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Q: Should I WX(drop) a class if the highest grade I can get is a B+? How badly would this hurt my PhD application? I'm an undergraduate right now and in my junior year. I was overloading courses and fell behind one course, leaving me with a B+ as the highest possible grade for the course. Should I retake it next year if I know I can get an A in the class? Also: it is a core class and I can technically get an A- but thats with a 100 on everything... A: I agree with Dave Rose that the most important aspects of your application will be your thesis and advisor recommendation, but I want to take a slightly more nuanced angle on whether you should drop your course. You say that a B+ is the highest grade you can receive. Is it the likely grade? You should not be basing your estimates of what you are going to get in the class on statements like "if I get perfect scores on the remaining exams I can get . . .". If, in fact, you are more likely to get a C+, and the course is a "core" course, then an argument can be made for you to drop until the next time it is offered.

Q: How would someone transition from the business sector to academic research? I am a junior undergraduate at an accredited college in the United States majoring in a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science program. Currently, I work at a for-profit business to gain some programming experience. In the future, I would like to enroll in a good Master of Science in Computer Science program. After that, I would like to work as a researcher studying computer science theory to improve human understanding of computation. Is there a general way to transition to research after undergraduate study and, if so, are there any particular mental tools that I should acquire that would be in my best interest for research? For example, mental tools would be something like a methodology to writing papers, and another could be a framework to acquiring research grants from the government. A: Is there a general way to transition to research after undergraduate study Usually the general way to transition to research is to do research under the supervision of an experienced researcher. (Either within the context of graduate school, or outside it.) are there any particular mental tools that I should acquire that would be in my best interest for research Yes, there are many, and they vary by discipline. You would learn what tools you need for your particular research and develop those tools by conducting research under supervision of someone more experienced in doing research in your field.

Q: What can students do if a professor penalizes an entire class because one student cheated on an exam? Today, I was taking a test in my intro to sociology course. It is a difficult enough class when the minimum requirement for an A is 96%. It is also difficult when the professor gets off-topic and does not cover important enough material. I'm taking the class pass/fail, so I'm not terribly worried right now. I have kept up a B+ so far. We have an online textbook, which allows the reader to use the audio version, which reads the page out loud. Today, during the test, someone near the back decided to play the audio on one of the chapters on which we were being tested. It played loudly for about two minutes, and the professor (who is not exactly relaxed) stood up and said the obvious about cheating policies. She said that if the cheater did not come forward before she left the classroom, she would penalize everyone's tests. She did not specify how, but just that she would do that. She held behind everyone in the area from which she heard the audiobook, and let the others go. I was allowed to go, because I was not too close to the back, and also probably because I'm always on time and never on my phone in class. I don't think she is allowed to penalize the entire class for the reason stated, but if she does, I'm reporting it to the dean of the university. However, our dean is known to not be the most responsive person. My question is: What should I do if the dean does not take the appropriate steps to help us? I may not be really affected by my grade in the class (again, pass/fail is how I'm taking it), but others are. Failing everyone for one person's actions is unacceptable. Please help! A: The described event does taint the exams given by everybody in the room. Even if they didn't mean to cheat. Sorry. What to do in such a case is a hard question. It ranges from doing nothing this time, but e.g. collecting cellphones and such next exam; just punishing the careless cheater (if caught); grade the affected question(s) for less maximal grade (or even not grade them at all, leaving them for a separate evaluation); or even repeat the exam.

Q: Explaining an unusual undergraduate degree title I've got an undergraduate MA, which has, interestingly enough, caused me a significant amount of trouble: Examples include being excluded from student accommodation and being denied funding (they were available only to students working on the "first" "Master's" degree, and they assumed I was working on a second). "Appealing" such decisions is not always possible, as e.g. I only got an official refusal for accommodation two years after applying (about a month before I handed in my thesis), or I got a generic refusal with no explanation or I simply didn't get a response to "appeal" at all. How can I make the nature of this degree explicit and unambiguous in e.g. contexts of applications?-- Some people simply cannot accept the fact that I do not have a "Bachelor's degree". In fact, a description of the degree is written in English on the second page of my degree transcript, and I have even directed people to this page who then still demanded to see my "Bachelor's degree"; This degree has conferred me the power to actually break bureaucracy despite that I'm not exactly the first person to be awarded such a degree (additionally, undergraduate MAs likely aren't the only example of this). On my CV, I have now put directly before the "MA" title the term (Undergraduate), e.g.: 2004–2008: (Undergraduate) M. A. (honors) Testing Bureaucracy Previously, I only had the 2004–2008 part, but actually this wasn't enough to make people understand that this is an undergraduate degree. I haven't had any experiences using the (Undergraduate) note, but there are still places where this is simply not possible to note in this way, such as when filling out pre-fabricated forms for e.g. admission or application of funding. A: I don't know how popular this answer will be with others but ... Call it a BA phase whilst applying to graduate schools In all honesty after having read as to what Scottish MA is, I would suggest that in applications (especially to the US or other parts of the world not particularly familiar with the degree type) that you merely enter it as a BA 2004-2008 BA (honors) Testing Bureaucracy With this seems inaccurate, consider it a matter of translation rather than some sort of dishonesty with degree names, etc. As the University of Edinburgh states, these are "conventional undergraduate degrees." Then when it's explaining time, explain that the degree is called a MA for historical reasons (by say printing the appropriate explanation page from your school or wikipedia) and providing that along with the degree certificate or transcript. None of this is to deny that it looks like a very high quality undergraduate education. My motive for this suggestion is that doing otherwise will confuse people at a time when their confusion costs you scholarships and other things. Call it an MA Phase Once you have some higher degree above it or when you no longer care about graduate school Revert to calling it an MA on your CV and in applications as you are suggesting. At this point, the only people reading it will glance only briefly at this and not really care.

Q: Ways to get free and legal access to research papers as a researcher I’ve discovered that website like ResearchGate offer the possibility to ask the paper editor to provide his paper for free. Many are collaborating. Are there any other ways for researchers to obtain free access to papers? A: I always use the following methods to get many inaccessible papers. Open Google Scholar. Search the title of the paper. Click see all versions (you can see many places where the same paper is available) Check one by one whether they are downloadable Another method, I always use when I really need an inaccessible paper, is just to write an e-mail to the corresponding author to send that paper. My experience is that I have always received the paper in a return email. A: It turns out that a related survey was posted last year in this PLOS blog post on how paleontologists access the (non-open access) literature: I put together an informal, non-scientific survey. The survey asked questions about how people access the literature, the kinds of journals they can access most easily, and basic demographics. I advertised the survey via Twitter and Facebook. I wouldn’t count it as a scientific sample by any means, but I do feel that I got reasonably good coverage of various types of paleontologists at various types of institutions (as well as non-paleontologists who follow the literature). 115 individuals responded, during the course of about a week. Note that it doesn't indicate the legality. FYI: Bulk download Sci-Hub papers A: The website mentioned here is obviously and blatantly illegal, but gives access to almost all journals ever published. It's very easy to use and more complete than our direct subscriptions. I might almost use it for stuff I have legal but slow access to. Use or do not use depending on your views on the "illegal" consumption of research.

Q: Did requesting more info/contacting admissions too early hurt my chances of getting in? Before saying anything I would like to point out I have no knowledge on the how to apply for graduate schools and this may very well be a stupid question. I'm getting my Bachelor's degree in Spring 2017 and I plan on applying for graduate programs for art that Fall. I have been looking at different schools and requesting more information and asking the admission offices about the programs I am thinking of applying to. BUT, a friend of mine told me I definitely shouldn't have done that until I am almost absolutely sure I will be applying to that school and especially not a year ahead. I was just casually requesting more information, and I didn't know they took that so seriously. So my question is did I somehow hurt my chances of getting into those schools by contacting the admissions very early? Especially when I am interested in more than one program? I would also like to clarify that I did not contact a faculty member in the program, just the admissions office. A: I am 100% sure you did NOT hurt your chances of getting in merely by requesting additional information. Asking for clarification is never a negative. I expect the admissions office would simply send you links to the school's webpages that give the information you requested, and end their email with "Feel free to email us if you have any more questions". A: I have been part of the admission process of two two-year long master-level courses in the Management fields. While these are not the same as graduate program in the US (e.g. MSc + PhD program), as far as your question goes, I think there is little difference. I was specifically involved in responding to emails directed to the admission office and I am confident no damage came to you from asking questions. The reason being that the person who reads the email and handle this kind of questions is an administrative employee which rarely, if ever, speaks with members of the admission committee directly. Those people are the ones who will make the decision w.r.t. your admission, they are typically busy professor and they never got remotely close to reading an applicant emails, as any menial task is kept away from them. Emails first pass through the employee, who reads them and replies to all standard questions or questions he has been trained to answer (like 98% of the times). If answering requires a higher level of responsability/expertise, said employee will ask the course admin/manager (who is typically not a professor, but that might depend on country/institution), yet this is done usually without any reference to the name of the specific applicant (because the information is irrelevant to answer the query). Furthermore, the reason admission offices put their email out is so that people can ask questions, any questions, so to ensure that the application process is as easy and smooth as possible on both side.

Q: How much does it cost the publisher to publish a book? I wonder how much it costs a publisher to publish a book (textbook or research book). I'm looking for referenced numbers, not guesses. I am mostly interested in the fields of computer science and maths, and English-speaking venues, but I am curious about other fields and languages as well. A: Here is one story on it from US News & World Report... Their example was a Calculus textbook selling for $289 at the bookstore. Where does all that money go? According to figures from the National Association of College Stores, an average of 21.6 cents of every dollar spent on a new textbook will go to the bookstore, whether for personnel costs, operations, or income. For Kadue's $289 textbook, that's around $62. Another cent of every dollar pays for the freight of shipping a heavy book around, so subtract another $3 from her cost. That leaves around $224 that goes to the publisher, or around 77.4 cents for every dollar. NACS no longer receives information from publishers about where textbook money goes, but as recently as 2008, they provided that cost breakdown. At that time, around 15.4 cents of every dollar went toward marketing the textbooks, 11.7 cents went to the authors, and the largest chunk—32.2 cents—went to the basics: paper, printing, and paying publishers' employees.

Q: Linking to printed books on archive.org I am a postgrad PhD student. I occasionally participate in answering academic questions a Q & A site when I hit a block with getting on with my thesis. I often cite a particular large and well-known academic source in my answers. I have my own copy of this book. It costs between £180 and £240 and is therefore beyond the reach of anyone who isn't a very serious enthusiast or a serious academic. It is a very important resource in my field of study. Recently, I found that this resource is available online in pdf form at a not-for-profit website called Archive dot org. I have done some cursory research into that organisation. It has an entry on Wikipedia. I can't find any substantial criticism of it. I am wondering whether it would be academically unethical of me to link directly to this resource in my answers, given the unknown copyright status of some of the content on archive.org. On a related note, I'm also worried whether it could get me into trouble academically to do so. Any insights would be appreciated! A: I occasionally participate in answering academic questions in online forums when I hit a block with getting on with my thesis. No worries, we all procrastinate (ehm... cough cough). I often cite a particular large and well-known academic source in my answers. I have my own copy of this book. You really don't need to own a copy of a book to cite it: many, if not most, academics borrow the books needed for their work from the libraries. Moreover, its cost is irrelevant to your question. I am wondering whether it would be academically unethical of me to link directly to this resource in my answers, given the questionable copyright status of archive.org. If the archived copy is legal (e.g., the publisher might have released the copyright because they no longer print it), it is certainly ethical to link it. However, I'd avoid referring to the copy if it's legality cannot be reasonably established. In addition, should the copy be removed due to copyright infringement, you would end up with a series of broken links. It is worth noting that links to books are seldom seen on academic papers, unless a book is exclusively available online. Therefore, the issue is more related to whether or not posting the link online. A: Achive.org operates in a grey area with respect to printed works that are still under copyright. In some areas it is completely fine. For instance, in software it is legal in the US to link to anything on archive.org, as they have an exemption from the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) that allows them to host copyrighted material. From the wikipedia article The project advocated for an exemption from the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act to permit them to bypass copy protection, which was approved in 2003 for a period of three years. The Archive does not offer the software for download, as the exemption is solely "for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive." The exemption was renewed in 2006, and in 2009 was indefinitely extended pending further rulemakings. The Library reiterated the exemption, as a "Final Rule" with no expiration date, in 2010. However, this exemption does not extend to other media. I believe some authors have strongly objected to having their work hosted there. (Harlan Ellison, I believe, successfully got all of his material removed.) My inclination would be that it is fine in academia. There is a process by which authors or publishers can have their copyrighted material removed from the internet archive. If they have chosen not to exercise that right, then I don't see that linking to it is problematic, legally or ethically. Your links may rot in the future if you do this since Archive.org might be required to remove the copyrighted material at some point in the future.

Q: Is it feasible to become a paramedic full time and do a PhD in an unrelated field? Do you think this is reasonable? I am graduating with a BSc in neuroscience next year. I would like to be a paramedic for a little while (throughout my 20's) before switching careers and becoming a researcher in Neuroscience (for my 30's +). Scenario A: After completing my BSc I want to do the 2 years of training to become an EMT. A full time work schedule as an EMT would be something like 12 hour shifts, 3 days on, 3 days off, 4 nights on, 4 nights off, etc. Would it be possible to pursue a masters and a PhD in Neuroscience while working a schedule like that? I imagine that this way I would graduate towards the end of my 20's or early thirties with a PhD. Then I would like to begin a career as a researcher/lecturer. Does this sound impossibly difficult? Scenario B: After graduating, spend the next 2 years to become an EMT. Work as an EMT for a few years, then reduce to part-time or quit and pursue funding for a masters + PhD in my mid 20's. I hear that returning to university after a few years off might be more difficult, both to apply, and to be competitive. Is this true? Scenario C: Pursue my masters after I finish my BSc. Then do the 2 years to become an EMT, work as an EMT for a few years, then do a PhD. Will the relevance of the masters depreciate over time? If I already have a master's done, how long would it take to finish a PhD? I guess in general, is this just an insane plan? Or is it possible? A: A does sound impossibly difficult to me. The first few years of a masters/PhD sequence are usually based on coursework. You will need to attend classes regularly on weekdays, which seems like it would probably be incompatible with a paramedic's work schedule. Even beyond coursework, particularly in lab sciences, you may find that parts of your research have to be done on a particular schedule. Moreover, at all stages of graduate study, you should expect that your coursework and/or research will require a time commitment at least comparable to a full time job (40 hours per week), likely substantially more. Many graduate students struggle with the workload, even without added commitments. Adding a full time job, especially one with as much stress, long hours, and sleep disruption as a paramedic must have, seems to me like a burden well beyond what any human could be expected to successfully bear.

Q: Is Master Program Rank Important for PhD Application I am looking to go into the neuroscience or stem cell research fields. I was recently offered unconditional acceptance to the University of Edinburgh for Regenerative Medicine and to University College London for Neuroscience. Both are one year masters programs and included a dissertation. Essentially, I am wondering how rank plays a role in applying to PhD programs. Does rank play a part in doctoral acceptances? Both are well ranked, but UCL is ten or so spots higher on a world ranking scale. Most of the research I have done has said that rank can be important for jobs, but I have not found much regarding the transition into a PhD, which I plan on. I appreciate any input or opinions on the matter. Thank you. A: I don't think it's so important for terminal masters degree, although it should not be completely disregarded. What is much more important, in my opinion, is the exact field you are intending to work in and the person you will work with and the references that you will get in the end (and, again, who they come from). So if Edinburgh would give you the chance to work with a leading scholar in a subfield you are interested in, and UCL is ranked 10 ranks higher generally, but not as compelling for your more specific interest, I would go with Edinburgh. Also, 10 is really not much of a difference.

Q: Is it typical to use an uncertain affiliation within a paper? I am an international graduate student, recently-admitted to a Canadian university. My admission has been finalized and I am just within the visa processing to acquire required study permit. Now, I am going to submit a proceeding paper and feel myself in a dilemma to determine my affiliation within that, appropriately. As a matter of fact, my preference has been focused on utilization of my position in the new university, instead of my undergraduate affiliation. But one might, realistically, imagine the situation that I use my favorite affiliation for the target paper, but (for any reason) I will be rejected by Canadian embassy to acquire the study permit. In this case (I hate even thinking about it!), I not only lose that position, supposedly, but that applied affiliation onto the paper will, also, be invalid, actually. Now, technically: Is it ethical to do something like that in academia, or I must bite the bullet for stabilization of my expecting affiliation to be applicable, formally? What are the potential consequences for me and my paper, if above scenario would be happened? A: No. There is no bullet to be bitten. Whenever you submit a paper, you just list your current institution as your home institution, no matter what you want to put here. The affiliation on a paper has two purposes: to allow others to contact you - nowadays it's mainly a disambiguation in case your name shows up multiple times on an internet search, but in former times, the institution information was necessary in order to send the author a letter or in order to call him/her; to assign credit to the institution that supported you during your research. The Canadian university did not do any of that (yet), so they should not be listed. Note that if you already started at your next institution when the final version of the paper is due, then it is entirely reasonable to update your affiliation then, just as you would update an e-mail address that expired. However, for reason number two from above, you would add a footnote stating that the work was carried out while you were still at your former institute/university.

Q: How would the UK leaving the EU affect academia and PhD admission? Will all European applicants count as ‘international students’ then? Are there any proposals on this yet? I am finishing my BA in two years and was considering applying to the UK, but am worried now that I will have to pay international fees. A: The following are opinion, not fact, as AFAIK nobody has a clue what a potential post-Brexit academic situation would look like: It's standard for qualitative features in regulations and costs to remain fixed for students over the lifetime of their studies. So I would guess that the fees won't change halfway through: you'll know the approximate costs at the start. It wouldn't surprise me if in two years fees for EU students would remain the same, especially if (as your question seems to imply) you've been normally resident in the UK for 3 years. I would always expect a PhD studentship to cover fees. I would be very wary of one that didn't guarantee this. The risk of higher fees should be on the studentship, not on you personally. (Of course, you may self-fund, which is a different issue) In the current UK climate I would be more worried about visas to study. With the current arguments around net migration, and the crazy situation where students are counted as immigrants, I would expect student visas from the EU to become a problem.

Q: Do all universities have a minimum required GPA for graduate school application? I am a senior undergraduate (electrical) engineering student, exceedingly interested in physics. 4 years ago when entering university, for some reasons (better: illusions) I chose engineering as my major, while I was interested (and also really knowledgeable) in physics . Soon after the first semester I realized that I've decided wrong, and I must have chosen physics. Since our university is a technical institute and does not have a strong physics department I decided to study physics on my own, without changing my major.But I took and passed the basic graduate physics courses (advanced quantum mechanics, advanced statistical mechanics, electrodynamics I & II), have done a few research projects and had a paper published (maybe 1 more in the future). I have explored lots of research areas in physics and I think I have a good potential for doing research. While concentrating on physics, I was inattentive to EE courses. Today, while searching for graduate programs, I saw that some schools require a minimum GPA, usually 3. I just calculated my GPA and found out that it is 2.95! Do all universities have a GPA threshold? Since I'm changing my major and also have a good GPA in graduate physics courses, is there any way I can compensate for my (very) low electrical engineering GPA? (like by taking subject GRE, etc.) If I first (somehow) get a masters degree in physics and then apply for a PhD, can I throw away this electrical engineering GPA in my PhD application ? Any other suggestion is warmly appreciated. A: I can't say "all" for sure, but I think you'll find that many if not most schools do have a minimum GPA requirement. Whether you can compensate for a low GPA depends on how the school handles it. In some cases it may be difficult, as admissions committees may literally scan apps for GPA and put all that do not meet the standard in a "reject" pile without even reading the rest of the application. In other cases the minimum may be "soft" and they will read the app. My advice would be to: A) get advice from a professor at your school you have a rapport with; and B) contact faculty at the schools you're applying to (or considering applying to). I would not just bluntly ask the GPA question on its own, but email them in general saying you're interested in the program, and mention the GPA issue along with whatever else you ask them about the program. You almost certainly cannot "throw away" your undergrad GPA in a PhD application. Even if you have an MA, most schools will want to see all your college transcripts. You should also take advantage of the time you still have during the year to bring your GPA up as much as possible. Even consider doing this by taking easy classes that you might not otherwise take. Personally, if I were in your situation, I would even consider delaying graduation by a year or part of a year, if it's financially feasible and your school will allow it, just to have more time to take classes and bring up your overall GPA. You have already made a significant blunder in letting your GPA get that low, as a GPA below 3.0 will be a red flag to many graduate programs. However, from what you say, you would be a strong candidate in other regards. If you can get people to look at your app long enough to read your statement of purpose and see your grad coursework, then you probably have a decent shot. To do that, you should leverage your strengths. If you have taken many grad classes, done research, and published a paper, you presumably have good contacts in the physics department. Lean on those people to write you glowing letters of rec. A: I just graduated from school X in BS. Physics & Astronomy. I graduated with a CGPA of 3.0 (did not do so well due to family health issues). But then I applied for only one school for my Masters in Applied Physics in school Y and got accepted. I also got the Graduate Assistantship (GA) position with that which gives me full scholarship and a stipend. I did not even have to take the Physics GRE to get accepted, just the General GRE. My advise get to know your professors really well. It's really amazing, what professors can do to get you accepted into a grad school. Get at least 3 excellent letters of recommendation relevant to Physics or Astronomy. Be the top student in the class you would like ask the professor for a letter. Be noticed by your professors as a determine & excellent student in class during your undergraduate. Be a TA or SI in Physics/Astronomy during your undergraduate, and this will show you can teach, looks very good on your resume and you can be accepted into GA positions in grad school. Publish papers & books in Physics/Astronomy journals. I did that, and I'm proud of my accomplishment and I stand out from the rest. Be good at computer programming. Matlab, IRAF, IDL, Python, Zemax are some good programming skills looked by most Physics/Astronomy grad schools. Knowing a computer language for grad school is essential for research and publications. Do research with professors from your Physics/Astronomy Dept. You will get to know your professor better and show that you can do research in lab. Lab skills are very important especially when you are going to grad school, as it shows you are knowledgeable and also experienced. Grad school will find it easier to select you this way. While taking classes irrelevant to Physics & Astronomy to boost your CGPA, sound like a good idea, it actually may not be the case all the time. Grad schools are only mostly concern with how well you did in your physics, astronomy & math classes. They are not bothered if you get A's in all your art or language paper if you're applying to Physics/Astronomy grad school. What matters to them the most are your Physics, Astronomy & Maths. While getting into grad school is one thing, but getting any financial aid or scholarship is another thing. Many student find grad school to be very expensive and in addition, they are still paying their loan back for their undergraduate. So funding your grad school is another thing to worry about, even if you got accepted. Most grad school requires a better grade to get any sort of scholarship or financial aid. For example, in my school only about 30-40 % of student got accepted into the grad school, will receive the GA position which gives student a full tuition waiver, a stipend and other benefits. I was the lucky few :) My general advise in CGPA to apply for grad school around the US (other criteria will be considered for admission) for Physics/Astronomy grad schools. Disclaimer:This is just a rough gauge on where you are standing and where do you see yourself in the future. 1) 3.70-4.00 (Top schools in the nation) 2) 3.50- 3.69 (Good schools) 3) 3.00.3.49 (Most state schools) 4) 2.80- 2.99 (Community colleges, small schools & mediocre schools) 4) below 2.80 (Don't be a science major)

Q: If a reference/book authored by your professor contains typos, how should you react? My professor gave me a module on history that contains several spelling and grammatical errors. Should I tell him about this or just ignore these mistakes? A: For the textbook I've written, I appreciate any feedback, including typos, misformed sentences, vague formulations and of course errors. Some points to consider (partly contained in the other answers): Wait until you have a reasonable list or, e. g., until a chapter is over, the whole book, or the course. Check if there is some errata available somewhere. Some authors maintain an errata on their webpage, sometimes the publisher hosts this, for some lecture notes I have a blog post. Only send the points that are not already in the errata. There is no need to ask if such a list would be welcome. I guess it is safe to assume that this is the case (but others seem to disagree - see the comment below). For other feedback than errors and typos (e. g. feedback for formulations or the organization of the book) be prepared that your comments may not be taken into account for various reasons. Oh, and for the lecture notes I reward bonus points for every mistake spotted and submitted by a student. A: Many professors are interested in receiving feedback about possible errors in their lecture notes or, more generally, in their course material, albeit they might not be able to amend it immediately. Since your professor might already know about those errors, ask them politely, e.g. (maybe it's not the best possible phrase, but it's just to get the idea): Dear Prof. X, Since I'm currently reading your history module, would it be useful for you if I compile a list of errata? Sincerely, user50284 In this way you should not have any issue, even if they do not care. A: Collect all the mistakes/comments you find throughout the semester. Wait until the semester ends, and your grade is assigned. Send email to the professor with all your comments. You can also mention that you enjoyed taking the class, if you did indeed. Professors usually enjoy feedback, when it is made on clear professional grounds.

Q: Permission for using publicly available questionnaires in Dissertations I have used and/or adapted several questionnaires for my dissertation study. I have already asked the authors for permission to use their scales. However, I have not received a reply from an author about using his scale. I wonder if we have to have the permission of the authors when we use their surveys (when the questionnaire items are published and publicly available), or is it a courtesy to ask for the permission. Is it still okay to use a public scale when no confirmation is received from the author who developed the scale? A: Cite them. If the questionnaires are published then you do not need to ask for permission, just give them credit. In Psychology there are some very popular questionnaires that were presented in papers that have been cited more than 5000 times. It would be a full-time job to reply to every person's email who wants to use it! A: If I understand the question, you're talking about taking a published survey instrument and administering that survey to your own subjects as part of your research, possibly with changes of your own to the instrument. I'm no lawyer, and I'm not in a discipline that uses surveys much, but I'd say you need permission, most especially if the survey form carries a copyright notice. In the United States, copyright exists the moment something like a survey is in "fixed" form, so the survey is covered by copyright, and you need permission to re-use or adapt it, so says the law. Re-using someone's survey instrument is not like citing their results. Based on the comments to an earlier answer, re-use of survey instruments seems to be common, but I still think that, legally at least, you need permission.

Q: Surname change during PhD I am in my second year of my PhD and am about to get married. I plan to take on my husband's name with my name and not keep my maiden name. But I have two publications already. What can I do so that I can associate my publications even after my surname change. Also, if I keep on publishing with my maiden name and use my husband's surname socially, and also change my surname in passport, won't there be a conflict when I apply for visa to attend conferences due to the two different surnames? A: You should also consider registering for an identifier, such as ORCID or Researcherid. This way you can have an additional layer that relates your profile with your work. It is used in many submission websites and it is becoming quite common for funding agencies to require such a profile when submitting applications as well. A: Having been in the same situation, let me share my experiences. I was fortunate enough that I did not have anything published yet, only accepted, so it was possible to get the name changed before the paper was published (if you have anything in the pipeline, make sure to notify the editors as soon as you can). But as it is only a few papers, I would suggest the following: Clearly you can't get your name changed on any printed versions, but it is certainly worth inquiring whether it is possible to have an addition made to electronic publications stating the new name (with a footnote about the change). If the paper exists in any other form (such as on preprint servers or personal webpages), make the change to those versions (again with a footnote explaining the change). If you cannot get the name changed on the papers in any way, make sure you point out on any future CV's and similar that some of the papers are in a different name. For many purposes, this will be the main reason it is important to be linked to those first papers. Be prepared to sign all mails with both names for a while, at least the first time you are in contact with someone, so that people will be aware of the change. And make sure to keep whatever email you used to use (if you have one that includes your last name), so people trying to contact you about those papers can still do so, even if they are not aware of the name change.

Q: Having to elaborate or modify an NIH grant aim Background: I am a graduate student in neuroscience at a US institution. I have a specific aim that I wrote into an NIH grant back when I was less knowledgable, and as I have grown better versed in my field, I realized that there were related experiments that were technically not described in the aim, but are logically necessitated to happen before even executing the proposed grant aim. Key members of my thesis committee agree that I need to do preliminary experiments before getting to the proposed research. Further, depending on these preliminary results, there is a small chance that the original grant aim would be inadvisable to execute as it is written. In so many words, the aim might have been written using too many assumptions in the underlying hypothesis due to my naïveté. Is it bad to do these necessary experiments even though they are outside the aim? Assuming the preliminary experiments do not scientifically justify the grant aim, can I provide a report to the NIH describing what I did and possibly modify the aim and hypothesis appropriately; e.g. pursue a different but related direction? A: The answer somewhat depends on the grant mechanism and whether or not it has been funded. If the grant has not been funded yet, do whatever you want. If you are talking about modifying a submitted proposal, you will want to talk to the program officer. The mechanism also matters. As you are a graduate student, if the grant is an F31 or T32, then you are not technically incharge and you will want to talk to the PI (likely your advisor). If it is truly your grant, then you may want to talk to the NIH program officer. They are your friends and have a good enough understanding of the field to see if something is truly needed and if it would require some sort of amendment.

Q: Write a reminder about a possible undergraduate project I am currently doing some research for choosing a topic for my M.Sc. thesis. A week ago I sent an email to an external professor (I mean, not one in my University) asking about whether we could discuss about the topic I chose. The mail was (I believe) properly structured - not spammy and personally tailored on the prof, citing some works on the topic I took a look on, explaining my motivations on why I would like to study this topic, maybe a bit lengthy but not that much and divided in paragraphs - yet I had no answer. For what I know it seems that this is not necessarily a "no" and a common suggestion is to write a reminder. Now, I would really like to work on this topic and taking contact with this professor would be a great chance for me, especially in order to continue my studies with a PhD. At the same time, this professor is quite important and maybe he just doesn't care too much about a M.Sc. thesis, so I was thinking to write a reminder asking, in short, if he could send me the contact of one of his PhD/postdoc students that may be interested in helping me with my work. My question is: is this considered a bad etiquette? writing first to a prof and then rolling back to one of his students...may sound like I underestimated his position or I am just not motivated enough. In case, how could I structure the message? It seems to me that "if you are too busy" is a bad way to start (sounds like I don't know whether the professor has anything to do or that he could be doing nothing). Also "I know you are very busy but..." sounds bad (but what? but I don't care? but I think it is more important to stop and talk with me?). So what could be a polite way to go for it? A: I'm not in the best position to advise you, but, perhaps, he/she hasn't answered you back, because he/she was busy to do so. Thus, you definitely should e-mail back. Quoting a professor, maybe something like this: "My e-mail server has been acting up lately, so I'm not sure whether my previous message was delivered properly; here it is again, just in case. Thank you!" Read the following before: Email Writing Tips Read This Before Cold-Emailing Me Examples of Good and Bad Cold Emails Best of luck! A: I'm afraid this is really subjective to the Professor you are approaching. If he/she is well known in the field of study, as you said, then it's likely he/she is having many similar enquiries and can't respond to all of them. Also as others have said - Professors don't always reply immediately. In either case, sending a second e-mail doesn't hurt and the Prof. won't generally get annoyed at you for sending "already a second email". In my opinion, there is also nothing wrong with contacting the PhD / PostDoc person most relevant to your question. Don't spam the entire lab, but write to someone and suggest that you asked the Professor earlier, but didn't get a reply (yet) - probably because he/she is too busy. In our lab it is common that these sort of e-mails do get forwarded (from the Prof.) to the entire lab - you won't know about this, but I guess it's not uncommon. Since, as you said, this is concerning a Masters Thesis and you are not at the same university as the Professor, unfortunately, your enquiry will be pretty low on the priority list. Why? Because, the Professor has to attend his/her students at the local university first. They also have to write their Masters Thesis and the Professors have an obligation to take them on (at least where I went to university). So don't be disappointed, but don't expect this to actually go anywhere. [EDIT] Depending on the popularity of the Professor, you may also have to assume that they never read your mail in the first place, because they simply can't read all their mail. In an ideal world, they would hire assistants / secretaries to help out, but that costs money and not every Professor ca do that. So, a probably not uncommon approach for Professors is, to simply delete all mail that is older than X days, because they can't possibly go through them and if it was important, the person would have written back or called. In my own experience, even the PhD students and PostDocs wouldn't always get a reply from their own Professor, unless they send the same mail 3-4 times. Of course that's counterproductive, but if it's the only way to get a reply, you don't have a choice. In the end I would include "Reminder" or something like that in the Subject-Line. The Professors I know are more concerned about efficiency, than etiquette. They want to get to the point quickly and don't have to read through apologies. The most polite way I would come up with would be to say something like: Please allow me to remind you of my request... No need to tell Professors that they are busy ;) I also often see the request to forward something to their lab, actually being honoured. But as I said before, if you can reach one of the lab members - they all conduct their own research and surely have conversations with different people all the time - no need for the Professor to approve.

Q: Stay in Institution or Move to a new institution Last time I reported that I had failed my qualifier and now have been asked to leave. In that time, I have done the prep work to exit out of with my masters with a presentation for my Masters work and the writing all but finished. My advisor seems to have abandoned me because, mostly, of how the qualifier went and well as not being impressed by my presentation (he's more of a hands-off approach). A few months later I have been accepted into a Ph.D. program (of a different major). However, something is still possessing me to fight to stay in my original program and continue either with my advisor or move on to a new one. Is it worth my time trying to contest my qualifier and stay in the program or should I just move on? Keep in mind that I do like the work that I have done with my advisor but am still flexible to move on to another professor. A: If you have failed your qualifying exam, it is entirely possible that you may not have the option of "fighting" at your current institution. Your degree candidacy may have been ended, and leaving with a master's is the best available outcome. You should check with the chair of graduate studies for your department to see what options you have available. However, in general, your path of least resistance would be to start over elsewhere. Overcoming a failed qualifier is difficult at best, even when it is possible.

Q: Why attend predatory colleges in the US? I just read this article about predatory colleges in the US: S. Cagle, These students were ruined by predatory colleges. Now they’re getting even. I am not from the US and didn't ask in the comments of that site because I wouldn't want to insult anyone concerned. I just wondered: before you enroll for any degree, would you compare what the college's officials say with reality? Like, looking on the internet to find people with a degree from that school who got jobs, asking a local employment worker, asking at a local employer if they would consider giving a job to someone with a degree from that school, etc. How is it this article says the students were so young they could not possibly have known they were being tricked? If you are old enough to go into debt with thousands of dollars for a college education, how can you not be old enough to check for the quality of that education first? Why would people attend predatory colleges? A: These people genuinely don't know any better. They think a degree is a degree. I would guess that they come from parents that did not attend college. A friend of mine started at a for-profit school because she really didn't know that there was a difference between my 4 year bachelor degree and her 12 month online degree. People want to take shortcuts and these schools know that. These schools spend a lot of money on commercials and marketing to try to convince people to attend. It isn't surprising that people would fall victim if you see a commercial for a school 3 times a day. These schools also promote their currents/past students to help recruit their friends. I have certainly seen this on my own social media feeds. I once had a manager at a large company that was working on a degree from a diploma mill because the company was imposing a new policy that all managers had to have a degree, but it didn't matter from where. So to directly answer your questions: No, a lot of people probably don't look into the details of past student success. The type of people that would do this, aren't the ones being targeted by these schools. And even if they do, you're bound to find some successes (confirmation bias) which the school will proudly advertise. Unfortunately, these types of schools prey on uneducated people, so while it seems like common sense to us, those people may really be getting tricked and yet the government continues to have surprisingly loose regulation. A: I was a professor at a major for-profit university in the US. A couple campuses, out of many had been caught in scandal for preying on students financially. The university, in my opinion, was not trying to scam people. However, when you pay people to recruit students by volume, you will get bad apples. I taught A+ certification. The academic side was solid. The teachers wanted to teach, the curriculum was correct. The books, the labs, the premade tests, etc were all, in my opinion, extremely satisfactory. If someone wanted to learn, they most definitely could. My classes were filled with mostly inner-city students that were simply uneducated. They could barely read or write. They could only do the most basic of math problems. I had one student told me he graduated with straight D's because his school didn't want to give him F's and hold him back for a year. I had a couple of students who were there because they committed a crime and a judge told them it is either school or jail. I had a few students who said they were there because their parents said it was go to school or leave the house. There were a few students who definitely had potential. Mostly, it was the older ones who wanted to do better in life. They were there for the right reasons and were willing to learn. Needless to say, it was not what I thought teaching would be. The reality is, their public schools failed them. These students have no chance to go to a quality university. Nor would they have a chance in a local community college. They simply did not have the education needed. So that's were the for profit schools come in. They give these students a chance to learn a trade and be successful. I do not believe they are out to fleece the students out of their money. It does happen, but there are bad apples in every business. The for-profit schools, admit people who can't go anywhere else. However, some of those students are destined to fail. But in reality, isn't every school like that? Now, as an employer, I went to a local for-profit school to hire some low level IT techs. We had one employee who graduated from that school and was extremely competent. However, I interviewed many students who had just graduated, or were about to, and I was extremely disappointed. Students who graduated from the school could not answer the most basic IT questions. This school failed them horribly. There is no excuse for having students graduate and not be able to do the basics. So here is the real question: Do you deny a student a chance at an education, given their odds might be slim? A: Here are a couple of reasons that nobody seems to have mentioned yet. One common reason why people attend these schools is that there simply isn't enough space in programs at non-predatory schools. For example, here in California if you want to become a nurse your best path is often to start at a community college taking classes such as chemistry and anatomy and physiology. But those classes are usually full, and many students simply can't get into them. They find themselves on waiting lists semester after semester. Here is an article describing one such student's experience. And before we compare predatory schools too unfavorably with community colleges, we should take into account the fact that community colleges are astoundingly bad at producing educated students. Community college success rates are amazingly low, and in many ways these schools are incredibly inefficient. Since they have open admissions, they waste many precious seats in oversubscribed programs like nursing by giving them to students who don't have the necessary educational foundation or willingness to work hard. Another thing to realize is that predatory schools basically exist because government policies are designed to subsidize the cost of education and make it easier for students to borrow money to get an education. These schools are experts in feeding at the public trough, and they do a very good job of hooking up their students with loans and aid. For students who don't have much money, these schools are often the only choice besides a community college that seems financially feasible. In this respect, predatory schools are very similar to high-quality private universities. One of the big driving factors in educational inflation is the fact that social policy is designed to funnel money into the system. If government provides a 50% subsidy for a product, a natural response by the seller is to double the price and sell the same number of units.

Q: Is it common in any other first world countries besides the US to work while attending university? I have an old family friend in Japan (born and raised). We were recently talking about academics as he is in his 2nd year of Uni and I have 1 B.S and soon to have another with the goal of moving on to a Masters this fall. While talking he asked if I "Work or study" as he knew I completed my first degree but was unaware I started my second. When I mentioned that I both go to Uni and work a corporate job in my industry he was, no joke, speechless. He couldn't believe someone could both attend a Uni and work at the same time without failing classes. He told me that people only work part time jobs very sparingly during school semesters and then work more during the summer but can't even begin to believe working in a corporate job while still studying. I don't know too many people that attend my Uni and don't either have 2 part-time jobs or a full time jobs (except for those with free rides or very generous parents). Many people I know from other countries (I try to culture myself) ask me the same question "Do you work or study?" and they get very confused when I tell them "both" and explain my situation. Is this only common in the US? I've talked to people from Singapore, Japan, Canada, Greece, and the UK and they all can't believe working and going to Uni at the same time. A: In Germany, at least one survey reports that 47 percent of students work during the semester, and 63 percent work during the holidays between semester. Most of these students earn less than 500 Euros a month, but 6 percent earn more than 1000€ after taxes. Over 60 percent that have jobs have one to finance their studies/living expenses. For 7 percent of students, their job is their only source of income. According to the Sozialerhebung 2012 (a large survey by a federal agency) figure 9.10, 13 percent of students studying towards their first degree worked more than 20 hours a week on average in 2012. Whether that's "common" is a matter of interpretation. The part on financing reports a median income of 300€ from working, with 63 percent of students doing some kind of work. Figure 6.5 shows that 2 percent of students only finance through studies through work, with an average income of 960 Euro, and 13 percent mainly finance their life through working, with an average income of 660 Euros. (All sources in German) A: Many colleges in Taiwan have evening divisions. They offer evening programs for the students who have full time jobs in the daytime. For example, College of Management of China University of Technology has set up a daytime program in the four-year college division and an evening program in the extension division. Usually their evening program will take 5 years for the students to get their bachelor degrees. This is because the evening division students really don't have much time to take classes in the evenings. Working full time in the day and go to school in the evening is not uncommon in Taiwan. I personally have many friends who received their Bachelors degree from evening divisions of universities. A: I am from Portugal and I'm finishing this year my Computer Engineering graduation. I've been working fulltime since I've started studing and here we have a thing called "student worker statute". This statute is very important on examination period were the employers must give two extrad days off per exam. Here in Portugal there's a lot of people who works and study at the same time although it's more frequent they work in par-time.

Q: What is the equivalent of the laboratory notebook in the humanities? As a scientist, the idea of a "research notebook," or its functional equivalent, has been well ingrained into me. However, it's not clear to me if this is a universal phenomenon, or if it's limited to the sciences. For students working in the humanities and other fields—such as literature, economics, or philosophy—what is the working equivalent of the laboratory notebook? If not, what is the preferred method of keeping records in those fields? A: I asked my wife, which works in art history/egyptology. So first, "it depends of how the person works" ;). However, it seems that many people are making a large number of thematic reading synthesis, research notes (as we do) and she also pointed out the importance of her personal database, where she stores archaeological artefacts, their descriptions, the related bibliography, personal notes about them, their relations, etc. According to her, this is THE most important thing for her work. A: From my impression, the nearest equivalent would be an academics' text source repository. This could be a library of theoretical works personally owned (and almost certainly monographic rather than papers). It could be a set of commonly referenced canon texts spread across four or five libraries in their region that they consult. It could be the items above plus documentary series such as archives, cultural texts. The objects manipulated, day to day, in conducting humanities research are texts; whether these are straight texts, or the meanings developed from physical records, or the meanings developed reflecting on terse problem statements. In my experience, some scholars keep detailed notes, and others don't. I try and keep my notes and sources in a deep text searchable database with what meta-data I can cheaply acquire. There is no standard for keeping a repository, and the way in which a scholar learns to keep an adequate repository is idiosyncratic. There isn't a disciplinary standard for keeping a repository, above and beyond "study skills" type courses which aren't mandatory or systematised. To evidence of the adequacy of the "experiment" equivalent scholars demonstrate their mastery over the relevant texts by providing evidence of firmly supportable readings through citation and footnoting, or by quality argument. A: Personally I've not heard of a dedicated "research notebook" in my discipline history, as may be used in the sciences. Like Sylvain Peyronnet's answer it very much depends on how a person works. In history, as Samuel Russell's answer alludes to, most of a person's ideas or arguments are gleaned from primary documents. Because of this it becomes very important to be able to keep a track of the primary documents that may be relevant to your area of research. Personally I use Mendeley to keep track of everything and the notes/annotations I make in that go someway towards forming my research arguments later. I note though that even the use of software like Mendeley is not common in my department. I believe one of the advantages of the research notebook is that it can keep track of when work was conducted by date, something that I have never heard mentioned in the Humanities. The disadvantage of this is that there is no way of proving when you may have had an idea based on your readings.

Q: Is it OK to go to postdocs for help? There is a postdoc from another group in my department that frequently helps PhD students in his area when they have questions or want to talk about a particular subject. I would like to know if this is expected/normal. In other words, can I go to a postdoc looking to talk and ask questions related to our field? A: In other words, can I go to a postdoc looking to talk and ask questions related to our field? It depends on what you mean by "can", as well as the culture in your field and department. If you are asking whether it's an ethical and reasonable thing to do, then the answer is certainly yes. You can talk with and ask questions to anyone you'd like, provided you appropriately acknowledge any assistance you receive. If you are asking whether the postdoc has an obligation to provide substantial assistance or tutoring, then the answer is quite possibly no. It's hard to give a definitive answer, since precisely what the word "postdoc" means varies between fields and departments, but you shouldn't assume supervising graduate students is a serious part of the job unless you have some confirmation that this is true in your scenario. If your questions are genuinely interesting and thought-provoking to the postdoc, then they will probably be happy to chat with you. You may also get a good response if you ask about topics that are truly difficult to learn about elsewhere, so that the postdoc will be sympathetic. On the other hand, if you try to lighten your workload by asking the postdoc relatively routine questions so you don't have to bother looking things up, then they will probably lose patience with you. A: Yes. Helping students is commonly part of a postdoc's job. They are not obligated to help with every problem a student brings, but they probably will if they can. A: Part of the idea of gathering professors, graduate students, postdocs and others is precisely to encourage exchange of ideas.

Q: How to interpret quality of computer science journals that charge publication fees? I usually publish my research work at conferences in the field of Computer Science, I do not have so many papers and the question that I am doing here it might sound foolish for some (or maybe a lot) of researchers in different fields. A situation has arosen when a colleague of me wants to publish a co-join work that we have done in a CS journal. For my experience conferences charge a fee for authors when their work is accepted, but I have some doubts about the fees that I found for some journals in the field: Some journals I have seen are free and have an open access so that everybody could read or access a research work Other journals charge some fees for accepted works that range from 200 USD to 600 USD, they are indexed in Scimago Other journals that are indexed in Scimago in quartiles Q1 and Q2 can charge like almost 2000 dollars for accepted article, I have seen those in an Elsevier table, or maybe am I wrong? I mean according to some PhD students that I have talked, they told me that usually good journals do not charge publication fees, but why for example the aforementioned editorial does that? I mean sometimes a journal could be accused of predatory because it charges for publishing, but it is not almost the same with some respectable journals in the field that do the same? Bottom line, should one aim to publish only on free fee for publishing journals? Or one should better look out for the quality of the articles accepted within a journal instead of the fees charged for publishing? A: From a comment of yours, you seem to be specifically interested in the Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society. From the website it appears that this journal is part of a set of Springer journals with an open access policy (Springer Open). This is also clearly stated in the fees and funding page: Open access publishing is not without costs. Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society therefore levies an article-processing charge of £695/$1085/€885 for each article accepted for publication. Among the reputable journals there are usually three different publication policies: Closed-access journals. Authors don't pay a dime, or they pay only if their paper is longer than a certain number of pages. Here the publication fees are covered by those -- typically libraries -- who subscribe to the journal. Only the subscribers can access the journals' content. Actually, many publishers require institutional subscribers to buy the subscription to a large number of journals, with very high subscription costs (can be in the range of 30 k$/yr). Journal with mixed access. Here the authors choose what type of access they want. If they opt for closed access, they don't have to pay, but their paper will be accessible only by subscribers; if, instead, they opt for open access, their paper will be accessible by anybody but they have to pay a fee, which can be as high as 2-3 k$. The fees should, in principle, pay the article-processing costs (something that is questioned by many people). Open-access journals. Here authors have always to pay a fee which covers the article-processing costs. The articles are however free to access to anybody. I would highlight two points from the fees and funding page that may be of interest to you. First: If the corresponding author's institution is a Member, the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable. And the final paragraph: It is the wish of the JBCS team that all quality articles will be published in the journal independent of the funding capacity of the authors. Thus, if the authors are unable to pay the APC charge, we recommend that they contact the editors. The JBCS team will provide support to find alternative ways of funding. In particular, a grant from the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee helps sponsoring the publication of many JBCS articles.

Q: I need to change PhD topics. Should I pursue one of my advisor's ideas, or one of my own? I had an idea for a PhD proposal and found a supervisor for that topic. My supervisor is pretty busy and is reachable only once every month or two at best. Unfortunately, I saw that my research topic could be usable only for publishing a paper, but not to develop something really novel that could justify its presence in a PhD thesis. Thus, I feel like I've "wasted" a couple years of my PhD. When I realized that my current research was not enough for a PhD thesis, I came up with another idea related to the same field and topic, but the problem is that my supervisor is not an expert in the field that I am proposing. To discover this other technique I spent an additional year. Now I have the following courses of action: Since my supervisor is not an expert into the field that I am proposing, then I should try to find a co-supervisor at another university. This is not so easy because a lot of professors have their own set of students to advise. My supervisor has a list of projects that could serve ås PhD research topics, but I'm not so interested in those topics. However, I need to graduate so I am seriously thinking of picking one of them. The problem is that I am very rusty in the background of the topics he has because since I haven't looked at those topics since my bachelor's program. I am pretty confident that I can continue to develop my new idea by myself, even though I know that is going to be pretty difficult. The problem is that I will have to do it all by myself, and my supervisor will not be able to give me any advice because it is not his field of expertise. If anybody is curious my PhD is in Computer Science. So what should I do? Should I aim for a new topic or should I stick to my "feelings" that I can make my proposal work, even I have to do it alone. A: Big Fat Note On Timing: First and foremost here, make sure to changing your topic is allowed by your supervisor. Then your supervisor will check the time you have left and will point out if you can do it or not. You don't want to change a topic while your supervisor do not know about it. Answer On Changing the PhD Topic With Your Supervisor Agreement Ok, I did my PhD in CS as well; also was very close to change it for two times as my supervisor was not as an expert I thought he would be. So here my takes on changing your topic as a CS PhD student: 1.What you have gained so far?: Without comparing yourself to anyone else, are you deep down happy with your progress and how much did you gained, knowledge wise, so far? The conclusion in this point brings me to the second point. 2. Problem is Environment or Yourself?: After thinking about how much you have done, if the sadness relates to the environment (such as supervisor) or yourself (such as the issue of focus). 2.1 If the problem is you: If the problem is you then, changing your topic does not change a thing. Now you might say well "I will change myself"; this is not as easy you might think and you might need professional help on this. If you see you need help and the supervisor is not helping either or even recognizing that you are having an issue, then you need to think seriously on how to get help. This is very important, as you might get depressed without doing anything wrong. You see what I'm trying to say here? 2.2 Problem Is Supervisor: It is more common as you might think, so in this case, if you have the ability to do the PhD, then YOU need to inform the supervisor about the changes and YOU need to decide what you want to do. This might get ugly at times, because if the supervisor does not know the topic and tells you, your thesis is total rubbish, you should know "well I'm submitting it and defending it regardless". So basically, take the control of the situation from start to finish. 2.3 Problem is Topic: To be honest I doubt it, because most of the time the problem is based on the first two sub points. Anyway if this is the case, then change the topic. Don't listen to supervisor to do a topic in a field he/she did not publish a thing for the last 5 years. Be honest to yourself and your supervisor ability before choosing it. This should be also discussed with your supervisor as well, don't accept anything without knowledge. I recommend to choose a topic that your supervisor is known for. If your supervisor works on software testing and you want to do a topic on code generation, things might not go well.

Q: Difference between Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Systems and information engineering master'sdegrees Good Morning! I'm a French student graduating this year in Computer Sciences from Paris Dauphine University and I'm applying to master's degrees at the University of Virginia. I was wondering what was the difference between: Computer Engineering Systems and information engineering Reading the handbooks, I understood that the second one was more focused on hardware than the first one. Yet, I have no idea of what the last one was about or where would it lead me. I'm asking because I'm not sure whether to apply for the second link or for the first one and the second one or for all of them. Thanks in advance for your enlightenment. A: Computer Science is mainly theoretical with a heavy "cutting edge" theory and research focus. This is where you would study things like memory management, compiler design, programming language design, artificial intelligence, etc. Computer Engineering is mainly hardware focused and is usually a subset of electronic engineering. This is where you learn to design processors and build hardware devices. Systems and Information Engineering is like Computer Science, but is more "practically" focused - it is more about application to real-world problems, with a focus on information systems. This is where Security often falls, as well as other fields like human-computer interaction, information systems, and other applications that are closer to the user. A: I've some experience with the University of Virginia so I can help shed some light on this. Computer Science is programming. AI, compilers, memory management, security, operating systems, etc. If it's part of software, it falls under CS. Computer Engineering is a mix of CS and more traditional Electrical Engineering. It deals with computer hardware as well as the software that interfaces with it (i.e. firmware). CE at UVA is that Venn Diagram overlap between CS and EE. It covers everything from chip design to Operating Systems. Systems Engineering is sort of a higher level overview of engineering principals. I'm the least familiar with this one. It deals with things like product life cycles, risk management, and the work process. Looking at the list of Systems concentrations might give you a better feel for it. UVA has one of the few Systems Engineering undergrad programs. Most people who do Systems major in a more normal engineering program in undergrad before pursuing a Masters in Systems. To get a better idea of the programs, you should check out the grad level classes you would be taking in each. For this, you want to use the unofficial class listing site called Lou's List. All three departments are part of the Engineering Department. Gradate classes will be those numbered 5000 or higher. Look at listing for both this coming semester and previous semesters.

Q: Uncertainty in Essay Writing: How do I know I will find a good argument? I have a few things that I would like to explore for my Masters thesis. However, I don't know yet whether I am good at this kind of topic, its more historical than what I am used to etc. But my question is this: How do people settle on a research question they haven't really explored yet, but then also know that they will be able to have something (more or less substantial) to argue for / to contribute once they are in the topic? I feel like have an interesting topic, but I have no idea yet what I want to argue for or whether I have anything to contribute yet. A: Simple: You start exploring several ideas, gathering references, learning how the attempted solutions work, searching for possible extensions/alternative approaches. As Edison said: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". You'd have to put in the "perspiration" part to be able to see the "inspiration" spark. Or, as Pasteur stated it, "Chance favours the prepared mind".

Q: I want to help out my Professor, how do I ask? (Humanities) I would really like to help out my professor and get some 'research experience', and I asked her the other day, but she said that me writing my thesis would already be 'research experience'. Does she maybe not want me to help her? Or is there no need? How can I prove myself useful? A: Your thesis will be your research experience in the humanities, absolutely. Speaking quite broadly, in comparison with the sciences, most research is done individually and published individually. Thus, as your professor has said, focusing on your thesis —which you're doing individually, though with some general oversight from your advisor— is getting you that experience. Again speaking broadly, consider the process that you've gone through / are going through / will go through for your thesis. Read a lot of books and articles. Come up with a really cool idea about something in one or more of them. Talk to your advisor to decide how you want to approach the topic, maybe getting a handful of ideas of important articles or viewpoints, etc. Find articles/books/chapters that contribute to your arguments. Write your thesis. … PROFIT! (except for that student debt...) Now, consider the process for most of us in the field when we write articles: Read a lot of books and articles. Come up with a really cool idea about something in one or more of them. (Optional) Talk to colleagues (either friends, or via conferences) about how you're approaching the topic, maybe getting a handful of ideas of important articles or viewpoints, etc. Find articles/books/chapters that contribute to your arguments. Write your article/book/chapter. … PROFIT! (except this is academia, so not) The only real difference is that you're working closely with your advisor, and later in the "real world" (academia), you're going to mainly work solo, except for occasionally consulting with others when you present preliminary work at a conference or when you bat ideas off of friend or colleague's head. In both cases, though, the actual research work is done by you, the actual planning and development of structure/ideas is done by you, and the actual writing is done by you. Or consider it another way, what kind of research help could someone give you that would actually be of help to you? They can't come up with the ideas, because, well, then they get credit. You don't want them writing it, because then it's not your thoughts and anyways you'd probably end up wanting to reformulate 90% of their arguments/word choice/etc to fit with your exact idea. At best maybe helping you track down some obscure article that mentions some obscure factoid, but that's almost always going to be inconsequential to your overall development of the topic and hell, half the time when doing those searches is when you find the really good stuff for later articles. There are some projects that are useful to have multiple people working simultaneously (especially nowadays under the banner of digital humanities), but if your professor needs people, they'll let you know, and as their advisee, you likely be the first student they ask. tl;dr: Don't feel the need to be useful, just do a good thesis. That will get you the best experience (and the best letter of recommendation). If they need help, they'll let you know.

Q: How to reply to a claim that a paper is "obvious" and "not interesting"? A month ago I received the referees' comments on a paper: two are positive, but the other one is negative. In particular, there is a very "negative" comment in this report: All of the physical effects considered here have been considered before, and model equation is an obvious and not especially interesting generalization of similar equations elsewhere in the literature. How can I give an appropriate reply to this comment? A: Well if you disagree with the comment, then you offer a sound, well-reasoned counterargument that addresses the concerns. If your equation is interesting, then why? If it is not obvious, then why? Do these alleged equations/models only look similar, but in fact there's a deeper and possibly subtle distinction? If so, point it out. Non-combatively. These are the sorts of things that often get addressed in the introduction. Possibly the remark is ultimately a reflection on your paper having a weak introduction that fails to address the "what's new here and why should I care?" questions with sufficient flair, clarity, and authority. More than one legitimately good paper (to whatever extent such a benchmark exists objectively) has been rejected because the authors failed to do an adequate job of "selling" and explaining the paper in the abstract and introduction. Of course, there's also the possibility that the remark is spot-on. One reason journals tend to use multiple referees is because there's no guarantee that any one expert has authoritative and unbiased knowledge on whatever bits of arcana your paper is using. Nor is there a guarantee for two, or three, or whatever, but the odds are better that if something is "wrong" from the standards of the journal then it will be found. A literature review is the way to delve into this possibility. "Elsewhere in the literature" would suggest to me that the reviewer believes you have intentionally or accidentally excluded some important pieces of the literature, and this can only be resolved by looking further into the literature (and possibly asking colleagues if they know of anything that might seem relevant). If ultimately you end up agreeing with the comments, in part or in whole, that can be a tough pill to swallow, but reality is what it is. You can still try to rewrite portions of the paper to properly address preceding similar work and argue why yours is in some sense novel, interesting, and/or useful. And then you either hope this placates the negative reviewer sufficiently to earn acceptance, or you submit it to some other journal after a rejection. "Minor generalizations" are sometimes simply not up to snuff for certain journal standards, while it is well within that of others.

Q: What are the negative effects to the first author when adding coauthors? There are many questions on this site which involve authorship disputes and ethicality. In fact, there are often people who are greatly distressed when their contributions to a paper are "lesser" than they expected, for whatever reason. This could range from having a co-first author added, or having other secondary authors added to the authorship list. Another famous example woudl be the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper regarding Big Bang nucleogenesis, where the first author Alpher greatly resented the addition of Bethe to the authorship list. However, I do not understand why adding co-authors would be a bad idea. Surely, the fact that you were helped by another person means that they should be co-authors on the paper, as long as they made significant intellectual contributions. None of the fields mentioned in this question regarding authorship norms had any explanation of the potential detrimental effects additional authors have to the first author. What, then, are the possible negative effects that the first author can suffer if other authors are added to the paper? Note: I do not intend to ask regarding issues where the original author is removed from consideration, only those where the first author is kept, but other coauthors are added to the authorship list. A: I think for some people, the principle is important: they didn't feel that the person whose name has been added contributed enough, and humans hate the feeling of giving up something unfairly. That said, there is a very real cost in terms of credit. This will not be consistent across different people looking at your record, but every new co-author decreases the chance that the important part of the work will be attributed to you. There was actually a recent study about this which found that women pay an especially large price on this score: when they do joint work with men, the evidence suggests the men tend to get the credit (the actual observation of the study is that their chance of getting tenure do not improve). You'll note though, even for men a solo paper improves chances of tenure by more than a jointly authored paper with anyone. A: Following the link to the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper I found that there is an answer for this particular case that seems important. From the Wikipedia page: He [Alpher] felt that the inclusion of another eminent physicist would overshadow his personal contribution to this work and prevent him from receiving proper recognition for such an important discovery. For this paper is seems save to assume that many people will consider that the order of the authors has not been decided by contribution. I am not sure about the rules for author order in physics at that time but for sure people would immediately get the intended pun. Hence, I can understand Alpher's concern. So in fields where order of the authors is not by contribution (or for special paper like this one), having one more big shot in the list of authors may really lead to the wrong perception. In fact, for PhD students in math is in not at all unusual to have papers written directly under the supervision of the advisor appearing with only the PhD student's name on it, even if the supervisor may have contributed some ideas. In this way it is ensured that the work will be perceived as the PhD student's work.

Q: Is a 3 year Ph.D. too short for MA/MSc graduate? Or put simply, 3-year vs. 5-year PhD? Many programmes in UK (and EU) take up 3 years, as opposed to a minimum of 4-5 years in North America. For a masters degree holder, with a goal to stay in academia, is a 3-year Ph.D. too short to prepare one for postdocs and academic roles? Or would the extra year(s) in a 5-year programme be a repetition of the masters? Is the short duration enough in preparing an academic and his/her career? While the additional year(s) in a longer programme costly and dispensable? This question is informed by the many discussions here and elsewhere lamenting the competitiveness and difficulty of staying in academia, especially in the UK. I am asking from a UK/EU point of view (more specifically, social science), as I am not sure if this (potentially unwarranted) concern is generalizable in other countries and disciplines. A: The thing about a PhD is that you should end up in roughly the same place. The length is therefore determined by where you come in. US PhDs tend to be longer than UK ones primarily because in the UK we specialise much earlier, so there is less left to do to reach PhD standard in your field. In deciding what is best for you, the key factor will be you. How much do you still need to learn to complete your apprenticeship as an academic? That covers many aspects: knowledge for your research, research skills, how to write papers and give talks, personal management, career management, teaching, student supervision, probably some I've forgotten. If you have suitable funding, your PhD is a good time to learn these things while you have relatively little in the way of responsibilities. Also, at least in maths, your research record is generally considered relative to when you finish your PhD, not when you start. My understanding is that the extra time in a US PhD is taken up completing taught modules/passing exams, not extra time on research. I would investigate whether having already done a masters would mean you could skip some/all of that and so shorten the total time. Of course there are other factors to consider, finances and family often being the biggest ones. Also consider where you will be happy living, and who you want to work with. I was advised that the right supervisor is the most important thing in choosing a PhD. Personally I like to add that choice of supervisor should include preferred working patterns and personality, not just research topic, because you need to work closely with that person for a sustained period of time. A: Any number of UK social science academics have PhDs from UK universities (and UK PhDs work in other countries obviously), so it's clearly sufficient in a technical sense. Apart from the coursework component in a US PhD - covered by the Masters - there are two other areas that make US PhD holders more competitive in junior academic positions, teaching experience and publications. In the UK, teaching experience during your PhD is a sort of 'optional add-on'. There are probably opportunities as a tutor, but there might not be. It's also poorly paid and time consuming, so many PhD students don't do it. This means you don't have teaching experience on your CV. Similarly, the US programs seem to have more emphasis on getting some publications. Whereas UK PhD students may have a conference presentation or two, but are unlikely to have much else by the time they finish (particularly in social science). So if you are intending to apply for UK lecturer positions, you would be competitive with a 3 year UK PhD. Possibly not for US positions though you could apply for US post-docs and then lecturer positions later on if you did some teaching and focussed on publications during your post-doc. A: There is a (large) difference between the nominal and the actual length of the degree program: Most social science PhD students in the Netherlands and Germany (the cases I am most familiar with) take 1 or 2 years longer than the nomial duration of the program (regardless of what the nominal duration is...). As long as everybody is realistic about what can be obtained in 3 years, then 3 years is enough. The PhD program is there to teach students the basics about doing real research (imaginary/ideal world research is taught during the bachelor and masters program), and gaining experience is what postdoc positions are for. I don't think prolonging a PhD program will be all that helpful. (Disclaimer, I took 7 years to finish my PhD, but that was still within my nominal + 2 years bound)

Q: Change title to arXiv paper I have a preprint in arXiv, which I submitted at the same time I submitted to a journal. This was a couple of months ago. It was rejected by the journal, and after talking to some experts and getting some advice, one of the changes that I want to make is to the title. All the other changes qualify as a revision, so normally I would just submit the new version to arXiv. Is it possible to also change the title? Another solution would be to start a new submission with the new title, but it would probably generate some arXiv overlap warnings, besides not looking too professional. I don't want search engines to find different versions of the paper appearing in different circumstances (what I mean is that I really do want all the old versions to be in the same arXiv page). Finally, I could just keep the old title. It's not dramatically bad, but I feel the new title reflects more correctly the contents of the paper. A: Is it possible to also change the title? Yes, you can change the title when submitting a revision. You'll be presented with the same web page on which you originally entered the title, and you can edit it (or anything else) there. Another solution would be to start a new submission with the new title, but it would probably generate some arXiv overlap warnings, besides not looking too professional. The arXiv would certainly not allow this if they noticed (when I think they would), and you are right that it would look unprofessional.

Q: How do I lift my spirits after giving a bad examination paper today? I had my Mathematics paper today. Its of 90 marks. In the past, I have always scored 90 or at least 88. Today, the paper was extremely lengthly and I made a silly mistake in a question of 4 marks although I knew the answer perfectly well. I am sure other answers are correct. But I am feeling very depressed for failing my expectations. I have got my Science, Social Studies and English Paper in the next week. I think I will mess up in other papers too. I am afraid my classmates will tease me. I am afraid someone else will get full marks. How to lift my spirits? A: As someone who has lived through this, the solution is to stop trying to be perfect and forgive yourself for making mistakes. Classmates would tease me because I built up a shield of "perfection" to try to defend against criticism. There's a big difference between setting goals for yourself and not allowing yourself to be human. We're all human, including very smart people like yourself. Try to turn the fear of someone else getting full marks into encouragement of others to get full marks. I understand that many education systems around the world use rankings in classes for standing. I did part of my education in such a system, and I understand how it leads to complex social implications. The best approach is to encourage one another and whoever is on top that particular examination will be respected instead of envied. The next examination, it may be another person, and that's ok. By focusing on encouraging each other and being happy for each other's successes, you'll collectively raise your marks and achievements, which will server you much better later in life and your career than always being on top. You will find that the opportunities in life, even in the most restrictive of harshly competitive academic environments, are not based solely on top grades, but rather a whole picture of the person. You will NOT mess up the other papers because you clearly study hard and know the subjects. Once you get into working on them, your spirits will lift themselves as you find your comfort zone in those topics that you know well. You might even find that the previous slip up will help you with your creativity, which is even more important in Social Studies and English. You'll look back in 10 or 20 years and everything will look different in retrospect. Trust me. I've done it myself. :) Good luck!

Q: How to ask the superviser to not mangle the manuscript? I gave a LaTeX manuscript file to the supervisor for revision. The paper is fairly long and complex, with lots of cross-referencing and citations. I use BibTeX for managing the otherwise unmanageable task of generating the correct list of references, which is recommended by the journal. Most of the BibTeX entries were generated by querying the ADS database so there wasn't even much manual typing. The journal provides a high-quality .bst file that correctly sorts and formats the BibTeX database entries. Before I gave it to the supervisor, I told him that he's free to come to me if there should be any technical difficulties such as BibTeX. He didn't, so I assumed that everything would be OK. It was agreed that I'd have the final control of the master copy, and I assumed that meant that he would try to "patch" the manuscript in a way similar to updating and merging a codebase, i.e. you follow the convention of the mainline source code, transforming the project by incremental updates, and only introduce drastic changes in the face of absolute necessity. It turned out that he's mangled the manuscript file in a combination of creative ways: He seems to have manually converted the BibTeX-generated reference list to his manually typed (based on his own understanding of the style), embedded \bibitem entries, which contain errors. The ADS bibcode keys, as unique identifiers for reference items in the BibTeX file and citation keys in the manuscript (using natbib's \citep and \citet mechanism) were converted to his own mnemonic keys based on no apparent rules. He also added his own references, again as manually typed text, that are incomplete and not necessarily correctly-formatted. He has mangled the \ref and \label mechanism by stripping quite a lot of the labels arbitrarily, so that much the cross-referencing no longer makes sense. I have to write several text-transformation scripts, at one point interfacing a simple search AI of the ADS web API, attempting to revert the damage he has done to the manuscript source files, but this task is not fully automate-able. It is also rather likely to introduce additional human errors in this process. All these take time. The point is that, it shouldn't have been necessary had he not mangled my manuscript file -- which was arguably written with maintainability and automate-ability in mind -- in the first place. Now I have a second manuscript given to him, and I want to ask him for a favor, namely considering not mangling the source file in his way this time. However, it is complicated by the following considerations: Training him on the use of BibTeX etc is definitely a waste of his time and resources (as well as mine). Imposing source-level conventions and tool-compatibility is a kind of power over others, and I shouldn't be in that power, even if I'm the ultimate controller of the manuscript. It may incur the wrath of The Powers That Be. So what can I do to reach a compromise? Do you think it's a good idea to say/write to him like the following? Hi XXX, thank you for your time revising the manuscript. I am really really grateful for the improvements in the quality of content. However, for the second manuscript, may I suggest trying BibTeX this time? It saves us the time of manually typing, checking and correcting the bib list. The journal we're targeting already provides high-quality bibliography style file that does the magic. In addition, if we're to change the target journal, it would be simply a matter of changing the .bst file. You don't even have to type anything to fill the entry fields in the .bib file. There's the ADS service, and each entry is a few clicks away, with some minimal copying/pasting. If you like I can show you this in a 2-minute demo. If we don't have many references to add, this is a non-issue anyway. If we do, I'm willing to help with the technicalities any time. Of course, you can even forget about BibTeX and directly add your additional references this way, and I'll take care of the merger. It saves your time of manually re-formatting the references that are already in the BibTeX database, and you can better focus on the important science rather than the style. Thanks! A: If your advisor isn't fluent in LaTeX, send a printed copy (or a PDF), to scribble over, and incorporate changes yourself. Use a version control system (I like git, you might want to try mercurial (hg)), and keep a branch for your work. Create a branch for "external" inputs, and use e.g. git's tools to break up the differences into patches you will apply and stuff you just omit. With my students the policy is that the work is theirs, I'll write into a branch of the shared repository with suggested changes, which they cherry-pick. Only in rare circumstances will I override their writing.

Q: I submitted a paper five months ago. Should I wait a little bit more for a response? I submitted a paper to a journal five months ago. The status of the paper was 'With Editor' for the first three months. After three months from my submission, I sent the journal a polite enquiry about my submission. I did not receive any reply, however, the status of the paper changed from 'With Editor' to 'Under Review' less than 24 hours after I sent my enquiry. It has been two more months now, and I still have not received anything back. What should I do? I am assuming that the editor has forgotten about my paper, then when he or she received the reminder, sent it to a few people for review. In which case, I was going to wait another month, then enquire about my paper again. Is this too conservative? I would love to get a reply, as this paper is part of my forthcoming PhD thesis which I'm about to submit soon. A: It differs case by case, but journals take a while before acceptance and publishing. Once I waited a year for a high ranking journal! You can always contact the editor and ask about the status of your journal. Advice On Your Thesis and Submitted Material: You can definitely cite the submitted material within your thesis. Don't forget to add the (Submitted to X) at the end of the citation.

Q: What is a strategy to do theoretical research? Thanks to some great SE answers on a previous question I posted, I realized that even though I don't have an RA at the moment (I am a first year PhD student), I must start my research ASAP. I am convinced that this is great advice and want to follow it. But the concept of 'doing research' is still not perfectly clear to me. I am interested in convex optimization, that's what I intend to do my PhD in. So as of now, for my thesis, I have this vague idea in my mind that I'd solve a problem by maybe coming up with a cool algorithm and give some nice proofs using convex analysis. But exactly how to start is a mystery. Here's what I think I should do: read a paper that looks interesting to me (this could be because of the abstract, or maybe it's a paper that has suddenly got very popular, or it could simply be based on the author's reputation, etc), thoroughly understand their results by working out proofs of all their statements, and then try to see what happens in slightly different cases than what they mention. Maybe relax some assumptions they make; or go the other direction, add a constraint and see if the algorithm can be improved because of this constraint, etc. Is this how it's done? I feel so lost right now. When I try doing this, I have so far (in six months) not been able to really think of anything new. Even the existing proofs that I get are so complex, I can't think of any way to come up with something new. Can someone please give me some tips on how one gets started in theoretical research - how to come up with a problem, and how to proceed from there? EDIT_ Adding more information: I don't have an adviser yet, and this is the post I am referring to in the first paragraph. A: In mathematics, a paper with 20 pages of proofs does not have twenty pages of original ideas. It might have a page worth, maybe. The rest are combinations of 2-6 previously known ideas, often with little or no acknowledgements of their first appearance [footnote 1]. To beginning graduate students, I strongly suggest to read much older papers. They are usually much shorter, much simpler, and actually allow to learn ideas in their simplest. In my branch of mathematics, that means papers that are at least 30 years old. General useful mathematical background papers go at least 60-100 years. A good way of doing research is just to be curious --- after all this is what got you into the position you are now, right? Whenever you are curious about something, try figuring it out, look for some way of doing it, search references, read whatever looks interesting, swear at whatever does not. Keep journal with your questions, observations, dead-ends, ideas and swearing. Occasionally, when there is something particularly nice, add those 5, 10 or 15 pages of formal expository and technical scaffolding that is needed to convey your message to others [footnote 2] and share with the world. That is research. [1] Many find it embarrassing, awkward and out-of-place to write ".... by Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. (This way of applying Cauchy-Schwarz inequality I learned from [ref] which is completely unrelated to the current topic). Next we can bound (5) by..." [2] After spending much time thinking about X, you will find that you need to spend much time to explain the basics of X to anyone who has not spent the same time thinking about X. That is why you need all that scaffolding. A: What you describe (look at paper, understand it in minute detail, look at next paper) is a depth-first search. This is probably a bad idea (oblig. xkcd). It's very common at the beginning of a PhD to do a proper literature study. This means writing a report (maybe just for yourself and your supervisor) that summarises everything the human race knows about convex optimisation. Of course, this will not include detailed proofs of everything. The point is to get an overview of the field. If you're lucky, someone has recently written a review paper in your (sub)field, which helps a lot. When you have an overview, you will (hopefully) at least know one very important thing: which problems have been solved, and which problems are still unsolved, or solved in a poor way? Then comes the hard work: trying to come closer to solving the unsolved problems in your chosen sub-sub-field.

Q: To what extent do visit weekends impact graduate school applicant's final decisions? Is there any study/survey that tried to quantify to what extent visit weekends impact graduate school applicant's final decisions? (final decision = which school to attend) I mostly interested in the computer science field in the US, but curious about other fields and locations as well. A: I visited 5 schools as well, and did not choose my "dream school" because of visits. I had actually started doing research with a professor there (and it was published during my first year of graduate school), but during the visit I realized that the department was not what I was looking for. One big thing that got me is that, on paper, they (and every program) seemed "interdisciplinary", but when you talk to them you realize that the "math biologists" don't talk to biologists. Add that the students seemed to not be interesting and I started thinking that, although it's a top school in the field (math), I wouldn't graduate as the person I would want to be. The other program started with biologists and mathematicians together in the same courses, then you split off after the first year. Everyone was really interesting and I kept in touch with them after the visit. I met with a bunch of professors one-to-one and found about 6 I would like to have as an adviser and already had projects I wanted to start. Lastly, they showed the funding statistics and showed the available computing supplies. I got the impression that this school would really help me become who I want to be, and so I chose this school. Then again, some people choose simply by the ranking. A: Advisor/program fit is by far the most important aspect of choosing a graduate school. Visit weeks can both help or hinder a prospective student from obtaining this essential fit information. Below is a list of things to consider. visit weeks allow you to see how you get along with the incoming class. These are the students you will be spending a lot of time with in courses and during time outside of your specific research group. They can be an essential part of program fit. availability for meetings: Visit weeks can facilitate professor availability if all professors clear out their schedule for that day. However, if they don't, then trying to meet with professors in the department can be difficult if you are competing for meetings with all the other admits. visit weeks can prevent admits/prospectives who can't make the visit week from getting good information about the atmosphere of the program when they visit at other times. The administrative staff is often a bit burnt out after visit week, and sometimes treats new visitors outside of visit week as after thoughts. Gender equity. The structured nature of a visit week can give you a glimpse into how much the program thinks about diversity issues. A good visit week organizer will think about diversity and gender equity, from the way social events are organized to the gender ratio of the professors giving talks. For example one program I visited had a session for women grad students and women prospectives only, organized by the female grad students. Every female recruit at this visit week chose this school (possibly a coincidence; it was a great program). This event could not have happened as it was structured if every student visited the program individually. Along gender equity and incoming class assessment, a visit week, due to alcohol consumption and group dynamics can lead you to discover important information about "sexual harassment" and "hostile work environments". I've seen many examples of this during visit week and a telling sign is how other students respond when fellow students do something innapropriate. I visited 5 graduate schools, 3 during visit weeks, one not during a visit week at a school that had a visit week that I couldn't attend and one that did not have a visit week. I was seriously considering all 5 schools. I enjoyed my time the most at the 3 schools with a visit week, but I was ultimately not there to enjoy myself but to make a better decision. The school that did not have the visit week it was easier to meet with professors I wanted one on one (harder to do when you're competing with 10 other students for meetings). The absolute worst experience was visiting the school that had already put on their visit week before I visited. The administrative staff treated me as an inconvenience. I had to pay for all incidental expenses (food, transportation to the hotel they were putting me up in). I was not offered to attend anything social. I was often eating meals alone. Ultimately, I didn't choose this school because the professor I initially wanted to work with rubbed me the wrong way (was far more arrogant and judgmental than the professors at the other schools and I perceived the potential for personality conflict, despite his great research). However, had the potential supervisors all been equal, my experience probably would have leaned me against this school. Note this conflict was not due to another visit week but an exam that a professor refused to let me take early. So for me, yes the visit weeks made me view the institutions more positively. But it probably didn't affect my decision.

Q: Would it be impolite to ask the time of selection decision, although the information is available online? I applied for summer internship(BSc level) in applied math in one of the North European countries a month ago. I would consider myself as a good applicant but I suspect that they accept very few international candidates, and range of countries of applicants is pretty wide. It is stated that the time of selection decision is march-april. I'm very curious and impatient about knowing the answers to "am I accepted or not?", "when will I get the answer?". In addition to curiosity, the reason of sending such email is to show that I'm ambitious(?) and serious and didn't applied just for fun. I believe that this might increase a little bit my chances. But I'm afraid that this email might turn against me, because I disturb the committee for almost(?) no reason, and it might give them an image of impatient student. A: I would not suggest to write an email that does only ask for the status of the application before the announced time of selection is over—even when the email is totally calm and polite. The program has a schedule, the applicants are supposed to know the schedule. However, you may have some other good reason to write an email. As Thomas commented to another answer: A good reason to ask for the status would be an offer for another opportunity. You could also try to find another good question to ask (but be sure that it is not already answered in the FAQ or wherever). Also, you could provide some new relevant information, if there is any (e.g. some new grades, completed projects,…).

Q: Do reviewers of research proposals for a fellowship read the whole application, or only the scientific part? If you are applying for some fellowships, there are many fields which you have to fill in. For example, what will be benefits for a host country, what will be the benefit for your home country, what will be the benefit for you or for your host supervisor, what will you learn, what have you learned yet, etc. There can be a scientific abstract, lay abstract or questions like what will be the impact of a fellowship on your future. Who will read your whole application? Scientific reviewers of your project will get only your research proposal, or is it their role to read all this fields? Are these field kept just for cases, when there are two similar candidates to get support, and than these fields can be critical? A: From my experience, reviewers get the whole proposal and also read the whole proposal. Reviewers try to get a complete picture of the applicant and skim the proposal for all relevant information in this regard. This means, that probably no reviewer will read every word of the proposal, but potentially, every word will be read by some reviewer. The reviewers base their review on the whole picture they get, but usually their feedback is only for the part for which they are specialists (e.g. the scientific strength of the applicant and so on…).

Q: Are faculty hiring committees overly polite on "denial" answers I applied to several tenure track positions this season. For some of them, I received an e-mail letting me know that I was no longer considered. That's cool and expected, since most of them were in US/Canada and I don't have any official experience working in neither... My real question is: In some of those, they said that there were impressed by my resume/background/publications or something similar, always followed by a ", but". Are they being polite saying that? How much should I trust this kind of information? (I could really use this kind of feedback to direct my search. It is not trivial to not over/underestimate yourself...) A: This sounds like a standard US rejection - they may be sending this exact same text to all other candidates that were rejected. I do not believe you can learn anything from it and it does not reflect on you specifically in any way. You can, however, try to get feedback, but it can be quite difficult - you must realize that the chances of getting good sincere feedback are not high. It is probably best to try getting this from someone with whom you felt there was a good connection or that this person was relatively open. Probably this person would prefer to do this over phone rather than by mail. You may also want to look at this question. A: Are they being polite saying that? How much should I trust this kind of information? Yes, in general the goal of the email is to inform you of the search results in a way that is polite and avoids any not strictly necessary emotional distress, confrontation, antagonism, and (this being the U.S.) risk of litigation. Sadly, this comes at the cost of depriving you of meaningful feedback that would actually be helpful to you. Thus the statements in the email may be completely true, or completely false, or somewhere in between... there is just no way of knowing. Note that your problem is a common one for job applicants both within academia and outside it, especially in the U.S. where the job application process is especially fraught with potential legal consequences, and where the culture strongly favors euphemistic face-saving politeness over blunt truth-telling (at least compared to some countries I'm familiar with, though other countries are even worse in this regard). See here and here for some related discussions on Workplace.SE.

Q: Do books need a URL when cited? I'm writing my thesis with Latex and I use Mendeley for the citation. When I add a book and specify some attributes, like title, author and ISBN, Mendeley automatically adds some missing attributes. One of those attributes is the URL of a book. Usually, this is a URL from amazon.com or books.google.com. After generating the document with Latex, the URL also appears in my bibliography. It could look like: Peter Smith. A Long Book Title. Pearson Education, 2008, p. 530. isbn: 0-123-54431-2. doi: 10 . 1336 / 976 - 3 - 434 - 03844 - 5. arXiv: arXiv : 1011 . 1889v3. url: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/012345678?ie=UTF8&tag=petersmith-20&linkCode=as2&camp=4321&creative=4567&creativeASIN=087239586. So the URL is very long and, in my opinion, useless. This is not the "real" URL of the book (not the URL of the author or the publisher) and I don't think, it adds any value to the bibliography. In Mendeley, when I click on Tools->Options->Document Details, I can specify which attributes I want to appear. Sadly, I can't uncheck URL in the document type Book. So I assume, this is important? Can I just manually remove the URLs of all by books? A: Yes you can remove the URL as you have the ISBN number for each book; which is a unique identifier, universally given and searchable. Note On The Generated URLs by E-Commerce Websites: Also make sure the on the URL you are using. The URL you posted is a generated one from Amazon that has number of variables for marketing purposes.

Q: How can we help cope with sleep deprivation among university students? Sleep deprivation is a common problem among college students that has become so serious that universities in the US have taken measures to help their students overcome it. As a particular example, the curriculum of Ateneo de Manila University was planned taking into consideration what would constitute a healthy student-life in a Philippine setting, however its students still experience the same sleep deprivation problem. With this in mind, we would like to gather ideas on what measures or projects can be taken to help students in our community cope with this problem. A: Unless the university is requiring students to become sleep deprived in order to complete assignments (which i'm sure it is not), then changing the course structure, reducing the number of lectures, etc, will have very little impact. Sleep deprivation is often actually a cultural issue. Cultural in the sense that every Institute/Company/University has a culture, and new students are always brought into that culture, taught "how things are done here", and in 3 years they teach it to the next intake of students. If the culture at your university is to work all day and play all night, or simply just work all day and all night because to be seen working is to be a good student - then you need to change that culture. Ideally try informing the students of the dangers of sleep deprivation. Try to promote efficient learning, and a balanced lifestyle of work and rest. Try to explain that being in the library 18 hours a day, does not make you a good student. Alternatively, if you play MMORPGs all night instead of sleeping, you will fail the course, and that is your own fault. A: Often sleep deprivation or stress have their root cause in overcommiting by the student (need to graduate on time, that means taking 150% class load, ...) or, very often seen here, bad time management or inefficient studying. I.e., play all day (and party through the night) until just before midterms, (try to) cram in two days what just flew by for three months, rinse and repeat. Or study irrational hours, but do not recognize you are stuck, don't seek outside help, don't look for additional material (today there are tons of lecture notes, blogs, and discussion sites like this!), ... Results (in horrible grades, in high stress levels) are predictable. Some suggestions that helped me are to review each class shortly afterwards, at least the same day, and jot down any doubts to resolve next time; reserve a few (more or less fixed) hours each week for resolving problems, exercises and homework; keep one day a week for other activities (go hiking, go to the movies, whatever), disconnect; never study for an exam the day before, arrange to do a last sweep two days early, leave the last day to e.g. study something else altogether, make sure you go to bed early and are rested for the exam. If you get stuck studying (or while doing homework, or whatever), switch over to something else. Staying stuck is just a waste of time, often you just need to have your subconcicious mull it over a night or a couple of days, and the solution (or at least some alternative lines of attack) will be obvious next time you pick it up again. So it is useful to have several tasks pending (to have something worthwhile to do always). Yes, you won't always be able to keep it up, but try to do so. Your sanity will thank you. Yes, I recommend my students to do this each term; yes, only a tiny minority heeds the advise. A: From the point of view of a student, one way is to start classes later, preferably after 10am. Another way is to limit the amount of homework given by professors to a realistic amount. Lastly, one can spread pamphlets detailing the harms of sleep deprivation and excessive use of Internet. For undergrads the major reason for sleep deprivation is probably internet usage or late night partying.

Q: Are dressing habits at poster presentations influenced by implicit sexism in STEM disciplines? I am currently attending the meeting of the American Chemical Society and was surprised by the way people were dressed for the poster presentations. In particular, many young women (and some young men) seemed to be dressed for a night out (tight clothes, heels, make up, etc.). This is not what I'm used to in European or international meetings (including international meetings at the US). More senior female (and male) researchers were wearing clothes I'm more used to in this kind of setting. This made me wonder: is there some sort of implicit sexism at play here, and do some of these young female researchers feel the need to impress other researchers (both male and female) with their appearance? I probably should also add that I usually attend physics meetings rather than chemistry meetings, where the ratio of female/male is much higher (we really need to work on improving this in physics). So perhaps dressing habits are simply different across fields. A: This made me wonder: is there some sort of implicit sexism at play here, and do some of these young female researchers feel the need to impress other researchers (both male and female) with their appearance? It is certainly possible that this is because of some sexist problems in this specific society / community that are not present in the international community. However, given Occam's Razor, I think we should assume that the more simple and straightforward answer is that this is just a regional peculiarity of these meetings, and that we should not extrapolate too much from this without further evidence. It is not at all uncommon for individual conferences or communities to develop their own standards and behavioral patterns. Basically, this is true for each event where students are likely to attend over multiple years, hence can learn from their experience in the year past. Assume, for instance, that you are a young female PhD student that attends such a meeting for the first time in casual wear, and you see many other students in a similar career phase dressing more formally. Would you not bring more formal clothing next time? I don't think that this should be qualified as "feeling the need to impress", or as any problem that needs addressing. It is also not overly weird to see more senior people wear differently - they have been attending this meeting for a long time, and (a) don't care much about the current dress code culture, and (b) have probably been nurtured at a time when the dress code was completely different anyway. These things change over time. Also keep in mind that your own expectation of what is "normal" wear in conferences has also likely not been set in stone from day 1, but is the product of what you have seen in "other conferences". There is no god-given law that jeans are more natural to wear to a conference than nice dresses, heels, or suits. (Actually, in most non-science conferences, it is normal to dress rather formally, so one can argue that what you have seen in your conference is closer to "normal" than what you are used to) A: The way people dress is their own business, I don't know how you conclude sexism out of it. You could go with an old never washed before shirt or wear your nice clothes for the conference. People are there in the conference to learn/present ideas and their contributions. Your conclusion on sex/sexuality of individuals based on their clothes, should be kept to yourself.

Q: How secure is a post doc job offer in an email from the department chair prior to receiving the official written letter? I'm in/from the US. I'm finishing my PhD this semester. I've been offered a research postdoc, via email, by the dept. chair at one of my top choices, but outside the US (would rather not give too many details). I replied to say I'm accepting the position. Everyone seems very happy: me, the chair, the professor I intend to work with. But I have nothing in writing. In the meantime I have an offer for a teaching job at another place much closer, which I would definitely take if I were not getting the above postdoc. I don't feel comfortable turning this down until the other setup is official. I emailed the postdoc place asking for an official letter. They said they would send it out by mail, but ignored my request for a scanned emailed copy, and I need to give a yes or no answer to the second place before their alleged letter would arrive. I emailed them again about the scanned copy and no response though it has only been a couple days. How confident should I be that this postdoc is really happening? How common is it for informal agreements like that to be backed out of? Are scanned emailed letters less customary outside the US? It would be terrible of I turned down the teaching job and then the postdoc fell through. Also, what should I say to the other place if I am still unsure about the postdoc by the deadline for my yes/no? Update: I got the requested scan of the official letter today. I ran it by my adviser and he says this seals the deal and I can cancel any other interviews. Whew!!! A: Don't count on an offer until you have it officially, in writing. A verbal offer is not an offer. An email or call saying you will get the offer is not an offer. You say you "emailed the postdoc place". Who did you email? If it is an administrator they may not understand the urgency of the situation. I would email the professor you will be working for and (politely) make it completely clear that you have a non-negotiable deadline for replying to another offer. You should also state that if you don't have at least a scanned copy of an official offer from him/her before then, you will have no choice but to accept the teaching position, even though the postdoc is your first choice. If they really want you, they will take the 5 minutes to scan a copy of the letter. If they don't, maybe it's best to turn down that offer anyway. In the meantime, I would also negotiate with the second place for an extension of the deadline. A: An offer in this type of situation is almost always a real offer. However, this kind of delay in getting a written offer is nonetheless quite common and has to do with the way the university's internal bureaucracy works. And as the word "almost" indicates, there is always a chance that something will go wrong, so you are absolutely right to be concerned. The way it works (in the U.S., and probably in some other countries) is this: postdoc offers are often made by a department chair, but are often subject to approval by a higher university authority such as a dean. Naturally, the dean needs to actually review the file before approving the appointment, and this takes extra time (sometimes several weeks, since deans are busy with many other things) after the department chair or search committee have already recommended making the appointment. In the meantime, the department wants to ensure that they can secure the candidate's commitment to accept the position. Waiting those extra weeks before contacting the candidate is completely impractical and means that they will almost certainly miss out on the opportunity of hiring the person. The result of this dynamic is that the university will try to play a game whereby the department chair will contact a postdoc candidate with an email, formulated to look as formal as possible (e.g., containing salary and other details, and a response deadline) without actually entering the university into a legally binding commitment. (By the way, IANAL, but just the fact that it's an email rather than a letter is not necessarily the issue; I believe an email could very conceivably be held up in court to be just as binding as a "written" offer, and that it really all depends what the "offer" actually says, including nuances such as whether the word "offer" is used, and whether it contains weasel phrases such as "recommend your appointment to", "subject to approval by", "pending review" etc.) Note that the way this process is designed is more or less well-intentioned and done in good faith, at least in places I'm familiar with. The goal is simply to achieve an optimal outcome under the constraints of how the university functions, while protecting the university's interests to the extent possible. In all likelihood, no one is trying to scam you into accepting an offer that they will then not offer you. At the same time, as a department chair myself I often think that this way of conducting the university's affairs is somewhat unfair and places an undue burden of worry on the candidate's shoulders. After all, there is always a chance that something will go wrong, there will be a disagreement between the chair and the dean or some other step in the process will fail and the appointment will fall through. And I wonder if when push comes to shove, the university's position of sending emails that are carefully optimized to get people to think that they have a real offer when the language of the email actually avoids making any concrete promises will really hold up in court. At least from an ethical point of view it seems problematic to me. But that's the way things work in many places, and usually things work out in the end. The bottom line is that a lot of this comes down to a question of trust: did the hiring department manage to instill in you a feeling that they "got you covered" and are backing up their claims with concrete actions? Or are they behaving in a way that seems suspicious and alarming? The lack of willingness to email you a scanned copy certainly seems like a possible red flag (depending on whom you sent it to - never discount the possibility that that person may simply be incompetent or forgetful, so consider looking for other people in the department whom you can turn to for help). Only you can decide how risky the situation feels, and how much risk you are willing to tolerate to secure the position. The only general answer we can give is "an offer is usually a real offer, except when it's not".

Q: Can I become a research psychologist by studying maths and computer science? I am currently studying maths and computer science in University of Barcelona, Spain, and I love research psychology. The question is: "is there a way to end up as a research psychologist following maths and CS studies? If not, what are the paths I could take without going far from maths?" Thanks for your attention and apologies for my English! A: Sure you can! There are some things you'll need to keep in mind, though, to make sure your current plans for undergraduate fit your longer-term desire to be involved with psychology research. First, psychology research take many, many forms. There are many inter-disciplinary fields of psychology research that actually prefers at least some background in computing and strong quantitative skills, especially in areas like human factors (also called engineering psychology or ergonomics in Europe - in the US ergonomics usually means something a little different), Human-Computer Interaction, and some programs of "applied psychology" and industrial-organizational psychology. Cognitive psychology also has quite a lot of use of computing backgrounds, while some fields of psychology lean heavily upon advanced statistics, such as some experimental social psychology. On the other hand, some areas of research psychology - such as clinical/behavioral/counselling - typically do not make much use of computing or advanced math at all. If you wanted to go into clinical research I'd strongly question your plan to study math/computing instead of a more related field like psychology, sociology, etc. The second issue is being perceived as needing to make a switch, and so having to try to convince people that you have sufficient background in psychology to be accepted into a psychology program. Most programs in the US I've seen request someone have the equivalent of about 5 classes in psychology if they don't have a degree in a psychology-related field. Will you be able to get any psychology classes with your current plant? If not, then wanting to go into any research field without actually studying that field first is a questionable plan, at best. It's a different matter if you want to switch after completing your studies - but if you are still studying, why not switch now? The third issue, noted partially in the paragraph above, is your preparation to do original research and so be able to make the most of your time in a graduate program. If you are studying math, this may or not be actually helpful in research. Psychology research most commonly uses quantitative skills in the areas of data analysis and advanced statistics. While a math background can help prepare you to learn the stats, it may not actually teach you the stats at all, and it most likely has no course in research or experimental methods. Similarly, computer science only sometimes includes any courses in stats, and rarely stats you'll actually need to use (ANOVA, linear regressions of all varieties, non-parametric stats, factor analysis, etc.), and it very likely contains no course in research methods or experimental design. My personal path was actually to start studying in computing and I considered a minor in applied math, and I became interested in the intersections of computing and psychology after I discovered fields like human factors and HCI existed. I used the research-based focus of the psychology field to give me the stats and experimental design training I needed, and used the computing background to enable my particular research interests in applied technology. This combination has worked very nicely for me so far, but it is particularly challenging at times and requires you to be very self-driven and willing to teach yourself things that aren't the focus of any of your classes and may be outside the area of expertise of any of your professors. The fields of computing, math, and psychology are very large and varied, and so while there may be an area that might be just right for you that allows you to combine all your interests, you'll need to work hard to 1) begin to locate just what that area might be, 2) ensure you are getting the preparation you need to thrive in that environment, and 3) be willing to get creative, because most established pathways, advertisements, and listed opportunities are often tailored for more "traditional" students wanting to go from Undergraduate Program in A to Graduate Program in A. Finally, you should be aware that inherently multi-disciplinary fields can be a bit..."different". The same basic area of research might be called a half-dozen different things, and the home of a department might vary by University. An example of this is human factors-related programs are sometimes hosted by a psychology department, sometimes by an engineering department, sometimes by a computer science department, and sometimes even by a business department, each with their own unique flavor and research focus - and you might be a great fit for one but a terrible fit for another. Meanwhile one program may be called one thing but seems to really do research in another. My first research project was considered primarily psychology research at my home institution, yet is being published in the top conference in the area of HCI; the topic of the project was actually the topic studied as "human factors" 10+ years ago, but is now considered primarily the domain of HCI. My next research project is in HCI, but a lot of related previous research was in the field of aerospace engineering, geospatial information systems, and remote sensing. If being in such weird situations terribly bothers you, you might want to consider a more "traditional path". I thrive on the complexity, but it really isn't for everyone!

Q: Can publications on research conducted before I started my tenure-track position count towards tenure? Do they need to have my new affiliation? I am joining a new school as a TT Assistant Professor soon and I know I will be on the 'tenure clock' and have to publish manuscripts in certain prestigious journals. I have two pending publications in high quality journals that would certainly help a lot with this. In both, most of the research was done before I joined the new school, but will be published after I officially join. How do these papers get counted? Do they need the new affiliation in order to count towards tenure? Is it acceptable to change my affiliation to the new school? A: There is substantial variation between universities, and to an extent departments within a university, about what counts towards tenure. The best way to find out is to ask your department chair, a mentor, or someone on the tenure and promotions committee about what counts. That said, there are ethics regarding what affiliations should be listed on publications. If your "pending publications" are in press or far along the review process, it would be unethical to switch your affiliation. If you are still writing the manuscript, or the reviews require a major revision, and you do additional work while at your new university, then it would be appropriate to add an additional affiliation.

Q: How to most effectively get good at a new topic? I have recently had a change of interest and would like to focus on a different area within my field. That being said, I want to stress that the area happens to differ quite a bit from my current area. I am not too far in my studies, so it's not like I am changing my PhD thesis midway or anything like that. However, I would like to know how I can most effectively get to grips with my new topic. I am obviously not completely new to it, but I have so much more knowledge in my old topic and am now worried that it will be a disadvantage, because I might be competing with people for PhD spots that have had their focus for many years and thus much better writing samples etc. Any advice on how to become good relatively fast? A: The simple answer is: Review Lectures, then read the referenced books / papers (in this order). There are a variety of good lectures on free course websites out there. (For example on youtube or coursera.) It'll give you a good introduction and - more importantly - will tell you what is relevant to know about in this field. If you can't find a lecture or at least slides, try to find a few (recent) PhD dissertations in the field and read their introductions / related work / background chapters. These are usually available for free and they will give you a good overview of what is considered relevant. You could then move on to study recent research papers, but - depending on your prior knowledge - you may not know half the methods that have been used here. In any case, find out which are the most relevant conferences in this field and see which Professors publish there a regularly. (The Prof. is usually last on the author list). From there you'll hopefully find the most key people in the field and check out their websites and latest publications to see what they are working on. I'll have to stretch that the right approach will largely depend on how well you are familiar with the basics of the field already. You may have to study a few books or some additional mathematics course work relevant to this new field you are interested in. Since you appear to be going to university - maybe it's also a good idea to just ask the Prof. most relevant to this field on campus for references and guidance. They will most likely know who's book and publications to read. Maybe this should actually be the first thing you want to do ...

Q: Wrong proof in a research paper, will the paper be rejected? We submitted a research paper to a journal for publication and we received the reports of the reviewers. However, the two reviewers pointed out a flaw in one of our proofs. Unfortunately, we cannot find another proof and we cannot also find an exemple in which the result doesn't work. One of the reviewers said that we can remove the result. The editor-in-chief asked us to send the revised version as new submission. What we can do in this case? A: First, notice that the question asked in the title has already been answered: your paper has not been rejected solely because an incorrect proof has been found. So your real question seems to be "What do I do now?" The obvious answer seems to be to do what you have been advised: resubmit the paper with the faulty proof removed. To me an "unproved theorem" sounds a bit self-contradictory; although there are some things that you might want to informally describe that way, using that language in a paper seems to be asking for trouble. Rather you should decide whether you want to include the statement that you now realize you cannot prove in some form, e.g. as a question or a conjecture. If you think the work would be much more valuable if the statement was proved, you might want to delay resubmission while you make a more concerted effort to prove it. Or you may decide that without the theorem you had, the paper is not in your opinion worth publishing. All this is up to you. A: You are worrying about a superficial consequence of doing mathematics research instead of what really matters, which is the research itself. This kind of thinking is an example of what's known as "putting the cart before the horse", and is in general a recipe for trouble. What you should do is to do your best to try to prove the conjecture you thought you had already proved. If you succeed, great. If you fail, go back and revise the paper to reflect the new state of affairs. Treat this writing assignment as a completely new and independent project to the one you had before you discovered the flaw in the proof. Right now you seem to be emotionally attached to the idea of mentioning the "theorem" in your paper, but you should let go of that notion: you should decide on whether to mention it or not by taking a fresh look at the situation and asking yourself whether as a conjecture it really deserves to be mentioned, in the sense that it truly serves the interests of the readers and of the mathematical theory you are working in. The bottom line is, don't second-guess the reviewers' advice. Just do the best job you can do to write the best paper you can, resubmit, and hope for the best. A: What's the flaw in the proof? That can really matter. Have you looked at adding any extra assumptions which are required in order to make your proof work? If you can find such assumptions, you can include the proof of this weaker statement, and then have it as a conjecture that the result can be generalized (and give reasons/examples).

Q: What are interests of a country to fund international PhD students? I would like to understand positive and negative effects for a host country and for a home country of a student. A: To the host country: Positive: A host country that is able to import top talent from other countries has a greater chance of keeping them in the country after graduation. This, undoubtedly, is an effort to promote national interests in a specific field (typically, scientific). Often, importing students to to do research is low cost (in comparison to hiring full time scientists or professors) and typically yields lots of deliverables (e.g. research papers) in a short time. Negative: A host country takes a lot of risks when it invests in a foreign student. There no guarantee that student even graduates, much less that he/she remains in the country after graduation, or in any way promotes the host country's national interests. To the home country: Positive: A home country that can produce top talent gains a reputation international level for its education system (for better or worse, regardless of whether this is actually true or not). Negative: A home country has the potential to lose its top talent to other countries, which is often counterproductive to its national interests (especially scientific interests). In addition to the countries, i feel it is important to discuss the benefits and risks that this presents to the student as well: To the student: Positive: The student can gain a high quality education, typically with no strings attached. When they graduate, they are free to choose their destiny (assuming that they even have the option of staying in their host country). Negative: The student effectively becomes low-wage, indentured migrant labor to the host institution. Students are often not promised jobs or citizenship in their host country, but are often led to believe that "it is possible if you work hard enough". This will often lead to foreign students out performing their domestic counterparts, but sadly offers little pay, benefits, or guarantees to the foreign student. As J.J. points out, if a foreign student screws up in some way, they lose (potentially) their only chance of a better life outside of their home country.

Q: Have any academic superstars succeeded in a subject while disliking it? This question is limited to only academic subjects that exist in internationally recognised universities (eg: exclude celebrities and Internet sensations), and is inspired by a discussion with a teenage family member who questions the maxim that interest is most important for deciding your academic subject: are there any academic luminaries who succeeded in a subject that they (secretely or not) despise? For example, has any Nobel Laureate or Rolf Schock winner despised the subject in which he/she won, or has any Fields Medallist despised maths? A: To succeed in any highly competitive endeavour requires long, concentrated, hard work. To put this into something you hate would certainly be a novel type of masochism, even if not successful. A: Actually, there is a nice example, Einstein himself: he helped inventing/discovering Quantum Mechanics (by linking quantum hypothesis to photoelectric effect) but later fought against significant aspects of it (especially probabilistic outcomes, and incomplete state knowledgeability); nevertheless, he even later contributed the EPR paradoxon as a "counterexample" (but it became one of QM's foremost illustrations for nonlocality).

Q: Politics in forming collaborations as a postdoc Graduate students talk to other researchers, other than their formal advisors, all the time, whether at their home institution or at conferences. They get help on specific tasks, ask for input on their current work, or even to discuss research ideas. However, as a graduate student, forming a significant collaboration with another researcher without checking in with his/her formal research advisor can be seen as "going over the advisor's head". Of course there is no hard and fast rule about this, and exceptions abound I'm sure, but then the student runs the risk of arousing the ire of his advisor, especially if the researcher is not a close associate of the advisor. Sometimes, this is because there may be "bad blood" between the advisor and the researcher, unbeknownst to the student. Also, if there is indeed politics between the two, the other researcher may be less prone to responding to the student, as the student is essentially seen as "belonging" to his or her advisor. Is this still the case as a postdoctoral researcher? Does one gain more independence as a postdoc? If there are political differences between your hiring faculty Prof. X and potential collaborator Dr. Y, will Dr. Y be more likely to shy away from collaborating with you just because you're associated with Prof. X? A: Talk to your boss in general terms at first. Then you'll get a feeling for whether a "go for it" approach will go down well locally or not. You may have a good idea of whether you're working with a natural collaborator or not, but an early discussion is still worthwhile because they can warn you in general terms about rivalries/conflicts of interest etc. Try your hardest to keep your boss in the loop at all times. Of course this isn't always possible when you meet people at conferences. Don't make promises you don't have the authority to keep -- so discuss possibilities rather than actually inviting someone until you can clear it. It might not be just your boss but politics/policies that you have to deal with. Money is always a good get-out: If you don't hold the budget yourself, everyone knows you can't just spend it without authorisation.

Q: How to solicit funded research projects from industry to perform while in graduate school? My ultimate goal is to secure a position in industry post graduation. I figured a solid approach would be align myself with current problems and try and partner to solve them. This gives me resume wins for when I am back on the market. Also industry may have deeper pockets than NIH for my field. How would one go about this assuming no contacts are known a priori. Also how would a PI react to such activities if say I were to land one with funding dollars attached? I figured it would be a win-win. Any comments are greatly appreciated. A: How would one go about this assuming no contacts are known a priori. Likely you can't go for this without any contacts at all. You are thinking about this in the wrong order - you can't get money from industry first and use this to build up contacts to industry; rather, you would build up contacts to industry to achieve a level of trust so that you would be later on in a position to receive industry funding. This also means that getting direct industry sponsorship as a PhD student is at least uncommon - typically, companies are more interested in sponsoring a professor or chair that they have positively interacted with over a sustained period of time. Slightly longish story short, your planned approach (acquiring industry funding) is not a suitable means to your stated goal (landing a job in industry).

Q: Why might a paper published in a good journal no longer be available anywhere? I came across a paper with an interesting title/abstract which was published in a rank-A journal. However, the article is missing from all online listings (Project Euclid, ScienceDirect, etc.) and is also missing from the journal's website. The article has volume, issue, and page numbers x–y (listed as such on arxiv). The journal website and other online listings have the previous articles (up to page number x–1) and the following articles (from page number y+1), with the article in question just being omitted. I contacted the journal about accessing the article a couple of weeks ago¹, but still haven't received a reply. ¹ A formal version of "Hey, I tried to access [this paper], but it wasn't available [here] or on your website. Is it possible to access this paper electronically?" The article itself is posted on arxiv and is listed as a publication on the authors's professional websites. I am very much interested in the result, but I am not familiar enough with the methods in the paper and it would take me a lot of time reading and working through the details of the paper. Time that would be better spent if the paper was withdrawn for containing errors. I don't quite feel comfortable contacting the authors blindly, asking if their paper contains an error. I can't really use "Please send me a version of your paper" as an excuse, because the paper is published on the arxiv. What should one do in such a situation? In particular, Are papers sometimes withdrawn "without comment"? Do publishers usually reply to requests by email? A: After forwarding my email to the director of the publishing company, he put the paper online, so it appears that this was an administrative issue. I thank everyone for their input and apologise for the noise. A: Are you sure that the paper has been published, or is it rather accepted in the journal? I see no situation that would make a paper disappear from the publisher's website. Even in case of fraud, papers are still mentioned, but are added a retraction notice explaining why the paper has been retracted. This is so to ensure the integrity of the research record, and is taken very seriously. If the paper is only accepted/to appear, then what you write makes sense. It happens that papers wait up to years between acceptance and publication. Many journal in this situation of heavy backlog have a list of papers to appear, which enables one at least to check the author's claim Added in edit: the question now makes it clear the second scenario is not what is happening, but a comment by DCTLib proposed a possible explanation for the situation. During the process of editing a volume, journal attribute pages and format papers accordingly. If after that stage but before actual printing and online posting, something wrong about the paper is detected, it could a priori happen that the publisher decides not to publish the paper but does not change the pages numbers of the remaining article to avoid reformating. That would still be weird and quite unheard of, but it does seem possible. Then the paper would not formally have been published, and the claim by the author would be wrong. Of course, that says little about why the paper was not published.

Q: Is it any unwritten rule, that for how long after getting PhD is it appropriate to publish with your advisor? After reading this question on What is wrong with continuing to publish with your PhD adviser I wonder whether there is something like an "unwritten rule" for how long after getting your PhD is it suitable to publish with your supervisor. Is there some sort of, let's say "secret statistic" related to the ratio of your own papers vs. your papers with your supervisor, upon you are rated among fellow scientist long after your graduation? A: You should not only publish with your advisor, because it suggests a lack of independence, and that rather than emerging as an independent researcher, you are still essentially "doing the work" for your advisor's ideas. That being said, I know a number of people who still work with their advisors on projects - the key is to project an image of "long-standing partnership". This is especially compounded in public health (my field) where a single large study is a vast mine of potential papers, and so it's likely someone will be working on the same data with the same people long after they've started their own careers. The key is to have a place carved out that's clearly "Yours". If there's a secret statistic for it, I must not have gotten my copy in the mail yet. A: There is no limit. You can always write and publish with any other researcher(s) (e.g., PhD supervisor) as long as they like to do so as well.

Q: Can being a reviewer for a top journal improve my chances in PhD admissions? I have got an email of invitation to review a paper in a best journal of my field. I had a paper there and somewhere else almost in that field. As I must invest serious time and attention to complete the review, I wanted to know if that does any advantage on improving my resumé for getting a better chance of acceptance and scholarship for my future PhD program abroad? Basically, should I mention in my CV that I am a reviewer of that journal, when I am sending it to other universities? P.S. I have graduated from M.Sc. two years ago. A: Yes, this helps. Regarding the CV, I've seen frequently that people include sections like "Other scientific activity" or "Community service" where there is subsection like "Referee for:" followed by a list of journals (sometimes even with numbers indicating how many reviews have been done). So you can make this service visible in your CV. There is another way in which reviewing may help your career: If you write a sensible review for a relevant paper it will be read by at least one editor of the journal and it's safe to assume that this editor is a respected and reputable member of the community. In this way, writing good reviews helps to build your reputation (albeit slowly as not many people see your reviews with your name attached, but at least these are the "right" people).

Q: How to get funding as a third year PhD student for conferences and thesis write-up? I am a third year PhD student in sustainability assessment on energy sector. I am looking to obtain private funding from either a company (preferably) or an organisation to finish my PhD, and hopefully be employed by the sponsor after my completion. My supervisor has not been as helpful in providing advice. I am also looking for funding to support conference attendance. Does anyone have any experience on how to get funding at this stage? Where shall I look for, and how shall I approach my potential sponsors? A: Everyone wants funding. This is not something you can just decide you want and achieve it within a few weeks. It is extremely competitive. Generally, at least in the US and portions of Europe, professors obtain the funding and they pay the student. If your advisor or department doesn't want to fund you, you should strongly consider finding another one. I have never heard of a student obtaining industry funding without substantial evidence of their success (and usually near the end of their PhD) and even then, it is in the form of a fellowship (e.g., IBM Fellowship). You could certainly apply to these but from what I have seen, you usually need to have done internships there and have a strong internal recommendation. On the other hand, I have known a few students that drop to part-time near the end of their PhD and they start a full-time job somewhere. Then their company reimburses them for their tuition until they finish. If you look at it from the perspective of a company, why would they want to fund a random student full-time? They are usually looking for late-stage students who are already successful and that they can trust, or they are looking for collaborations with faculty members. Note: I was funded by a large tech company after a successful internship, however, the money went to my advisor rather than me directly because they said it was "too risky" to interact with a student directly, and preferred to work with a professor (and thus all the benefits and accountability of a universities's research support and legal team).

Q: 24 years of personal research which needs to be academically recorded but how? I need some guidance, 24 years ago I started to research a specific topic which slowly developed into my collating related documented evidence that I accessed worldwide. Today, my research is finished and ALL the related historical documentation etc compiled. But now what? I am being told by those interested in my research and findings that I need to publically ensure such is available to others, but how. Unlike those that embarked on a PhD journey, my journey was one of a personal nature that ended up being Thesis style, any suggestions? A: Options that come to mind: Publish a monograph or a book. This requires either paying or somehow getting an academic publisher interested; depends heavily on what others think of your work. Submit article(s) to a peer reviewed journal. This option will likely not work in practice if you have no ties with the academic world. Produce the electronic version of the book, and offer it as a pdf in your own website. Expose the research in blog form.

Q: How effective is ResearchGate as an academic selection and recruitment tool? I've informally noticed that ResearchGate seems to have increased in popularity over the last year or so. I also noticed that, while I'm not on the job market, ResearchGate was able to successfully identify an available academic job in my area and in my country and bring it to my attention (for more info see here). Thus, I ask the following question as a potential recruiter or as a member of my department who is keen to see the hiring of good applicants. What was the experience of anyone who has used ResearchGate to recruit for an academic position? Did you get many people applying because they saw the position through ResearchGate? How do you think this medium of academic job advertising compares to other options? Do you think it was value for money? A: Some mathematicians I know (me included) appear in Research Gate. Many many others don't. As such, in the areas I'm related to, RG is not a significant source of information. It might be significant with respect to a single person who worked on her/his profile, but not representative of the market. When I click on "related researchers" on RG, the omissions in the list are way more significant than the inclusions. More specifically to your question, I didn't know that RG had any relation with recruitment. We wouldn't use it because it is not obvious that our target audience is well represented in it.

Q: Right time to go for poster presentation and talks I have multiple questions regarding talks and poster presentations. I am in my second year of PhD (computational biology) and have not yet published any paper. Keeping my background in mind do answer my question if possible: My question is: Is it okay to give poster/talk of your unpublished work? Is there any risk of leakage of research idea via this? (Leakage in the sense that I do a work and someone probably was thinking in the same line, now gets the idea from my work and works fast enough to publish it before me) A: Is it okay to give poster/talk of your unpublished work? Yes, it's okay. Is there any risk of leakage of research idea via this? Somehow, but not really. The chance is much higher that 1) people will find your idea interesting (if it's good) but keep working on the things they work on already and 2) the idea is already floating around or may pop up anyway. I can't argue with Martin Argerami's answer that there is a risk when you present unpublished work. But you also can argue that there is the risk that you will run over by a car when you walk on a street. So what I am trying to say is that the benefit of publicizing your ideas, get in contact with people, maybe even starting collaboration very much outweighs the risk of ideas getting stolen. Especially as a PhD student it seems crucial to me that you should take any opportunity to publicize your work in talk and with posters. This is how you enter the academic system, get in contact with all sorts of people which may be important for your academic career in one way or another (and you will meet many regularly for your entire career). "Stealing" other's ideas happens rarely, but more importantly, in many cases it is really not clear if some idea is "stolen". Ideas pop up at various places all the time and especially good ideas tend to pop up at different places simultaneously (there is, for example, this famous BFGS-method in optimization which has its name since it was found by four people simultaneously in the same year). Actually, this is sometimes how you can recognize a good idea. I may also be that your ideas was inspired by talks with your supervisor (or anybody else) and she also talked with other people, thereby inspiring them to have similar ideas. So, while one can't neglect that science is somehow a competition in that you have competitors for jobs and prices, I think that there a danger in viewing doing science as a competition. You should do science for the sake of science and not to win anything.

Q: Workaround for Horrible Thesis Title on Academic CV I am writing an academic CV for artificial intelligence PhD programs. However, when it comes to mentioning my master's thesis, I am embarrassed at how horrible the title is. It was even criticised in my feedback for the work. The title is: INVESTIGATING THE EFFECTS ON THE FLEXOELECTRIC RESPONSE AND SWITCHING SPEEDS OF LIQUID CRYSTAL MIXTURES DUE TO THE ADDITION OF VARIOUS ADDITIVES Is it bad to simply mention your thesis topic, and not the title itself? Is this going to haunt me for the rest of my academic career? For example could I use: Thesis topic: Flexoelectricity in Nematic Liquid Crystals when discussing previous projects on my CV (as I do not currently have my name attached to any publications). A: You could use a summary statement like the one you've proposed as your thesis topic - and I'd assume that it was for brevity and clarity rather than because you hate the title. That being said, that title is far from the worst paper title I've read today, let alone something in need of outright hiding from the world. A: You can simply abbreviate your title. "Flexoelectric Response and Liquid Crystal Additives." People talk about "Hamlet" when the full title is "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." Alternatively, paraphrase. "MSc in Chemistry, with thesis on flexoelectricity in nematic liquid crystals." No one in your new field cares about the exact title. In fact, the only reason to mention the thesis at all is to emphasize that you did a thesis on a sophisticated topic. A: I don't think the title of the thesis matters very much once you've moved beyond your graduate work, and are into a postdoc or permanent position. I'm not about to throw out a perfectly valid CV because the title of the work is unusual. (I might chuckle to myself and shake my head, but I'm not going to rule it out of consideration.) That said, in most cases, it is also not necessary to post the full title of the thesis. You are perfectly free to cover the general area of the thesis rather than the full title. You can say something like "Reasearch in [area of work]" instead of listing "Thesis title: [Something Awful]."

Q: Should I write my master's thesis in English, as a non-native speaker? I'm currently enrolled in a Master's degree Program in Statistics in Italy. I just started working on my thesis and my advisor asked me if I wanted to write it in Italian or in English. Apparently, both languages are accepted but presenting a thesis in English would mean having to discuss it in English too. It's a 10-min Q&A session so not that big a deal, however I wouldn't want to put the evaluating committee in a difficult position since none of my professors are native English speakers. Given that I have no interest (at the moment) in pursuing an academic career beyond my Master, what could be the benefits of writing the thesis in English? Would it realistically make any difference for future job search abroad, for example? A: The reasons I write all my work in English, regardless of the country in which I work, are threefold: The scientific community works in English English texts are easier to reuse English texts are easier to share and diffuse Reasons 2 and 3 are effectively based on premise number 1. In terms of the ability to reuse my work, more often than never I might have to give a presentation, a talk or create a poster based on some report/thesis/paper I previously wrote. This scenario is common to both academia and industry. When this happens I can easily extract sentences, keywords and figures from my previous work if all the text contained in them is in English, without the need to translate it. Similarly a document written in English can be given to anyone and they'll be able to read and understand it without requiring a translation. Therefore if I were you I would write the thesis in English, and present it also in English. I don't think that your examiners will feel in any way threatened by this. Ever more so if you are a foreign student and Italian is not your native language. You should not be expected or forced to write and/or present in a language you are not that familiar with, if English is an allowed option. A: When you said "none of my professors are native English speakers", did you mean that they have difficulty understanding and communicating in English? The fact that someone's native language is different from English in no way implies their inability to communicate in English fluently enough. If your professors indeed have difficulty understanding and communicating in English, then it would IMHO be impolite and, even, unethical to choose English as the language of your thesis, thus, making your decision an easy one. On the other hand, if your professors can communicate in English with enough fluency (and will heave no problems understanding your subject domain terminology), then I think that producing a thesis in English would be preferred. The rationale is that your thesis can be shared with (and understood by) much more people and, while you might not see value of that today, perhaps, tomorrow you opinion will be different. Sharing your thesis with more people might be beneficial from two perspectives: academic (disseminating research) and professional / non-academic career (communicating your professional knowledge, skills and abilities to potential employers). A: It seems likely to me that your professors would have no difficulty reading your thesis in English and even understanding your presentation in English. They might, however, feel uncomfortable asking questions or making comments in English. If that's the situation, then you might consider doing your writing and your presentation in English but making it clear to the professors that you are willing to take questions or comments in Italian.

Q: As a student, is it appropriate to use my university's letterhead for a letter I write, to give it extra weight? A program I participated in for six years, while I was in junior high and high school has just had a huge chunk of their funding removed by the school. I credit this program with the majority of my success in college and my general interest and capabilities in science, and a lot of my maturity (which was sorely needed in junior high...). The program has a new coach (who I worked with, but has just now taken over) who is not a confrontational person. I would like to write a letter to the school expressing my support for the program, and would encourage other alumni of the program to as well, many of whom also have a lot of respect for it. This is just a thought I had while drafting my letter. Is it appropriate to find some sort of letterhead or something like that from the university (perhaps my major department?) to give more weight to my letter? I am personally an undergraduate student, but would it be appropriate for a graduate student or postdoc to use letterhead? Or should use of the letterhead be reserved solely for faculty and staff? A: Do not use any professional letterhead when you are not speaking "on behalf" of the entity it comes from. Using your status, like explaining who you are or whatever, is fine. However, the sole fact of using entity's letter head, implicitly involves your employer and can only ends in a bad situation. If you are writing to another department of the same university, like in case of an internal matter, this can be deemed acceptable, but otherwise I would refrain from doing it. A: You can not use official letterhead (or other official institutional material) unless you are talking in official capacity in the name of the referenced institution. As a student, you certainly aren't.

Q: PhD: Find the problem to solve or use tool to solve a problem? So let's say I have a problem (X) that needs to be solved. Most people in research use several approaches around a sub-topic Y. Most of these algorithms have performance of 80-95% accuracy so there is a space for improvement. I understand that a proper PhD topic would be to find a better solution here. But what if I just use a new technique (K) to solve this problem? It hasn't been addressed yet in literature. I expect the performance of it to be lower or near the conventional methods. I justify using it because it's outperforming in imagery tasks and it would open up the literature to a new method. If I use K to solve this problem and get lower performance than conventional solutions Y, does that count as a proper PhD thesis? In other words, to define a PhD topic, should I find the problem to solve or use a tool and see how it solves a problem? A: The following answer/story is more to address the titular question, and the last line of the OP (free of the context of the rest of the post)... I once attended a talk by Peter Sarnak. He had the following to say (which I recall from memory; these are not guaranteed to be his exact words) on the matter: My student had just recently finished solving a problem for his thesis. He was very excited to have found a new way to approach the problem that worked. He said to me, "Okay, now that I have these new tools, what can I solve with them?" To which I responded: "No, no, no! That's not how you do research. You don't pick up tools and then take them to a problem to solve with them. I mean, sometimes you can get lucky that way, so you can try it if you want. But that's not the smart way. What you do is, you pick up a problem and then you invent the tools you need to solve it. As far as the more specific question of the OP... Ultimately, this is something to discuss with your advisor. Expecting worse results is not likely to sound very appealing as a project idea, unless you can make a convincing argument that it will make some sort of improvement—be it computation time, memory consumption, cost to implement (maybe it can be run on data obtained by cheaper technology that other methods basically can't), or a basic proof of concept that could lead to more meaningful breakthroughs after suitable adjustments and investigation, etc. If you can do those now, your advisor may decide this could be a fruitful area of investigation. Either way, talk it out and see what his opinion is, and if he knows if this actually has appeared in the literature before or not.

Q: Is it ok to get independent feedback before handing in thesis? I have a thesis to hand in at my university. Am I allowed to ask a grad student who is an expert in my field to have a look at my thesis and give me feedback (more than merely grammatical / stylistic feedback that is) before handing it in at my university? Some personal background to this: I was asking my lecturer once if he knows anyone who is good at subject X. He referred me to Daniel. Daniel wanted me to pay him for his service, and I was ready to do that. However, he then asked me whether I intended to hand in the paper, because if so, he could not give me proper advice / would have to withhold certain criticisms from me. I told him the truth and did not end up doing it. But is this so? Was I unknowingly trying to 'cheat'? Would it not have been good conduct, because I would have paid him? Does this make it somehow different from "just asking a friend"? A: One of the objectives of gathering professors, postgraduates, graduate students and undergraduates at an university is precisely to encourage working together and cross-checking. Nothing wrong here. If another graduate student in interested in your work, good for you! Perhaps the basis for future collaborations. If she helps you out by helping proofread your thesis, she is certainly entitled to an acknowledgement of the help in your final writeup. And you should also lend a hand, either to her or some following students, in gratitude. A: The upvoted answers are correct. You can and you should ask other people to proofread your work, and this will continue well beyond the times, when you have to submit theses and such. Senior scientists have their work reviewed by colleagues all the time too. For example, the internal review procedure at our institute - the internal guidelines basically say, we shouldn't submit a paper anywhere, before a couple of members of the institute have proofread it. However, I wanted to make a different point here. I can see, that you're being cautious, and questioning your actions and that's a good thing. But, apparently, some (malicious at worst, unethical at best) people will take advantage of that. Don't let the strange reaction of this Daniel character lead you into thinking, that you're doing something wrong here. You are not cheating in any way and are doing precisely the right thing by getting someone to review your work. You simply got a bad reference from this professor. Look for a different reviewer.

Q: What date goes on your hardbound PhD thesis? I submitted my thesis in 2013 but passed my viva (the oral defense/examination) in 2014. Should the date (month+year) which I put in, on and around my thesis be, When I submitted my soft-bound copy to the examiners. When I passed my viva (the oral defense/examination). When I submitted my hard-bound copy to the university. A fourth option is, It depends on your university. (Note that I am at a British Uni, so I presume that this is governed by something the British Library said...but what they said, I cannot find...) This seems to be ridiculously hard to search for, but I apologise if it has been asked before. A: This is the kind of question which is best answered with actual evidence. Many American universities have their thesis formatting rules online, and you can find them with relatively little effort. British Universities (Oxford and Cambridge, in particular) often seem not to give as detailed rules. From these examples, it is clear that the rules for which date is used depends on the university. Harvard University: "[Month and year of the submission of the completed dissertation to the department, division, or committee and Dissertation Acceptance Certificate was signed]", MIT: "the date the degree(s) will be conferred (June, September, or February only)", Stanford University: "(Date should reflect month and year of submission to the Office of the University Registrar.)" University of Michigan: "year of degree conferral not year that dissertation was finished" (they don't want a month). University College London: no date seems to be required on the thesis (none is mentioned in the guidelines, and there are theses without dates in their archive). University of Edinburgh: "Year of presentation. In the case of a thesis which is resubmitted, the year in which the thesis is resubmitted should be shown as the year of presentation." What do they mean by "year of presentation"? From their website: "At some point between submission of your thesis and the viva, you are encouraged to give a final presentation of your work to the School, often via a research group seminar series." University of Leeds: "the year of submission for examination (Or resubmission where the thesis is submitted following re-examination after referral)." A: While I agree that you should check your institution's regulations, I will give some pointers based on experience at UK institutions. Everything I write should have the proviso "This may vary between institutions" attached. The thesis you submit will have the date of submission on the title page. After the viva, the examiners at a UK institution can make one of several decisions. The following is a rough guide: Accept the thesis without requiring corrections. In this case, the hardbound thesis will be the same as the submitted version except possibly for fixing typos etc. In this case, the date on the hardbound version should be the same as the date on the submitted version. Accept the thesis subject to minor corrections. In this case, you will have a certain period (often three months) to make the corrections, which the internal examiner will check before formally accepting the thesis. (There is usually no second viva on the corrected thesis.) In this case, the date on the hardbound thesis should be the date that the corrected version is completed and given to the internal examiner to check. Reject the thesis but offer the candidate the option of making major corrections and re-submitting within a certain period (often a year). In this case, the submission process starts over and the dates will all reflect the new submission process. Reject the thesis for a Ph.D. but accept it for an M.Phil. In this case, there are no changes (except possibly for changing "Ph.D." to "M.Phil." on the title page) and so the initial submission date remains on the hardbound thesis. Reject the thesis entirely. In this case, the question is moot. A: My intuition would be that it would depend on the university’s regulations, but I’d guess 2014, since your examiners could have asked you to make changes, which would mean that the version you submit wouldn’t be the same as what you submitted to them. I assume you’re actually being admitted to the degree this year, too. The quickest authoritative answer would presumably be obtained by emailing the relevant library (note that only some universities’ theses go to the British Library).

Q: Is it always bad if you continue to publish with your PhD advisor? What about the small country vs. big country bias? Is it any biased view from a viewpoint of a big country, where you have many chances to change laboratories/universities/working groups, vs. a small one? Suppose you are from a small country when there is only one laboratory in your field and you want to stay in that country due to family reasons. Then you probably have these options: stay there and get published with your supervisor; move to another country for some years and come back (and you will end up with your supervisor); move to related field and you will probably end up with some sort of collaboration with your supervisor anyway. Are these options considered "weak" from an academic's perspective? A: Do good work and publish in high impact journals. As long as you're doing good work, then it really shouldn't matter who you are publishing with. I don't think I've ever read a paper from a small country and had a preconceived notion about the quality of the work. However, if your lab becomes well known for a research area then I think that's a benefit and not a hindrance.

Q: What are the legal ramifications of citing scientific articles for producing commercial software? I am a sophomore student building some software with friends that are heavily based on various articles about distributed hash tables, networking, and various topological mathematical concepts. Since we do plan to sell it after completion, we are worried about potential legal obligations of citing our sources (from different scientific journals) If we cite some professor, will they be entitled to all our work, perhaps even lay claim to profits and or have the right to sue for copyright infringement? Obviously, I am not asking for the nitty gritty details, but a general rule of thumb. Is copying theories from scientific journals a big bad idea. Or is it "public knowledge" kind of and I have nothing to fear. Summary Does citing scientific sources for your program entitle the researchers to some intellectual property? Am I legally bound to them as if I were to a Lady Gaga if I used one of her songs in my videos? A: The knowledge in the articles is for all to use, what you can't do is to copy text. There is a fine line if the article contains e.g. code listings and you use a fragment, or if you take pseudocode and rewrite it in your favorite programming language, that might be a copyright violation. I very much doubt they'd go after you, in any case. I'd say that citing the articles is very good practice, somebody (even yourself in a year or so!) trying to understand the code later will thank you.

Q: How can I know if I’m working through my PhD correctly? I’m a math PhD student in a university in Europe, working in a highly abstract field. I’m halfway through the intended three years. But I have the feeling I’m not doing it right. When I look back, two years ago I knew almost anything of the theory I’m working in. So from that point of view, it’s reassuring. But I am still learning. My supervisor has given me a problem which is not very definite or well-defined: I have to abstract some structure from some old, classical scenario and try to update it to some more modern objects, in hopes of gaining insight and computability. This has proven a bit formidable to me, even if he said it shouldn't "take me more than some weeks". After trying the “hands-on” approach my supervisor had some months ago, I got to realize that it wouldn't work, at least not naively. So I started thinking of an easier case, and then the problem started to divert and I feel like I’m on very loose ground now. The situation is the following: my supervisor has a very computational approach to math, whereas I err on the conceptual, abstract side. So when I started getting farther away from his line of thought, he progressively stopped being helpful to me, to the point where in our meetings I usually tell him what I have thought of or learnt, he nods, sometimes gives me an idea, but most of the times he just doesn’t help me. And the main problem is, I think, he doesn’t think about my problems at all outside of our short meetings (even when our meetings end up with a very well-defined, specific question from me). So it’s all up to me and I feel inept and insecure, especially because I try to apply stuff I learn on my own, stuff my supervisor doesn't really know, many times. I also think that I’m thinking -too- conceptually, I think much more by analogy than by computation, but since I’m a beginner I don’t know if I’m really thinking about the objects like I should, but my supervisor doesn’t speak to me much so I’m confronting articles, books, monographs by myself. I have learned much more by myself than from him. It's been a long while since he's tried to transfer some knowledge to me (as I said, our meetings consist mostly of me showing my current problems). Honestly, I feel like I'm doing my PhD unsupervised, and I'm scared to be leading my mathematical thoughts into unfertile regions. My question is: how can I know that I’m working through my PhD correctly? I feel aimless, and moreover for the moment I feel like I’m just juggling with other people’s knowledge. I keep incorporating knowledge that I try to juggle. To put it differently, I feel like I’m collecting by myself pieces of a puzzle, and I’m just putting them together, without creating any pieces. I’m just picking up other people’s fruits. I feel like whatever result I might end up converging to will be just a trivial consequence of some stuff done by others. When I read articles, I many times skip the proofs, and I feel like I know many things at a “moral” level. I really don’t have the time to go through the technicalities, and at the same time, they look so daunting! I always skip the hardest parts, stacking them into “black boxes”. I have read other posts about the “impostor’s syndrome”. I certainly suffer from this and other related issues, but this question is not about coping with the issue “how not to feel worthless”, but rather “how can I be sure that I’m doing this right?”. I feel like this will just go on and it just doesn’t feel like anything will come out of my struggling. Am I wrong? I am a hard worker and I have had good results getting here (as in, grades, scholarships, etc.). I have managed to learn a lot of different math successfully. I have a very good memory and an uncanny ability to find references, which is what my impostor’s syndrome tells me it’s what has been saving me; I feel like I am a good bibliothecologist, a good organizer, a good cleaner, but that doesn’t imply I’m a good creator; I have given no signs of being able to -create- anything. How should I cope with this? A: My question is: how can I be know that I’m working through my PhD correctly? Well, you can't as you haven't done it before, but in some sense you can never truly know anything, if that makes you feel better. In any case, there's no "right way" to do a PhD. Research is by nature a process where you wander into unknown territory, and at first you have no maps or guideposts. Then maybe you find what you are looking for, and maybe you don't, but as some measure of reassurance: After wandering around long enough, you can usually discover something new. Many times it may just be a different point of view or minor results, but at least you have understood something new. Still, usually when you spend a long time on a project you can get something publishable out of it in my experience. Here are some other points regarding other things in your post: Many PhD advisors are very hands-off. It's also natural that they become less helpful as you go beyond the bounds of their expertise. However, it's probably not great if your advisor is thinks what you're doing is uninteresting. (I don't know if this is the case or not.) It's probably worthwhile to have a meta-research talk with him, including whether he thinks it's worthwhile to continue along these lines or consider a different approach. If you go out of the realm of your advisor's expertise, it might make sense to try talking to an expert who can give you better feedback. Conferences are one good opportunity for this. No professional mathematician has time to understand all or even most papers of interest to them. You need to learn to prioritize, which it sounds like you're already doing. You actually don't have to be that creative to do new things, or have too many new ideas, or be successful in research. Many PhD theses boil down to learning a bunch of stuff and then doing computations. This does not mean they are bad--many of them are very good. It's also hard to be creative before you reach a certain level of understanding, so you may not realizes your creativity till later, at which point you will almost invariably think, "How did it take me so long to come up with that? That's so simple." Organizational skills are not so separate from creativity. Many times problems can be understood easily after organizing your thoughts about them in the right way. This was part of the Grothendieck philosophy, and I doubt many mathematicians criticized Grothendieck for not being creative enough. While research can be frustrating and disheartening, you should generally enjoy learning and thinking about math, otherwise a PhD or academic track is not for you. Most people have good times and hard times with research. This is natural. I view one of my most important duties as an advisor is to encourage my students to help them get through the hard times.

Q: What are the differences between a research paper and a patent? I would like to know particularly how is regarded in a scientific community since it is not peer reviewed. It should be noted patents do not go through similar peer review as journal publications. Of course, this is slightly depending on whatever requirements patent laws in a specific country put on the claims put forward bu the patentee. But no country really requires another researcher to scrutinize the claims made by a patent at the point of filing it, like a publication does. There are patents of cars that run on water, fusion-powered space craft etc.etc, ie. things that do not work. So as a reference a patent is definitely a weaker source, especially if it is not something someone is using/selling yet. Is it allowed to publish patent and then paper? A: You're asking multiple questions at once, so let's start with: What are the differences between a research paper and a patent There are many, but briefly a research paper has the purpose of communicating research findings to the relevant scientific community and the general public. Patents are legal documents used to prevent other people from commercializing the process or devices they describe. Research papers typically report results of a scientific process, whether experimental or not, while patents describe processes and devices along with their respective intended applications. Patents are typically very open-ended, not unlike a very long "future works"-section of an academic paper. The strategy is to cover a maximum of possible usages for the technology. it is not peer reviewed That is correct, peer review is a strategy used by researchers to filter, improve, and curate scientific literature. For patents, the review is driven by the legal requirements only. A major point is absence of overlap with existing patents and other publicly available material*. In some regions, a minimal demonstration of how the process/device works is expected by patent offices, but it's not the same as peer review. Is it allowed to publish patent and then paper? Yes, it's the other way that's problematic because as stated above, if you (or someone else) published a paper about your process or device you cannot patent it anymore. Most journals are interested in novel results and all (legitimate) journals don't want to re-publish existing literature but the fact that the processes are patented is not an issue. As stated in my first paragraph, both documents should have very little overlap. *On that subject, see the entertaining if not entirely historically accurate Donald Duck as prior art case A: A patent is a paper that describes an invention. When the patent is accepted, the invention is protected to the extend of the made claims. This means that you can sue people for replicating your invention into their product, within the scope of your patent. The deal of patents is you get exclusivity in exchange of detailed public disclosure of the invention, which become free to be exploited after a certain period of time (namely 20 years?) Research paper on the other hand, aim to disclose a finding regardless of any application. Its main focus is results of some experiment, which may or may not include products, inventions or applications of any type. The peer-review makes for more credibility to the content of the publication. Making a publication after a patent should be possible, on the other end the opposite is not. While filling a patent, the invention must not have been already disclosed. Otherwise it is considered prior-art. A: A patent is a legal document written by lawyers trying to say as little as possible while protecting an idea. Peer reviewed papers are trying to inform people and say as much as possible about an idea. one makes you money, the other one keeps you a poor academic.

Q: Is post-hoc hypothesis an issue? I was asked to serve as a reviewer in a peer-review process. I remarked some issues and suggested a minor revision to the editor. Now I received the revision back and generally think the authors did a good job revising the manuscript. The field is psychology. There is one issue that I was not sure about. That is, the authors changed their hypotheses between drafts. This has something to do with the way they treated their data. In the first draft, the experiment provided data from two instruments (very similar instruments) and were analysed separately. Hypotheses were formulated separately for the two instruments. Now, in the 2nd draft the instruments were combined and the data treated as coming from one instrument. Hypotheses were adapted to these new circumstances, but also were partly contradictory to previous hypotheses because then, the authors expected some differential results from the two instruments. I am not sure how to judge this. Is this a big issue or just a minor thing? Why is it an issue at all? I have a feeling that this not too uncommon in my field (psychology), I mean to treat hypothesis testing somewhat lax. I believe that in grad school I learned that hypotheses have to be stated before conducting the experiment and cannot change. But I was googling a little about this topic and did not find anything that would indicate that post-hoc hypotheses are a bad thing. A: There is substantial divergence between fields and individuals to what extend twiddling with the original hypotheses post-hoc should be tolerated. Defensible positions range from "it's not a big deal if the experiment / write-up still makes sense with the new hypothesis" to "hypotheses shall never be changed". Only you can tell what your and your field's methodological stance on this is. As Boris says, the main issue to avoid is "p-value hacking". That is, it should not be that the authors decide that whatever they find support in their data is redefined to have been their hypothesis all along - while exploratory research per se is not bad, it is distinctly different from hypothesis-driven research and should methodologically not be sold as such. You will need to evaluate whether this has happened for your manuscript. If the answer is "yes", this is certainly grounds for rejection. However, from your explanation, it sounds to me like the authors did more of a technical refinement of their hypothesis, without changing the nature of it. If that is true, it sounds somewhat nit-picky to reject a paper on this grounds. I tend to be of the opinion that methodology should be considered a means to an end, not a strict rulebook that needs to be followed to the letter even if there appears to be no reason for some of its details in a specific case.

Q: "It is our policy not to include attributions of figures and tables" - what does this mean? I just received some proofs of an accepted paper, for me to review prior to publication. The email from the publication staff included the following paragraph: It is our policy not to include attributions of figures and tables. If you feel that such citation is necessary in the case of your article, please indicate so when sending your page proof comments and corrections back to us. (no other relevant context.) Does anybody know what kind of attribution they are referring to here? I have a hard time imagining some kind of attribution that would ordinarily be appropriate, but could be removed as a matter of policy (ethically). I'm not going to ask the staff member who sent me the email, because it doesn't apply to my paper anyway. I'm just wondering if anybody here knows. A: While I have not encountered this before, my guess is that the journal has decided to discriminate against non-academic citation (e.g., crediting of image sources per Creative Commons licenses). While I believe that this is improper and unethical, I have encountered worse. I have, in fact, encountered a major journal that refused to allow citation of anything that was not a journal article, because that journal's field does not typically have peer-reviewed conferences. To somebody coming in from computer science like myself, this is clearly incorrect and unethical: the editors of the journal, on the other hand, saw themselves as manning the barricades in defense of scientific quality and refusing to allow inadequately peer-reviewed material to infiltrate their publication. In short: I think this is another case of "academia varies more than people think it does," in this case unfortunately being baked into a journal's policy, and would recommend anyone encountering such a policy to simply make their case as suggested by the policy.

Q: Is repurposing money from companies easier than repurposing money from federal grants? I wonder whether repurposing money from companies is easier than repurposing money from federal grants in the United States, and if so, why. If the field matters, I am mostly interested in computer science. Example of repurposing: a student did some TA, and the money could be spent on computer hardware instead. A: Sometimes you make a mistake in creating a budget for your project when you propose it. Doesn't matter who you sent it to, public agency or private company, sometimes you make a mistake. Most agencies will let you move money around between buckets within the grant as long as it serves the purposes of the program and you can justify it. Lots of agencies won't let you buy a computer unless you swear on a stack of your mother's graves that you're going to use it 100% for the project and nothing else. They might not check, but they might make you swear anyway, and your university will be looking as well. Companies are similar, though maybe not as caring about the details. Everything, as Jon points out, depends on the terms of the agreement between your university and the granting entity. Lots of corporate money comes in as an unrestricted gift with no strings, whereas virtually no public funds have no strings. Read the terms.

Q: Getting Help From Adviser's Friend My MSc thesis is about a subject that my adviser isn't completely familiar with. In my work, I found some new result. He said it is better to show the results to one of his friend that has expertise and is more familiar with this subject. I suggested to first publish a pre-print in arXive, before showing result to others, but he objected I should just publish a completed work. However, I don't know if I can trust his friend or not. What can I do? A: I guess you have two way of going through this. First, trust by default. I am not sure what you are afraid of in the first place, maybe that this friend steals your work? Your advisor could do that himself if he wanted to, and it does not seems credible he would refer you to someone in the sole purpose of stealing your job. Also, this friends is presumably another academic and stealing the job of a MSc student seems moot, since they can just wait you to finish it and then reference to your work for their research if they want it. The second option is to ignore that request. But you won't get any review of your work and would have to put on the show and review the work yourself to make it convincing. Hopefully your advisor won't ask his friend about it.

Q: I signed up to present at a conference and didn't tell my advisor about it. How to handle this now? I have a little bit of the dilemma here... A month ago, I signed up for a conference talk and I got accepted to present there... However , I actually found out about that conference and decided on my own to give a talk... I did not tell my advisor about it. At that moment, I did not think much. And part of me forgot about it since I was so busy with everything else. Now, thinking back, it occurs to me that I might have done something stupid. From what I know , most PhD students go to and give talk at conferences because their advisors tell them to go... So I am not sure if I did the right or the wrong thing not asking my advisor before applying to go... So I know that I now should tell my advisor about the conference. However, I am not sure how I should explain about that fact that I didn't ask before applying ... Is it common for graduate students to let the advisors know before applying for a conference ? Seems like it is a common thing at my institute. Or should I just back out from the conference? I don't think it is smart if I back out since it will hurt the reputation. Please give me some insights about this. Thanks a lot. A: Explain it just like you explained in your post. Tell your advisor that you are very interested in attending a particular conference and that you even applied. You realized it was an oversight that you applied without talking to him first, and then you got sidetracked. Make it clear that you want to go, that you got accepted, that you made a mistake, and you'd appreciate his feedback on all of it. If your advisor tells you to withdraw, then I would probably listen. It is not common to do such a thing without discussing it with your advisor, often because they are a co-author and footing the bill.

Q: Why does or did Elsevier make PDFs grey and therefore unfit for printing? My university subscribes to various online journals. Sometimes I print off articles that I know I will read over and over again. (I'm all for saving paper, but some things I do prefer reading on paper. I print on recycled paper and I bind the articles, so they will last a lifetime.) Now I tried to print an article from Advances in Mathematics (published by Elsevier) and it took me a while to figure out why part of the text was blurry: The PDF has seemingly random snippets that are not black (#000000), but in a dark grey (#231F20). On screen the difference is hardly noticeable especially if it is text: However, when trying to print it, the printer is trying to make it less than black, which results in blurry text: As most other publishers manage to produce pure black PDFs, I must assume that this is intentional (it's not just "all italic text" or "all math mode symbols", the colour changes mid-sentence). The question is just why? I doubt that this is an anti-piracy measure: surely there must be a less intrusive way of marking a PDF file digitally to record the IP from which a particular copy was downloaded. (Some journals add text like "downloaded from [this IP], [university name]", which I don't like, but at least the text itself is not blurry.) I also doubt that it is to promote their offprint sales: Elsevier sells offprints of their articles, but only 25 copies or more and only to the original authors of the article (or someone acting on their behalf). In other words, it's not to "encourage" me to buy "quality" offprints of a single article of which I am not the author. (Of course, it can't be to encourage purchasing of physical volumes/issues of the journal. It is entirely unreasonable to assume that researchers buy an actual volume/issue of the journal just for one article, if only because a single issue contains so many unrelated articles and researchers typically live in small offices.) What benefit do publishers have from mutilating their PDF files? Making a printable (= pure black) PDF would also have benefits: I'd be convinced that Elsevier is a great publishing company, publishing high-quality research papers in a good format for everyone's benefit and, as an author, would be more likely to consider publishing in Advances in Mathematics. This also makes me wonder: Just to check, I am allowed to print PDF files (for use in research) of online journals, right? Am I allowed to open the PDF in some other software, modifying the file so that it prints in pure black? Am I allowed to use another method of getting a pure black printout of the PDF (e.g. by loading a special printer colour profile that treats the dark grey as black¹)? ¹ Unfortunately, I haven't found out if this is actually possible. Note. I have not tried to investigate this issue systematically, but I observed this in 3 articles from Advances in Mathematics (Elsevier) from around 2005–2006. A: This often happens when a document uses the CMYK color space and the black is set as (0,0,0,100). When you go print in a monochrome environment, the document's color information is converted to grayscale first. Because black ink on white paper can't actually create gray, a halftoning process is applied, where the shades of gray are hinted at by using a circular-like pattern. Because CMYK (0,0,0,100) black isn't seen as being as black as it gets, in the conversion process, it gets turned into something more like 90% dark gray, and the halftone pattern appears. Probably somewhere along the production process, someone got their blacks mixed up, and if it's consistent with all their PDFs it could be in the scripted part of the process, there's an issue either between color spaces (CMYK vs RGB) or a conflict between the source documents and the imported parts. A: guifa is correct in their analysis of why this happens, but I would like to note that there is often an easy fix available once you know what is going on and so long as the PDF is saved as text rather than as a scanned image. When you go to print from the PDF, click Properties from the Print menu, and on the advanced tab hopefully you'll see something like this: Under your printer you'll hopefully see Document Options -> Printer Features. If so, you may have a "Print All Text as Black" option (hopefully you do), and this is Disabled by default. Turn it to Enabled and try printing an example of the dotty-page you were getting before. If the page is actually text and not just a scanned image, you will now hopefully enjoy a print of pure monochrome, crisp black text. This problem is quite common especially with older monochrome laser printers, as they attempted to accurately print the "less than 100% pure black" using the only tool it had available - black toner. With this option enabled your smarter monochrome printers will understand that you don't want an accurate portrayal of the text - you want a readable one! This option will cause a problem for text effects that use a gradient, but honestly outside of the print-proofing world I've always turned this feature to on by default to produce nicer text prints.

Q: How do I explain to a prof who is not happy with my actions which were simply a mistake due to miscommunication? I had emailed a professor for a summer internship opportunity. He had accepted me and aksed me write a proposal for applying through a fellowship. I replied back putting down some points for my proposal. I got no reply from his side. I emailed him again after 2 days and continued to do so for the next 3 weeks. Afterwards, due to no response, I believed he was not interested in me due to no email response and stopped mailing. But now, after the deadline is over, I found out from another source that he was not happy with my behaviour for not applying for the fellowship. How do I convince him that this was a honest mistake and I did not intend to be rude and am still interested in working under his guidance? A: Agree with Dave, as supervisor/student relationship is like a marriage, communication is essential for it to remain healthy. However also note that, since you have emailed him quite a number of times and he never responded with any feedback, he did not want to help you, and hence he might not be the kind of person you want to work with. There is nothing worse than a bad supervisor in academia.

Q: Are college students forbidden from sharing their grades with other students? I am currently in an anatomy class and had an issue. I and three other students worked on an 18 page packet together. We had the same answers since we worked on it as a group. However, two of us received a 35/50, one of us had a 50/50 and the other had a 30/50. When we asked the teacher why we got different grades, we were scolded for sharing grades with each other and told we were not allowed to. I can't seem to find this anywhere in our welcome packet or any paperwork and I was wondering, are we really not allowed to tell other students our own grades? A: I have a lifetime of experience in academia in the US, and in all of my experience your instructor's claim is completely without merit. There is no regulation or cultural norm that requires students to keep their grades confidential from other students. Moreover, comparing assignments or exams for learning purposes and/or to confirm that the grades have been assigned fairly is a very common practice among American students: at any American institution I would assume students have a "right" to do so unless given explicit information to the contrary. So, bottom line: there is a very good chance that what the instructor has told you is bogus. What should you do about it? I would begin by politely asking your instructor whether there is any written confidentiality agreement that you are subject to. If he says yes: good to know! If he says no: I would seek aid from someone at your institution. Good places to start are (i) your faculty advisor or (ii) your student ombudsperson. Eventually you may want to speak to the department head and/or the relevant dean, but I would proceed carefully and get as much advice as possible rather than escalate too quickly. It is very likely that you are in the right here, as others should recognize without your needing to press too hard or further antagonize your instructor. (Someone at an American institution who says this to a student is likely to be well towards the "unreasonable" end of the spectrum, so I would try not to hand them an excuse to retaliate against you.) Good luck. A: There may be absurd non-disclosure agreements who-knows-where, but I would consider such a ban a violation of my rights. This raises the suspicion that they have a problem with marking consistency and wish this not to be exposed. However, it may be that your submissions are indeed of varying quality, despite you having worked together, so be prepared for a response, but a response you deserve. Finally, take into account that they might cite you for collusion if you insist on a very similar submission quality. As for the comparison with salary, this is quite a different issue: different people may negotiate different salaries for similar work and that may be considered part of the skill gradient of the worker/employer coupling; introducing a comparison may, however, damage work relations; some countries, however, have transparency, so the attitude to this is country-dependent. Whereas marks are supposed to focus exclusively on the quality of the particular work, everywhere in the world, at least in principle. A: I don't know of any university in the U.S. that does not allow students to share grades. I would not worry about sharing grades. No university in the U.S. (or probably anywhere) would make such a stupid, unenforceable rule. What to do next assignment While its not unethical, don't continue to let the prof or his TAs know you're sharing grades. When you have questions about grading next time ask. Could you explain what changes I would have to make to receive full credit. I'm not asking for a re-submission, I just want to know the best way to answer the questions next time. Also, if this grade is the difference between pass/fail for you, you can usually contest the grade, and use the other grades as proof. Be warned though, doing this is likely to cause retaliatory behavior from the prof (which would be unethical). This is the nuclear option, so use it as a last resort.

Q: Related follow-up paper I have published a paper earlier in a journal and would like to submit a continuation of research paper to build on the earlier paper's results. I was wondering how is the second paper identified as a follow up of the original. Also, I have changed my name since (same co-authors), do I have to indicate this? Details The first paper contained a series of experimental and modelling results for a pure system, and the new paper will contain experimental and modelling results of non-pure versions of the original system. A: I assume you would cite your earlier paper somewhere in the introduction of the new paper. You could write something like this: Recently, we (Author1, Author2, & Author3, 2016) presented a series of experimental and modelling results for a pure system. With the current paper, we would like to extend ... Alternatively, a footnote may be appropiate to indicate that the first authors are the same. Also, see this publication on the topic of name changes in academia: The Ripple Effect of Women's Name Changes A: If it builds on previous results, just cite that normally. You might want to link them by the title, but that isn't required. It will be accepted for publication if it is significant enough. You might also consider publishing it elsewhere, if the outlook warrants it.

Q: How to use Microsoft Word for formatting references according to ACM (and others) guidelines It is commonly known that using LaTeX is the best option for formatting a scientific paper (including references). I know. But recent versions of Microsoft Word use a quite interesting reference management system (see this video for a demo). However this system only include few formatting styles, e.g. APA, IEEE, ISO, etc... Is there a way to "install" a new style, to get reference formatted as required by ACM journals (and, possibly, as required by any other scientific association, journal or conference guidelines)? A: At this link there is an interesting tutorial that explains how to use Microsoft Word for formatting references in any style. Below I summarize the salient parts. First of all, we need to download some additional formatting styles, and we can found some of them at this link. Here, we will find a .zip file containing several .xsl files, which represent the formatting styles used by MS Word. What we need to do is to copy those .xsl (all of them or just the ones we want to use) in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\Bibliography\Style. Actually this directory can vary according to the MS Office version or the system architecture (32-bit or 64-bit). However if you look at the main Office directory, the Style directory should be easy to find. Then you just need to close MS Word and reopen it. And you will find all this additional formatting styles available in the dropdown box, under the Reference tab. EDIT: For some Office version (I had this issue with Microsoft Office 2013, installed on Windows 8.1), you will probably need to copy the citation style (.xsl files) in C:\Users\<YourUserName>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Bibliography\Styles, as explained in this website.

Q: How to handle unprofessionalism in academia? This question is in part related to this question and this one. In my case, I’m part of a double-degree Master’s programme¹, and am having a lot of difficulties at my German exit university. There are two coordinators/supervisors: one that handles more of the organizational aspects of studies (recommends courses, seminars, internships, thesis topics, etc.); one that takes care of all matters concerning thesis work. Both have been incredibly unprofessional; because of the first, I was the only student who: was not paid for his contributions while working on the thesis, the others enrolled at the same university and company (we have to develop our thesis project in an “outside” company) due to some bogus reason, which was not made entirely clear, had to retake a seminar while working on the thesis even though it has been passed. The main issue was that I had to commute from the company to the university in order to participate in it. Other aspects include: I have to deal with inconveniences such as being called to the coordinator’s office for meetings scheduled by him, that he would not show up at (this can become incredibly infuriating after a while). When contacted, he mentioned that he was on a trip for two weeks. Extreme favoritism towards other students. There were students who did not finish their thesis, but “graduated” nevertheless. Very, very high unresponsiveness to e-mail messages (I always keep them short and to the point – usually between 5 and 10 sentences). Toxic attitude; when confronted with the situation, the coordinator mentioned that he doesn’t care. I stated that, because of him and his thesis recommendation I had lost little over 23000$ (the amount that the other students earned during the more than one year period of study/thesis work at the company) and a few months of my time. He again mentioned that he doesn’t care. What would be the most preferable course of action to take? ¹ The first year of my Master’s studies is spent at one university while the second at another. The second university is the one at which I’m working on my thesis. The double degree means that I will get a degree from both universities, when I graduate at my current university. A: In my limited experience this is the BS many have to deal with in academia, which is the main reason why doing a PhD made me change my mind about working in academia. Universities are a place where bureaucracy thrives, however this can be to your advantage, when it comes to complaints procedures, which are taken very seriously (usually). Find out the university's official complaint procedure (usually two stages, first stage is dealt by the school and if issues continue you may raise it to university level, at which point the supervisor, if at fault, will be dealt with in a biblical format ;).) Make an official complaint, provide all of the evidence required (including emails unanswered), and it should be dealt with withing a couple of months.

Q: Why include a table of figures? Many postgraduate theses include as part of their front matter a List of Figures and a List of Tables, plus lists of various other special environments. Many institutions, including my own, directly require the inclusion of at least those two Lists at the front of the thesis. However, I have never really understood why a thesis should have those two environments at all; they've mostly just been yet another page to scroll past on the way to the meat of the thesis. On the other hand, if you have a print copy of the document, I generally find it much easier to flip through the pages, since graphics tend to stick out, and more so if you have a general idea of where the figure is (such as having a figure identifier that gives the chapter) or what it looks like (as when looking for a figure one has seen previously). What use cases are lists of figures or tables meant to serve? In what situations are they meant to be useful? Do they still work, or are they simply an artifact of pre-pdf days? A: When I refer back to a thesis to find a piece of information, I find the lists of tables and figures to be extremely useful. I often have a general idea of what I am looking for. Turning that general idea into a simple text search that does not yield hundreds of hits is difficult. By reading the short captions in the list of figures, I can generally find the figure I want. A: You appear to start from an assumption of reading on screen. If some actually wants to read a thesis (as opposed to looking something up in it) there's a fair chance they're working on paper. An examiner for example. A list of figures/list of tableswill help them track down some of the important material quickly. If someone has a paper copy, good lists are really useful, but xcost a couple of pages If someone has a PDF copy, the list costs them nothing. A few bytes of data, and there's no need to scroll past it as any decently-produced thesis PDF will allow you to click on the headings (or "Contents") in any decent PDF reader. So even with primarily electronic distribution (which is an optimisitic assumption) these lists will benefit some of your readers, including some important ones. I found them quite useful when checking the print copies -- text was easy to spot-check, but ensuring that the figures came out right was important.

Q: Which would be more beneficial when applying to theoretical physics PhD programs, Math M.S or experimental physics M.S.? I am graduating this semester with a bachelors in physics. My goal is to do theory in my graduate level course work. The problem I am in now is that I missed the deadline to take the physics GRE (I'm taking it in April) so I also missed the deadline to apply to most graduate schools. Fortunately, I was accepted to pursue masters degrees by both the math and physics departments of my current school. My plan is to do one or the other and apply to other schools next semester. My question is which one will be more beneficial to me? Our math department is all around phenomenal... but it won't say "physics" on my applications. Our physics department is good, but it is completely geared towards experimental nuclear physics, which is not my interest (and there is no non-thesis option). Every day now I have been swinging back and forth; math... physics...etc. So, which one would be more beneficial when applying to schools with top theory programs, Math M.S or physics M.S.? A: If your MS in physics will be experimental and you want to do theoretical physics, the math route could work. But we are basically guessing at how an admissions committee will see your application; so I encourage you to keep asking. Hopefully other answers here will help.

Q: What should I do about my previous self-plagiarism? I came across the question "Attitudes towards self-plagiarism" on this site, which asks whether it is OK to reuse text from your own papers without quotation formatting. It seems the answer is no. I didn't know this and I have in fact done this in the past, before I even heard the term "self-plagiarism." Here is the precise situation: I wrote and published paper A. Then I kept working in the same area and I extended the results, so I decided to write paper B two years later. When writing paper B, I started by taking paper A and editing it. Consequently, much of the text in paper B is directly copied from paper A. In particular, many paragraphs in the introduction, related work, and background sections are either identical or lightly edited. There is no indication which sentences are copied and which are not. Of course, paper B clearly explains the difference between the results of paper B and the results of paper A. In particular, paper B solves an open problem posed in paper A. As far as content goes, there is no problem, in the sense that, if I had rewritten the copied parts, there would be no problem. When I did this, I didn't know it was considered bad practise. I figured that, since the motivation, related work, and background for both papers is essentially the same, there was no point in writing paper B from scratch, given that paper A had already covered these things. What should I do about this (if anything)? I don't think I did anything malicious, but it seems this is not acceptable. A: This following response is highly personal and does not claim universality: it is my personal 2 cents, and my opinion is that your approach sounds perfectly fine. You do not claim other people's results as your own and you do not claim previous results of yours as novel. I do not know where this fashion that one has to rewrite everything from scratch comes from, even unchanged aspects in a new paper. Perhaps it comes from humanities where language and formulation is central. But in technical topics it does - in my personal opinion - not really make sense to reformulate obvious intro sections; as little as it makes sense to rewrite code for which there is a library. Personally, I like to rewrite even intro material sections because I do not like to bore my readers that have read other papers of mine, and also I sometimes discover novel aspects just by writing. However, as long as above conditions of 1. attribution and 2. clearly delineated novelty are fulfilled, I would not join in a negative judgement about repeated sections.

Q: Is it rude to ask the status of an application? I have applied for a PhD position in October 2015. I was not informed about the result since then. Is it appropriate to send a mail to a member of the hiring committee (with whom I have contacted before applying) to ask about the process? Or should I wait for them to contact me? The university is in Sweden and I have contacted with the member prior to the application since he is the head of the research group that I intend to work in. A: I don't think it is inappropriate nor rude to send them an email. It's your right to be informed with your result as time is passing. A: It depends. What does your acknowledgement say when you had submitted your application? If you were told something like "you will be informed your result by XX month/year" and you have not received anything in that regard by that period, then you can write an e-mail to inquire the status of your application. If you were told something like "only successful candidates will be informed by XX month/year" and you have not received anything in that matter, then you can write an e-mail to your contact person to know the status. In any case, you can write email politely to know about your application status if you think it is already too late. There is no harm to inquiring application status. A: If you're waiting 6 months for someone to write you back, perhaps that reflects poorly in their eyes on your skills as a researcher... seriously, though, you have to be more assertive about these things. If you feel it would be rude, try to make it as un-rude as possible: Ask about applications in general, not just your own; say you want to make sure you haven't missed a reply by mistake; ask whether they can estimate when a reply can be expected (rather than asking whether you were accepted); etc. But don't just wait for it to happen!

Q: How much does it cost the publisher to transform the draft of a textbook as given by the authors into a final publication (for web or print)? I wonder what are the actual costs of translating a manuscript of a textbook as given by the authors into a final publication (for web or print). I.e., ignoring the costs of marketing the textbook, and printing the textbook, and serving content via web. I am mostly interested in the fields of computer science and maths, English-speaking venues, and the United States, but I am curious about other fields, languages, and countries as well. I am looking for referenced numbers, not guesses. Given the number of downvotes and close votes from people who seem to think it's impossible, here is an example… A: The costs are going to depend on three factors: (1) how long the book is, (2) how well written the book is, and (3) how much layout work the publisher does. For example, in Math, the publisher might provide a LaTeX template and expect you to hand tweak underfull and overfull lines, float placement, and hypenation. In other fields it is more typical to give the publisher plain text with minimal markup. The Editorial Freelancers Association publishes recommended editing fees. A typical book might have a round of "line editing" at 4 cents per word, a round of layout at 4 cents per word, and a round of basic copy editing at 2 cents per word. If the book is poorly written, two rounds of line editing might be needed. If there is automated layout, the layout costs could be saved. There is also the cost of creating an index at 2 cents a word, which depends on who makes the index.

Q: Withdraw CS conference paper (after acceptance) due to authorship disputes? Is it ethical to withdraw a CS conference paper after being accepted, but before the final version is due (because of authorship disputes). What other consequences would there be (like re-submitting to other conferences if withdrawal is is successful)? A: If you are able to resolve the authorship dispute, then clearly that would be the best solution. On the other hand, if you are unable to resolve the dispute (at least on a timeline compatible with the conference's schedule), then not only is it ethical to withdraw the paper, but in fact that would be the only ethical course of action. Basically in this situation you have no reasonable choice and you simply have to withdraw the paper, which is why it is clearly ethical despite the fact that it means you will have wasted the time and effort of the organizing committee and reviewers. With that said, even though withdrawing the paper is ethical, there may still be some hurt feelings and a small amount of loss of credibility on your and the other coauthors' part, so it is important to do all you can to minimize the damage by being as honest and transparent as you can about what happened and about your motivations. As Anonymous Mathematician points out, just telling the organizing committee that there's an authorship dispute might come across as a lame and possibly suspicious explanation. What I would do is make sure to include in my withdrawal email: an apology; a relatively detailed explanation of the nature of the dispute, which establishes the claim that withdrawing the paper is the only reasonable course of action open to you (if there are some highly sensitive or personal details, you can omit them, but try to provide as many details as possible to make your claim that you have to withdraw as credible as possible); an apology! Specifically, acknowledge that you should have sorted out the authorship issue before submitting the paper and that you and the other authors are at fault for not taking proper care on this matter. Make it clear that you understand what went wrong and will be more careful in the future. My feeling is that with the proper explanation, no one will bear you any hard feelings for creating this somewhat awkward situation -- reasonable people understand that these things can happen (as Anonymous Mathematician points out, in rare cases they can happen even when everyone is behaving reasonably and has the best of intentions). Your reputation will survive. In any case, letting the paper be published when there are unresolved issues surrounding authorship is almost certain to lead to a much bigger mess and much greater damage to the reputations of everyone involved.

Q: In general, does Texas A&M or University of Florida have a better reputation in mathematics? I have been accepted to both of these schools' PhD programs in Mathematics. I know they have different mathematical strengths as departments; however, I'm wondering if being an alumni of one of those schools vs. the other would likely affect my job placement after I graduate, assuming I seek an academic position. In other words, does anyone know which of these schools has more success in securing their alumni better positions at better universities? I've looked for this information on both of the universities' websites but not had much luck. A: US News and World report ranks math departments according to their reputation in the profession: see here. These ratings should be used broadly: i.e., just because a school is higher doesn't mean it actually has a meaningfully higher reputation. You will do better to use these rankings to divide schools into larger groups of the same approximate quality. In this case, the two departments you ask about are currently ranked #41 and #56. For me this means both departments are (i) quite good, though measurably worse than a school in the top 25 like Rutgers or UCSD and (ii) so close in overall reputation that the question "which is better, globally?" is not going to have a meaningful answer. (For good measure, my own department falls in between these two departments in the rankings, and indeed I view both departments as being rather close peers.) For these two schools, any global differences in prestige would be drowned out by many other things, e.g. the prestige of your thesis advisor and/or the research group within the school, connections between a particular department and particular employer...and of course how successful you are in one department versus the other and the quality of your thesis work. In short: in this case, pick whatever department is better for you, and don't worry about prestige.

Q: Time management in PhD Math program I'm accepted at a PhD math program for the fall and I will be expected to take 3 very rigorous pure math classes a semester and TA about 10 hours a week. I am a slow learner and it takes me a long time to truly understand difficult concepts (at least it seems longer than what it takes my peers). I would appreciate any tips in the following: What are some tips for managing my time in grad-school? Is there anything I can do now before I start to help prepare me (other than learn more math of course)? How to grade or teach time efficiently? Is it better to focus on learning material for one class per day, or allocate a little bit of time each day for each class? A: I'm a first year student in math Ph.D. program. I'm taking 3 courses (all qualifying exams preparation course) and do TA work about 10 hours a week. What are some tips for managing my time in grad-school? a. Start doing homework the day you receive it, not the day before it is due. b. When you're not sure what to do, study/do math. Is it better to focus on learning material for one class per day, or allocate a little bit of time each day for each class? I go for the first approach because I feel it's easier to focus on one of them than to switch back and forth among subjects within a day. How to grade or teach time efficiently? a. Before you finish your own exam requirements, choose an easy course to TA (like single variable calculus). b. Remember unlike you most undergraduate students in lower division courses are not interested in math. They care little except exam/hw scores. Most students who can easily get an A+/A/D/F do not care about you. In discussion section do examples highly related to their HW, Sample Exam, Past Exam and little to nothing else. c. Set up a good grading rubric that allows you to grade fast. Give full credit to correct answer with some reasonable justifications (even if it's not perfectly written). When it's boarder line give 1 additional point instead of explaining why the answer doesn't deserve an additional point.

Q: How does a book chapter in an edited volume compare to a peer reviewed paper? I have been invited to write a book chapter in an edited volume, relating to my field of work. I have a paper ready that I have not published and was planning to submit it soon. So, I am wondering is it worth to use that article for the book chapter, as both are on the same topic, or is it in a sense a waste of a journal paper, as book chapters might not be seen to have the same academic value? What should I do? Should I, instead, send the ready paper to a journal for a review and write a book chapter, based on a couple papers I have published, for instance? Generally speaking, where does a book chapter stand? Is it something between a conference paper and a full-fledged journal article? Or, does does it have the same value as either of the above-mentioned publication types, in your opinion? A: Like a lot of things in academia, I think this will heavily depend on what discipline you're in. In computer science for example, while there's nothing wrong with a book chapter, a paper at a conference or in a journal is typically more valuable. The reason normally given is that papers are peer reviewed (as compared to edited), so they are somehow more 'valid'. Having said that, there's always myriad exceptions. Writing a whole book that everyone uses is much better than a few papers. Later in the career, book chapters perhaps gain value as they're a mark of respect and prestige (once you've already proven your research ability). As a counter-point though, from my limited experience, it seems that book chapters are much more common in bioinformatics and operations research, and thus are viewed more highly. Talk to fellow academics in your area, their opinion will be the best guide. A: In my field a peer reviewed article counts for a lot more than a chapter in an edited book. That said, a published chapter in an edited book counts a lot more for job searches than a working/submitted/under review/under revision manuscript. Often edited books lead to a publication in press much quicker than a journal. I would definitely look into the time scale of the book chapter. A: It's based of field but the general rule is to pump articles because they are peer reviewed. However some publishers have a review process so if the chapter is in a handbook or in a collection that will be important to the field then you're good. Look at publisher rankings and try to only publish chapters under top ranked book publishers. If you're a junior tenure track then ask colleagues and dean for tenure and promotion info. I will say that in the humanities or social sciences you are more likely to have your chapter cited by another person in their work than an article. Hope some of this helps.

Q: How far should I help students with learning extracurricular skills? I am currently a teaching assistant for both master and PhD students. Part of my work included helping and supervising them during several lab experiments (physics). One task of the lab experiments is to write a program to numerically calculate values and simulate them afterwards. The students are allowed to use any programming language they want to use (except stuff like Brainfuck and Whitespace, of course), as long as they provide the source code with the result. While the master students are not having any problems with the problem, I got was asked by the PhD students if I can help them do the programming in Excel, as that is the only thing they can use and know for "programming". How far should I now go and help them? I know that doing the task they are assigned to is impossible to do in Excel, but they never used any other language or programmed themselves. I am able to teach them how to achieve the programming goal, but based on their current knowledge that will take a lot of time, which I also need for my own lab tasks. Should I thus simply tell them to drop the course, or should I try to help them, and if yes, in which extent? A: If you are a TA and have questions about what to do, almost always the first thing you should do is ask the instructor. The instructor should clarify exactly how you should be assisting them, and what the prerequisites for the course are. I would be wary, as a TA, of suggesting students to drop the class. A: This is definitely an issue for the instructor. Perhaps programming should have been mentioned as a prerequisite for the course. On the other hand, the prerequisites probably did not list "Must be able to find the physics lab given a campus map.", even if that is required for success on the course. The instructor may have, not unreasonably, assumed that graduate students in a STEM subject can do simple numerical programming in at least one language. You may want to have a list of options to present to the instructor: If the assignment can actually be done using a spreadsheet, show you how so you can help the students do so. Set an alternative assignment. Pick a time period when you would normally be doing TA activities, and tell the students who cannot program to meet you then. Teach them really, really basic programming in some language with which you are familiar. A: How far should I now go and help them? You probably shouldn't be spending any time whatsoever teaching prerequisite skills one-on-one to any individual students. As you say, it is not anywhere in your expected priority queue of work that the university expects you to be doing (plus: it's simply an inefficient use of the time resource). Perhaps the most that is reasonable is to point the student in question to a relevant class, book, or tutorial from which they can learn on their own (and as an aside, to explain why it's a bad idea to use Excel for a task like this). That said, you note in a comment that "As far as I know there were no requisites stated beforehand". This is, indeed, very bad. I would say if that's the case that the instructor may now have a responsibility to give them an alternative and equivalent assignment that does not involve programming, if that failed to be stated up front in university prerequisites, or on the first-day syllabus information. Definitely speak with the teacher of the class (and advisor if that's a different person), tell them there are students in the class who don't know any programming, and ask about how to handle this case.

Q: Would a retired researcher mentor a postdoc with his/her own external funding? What about one without external funding? I'll be completing my Ph.D. soon, and am reaching out to people who I'd like to serve as my mentor. Two questions with regards to "academically" retired researchers: If I have external funding, would emeritus faculty be interested in mentoring a postdoc? If I don't have external funding (so would require my mentor to fund me), would a retired researcher from a research institution, or retired faculty, take on a postdoc, i.e., willing to spend time with and pay someone? I have never seen this happen (though I haven't really looked into this), so I'd like to know if being a postdoc for someone retired is even possible. Both people I'm considering are still somewhat active in research (publishing papers, responding to emails). A: I'm sure you'll find people who are "retired" (from administrative duties, from chasing the next funding proposal) and still are hard at work, while others just want to stay at home and look at the lake in front of the window. If one of them would take you on as mentoree (made up word, I know) is anybody's guess. Perhaps they retired in part to be free of having to deal with pesky students. Maybe you are so outstanding that you lure the hermit back into active work.

Q: Will publishing a paper hinder graduate admissions if errors are discovered? I believe I have developed a formal proof for an unsolved conjecture in mathematics; however, I'm not yet enrolled in university and I know maybe one individual who could check my proof. Should I still submit this paper to a journal and risk it being published and then later errors being discovered? Furthermore, would an incorrect paper hinder admission to graduate schools? It's not that I would be upset about being wrong, it certainly wouldn't be the first time I was ever wrong. I just wouldn't want those errors to ruin my future. I wouldn't be concerned if the paper was denied by the journal because the error wouldn't be publicized. I'm confident that my method is rigorous and proves the conjecture. However, I know the likelihood of errors being present is almost certain. The overall question is: If I submit a paper to a journal and it is published, but later errors are found, will that hinder admissions to graduate school; or is that just a risk one takes in sharing research? Note: I don't expect that the proof is wrong, I truly believe that it is correct. However, I must consider the event that it is proven incorrect. A: Have the one you know check it out. If it has merit, they'll know who can look at it closer, and tell you what to do. It is very probable that your proof s wrong, or contains holes. Even so, you learn something (and learned by working it out).

Q: Number of pages for a Cover-letter to apply to postdoc position A friend and I are arguing about the number of pages needed for a coverletter, to apply to postdoc in electro-engineering. Usually, the postdoc offer (what I called a job offer) says up to 3 pages. My friend fills the 3 pages for the coverletter. To me, he should stick to one page , presenting himself, his work and why he is the most qualified for this position like any regular jobs actually. I feel I'm right but as I do not have much experiences applying to postdocs, I cannot validate my claim. Any insights are more than welcomed. A: Please follow the link. Everything is properly mentioned as follows. http://www.nature.com/scitable/ebooks/english-communication-for-scientists-14053993/118520525#headerAndCitation The structure of a letter written for an entry-level position will differ from the structure of a letter written by a master's or Ph.D.-level researcher. Typically, a more advanced position will require a lengthier cover letter. In all cases, however, remember that your readers are extremely busy. Therefore, keep your letters from extending beyond two pages, unless the job advertisement specifically requests more details about research or work experience. A: Like a CV, it should be as long as it needs to be. For a post doc, you need an intro paragraph (what job you are applying for, who you are, where you are coming from). You also need a paragraph that describes what you want to get out of the post doc. Finally a paragraph (or two) on your thesis. That is likely a page. If you did research during undergrad or an MS, then you need to include that. If you have a side project to you PhD or have already done a post doc, then you need to include that research. If the position has a teaching requirement, you need a paragraph for that. I would be surprised if a Post Doc cover letter hit 3 pages, but trying to get it down to a single page seems hard.

Q: What does the "final published version" refer to in copyright? I'm trying to figure out if I can put a PDF that I give Springer on arXiv. Note that this PDF has had further changes made to it after it has been already accepted by a conference; it's not the same as the conference submission. Springer's copyright transfer form says: Prior versions of the Contribution published on non-commercial pre-print servers like ArXiv/CoRR and HAL can remain on these servers and/or can be updated with Author’s accepted version. The final published version (in pdf or html/xml format) cannot be used for this purpose. Acknowledgment needs to be given to the final publication and a link must be inserted to the published Contribution on Springer’s website, by inserting the DOI number of the article in the following sentence: "The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/[insert DOI]". ...but I can't tell what "the final published version" refers to. Does it include the final PDF that I submit to them for publishing? Or is it only the official PDF that they actually publish on their site? (I presume the two could be different, since they could make their own edits?) My guess is that it's only the latter, since they seem to imply the final version is the one with the DOI, but I'm not sure. A: The usual workflow with Springer is: You prepare your paper, and submit it as a PDF file to the conference. The conference reviews the paper, and you get the acceptance notification + conference reviews back. You revise your paper, and submit the source code to Springer. Springer does copyediting, and you get the page proofs back. You check the page proofs and submit your corrections to Springer. Springer prepares the final PDF and posts it on their web page. (Note that steps 1–3 involve work from you + research community. Steps 4–6 involve some added value from the publisher.) The "author-created version" refers to your output after step 1 or 3. This is what you can self-archive. The "final published version" refers to Springer's output after step 6. This is a version you cannot self-archive. (IANAL, etc.)

Q: Can I submit the anonymous referee report from a previous submission to another journal together with my manuscript? I sent an article to Annals of Mathematics and after 4 months of review process it was rejected. I received a report from an anonymous expert. Could I send this report, together with the manuscript, to another journal? A: Could I send this report, together with the manuscript, to another journal? This is a confusing wording: the first two times I read it, I thought you meant you were submitting the referee report for consideration of publication! But I think I understand what you mean now: I'm guessing (though please confirm) that the referee said some good things and in particular regarded, either implicitly or explicitly, the result as being correct, but just not good enough for publication in Annals (as are at least 99.9% of mathematical results), and you would like the positive aspects of the referee report to follow you to your next submission. If all of the above is right, the answer is that you cannot do this directly: it is simply not the part of the established protocol for paper submission. And there are good reasons for this. On the one hand, how does the next editor know that you did not fabricate the report or modify it in some way? On the other hand, referee reports are never anonymous to the editors, so "submitting an anonymous referee report" undercuts most of its value. However the next journal could contact the Annals and get the report officially and the identity of the referee. Which brings me to what you should do: if you want a referee report from Journal A to be carried over to Journal B, you should write to the editors at both journals and request this to happen. This definitely happens sometimes, although in my experience it is most commonly initiated by someone other than the author. A: Could I send this report, together with the manuscript, to another journal? I have several times thought of doing just that, and one time decided to take a chance and try it. Somewhat to my surprise, the strategy worked brilliantly: the editor of the second journal decided to accept my submission on the spot without sending it out for another review. Looking back, I think that the forces in play that made the strategy successful (which is also why at the time I decided to try it) were: The editor of the second journal I submitted to was already somewhat familiar with the work in question and was someone I had a relatively high level of confidence would give my paper a fair hearing. The referee report from the first journal was fairly detailed, actually said several positive things about my paper, and did not question that the results of the paper were correct. There was only one particular issue that led that referee to recommend rejection, and that was a somewhat unfair judgment (in my view, which I thought the editor of the second journal would agree with, which he did) regarding the novelty and importance of the paper's results. Note that this is just an anecdote and offers little predictive value about what would happen in your situation. However, it demonstrates that unusual strategies of this sort can sometimes pay off and that there is nothing that makes them invalid or taboo.

Q: Not getting along with Spanish professor. Professor is condescending, and picks favorites. I feel I have enough evidence to do something I am in a Spanish Translation class at a good public university. Background: I am a white male and a Spanish/Chemistry double major. I plan to pursue a PhD in Chemistry or teach at the high school level, and Spanish is pure enjoyment. I am engaged in this class. I do every single reading, and try really hard to participate. I do not give her any "sass" (and if I did, that still doesn't justify taking points off in direct contradiction of her assigned readings). I have asked her already how to be more polite, and she tells me I am fine. Early in the class, there were some strange vibes. Since then, there have been numerous instances, so for brevity I will only mention the ones that stick out most. 1: She marks me off two points for using the word "Filipina" in a journalism translation, claiming it's not an english word. I find it in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as well as in hundreds of New York Times (reliable english journalism source). She awards me only one of two points back for this, and when I question it she says it is "non-negotiable." 2: One day, she asks our opinion about a "translation tidbit". I said I liked it and thought it was poetic, and she proceeds to laugh out loud assuming I'm joking. She then says in an incredibly exaggerated and melodramatic way "I admire your courage for speaking up in class but that is incorrect." Some awkward silence passes and she says, again loudly to the whole class, "Are you embarrassed?" in an incredibly condescending manner. 3: On a quiz, I translated the phrase "Diagnosticar un niño es separar la familia" or something similar as "To diagnose a child is to separate the family." She marks me off two points, claiming she "wanted the gerund" and cited certain textbook pages. On these same pages, the book clearly reads "the infinitive in Spanish can be translated as the gerund or as the infinitive in english." I present her with this direct evidence and again she says "I wanted the gerund. Non-negotiable." 4: During our most recent quiz, our task is to translate an idiom. She writes an idiom on the board, relating to January 6th which is apparently a holiday in the Spanish-speaking world. I very politely ask her for the meaning of this holiday, and she says condescendingly to the class "I would expect an advanced to student to know what this cultural day is. I can't just give you the answer." Several other students raise their hands and admit to not knowing the cultural reference. She then tells us what it is, and angrily says "You're welcome for the answer. Have a good spring break." 5: While reassuring one of her favorites about a missed assignment, she talks about the "class participation" part of our grade (10%). She openly says "this is where I can give my favorite students a little bit of a boost." She makes direct eye contact with me during this. That's what spurred me to write this. Beyond these instances, other students have commented to me that they also notice her favoritism and hostility toward me. She has a general air of condescension toward everyone, but it's worse with me. I don't know what to do. I am giving my all, and objectively earning A's according to her rubrics. I have an A in the class right now, but I can just sense that she's going to screw me with this "Participation grade", which is not valid because I participate more than almost everyone else in class. Is there anything I can do? I feel like I have decent evidence and can bring in a fellow classmate to vouch for me if need be. I have no doubts they would take my side. Update: She gave me no feedback on my final paper draft and then proceed to make 80 edits to my revision, and then gave me a lower grade on the revision. I decided this lack of feedback was sufficient enough to go over her head. A: Others may disagree, but I think you should go over her head. When she's outright admitting that she plays favorites with the participation grade, her department should know. What they do with that information is hard to predict, but if such complaints become a pattern with this teacher, they (hopefully) have to do something about it. Plus, complaining now could put you on slightly firmer ground if she gives you a grade for the course that's low enough for you to want to challenge it. If there's someone with a title like "Director of the Undergraduate Spanish Program," that's the person to complain to.

Q: Is it ok for PhD to come from same school as BA? If my ultimate goal is to obtain a tenured teaching position, is it more desirable to get a PhD from a different university than the one where I obtained my BA? What are the possible pros and cons? The original university has a large philosophy department, which is also a factor for me. A: Many people refer to PhD programs accepting students from their BA programs as "academic incest." (The same term is used for hiring PhD students from the same program into the tenure track). The reasons why doctoral programs generally don't want to commit academic incest are: As with physical inbreeding, academic incest reduces the intellectual gene pool. You've already studied under a singular group of faculty for your BA, go to another program for your PhD to widen your intellectual horizons. As with physical inbreeding, if your program is known for academic incest, it dissuades possible future candidates from applying -- or at minimum, feeling that you prioritize your 'own' over others. There are clear reasons why a program might not want to be known for incestuous tendencies. However, the question is whether this hurts a candidate. Here, the risk/benefit analysis is a bit more murky. Pros: If your program is indeed the best in X-Studies, why not remain at the best? Cons: There is a risk that you might be seen as parochial -- that you only really know the intellectual currents at your single alma mater. To be honest, I'm not sure how significant a risk this is in terms of jobs although I would for the reasons of scholarly diversity above, still suggest that students not apply to their own PhD programs. Fine print: Note that claims of the negative aspects of academic incest are much more pronounced (and pernicious) in the humanities and social sciences; and are much less common in the lab sciences. If there's only one university lab in the USA that does the type of gene splicing you want to do and you're continuing a project that you've done as an undergraduate, it'd be silly to think of going elsewhere.

Q: Leaving postdoc after less than one year with no reference letter I've been in my first postdoc for a year and feel that I'm not progressing in my career. There has been communication issues with my PI, he's not very supportive of his senior postdocs, and it takes a long time to publish. I am currently looking for new positions, however how do I address the issue of my one year postdoc, especially if I won't be receiving a reference letter from the PI? Should I address this in the cover letter? Also, he is quite big in the field, so are there any considerations I should be careful about, for instance applying to people he has worked with? Would it be worthwhile to ask other PIs in the department that I have not worked with but I have been on good terms with for a reference letter? A: I would apply to new postdocs using the professors at your former doctoral program as references. If there's someone at the postdoc school that you worked with and can speak positively, you could use one of them instead of one of your former profs, but I'd keep the ratio 2:1 or 3:1 in favor of your former professors. The good thing is that you're in your first year of the postdoc. Sometimes there are just fit issues -- in terms of personalities or research topics or both. Everyone in academia is aware of this and we're aware it's not always the fault of the applicant -- especially when it comes to "big names" (== big egos). I think you could apply to new post docs referring very briefly and obliquely to fit -- and using the materials and references from your doctoral program.

Q: How widespread is sharing of slides/assignments among educators? Often, when taking a course at the university level, I amuse myself by Googling phrases from the instructors' slides, assignments, and other materials. I have found, without exception from any instructor, that the material is more or less identical to some resource I can find online, often course materials posted by a professor at a highly prestigious university (e.g. Stanford). In some cases I will find material that is 10 - 15 years old; other times it is undated. Sometimes I can find the same material posted by a dozen different professors at a dozen different universities. A few times in the past, I've entertained the idea of reporting the professor for possible plagiarism, but I've never followed through on it because If the material is undated, there's no way to know who published it first For all I know these slides and assignments can be purchased from vendors. I have occasionally had a professor use a complete course package, where the publisher of a textbook also offers the assignments and tests to accompany the textbook. I have been unwilling to risk having to re-take the course, if the instructor is suddenly fired mid-semester for plagiarism (In some cases the materials are sprinkled with enough informal language that it's obvious that they were not purchased from a vendor.) Since it seems like all of my professors get all of their slides and assignments from somewhere else, I am curious how common it is to share course materials between instructors. Do college professors commonly purchase their lesson plans and assignments from vendors? Do instructors and universities share premade courses with each other? A: It is common for college professors to use teaching materials from outside sources. There is generally no an expectation of originality when it comes to teaching materials. Do college professors commonly purchase their lesson plans and assignments from vendors? Many textbooks come with a set of slides, distributed by either the publisher or the author of the textbook (often for free). Instructors may choose to use these exactly as they are, or adapt them. Some books come with other materials too, including assignments. Personally, I often don't like the textbook authors' prepared materials and prefer to develop my own. But that's my preference. Do instructors and universities share premade courses with each other? Yes, this is also common. I have shared my course materials with instructors at my own university and at other universities. Many of my course materials are hosted online with an explicit Creative Commons license allowing others to use them. I have also participated in projects that received NSF funding specifically to develop course materials and other resources to share with other instructors. A: I have always shared my course materials with (younger and other) colleagues, and others have shared some materials with me. I have also jointly developed material. This happens all the time -- and it's also a good thing because, obviously, if one person is doing a good job at teaching a particular course, it would make no sense for everyone else who starts teaching it to start from zero. Reasonable faculty help each other out. Only poor colleagues insist that a new faculty needs to develop their own materials.

Q: How do you include a poster in an academic resume? I'm a chemistry major and I've done a few poster presentations and an oral presentation. I have to put together an academic resume for a class. I was told to include mt presentations. First off, are these things worthwhile to include or is it like putting in that participation ribbon you earned in gym class in 5th grade? If it's worthwhile to list these things, how do I do so? Do I separate the oral presentation from the posters? Do I include the name of the conference it was presented at? A: In academia, one lists things related to accomplishments and dissemination of research in the CV. This typically includes things like papers or preprints, software, as well as presentations one gives. In particular, your list of presentations gives one piece of information into how active you are in your research community. So yes, assuming your poster presentations are academic/research related, it's appropriate to put them in your CV, though in-class presentations are typically not included. General comments: a CV is different than a resume so there's a lot of flexibility in what you include and how you format it. Still, there are some dos and don'ts. You can find loads of example CVs online, but it might be most helpful for you to look at sample CVs of young researchers (students, postdocs) in your field for some models. Specific comments: there are different ways you can organize your presentations, but my suggestion is make a section titled presentations, and within that two subsections, one for oral presentations or "talks" and one for poster presentations. Then for each presentation, list the title, venue including conference name and date. E.g. From Cervantes to Swift, 33rd AEIOU Conference, University of Lillipilut, Mildendo, Lilliput, April 1, 1726.