACKGROUND

I am an engineering graduate student at a good American university, funded as a Research Assistant (RA).  The lab and professor rely heavily on my day-to-day work.

My PhD research is going nowhere and I am far less interested in obtaining a PhD compared to one year ago.  Most importantly, my wife wants me to leave and pursue an engineering job with a salary.  I have a colleague/friend who has a position lined up for me provided I begin to work ASAP.  Ultimately, this would mean quitting my funded research position mid summer (and mid-semester) with little notice.  Because of this, I am not expecting a "letter of recommendation" from my advisor/boss/professor, however I don't want to be blacklisted either.

QUESTIONS

How significant of an offense would it be to quit a graduate-level Research Assistantship in the middle of a semester?  Would it even be legal to do this at an American university?  What would be the consequences for simply turning in my resignation and leaving the program (again, in the middle of the semester with very little notice)?

Opinions from professors, PhD drop-outs, or people familiar with these situations would be great!


texts: How beneficial is speaking at non-academic conferences to future computer science career?

texts: How beneficial is speaking (or holding a workshop) at non-academic software development conferences (like PyCon, Strange Loop or LambdaConf) to future computer science career (applying to PhD and further)?


texts: How to hold back from interfering with students' inefficient-but-not-wrong work?

texts:
I'm a new and junior group leader. I therefore work quite closely with my (also new) MSc students.

I try to let them work and figure out things as independently as they can, but have my door open so they can ask me for help. When they do, it will often be about scripting.

In these cases I sit with them and we work together for a little bit. That's when I see that students often work in ways that are clearly inefficient, but not objectively wrong.

I don't want to interfere too much. This is a learning process and it takes time to learn from one's own mistakes. But I have to really force myself to not suggest they use keyboard shortcuts, a bigger editor window to see more code, more sensible file and variable names, use Dropbox instead of emailing, etc etc.

I think it's important that I hold back: it would be annoying of me to point out every little thing, especially if, as I said, it's not actually wrong. Is there a good way to suggest solutions but not be unnerved if students don't use them?


texts: What can be done (by the community as a whole) to make it easy (for persons other than the authors) to reproduce numerical results in a paper?

texts:
For example see reproduced papers repository.
I am restricting the scope to theory papers that have some results obtained through numerical techniques. The fields may be as diverse as physics, mathematics and the things in between.
How can one make this process of reproducing papers more frictionless? Is there a way one could incentivize independent reproduction?


texts: What action is appropriate when co-authors admit that the first author committed plagiarism?

texts:
I'm the executive editor of a PubMed-indexed journal. Last year The journal published a paper with four authors in the byline. Today I   received an e-mail from the first author admitting that she translated large parts of a research paper published in a local language and used it in the paper's introduction and discussion without referring to the author. She claimed that she did not realize at the time that this was unethical. The other authors, when they discovered the problem, asked her to send us an e-mail containing these details and also sent an e-mail asking us to withdraw the paper.

I could not access the paper written in the local language because it was published in a local journal. Accordingly I'm not sure how much of the text was used.

We use a plagiarism detection software but for this paper it did not yield  any results that warranted attention.

Is withdrawal the solution? If so, how can I contact PubMed to do it?
Are there any further steps to be taken concerning the authors?


texts: How long does it take for a recruiting process to finish?

texts:
I think the title says it all, but here it goes. I am a final year PhD student in pure mathematics. My PhD has been running smoothly and I will graudate on time next summer.

This year I started applying for postdoctoral/assistant professor positions in Europe and in United States. The reviewing processes for these positions have already started, for example the earliest one started in mid December.

As times passes I start to worry that the reviewing process will take longer than I expected. I understand that the people in the search committees have other things to do an that they may have large numbers of applicants to review. But as someone who will be unemployed next September, I am worried that there might not be enough time for me to look for alternatives if these applications turn out to be unsuccessful.

Hence, I would like to ask what the normal period of time is for a recruiting process to finish. A side question might be if I would be notified if my application was unsuccessful. In a few job announcements it is stated that only the successfull candidates will be contacted. Hence if it is not stated otherwise in the job announcement, can I assume that I will be contacted no matter the outcome?


texts: How to cite oneself as co-author without all names, for resume or presentation?

texts:
My questions regards the format of citation.
For the context: I am a student, presenting my work (with slides) and referring to the publications in which I am co-author (never in the first three authors).

It would be nice for my name to explicitely appear, as I also refer to other publications in which I did not take part.However I do not want to list all the authors (more than 10 for some papers).

Should I use (recommendeed by my advisor):

  A.Smith, M.Myself et al. "Marvelous publication"

Or

  A.Smith et al. (including M.Myself), "Marvelous publication"

My concern is not to appear as being the second author, which would feel like a lie, while keeping a compact formatting.

Is there a common way of doing this ?

Thank you.


texts: Finishing my BSc while working - asking help to professors and future academic chances

texts:
I started my BSc (major Engineering of automatic systems, in a world top-30 college) in 2010 and, one 1.5 years in and around 25% done, I left to cope with growing family problems (multiple severe health issues amongst close relatives). It was not a light decisions, I was part of a great student research team and really loved the people around me, but being left unable to concentrate by all the struggles at home I had no other option.

During the time not in college I founded, along with a friend, a startup company out of personal research in the field of HMIs of systems for beta testing and got acquired  by a much larger company and my product is now in worldwide usage within the parent group.
The deal was/is satisfactory from an economical point of view and getting a technical vision that i truly believed in to grow was a fantastic experience but I started to find myself really disliking the corporate job very when, due to company reorganization, I was moved from product development to a more white collar job.

This experience made me realize that what I love is critical thinking around technical problems, so, around 3 years ago, I re-enrolled in college while holding on to my position in the company; at age 26 a strong economical independence is fundamental to me, especially because it allows me a great independence from the problematic family environment and to make one of my childhood dream -flying gliders- come true.

It has been 3 years of exhausting studying 9pm - 1 am 5 days a week and, slowly, I managed to reach around 80% completion of my degree, even if with a low GPA (22/30) and hopefully I`ll graduate within 1.5 years.

Questions time:

My current objective is to pursue a higher level of education, I`d like to know how does such a twisty academical career affects my chances of getting accepted in a good Master program around 2 years from now.

Moreover, I`d also like to know what is a legitimate level of "help" that I could ask for to a professor of a mandatory course that I am finding extremely difficult (e.g. recommending area of focus and exercises to pay special attention to) , since being unable to attend lessons makes it way harder to know what to focus on while preparing for tests.

Thankyou for your help


texts: How to use results/ideas from a paper I reviewed?

texts:
I recently reviewed a paper (general applied mathematics context). During the review, I realized that the fairly general ideas introduced in the paper can potentially be applied to a specific problem in a similar context. The authors did not mention this application in their paper, so I suggested to add a short comment about it in my review.

I later started thinking about the application in more detail and tried out some things, which actually seem to work quite well for this application. Now, the paper is still in the review process and might take some time until it gets published. What is the proper way how to proceed here in order to use the ideas and results which I in my exclusive position as a reviewer saw? How can I refer to the paper that is still under review? How can I best discuss the ideas with my co-workers (and potential co-authors) without disclosing that I reviewed the paper?

The paper under review is not available online on any preprint servers such as arXiv etc


texts: How far should you go in compromising your work to get it published?

texts:
To get my first paper published I carefully followed all reviewers’ instructions as I was convinced that reviewers are experienced researchers and reviewers. After major revision my first paper was smoothly accepted.

However, as I progressed in research I also grew to dislike my first publication. Following the reviewers’ instructions made the paper unbalanced and disrupted the line of reasoning. That is because many reviewers request additional changes reflecting their area of expertise, but not necessarily contribute to the original objective and scope of the paper.

I also learnt that ‘the academic standard’ is a broad interpretation depending on the reviewers’ experiences and preferences. Also reviewers make mistakes in their judgement. As I was quickly asked to review myself, this blog greatly helped me in identifying my own mistakes: https://sites.umiacs.umd.edu/elm/2016/02/01/mistakes-reviewers-make/

In following publications, supported by my experienced supervisors, I learned to refute more. Even if I want to compromise, my supervisors will object because it is also a matter of our long-term reputation. The flip-side of the coin is that reviewers get pissed-off because no one likes a rebuttal, no matter how politely and respectfully it is written. It just provokes a response in reviewers to legitimize their views and invites additional scrutiny of my work.

I do however fully agree with my supervisors. It is a balance between short term targets and long term success. It is in essence a matter of personal integrity. But it is also personally stressful and it takes a lot of additional time and effort on the expense of research. I often think, just let us compromise and get the work published smoothly.

How should I deal with this dilemma? Have others had similar experiences?


texts: What should I do if a professor is not writing the recommendation letter whom I already suggested?

texts:
I have applied for a Ph.D. position and I had to suggest two referees who will write a letter for me. Previously one of my professors had written one for me so I write her name again. The system is you need to meet her in person and then she will write one in front of you and send it to the university.
After applying I came to know she had taken sick leave for the whole week and she asked me to meet next week. But the last day of letter submission is this week (Friday). I had written her mail about my problem and urgency but she did not reply. In this case, what can I do? I had some other referees too but she is a big shot that's why I put her name in the submission form.
Should I write the Ph.D. coordinator regarding this?

Update: I wrote the program coordinator and she replied that one recommendation letter is enough to make a decision.


texts: Motivating students when teaching a widely disliked course

texts:
There is a general tendency of students (master's or less) to rate highly those courses that create a value for them at the industry. For example, in CS, networking or OS courses are found to be attractive by many students simply because these are (almost) indispensable for most job interviews. It is difficult to find the same kind of enthusiasm for say, an optimisation course.

Another example from ECE will be courses pertaining to electromagnetism. Students generally love VLSI-based or telecommunication courses and ignore or dislike the ones on EM. Similarly there could be subfields in many areas where research has stagnated and relevant courses do not carry industrial value, but it is impossible to exclude them from the syllabus.

How does a professor teaching such a course sustain the interests of the students? How does he/she make the best out of a bad job?


texts: Admitting candidates from a no-name college?

texts:
How many times have you really seen Graduate Admissions Office of top universities in the US and the UK admitting students for Masters Program from no-name colleges in South Asia? For example, they might know the university but the college is unknown to them because there hasn't been any student of previous batches who went to that particular university?
If a student is stuck in such a case, what could he/she do to improve their chances?


texts: How do I know if my research skills is valuable in industry if majority funding is from government?

texts:
As a postdoc, my research is funded from a grant that's 70% government and 30% aerospace industry.
I work in collaboration with experimental groups and these groups have the collaboration with industry. The part of the industrial funding was acquired by the experimentalist PI working on the project. My PI who works on only modeling/theoretical research, doesn't have direct industrial contacts.
How do I know if my research skills is valuable in industry if majority funding is from government and the industrial funding is predominantly acquired by the experimentalist group?
I like what I do. My research and predictions is commended by experimentalist and since it's very applied, it gets published in experimental focused manufacturing related journals.
But I don't see my skills directly being used or sought after in industry. This would be a problem if I plan to move to industry in the future or in a tenure track position apply for my own individual research grant.


texts: How should work experience affect decision to get an MLIS (or another similar specialized Master's)?

texts:
The Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree is widely discussed as a potentially bad investment as a graduate level degree at this time because few programs are funded, it is rather specific, and it is notoriously difficult to actually get a job in the field of librarianship with an MLIS. One of the major reasons I've seen cited for this is the number of graduates versus available positions, and lack of practical work experience among new MLIS graduates.

However, I may have the opportunity to work in a library for over a year during my undergraduate degree. If lack of practical work experience is indeed (?) a major factor in the difficulty of the library job market post-graduation, would an MLIS be a more practical investment for me considering I could gain this experience before beginning the graduate program, thus leaving with both a degree and experience? In general, when deciding whether to apply to or enter an unfunded Master's program in a given field directly out of undergrad, should presence or lack of existing work experience in the field (or a related one) during undergrad be a major consideration?


texts: Fired/project given to another postdoc during F32 fellowship

texts:
I am in my third year of funding of an F32 NRSA postdoc fellowship (one month into my final year). My project is nearly complete and ready for publication, however, my sponsor/PI wanted another postdoc in the lab to conduct a few biochem assays for the project.

Over time, I have been cut out of my own project. My PI now feels that the paper is not near submission, and would like my project to be a "co-project" with this favored postdoc. My relationship with this mentor has started to deteriorate since that point. Favorite postdoc complains constantly about me to the PI, even though I remain positive and productive.

Recently at a meeting with PI and favorite postdoc, I was accused by the other postdoc of not properly analyzing a certain data set. In my defense I explained how I analyzed the data and why I employed the method I did. My mentor then cut me off and fired me from my position, citing that I had a bad attitude. I felt set up.

She asked me in a follow up email to give over all stocks, reagents, notebooks, and data files so the other postdoc can finish the project. I am to look for work, and I do not need to report to lab anymore.

What I don't understand is that this project is funded by an NIH fellowship in which I am the PI listed on the grant, can she give this project to someone else and take my three years of data away from me? Also, I had a year of salary/work coming to me, I was going to use this year to publish my work and apply for jobs but now I'm screwed. I was a free employee to the PI since my salary was covered, so I don't understand her actions. Any advice?


texts: What is an "innovative statement" for faculty application?

texts:
I am putting together a faculty application for a university in Russia.
The University has asked for an "Innovation Statement", along with other documents.

This is the first time I have heard of any such statement. I have googled the term and did not found much information, except one interesting article about "innovation mission statement" which does not fit well with a faculty application.

Any idea what an "innovation statement" is?


texts: How are scientific papers uniquely identified?

texts:
Some papers have the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) which uniquely identify them, some other have an oai identifier (e.g. oai:arXiv.org:1402.3722). Even though I inspected the metadata of different sources like core, microsoft academic, and semantic scholar I couldn't find a unique identifier which is used among all sources of research papers.

How are all scientific publications uniquely identified?


texts: When applying to grad school with a mediocre past how can you make yourself stand out

texts:
So the title question is not real clear so let me try to elaborate. I am currently 30 and a senior in college. I will be graduating this spring with a BS in Computer Engineering. The way my school is set up the Comp-Sci and Computer Engineering departments are together and the Electrical Engineering department is separate. I expect to graduate with over a 3.5 gpa (not wonderful) but have no research or intern/on the job experiences. I am looking at continuing on at this same institution with their phd program. My gre scores verbal 165, Quantitative 158. Their cut off is 146 verbal and 156 quantitative. I still need to talk with them and see how they utilize the gre scores and see if I need to retake the gre and up my quantitative score.

So from that mediocre beginnings I come to the grand finale. When talking with professors and otherwise looking/learning in my field. How do you find those areas that are new and pushing into the frontier. When I write a letter of intent and they want me to tell them what I want to be doing. Where do I go read up on the new stuff for my major. What are some all around objectives and methods that people use and then specific to computer engineering what are people reading or procuring their resources from.

What other things could I do in this last year that may help my chances of being picked?

As an additional question, Letters of recommendation would be coming from professors from within the department that will be doing the selection. Some of these Professors would be the ones heading my thesis committee(i think that's right). Does anyone have any experience they can relate where they went to grad school at the same institution that they go their BS degree from.  I will have one outside reference as a peer mentor for our freshman engineering program but otherwise most of the professors have seen me go over the top in my work for their classes.


texts: Getting back to academics / independent research

texts:
As a full time professional without prior publications, I am seriously considering a move to academics as a PhD student. My field of interest is mostly Data Analytics and I am keen to explore the possibilities where I can associate Data Analytics with AI and Deep Learning.

Unfortunately, I have no degrees or certificates to show my credentials here but I have prepared myself in the tools I may need to tackle a research question in such a discipline.(Yes, I agree that it isn't enough)

I want to know if there is any possibility of collaborating with academic professionals and publish independent papers?

My academic qualifications:

Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering
MBA in International Management


texts: Are itemized lists discouraged in scientific papers?

texts:
From my experience in biology (by experience I mean reading other papers), it seems that there is an unspoken rule that itemized lists do not belong in the body text of a paper.

I have almost never seen a paper have a bullet point list or a numbered list which is formatted as a separate entity in the body text (although I have seen them in eg. the sidebar, or figures which essentially are a numbered list). The closest I've seen is an "in-line" numbered list:

  Our paper raises three points: (1) yada yada, (2) blah blah and (3) bip bap boop. Point (2) is particularly important, because yakkity yakkity...

Are bullet point or numbered lists, formatted similar to how StackOverflow formats them for example, discouraged in scientific publication? If so is there a reason why?


texts: Is it common to have exam questions 'peer reviewed'?

texts:
How common is it that exam questions, after being designed by the instructor and before being given to the students, are checked by a colleague in one's same institute, to make sure that they are appropriate and unambiguous and that their results are correct? Is this normally enforced by universities across the world?

I am asking whether there is a formal check required by the department; I am not speaking simply about instructors of the same course writing the exam collaboratively.

Motivation: anecdotal. A recent answer mentions "having [exam questions] checked / verified for quality, consistency etc". And I heard from a colleague from a country in the English-speaking world that in their institution something similar goes on: they prepare exam questions one week in advance, and then they are sent to be checked by a colleague. OTOH, this is completely unheard of for me in Italy --- the instructor designs the questions, then they are sent out to the students without any form of review imposed by the university (though the Italian system is somehow peculiar when it comes to exams.)


texts: How to deal with these so called "Minor revisions"?

texts:
Update: Mars 29
Thank you everyone for your time and efforts to help me with the revision. The article has been resubmitted yesterday and accepted this morning. Without your help, I don't think I can do this. Except your suggestions for this revision, the more important thing I've learned from your comments is the altitude and methods of research， which points out the correct direction and helps me get rid of some misunderstand of research. Thank you everyone again. It's a excellent experience of discussing with you here and I expect more communications in the future.

I've received the editor's reponse for the second revision. He marked "minor revision" in the online system of submission. But his review is so confusing.

Reviewers/Editor comments:    As the reviewer kindly points out the discussion is very speculative. In view of this, the outcome of this manuscript is still in doubt and a final decision will be taken upon submission of your revisions.

Reviewer #1: The authors have responded to my comments.  The article has some value but its discussion is still somewhat heavy on speculation and somewhat light on hard analysis.  Leading the authors further toward a stronger analysis falls beyond the scope of the review and so it falls to the editor to decide whether that value is sufficient to warrant publication in [journal].

In fact, if I revise the manuscript according to their demand to eliminate the "speculations", I have to delete and simply a lot of the discussions. This is a real "major revisions" indeed. So now I am so confused for this so-called "minor revisions". I'd like to ask your help and advice, thank you!


texts: How to get feedback on unfinished research papers if I don't have any direct contact with people qualified in my field?

texts:
I have a question which can seem a bit unusual.
How can I get feedback on unpublished scientific articles if I have no direct connection with anyone qualified in my field? The fact is that now I am studying for a Bachelor of Computer Science at one of the small provincial universities in Russia, I am researching the field of machine learning (I am developing several new architectures for dialogue modeling and natural language generation).
And my main problem is that I have been studying machine learning and all other necessary disciplines on my own since the age of 15 (now I'm 20), that is, I am an autodidact, I have never received any outside help in learning machine learning. But in my university, there is not a single person at all who has at least some knowledge in this area and who is familiar with modern research in it. Believe me, I was looking for such people, and I have found none, and even one of my projects was rejected at the level of the computer science department as it turned out later because no one understood what it was and what to do with it and no one even asked me for an explanation or gave me an explanation of the reason why it was rejected until I knew this from one of my professors who is a member of the academic council of my university. At the moment, I am locked up in my university with no way to do anything about it (if you want to know, even though my specialization is applied computer science, we have never been taught programming besides of a very blurry theory in survey courses, although I'm a third-year student here, I was forced to learn to program on my own). My only hope is to wait for the end of my studies here and move to another university for a specialized master's program in machine learning (after all, although I study well here and I have never had lower than excellent marks, there is little benefit from it). As you can see, the situation is more than dire. Any help is greatly appreciated accordingly. I am sorry for such a verbose description of my state of affairs. Thank you for your attention.


texts: How to reject a postdoc job offer politely while keeping the door open for potential future collaboration?

texts:
A colleague of mine received two postdoc job offers from two universities in the same city. He finds the two projects very interesting. He made his decision and now is drafting an email to reject one of the offers.
The issue is that we live in a small city and everyone knows each other, so he needs to be very delicate with his email. In fact, some research staff members are working with both groups at the same time. My colleague could suggest a collaboration to work on both projects, but he says he prefers to stay focused on working on one project. So he wants to reject one of the offers, but he wants to keep the door open in the future as he may want to work with the group in the future.
The question: What can my friend say in the email to show he sincerely regrets rejecting the offer, and that he is open to having collaboration in the future?


texts: An inteview with another live offer out!

texts:
I already have an offer for a TT job at another institution, but I received an inteview offer from a school I'd really like to work for. I was told (twice) that they didn't like two of their first three candidates and that they'd like to inteview me if the one they liked fell through.

They told that they'd have an answer as to whether or not I'd interview on Friday by Wednesday. Which turned into Thursday. At about 5:45PM on Thursday, I was called by one of the committee members to offer me an inteview for Friday. (I am currently visiting faculty here, so the turnaround is possible if really inconvenient and hard to swing.) I agreed, excited. But it occurred to me during the conversation that I should ask if I could safely assume that the first candidate fell through, and I was told I could not!!!

I was flustered, continued the conversation, finished it. I then calmed down and emailed very shortly after and said that I could not accept the inteview until I could actually be considered in contention for the job and that I should have immediately said so upon learning that my assumption that the first candidate had fallen through was not correct.

Has anyone heard of such things happening? Getting a backup lined up outside of the first round of invites to campus interviews after an offer has already been put out?

They know my clock on the other offer expires soon, so I know they're scrambling to make sure that they could consider me should the other candidate fall through. But I was told that the interview would only happen if the candidate did fall through.


texts: Should the desire to go back to one's country after graduation be written in the statement of purpose?

texts:
I wish to apply to public universities in the US for a PhD in the near future and at this point I am drafting my statement of purpose.

Having been exposed to how research (majority of which is public and funded by the government) is done in my country (India) from an early age and having worked in some of these research organizations myself, I was considering including a desire to be an active part of the academic community (in what capacity, I don't think I can be sure at this point) in India and possibly working to contribute to it as one of my motivations for gaining a PhD.

Given that I wish to apply majorly to public research universities (majorly funded by the governments, as I understand it) in the US, will it be perceived as not being in the interests of the university to accept a student who is keen on returning to his country following his education? Does this kind of a thing matter during the admissions procedure? Should I be thinking along these lines? How is marginal patriotism this kind of a motivation perceived in a statement of purpose?


texts: Applying for assistant professor position with limited teaching experience

texts:
I am applying for an assistant professor position at a research university (in one of the hard sciences). It is stated in the announcement that some teaching will be required, and a teaching statement is needed for for the application.

I only have limited teaching experience. I have never taught a full semester course. I have helped out colleagues by teaching their courses for 1-2 weeks at a time, while they were travelling. Thus I taught as many as 7-8 different subjects, mostly graduate courses, but always for a very short time (except once, when I did it for 2 months).

I did enjoy these short opportunities to teach and I was hoping to be able to teach a full course at some point, but at my current job this was unfortunately impossible for a number of reasons outside of my control.

Will this lack of experience seriously harm my application?  How should I approach writing the teaching statement in my situation?  I do have opinions on how to each effectively in the classroom, but they may be naïve: they are based more on my experience as a student than as a teacher.  I am even less confident about laying out a syllabus for a full semester (what is too much or too little, best organization, etc. -- following a textbook is not always an option).

Should I describe and discuss my background at length?  I fear that doing so will highlight my inexperience too much.  But not doing so makes it difficult to beyond generalities.


texts: Is it appropriate to ask a professor for a discount on his expensive book?

texts:
My question is similar to this  - Rude to ask a book chapter.
I have bought the first of two parts of a research monograph. The second part is even more expensive (around $150) and in my currency it is prohibitively expensive. I do not know the professor and he does not know me either. On the other hand it is possible we may collaborate in the future as we are in the same field. Is it appropriate to send him an email and ask him for a discount on his book? Would it harm a professional relationship later on in my career?


texts: How to write literature review when several systematic reviews already exist

texts:
I'm currently getting stuck into writing the literature review for my PhD thesis. (Provisional literature review anyway, given that it's my first year.) In my field, there are two or three published systematic reviews of the subject matter I'm covering. I'm uncertain as to how to make use of these in the context of my literature review: if I were to review all the literature independently I'm effectively reproducing the existing systematic reviews, but if I simply report the systematic reviews I'm not demonstrating an in depth engagement with the literature.

How should I make use of these existing systematic reviews in my literature review, without either duplicating text or appearing to take short-cuts?


texts: Does all computer science research involve heavy usage of mathematics?

texts:
I am starting my graduate studies in computer science this year and am confused as to what quality research (some new innovation or discovery) domain I would choose specifically amongst virtualization, distributed computing, containers, and/or blockchain.

My main issue is that I understand but am not interested in algorithms and their efficiencies. Similarly, I can understand my undergraduate level mathematics but that does not interest me. I have good knowledge and understanding of operating systems, virtualization, and containers concepts.

I have researched regarding this online and came to know people normally only compare out the efficiency of one algorithm over another in problems of memory sharing, process switching, and other similar problems; is there any other method or means to do something new in the field of cloud computing, containers or blockchain?

It would be quite helpful if any expert(s) from these domains could enlighten me regarding as to what type of research is currently going on in these domains and how research work in these domains can be done (while staying away from algorithms and complex mathematics).

Thanks to all those who answered and commented. Answering some comments and to give some more context to my question:

I am looking to select my research area from the broad domains of Cloud (virtualization and administration), DevOps methodologies and tools (optimizing workflows and processes), Containers technology (for example dockers and kubernetes), and Blockchain optimization ( I am aware this one would involve complex algorithms).
I'm not looking to write PHP scripts or JS (I know that is engineering). I personally dislike front-end scripting. Some of my projects include setting up a private cloud infrastructure for a company in an internship, writing shell scripts for CI/CD purposes and creating a custom RHEL ISO which already has preinstalled software (no, not templates). Basically, I am proficient in Python, bash shell, Java, C and have a good understanding of how OS, Cloud and IT infrastructure generally works. You can say I am interested in the data center or infrastructure optimization.

So, my question's main perspective is: I find it hard to believe that computer science research (at least development of new techniques, tools, and platforms) is impossible without deep knowledge of mathematics and algorithm designing (I may be wrong but that's the point of the question). Is there established research work or progress done in these domains that do not involve very complex usage of algorithms and mathematics like integration, differentiation and such. Please note, I am trying to avoid complex usage and modification of algorithms and its maths. I am interested to discover methodologies of such research (I am hardly able to find much on the Internet).


texts: Interviewing for a PhD with intent to reject the offer if admitted elsewhere

texts:
I made several applications to Universities in the US, Canada, and Europe. One of the universities in Europe asked me for an interview which I attended several weeks ago. I felt like they dedicated resources to interview me as there was 5 professor present. They interview was completely technical in nature.

A week ago I received an email where a professor wrote a feedback about my interview, and told me that they are considering me for a position. They will have to arrange an interview with their industrial liaison before I get the offer. (In Europe, a PhD is a job).

I didn't receive any decisions yet from other places which are preferable choices to me. In case I get an admission offer elsewhere, I intend to accept it. Otherwise, I will accept the offer in Europe.

I feel like what I am doing is not completely ethical since it seemed to me that they university in Europe, or more precisely the professor I am in contact with, is dedicating lots of resources just to interview me and they are trying to get someone on the project quickly. They have never asked me about my plans or whether I applied elsewhere

My question: Should I say something in the next interview? Is what I am doing right (Keeping this place as a plan B) while applying elsewhere?


texts: How to act when a researcher doesn't respond to an e-mail?

texts:
When asking an unknown researcher about their work (and, most specifically, the data they used and the availability of it) via e-mail, what timeframe could one expect as a "normal" one in which an answer would be expected? If you don't get an answer within this timeframe, how one tactfully go about persisting, if at all?

This is, of course, after formulating the e-mail in a way which describes you and the particular project you're doing that the researcher (hopefully) takes interest in it.


texts:
I am just curious. Israel is not a part of Bologna Process.

So, I have two questions:

Why was Israel rejected a membership in Bologna process?
How is an Israeli PhD evaluated in Bologna member countries?


texts: What is the best way to archive all references in phd?

texts:
As a phd student, I am in phase 0 of my research and I download many papers everyday. I have archived the names and the specifications of the papers in a spreadsheet, but that does not really help.

How can have I an efficient interactive archive/database of all the papers I download every day?


texts: My colleague *may* have forged data. Any advice?

texts:
We are about to submit a revised manuscript for publication in a prestigious journal. This is a team work and one of my colleague performed most of the molecular biology experiments, including many electrophoreses.

I just noticed that on one of these electrophoreses, if play around with the contrast etc., some bands are surrounded by a rectangle with a different background as if the image had been assembled.

When pointed this weird detail (without making accusations) and asked where that came from, he said something along the lines of "wrong image, my mistake", and sent me a different gel later on (without this weird signal).

Now, I can easily imagine how one may accidentally mislabel an image, but I have a really hard time imagining how one can accidentally copy-paste signal from one image to another. I am now concerned about the validity of all the work that was performed by this teammate. Not only that experiment, but also graphs etc.; while I have no further evidence of weird results, I am now suspicious of anything that was produced by this person.

The deadline for sending our revisions is in a few weeks, and the experiments performed by this teammate are both 1) too tedious to be repeated within the next few days, and 2) too important to be removed from the paper.

I am afraid that if I bring this up with our PI (who is good friends with this colleague), and if my colleague finds a way to talk himself out of this, I would be seen as the "team breaker" and have a really bad time for the rest of my graduate studies in this laboratory.

How should I approach this, and with who?


texts: How to subscribe to journals so that I regularly receive only the Titles and Abstracts without necessarily the full content of the papers?

texts:
How can one subscribe to a non-open access journal such as "Nature Reviews Drug Discovery".
The subscription will be to have the abstract of the latest releases.


texts: Prolonging a PhD to improve research CV, is this good ?

texts:
I am in my 4th year of PhD. Few months ago I presented my thesis proposal which already included some of the results (that are actually published). I proposed to add another chapter (call it Chapter x).

One of the committee members told me that the results presented are sufficient for a thesis. He said that chapter x is not necessary, or it can be replaced by a literature survey (instead of presenting original work - as I proposed during the thesis proposal). He said that original work can be done during a post-doc instead.  My thesis supervisor agreed.

Right now, I am in the middle of of the Chapter x [and some other stuff] (and I think I have original results that are not complete - they would be complete, if everything goes fine [which is never the case in research]).

My question is: should I write my thesis without novel results in Chapter x and then do a postdoc based on Chapter x ? Or: should I continue working on Chapter x even if this will result in a longer PhD ?

The source of my confusion:
Wouldn't adding novel results in Chapter x improve my research CV ? but at the same time, will the long period of PhD negatively affect the research CV ? Plus, will I find the chance to work on this topic as a postdoc !


texts: Should a history book written as a narrative be disregarded as a source?

texts:
Recently, I found several sources relevant to my research paper, and also written by prominent historians, but the book is written in first person, in some narrative form, with dialogue added. I find it a little strange, because the text has complete conversations, that I think could not possibly be recorded in such detail.
When I studied my BA in History, there was a course that discussed in detail how to evaluate a source, against the CRAAP test and other similar measures, yet I'm not sure where this fails the checklist:

Currency
Relevance
Authority
Accuracy
Purpose

My colleagues keep recommending me such texts to use. Are these types of texts something I should skip over when writing a research paper?


texts: Why would manuscript status change from "awaiting reviewer decisions" to "evaluation requests sent to reviewers"?

texts:
I submitted a manuscript two weeks ago to a journal. I was following the progress of handling my manuscript depending on the status revealed by the journal's website within my account.
The status history showed the following:

1. Manuscript accepted for processing
2. Evaluation requests sent to reviewers
3. Review is pending
4. Awaiting reviewers decision
5. Evaluation requests sent to reviewers

The journal never informed me about the decision. What are the reasons behind this behavior? Is this normal ?


texts:
I've talked a surprising number of graduate students in several disciplines, all in the same bind:

They have a very senior and well respected academic as a coauthor
That coauthor has been sitting on the manuscript for a year or more
They have written several followups with no luck.
They can't (or feel they can't) pull that person from the paper,
partly for desire to benefit from the glow of fame, but largely for fear of offending this kind of person, who so often functions as a gatekeeper to their discipline.

I don't know what to tell them, besides keep following up, or give up on getting the paper published. Any better advice?


texts: Identity of a supposed anonymous referee revealed through "Description" of the report

texts:
I received a referee report from a journal (with single blind peer review policy).

If that matters, the journal uses "Editorial Manager" system.

By clicking on "View Attachments", one can see 5 these information "Action", "Uploaded By", "Description", "File Name", "File Size".

The content of the column "Uploaded By" is "Editor".

The content of the column "Description" is  "from prof. X"

Hence the identity of the referee is disclosed.

I am wondering if it is an unintended mistake from the Editor or it is the referee who has written such description.

The referee has done a substantial work to evaluate the manuscript and has proposed many suggestions leading to the improvement of the manuscript.

My dilemma is that, as I know the identity of the referee, should I use his real name in the acknowledgement or just thank an anonymous referee?


texts: How to reference to a statement that itself is referenced by a paper other than original paper?

texts: When I read a statement in a paper that is itself derived from another paper, how should I reference it when I use it in my own article? Should I reference the original article or the second article, or both?


texts: Is it possible to do a Postdoc without travelling?

texts:
I am soon to finish my PhD and would love to do postdoctoral research (UK). However, for reasons I shan't go into, it is not viable for me to travel outside of my city and so I am unable to attend conferences/workshops/etc.

Is it feasible for me to obtain a postdoc position? Or do postdoc responsibilities necessarily entail travelling?


texts:
Some journals require keywords besides the abstract to 'describe' the published article, some don't. See for instance with keywords http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X16301788 and without keywords http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12313/full
I was wondering whether there are guidelines or recommendations how to choose such keywords? For instance, has each journal a list of keywords that you can use or recommend scientific societies/associations a certain standard of 'how to set up meaningful keywords'? Or do paper authors just make up their own keywords?


texts: how universities treat faculty according to teaching feedback questionaires filled by students

texts: If faculty get good or bad scores out of teaching feedback questionaires filled by students, what will happen to the faculty? Most people get average scores so nothing happens. Will those who get very high scores get better chances of pay rise or promotion? Will those who get very low scores be deprived of chances of pay rise? Will students' final grades be viewed for reference together to assess faculty's teaching?


texts: PhD theses in mathematics with no "big" results or no results at all

texts:
I've recently come across a math PhD thesis of a student from a prestigious US university in which he just computationally checked, up to a certain bound, a conjecture, without coming up with any new ideas. To me, this would be insufficient to get a PhD, as there are no new insights. I was talking about this with a collegue, who showed me a phd thesis in which the main thesis was a not well-supported conjecture. Hence the question:

how common is for successful PhD theses in math to have "little to no results" in them? Do you know any further examples (of course, without mentioning names, unis, etc)?


texts: Is there any difference between PhD and D.Tech?

texts: Just out of curiosity, I will like to know if there is any difference (if any) in academic environment, between Ph.D issued by most Universities and D.Tech issued by University of Technology.


texts: Workshop: What to put on CV when you had multiple roles?

texts:
Part of my post-doc has involved organizing a series of workshops. At some of these workshops, I end up with many roles. As an example, for the most recent workshop I wrote the proposal to get the funding, served as organizer, gave a talk/tutorial related to my research, and gave a (teaching) tutorial on some general skills useful in the field. (These workshops are more like schools: teaching grad students and post-docs about best practices.)

My question is: What parts should end up on my CV, and where? It feels ridiculous if some workshops show up 3 or 4 times (under headings for funded proposals, workshop organization, and talks). On the other hand, it was all a lot of work.

In addition, there were some workshops where I only gave a talk, and some where I was an organizer, but didn't write the funding proposal. It seems weird to include a talk from the one where I wasn't an organizer, and not include a talk that served the same purpose when I was an organizer.

What's the standard/recommended practice in this case? For context, my work is at the border of chemistry and physics, so to the extent that a lot of CV stuff is domain-specific, those are the relevant domains.


texts: In U.S. universities, do male professors get paternity leave?

texts:
Do American universities typically help male professors transition into fatherhood by offering (paid) paternity leave?  If so, what is the standard amount of paid time off that is offered?

Feel free to compare with maternity leave benefits for female professors, but my question is mainly on the availability of paternity leave.


texts: Can I do research at the university without acceptance to the university

texts:
Is it possible to do research at the university without acceptance to the university? What I mean that if I have free time and desire to help with projects, can I join some reseach group.

The question is not a legal stuff (I suppose that's legal :) ), but what are the chances that some university lab accept me?

I do not want to search for work position as little afraid about strict timelines. At the end I hope to get few articles that will help me to get to grad school and nice spent time.

Desired field is robotics.

Thanks for ideas and opinions.


texts: I have a PhD in Physics and about 10 years of experience post the PhD, 6 years in academia and the rest in Industry as a research Data Scientist. I would like to move more towards management and am considering an executive MBA. Another reason for considering the MBA is that my PhD was from US and then I returned back to India. Now I am looking to go back and considering this as an avenue to return to US. Does it sound like a reasonable idea?


texts: Dealing with an unhelpful and unresponsive thesis advisor?

texts:
My thesis advisor is based on another city and we barely had meetings during my master thesis process.  At most three times. He responds very late to my emails and I have to wait weeks sometimes.

But the deadline is approaching and he has to give feedback to me.

(Instead he advised me to find a second advisor from where I work to continue quickly with her and that person helped me ten times as much as the actual advisor did!)

When should I remind him about my emails and that I'm waiting for his feedback? I know they can be busy but I was too alone and isolated in this process except the guidance the second advisor from my workplace..


texts: Is it okay to submit manuscript to arXiv after "revise and resubmit"?

texts:
I've read this question about how some publishers (e.g., Springer) allows authors to submit to arXiv before journal submission, but they make authors wait for a year after acceptance to submit to arXiv.

My question is: Is it okay to submit to arXiv during the time when the paper is under consideration by the journal, for example after it has been "revised and resubmitted" but before final decision?


texts: Can we first claim and then find the evidence when we write the literature review (i.e., using confirmatory technique)?

texts:
I have a question regarding a researcher’s practice in writing.

Let me give you some background about this issue. Here’s what this researcher does when writing introductions and literature reviews. He makes certain speculations first and then proceeds to making claims based on those initial speculations. It is worth noting that the claims he makes are sometimes too specific. Following that, he starts looking for evidence to support his claims.

I have tried many times to convince him and have told him that this is not the right way to write a research paper. It’s more like writing a composition rather than an academic piece of writing which aims at making contributions to the world of education.

Here’s part of what he recently wrote in an email in response to me:

“I disagree that making claims and looking for evidence supporting them is "not academic". Maybe I am wrong but this approach is less exploratory than the method you have in mind. For example, [Michael] Kane's framework is based on this method: Claim --> evidence. Kane specifically stresses the importance of opinions/judgments etc. I personally do not prefer to tie my mind merely to the literature --I do not find it much academic in the sense it does not engage me in critical thinking. My method is: "The theory I wish to develop does not exist out there; I develop and support it"”

I would like to have your opinion regarding this issue. Is what the researcher claims really right? If not, can you introduce some published sources which have attacked this practice?


texts: Breaking an axis - is it ever a good idea?

texts:
I know that using an origin other than 0 for numeric data is considered misleading. But for plots in academic publications, is it ever a good idea to break an axis so that patterns and outliers can be more easily seen?
Or would you always try to find an alternative (e.g., using a logarithmic scale, faceting, using multiple plots with different scales)? I'm looking for a general rule of thumb.


texts:
In experimental fields, such as physics, chemistry, and engineering, every professor has their own lab/workshop, normally with several externally funded projects. A PhD student may work on currently funded projects.

However, it is the responsibility of the university or department  to provide the cost of this PhD project. How and by whom is the budget of a PhD project set?

I mentioned experimental fields, because the costs of these PhD projects are normally much higher than tuition fees (consider that the student has no research fellowship).


texts: How to overcome feeling that published articles lack public interest?

texts:
I am a MSc graduate student, still trying to get a PhD position, but with no success at all. During and after my graduation I struggle to publish some articles (right now I got 6, mostly published in IEEE conferences or indexed in Scopus), but I do not feel happy at all.

The problem is that I see my publications as having a lack of public interest. I would like to publish more interesting, formal and mathematical stuff (I am in the field of Computer Science), but the problem that I have is that in my current place of work almost all my time is dedicated to lecturing. Also, and because I am working in a university of applied sciences; the research made here is highly applicable and less theoretical. All this things has put me in a state of deep depression.

What should I do to start looking to my research and my made publications with a different attitude? Should I seek for medical counselling?

Thanks


texts: How do you present internal funding for facilities and staff in your record of secured funds?

texts:
One of the key factor in the resume of an academic is the amount of research funds he was able to secure.

Most research funds go towards human resources, for example, postdoc fellows and PhD students. In my resume, I write the total funds I have received. A significant part of these funds is paid to my research fellows.

However, sometimes my institution hires staff for me. For instance, if my university gives me credit to hire postdoc fellows for my research, this is also a kind of grant that I have earned, but it is not a value to be summed (to estimate total funds I've secured).

Questions:

The list of funds we secured are normally external funds provided by funding agencies. How do you calculate internal funds granted to you?
If your  research institution grants you special access (as a reward to your achievements) to human resources or facilities, but no money is transferred, how do you estimate the total fund granted to you? And is it appropriate to do so?


texts: What are the super cool tricks to getting published in high impact journals?

texts: I am starting a post-doc in Cognitive Neuroscience and I am interested in publishing my work in high impact journals (e.g., Nature, Science, Behavioral and Brain Science). I have already published review articles in not-so-high impact journals, and I would like to know your thoughts and tips for publishing in high-impact journals. I will be responsible for submitting these papers to these journals and I will be seeing them through to the end. Ay helpful advice and tips would be greatly appreciated!


texts: How to select the principal investigator in a group?

texts: If a group of researchers collaborating on a grant proposal, how the principal investigator can be selected? The researcher with the idea, the one who invited other researchers, the most well-known researcher in the group, the researcher with highest academic rank (e.g., full professor), etc? Should the group decide? What if the first researcher would like to be the PI?


texts: How should one describe a future academic appointment

texts: I am currently a grad student, and will have an appointment as an assistant professor in a few months.  For various conferences I am attending, I am to provide my title.  I would prefer to mention my future position, if for no other reason so that people I meet will know where to find me in the future.  Is there a term for a future appointment like "President-elect" or "Chairperson-elect" that can be used?  "Assistant professor-elect" seems strange and "Assistant professor (effective August)" seems clunky.