texts: How can I provide a great external evaluaton of a faculty member's promotion and tenure case?

texts:
I recently received an email asking if I would be willing to evaluate a colleague's application for promotion and tenure. We are both at R1 universities in the US. According to the guidelines, I am qualified to serve as an external evaluator even though I am neither tenured nor in a tenure-track position. However, this means that I have limited familiarity with the process.

I am inclined to accept and support the case, but would like to know:

What is typically involved in such a review? How much reading and writing? Can I expect to do this in a single day?
What makes a great (great = valuable to the committee) evaluation?


texts: Publishing paper as a PhD student without advisor's name

texts: I'm a Computer Science PhD student in a US university. Recently, I worked on a problem and wrote a paper. When I asked my advisor to submit the paper to a good journal (such as IEEE Trans. on Computers), he became upset with me and forced me to submit the paper in a very poor quality open access journal. I need good publications to get a faculty position after PhD. Now I'm thinking to work on some other areas on computer science simultaneously with my PhD dissertation so that I can publish my work in a good journal without including my advisor's name. Can I publish my own work (not my dissertation work) as a PhD student without including my advisor's name?


texts: How can I delete an article listed on my Google Scholar page that was not written by me?

texts: On top of my Google Scholar page an article appears that was not written by me (increases my citations quite a bit, but I feel it reflects badly on me). For whatever reason, the article doesn't appear on my underlying profile page, so I cannot delete it. Is there a way to delete it? I send emails to Google Scholar help but no answer. Thanks.


texts: Can a 3 years PhD make an independent researcher ? Or how many post-docs after PhD to be an independent researcher?

texts: I am doing research more than 3 years. I was admitted in a 3 years program, now in the last months of the program. I fell I have a long way in the field to be an independent researcher. But most of the post-docs in my department and in my group don't seem to be in the direction of a independent research. Many of us PhD students and post-docs look like more high level technical staff.


texts: Academics with ADHD or autism: What workplace accommodations have helped you?

texts:
Folks,

I have ADHD, and I'm considering a career in academia after I get my PhD. I am about to defend my dissertation proposal, and I expect to defend by May 2020.

Part of the standard package of accommodations for students with ADHD is extended time on tests, but I have never needed this. I can complete tests fine. And it won't be relevant when I'm a faculty member, anyway. I'm more interested in this: for those of you who have ADHD or autism who are academics, what specific workplace accommodations have you requested? These can include formal or informal accommodations. Hearsay (i.e. I know a colleague with ADHD, and she has XYZ) is fine. Autism included as this condition also affects executive function, albeit in different ways.

Inattention and making mistakes while creating Excel tables has been a problem before. In an academic job, I would work with my colleagues and any students I'm supervising to check any tables I'm putting out - not to mention I'd probably be the one checking any tables my students put out. I've been able to automate a lot of the table writing through statistical software, which really cuts down on cut and paste errors. If I were in the private sector, one of my accommodations would need to be something along the lines of needing to work with others to check my work.

Alternatively, per @Elizabeth Henning's question, I'd also be interested to know if anyone was offered accommodations that aren't actually helpful, and what accommodations those are. Perhaps those answers will be informative to the community.

The site is warning me that the question I'm asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed. A lot of the questions here involve some degree of subjectivity, so I find the rule to be very ill-defined. But, so I don't get the question closed, please limit this to discrete workplace accommodations that you have received, or that you have heard of others receiving.

Some related posts on StackExchange that don't address this specific question:

What specific techniques can help someone facing mental health problems (depression, anxiety, ADHD) have a productive academic career?

What type of workplace accommodations are departments required to make for a mentally unhealthy faculty member?


texts: Can I quote a sentence from another paper?

texts: I am writing a paper and I have found in another paper a definition for a quantity which I am working with that is very clear and is written much better than I will ever be able to do. I tried paraphrasing it, but the result is not so clear: can I quote it in my paper?


texts: Some professors a my institution are asking for "common" spaces in which post-docs are not allowed. Is this ok?

texts:
I have been working as a postdoc for nearly a year. In recent months, the university is working to upgrade office and common spaces within my particular building. Some professors wanted a "Faculty Club" which is something like a common space for interaction between scientists to share ideas and discuss problems. However, in the last faculty meeting some professors stated that this should be a space "only" for them and postdocs would not be allowed there, not even to use the coffee maker.

Now I live in a country (Chile) where there is a social rising with people demanding for equality and to stop discrimination between different social classess. In this context, the universities have a role to be an example and to educate people according to the social demands.

However, I see the same discrimination within the university, when you have professors that does not want to share spaces with postdocs like we were second class citizens. I understand that professors and postdocs have different needs in term of office spaces, but I don't think that in the middle of the 21st century you should start to ban people to use certain spaces just because they are "less" than you.

Is this common in academia?


texts: How can I create a sense of community in a research group?

texts:
I am beginning to develop research projects that will incorporate undergraduate researchers.  I have observed that some faculty manage to create a strong lab culture, where the students that work with them seem to get a sense of achievement from simply being part of the lab and the lab culture.  (I work in biology but I have seen this across disciplines)

Similarly, I would like to create an environment where there is a sense of community associated with my lab. What steps should I take to accomplish this?


texts:
Six years ago while I was working in a company outside academia, I had been involved in improving a process which was hot in academia. I have developed a new method which, among other notable advantages, improved all previous methods by deriving better results. Although some time passed, today it can still be considered as state of the art.

Despite I was not in academia, because of the quality of the results, I have managed to publish a paper about it in a top journal in that field. I hoped that the paper would get popular, and it would get cited many times, but today, after 4-5 years of being available, to my surprise, the work is still not cited. I see that new papers that come out and that are related, still refer to (lesser) methods, as though mine doesn't exist at all. As I am following the papers in that field, and despite a large number of related papers, I still don't see much improvement over my work, so it's pretty much current.

The paper uses proper keywords and wording (so it's easy to find), the journal is a good one (so people must have seen it), and it cites all other related papers (so I guess that relevant people in the field who have Google Scholar would be aware of it existence if they get notified of new citations). And still the paper didn't take off. The only reason I could think of is networking. Since at that time I was not in academia, I did not go to conferences to get the work (and my name) "advertised". But I refuse to believe that this was the critical factor.

The questions are: How to get cited and how to boost the impact of one's work? And did I do anything wrong?

I am now in my PhD, and I would like to learn how to boost the popularity of my upcoming papers.


texts: Can co-authors disagree in their own paper?

texts:
Co-authors are increasingly required to report their individual contributions to a research paper. But can they report their (internal) disagreement?

Co-authors may disagree on parts of a final draft. Each may have own interpretation of (parts of) the results or view of their implications.

The different views can be of course expressed in the publication without attribution, e.g.:

  Our results may mean x, but they may also mean y.

But some co-authors may find others' interpretations/views controversial, or they may wish to get "exclusive" credit for their own ideas.

In such cases, is it appropriate for co-authors to explicitly attribute certain interpretations/views in a paper to their owners? Should they do that?

  Co-author A thinks results mean x, whereas co-author B thinks they mean y but not x.


texts: Changing office hours by student request

texts:
Usually, I poll my students at the beginning of the semester and voluntarily tweak my office hours if someone can't come to any of them (or offer office hours by appointment when appropriate). So I don't, in general, have a problem with doing this.

This semester, however, I am teaching two sections (100+ students each) of a very large centrally coordinated course. There are several other instructors and many graduate student TAs. All students are welcome in any and all office hours.

With that many students and so many office hours to choose from, I feel less accommodating with respect to modifying my hours. A large part of this hesitation is that I have extra responsibilities associated to the development of this course, so I'm already spending more time than usual on it. AND I'm applying for jobs.

I chose my current office hours for time management purposes. I've been asked by a few students if I could move one to a different day (a day that I usually work from home) or take appointments outside of my regularly scheduled office hour, and I really don't want to. In fact, I feel a little bit like it's inappropriate for them to make the request in a class this large and with so many resources already available.

Is it unreasonable for me to flat out refuse to change them?


texts: When I read research papers I often come across many things that I'm unclear about and would like to talk over with someone. My advisor is not available to do this with me as she does not have time. I'm not sure with whom should I discuss these research papers with, in order to help me understand the papers better. I am the only student who is currently being advised by my advisor.  How should I go about finding people to talk through these things with, so I can better understand the research papers I'm reading?


texts: For someone who has just finished his M.Sc. with extremely good grades, is it possible that their not so extremely good grades during undergrad might affect where they get their PhD?


texts: How much weight do Math PhD programs place on the subject GRE?

texts:
I am a master's student in mathematics at a relatively unknown university, studying Number Theory. I have completed readings for my master's thesis and will present this in Spring, along with other readings with another advisor. I have 4.0 gpa throughout my time here, and I believe strong recommendation letters. My research goals are pretty focused, and this will show through on my application (probably mostly so in my personal statement, but also in one rec letter).

The only thing that is holding me back is this darn math subject GRE test. I have been so focused on research that I did not study for it! It was very fast, with lots of tricky calculus (the "advanced" topics questions are not actually that hard). I have not received my score, but I believe it will be bad, maybe at best 40 percentile, but I'm just guessing.

So my question: How much weight does math GRE subject test have on my application? Specifically, I'd like to get advice on this from people in pure math on admissions committees (or used to be), since this obviously depends on the university. For instance, how much does it matter for "tier 1", "tier 2", etc. universities (whatever this means)?

I have tried to look up other information on this but little is out there, with the exception of a couple of threads here and there that are not super helpful.

The main reason I ask is that I am spending potentially a lot of money on applications, most of which require this tricky calculus test! But I'd rather not apply and save the money if it won't matter.


texts: Why is Hawaii time used for conference deadlines?

texts: I saw a European conference post deadlines for paper submission in Hawaii time. Now I see requests coming from locations in Eastern Standard Time areas with Hawaii time deadline. Why is this?


texts: What should a lecturer do when an international student plagiarises and the student claims it was unintentional?

texts:
A student has plagiarised her assignment. The lecturer gave all students a lecture on plagiarism at the beginning of the semester. The student maintains she was absent that day but the university does not keep records on attendance. However a copy of the lecture is on BlackBoard. Her excuse is that she didn’t realise she was plagiarising.  As she is an overseas student a fail in a unit means she risks losing her visa.

What actions should the lecturer take?


texts: Impact of PhD cgpa in academia and industry

texts:
I'm a Physics PhD student in a US university who qualified for the PhD level and waiting for the comprehensive  test.

In the first year of my PhD, I wasn't able to cope up with the pressure and  that caused bad grades. The result from first and second semester is below:

A, B, B ;  A, B+, B+.

In the second year,  I eventually  understood  the pressure and was able to cope up the  coursework pressure along with the  research pressure. And, eventually I did well  in the second year. My result is:

A, A, A  ; A+, A+, A

My question is how bad influence will my overall score appear to the academia and industry?

NOTE: My supervisor is pretty happy with my research work.


texts: Whether to exclude standard deviation in plot of outcomes of a series of experiments?

texts:
I have performed 21 different experiments, which I have repeated 3 times in total (63 samples gathered).
I plan to compare data using a bar plot. For bar plotting, I initially decided that I will calculate the mean over every 3 samples, and I will graph this value. However, along with the mean an important thing to state is also the standard deviation. I really do not want to include standard deviation on my graph as it will blur the results to the reader.

Of course, I can just put standard deviation into table, but this will be completely useless to regular reader.

Seeing other papers I sometimes spot that researchers do not really state how the values was gathered. Should I then assume they have conducted measurement only once?

Would it be ethical to not inform the reader that I plot the mean on my graphs? Any other suggestions are welcome.


texts: What can I do with multi-subfigure figures on ResearchGate.net

texts:
As many of us are aware, ResearchGate.net is a popular site on which researchers showcase their publications. In addition to the PDF for a published work, the site interface allows you to upload PDFs for figures, together with captions.

This becomes difficult, however, when your figures are actually made up of multiple subfigures. There doesn't seem to be direct support for specifying subfigures of the same figures and having them show up alongside each other.

What (if anything) can be done to overcome this - other than uploading each subfigure separately, or not uploading them at all?


texts: May I use my graduate school's letterhead right after graduating, when applying to jobs?

texts: I just completed my MFA in Film this August, 2017. Now I am freelancing and not associated with an academic institution. May I still use my graduate university's letterhead when applying to faculty positions? I don't have any other nice looking letterhead with a logo, unless I make it up.


texts: What to do if a postdoc I just started has practically no opportunities for self-directed research?

texts:
During the interview for a postdoc position, I was given the impression that there will be various opportunities to get involved in research other than the main job description of the postdoc, and also before I started I mentioned that I would like to also work on my own related research project, and the supervisor said that would be fine.
At the time I started the position, two of the collaborators on the project said they will be decreasing their involvement in it. The supervisor has a hard deadline for completion of his research, and he is a bit nervous. It became somewhat obvious that I would be working for the next several years as a calculator for the supervisor and not really practicing my own research skills.
I am worried that my research experience and output from this would be low, and that the postdoc position will not prepare me for a staff scientist or professor position. Is this something that I should seriously discuss with my supervisor, or should I just start searching for another postdoc position?


texts: Advisor asking me to work on research not covered by my grant

texts:
I have a rather difficult quandary. I'm a first-year student, and I joined my lab group to work on a clinical psychiatry/neuroscience grant. I've been making slow progress towards familiarizing myself with the grant. However, my advisor (actually, one of my two-advisors... they both run the lab together) has been having me work on a separate project of his, completely unrelated to my work. From what I can tell, this project would take a few months to work out, and the result would be my co-authoring on a small paper with another graduate student in the lab.

My worry is, I receive a stipend from the university every month, and that stipend is paid for my the psych/neurosci grant. By working on the second project, I have the feeling that I'm "stealing" from the first grant. I was told by my advisor that this sort of time-sharing between grants is normal within the research world. My question is, is that true? If it is a problem, how should I deal with this?


texts: Include code snippet which is licensed under the MIT License in a paper

texts:
My paper is about a software I created which uses part of another software licensed under the MIT license. It is available on Github and includes a copy of the MIT license correctly. Additionally the paper cites the repository.

I want to to include a code snippet of the other software in my paper, but the code is licensed on Github with the MIT License.

Currently I include the code and cite the source for it, is there anything more I need to do?


texts:
Is there any exact or approximate measure for the score of each question in GRE verbal?

Can I estimate my verbal score for answering n questions correctly?


texts: Where is Harvard referencing style most commonly used?

texts: Is Harvard referencing style used mostly in Europe? I ask because it seems to be less well known in USA than I had expected. If so, which is the most commonly used style in US academic institutions?


texts: Math Phd vs Job Offer (struggling very hard in my mind)

texts:
I was offered a math PhD position with full funding by a university in Canada (which is currently on a strike), and I was also offered a position as a math teacher in a quite prestigious high school in Macau. The wage of the school is comparable to the PhD funding in Canada. I am struggling very hard to make a decision, as both positions are not easy to get. (The fully funded PhD positions are very competitive for international students)

Since I am a beginner in the area of academia of math, I am not quite sure what kinds of quality I need to look for in a graduate program to make me more well-prepared to look for a academic position in colleges. The research topics my prospective advisor do match my interest very well, but does the prestige of the school play a very big role also? Or the no. of publications is more important?
Clarification of this will probably help me make my decision.


texts: How many hours on an average do academics in business and technology spend consulting for businesses?

texts:
Early stage startups and entrepreneurs often look at those with experience and knowledge for help in areas such as finance, management (HR), marketing and technology.

How many hours per week/month on  average does a faculty member spend consulting/advising/coaching businesses?


texts: Some Advices Regarding to Preparation for Mathematics Graduate Programs

texts:
I am a rising senior at college in US actively pursuing the mathematics and microbiology majors.  I am deeply interested in the arts of topology and set theory, and their applications to the machine learning and biological data analysis.  My plan is to apply for graduate programs in mathematics, but I did not decide pure or applied as I like both aspects of the mathematics.

Started out as a microbiology major, I did not begin to pursue mathematics until the end of sophomore year.  Started from my freshman year, I have been haunted by a severe case of OCD, which seriously interfered with my study and undergraduate research, and subsequently my grades and research performance were not good (my current GPA is below 3.00....).  When I first noticed the signs of OCD, I thought I can handle it with my mental strength, and the they will go away by their own (like a cold virus), which I realized are big mistakes!!  Starting on this Summer, however, I started to receive psychological counseling and medical treatment, which have been helping me a lot.

Although my grades are not good, I took some graduate-level courses in microbiology and advanced courses in mathematics and got A's.  On this semester, I am going to take the advanced classes in both math and microbo, including one graduate-level course in mathematics.  I also got several opportunities in the undergraduate research and mathematical reading courses with professors of my big interest.  Although OCD is still affecting me, I am in a much better position now as I started to regain a control of myself.

My question is that if it is too late to start preparing for graduate programs in mathematics.  If preparing for mathematician is late, then I would like to search other opportunities.  Another worry is that I fear the admission committee might look down on students with mental disorders as people who have weak mentality and cannot handle their problems properly, thus are not suitable to learn mathematics.  Could you provide me some advice about preparing for graduate programs in mathematics?

I am planning to stay one more year after my senior year, or possibly two years.


texts: How to get a university to make an admission decision more quickly

texts: I received an admit from University A with an acceptance deadline of March 22nd. But my top choice is University B, which—according to their website—won't get back to me until the end of March. I definitely want to join B if possible, but the timing on A means I may not even have heard back from B before A's deadline passes. Is there anything I can do to speed up B's getting back to me?


texts: How to tell a faculty member that I don't need him on my thesis committee anymore?

texts:
Out of five needed members for my doctoral thesis committee, four are fixed. For the fifth member, I approached Mr.A. He has no real connection to my research or topic but I contacted him because he was just as good a fit as anybody else in the department to be the fifth member. I have never worked with him or taken any classes but we did talk a lot in the first few years where he would just ask about my progress by the copy machine, etc. We don't even have a "rapport". The relationship is absolutely neutral, nothing positive/friendly, and nothing negative. I asked him to be on my committee and he said yes. I said I'll get back to you with dates, etc. He is a senior tenured professor.

Then about a month later, I was looking at the CV of some of the new hired (junior) faculty in the department Mr.B (this is his first year) and I see that we have a collaborator in common. Mr.B has published multiple papers with him and Mr.B is working with the same code and the code managing team that we are working with. He is definitely a good person to have on my committee. I finally see Mr.B after a few more months (because of busy schedule/travel/etc.) and he agrees to be on my committee.

The question is, how can I tell Mr.A, as tactfully as possible, after about four months of being quiet that he is basically rejected from my committee because I didn't know about Mr.B but now that I know, Mr.B is a much better match than he is? That I don't need him but I do appreciate his offer? I don't want to antagonize Mr.A or burn any bridges. Should this be in email or in person? Should I explain or just keep it terse? Should I keep it vague that I don't need him and thanks for his time? Or should I tell him about Mr.B and why he is a better match?

FYI, this was before anything official/paperwork was done so there is no problem with that.


texts: Best strategy to learn programing for graduate research data analysis in biology

texts:
I'm actually asking this question on behalf of a sibling who's pursuing a PhD in Biology. While I'm a Mechanical Engineering student and am "computer-savvy" and experienced in learning programming languages from technical textbooks and internet forums, she is very inexperienced in programming in any form.

What textbooks would you recommend for the self-teaching of MATLAB and/or Excel for the purpose of data analysis? If she wanted a technical book, I could find one in five minutes. I'm looking for a book that can explain MATLAB to an inexperienced user with no programming background.

Also, if you learned MATLAB or a similar program with great success, what tips would you give for self teaching? Thanks!


texts: Getting the best out of a book-reading exercise

texts:
A doctorate involves plumbing the depths of a problem and often this involves a lot of knowledge breadth-wise in related areas. Though the latter is provided by coursework, education about a precise "tool" that a doctorate may need during solving his problem is unlikely to have been provided by the courses. Often the PhD may run into huge tomes of material which he has been introduced to by Wikipedia. Intuitively he/she may feel that somewhere in those volumes lies a theorem or an idea which can provide vital keys to solving his own problem. So I come to my questions:

What should a student do to get the best out of a book-reading exercise? The question in turn assumes the student has arrived by some means at the best book for serving his purpose.
There is a trade-off involved in reading books tangential to your field: you may spend a lot of time groping in the dark looking for a bounty which may never be there. How does one gauge the potential applicability of a book to his work? When does a student decide to pull the plug on such an effort?

Related Question: Skimming through a paper


texts: strategy of looking for external reviewers in grant applications

texts: Some grant applications require aplicants to find external reviewers. First, we can't look for co-authors. Who else can we look for? Friends? Faculty who ever worked in the same school? Do the external reviewers need to be the immediate same field? People who don't know us at all? May I ask immediate associates to recommend their associates who don't know me at all?


texts: Can a PhD from a non-TU9 German university become a professor in a TU9 university?

texts:
Suppose, someone does a PhD and a Habilitation from a non TU9 university.

Is there any practical barrier for him to become a professor in a TU9 university?


texts: Do's and Don't's of Undergraduate Research

texts:
I was fortunate enough to get a position as a researcher for the Mayo Clinic's SURF Program this year. My PI's lab focus is on the the immune system's role in CNS axonal and neuronal injury, specifically through the lens of how innate and adaptive immune effectors interact w/ infected neurons.

Although I do research under a professor at my college and I volunteered for a state university lab during the previous summer, this is my first REU/SURF opportunity, and I REALLY want to make a good impression. Here are my questions:

What are the do's and don't's in terms of being a skilled and efficient researcher?

Since I am still an undergrad, I know that I will be a less useful asset to the lab than a grad student or post-doc, but what can I do as an undergrad to not burden my colleagues and PI?

Thank you all for your help! Wishing you all the very best!


texts: Are foreign language requirements beneficial for Physics, Math and Chemistry PhD students in North America?

texts:
Senior readers will recall that in North America (USA/Canada) it was required to show a reading knowledge of another language besides English in order to complete the academic requirements for a PhD in basic sciences. It is no longer necessary now in physics and chemistry but other top notch universities like Harvard still have this requirement for a PhD in mathematics. For chemists studying electrochemistry, Russian was recommended, but for organic chemistry German was beneficial. Undoubtedly, German had the largest compendium of handbooks, factual information etc in pure sciences. Gmelin and Beilstein Handbuch were one of the largest databases in chemistry and they still are in the form of Reaxys (A database in Elsevier) since the mid 1700s.

I was writing an educational article encouraging students to explore foreign language publications in chemistry with the help of online tools. A reviewer asked if there is any knowledge difference between those who knew foreign languages and those who did not. This is a very subjective idea.

Do those that have to learn a foreign language for their PhD, especially in sciences, really benefit from being able to read foreign language paper/book/ database/patents?

(I am especially interested in German, French or Russian language literature for research in math, physics or chemistry.)


texts: A friend helped me with a presentation – plagiarism or not?

texts:
My friend helped me with my assignment. I was having a bit of trouble and he showed me what he did.
The assignment was a speech with a powerpoint in the background.

I did not receive any help in the speech and it was all my own work but two of my slides are similar to his, and I copied his table. The speech is the part directly getting assessed while the powerpoint is merely for the theatrics. This was all done with his permission and he himself showed me how he did the slides.

The powerpoint was twelve slides long. Does this constitute plagiarism?

Edit: I did cite him in a bibliography which I submitted for his contribution. I, however, did not cite him in the PowerPoint. Also, the similar slides are not in the PowerPoint anymore but the table still is.

Edit 2: I was not found guilty of plagiarism, however, I did lose 10% due to academic misconduct.


texts: etiquette/rules regarding acknowledgements and co-authoring of papers?

texts:
I have never published a paper before but I am wondering in the case of a collaboration, how this collaboration should be acknowledged to the reader in different situations.

Specifically, I am wondering whether there is an (internationally accepted?) "rule-book of academic etiquette" with a set of rules regarding questions such as:

If person A has contributed more than person B to a paper, how should this be made clear to the readers?
If person A has contributed more than person B, where is the line between B being recognized as a co-author, or simply thanked in the acknowledgements?
If person A has supplied all the theoretical/mathematical analysis, and person B all the empirical analysis in a paper, how should this be communicated to the reader?

Are there standardized rules about questions like this? If so, is there some kind of resource I could consult?


texts: Should I mention I had no funding in my Ph.D experience?

texts:
A professor mentioned on his website that his looking for postdoctoral researchers. And he mentioned that interested people should sent a short research statement and added this link.

Discuss where you will get funds to sponsor the research project, who will be the collaborative partners and what facilities will be used by you.

Unfortunately, I did research under no funding because it's hard to find research grants in my country. And it's not mandatory to have a grant or a scholarship to be a Ph.D student. But that's another topic. Now, I am trying to write a research statement and I don't know if I should completely ignore talking about funding. The only thing I have is experience in preparing, with my supervisor, project proposal documents for funding (Around 2 months of work). I don't know if I should write that, because it also could be a double-edged sword since my experience is "failure in finding funding". Any suggestions?


texts: How committed should I be to a specific research area before and shortly after I enter a doctoral program?

texts:
I am an electrical engineering undergraduate student and entering my final year of study.  I plan on applying to doctoral programs in the field of power engineering.  Specific advice from the field would be appreciated, but I welcome professors and students from other backgrounds to comment.

I say power engineering because I'm interested in studying problems related to the electrical grid.  However, there are a lot of problems out there: multi-agent systems, smart grid technologies, distributed grid technologies, power electronics, and many, many more.  It's such an overwhelming list that I don't know how to choose, or even how to educate myself enough to make a choice.  I'm sure other fields have this problem of "too many subjects, too little time".

I know in a general sense that I want to enter this field and do research in it, and that I would enjoy the challenge of a PhD program.   At this point, though, I don't know which specific aspect I want to study.

My questions are these: how much should I know before applying to a program?  Upon entrance to a doctoral program, how much time do I have to pick a certain area of research?  I've heard of students being co-advised by more than one professor; does this mean my study can be somewhat multifaceted?

Edit: Answers specific to doctoral study in the United States would be appreciated.


texts: Why does the Nobel committee not award prize to collaborations?

texts: The 2013 Physics Nobel prize went to François Englebert and Peter Higgs, for their discovery of the Higgs boson. I was wondering why the CERN, as an institution, or the ATLAS collaboration, are not co-awarded the price with Englebert and Higgs. Apparently, “collaborations” cannot be awarded the Nobel prize. Is it a tradition, or something written in the rules of the Nobel foundation? Has there ever been an exception?


texts:
I am currently a CS PhD student in an East Asian institution, in my fifth year, one year overtime over the normative period. I have passed all my qualification and thesis proposal exams and just need to submit and defend my thesis. Unfortunately, I don't have any serious publications in top conferences or journals (tried to sumbit several times but got always rejected), only a handful of low-quality workshop and medium-low tier conference papers. For these reasons I have been constantly blamed by my supervisor, and he may not be willing even to sign the thesis defense request, leaving me in the dreadful prospective of spending several years more just to see a paper accepted, and prolong my overtime and agony.

After confrontation with other students, and even professors of other university, I strongly believe that this situation is due mostly to poor guidance from my supervisor and senior PhD students and post-docs during my early years, poor publishing strategy, a not very feasible research project to produce concrete and verifiable results, and until recently obsolete equipment. I am also very frustated because I have been working almost every day, often many hours a day, and I have been collecting much less results than other people working only a fraction of the time and graduating in less than 3 years.

I tried many times to discuss the situation with my supervisor and other people in charge in my department to solve these issues, but they all repeat the same things, that it is normal to take many years to finish a good PhD, I should concentrate not on graduation time but on quality, I will easily find the job I want afterwards, and things like this. Unfortunately I cannot agree, since in the Asia-Pacific region, where I am interested to work, there is a very strong competition from candidates finishing the PhD in the normal 3-4 years time. Also coming (and with a Bachelor) originally from a country in southern Europe where the level of primary and secondary education and the level of the IT field is very low, I am already at a disadvantage with respect to other more skilled candidates, and is already making harder for me to obtain a working visa. I have in theory already found a job in one of the company where I would like to work, willing to sponsor me a visa, but it is only a conditional offer based on graduation that may be easily withdrawn if I fail to graduate in the timeframe they believe is reasonable, losing this opportunity may lower my morale even further.

I would like to ask suggestions about the current options I have:

I can consider withdrawing from the program and look for jobs. This has the risk of leaving me almost unemployable and force me to return back to my home country with just a Bachelor degree, unable to find a serious decently-compensated job, a career black-hole. Even if I look now for jobs I would have to state I am currently enrolled in a PhD, with companies assuming automatically I am going to finish it (because in Asia is the norm).
I can stay for at least one more year trying to publish and graduate. I would waste a lot of time just waiting for reviews, unable to develop any useful skills in the process and log useful working hours. And again, 6-7-8 years in a PhD would be a black mark on my CV, and I am already teased enough for this when I participate to networking events.
I may insist to submit my thesis at the first useful occasion (in a few months, due to university regulations). But keep complaining may not be useful and may ruin all my relationships even further.

I had to keep some of the details generic as I cannot disclose too many information. Please also note that my main goals when I started my PhD were to find a job in a big corporation about Research & Development, and maximize the chances to be able to emigrate from my home country. I still hope I can figure out the best course of action to come out from this situation. Thank you in advance for your replies.


texts: Time difference between admission offers and rejections in US PhD Admissions?

texts:
Being that I am currently awaiting offers of admission/rejections for some of my PhD applications in the US, i regularly frequent the website http://thegradcafe.com, which, if you've never heard of it, has a forum where just about any subject relevant to graduate students is being discussed, and, most importantly, maintains a database of admission/rejection dates for various programs at various schools (see http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php).

While discussing with other members of the forum and browsing through the database myself, I have noticed the following pattern: For many PhD programs, year after year, all the offers of admission (the ones added to the database, anyway) will be made on a single day, and then, some time later (often 2,3 weeks or even almost a month later), all the rejection notifications are made.

Of course, it should be said that this "data" is fairly unreliable, since it is all added anonymously and most likely very fragmentary, but assuming this is actually a trend, here is my question:

  What is the explanation for such a long delay between offers of admission and notifications of rejection in (some) US PhD admissions?

The possible explanations I have in mind are the following:

The candidates that are assuredly admitted are sent offers as soon as possible, and then the admission committee takes a lot more time to choose a few more candidates within the (probably very large) sample of not-so-surely admitted students. (This could possibly not be reflected in the Grad Cafe's database, as very few candidates could be admitted this way)
Universities wait to see if some of the strong applicants will answer positively or negatively to their offers before deciding to reject other applicants (but then, why not waitlist them in the mean time).

However, I would be very interested in hearing about anyone who has been in (or knows about) an admission committee that operates like this, and the reason behind this.


texts: Is it acceptable to require a student to use the supervisor's preferred software/tools?

texts:
I'm about to supervise my first bachelor student and I'm not quite sure what is acceptable and what is not.

The thesis will contain math formulas, illustrations, images, graphs and tables - like any other paper / thesis in physics. The question is, shall I force my student to use (and learn how to use) certain SW tools (LaTeX, Matlab,...) instead of commonly used office packages (Word, Excel, PowerPoint,...)?

Is it acceptable to provide source files of my thesis and/or Matlab functions/scripts to the student? Note that the field of research is not connected to typography nor data analysis.

Edit considering JeffE's answer:

  Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to require students to use the software tools that are standard in your field when they begin working in your field, even as undergraduates.

There aren't defined standard, or mandatory, tools to use. Just only vague rules how the thesis shoud look like.

Tools for specialized work, say microhardness measurements and analysis, are set and there can't be any doubts and discussions.


texts: Why is B or B− the minimum passing grade for most graduate courses in US?

texts: I was recently told that in many schools in the US (maybe other countries too), the minimum grade for a graduate course is B or B−. Meaning that B is considered as a passing score. I would like to know whether this is true. Why should it be the case? Does this mean that grading in graduate school is easier?


texts: Applying for a position: Certificates and Supplements

texts:
When applying for positions in academia (I think the question is valid for economy as well) I add several documents to my application: cover letter/motivational letter, CV, publication list, PhD Certificate, Diploma, employers' references. As a PhD student and as a post-doc I have visited several courses that train soft skills like conflict management and are certified. These courses are offered by the university and provide a certificat and a supplement.

For any application, should I attach both documents (certificate and supplement) or only the certificate?

All in all my application start to get quite bloated (around 16 to 22 pages).


texts: MLA style: n. pag. in parenthetical reference?

texts:
Is it a rule in MLA style to have the addition "n.pag." also in parenthetical reference to a source that has no pagination? Or is the addition only required in the works cited?

source: Miller, Arthur. "All the Small Things." New York: 1980, n. pag.

  In the 1980 essay "All the Small Things" Miller goes on to say that "all things are small" (n. pag.). This is interesting because ...


texts:
I am a 2nd year PhD student (starting my third year soon). For the past 7 months, I've been struggling with finding an appropriate journal for my (hopefully) first article. I had to deal with many journal desk-rejections, in which 90% of those were out-scope rejections. However, one journal suggested that we need to improve the paper. Of course, we followed the advice (+1 month on the same manuscript).

Now a journal has accepted to review our paper, and here are the status of the paper:

"Under review" 43 days
"Ready for Decision" 6 days
"Decision Pending" 13 Days

I don't know if I should send the Editorial Team a polite reminder, because I have read many similar threads that say I should wait a little longer and I know 43 days of review is fast, but considering my circumstances (the context that I've described earlier), I feel that I've wasted a lot of time on this one project.

Thank you for your suggestions.
Bests,


texts: How to talk to a project advisor as an undergrad?

texts:
I'm an undergraduate working on a small project with an esteemed scientist, whom I met through a connection. I'm communicating via email due to distance. The problem is that I'm having a lot of troubles with this project, and the last time I asked him a question he just told me to re-read the information he sent me.

I want to tell him that it doesn't make sense (I think he made an error), but to do so without appearing arrogant or ignorant. He's intimidating and it always seems like he's two seconds away from declaring me incompetent. Yet, I am very interested in his field and this project could yield a publication.

I don't know what to do; should I just keep asking questions (if so, how do I word them in a way that shows that I'm not just being lazy), or find a way to drop the project? I don't want to close doors on future collaborations when I'm more knowledgeable.

Thank you.


texts: What are the advantages and disadvantages of an "open gradebook" policy?

texts:
At the end of the semester,
after the grades have been determined and released to the students,
I will receive emails from multiple students appealing for higher grades.

A few years ago, my colleagues developed a large course (> 600 students)
which is offered across multiple sections.
They chose to adopt a "semi-closed gradebook" policy
where the grades for the quizzes are released to the students,
but the grades for most of the other assignments and the project
are not released to the students.
When I asked my colleague about why she adopted such a policy,
they stated that the reason for this policy is that the class is large
and she didn't want to waste time dealing with
grade grubbers,
i.e., students who complain that they should get a higher score
for this or that assignment.

After a year, I inherited this course from her,
and as the course leader for this course,
I am able to make changes.
In the last two years,
I have maintained the "semi-closed gradebook" policy
introduced by the previous course leader.
However, I am wondering if I should adopt an "open gradebook" policy
where the marks for every assignment are released.
One benefit of such a policy is that if we make a mistake,
e.g., a student submitted an assignment,
but we gave the student a zero by mistake,
the student can notify us of our mistake and it can be corrected.
In addition, giving students some feedback
about their performance in the course
can help them to feel less worried and uncertain about how they are doing.

Question:
What are the advantages and disadvantages of an open gradebook policy?

Response to comments

Question in comment:
Do you give students other individual feedback on these assignments, and just hide the numeric grade? Or do they get no feedback on them?

In the past,
we do give the students their numeric score for some of the assignments.
I would like to give the students some written feedback on their assignments,
however, the graders are not very motivated,
and I am unsure how the logistics should work for given written feedback.
For example, should the grader send an email
to every student individually to give feedback,
which is more than 600 students?


texts: How and why did the top journals become top journals?

texts: Journals like Nature and Science have impressive impact factors. How and why did these top journals become top journals? Why are they able to sustain their statuses?


texts: Including positive and negative evaluation comments during job search

texts:
This may sound like a "humble brag," but I assure you that I am asking this as a legitimate question for the sole purpose of increasing my chances of getting a job -- not internet bragging points. I am also very well-aware of the fact that evaluations are not a direct measure of how good a professor is; I am thankful for my good fortunes and know better instructors with worse evaluations than me.

I am currently applying for jobs and along the way I compiled a word document with all of my teaching evaluation comments, good and bad. Upon completion, I noticed there were far more good than bad (and the bad do not paint me as the worst) and it dawned on me that if I just cherry pick the good ones, the hiring committee might just blend me in with everyone else trying to sell themselves. After all, most people can cherry pick their way to looking good and it's typically not that hard to find a few wonderful comments.

But I wonder if I submitting a few pages with all of them (color coded by good and bad) would actually make me look better, showing that I am out in the open and didn't just cherry pick. Doesn't it look good that I don't have tons of disgruntled students?  I have read job searching guides that say to only paint yourself in the best possible light. But what if the transparent picture looks good and is actually a selling point? I imagine hiring committees sifting through hundreds of applications, desperately looking for real information from the evaluation comments.

Is this line of thinking risky? Should I just make a collection of only best positives and do what most people do?

Thank you.


texts: Is it worth doing a 'Pipe Leak Detection' PhD (industrywise)?

texts:
I have been offered a PhD opportunity in a UK university and the topic is 'Pipe Leak Detection (using acoustic waves)'.

My question is, is it worth doing a PhD in this area considering the industrial opportunities available for such area of expertise?

** the research is co-funded by the UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR), but I am not sure (at the moment) about the possibility of joining them after the PhD.

Could someone with relevent expertise or someone working in the field advice me or drop some comments. I really appreciate it, thanks in advance for all.


texts: Will my paper get an ISBN/ISSN number if I upload to arXiv.org?

texts:
I want to upload my paper to arxiv.org.
I also want to submit the same paper to a conference (computer science/multimedia related). The PC chair informed me that if the paper already has an ISBN/ISSN number, then it cannot be submitted to the conference.

Does arxiv, add an ISBN/ISSN number to all uploaded papers by default ? (assuming I choose the minimal, 'perpetual, non-exclusive' license option on arxiv)

Thank you


texts: What is normally done if there is an underspending of a research grant?

texts: At the conclusion of a research project, what is normally done if there is an underspending of the research grant? Is the remainder returned to the funding agency? If this is true, how is it possible to build one's funding over the years?


texts: how to show I fit in with the department during faculty interview

texts:
A commonly asked question during the faculty position interview is

  How do you fit in with the department?

It is quite similar to but different from

  How do you fit in with the position?

I want to seek some specific suggestions as to answering this question, assuming the position to interview for has a 50-50 teaching and research appointment. What is the hiring committee really looking for from a candidate from this question?

In my previous interviews, I would answer this question by focusing on how I would collaborate with other faculty in the department. It seemed that the answer did not hit the point well.


texts: Advisor promises letter of recommendation, but hasn't produced letter

texts: I have unfortunately been put in a position where my advisor has neglected to write me a letter of recommendation for a whole year. We have a good working relationship, and I have no reason to suspect that my advisor is unwilling to write a letter, however, for some reason or another it hasn't been done even after numerous requests (on my part) and assurances (on theirs) that it would get done. I was unable to secure a post doc in part due to this, and I am starting to become exasperated with how this situation is playing out. Has anyone faced a situation similar to this before? What steps would (did) you take to resolve this without burning any bridges? Does anyone have any advise on how to move past this in the event that I cannot get the letter?


texts: Feeling like a failure because of a class

texts:
I am a PhD student in the area of CS/math. My dream (for a long time) is to develop an academic career, and I work really hard (like any of us) to achieve that.

This semester I am taking a class which is semi relevant to my area. This class made me feel like a complete idiot. I have been spending hours on HW questions which other students solved quickly, it takes me a while to even understand parts of the solutions/concepts presented. This is very different from a struggle in research, where sometimes nothing works but at least you know that you are trying to solve something yet unsolved.

I know that the academic career path has so many struggles to come. However, this class kinda made me think that maybe I am not good enough for this type of theoretical research. How come other students invested so much less effort on that?

I guess I am looking for advice on this. Should I take that as a hint for actually not being able to do that type of research? Should I just forget about it? Have you been in such a situation?


texts: How to count non-self citations of articles?

texts:
In Google Scholar, I can view the number of citations of each article, but this includes self-citations. Is there a way to view the number of non-self citations?
In this tweet from 2019, the author suggests a way to calculate this number for a specific article. But is there a way to do this automatically for all my articles?


texts: Looking for an example or draft of an IP-related agreement for industry employment

texts:
Researchers which start doing industrial work while continuing independent research are in a delicate position with respect to the part of their contract/employment agreement governing "intellectual property", confidential employer-owned information and the like. Often, commercial companies are only used to industry-experience-only hires, and have thus gotten away with agreements saying basically "we own everything you do or will do (or have done) that is related to company business", essentially preventing the employee from ever doing independent research in the field, contributing to FOSS etc.

What I'm looking for here is an example agreement, or part of an agreement, which is reasonably drafted to be fair to the researcher-employee. Something actually used in real life would be great (no need for identifying personal details of course).


texts: what should you answer to your potential supervisor's question: Are you applying to other programs?

texts:
I had an interview with a potential Ph.D. supervisor, and along the way, he asked whether I am intending to apply to other similar Ph.D. programs? I said: Yes, but that's because I don't know how admissions work.
Was that a good answer? What is supposed to be done in such situations?
Also, when the professor says: Ok, I will work with you to write the best competitive statement of purpose. Does that mean he is going to accept you?


texts: I'm currently a first-year PhD student in the US (in the middle of the first semester). However, I'm not satisfied with the program here and want to re-apply to other programs. While doing that, can I simply exclude the current PhD program in my CV?  Will it be a serious problem of credit? (I have not had any course grade, nor am I asking for recommendation letters from any professors here)


texts: Letter of recommendation for grad. school application source

texts:
I am applying for admission to the Master's program next fall. However I am in doubt about the source of reference. I have two options:

My mentor at a research institute who was pursuing his PhD. when I was a research intern. However, he did not complete his PhD.
Research Scientist(PhD) at my current organization where my role is that of a software developer. Therefore the recommendation is based on my work as a developer rather than on my research contributions.

Both are willing to write strong recommendations for me.

Who would be a better source of recommendation?


texts: Convention for naming something after its discoverers when many were involved

texts:
I would like to refer to a mathematical construction by the names of its discoverers. The issue is that the same construction was discovered by two groups simultaneously, through quite different chains of reasoning. One paper has two authors and the other has five, so there are seven researchers involved in the discovery in total. Obviously I can't refer to it by all seven names, and I'm wondering if there's some other reasonable convention to follow instead.

So for example, if one paper is by A. Alpha and B. Beta, and the other is by G. Gamma, E. Epsilon, Z. Zeta, E. Eta and T. Theta, would it be reasonable to refer to it as the Alpha-Gamma construction, leaving off the names of the other authors? Or would I have to call it something more ad-hoc like AB-GEZET, after their initials?

If it makes a difference, the field is information theory, so I guess somewhere in the intersection between maths, computer science and data analysis. I'm confident that the authors are not listed alphabetically on either paper.

Also in case it makes a difference, the reasons I want to do this are

It's a solution to a fairly well-defined problem that a number of people have been working on for a while, and it's pretty non-trivial.
There are many other proposed solutions to the same problem, so it's handy to attach names to them in order to distinguish between them.
It seems like a nice thing to do for the researchers involved, at least one of whom spent their PhD on it.


texts: Is it a good idea to apply for PhD in Econ before finishing my Msc in Economics first?

texts:
Ok so I am currently pursuing a Msc in Economics with a research distinction in Norway. I just finished my first year of studies and my grades are competitive. All A's except of a B. I have 2 more semesters to graduate meaning May 2020. Also, I have a Bachelors degree (3.42 gpa) in Finance from a well respected university in USA. Throughout my first year of Masters I took classes that revolved heavily in math topics that most universities require from students (time series analysis, multivariable calculus, econometrics, also im proficient in stata and R.)

My dream is to get accepted into a top 20 PhD program in USA and I was thinking if I should apply this upcoming fall or not. The deadline for most US university is Dec 15th 2019. I have done some research and I saw that universities require some research experience which is something that I dont have so far. I am going to acquire this experience in the final semester of my masters by presenting my thesis. Unfortunately, the application period will be closed by the time I present my thesis. So, should I wait out one year in order to present my thesis along with my application or should I apply this fall?  Are the universities aware of such circumstances? I dont want to hurt my chances of acceptance but also I really dont like having to wait out another year before starting my PhD.

Thanks!


texts: Can I reasonably move universities every few years for professional work?

texts:
My real love is scientific computing, but I'm generally interested in nearly every academic field — through undergrad I've had research computing positions in social psychology, electrical engineering, volcanology, and pharmaceutical sciences. Now I've graduated, and I'm at a different university doing data analysis in cognitive science. I like it, but I have a long list of places I'd like to live and fields I'd like to learn more about, and my "career plan" is to move every 3–4 years and work at a different university in a different field, always doing scientific computing/data science though. I'm not too concerned about getting a huge list of academic accolades or getting a PhD right now; I'd rather just be doing interesting work.

I've mentioned this to several professors and graduate students who have asked about my plans, and they always react as if I've said I want to run off and join the circus. Is there some truth to how they react? Am I hurting my career this way?

I'd like to clarify that I just want to be doing data analysis. It seems like nearly every lab needs people to do this, so I don't see how I'm a funding leech.


texts: Low ranking university with fund VS Unsure opportunity at a higher ranking one

texts:
Two years ago, I completed my bachelor degree with highest honor ranking 1st of my class in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department in my university in Egypt. Since then I have been working as a teaching assistant in the same department. I was seeking to pursue my Msc degree at a high ranking university and hence I applied for a Msc in 12 universities. I was able to gain admission(without funding) in four of them(among them was Carnegie Mellon and University of Michigan ann arbor). Meanwhile, a friend of mine helped me to get a research as position in a low ranking university in the US (No. 160 according to Us news ranking).
 In the low ranking university, I am supposed to work intensively (the lab director requires the students to work on Sundays!) on a field that is not my primary field of interest. Also, he , this adviser, expects me to continue my Phd with him and my friends in this lab informed me that he will not give a recommendation letter if I want to leave his lab later. However, I am shooting for a higher ranking university for the Phd.

Do you advice me to go to the low ranking university with this adviser and then shoot for a higher one for the Phd? Or to wait and apply again for other universities for my Msc?

Also, is it OK to change my field of interest after finishing the Msc? will this limit my opportunists for a Phd in my primary field of interest?

Finally, how important is the Msc adviser's recommendation letter while applying for a Phd?


texts: Is re-using an idea from a research proposal considered as self-plagiarism?

texts: It is known that re-using oneself idea in his/her published work without citing is considered self-plagiarism. In school, submitting an assignment which uses certain amount of works from a previously submitted assignment without mentioning it properly can be considered self-plagiarism. If one submits a research proposal which contains original research idea, and later proposed another proposal (let's say, for applying graduate school)containing significant parts of ideas from the previous one without mentioning it, can this be considered as self-plagiarism?


texts: What reason would someone who offered you a PhD position give a recommendation letter for another position?

texts:
Background: I was offered a PhD position by the advisor of my current masters thesis and also by the corresponding professor at the local university. Now that i thought more thoroughly about pursuing an academic career i want to apply to a different university to gain experience abroad (eg. Switzerland).

Obviously my advisor and the professor are interested in my work, is there any chance they will support me with a letter of recommendation? Or more generally if the professor likes your work, why would he or she support you to apply somewhere else?

Edit: To expand on the answers, will i risk my chance of PhD at the local university just by asking for a recommendation (e.g. EPFL seems quite competetive)?


texts: Must a tutorial TA resolve any questions from the students?

texts: I know it is TA's responsibility to help students understand the course material. But there are always some students don't like to think independently, or maybe just not smart enough. Is it ok for TA to tell students that "I can't help you. You should figure it out by youself." for some lame questions? Would this put TA into dereliction of duty?


texts: Rejected an offer and then became interested (a bad decision I made)

texts:
Three months ago, a professor has offered to me a research position at his university with high salary, and I rejected it because I wanted to join a master's program. Unfortunately, I made a bad decision and now I changed my mind and became very interested to the exciting position he offered to me.

Do you think is it a good idea that I send him an email and ask if the offer is still available? So even that I rejected the offer 3 months ago, is it possible that I ask the professor about that offer again?


texts:
I can think of two possible ways in which a new department is born: one, the university decides to start teaching a certain subject, and in the other, an existing department splits into two (e.g. department of physics and astronomy -> department of physics + department of astronomy). If the answer in these two are different, please say so and I will split this question into two.

Clearly the initiative must come from a senior university administrator. Who though - the chancellor? The vice chancellor? The dean of the faculty?
Starting a new department is presumably very expensive. Where does the university find the money? Do new departments usually only start when there is a sudden source of funding (e.g. ___ big new discovery leading to a massive surge in student interest + external funding in the field)? Or do universities spend years saving money before starting a department?
Once the decision is made to go ahead, how does the university go about it? Do they hire a new professor who works in the field, provide her with a budget, and let her hire everyone else? Or do they decide on every individual hire by committee, which is not always made up of people expert in the field or affiliated withe the university?


texts:
Sometimes when I am writing a review blog post (or an answer on SE), it is convenient to include a figure from the original paper. Some journals (say PNAS) have policies that explicitly allow non-commercial reproduction of figures:

  Anyone may, without requesting permission, use original figures or tables published in PNAS for noncommercial and educational use (i.e., in a review article, in a book that is not for sale) provided that the original source and the applicable copyright notice are cited.

Others, however, seem to explicitly disallow this, of note is the Nature Publishing Group. Today, I had to fill in an online form on RightsLink in order to ensure I could use a figure in my post. I didn't have to pay anything, and the rights were granted instantly after completing the form, but it was still a hassle. The biggest hassle is having to go to each journal's website to check their policies. Hence the questions:

Is there a general law like fair-use that allows me to place figures from published papers inside blog posts for non-commercial commentary/review purposes?
What if your blog has ads that generate revenue, is the use of the figures no longer non-commercial? What about SE that generates revenue but not for the poster?
Is there any extra etiquette one should keep in mind for including figures in blog posts?


texts: Is it normal to feel like I bought my way into graduate school after being rejected and then accepted when I was awarded an external fellowship?

texts:
I initially got rejected by the two schools I applied to (horrible pGRE scores, lackluster GRE scores, and only did research at my undergraduate institute), but then I got an NSF fellowship, and was almost immediately accepted by both schools.

I feel a little hurt by the whole acceptance process. I feel like I was essentially told: "you are not good enough to pursue space physics in our program, but because you have money we will let you in".

Question: In this situation, is it normal to feel like you essentially bought your way into graduate school? Or that people will always look at you as not good enough?


texts:
The Times Higher Education university ranking seems to be a popular metric to rate universities (although rankings are kind of weird). I wanted to understand how they actually create the scores and read a bit about it. However, I couldn't find any detailed information about the citation component in their scoring system (which accounts for a whopping 30% of the total), and I'm wondering if anyone has information about how it is generated.

Here is their methodology section, but I don't think it really states how various trends of citations across many subjects are comprehensively reviewed, and especially how those numbers are transferred into a scoring system of a 100 total. There is an additional document at the end of that link with more information, but the citation score methodology is still a little shrouded in mystery. Let me quote them:

We examine research influence by capturing the average number of times a university’s published work is cited by scholars globally. This year, our bibliometric data supplier Elsevier examined more than 86 million citations to 13.6 million journal articles, article reviews, conference proceedings, books and book chapters published over five years. The data include more than 24,000 academic journals indexed by Elsevier’s Scopus database and all indexed publications between 2015 and 2019. Citations to these publications made in the six years from 2015 to 2020 are also collected.

But...how exactly? Taking a raw average of citations per publication would be possible, but across how many years and what are the normalization factors for the subjects? They are again vague about this:

The data are normalised to reflect variations in citation volume between different subject areas. This means that institutions with high levels of research activity in subjects with traditionally high citation counts do not gain an unfair advantage. We have blended equal measures of a country-adjusted and non-country-adjusted raw measure of citations scores.


texts: Can one acquire "tenure" through teaching or being something like a Research Associate at a university lab?

texts:
This question is specific to the United States.

Can one acquire something like "tenure" if either

(1) their primary / only responsibility is teaching undergraduate courses

and / or

(2) they work as a Research Scientist for a university lab but are not professors.

I am wondering about job security, basically.


texts: Paper was rejected for high similarity with parts of my own dissertation

texts:
My PhD thesis consisted of two published papers and one submitted paper embedded in some additional framing. For completion of my PhD, I had to upload my thesis to the servers of our academic library, where it is now publicly available.
However, afterwards, the third paper from the thesis was rejected after peer review. I performed substantial changes and submitted the manuscript to another journal. They returned it back to me, stating that I exceeded by far the allowed index of similarity (40 % similarity with 35 % similarity of a single source). I spent $100 for a plagiarism check only to find out that the source from which I was accused to have copied a majority of my work, was my own publicly available thesis.
As my thesis contains my third (unpublished) manuscript, it naturally has a high similarity with the version I was about to submit.
How can I solve this?


texts: How much reading is appropriate to give to students?

texts:
I'm designing an introductory undergraduate course on social science which is mostly based on not-so technical textbooks and articles (little math involved). Essays will be the key form of evaluation. I want to have an idea of how much readings to give to my students per week. The credit system my university uses is such that for 1 hour of contact teaching 1 hour of autonomous work is expected. I have 2 hours of contact teaching per week. If I assume students can read, say 20 pages per week (assume average article/journal size), I can give them 40 pages per week as background reading. This, I assume does not include their own study of textbooks (otherwise it would be impossible to give them readings!).

Do you have an idea of what sort of relation is used in terms of contact hours versus pages of reading?


texts: Why do top Indian Math grad school students leave for the US/UK?

texts:
I am currently a senior year student at Hansraj College, University of Delhi. I have completed my 2-month summer internship at IISc Bangalore recently. During my stay, I got to interact with a lot of Pure Mathematics Ph.D. students. I have come to know lately that many BS and MS students leave even the topmost schools like IISc, IISER's, TIFR etc and go for Ph.D. in pure Mathematics abroad.

Although the standard of research in pure Maths is pretty good in India.
See this post here

I have the following questions and some associated assumptions/facts:

Question 1. So, why do these top students leave these exceptionally good schools that are almost at par with the elite US universities for a Ph.D. in Pure Maths?

Assumption 1. Since they were already a part of the school, it is unlikely that the small department size is a factor behind this. However, unlike US schools, TA's are not common in India.

Assumption 2. The recent pay increase should have improved the financial situation as well.

Question 2. What is something that Indian grad schools lack when it comes to theoretical Mathematics or in general that drives students out of India?

I am going for a Ph.D. soon, so I think this is something I should know.

Thank you.


texts: Deferring Admission to reapply for some PhD programs next year

texts:
This question is related to one of my previous questions:

Changing University in First year of Phd

I just completed my senior year. I have been accepted to a grad school (say University X).

I want to reapply for some PhD programs next year (fall). But, at the same time, I don't want to lose the only PhD seat I've got.

So, I was thinking about deferring the admission to University X in order to apply to few other universities for next fall.

I have 2 questions regarding this:

Should I mention about my deferred admission to Uni X in the Phd applications for next fall ? If I don't, Would it be treated as academic cheating ?
How much deferring should be enough ? (Next Spring, Next Summer or Next Fall)


texts:
I did a campus interview two weeks ago (US universities, R1, Engineering). I was not the last candidate, so, by considering the last one, the search was closed one week ago. In the last meeting with the department chair, he said the department will select the final candidate next week and it seems they have made some decisions based on the information I have. I received an update this weekend from the department chair indicating that they are working with the dean's office and I should get an update this week. First, I interpreted this email positively in a way that probably I will be their first choice since they should keep all finalists on hold until the first candidate (assuming to be me!) signs the offer, which normally takes time (negotiation, salary, lab space, ...). So, there is no reason to notify me if I am not the first candidate.
Then, I looked at this matter differently and thought maybe they already have offered another candidate and they are indeed waiting to get some approval from the dean for that person (probably the candidate has some requests). Because sometimes dean's office can approve the final candidate after a few days since it should not be a long process. I am not sure which case is more likely. I know that I should be more patient, but it is honestly difficult!
So, my question is about your experience with the hiring process and its timeline.


texts: How important is the publication venue for academic hiring and grant applications?

texts:
A comment in this question says: but spending some money to publish in a high rank journal can open more funding opportunities in future, doesn't it?.  In another post, JeffE writes in this answer:

  Personally, when I read a CV, I only spend a second or two on the self-declared research interests and jump straight to the publication list..

If a candidate (either for hiring or for a grant) has good science but the publications are not in the most prestigious journals, but in slightly less known journals (but still journals that are not obscure), does that significantly hurt their chances?  Or is it really the content that matters and is the venue of publication less important?

Note that my question is specifically about the venue of publication.  These related questions do not answer my question:

What can I do as a graduate student to maximize my chances of obtaining a professorship?
How important is number of publications and prestige of the publication outlets for getting a tenure-track job?
How important are citations when applying for jobs or promotions?


texts: Is it suitable to discuss with several professors which of them would be best to supervise me?

texts:
Quite simply, I have contacted several professors in the same department, and they have all expressed an interest in supervision, and several of them have also said, "you should also consider professors X, Y..." So I ask:
Can I disclose in my correspondences that "yes, I am also in discussions with professors X, Y..."? I feel like the scenario is a bit like being in Dragon's Den and I don't know whether it would be a good idea and then have them potentially discussing me behind my back? Or what does happen in these circumstances usually?


texts: How to ask professor to post more example?

texts:
My professor always posts solved problems on the course website but for the last chapter, he did not post any solved problems. Although we have our textbook, I think solved problems help me understand the chapters better. But now I could not understand the last chapter deeply, and I have difficulties to do assignments.

Could I ask him to post one or two solved problems? If yes, how should I ask?


texts: Can a co-author prevent me from submitting our joint paper to any journal except the one he prefers?

texts:
I‘ve been told (by a PI who is a co-author of the paper) that I cannot submit a jointly authored paper to any journal in my field except Frontiers because anything else is “politically incorrect” or “too slow”.
We have a new method developed with a colleague in a different (more quantitative) field, the results are new, answer an open question and are replicated in two languages.
I found out this week that the PI saying we cannot submit to a regular journal has just had another paper accepted on part of the same topic at a good journal in our field. The findings we have in this paper go against the findings of the paper he wrote five years ago with that group (and I’m guessing maybe against this paper then too, but I have not read this paper).
Is there anything I can do?
At the moment, I have suggested PLOS One as a better alternative to Frontiers, but honestly this is just such a waste - the results are really cool, it took us a year and travelling to get them, and they come from a really good interdisciplinary collaboration. I’m really angry and upset about this - I’m in the third year of a postdoc with no publications, and we finished this data collection over two years ago. Do I have to accept the decision of the PI even though I am first-author and the decision has explicitly not been made on the content, quality or potential readership of our paper?
Note: The paper isn’t a particularly confrontational paper: it just presents previous conflicting results and then shows how the new method is more sensitive and so validates most previous experimental results whilst showing that the theoretical implications people were drawing from them. I‘m sure it’s solid, and I know the co-authors think so too - we had checks worked into the method, replicated it in two languages and again in one of the languages. This type of paper is usually published in a good discipline-specific journal (and it is very rare to have data like this in our field). Both professors are retiring - one already is and wants to use the data in a course he’s teaching - the other retires soon, and is very politically engaged (I have been told to turn down invited talks because they would have involved plane travel). The question is whether as first-author I have any say in where the paper goes.


texts: reviewers asked to use continuous data instead of grouping participants. Should I do it?

texts:
I have done a research where I grouped participants based on their scores on Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II). In study 1, my groups were healthy controls (scores 0-13) vs depressed (>13). In study 2, they were regrouped to mild, moderate and severe depression in addition to the control group.
I've been under the impression that what I do is fine, but reviewers in a journal I send the paper for have mentioned that it reduces the power of study and that it is "unconventional" to group based on BDI scores (and not clinical interview). They have suggested that I erase the groups and re-do the analysis with the continuous BDI-II scores. Doing this would mean completely rewriting the paper.
I need opinions from people who are better than me in statistics. Is it worth re-doing the analysis? Does it reduce the power really that much? is it really that unconventional?  Can I convince these reviewers of keeping the analysis my way, or should I change everything? or should I just send it to another journal?
I will be very grateful to get your opinions. thank you in advance!


texts: Outsourcing your research to Kaggle for co-authorship or other non monetary options

texts: Some parts of our research fall out of our expertise. We thought about creating a Kaggle challenge just for this part. But we lack fund resources for the reward, so we could not offer any money. We are thinking now about offering co-authorship in a paper, do you think this would work? Otherwise, which other things would you offer as reward in Kaggle apart from money?


texts:
I teach a course where my teaching materials are a combination of 1: original material, 2: material from colleagues, and 3: material provided by the textbook. My colleagues have given me permission to use their material with no requirement for attribution, so I tell my students this in class, but do not have any written statements attributing this material. I do this primarily to avoid adding more information to an already long syllabus.

The material provided by the textbook includes lecture slides (licensed under GPLv3) and problem sets/exercises (licensed under GPLv2). This material is provided in the form of .Rnw files and data that allow R to produce PDF lecture slides and problem sets. My understanding of GPL is that if I were to distribute my .Rnw files, I would need to license them under GPLv3 and credit the original author of the teaching materials.

However, I'm sure not what I should be doing in a teaching context. GPL was designed for software, and while this material is code, the students never see any of the code. They only receive the PDF files produced by it. Should I add a footnote on the syllabus about the origin of some of the material in the course? It feels weird to upload a license file to the course site, and I'm worried doing so may confuse students. I'm assuming GPL requires some form of attribution in this context, but I really have no idea what the correct choice is here.


texts: Is it ethical of a professor to ask students for recommendation letters during a class?

texts: I am taking a graduate course with a non-tenured professor. During one of the sessions, the non-tenured professor told students that recommendation letters from them would be helpful and that they could be sent directly to the professor. This seems very unethical, given that class is not over yet and that the students have received few grades. Is something wrong here?


texts: Journal publication and acceptance to competitive conferences

texts:
My graduate training is in an interdisciplinary field (bioinformatics). I am affiliated both with a genetics department and an interdepartmental program that encompasses everything from genetics to computer science to evolution to statistics to engineering. The life-science-oriented fields seem to place a lot of value in publishing papers in high-profile journals, whereas some of the more quantitative and technical fields (comp sci and engineering especially) seem to be focused on getting accepted to high-profile conferences with low acceptance rate. So far in graduate school, I have focused completely on publishing papers in journals and have not worried about getting into competitive conferences.

My question is twofold: first, is my assessment of the life sciences vs the quantitative sciences accurate? and second, should I consider submitting my research to competitive conferences in addition to journals? Will this make me more marketable as an interdisciplinary scientist down the road?


texts: How do American universities handle cases of discrimination?

texts:
Many non-American students come to America in the hope of good education and support from their academic advisors.
How should anyone handle discrimination based on national origin by American professors if such a situation arises in the future?
How do universities take care of these situations, and do they treat non-American students and the American professors equally under the law?


texts: Do teaching load agreements always refer to the academic year?

texts:
I was lucky enough to get hired as a tenure-track assistant professor in computer science. During the negotiation of the offer (per email), the department head assured me that, during my first year, the usual teaching load of 2 courses per year will be reduced to 1 course.

After having accepted the offer and agreeing on a starting date in Spring (2017), I was told that I will be teaching 1 course in Spring (2017) and also another course in Fall (2017) as "I am not teaching any course this Fall (2016)" and hence I have a reduced teaching load as promised. The reasoning makes little sense to me as I will only be joining in Spring 2017. (For the record, I am going to be TA for a course at my current institution this Fall).

How do I approach the situation?
Is it common that new hires joining in Spring miss out on reduced responsibilities during the first year?

Note that the department/university is considered to be well-established (i.e. reasonably highly ranked and has been around for several decades.)

Edit:   I will also be teaching a course in Spring 2018.


texts: Is publishing a graduation requirement in many master's programs?

texts:
I know a student in a linguistics master's program (in East Asia). He told me that in his country, most master's programs require students to publish a certain number of papers in academic journals in order to graduate. I want to study a linguistics-related degree in the US. Is such a requirement common there as well?

In the US, does "thesis-option" generally imply that one "must publish a thesis to graduate" or does it just mean "must write a thesis"?
Are such publishing requirements common enough in graduate programs in the US that it should be a question I ask schools when I apply?


texts: Journal changed the ordering of the authors. What to do now?

texts:
I am facing a very difficult situation. I sent a paper for peer-review in a SCOPUS indexed journal. My supervisor though did not contribute anything rather than reading my draft insisted that I put his name in the manuscript. I had put his name as the second author as otherwise he would stop my funding. Now my paper has been  accepted and published online. To my ignorance the journal has re-arranged the author names in alphabetical order making the name of my advisor to appear first.
In our university, it is mandatory for authors to be listed in the order of their contribution. Also it was me who did all the hard work. My advisor had no idea about the reviews sent by the reviewer.
Though I had clearly made myself the first author and my advisor as the second author in the TeX file I had submitted for publication, the journal has changed it.
The journal did not send me the page-proof before publishing it online. They just changed the author ordering in the TeX file I had sent and published it as it is.
They put my paper in "RECENTLY ACCEPTED" section with no DOI and no VOLUME NUMBER but it is posted online and is accessible.
What shall I do now? I mailed the journal. They are not replying, it's 2 days already.
Can someone please help. Shall I withdraw the paper from the journal?


texts:
I wrote a paper that is a literature review. It has been accepted with minor revisions. However, I when I read it again - 3 months after submitting it, and thus, 3 months without thinking about it - I noticed passages that could still be improved. I know that a paper is never perfect, but I am itching to add some enhancement...

So I wonder how much it is acceptable to improve it now, beyond modifications pointed out by reviewers’ comments (i.e. on parts that are already ok according to reviewers).

I can think of 3 types of improvements:

Fixing typos, that had also been missed by reviewers,
Style, phrasing improvements,
Adding new information (e.g. a paper that I’ve discovered since I’ve submitted my paper).

Since it is my first paper, I do not want to give the impression of having submitted an unfinished work the first time.


texts: Do details of my undergraduate title matter?

texts:
I'm a third-year undergraduate student yet to experience the graduate world.
Currently, with the course choices I made, I can choose between two degree titles, namely “BSc Mathematics” or “BSc Applied Mathematics”.

I will be taking the same courses regardless, but I'm wondering if it matters to have a different degree title.
E.g., might one of the titles benefit me or does it not matter at all (in terms of job prospects, continuing to my master’s, …)?

Moderator’s notice: Do not take this as a shopping question as to which of these specific titles is better (you can use them as examples though). Instead, focus on the relevance of such differences in the title in general.


texts: Do evaluation / recruiting committees respect "co first authors"?

texts:
Inspired by this question and this question, I continue my ongoing quest of understanding the concept of co first-authorship.

My question are:

In which fields does this notion even exist?
If the notion exists in your field, do recruiting committees (e.g., faculty search committees) actually care about this?

The background of the second part of this question is that it seems to me that a little footnote in a paper should be easy to miss for a committee, and even if a committee becomes aware of the claimed dual first-authorship, I find it hard to believe that the paper will actually be counted as another "first-authored" paper.


texts: Should I Address a Letter to "Professor" xyz when they are actually a "Lecturer in Discipline"?

texts:
I am writing thank-you notes to Professors before I graduate from my Bachelors' program. I am unsure how to address letters to two specific individuals:

One is listed as a "Lecturer in Music" on my school's website and has no vita published online. He has a DMA (Ph.D equivalent for composers), but I can't determine if he has held the title of Professor at another institution. He has been at my school for 10 years, so this is unlikely.
The other is listed as a "Lecturer in Discipline" on my school's website but his vita, which is on the same webpage, lists his title as "Adjunct Assistant Professor". He has his Ph.D in Economics. He has held Assistant Professorships elsewhere but his career has largely been in the private sector.

I feel like I shouldn't be listing either of them as "Professor" in my recipient addresses, but I don't want to be disrespectful. I call them Professor in person and in class.

What would be the most appropriate way to address these letters without ruffling any feathers?


texts: As a new Ph.D. student (mathematical statistics) how should I read papers for research?

texts:
My question is about how to best read mathematics papers for research.

I just passed the last qualifying exam as a Ph.D. student in mathematics (studying statistics) and I'm reaching the point where I will need to do more research, which involves reading papers. I used to write, in my own words in a journal, pre-reading thoughts (why I'm reading this paper, what I already know, etc.), a summary of the paper's contents while reading, post-reading thoughts (what I think about the ideas, how they connect to others, how this could be useful, opinions, etc.), and a list of potentially interesting bibliography entries for later reading. When reading I would essentially read linearly, making margin notes, highlighting interesting sections, and so on. Reading a single paper could take a day, going through this process.

This did well enough for my undergraduate thesis on a topic in economics. It also worked well for the paper that my adviser and I are wrapping up and submitting to journals. But I get the impression that this is not an optimal way to read papers, especially in subjects as technically intense as mathematics. (My role in the paper I co-authored with my adviser was to do simulation studies for a test statistic he and another co-author developed, which is more computational and programming intensive than mathematically intensive, and paper reading was basically to get background on the subject. This is fine for me as a starting researcher, but I don't think I will get by on this alone for a Ph.D. thesis, let alone in my later career.)

I'm shy about asking my adviser the best way to read papers, so I'd like to hear others' approach. Is my approach to paper reading a good one, or is there a better way?


texts: After an unsuccessful first PhD position in experimental research, how can I get accepted to another program?

texts:
I am a new PhD student, almost one year into the program. I was in theoretical research in my Master's program and switched to experimental research for my PhD. During my studies I have used a programming language but I do not have any expertise with it. I immediately started to working with this language, but still have great difficulty working efficiently it. I don't have any positive contribution and my supervisor doesn't seem to be happy.

I don't want to just quit and go back to theory. I really want to continue with experimental study, but not in my current university. When I talked to my supervisor about this he just told me to quit and find something else but I don't believe this is the proper way to motivate a student.

I've applied for other positions which are of a different topic but also experimental. The people who I contacted were very interested in my studies I have done before. But at the end, these people will contact with my supervisor about my progress and I think he will not say good things about me.

I think I behaved very honest for my new application. One of them knew my supervisor and he wanted me to ask about my current performance and I told him to ask if he wants, but I also explained that this talk wouldn't be a glowing recommendation since I have been unable to meet objectives in my current program. Now I think being honest didn't work for me since I didn't get any response back...

What should I say to those people to get accepted into a different program, since I really want to continue in this experimental field?


texts: Applying to Law school in USA with an Econ BS degree from another country

texts:
My friend moved to Los Angeles a few months ago and she wants to go to law school in here. She got a Bachelor's degree in Economics from another country (she is a resident in USA). The university she studied in is one of the top in the country but is not known in the world. She is thinking of going maybe to UCLA or USC law schools.

I am trying to help her to see what will be the best for her. We are planning to talk to a school counselor hopefully next week, but doesn't hurt to ask the question here :)

What is better?

If she goes to a community college, then transfers to a 4 year university and majors in something different (maybe engineering or something else), and then applies to Law School

OR

She takes some classes in a community college (she needs to improve her English so taking the classes will be helpful), then evaluates her BS degree in USA, then applies to law school?

Another friend thinks that if she does the second option then she won't have a chance to be accepted the schools she wants to since the BS degree university is not a known university.

What do you think she should do?

Thanks a lot.


texts: What are the different committees for in a conference?

texts:
I would like to take the example of QIP 2018 conference. I've always wondered what the roles of committees are. In this conference, for example, there are three.

Organizing committee
Program committee
Steering committee

It's obvious what the Organizing committee is, but what are the other committees for?


texts: What are the different components of degree titles called?

texts:
Some degree titles have many components, e.g.:

Master of Arts in Psychology: Behavioral Health
|_A__|_B_____|_C___________|_D________________|

Another e.g.:

Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction: Special Education
|_A__|_B__________|_C___________________________|_D________________|

What are these components called?