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2014/02/12 | 2,229 | 9,014 | <issue_start>username_0: Is it legal to upload a paper to arXiv when it is under **double blind review** for one of the IEEE journals? I am suspicious that it may violate the double blind review requirements and I couldn't find any thing in the journal's homepage specific to this issue. In general IEEE allows preprint versions to be uploaded to arXiv.<issue_comment>username_1: Legal? Sure. There's no law against it.
Contract violation? Possibly, ask the editor.
Ethical? Something else entirely. Quite possibly not.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You mix two things, especially in the comments to the answer by **username_1**:
1. *Fair review process,* which in the journal you chose means double-blind review.
2. *Free access to information*, which in your opinion seems to mean that the article should be open-access.
While the second can be true, it cannot mean you break the first one. So: It's quite wrong to pre-publish an article if it's under a double-blind review. At least unless you have a permission from the Editor to do so. Once it's accepted, it's just between you and the copyright transfer rules of the journal.
Since IMHO violating a contact is basically illegal, my opinion is that pre-publishing it is very likely both illegal and nonethical.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: As username_1 points out, there is nothing illegal in doing this. Further, since you don't really have much of a contract (yet) with the journal, there are few possible negative outcomes from this - apart from immediate rejection of your submission. Most importantly, though:
* In all situations where you do not know if it's OK to do something with a paper, either before or after publication, **ask the journal first**.
Certainly, do **not** attempt to upload your paper to the arXiv (or similar repository) whilst your paper is under double-blind review (or any type of journal submission, really), without informing the editor. Failing to do this can be interpreted as acting in bad faith and it is likely to set the editors against you from the start.
Having the manuscript freely available (and possibly easily googleable) completely negates the purpose of the double blind review, as it publicly divulges your identity as the author of that manuscript. I would see this as the conflict of two things you want: (1) you want to publish in this highly-respected journal, which at least partly built its reputation through things like double-blind review, and (2) you want your paper available to everyone as soon as possible.
Those two things are incompatible, and you need to choose one of the two. You're not giving away much; you simply need to sit on the paper for maybe a month or two (or however long the review process takes) and you can then upload your eprint. You're not "opposing information dissemination", you're under an embargo of sorts, which is perfectly reasonable and which you're submitting to voluntarily through your choice of journal. (Note, in particular, that public policies that mandate the open access of taxpayer-funded research do not usually require this until six months *after* the publication; they definitely do not apply before it.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I have just received an email from the editor and I am writing it here
Dear Dr. \* \* \*,
We cannot prevent an author to upload her/his paper to Arxiv. However, because of the double-blind process applied in Communication Letters, we don’t encourage it.
There is only one restriction: Your paper should stand alone without any supplementary material and/or reference to an ArXiv post.
Sincerely,
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_5: Certainly, do not attempt to upload your paper to the arXiv (or similar repository) whilst your paper is under double-blind review (or any type of journal submission, really), without informing the editor.
I definitely **do not** recommend to do it. First, an Editor, of course, will say no as he must follow the review policy. Secondly, if your paper is indeed of high quality, there is always a risk that your idea could be leaked (it is normal that people communicate with each other about topic in your paper). If you decide to submit to arXiv, you should follow the rule “don’t ask, don’t tell”. So, you should never ask Editor anything about arXiv, and the Editor, who understands this problem, would not say you anything about arXiv. It is a normal practise now when the paper goes to journal and to arXiv at the same time.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: I have many publications in peer review journals. Let me share my experience. If you have a high quality manuscript, I recommend you to submit the manuscript to a journal and also to upload it to arxiv. Do not ask Editor anything about arxiv as it is completely counterproductive. If due to some reasons your manuscript is rejected from the journal, you will save your idea in arxiv at least. Further you can refer to your arxiv paper for future peer review journal publications.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_6: Even it is legal, is is subverting the process of **double blind** review. I would not do it, but of course, I understand that the advantage it may bring to you may be tempting.
At least in my field it is widespread practice of lab submitting multiple papers to very competitive conferences which take double blind review extremely seriously, and then doing everything they can to actually reveal themselves as the authors (e.g. lab head goes on the "tour" of good universities presenting exactly the same work which is in the review process, hoping that the reviewers of the submitted papers will be in the audience).
I don't like, it is cheating, even if it is nominally legal.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: **No**. I checked with the IEEE customer service and they told me one cannot upload a paper to arXiv when it is under double blind review for one of the IEEE journals. See details below if interested.
---
I asked the question to one of the conferences (viz., [ICASSP 2020](https://2020.ieeeicassp.org/)) publishing their proceedings in IEEE and here is the response I received:
>
> IEEE policy permits authors to post their articles to the preprint
> repository arXiv. Posting rules for each stage of the article life
> cycle are:
>
>
> * **Pre-submission**: Before submission to an IEEE publication, the papers may be posted anywhere, including to arXiv.
> * **Upon acceptance**: Upon acceptance to an IEEE publication, the arXiv posting must be updated by replacing the pre-submission version with
> the accepted version. The accepted version must have the IEEE
> copyright line (© 20XX IEEE) but no other changes may be made. The
> version suitable for posting is available on the Completed Articles
> page of the IEEE Author Gateway:
> <https://authorgateway.ieee.org/ag/public/landing.jsp>.
> * **Upon publication**: When the article is published, the posted version on arXiv should be updated with a full citation to the IEEE
> publication, including DOI. No other changes may be made.
>
>
> Visit the IEEE Author Center for more information on SPS sharing and
> posting policies at <https://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/>.
>
>
>
However, that didn't specify whether one can submit a paper to arXiv after the paper submission deadline and before the notification of acceptance (i.e., while the paper is under review). So I emailed <EMAIL> about it and got the following response:
>
> Sharing of a submitted paper is allowed under the following circumstances:
>
>
> * On authors' personal and employers' Web sites
> * On institutional/funder Web sites if required
> * For authors' own classroom use
> * Only on Scholarly Collaboration Networks (SCNs) that are signatories to the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers' (STM) "Sharing Principles"
>
>
> For more details, see <https://conferences.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/get-published/post-your-paper/>. Thank you for publishing with the IEEE.
>
>
>
I then asked whether arXiv counts as a "Scholarly Collaboration Networks (SCNs) that are signatories to the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers’ Sharing Principles", and I got the following response:
>
> Thank you for your inquiry. ArXiv does not seem to be included on <https://www.howcanishareit.com/> , which is the Web site that lists the permitted SCNs. Some SCNs where the article can be shared are listed there.
>
>
>
That being said, I would advice to double check with each conference you are targeting to make sure that they don't have any extra policy on top of IEEE policies.
FYI:
* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_journals_by_preprint_policy>
* [Why would a conference discourage authors to submit their papers to pre-submissions platforms (e.g., arXiv) before submitting them to the conference?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/88273/452)
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/12 | 1,982 | 8,197 | <issue_start>username_0: The recent question [about the legality of uploading to arXiv](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16831/is-it-legal-to-upload-a-paper-to-arxiv-when-it-is-under-double-blind-review-for) made me realize that I don't have any understanding of why one would upload to a preprint site. (I don't work in a field where they seem to be common.)
Why would one be concerned about getting a manuscript on arXiv, if it's already under review with a journal?
Is it because of the long publishing timeline of journals? (That could explain why computer science — which publishes much more in conferences — doesn't seem to do much with them.)<issue_comment>username_1: In mathematics, there are several reasons to post to the arXiv:
1. It provides free access to papers that might otherwise be hidden behind paywalls. Of course you could achieve this by posting on your web page, but your web page may move or disappear, while the arXiv is far more stable. This means it's better for archival purposes and it's better suited for citations. [Note that this is not just about preprints: it continues to be relevant long after publication.]
2. It attracts readers. Many people pay close attention to arXiv postings in their area, in a way that doesn't happen as much with journal tables of contents. I don't have statistics, but my impression is that a substantial fraction of the people who learn about my papers do so through the arXiv. If you can get noticeably more attention for your research with almost no additional effort, why wouldn't you?
3. It establishes priority. Submitting to a journal does not: if you submit to a journal without circulating your work publicly, then you may still end up sharing credit with anyone who makes the same discovery before your paper is made public. The way to establish priority is to distribute your work so widely that any competitors cannot credibly claim to have been unaware of it. Submitting to the arXiv is the easiest way to show that you have done so: it's widely read, and it preserves all versions of the article with time stamps.
4. It's conventional. This varies somewhat between subfields, but once arXiv use reaches critical mass in a given area, it becomes the standard way of announcing to the world that you have completed a paper. At that point, *not* posting to the arXiv looks strange.
Compared with other fields, mathematics and physics are anomalous in making heavy use of the arXiv, with physics even more so than mathematics. As I understand it, in high energy particle physics the arXiv replaced an elaborate system of paper preprint distribution that was used in the late 80's (and it rapidly became popular since it was obviously better than the paper infrastructure). Usage spread to other areas of physics, from physics to adjacent areas of mathematics, and then further into mathematics.
Things are trickier in other fields, because many of the advantages depend on network effects. If nobody in your field pays attention to a server, it's not conventional, and it counts for little or nothing regarding priority, then there's less reason to post to it (although it still has some value). I'm not surprised that it catches on only slowly and spreads primarily to adjacent fields, but I expect green open access servers like the arXiv will become more popular over time.
Upvotes: 8 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: As I see it, the main reasons to use arXiv and similar preprint servers are:
* To disseminate your paper without waiting for the peer review and publishing process. This is a serious issue - in mathematics, for example, peer review often takes a year or more, and it can be several more years before your paper gets to the front of the queue to actually appear in print.
* To make the paper permanently available to readers who don't have a subscription to the journal where the paper is published.
* In some cases, to disseminate and solicit comments on a paper that may not quite be ready for publication, while at the same time establishing priority.
Incidentally, from the computer scientists here, I've gathered the impression that CS uses arXiv very heavily, to the point that it practically supersedes journals as a way to distribute papers. Perhaps I'm mistaken, or it varies by subfield?
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: Let me add one point not mentioned by other answers so far.
In fast moving fields (e.g., most of computer science), a great benefit of publishing technical reports in recognised/citable series (at least an ISSN) and/or arXiv is to get a citable reference *before* publication in a more serious venue, such as a conference, or a journal.
So the workflow is as follows:
1. write and polish a paper
2. before a submission to a serious venue, publish it as a TR/arXiv preprint (unless this clashes with a double-blind, or copyright policies of the target venue)
3. submit to the target venue
4. **right the next day you can write a next paper referring the work you published as a preprint. It can be either an incremental work, or something else using the result you achieved recently, etc. All this you can do way earlier than the paper really appears in proceedings, or a journal issue.**
5. if the work was accepted at the target venue, good for you
6. if it wasn't, you still can refer to the work, while improving it and submitting next time/elsewhere/etc.
As you see, the turn-around time is what this is all about. Of course one should be later careful regarding replacing references to TRs with references to the really published stuff in CR versions - if there's time/space for it.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: If papers were posted on the arXiv before submission then I argue it would be easier to branch out. I also think it would increase the quality of submissions and the speed of progress. Overall, it should benefit your community and so, albeit indirectly, yourself.
I quote from [this blog post](http://emanueleviola.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/only-papers-on-the-arxiv-can-be-submitted-for-publication/) an illustration.
>
> The current system reinforces the partition of research into
> (sub)areas, making it hard for an outsider to leave their own. Of
> course, it is good to have a domain of expertise and produce deep
> results in it. Still, I think it would be better if it was a little
> easier to work in different areas.
>
>
> To illustrate the difficulty, suppose you want to start working in
> new, hot area X. To learn the background, typically you have to read
> papers. However, for every paper that you read, it is not uncommon
> that there is another one which is or was under submission. Indeed,
> the community is producing great results the majority of which is
> rejected due to capacity constraints. So unless these works are on
> electronic archives such as the arXiv, you don’t have access to them.
>
>
> Who does? The experts of area X, to whom these papers are sent so that
> they can be properly evaluated. But it may be hard for reviewers to
> ignore submissions until publication. Suppose for example you have
> been working on problem Y for months and now you are asked to review a
> paper that solves Y. Are you going to ignore this information and keep
> working on Y despite knowing that you will be beaten? Also, when the
> paper does come out you’ve had a long time to internalize its
> implications.
>
>
> The edge currently given to an insider over an outsider is months if
> the paper is accepted right away; it may be years otherwise.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Some researchers (supposedly from respectful schools) will use preprints as a way to hack the double-blind process and to try to impress possibly hesitating reviewers with their name or the name of their institutions. Preprints usually appear in Google Scholar if you work in that field.
So, by the time the paper gets to the reviewer he or she already knows who wrote it. In my opinion that violates the double-blind process, but the official position is that it does not, at least in conferences where I submit. Is anyone aware of different policies?
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/12 | 874 | 3,810 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm a third year undergraduate right now. I submitted a review on Cell motility, waited 6 months and got a rejection. The first reviewer appointed the manuscript as "publishable with corrections" and gives recommendations. The second reviewer didn't like it at all and made harsh comments. It seems that the first reviewer went throughout a longer analysis of the manuscript (based on his careful comments), while the other discarded it quickly, without too many protocol. The Editor's comment at the end sounds a bit like "We could be friends in the future, but go somewhere else this time".
Although I agree with the majority of their points and I know most papers are rejected nowadays (so I'm not desperate with this issue), I'm confused. Is the papers worthy of revision and resubmission (to another journal) or should I tank it? I've to be careful with duties (Thesis, Assistant job, etc.) because I don't want to spend an extra semester at College due to this nuisance.<issue_comment>username_1: Congratulations on submitting a paper as an undergraduate that one referee found to be publishable with corrections. That's impressive.
Are you really the sole author on a biology paper as an undergraduate? Biology is not my field (I'm a mathematician), but that sounds unusual to me. Even if you are, you must be doing the research under the supervision of some faculty member, right? If so: **ask them for guidance**.
From where I'm standing, I would think that what one referee at a reputable journal finds publishable with corrections should be publishable by another journal, and perhaps even one of roughly equal quality. But you should not take the word of someone from a different field who doesn't know your work or your manuscript. Again: ask for guidance from a faculty member.
P.S.: The fact that the referee with a more balanced recommendation looks like they did more work and understood the paper better is unfortunately a familiar phenomenon to me. The refereeing process in academia is far from perfect: it works well when the referees decide to be conscientious and fair...but there is almost nothing inherent in the process which forces referees to be conscientious and fair or even allows one to discern with anything approaching certainty whether any given referee has been conscientious and fair. It is a bit frustrating. All I can think to do is to try to apply the golden rule and hope for karmic benefits to accrue eventually (if I may mix metaphors slightly).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: First of all, congratulations are in order!
Secondly, without deeper understanding into the field noone here can really tell you whether or not it's worth reworking and resubmitting. Even with deeper knowledge in the field without seeing the manuscript in question, and the reviews, it's hard to say anything. The only person that can and will most likely give you valuable feedback on this is your supervisor, or whoever is last name author on the manuscript.
In general papers typically get rejected more often than they get accepted, sometimes on sound reasons, sometimes on petty differences and small issues, and sometimes based on arrogance of the editors/reviewers (if you happen to bash a technique or an idea they are emotional about). The common practice in those situations is to make the best out of the reviewers' comments and either resubmit to the same journal (unless of course the paper was rejected by the editor based on not being interesting for that journal), or more commonly to another journal.
Sometimes your interpretation of the impact of your work might differ from those of others (like editors) in those cases aiming for a journal with slightly less impact factor, or broader scope, might help.
Good luck!
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/12 | 1,564 | 6,841 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a research scientist, and as part of my role I am expected to perform some form of public outreach and engagement. I enjoy outreach activities and giving public lectures.
I have a suspicion that free public lectures are usually poorly attended. I suspect that the attitude is one of "Well, it's free and you get what you pay for". Certainly the quality of artistic performances that I've seen is strongly correlated with entrance fee.
While it is a reasonable expectation that my Faculty would pay for the costs of lecture room hire, advertising, possibly even tea and biscuits, I wonder if there is an advantage of charging a nominal fee to attend, to overcome the low-quality perception of a free lecture.<issue_comment>username_1: I doubt exclusivity as represented by an entrance fee would attract people to a lecture. After al, it is the subject that is of importance. thus the advertisement is key and the way you set your topic in a wider perspective. If the topic concern people such as climate change, environmental issues, medicine to mention a few, people will come. It will be more difficult to attract people to topics they either do not know anything about or are not interested in (or in the worst case, is not widely reported in media). Thus, my negative perspective is that the success of attracting an audience is to a large extent a question of how the topic is known by and an interest of the public.
So, I would advice against charging for the lecture and put all efforts into making the lecture as interesting as possible for the intended audience. And, to do this by coupling the topic to a larger picture that is relevant to the public. And finally, if you do not get a huge audience, it does not mean there is anything wrong with your research or lecture, public interest varies over time and research can have huge relevance for important aspects of society and life without attracting a wide audience.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I remember this issue from my econ 101 class (far too long ago). The teacher said **"As the price of something goes up, demand goes down, all else remaining equal."** A student responded *"But if you increase the price, you increase the 'perceived value' of your offering thus more people will want it then your demand will increase."*
One saw things from a marketing perspective and one saw from an economics perspective.
The teacher, however, responded that **the student's statement is generally only true for luxury items** which demand higher than normal market prices for their category of product.
I believe your thinking is in line with the student in this story. I would not consider a talk from an academic to be a luxury item (even for a 'rockstar academic'). I would go along with Peter in his answer and posdef in the comment: The cheaper (best=free) the lecture, the more likely I am to go and the more likely I am to encourage my friends to go, since they cannot complain about it being too expensive.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I think whether or not charging a fee is a feasible idea depends on the circumstances. There are several factors at play here.
* **Your role.** This is the hearer's primary perception of you. E.g. I think it is quite common that authors who read from their book charge some fee. This would be perceived like the artistic performance you mention, and it is also the case for journalists talking about e.g. political topics. On the other hand, it is really (at least here) uncommon to charge entrance fees for scientific lectures for the public.
* **The topic.** The "norms" of fees for lectures may vary according to your topic.
If you are talking about some medical topic and charge even a nominal fee, I think there is a risk of repelling people more than one could attribute to the fee: you may leave a slightly "fishy" impression that you are talking *for the fee* and thus maybe you are saying what you think the audience wants to hear as opposed to giving an independent opinion. Just like the default opinion is "be cautious" if the lecture were sponsored say, by a pharma company.
I don't think it would matter in this case if the fee is so nominal that it doesn't even cover the rent for the lecture hall. Of course in this case, you could turn the argument and say "I'm charging a fee of you, dear audience, so that I do not need to go to pharma industry for sponsoring".
For topics which are also discussed politically, I think the reasoning should be roughly similar. Though people are used to hearing speakers that have a clear political opinion, and there are scenarios where it would probably be perceived as normal if entrance is charged (see the book author reading).
If on the other hand you are going to give an awesome experimental lecture, I think no concerns about your integrity would be linked to the fee. People may be willing to pay just as they pay the entrance fee for a science museum.
Note that none of these points looks like drawing a larger audience (unless maybe the fees are to cover extra advertisement), just like repelling some or not.
A completely different consideration: **Why not choose a smaller lecture hall?** It is not very pleasant to be in an empty-looking lecture hall, neither for the speaker nor for the audience. Much better if the hall small enough to be well filled. And a slightly overfilled lecture hall leaves the nice impression that far more people did come than were thought to come... May also be creating an impression that this lecture is an insider tip.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: If your work is publicly funded in some way, then your outreach should be free. If attendance is poor, consider finding some other venue for your outreach, such as an event hosted by a school or museum where you will have a more "captive" audience.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: A possibility that I have not seen mentioned: contribute the lecture as part of a fundraiser.
This stems from the belief that while information should be free, the actions of distributing it should not. If you find an organization (possibly even on campus) toward which you are sympathetic and might have such returned because of the subject matter of your lecture, you might offer the lecture as part of a fundraising effort, requesting a minimal contribution.
This may achieve both goals of increasing its perceived value (as suggested elsewhere in this thread) and having you perform more of a service than just delivering information. A side benefit is that the recipient organization normally will handle the logistics of scheduling the talk and getting the audience.
Check with your university on approved ways of doing this: I have not done anything like this in this millenium, so the rules may have changed.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/12 | 1,364 | 6,132 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm already in the second year of my PhD studies and my advisor insists on pursuing a very vague track, in order to produce *some* results that *may* be publishable. The problem is that the topic itself was extensively studied in the past two decades and there's little maneuver space without overlapping with others' past ideas (it's in applied Computer Science). My adviser seems to be constrained by his grant committee to have a solution for the topic's problem using a certain kind of technique that will be outperformed by other, more specific algorithms right from the start. Although it has other benefits, they're not interesting for this particular topic (since they're not going to be used in any way).
To put it simple, how can you tell your advisor that what they want you to do is like killing flies with TNT and then have the denotation site rebuilt in order to get rid of those flies? (in an elegant way, of course).
I should mention that my advisor has a different area of expertise than the one chosen for my PhD program and often seems not to having the slightest hints on what state of the art means for that particular field and why it is important not to reiterate past methods and algorithms just because they can be applied in a slightly different field from the one they were initially proposed for.<issue_comment>username_1: I believe you are rushing ahead of yourself. In popular areas as applied CS, all areas one way or another may be considered overcrowded. Take any hot topic right now and you are going to see multiple publications with incremental updates / improvements. Still, a new dataset or a new test case ignites new research and so-on. No CS problem may be considered entirely solved. The fastest algorithm may be impossible to use for some datasets, its preprocessing may not scale and slower algorithms may be more parallelizable and more attractive to use. New hardware (CUDA / multiprocessor chips) change the way we write algorithms and so-on. There is a not a single criteria for what is the "best" solution. Stil, this is something you cannot know just by a literature survey.
Have you actually implemented any of the previous solutions to get a grasp of their advantages / disadvantages? Will you be able tomorrow to implement on your src code the state-of-the-art in this suggested problem or you assume it is too perfect to improve (to avoid the trouble of actually doing the implementation). Have you asked /contacted any of the authors if they can provide datasets or binaries for their solutions? Have you actually created multiple datasets to test previous solutions (and yours)? Or is everything just in your head. If yes, you must get them out of your head and into your PC.
If you actually implemented a quick and dirty (1-2 months) implementation of your advisor's suggestion, get some insight of how it behaves and 100% confirmed that your results are much worse than state-of-the-art solutions then no one (including your advisor) will object to you changing direction (no one likes dead ends). But this time will not be wasted. You have learnt what went wrong, you improved your coding skills and you see the research area more clearly. Maybe then, you can even come up with a test-case where your solution is way better than previous works, you perhaps know how to combine this problem with other related sub-problems and you have a solution that works (although not optimally) to partially satisfy the grant's requirements.
So, out of the books / papers and start writing some code!! It is more fun after all.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: It is difficult to say very much about this without knowing some of the details of your research area. However, I think you are probably being a bit harsh on your supervisor, for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, every PhD student has to start somewhere, and replicating work from a good paper, or otherwise solving and already solved problem, is a perfectly reasonable way to getter a better understanding of the area you are working in. You will gain an appreciation for some of the subtleties of the area and some insights that will help inform your future, hopefully more novel, work.
Secondly, if this is part of a funded project then it has to be done. Gaining experience on a funded project, especially if you can collaborate with others, is good training for your future career and a good way to make contact with people you might work with in future. It may also be that follow-on funding from this work could become part of your own future work on your PhD.
Thirdly, if you can get a publication out of this work, even if it only obliquely relates to your PhD topic, will help you establish a reputation. When you come to your viva, if you have a authored few publications it will be difficult for your examiners to fail you since you have already demonstrated an ability to work at PhD level, as validated by the fact that your papers have been peer-reviewed.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Your supervisor probably has a number of reasons for wanting you to take this work on and it would benefit you to talk these reasons over quite openly. Don't assume that the work has no value!
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: If you have serious doubts about the value and success of your PhD project, try to change the supervisor and the laboratory. It is the job of the supervisor to persuade you that the project will succeed under the normal expected work input from your side.
The supervisor may use arguments like he and his laboratory has multiple published works in this area, there are some preliminary results that show good prospects, it has never been a failed PhD project under his supervision, etc. If heard and proven, these may be reasonable to consider. From the other side, your case as described looks miserable, if you see everything correctly.
Most important, do not try to suggest and push alternative topic yourself as you are not competent to do this. Even if the supervisor would yield at the end, your idea may actually be worse.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/12 | 605 | 2,558 | <issue_start>username_0: When delivering a presentation at an academic interview, what are some keywords which should be included in the title of the presentation? Should the title be in the first person? What are some good examples?
The position I am considering is **assistant professor / lecturer**
I imagine some choices to be:
1. The interview presentation for <NAME>
2. The presentation for lecturer at Uni Awesome by <NAME>
3. <NAME>'S presentation as candidate lecturer at Uni Awesome<issue_comment>username_1: Just throw it out here. Perhaps others can upload their suggested topic slide as well? That would be fun.
I don't like to appear to be overly kissing-up, so I'll opt for toning down the university. My talk would have been broadcasted and posted for a while at the institute so the audience should know why they are here. So I'll just focus on up-playing my topic and who I am.
It'd be prudent to clarify with the hiring committee chair on the format and topics to be covered. But beyond that, just be at ease with the format stuff; focus on the contents. Be very, very certain that you cover just enough background to show you can think in breadth and depth, explain what your research questions are, and present your methods and results in alignment with your questions, and state briefly the implication. For job talk, leave a few minutes to elaborate how your work can grow into your career path, and highlight potential synergistic collaboration with some hot areas that your target institute is good at (e.g. "I'll also love to collaborate with the specialists at your Marine Dietary Assessment Center to cast a more critical look at the diet-obesity association.") You'll need to read their website/reports up on that. Find some friends, colleagues, and mentors to sit in your practice sessions.
Best of luck!
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: You don't need to include *any* of the proposed titles in your presentation. They all come across as stilted and affected, and are entirely unnecessary.
Instead, if this is a public presentation, treat it as you would any other such presentation: indicate the title of your talk as you normally would have it, and so on.
If this is the "private" presentation to the faculty, then you should give it a title representing your current and future research interests. You don't need to say "what" the presentation is for—again, the location of the talk should be sufficient.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/02/12 | 1,965 | 8,550 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a lecturer at university that I find very hard to understand. My lectures are taught in English, but my lecturer is of East Asian origin, and English is not his first language.
I find the lectures incredibly hard to follow, just trying to understand what is being said requires a substantial effort, and I find the material is challenging in any case.
There is *no textbook* for the course, but we are given printouts of the lecture slides that are used in the lectures (six to each side of an A4 page). While the lecture slides do contain the material, they don't explain it like a good lecturer would.
I've spoken to my tutor about the course, telling him that I find it very hard to follow the lecturers. Many of my peers feel a similar way to how I do.
Finally, let me point out that I bear the lecturer no ill will; I just want to do well on the course.<issue_comment>username_1: Partially this will depend on how specific the course is. If this is a general "Graduate level intro to X" class, my first suggestion is to look for an equivalent course provided on one of MOOC sites. For instance, if your course was an introduction to machine learning, you might have a look at Andrew Ng's [course](https://www.coursera.org/course/ml).
At the graduate level however, its entirely possible that the material you're being taught is difficult or impossible to find online (it could be a professor's seminar course afterall, in his or her specific research area). If this is the case, consider asking the instructor for more resources. He may know a good textbook from when he learned the material, or might be able to suggest lecture notes from another school that are available online. Phrasing this as "I'm looking for more to do and more to read!" can be a good strategy for getting help without offending the instructor, if you are concerned about this.
You might also try talking to other faculty members in this area (if there are any at your school). In my experience, most faculty members are happy to take a little time for one-on-one instruction if you're polite and genuinely interested. This is especially true if you're in the same lab. At minimum, these people may know of resources that your own instructor does not.
Finally, if you have to tough it out, there are good study strategies that you can use. A great starting point is to form a study group with the other students. If they're getting it, they can explain it to you. If not, you can figure it out together, and at least you'll know it's not you alone.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I think you are dodging the more difficult question - should you confront the lecturer about this problem? The answer is definitely **yes**. The lecturer is a professional, he or she will want to gain honest, helpful feedback to improve their performance. They are probably completely unaware that students are finding it difficult to understand the lectures, and they will not become telepathic in time for you to sit your exams. So, be polite and professional about it, but find a way to let them know. Use email if you have to. And in the mean time search out Google Scholar to gain a better understanding of the material.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: As a lecturer in Asia, I appreciate what you are saying. I have some colleagues who are Asian who are quite clear when they speak English and others with whom I require a minute or two to even recognize when they are speaking English because their accent is so strong. You have to work with what you've got.
While you could confront your lecturer, as username_2 said in an answer, you need to be delicate about this. The lecturer could find you condescending or insulting. Even if the lecturer does not think you are being purposefully hurtful, making a lecturer self-conscious about his accent might make him an even worse lecturer (of course, it could help, depending on his personality).
I would recommend talking to the lecturer and simply say something like this: **Hi teacher, I'm finding it necessary to read more about this topic in order to do well in your class. Could you point me in the direction of some reading material that I can use to improve my understanding of your subject?** (then stop talking)
Once you have the reading materials, focus your learning there, perhaps with some genuine emails to your lecturer, if he allows.
Even the lecturers I've met with horrible English will happily go out of their way to find some material for you to read. Either they will recommend a textbook, some articles, or they will have some material they have collected on their own. I don't believe I have ever met a university lecturer who would be offended by this approach nor have I met one who would not support a student with such a request.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: Try getting familiar with the terms used in this area. Our first DSP lecture was about "disco time systems", took us half an hour to realize it was "discrete".
I would aks if he/she could use slides with some bullet points on it. Do not mention "everyone" has problems understanding him/her, this might be embarrassing because you talked about it with others. Just say you have (sometimes) problems following.
No experiences or assumptions made about how this is perceived in asian cultures.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: I have seen this problem solved two ways.
1. Get the professor to write extensive slides, which he can use in class. Many professors just read slides they preprepared for the lecture anyway, and this is the best thing a professor such as this can do to increase his understandability.
2. Get transferred to, or just start attending, other currently ongoing versions of this class. Often the class is being taught by multiple professors concurrently. Often they even cooperate and teach the same things on the same day.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_6: Is there a class representative? Many universities get the students to elect someone. If there is such a person, there should be some arrangement to meet with the lecturer to discuss general issues.
The representative could take an approach along the lines of 'several of the international students are having difficulty understanding your accent and are finding the slides are not detailed enough to capture all the information. Would it be possible to provide links to readings in the slides and/or slow down a little when speaking'.
If there is no representative, then perhaps you could ask the tutor to approach the lecturer. You would probably need to get a few people to confirm to the tutor that it's not just you. Alternatively, the tutor could say to the lecturer that several students are not understanding and he/she would like to recommend some reading materials and could the lecturer provide the tutor with something for each topic.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_7: As a lecturer who tries to make the courses understandable to students, I find this situation horrifying. I only hope this is a graduate course, for two reasons: 1) there could indeed be a problem with available lecturers for the specific class you are taking and b) the classes on graduate courses are usually smaller and the lecturers more available for 1-to-1 discussions.
If it is a graduate course, perhaps you can ask the lecturer or your classmates for additional material. If it is introduction to AI, then I don't understand the warning not to find additional resources: the field is so old that there are literary hundreds on textbooks on this topic. What on earth could not be relevant for "introduction to artificial intelligence"?
If it is an undergraduate course, then you have a real problem, but perhaps even simpler solution. Disregard what lecturer has told you and get a good book or two on introduction to AI. You apparently have slides, so you should have very good idea of which topics are covered, and find a book that covers most of it. Learn using the book, and use the classes to just keep tabs on the lecturer's progress.
Now, in the long term this person should not be teaching undergraduate course. Not all people are good speakers and teachers, and this can do real damage to the institution where you are studying. There is perhaps no way to solve this by students, but faculty themselves should have enough reason to prevent this guy from teaching again. It is hard and painful, but he may be excellent scientist and he should work as a scientist, not lecturer.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/02/12 | 1,879 | 7,786 | <issue_start>username_0: After my PhD (Mechanical engineering) in 2013, I have been employed as a "visiting assistant professor-TERM" for 2013-2014 at the same university (in the USA). In this time I have been applying for several post-doc and faculty positions all around the world. The following fortuitous situation has now developed:
* I was interviewed for a post doc position at a famed lab in Europe and received a job offer. This job offer is contingent on me getting security clearance for this lab and getting a long term visa. One of the ground rules laid out was I would not accept other post-doc positions.
* Prior to this post-doc interview, I had interviewed for faculty position at US universities. Fortuitously a few weeks after this post-doc job offer, I have been offered full time faculty position at two other universities in the USA.
* Now the reason I did apply for post-doc jobs is that they would help me build my network, publish more and help with an eventual faculty position!
* **I am in some moral quandary now:** I know that I have given the post-doc PI my word and I will not renege on it. However, the faculty positions are definitely more lucrative and long term.
* I accepted the post-doc job because I was asked to make a decision soon and since I am a foreigner, timing is everything for me and a "job in hand is worth two in the bush" `Groans at quotation`.
The options (likely and unlikely) that present themselves to me are:
* **Unlikely:** Postpone the faculty positions to Fall of 2015. I don't think these universities would want to do that.
* **Likely:** Angle for better pay/better title at the post-doc jobs.
I am hoping that given the experience in this forum, people could throw some light on this situation.
**Edit: Advantages and disadvantages of these positions**
**Advantages and Disadv. of Postdoc:**
* (+) Great change of work, reputable lab, exposure to different work culture, deadlines, work pressure, expanding professional network on both sides of atlantic
* (-)1-2 years only, relatively poor pay
**Adv. and Disadv. of faculty position**
* (+) Faculty position nuf' said. Much Better pay, "long" term
* (-) Will miss out on once in a lifetime post doc at great lab<issue_comment>username_1: Maybe I shouldn't start the answer with the judgey part, but if you don't feel like you can accept the faculty positions because of your previous commitment, why the hell didn't you pull your name from consideration the moment you accepted the European job? On my personal list of academic job hunting sins, not withdrawing your name from a position you've decided you can't accept is much worse than declining a postdoc offer for a TT. So, there's really no ethical choice at this point, so you may as well do what's best for you long term.
That said, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the possibility of starting the TT job with a delay. This is very common in mathematics (my field); I've done it, and I know dozens of other people who have as well. I can imagine reasons it would be harder in mechanical engineering, but it's worth a shot. An important thing to remember as a job candidate is that once you have the offer, the tables are reversed. They've shown their hand, they've made a time, financial and psychic investment in you, and their other candidates are slowly slipping away as they wait for your answer. They really want you to say yes, so a concession like letting you take an initial leave is a small one. After all, they don't even need to pay for it! Universities are very flexible about letting you do things if they don't have to pay for them.
I mean, really they should want you to do this, since you'll come to them better trained, with more fresh ideas, and a wider perspective. So sell it on those grounds, and I bet you'll succeed.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: It's an inherent risk when hiring good postdocs that they could get a faculty job offer and leave. Take the faculty job offer and decline the postdoc offer. It's what almost everyone in your position would do.
(Trying to get a year off from the faculty job so you can work at the postdoc job for one year as promised is a very reasonable thing to do first. But I think it's generally a mistake to decline a faculty offer in favor of a postdoc job, unless you are very confident you can get an equal or better faculty offer in the near future.)
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: A job offer which is contingent on a visa and (especially) on a security clearance is not a present job offer but the promise of a future job offer if certain conditions are met. I had a PhD student who wanted to accept such a job, but his security clearance didn't come through in time for him to start the job (note: I'm not saying that he failed his security clearance; it just wasn't resolved in time, even though he started the procedure months in advance). Thank goodness my student was also pursuing other job offers: he is now in a one-year temporary position with the intent to start the aforementioned postdoc next year...still assuming his security clearance comes through.
I am a little confused about the "no other postdoc offers" clause. Surely it cannot be that *just by applying for that job* you promised not to apply for other postdocs? (Why would anyone apply for a job under those conditions??) And as I understand what you've wrote, you haven't signed any forms or officially accepted anything but only given your word to someone that you intend to take the job. (If you did intend to take this job, then as username_1 writes, you certainly should have written back to other jobs that interviewed you and informed them that you are off the market. That was a mistake. I wouldn't beat yourself up about it too much though: none of us gets much experience in these matters from the point of the job applicant. Later we get the rest of our career looking at things from the other side, and "the right thing to do" becomes increasingly clear.)
If you haven't formally accepted the postdoc -- and you can't do so before a security clearance comes through, in my understanding -- and the tenure-track job is much more desirable to you, than I think you are legally 100% in the clear in taking the tenure-track job. Ethically speaking: well, you haven't acted in the best possible way, as mentioned above, and I would not lightly go back on my word to a senior academic who did me a great service....so it shouldn't be a light decision, but in my opinion it would still be understandable and ultimately acceptable if you took the tenure-track job under these circumstances.
It would indeed be a classier move to explore the option of deferring the tenure track job and taking the postdoc for one academic year, or even one semester. Deferring a tenure track offer is quite common in the contemporary academic world: in my department (mathematics, University of Georgia) about half of our recent hires have completed a postdoc and arrived one year later, and recently we had someone *start* a one-year postdoc at UGA with a tenure-track job waiting for her afterwards (which she did then go on to take). You should understand though that that simply may not be possible for reasons having little or nothing to do with their desire to have you: the decision will probably be made rather on their ability to find personnel to cover your academic responsibilities.
Finally, it may also be a good idea to communicate your thoughts to your putative supervisor. Maybe she will be totally okay with it, and with her blessing your conscience should be pretty clear. Or maybe changing your mind will cause trouble for her in a way that you don't see. Either way it seems respectful to keep her informed.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer] |
2014/02/12 | 523 | 2,351 | <issue_start>username_0: If research was done and paper was mostly written at institute A, but then it finally got accepted while the author moved to institute B, say, 3 years later. Should the affiliation of the author be
1. Only Institute A: because 95% of the support was from here, and work was done here
2. Both Institute A and B: in some sense, both institutes supported the work
3. Only Institute B: this is where the author is affiliated at the moment
related: [Changing affiliation on publication](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11151/changing-affiliation-on-publication)<issue_comment>username_1: Firstly, **some journals have specific rules about what counts as an affiliation**. So if the journal has such rules you should follow them. These rules are variable, and I have seen all three of the options included. In my opinion, affiliation should match your current contact information **and**, on top of that, match any affiliation where you conducted the research, if possible. Note this means options (2) is best. If the journal has a rule precluding option (2), be sure to thank any institution you don't put as an affiliation in the acknowledgment section. All universities deserve credit for what they contributed. That said, in my experience the majority of people in this situation (not a huge sample size), use the affiliation that either matches their current contact information or their contact information from when they submitted the paper. However, this doesn't mean it is what they should do.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: There are no fixed rules but I would opt for your option (2). The affiliation is intended to aid in facilitating contact with the author but is of course useful to a department to show count the paper as a product from that institute. By listing your former address first indicating that that is where you did most of the work and then adding the second as *present address* provides the best and useful information for all parts. Option (1) means your present location is not disclosed which is a missed opportunity to locate you. Option (3) has the disadvantage that your former department are not associated with the work you performed there. So although all are acceptable, (2) would be the best (most polite and useful) way in your situation.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer] |
2014/02/12 | 3,772 | 15,729 | <issue_start>username_0: There are now many different ways to increase your research visibility: Google Scholar, laboratory/faculty/industry or even personal websites, and LinkedIn, to name a few.
In your opinion, how does [**ResearchGate**](https://www.researchgate.net/) fit into all of this? Is it really a good way of increasing the visibility of your publications and finding fellows with common research interests, or is it just a "waste of time"?<issue_comment>username_1: I personally find one aspect of [ResearchGate](http://www.researchgate.net) very useful, although I find that its benefit for me is only in small part due to any effect it has on my research visibility. Perhaps others can say more. But I do find it very helpful for keeping up with the state-of-the-art in my area.
I’m in an interdisciplinary social/medical science field where people publish in a very wide range of journals, and I try to keep track of several pieces of literature. So for me [ResearchGate](http://www.researchgate.net), in letting me follow researchers to see what they’ve published recently, is a nice complement to journal Tables of Contents. It’s a nice way to keep track of what others are working on without too much effort. I choose to follow both researchers I’ve met and strangers who recently published a useful article and might publish more in the same area.
To do this, I have the settings organized so that I am not following any “interesting Topics”, only people. This avoids having questions and answers in my live feed (which I find totally useless). Consequently, my live feed contains only new articles other academics in my fields are adding, and going through this from time to time in a moment of procrastination is fantastically useful. Of course, using ResearchGate in this way is only worth it if a large-ish proportion of researchers in your sub-fields are on the site.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: My experience with [ResearchGate](http://www.researchgate.net) has been negative. I was searching for a paper online, and a [ResearchGate](http://www.researchgate.net) page came up. I signed up as a member because they promised to send me a pdf of the paper. They never sent it and instead sent unrelated spam.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: It's hard to predict how this will develop in the future. As is, I have yet to hear any positive success stories from my peers. **All I've heard of ResearchGate are complaints about their invitation spam**.
If you sign up (or are already signed up), make sure to **carefully check all settings**. There are some "hidden" settings that will repeatedly send out "Invitations" and even "Invitation reminders" to your peers (make sure to disable this right at signup time, before "claiming" a single paper!). You can imagine that if your peer gets a dozen of them each week, he will get annoyed. And ReseachGate uses your name for the invitation, so he will **get annoyed at you**.
**Before "requesting" a paper on Researchgate, make sure they have signed up**. Otherwise, use regular email (even better, just use regular email right away!)
When you request a paper from a non-user, they will be sent an *invitation letter*, but they **cannot answer without joining**: ResearchGate does not include contact information in your request!?!
Other than that, I have the impression that ResearchGate is mostly used by students, not by established researchers. Therefore, do not expect many high-quality interactions to happen.
Most of my peers that were on RG once, seem to have left. This is not a good sign.
If they don't manage to get high-quality interactions to happen soon, their name may end up remaining associated with spam. They may have been too aggressive at boosting their user numbers quickly. The **overall idea is good**, but they need to find a way to get *quality contributions, not only quantity*. As is, I see them only strong on the quantitative side so far...
Honestly, in my opinion, there is one thing really important for the visibility of your research:
1. Make it available. Publish with open access or a publisher where you can put the preprint on your webpage. Make sure that **Google Scholar indexes** it because that is what *everybody* I know uses for searching literature. You must get Google Scholar to return a PDF link for your article.
2. Make it available. Also put data sets, detailed descriptions, source code, etc. on your web page; offer collaboration.
If you make it easy for others to build upon your work, they are more likely to do so. In particular, you *must* make it easier to build upon your work, than on alternatives. Making an RG profile does not really help; effectively it just means your data is spread to one more site. Instead, put a lot of information on your homepage.
[Here is an example.](http://yann.lecun.com/) **I'm convinced that one of the reasons why he has been very successful is that you can download data and software and tutorials right on his homepage**. Compare to his [ResearchGate profile](http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yann_Lecun) (I was even surprised he has one) - it's a dead duck, absolutely useless. A Google Scholar Profile may be much more useful, as it will be linked from any article, making it *easy* for people to reach your other publications. Again, the [same example](http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WLN3QrAAAAAJ): Google Scholar does a much better job at providing an automatic publication list for you.
IMHO, Google Scholar is a must, *because* the profile will make it easier to get updated on your other publications. I visit Scholar profiles quite often; in particular to see the latest and the most cited work of an author of which I *already* have discovered a good article.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: [ResearchGate](http://www.researchgate.net) is pretty much like [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com) or [Academia.edu](http://www.academia.edu). I prefer Academia.edu because it doesn't send me an email every time someone looks at my profile. At the same time, Academia.edu doesn't look as visually aesthetic as ResearchGate. On the other hand, you have Linkedin which is for professionals, not really academics. However, a lot of academics are now setting up their profiles because Linkedin is most likely the first place employers or other researchers go first.
In my opinion, it's not bad to have an account in as many places as possible to allow as many people as possible to see your profile. You can also sign up on Google Scholar and it will assign your papers to your profile, or you can insert papers that Google does not find.
Basically, it's entirely up to you and how you want your information to be spread!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: I don't really think that [ResearchGate](http://researchgate.net) is a waste of time.
EDIT:
As this answer was being downvoted because it was not originally focused on [ResearchGate](http://researchgate.net), following I try to explain why this social network is not a waste of time for me.
You can already search for journal articles and or researchers in [Google Scholar](http://scholar.google.com/) and [Scopus](http://www.scopus.com/), to name just a few. [ResearchGate](http://researchgate.net) gives a social approach to it. In[ResearchGate](http://researchgate.net) you can *follow* researchers, so that you can get notified when any of them publishes new papers, for instance. Moreover, you can set your profile and tell other researchers what you are dealing with, what topics you are interested in, and so on.
I think it could still be quite more useful if some functionalities were added (maybe adding the ability to create, announce, and promote à-la-Facebook *events*, which means conferences, workshops, symposiums, etc., for instance), but it is actually becoming *the social network* for scientific researchers, in my humble perception.
THE REST OF THE ORIGINAL ANSWER:
I personally recommend having your own academic profile on the following social networks/tools:
* [ReseachGate](http://researchgate.net), It is nearly the [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com) for researchers, so you just *must* be in.
* A personal website (better if it is hosted by your University) - With all your contact information, teaching and research info (the info that you consider to be interesting for those people that are looking for you on the Internet). Keep it as clean and simple as possible.
* LinkedIn - More professional than academic. One doesn't know when it can be useful.
Optional but also interesting:
* [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com), A simple and fast way to share short messages, interesting pieces of info, etc. with your *audience*, whoever they are.
* [About.me](http://About.me) or similar, A kind of landing page that you can configure to show all your very basic information, together with links to all your Internet profiles, etc. all with a minimalist and nice touch. You can add it to your e-mail signature.
* A blog, Basically a place where you can say things. It could be integrated into your website.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_6: ResearchGate is a counterproductive vehicle for the spread of publication news. It does an incredibly sloppy job of assembling information on scholars (e.g., catches only about 350 of my over 1000 citations at ISI and 3500 at Google Scholar and Hazing's Publish or Perrish). It lures one in with an appeal to recognition of other authors who are friends or co-authors.
Perhaps its operations are guided by the old Russian adage that "if something is worth doing, it's worth doing wrong."
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: I was never a member of ResearchGate or tried to be one. But at one point I was spammed with emails from ResearchGate of former collaborators, with whom I published or did not publish, and it still goes on. There are also researchers included who I personally don't know.
I was asked constantly to confirm the authorship of some of my papers. This turned me completely off, and I think it is simply a spam company. A company, which wants to do serious business does not use this kind of method.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: I think that ResearchGate can be a useful tool to promote your research and contact peers, **if you invest quite some time** in it. It does not happen automatically. You must work to find people with relevant work for you, and follow them (and also occasionally unfollow some people) - so that you get a minimally lively and relevant news feed.
As scholarly communication goes, until now I have only received a letter from a professor via RG, but he was an established figure, so I was really happy to get a message from him. I also promptly started to read his older publications which were great, so this was an added benefit. That is, I think the best advantage of ResearchGate consists in how it creates **alternative paths for exploring the scholarship universe**: instead of jumping from text to text you jump from text to author to text. This is more lively and it leads you on surprising paths, sometimes.
Also, I enjoy finding established scholars from my interest topics on RG (and Academia.edu), browsing through all their publications, and clicking "Follow". I like the idea of a connection with them - especially when, occasionally, they "follow" back. It's a variety of entertainment, I guess.
Still, in terms of visibility, I think that my publications do get more views and downloads compared to my personal site - well, partly because I don't know how many they get there. At least, I can say that it gives me **occasional joy when I see some view & download numbers** on ResearchGate. (All these considerations also apply to Academia.edu, which has a much nicer - or not so evil- marketing strategy).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_9: I think it is worth mentioning that ResearchGate's policy on invitations has improved. This is what they say on the matter:
>
> One way to make sure that your publications gain maximum exposure among your peers is by inviting your co-authors to join you on ResearchGate when you add publications to your profile. If you’d like your co-authors to join you, just make sure that the Invite my co-authors to ResearchGate box is checked when you’re adding publications and, where possible, an invitation will be sent to them. By clicking Preview, you can also choose which of your co-authors you would like to invite. Invitations will only be sent to the co-authors selected; ResearchGate does not email your co-authors on your behalf without your knowledge or consent.
>
>
> You can customize your Invitation settings at any time. To do this, go to your Invitation settings and choose which of your co-authors you would like to invite by selecting them from the list. If you would like to disable invitations entirely, simply click Turn off all. If you have turned off invitations, you can always turn them back on again by selecting Turn on all.
> We take personal data and anti-spam policies very seriously; our processes are compliant with European and U.S. regulations and are audited on a regular basis.
>
>
>
There are still plenty of problems with the site. Here is an extensive list of things a computer scientist thinks should be addressed <http://ptbcs.blogspot.ca>. He seems to be keeping the list updated with new problems or improvements.
ResearchGate has only sent invitations from me to two people. One of those I was unhappy that they had sent an invitation as it was not clear they would do that. But I immediately realised this would be an issue and disabled the setting.
I think ResearchGate has huge potential and many benefits if used appropriately. But as @username_8 mentioned, you need to invest some time setting things up, making sure the settings are appropriate. Facebook went through similar problems with privacy and has since improved. When I first joined the site several years ago, I was hugely disappointed and quickly realised that I would have to wait and see if it amounted to anything. I finally feel like the site is going down the right path. Most of my colleagues and peers are now on the site, I see their citation updates and the metrics are improving. I recognise the site's current major flaws, but am optimistic about its future role in the research community.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_10: ### For me, it's an asset.
I've been using ResearchGate for about three years now. At first, I would also get a lot of emails from them: Weekly stats, "people are noticing your work", are you an author of this paper?". I played with my settings and the undesirable ones stopped; completely, or somehow my junk filter picked it up. **Now I pretty much get no email from them.**
On the positive side:
* I *have* found interesting and useful papers on RG which I didn't find elsewhere. (I mean, perhaps I could have, but I found them there first without knowing what I was looking for exactly.)
* I *have* used it to request and obtain the full text of papers about whose existence I knew but didn't have publicly-accessible full text.
* A few people who are close to my field have written me due in part or in full to noticing me on RG.
* Several people (not as many as I would like...) download papers of mine every week.
So there. It's a net asset for me.
Caveat: Some people claim that seemingly-unrelated solicitations to publish in obscure venues - which I do receive - are due to my RG presence or even due to RG passing on aggregated data to such advertisers. I can't say to what degree this is the case. But even this possibility does not change my bottom line view.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/12 | 586 | 2,653 | <issue_start>username_0: I have been working on a graduate level research project, with the bonus of being listed as a co-author if I make a significant contribution (which I likely will). I am still an undergraduate, but have significant experience (professional and educational) in the field.
My question is: Is this a big deal? If I go to grad school in that field, would this allow me to obtain a PhD quicker?
What if I don't go to grad school, but choose to work in the field, would being listed as co-author on a research project of this level hold enough weight to warrant listing on my resume?<issue_comment>username_1: It doesn't exactly "allow you to get a Ph.D quicker". However, you would have more experience in academic writing than if you hadn't contributed to the writing in the paper. Writing a paper isn't just "writing" a report - a lot of analysis, interpretation, and technical work goes into papers and these are skills you want to have as a Ph.D student. Being a co-author on a paper will make your application stand out.
If you go into any job, you can list this as a project that you have worked on. If you are familiar with the contents of the paper, then you can talk about it as if it was another project that you've worked on. Having your name on the paper is verifiable and can look pretty impressive especially if you are familiar with the details.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The benefit will hopefully be that you get to learn how to prepare and write a scientific paper. If you continue to graduate school then having been involved at this level will obviously be a positive. If you are not planning to continue with research you will still benefit from learning the process since academic writing is something you will likely continue doing in a professional role. In addition you will have some insights into how papers are written which may help you read and assess papers and reports. Since communication through written reports is key for any academic work this will be of use to you. It may not count for very much when applying for a job but you should also consider the skills you will improve when taking part in such a process.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: It won't let you get a PhD quicker, but it will improve your chances of getting into PhD programs. It will also give you valuable experience in the process of writing a paper and getting it published. This could result in you publishing more papers during your grad school career (because you'll be better at it), which could improve your chances of getting a desirable job after you finish your PhD.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/12 | 1,716 | 7,048 | <issue_start>username_0: Let's assume that I've contacted professors in the United States and referred to them appropriately as "Dr. Smith" or "<NAME>" based on their having attained a Ph.D.
**If they respond to me informally, should I continue to address them formally? If so, for how long?**<issue_comment>username_1: "Dr. [Last name]" is more common and also more versatile because it covers people with a doctoral degree but not involved with academic organization. If you do know that person does teach or you are/were in his/her class, then "Professor [Last name]" works as well.
The formality can be toned down when the other side writes something like "Please call me [First name]." Otherwise, keep using "Dr."
If you feel that it's safe to be more collegial while the other side still keeps addressing you formally as Mr. Hundt or Dr. Hundt, you can take the initiative to say "Please call me Andrew." Usually, a socially viable person (notice that social skills can be scarce among PhDs, but give it some patience and eventually this will happen) should reply and say, "Please call me [First name] as well." If not, look pass the awkwardness and keep using Dr. [Last name] until perhaps you two get to meet and be more acquainted during the meeting.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: For email, the general rule of thumb is to address the person in the same way in which they sign their emails to you. If they always sign as "Professor" or "Doctor", you should address them by the same title. If they sign informally; i.e. "Chris" or "Dr. J.", address them by that name.
It gets a little more complicated when speaking face to face, and here I tend to err on the side of formality, and use Doctor or Professor unless and until they ask me to do otherwise. As @Penguin\_Knight states above, you may need to take the initiative and ask them to call you by *your* first name and hope they get the hint.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: This is so highly dependent on particular universities -- let alone particular regions -- that it is probably best just to ask students and faculty what is the culture at their particular university.
I will give one example. At most American universities you should begin by calling all your instructors by "Dr." or "Professor", although in some cases your instructors will be neither one of these and should probably say so in response. For anyone who is either a Doctor (i.e., has a doctoral degree) or a Professor (in the United States this usually means "is on the tenure track", but already there are variations...), it seems a bit rude not to use one of these two appellations. When students call me "Mr. Clark" I assume they are just forgetting that they are not in high school anymore. But whether "Dr." or "Professor" is preferred is highly variable. At my university it seems that "Dr." is the go-to appellation: I have even heard other faculty refer to me as "Dr. Clark" when talking to students. Nevertheless I prefer being called "Professor": getting my PhD was nice. Getting a tenure-track job took place three years later, and that's when I really made it big. However at some places you call people "Professor" because you are not sure whether they have a doctorate, and for the ones who do, "Dr." is the superior honorific. Et cetera...
(I believe I learned some of this from <NAME>'s *Automathography*, which I highly recommend to all academics and not just to mathematicians: to mathematicians I would *require* that you read it if I could! He goes on to explain more nuances than I did above.)
What you call your instructor also depends on things like their age, their gender, and honestly perhaps even their ethnic background. As a tenured Caucasian male, the desired aura of authority is already there: I don't have to do anything special to summon it. On the other hand I am still "young" -- closer in age to some of my students than some of my colleagues -- so if I met a student in a non-academic context I would not want any deferential treatment. (This is also a generational thing: telemarketers, phone company employees and so forth now call me and refer to me by my first name, and I wonder where our civilization is heading...) I am totally okay being called by my first name by any university student. Whether they are similarly okay doing so is another question, but I encourage this behavior particularly from former students and in contexts outside out of the university campus. If I were 65 years old and wearing a suit, calling me by my first name would seem less appropriate. (In fact I had to steel myself at first to call all of my colleagues by their first names, even the ones who were famous mathematicians before I was born. But that is definitely contemporary American academic culture: any of my colleagues who calls me "Dr. Clark" is signalling that they want to strangle me.)
I feel that it is especially important not to use less formal appellations for female faculty. I covered a colleague's class a few weeks ago, and one of the students asked a question, beginning with "<NAME> said..." And my answer began "Well, first things first: it's **Dr. Matic**..." I then got the student to agree that that was the correct thing to say before moving on to address the question. Also I feel honorbound to stand more carefully on honorifics when addressing minorities. It is sad to me that contemporary American society has not gotten past the point where this seems necessary...but it hasn't yet.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: By definition, Doctor is reserved for individuals who have completed their doctorate.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)>)
I would think most educators that have taken on the arduous task of completing their PhD would be offended by students addressing non-PhD professors as 'Dr.'. Although there are several PhDs I know who prefer NOT to be addressed as 'Dr.', I would never make that assumption unless specifically requested to refrain from doing so.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: Honestly, I have always assumed the "appropriate" thing to do would be to call them by their title until they tell you to just call them John or whatever. This can drag out quite a bit, though, but in my mind, if someone is addressing me with a title, and I feel they can address me by my first name, I'll definitely say so. So I suppose the same could be said for faculty. If they feel that a change is appropriate, they should or would tell you "Please call me John", but if they stay silent on the matter, then that would imply they feel it's fitting for Dr.'s or Prof.'s still being thrown in the mix.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: I may be unaccustomed to customs at US universities, but if someone addresses me "informally", i.e. with my first name or "Hey", (that was the point of the question, right?) I will do the same towards him.
A professor expecting anything else should quit university, and become a ~~high~~ middle school teacher.
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/02/12 | 3,174 | 13,238 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a US-based researcher who recently accepted a postdoc in Sweden. My offer letter states that I will be entitled to a 6-week annual vacation during my appointment. Being from the US where I have been in charge of structuring my own schedule (except for teaching), this obviously confuses me for several reasons.
1. First, I am not sure if we are legally entitled to vacation days in the US, but even if we were, I have never seen people officially take "vacations" in the US. This is, in my mind what school administrative staff or office workers do, not academics. Over the past years, I have structured my work and vacation time around my teaching schedule and figured out when to rest and when to work on my own without having to count days or ask my department's permission. Of course nobody cares when I take vacations as long as my vacation time does not overlap with my teaching schedule.
2. So the fact that my new department is emphasizing "legal vacation hours" is a little strange. What does vacations mean when I will likely be spending whatever free time, rushing to finish my manuscript, grant proposals, or course prep anyways?
3. Also, does the fact that the school is counting vacation days mean that I have to be in my office during "normal work hours"? I've never heard anything sillier, because for academics, number of hours in office does not equate productivity, and I actually like switching up my work location time to time rather than being stuck in an office! (In the US, I only show up to school about 3 days a week-- mostly when I have to teach and want to be in office. Other days, I just go to a local cafe to write. If possible, I'd like to keep things this way...)
I'm wondering if anyone can clarify what academic vacation means in Europe and if it really differs from the US?<issue_comment>username_1: Welcome to European vacation regulations :-).
You are entitled to X days of vacations per year. Literally. There's no hook to it. You simply ask the employer, basically your direct supervisor (head of the group, department, dean?), and if there's no reason to say "no", they will approve it. Of course taking time off during days when you are teaching needs to be explained very very well, but if your vacation days do not interfere with teaching obligations, or similar duties, you will be given the time off. That's it.
Normally at universities, unless you have a very fussy boss, nobody cares when you take vacations time (still recall non-interference with teaching), but most people take several weeks off in the summer and people with a family also during school vacation periods (country dependent). In companies, the system tends to be stricter, you should plan any longer breaks several months ahead and coordinate with your colleagues so that it does not happen that everybody leaves for two weeks and a company stops. At universities that is a non-issue, though.
Legal vacation time means you are entitled to that time. The employer is obliged to give you that time off. Suppose they will refuse to approve your vacations when you wish to take them (e.g., when you work in agricultural sector you shouldn't leave at the harvest time). In that (rare!) case, they will have to select and offer you another period of (usually at least two weeks of uninterrupted) vacations period some other time in the year.
But there is another potential surprise for you. If you won't take all your vacations in a year, since you are entitled to that time, it will be (in all countries and places I worked, but there might be local differences) shifted into the next year when you will be entitled to the standard X days per year according to the union negotiations PLUS whatever carry-over from the last year. The regulations regarding how far into the future that contingent of vacation days can be pushed differ, but normally the carry-over is useful in the very next year in full. Sometimes you might even be obliged to take it. Because if not, the employer might have a problem - again, you are entitled to vacations. And the employer can even force you take time off in order to use that vacations budget. The reason is that they don't like the idea of accumulating and then even making use of several months of vacations in a row.
As for being in the workplace during working hours, again, regulations differ but most of the time there is at least a certain period (10oo-15oo?) when you are obliged to be there. But in reality at universities I never heard of anybody making any fuss about this (except for Eastern European universities, where it can be a matter of local department politics - but that is of no concern to your case). Think about it as a legal issue. If something happens to you at office hours (a car accident), it might be considered a work-related accident, so the employers try to counter-act that by requiring you to be in the office unless allowed not to.
Later edit:
>
> What does vacations mean when I will likely be spending whatever free time, rushing to finish my manuscript, grant proposals, or course prep anyways?
>
>
>
You structure your time. It doesn't have to be the way you describe. What use does an employer have of burned out and stressed out employees?
Even later edit:
Just for completeness, being entitled to take vacations also means that often you will be able to trade days off for salary. Usually the union contracts regulate, or prevent this, but for example when you are leaving, the employer will either compensate the unused fraction of the annual vacations budget by money, or will force you to take it right before leaving the position - during that time you will receive the regular salary up to the date of leave.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: The parts of the question about vacation days have been answered above. Formally, you're supposed to arrange your vacation days in advance; in practice, this usually means going to the person you report to (e.g., the professor you're working for as a postdoc) a reasonable time in advance and saying, "I was thinking of taking X time off; is that going to be OK?" The answer is usually yes, unless you're supposed to be teaching in that time, in which case you'll need a really good reason to be away and you'll need to arrange cover. "Reasonable" just means, you know, reasonable.
The simple answer to the "Can I work in a cafe instead of my office?" part is that it's up to your employer, so ask them. You will probably find that your employment contract specifies your "normal place of work" as being the university department. However, academic staff are usually trusted to work sufficient hours in a suitable place without being managed in detail. As long as the people you're working with are happy for you to work outside the office, that's fine. If you're working collaboratively with somebody else, you might be expected to spend more time in the office than in cafes, so you're available for discussions but I doubt anyone would demand you work in the office just because "that's where you're supposed to be."
In summary, it's probably not going to be an issue. You and the people you're working with will quickly figure out something you're all comfortable with.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: This answer will just clarify Swedish conditions since that is where you are heading. The following applies to Swedish universities and other state employment:
* A fixed number of days of vacation are given by law and varies a little depending on seniority and other factors. The basic number is 35 workdays a year. If you are employed a shorter time the number decreases directly as the fraction of the time of a year you work.
* Vacation days are salaried and you also receive a smaller amount extra for vacation days.
* You will be asked to place your vacation days in advance. You can always change the dates later.
* You will not be insured for work-place accidents by your employer on your vacation days. This means you should retract vacation days if you actually work when you should be on vacation.
* You cannot save more than 31 days of vacation in total to be carried over from one year to the next.
* When you complete your position, days of vacation not taken will be reimbursed as payment.
* A work week is 40 hours and you should normally be at work. However, there are possibilities to get permission to work from home, particularly during summer.
In reality no-one really cares if you work or not on vacation days but as I stated above there are possible negative effects one should be aware of. No-one cares where and when you work. As a post-doc you will probably not be involved in much bureaucracy and so all you need to figure out is when your collaborators want you to be there and learn the local *modus operandi*.
I would not advice you to be invisible since part of a career in academia means involving yourself in activities and politics of departments. People will probably not be very up-front with their opinions about your presence/absence but will not look very favourable on someone who gets a salary and an office and never shows up. A funny law in Sweden is also the coffee(tea)-break, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. this is a time and place where you socialize with others in the workplace apart from immediate colleagues. You absence from these will not go unnoticed. This will not prevent you from working elsewhere for weeks at a time if you wish but showing some presence outside of mandatory chores will likely be expected.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: [username_3's](https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394/peter-jansson) answer is right on the spot. I'd just add a few more pieces of advice and "exemplary" cases I picked up along the way:
* most people here in Europe will refer to their PhD/postdoc as a *job* rather than *school* (you're not going to school, you're working)
* it's almost the *perfectly evaluated job*: people judge you by how much you produce, not how much time you behind is in you office chair (of course, the "almost" part comes from all the things [username_3](https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394/peter-jansson) already warned you about: you should be there and visible)
* if you have an obligation away from the office, or in some cases, it's simpler to work from home, nobody usually has a problem with it. Last year, I think I had maybe 5-6 days when I did not go to the office at all and worked from hom, and another 5ish when I had obligations in the middle of the day and would spend half a day working from home.
Some of these included after-flue recovery (e.g. I felt fine but was coughing frequently... I worked from home as to not disturb my noise-sensitive officemate), some tasks were just simpler to do from home (some tests etc.).
* People in Europe actually would like you to have free *free* time and not to rush all the time: (this might be a bit special cause I'm in France, but) I strongly suspect that our lab cafeteria is closing at 5:15PM to deprive people of coffee and make them go home.
* This whole "free time" of course does not work: I know people coming to the office around noon and leaving between 10PM and midnight on a regular basis. Nobody minds...
* ... unless you don't have any overlap with your team and especially your supervisor. You should have a schedule that overlaps with their at least partially.
* Where I am, it's not really sunny really often, and there's a lot of people that start missing the sun very soon. I had a friend who would spend every single sunny afternoon in a cafe (working) instead of the office. He was sharing the office with his supervisor -- and it was okay.
* It is very rare for you to be able to take a long chunk of vacations at once (except for 1st year PhDs): precisely cause of deadlines, proposals and other things that wait for nobody.
* One of the most frequent uses of vacation days among European PhD students is extending their conferences and other official travel. The university does not generally mind for which days they buy the plane tickets, so virtually anybody takes a few days up to a couple of weeks of vacation at every cool, exotic and new conference location they're sent to :D
But, basically, you should feel your team/lab dynamics. If it's a very coherent team, you might want to be there for the morning and/or afternoon coffees and lunches between often and always, otherwise you get a bit more flexibility. Of course, it might be that you got a postdoc in a very strict lab, but I don't think that is very common.
On the other hand, the lab/office can be a nice and fun place (even a nice, modern, spacious above ground facility with enough windows and sun ;)). You might just arrive and realize you *want* to spend time in the office: I realized I much prefer working *only* in the office, staying longer or coming earlier when needed. It helps me to stress out much less about work, especially when I'm away from the office and supposed to relax.
And lastly, I just want to add that I was almost as surprised with your description of US-(non)-vacation system as you seem to be with the European system.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/13 | 1,133 | 4,820 | <issue_start>username_0: I am wondering how the search committees take into account feedback that is provided by faculty members who meet one-on-one with a candidate. I am curious about both the process as well as how the committee considers the feedback when making their decision.
So, for example, does the faculty member who meets with the candidate email the committee as soon as the discussion is done to write about how the meeting went? Are they evaluating the candidate on "culture fit", technical prowess, teaching/research, etc.? Do they have veto power over a candidate? Do they meet with the search committee and discuss candidates after everyone's met with each one? Is it the same faculty who meet one-on-one with the candidates, or does it depend on who's available that day?
I'm rather interested in the process of how it works, for those who have been on search committees, and that is why I ask this question. I am most interested in responses for research interviews for institutions in the United States but experiences from other locations would be valuable as I am sure that the process is not identical even within one country (or even one department).
This [question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/946/interview-strategies-for-faculty-positions-to-focus-on-their-research-or-your/947#947) is highly related, but isn't specifically addressing what I am wondering.<issue_comment>username_1: I've been on a hiring committee twice. We don't typically have formal "one-to-one" meetings, but we do make a lot of time for informal discussions with the candidate and one or more faculty.
Each time, we have hired in an area which I'm very interested in but only know a very little bit about. So, I always have "stupid" questions in the back of my mind which I can ask to the candidates. This gives me a good opportunity to be favorably impressed by them.
Another thing I like to do is start talking about my own research area. Sometimes candidates will know at least a little bit about it and will ask very interesting questions. This also makes a positive impression, especially when it leads to a long discussion.
I don't care much about "culture fit", but candidates do, and they often ask a lot of questions about my university, the department atmosphere, and what the city is like.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: *I am in a US R1 institution in a department of computer science.*
All departments have their own style. Ours is something like this:
* Each candidate is "governed" by a search committee (we often have multiple searches in different areas) consisting of 4-5 faculty.
* Each candidate is "hosted" by one specific person on the committee: the host's job is to be the candidate liaison to the process, as well as managing the interview schedule, and making everything run smoothly from the department's point of view
* Immediately after the interview, the host sends out mail to the faculty requesting formal feedback via email. The host will also typically buttonhole people in the hallway to get informal "vibes" as well.
* after the formal feedback is collected (and anonymized depending on how things go), and after all candidates have been interviewed, the search committee sits down to assess the pool.
At this stage, faculty feedback plays the following role (the committee has already discussed the technical merits and strengths/weaknesses of the candidates):
>
> * Is there a clear consensus in favor of a candidate ?
> * Are there candidates that are drawing strong (and well-founded) opposition from the faculty ?
> * If the committee decides to choose one particular candidate to put forward to the faculty at large, will there be significant opposition,
> and why ?
> * what is the overall sense that the faculty appears to have about the candidates in general ?
>
>
>
After this is done, the committee might choose to:
* present a candidate as a consensus choice
* present two candidates as co-consensus choices that the faculty at large can vote on
* decide that no candidate has crossed the bar for a faculty-wide vote.
To answer your specific questions that aren't covered above:
* no one person (not even the chair!) has a veto over hiring someone, but obviously people closer technically to the candidate will have a "weightier" opinion. The way our structure works, it's possible (though unlikely to happen) that the committee will nix someone that the faculty all like, which is a sort of collective veto
* faculty are assembled to meet the candidate based primarily on possible match of interest, and occasionally also for tactical reasons :). The host will make sure that people who are stakeholders in the hire meet as many candidates as possible. But there's of course an element of "who's available that day".
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/13 | 6,860 | 28,732 | <issue_start>username_0: Or how would you like to be addressed?
As a graduate TA, I went by my first name. But I thought that some students were becoming too friendly. They took things for granted (for example, asking for a homework extension every week without even bothering to make up an excuse, or showing up to my office hours and interjecting with comments meant to be funny but came out sounding obnoxious).
I will be an assistant professor next year, and I am wondering whether asking my students to call me Dr. LASTNAME would resolve some of the rudeness that I've encountered.
But how do you ask? Sign my email Dr. LASTNAME? That sounds pretentious. Should I just use initials (FL for FIRSTNAME LASTNAME)? I sign all my emails with my first name, but doing that for students is an open invitation to call them by my first name. How do people transition from a graduate TA to someone with a PhD in front of a class full of undergraduate students?
\*\*EDIT: I have had several students be truly rude to me, but in keeping with the spirit of anonymity, I did not describe in detail what happened. But My colleagues were shocked and appalled at some of the behaviors that I have encountered.
That said, I do very well with evaluations, often nearing perfect score, and my students score well above average in multi-section calculus classes. As you might imagine, my classes are fairly well-attended with high level of participation. Of course there are pros and cons of familiarity, but I am somewhat puzzled at this display of lack of authority in my classroom, as all of my colleagues also go by their first names. I hope this is more information.\*\*<issue_comment>username_1: Like JeffE's comment, I always prefer students to call me by my first name. My male **and** female, Asian **and** white colleagues also prefer to be called by their first name. There are some exceptions where they insist on some title according to local custom for showing respect. However, I do not have the problem you describe (students expecting unreasonable things and acting in completely unprofessional ways). The reasons that I do not have to deal with these problems is because I simply do not accept them.
Actually, I am fairly strict but also fair and I always try to be open, transparent, and predictable to my students. They know if they arrive to class late, they are absent. If they submit late, they fail. They want more time, they won't get it.
I do not see how what I allow them to call me (excluding rude names) would result in overly familiar behavior. Indeed, many of my Asian colleagues are far closer to students than I would ever allow myself to become. The ones who demand more formal forms of address are the ones who seem to get the closest with students. Perhaps this is how they remind students that they are still the teacher.
In short, student behavior is driven by your attitude towards them and you can convey a tone of seriousness in the relationship without requiring formal salutations.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: As username_1 says, student behavior toward you is influenced by a lot more than how you have them address you. But that doesn't mean that how they address you isn't a factor.
This can depend a lot on the culture of your institution and department. If all the other faculty in your department have students address them by last name, and you stand out as more informal, it may well make it more difficult to establish authority in the classroom. (Especially if you are, e.g., younger / more soft-spoken / shorter / more female than many of your colleagues.) On the other hand, if the students are used to addressing all of the faculty by first name and you stand out as more formal, you may come across as either unfriendly or as trying too hard. You should ask your new colleagues about what the common practice is in your new department. (But you also don't want them to think you're overly worried about student interactions. Explain that you're just trying to get to know the local culture so you can fit in.)
Whatever you decide, you can establish what you want to be called with how you introduce yourself at the beginning of class. (Amazingly to me, many instructors never think to introduce themselves to the class.) At different institutions (with different cultures, and at which I held different positions), I've either started the first day of class with "I'm Mark" or "I'm <NAME>". If you do decide to go by last name, you should definitely not sign email to students with only your first name. I use my full name; many other people I know use initials.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I want to add to the other answers by taking a wider look. The way students and teachers address each other is not only a difference between universities etc. it is also a cultural difference. Some cultures (countries) are more title oriented than others. In Sweden (and the rest of the Nordic countries), titles were largely laid aside in the late 1960s/early 1970s. If a Swedish student approached me as "<NAME>" I would almost be shocked. If a foreign student did the same I would not react since I am aware that titles are handled differently around the world. Being aware of differences should therefore be in everybody's mind and also that adhering to local customs may be necessary, regardless of ones opinion on the matter. It should be said that laying titles to the side is not the same as removing politeness and respect. So awareness of the local culture shows respect and etiquette but realizing cultures vary is also a sign of tolerance. As long as both parties tries to be respectful and help each other to find the proper (local) way much will be gained.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: >
> I will be an assistant professor next year, and I am wondering whether
> asking my students to call me Dr. LASTNAME would resolve some of the
> rudeness that I've encountered.
>
>
>
Yes, what students call you will probably have some impact on how they behave, but I would not stress about it. As you say in a comment, many white males (myself included) don't have these types of authority issues. On the other hand, my wife used to regularly have students tell her inappropriate personal things because they think she is their mother or act inappropriately because they think she is weak/helpless. The way to resolve these issues is to tackle them head on and not change what they call you.
As a male I keep my office door open when meeting with students to prevent accusations of sexual misconduct. My wife keeps her office door open to try and prevent sexual misconduct and to cut down on the student crying. She has developed a low tolerance for students going off topic and stops most in their tracks by asking if she should call the student counselling services.
In the US and UK system, I find that telling students what you expect and making it clear you are not their friend from the first day of class helps a lot. If you are a women you also need to make it clear you are not their mother. Tell them extensions require a doctors note or a death certificate. Tell them that personal issues should be taken up with counselling services. Point out that sexual misconduct and bullying is not tolerated in your classroom and that you will report any and all incidents. Then explain you have office hours and what types of issues can be discussed during them. Finally, explain how they can contact you (e.g., no text messages and grammatically correct emails). Somewhere in this introduction, you can tell them what to call you.
As for signing an email, don't. A signature is redundant with information in the message header and in this case can only cause problems. An auto attached footer with your full name and titles and contact information is fine.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: (Localized answer: I'm in Germany and in my work experience also [the north of?] Italy thinks along the same lines. Both languages have the concept of changing pronouns as well as first name vs. last name to express different grades of formality and closeness)
Spoken interaction with students
--------------------------------
* The default here is to address TAs by "Sie" (formal pronoun) and last name. Addressing in everyday spoken language by Dr. is becoming more and more unusual, it is still the default with people who are much older and/or are known to put much emphasis on this formality. Same with Prof., the default being slightly more on formal side. Needless to say, the TA or prof also adresses the students by "Sie" and last name.
* For mass courses (labwork practica where I have different groups of students on every occasion or seminars), we just stay with the formal way of adressing. These courses typically have a comparably low number of one-to-one interactions with the student.
* When students join our research group, I offer the "Du" (informal pronoun): this is done by (re)introducing yourself "By the way, I'm Firstname".
* As a student I found it *very awkward* if the teachers weren't clear about this: in our culture it is clearly up to the more senior (also or even mainly professionally more senior) person to offer to drop the formalities.
e-mails
-------
For inner-German emails I'd still consider it rude not to put an opening line and a closing line to the body. For e-mail exchange with other countries I adapt to their customs as far as I know them. In my language the way the recipient is adressed and the email is signed state how formal or close the relaionship is to be. This is information the email adresses and the full email signature cannot provide. The full signature below the "--" line is the place where full professional grades and position go.
Emailing with students without these "instructions" may be perceived as rude or also as *insecure*. The mass-course email starts with "Dear Mr./Ms. X", or less formally "Dear seminar group A" and ends with "Best, Firstname Lastname" or less formally just with "Firstname Lastname".
I close with abbreviation ("VG C") only with close collaborators. In that case, opening and closing line may be dropped as well.
Students becoming *too* friendly
--------------------------------
I'll try to live up to the stereotype that Germany are direct to the level of being rude. Here are my thoughts:
In German language, the concept of *too* friendly with a negative connotation does not exist, friendly is unambiguously positive. From that perspective, I'd say that your "too friendly" is a euphemism for something along the lines of presuming and rude, not respecting you.
Now **in the described situation I'd try hard to avoid any euphemisms about the student behaviour** as they may be perceived as a sign of you lacking confidence in yourself, and submitting to the badly behaving student: your language offers them a very easy way to ignore your request. If that happens (and I'd think it more likely to happen with rude students...), good-bye to the student respecting you.
Even (or maybe: particularly?) in a culture that relies less on formal distinctions (like the formal way of adressing) if someone doesn't know and doesn't get the hints how to behave themselves, it may help to tell them in clear words what is expected and that not behaving accordingly leaves a very bad impression. I'd take them aside to tell that, and I'd make a point that I don't particularly grudge this first time - but that I'm concerned because in a professional environment such non-respecting behaviour may cut their throats.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: Do not worry too much about it. The way you're being addressed has very little to do with the respect students give, otherwise all these tyrants in the history would have been very respectable. Just go with how your peer professors being called, and use that as a benchmark.
And more importantly, try not to pick one imperfection and magnify it to out of proportion. Zoom out and evaluate these:
1. "... asking for a homework extension every week without even bothering to make up an excuse... " Does the syllabus specify that there has to be an excuse? If not, why do they have to give one (or worse, make one up?)
2. "... office hours and interjecting with comments meant to be funny but came out sounding obnoxious... " Hmmm... I can't understand what the problems are. If it's crossing the line, then casually, with a bit of humor, tell them jokes will be for another time, focus on the questions on [the subject].
3. Did teaching and learning actually happen?
4. On the flip side, with this "friendliness," are the students also more willing to ask questions and give comments in class? When you walk by the groups during their discussion, did they immediately incorporate you, or close up?
Overall, may I humbly suggest you not to stand out there, getting all ready to be offended? In the contrary, when these "bad" behaviors happen, an educator should use the opportunity to teach, not to internalize the (real/imaginary) lack of respect, get all angry and proceed to pout for the rest of the day. We are their first line to test their professional interactions, and both the students and the teacher will benefit by being leaning towards more reflective than judgmental.
---
And finally to answer your question. I teach in the US and go by my first name. One year, I decided to keep a beard (bad decision, please don't ask) and all the students called me professor. Having tried both, I will not think twice opting for first name-based interaction.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_7: Another localized answer.
I live in Ukraine and when I was doing PhD, I was giving also some Calculus workshops instead of my supervisor, so undergrads were calling me by my first name and father's name.
It is common practice in many post-soviet countries and probably many Slavic countries.
I would probably preferred if they called me Sir [FirstName] or something like that instead of calling me by my first name and father's name.
Also I have never send emails to my students, so I didn't have to sign my emails.
Anyway, I have done some wrong things like accepting their friend requests in social network. I shouldn't do that because they didn't take me seriously and were trying to solve some formal issues through social network.
I think it doesn't really matter how to sign your email. More important is how do you allow to treat yourself, you shouldn't allow students to bully you or something like that.
I allowed my students to treat me too informal, now I realize it was a huge mistake. I shouldn't ever do that.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: What about the perspective of a student on the subject? I went to school in south Texas (Houston, to be specific), as location may be important.
* Every TA I had (graduate and undergraduate) was addressed by his or her first name, including myself when I worked as an undergraduate TA.
* Almost all of the professors were "Professor LASTNAME" or "Doctor LASTNAME." There were two major exceptions I was aware of:
+ One of my computer science professors went by either "Doctor LASTNAME" or a *nickname* with approximately equal frequency. I personally always used his nickname, as my father would always use the name when speaking to or about him. (My father was a graduate TA when this particular professor was an undergraduate.)
+ There was a particular adjunct professor whom I always called by first name. In this case, I was the exception to the rule, because this professor was a close personal friend (and drinking buddy) of my father.
In addition, the man who taught the "Game Content Creation" course was called by his first name, and he was not actually (directly) employed by the school; he was the lead developer at a local game company which occasionally poached from the school's CS department. He worked with the head of the department to create the course when he learned the school had a license for 3DS Max which was going unused by any course at the school (the Architecture department would point at 3DS Max, say "this exists and some people use it," and then go back to AutoCad).
Even the professor who I had a close, friendly relationship with (the head of the CS department), I still called "Professor LASTNAME." In fact, to this day I think it would feel strange to call him by his first name. (Heck, I think I would feel strange calling my high school CS teacher anything but "Mister LASTNAME," and the two of us grew very close over the years.)
As far as emails go, all of the professors and TAs I exchanged emails with signed their email with "FIRSTNAME LASTNAME," occasionally with their department, position, and contact information as well.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: FWIW, this however-many-th-generation European-American (i.e., "white") man had some authority issues while teaching an undergraduate course on personality psychology once upon a time in [SoCal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California). I had just turned 28 at the time, so I still thought I could relate well enough to people less than a decade younger, but I was wrong. If there's one simple lesson about how to address students that I learned, it's to avoid giving them *anything* to object to. I guess I should've said "simplistic", because that's impossible; in sufficient numbers (I had a class of 220+), **they will find something objectionable**:
* I insisted I was not a professor, but a graduate instructor (single-quarter appointment, no PhD at the time, was still a grad student at that university), and actually got a comment in my evaluations from someone who thought I was shirking my responsibilities by denying the fact that I was a professor. [Kids these days](http://eubie.com/genme.pdf)...
+ I told them I wasn't a professor in so many ways, I thought that would produce complaints in itself. I used my first name wherever possible; probably only said my last name once. They still called me <NAME>. I think it's just habit—even they couldn'tve been *that* inattentive.
* I sometimes used emoticons to try to avoid the `teacher = robot` fallacy. Again, I was 28, a white dude, and *the instructor*, so I thought I could get away with it in *my class*. I even thought it might help me seem less intimidating, which I've sometimes gotten from others. Maybe it did...but one particular student just thought that was incredibly unprofessional, and that I should be forbidden from ever teaching anyone again in this life or any other. Clearly you can't win 'em all, much less control them.
* The course catalog was updated late, so someone signed up expecting [Professor Funder, PhD](http://www.psych.ucr.edu/faculty/funder/) instead of Graduate Instructor <NAME>. (at the time). This person felt the need to blame me for not being Professor Funder in his/her evaluation comment. I guess I can understand that; he's a pretty awesome lecturer...but I wasn't exactly chopped liver myself, even then.
To answer your question directly, I'd echo many others here in pointing to culture as an important factor, because IMHO, it mostly comes down to **how your behaviors fulfill or defy expectations**. Best practice probably is just to blend in until tenure, then play the game however you see fit (i.e., however is *best for students' education*, regarding which this is probably irrelevant). I'll echo this part too: choice of signature isn't going to solve authority problems, no way, no-how.
That being said, it's an **interesting empirical question, and I'd love to see someone research it**:
* Operationalize rude behavior as words or contiguous phrases in evaluation comment transcripts
* Code with multiple judges; 3–4 ought to suffice (calculate and report [inter-rater reliability](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-rater_reliability))
* Test for group differences using the signature factor you've described as an independent variable
* Supplement comment transcripts with counts of behavioral observations during class by TAs, if available, to make it a [multivariate ANOVA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivariate_analysis_of_variance)
* Probably consult questions like [this one on Cross Validated](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/70558/32036) about how to handle the Poisson distributions of counts as dependent variables.
I'm sure some academic journal would want to publish those results, even if the effect is small.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_10: If you want a guideline regarding how the students should address you, go by the culture of the department, if the other professors are using last names, use last names, if they're using first names, use first name, if there's no clear pattern, use whatever is comfortable to you. If you sign your emails "Firstname Lastname," it's not an invitation to do anything, since full names are awkward to use in conversation, and it puts the burden on the other person to decide how to address you.
>
> I am wondering whether asking my students to call me Dr. LASTNAME would resolve some of the rudeness that I've encountered.
>
>
>
**It won't.** If someone is being inappropriate, react immediately and let them know.
Regarding **favors** like extensions and flexibility, you need to be clear from the start on what your policy is, **outline the policy in the syllabus, and stick to it**. It's not just a matter of respect, but also a matter of fairness to the students: if the students that aren't playing by the rules are getting their way, the rest of the students are being put at a disadvantage. There will of course be situations where the policy will need to be broken, but those should be extreme (death in the family, student hospitalized/severely ill, natural disaster, global war, etc.) and rare.
Sticking to the policy also applies to office hours, btw. You are obviously free to move your office hours for your own reasons, but being overly available to students outside office hours can be a bad thing if it gets out of control.
Disclaimer: I'm not a professor at the time of this writing.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_11: If you earned your advanced degree why not use it? You shouldn't expect to be friends with your students either. Kids today seem to have all too few figures of authority in their past and they end up being horribly prepared for careers.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_12: I was a student for 7 years and had lots of TAs. My brother was a TA for a couple of years too.
My favourite TAs were the ones who let us use their first names, because it would give a more relaxed tone to the class. When you're in the lecture, the person teaching is meant to be called "Professor" or "Dr" because that's what he is. In the tutorials and labs, you prefer to call them by your first name because they're really just one of you, but with more education. It gives the students the feel of having someone who can relate to them teaching them.
That being said, you're the one who sets the guidelines with students, and the name they call you has little to nothing to do with it. My brother had people in his class trying to add him to Facebook. He would decline, and eventually set his privacy settings tighter so that no one could find him unless they had a direct contact. He even set his Twitter to private because of that.
You should walk into the tutorial the first day and state clearly "If you miss the deadline, you will fail or get a penalty each day it's late." and then say that you have deadlines for marking and every person who asks for an extension is pushing back the date it will be graded for everyone. If you stick to it with only exceptions for students with doctors notes, they'll know they can't mess with that. The first time you give a kid an extension with no good excuse, or even a semi-good excuse, you're telling that student and everyone that student talks to that you give extensions out. It will be hard to start this now unless you tell the class that they've been taking advantage of extensions and that you won't give any out, but you need to commit to it.
As far as students being disrespectful, you should state at the start of the semester that you take the respect laws very seriously. You can even do this now if you're finding it too much of a problem. Then even read some of that rule (respectful speak, respect between teacher and student, etc.) and give examples that are close to reality so that they understand what you're talking about. Even state what the repercussions are. Look very annoyed so the students realize you're not saying this out of needing to, but out of necessity.
Once you're an assistant professor, you'll have an easier time with people being too informal with you, unless you do things like make lewd jokes or say things like "It's due around now." Just be firm with you treat them and they should stay in line.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_13: I think that if you behave with a strong personality and delegation of responsibility for your students, then you wouldn't worried about the challenge and dilemma with them. Also calling you with first or family name depends on your academic culture, city, and country.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_14: (An answer from an undergraduate in the U.S.; cultural differences will probably apply)
I took a Computer Science intro class 5 years ago. I had a great professor (a TA), who preferred to be called by his first name. I was ***infinitely*** more comfortable with this lecturer, and so I had no qualms in asking office-hour-questions (less intimidation factor), and *gaining valuable knowledge because of it*.
You can't know how your students will interpret this type of change until you start. Students expect, and *want* an authority figure in their university courses. Yet, they might be more comfortable in a 'friend-like' setting, where rank, title and authority are less of an issue than what they *learn*. As a student, the most effective combination (for me) is the following:
1. Create an open and *relaxed* environment as the instructor: let students call you by your first name. This creates a more open atmosphere, where rank, title and authority are less of an issue for the student than their learning perogative.
2. Ensure that students respect you: **clearly** define expectations (usually in the syllabus), so that students are aware of what you expect
* Ensure that students do not take advantage of the 'first-name-basis'
+ if your policy states that you don't accept late work, *make no exception to the rule*
+ if your policy states that being 5 minutes late to class equates to an absence, *make no exception to the rule*
As long as you remain *authoritative*, yet *lax*, your students will do what students will: some will respect and adore you, some will slack and resent you. That is the way of the world.
Given the above, you have a significant *advantage*, in my eyes, by allowing students to address you familiarly. You allow students who feel more comfortable doing so avoid the pitfall of "*this professor is so intimidating and smart that I can't go to their office hours because they'll resent me for asking basic questions and make me feel stupid*", yet you remain an authority figure for those who prefer to address you as 'professor'. Of course, whether or not students are intimidated by you is partially dependent on your social behavior as a whole, and not just the title. But speaking from experience, having had professors who were very strict with their titles, the feudal-esque authoritarian role does not sit well with a lot of students, as it puts them in the 'peon' (laborer, serf, etc.) level compared to you, which in my opinion is **not** conducive to a learning environment.
Moreover, the argument that students will take advantage of the 'lax' state of address is *completely* ridiculous. You, as the professor, have *absolute authority* to lay out the rules in your syllabus. If students don't follow those rules, what does it matter whether they call you *Joe* or *<NAME>*? You can easily state, for example, that you will ignore email requests that do not fit a certain format. You have that power. What does your title have to do with it?
**All in all**, as a student, I would prefer if professors were more lax on the title aspect of their career, and focused on the academic aspect. As long as they ensure that guidelines (laid out *in the syllabus*) are followed, state of address/title has little to do with it the pedagogy.
(An answer from an undergraduate in the U.S.; cultural differences will probably apply)
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/02/13 | 1,268 | 5,638 | <issue_start>username_0: I have an upcoming interview/campus visit for an assistant professor TT position with a US R1 university in the sciences. They have asked that I bring a details about my desired startup package to the campus visit. I have never heard of anyone being asked for details about their startup package prior to an offer being made.
This seems to have two effects. First, to some extent my startup package depends on what is already available in the department and the interests of the department. Second, it seems it potentially changes the negotiations. With an offer in hand, you can ask for more in your startup package, since they may not give you what you want, but they won't take the offer away. If I ask for too much in my startup package before having an offer, they may not even make an offer.
I guess I have three questions. First, is it common for US universities to ask for details about the desired startup package prior to making an offer? Second, how does this change what I should include in my startup package request? Third, can I ignore this request and only give them a general outline of what I need to do my research?<issue_comment>username_1: I've also never seen this at universities in the US (or elsewhere in the world) but I've seen it a lot in industry. I'm guessing someone came in to 'shake things up' or they hired a consultant and are trying things differently this time. Therefore, I will answer with respect to industry which I'm guessing will actually be applicable in the end.
It is a common negotiation technique to get 'the other guy' to make the first offer with the belief this puts him in a weaker position. This seems to be what they are doing and as you stated in your question, when they make the first offer you are indeed in a stronger position.
In your last question, could you ignore their request and simply not give them a number, tread lightly on this point. Some hiring people will become angry when you don't follow the rules and will count it as one reason not to make you an offer at all (or lower your offer because you are unable to follow simple instructions).
As far as how to actually handle the negotiations, like any negotiations, it is MUCH better if you are negotiating from a stance of understanding how you can work together to benefit each other. That is, don't get locked into a 'the more I get, the less you keep' train of thought. The goal is to be creative and find a way that you can actually ADD value to the equation and then divide that new value between the both of you...leading to the win-win settlement.
The problem is if you must make some kind of an offer blind and you have no personal rapport developed with your counterpart, it is very difficult to go down the win-win path. At that point, I would see if you can find a way to change the situation and start building some kind of relationship (even a telephone call can make a huge difference with regards to finding a genuine win-win solution).
If you are stuck and you cannot have any any meaningful conversation before you give a number, then the best I can say is to make a serious statement about what you would like but make it in terms of ranges (say between $100 and $120 *[replace with reasonable numbers for you]* per month depending on the rest of the details). By offering a range you have retained some flexibility but allowed them what they demanded: Something.
As you might guess, they may lock in on the lower number. However, you have not committed to that lower number firmly because of 'the rest of the details' you included.
Congratulations and good luck!
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: It's very unusual: I've never heard of this happening before. Since they're asking about the startup package (and not salary, which is less elastic at a university) that changes things slightly though.
You might be able to get away (at a first approximation) with a list of things you need (without specifying a price tag). Typical elements of a startup package include summer salary, support for students early on, space for offices/labs, and equipment. All of these can be specified without particular price tags: i.e you need support for X students for Y years, lab space to support this kind of machine, or these many students, and so on.
If you're pressed to put a price tag (which would be also unusual), then you'll have to have some number ready for things that you can price (equipment for example, for which you could add a generous inflation factor). For other things you can ask them ! (how much does a student cost, what is typical lab space, and so on). Again, the goal is to provide as little information as possible while satisfying the unusual requirement.
In addition, if you're asked to put a price, you should preface with "while it's a little unusual to ask this now, and while I can't be certain what things will cost once I'm in a position to purchase them", and ask first whether there's some flexibility in these numbers.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Something to keep in mind: The reason that startup packages are typically negotiated at a later stage is because they are not a major factor in determining whether to take someone for a tenure-track position. I think that in your case, even though you are asked for this during the first interview, it will still not be a major factor.
This means that unless your startup package requests are extremely unusual or the university is unusually poor, this will probably not affect the outcome. So I would not worry about this aspect too much.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/13 | 1,087 | 4,907 | <issue_start>username_0: Suppose candidate A has only published alone, and in an alternate universe candidate B has an identical list of publications, most of which are with coauthors. All else being equal, would a typical hiring committee rate A higher?
I suspect the answer depends highly on the field; I'm especially interested in (pure) math.<issue_comment>username_1: This depends not only on the field, but also on the institution doing the hiring. At some places, a joint publication and a sole-authored publication are identical in terms of "credit" toward promotion decisions. At the other extreme, other institutions consider a three-authored paper as one-third credit. There are many in between as well. Truly elite places don't care about how many papers or the authorship, but whether you've amazed the world.
Further, if the publication record is substantially more or less than expectations for the position, the authorship doesn't matter. A place that expects its hires to have a dozen papers won't be impressed by an applicant with 5, even if they're sole-authored. A place that expects one or two will be delighted with the same 5, no matter how many authors.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: *All else being equal*, solo papers can only be weighted more highly than joint papers in hiring decisions. This is probably especially true at the very top: e.g. a joint *Inventiones* or *Annals* paper makes your application look fantastic. A solo publication in either of these journals is a golden ticket for many academic jobs.
Things get much more complicated when one tries to determine *how much more* to weight solo papers than joint papers. To the best of my knowledge few departments or universities have hard-and-fast rules or even written guidelines about this, so much of this evaluation goes on in the minds of the individual evaluators. The truth is that in some situations jointly authored papers will count to exactly the same degree as solo authored papers, and in other situations the existence of coauthors will cause the work to be substantially discounted.
There is a dramatically increasing prevalence of joint papers in the mathematical profession. Thirty years ago they were quite rare; and they are even more common now than at the beginning of my career, which was not much more than ten years ago. There are now, for instance, certain conferences and workshops in which several people sign up in advance to work on a certain problem under the guidance of a senior mathematician. And then everyone who came to the workshop gets their name put on the paper, even if everything they did was under the guidance of someone else. This is a model much closer to that of the laboratory sciences than what used to be common in mathematics. In my opinion, it is time for the profession as a whole and various groups within the profession to put down in writing some feelings about the merits of joint papers. Of course this will be hard to do since the matter is so complicated: it matters whether your coauthors are "senior" or "junior" to you, it matters whether they have supervised you, it matters what percentage of your papers are joint and whether your papers are always joint with the same coauthors....
Sometimes I see certain publications listed on young people's CV's and think "I find it unlikely that they had a significant intellectual contribution to that work." That's a problem both ways: i.e., people may be wrongly evaluating the merits of this type of work in either direction!
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: This situation is very complicated. First, there's no hard and fast rule as different mathematicians have different opinions. Second, it really matters how individual facts (like whether one paper is coauthored or singly authored) fit into a larger picture.
People want to hire candidates who have demonstrated that they have their own research program and their own direction. Coauthored papers can hurt with this. This is especially true if a candidate has too many papers coauthored with their advisor, or almost no singly authored paper, or too many papers coauthored with a single more senior person, or all papers coauthored with the same person. (Of course, other factors like letters can counteract against this narrative.)
On the flip side, people also want candidates who are influential on their field. Coauthored papers are one way to show that other people are interested in your research program. (Of course there's other ways to demonstrate this, like giving talks at great places or letter writers say you're influential on them.)
In general my impression is that a paper with n authors counts as less than a singly authored paper but as much more than 1/n of a singly authored paper, and that in some sense the perfect situation is to both have effective collaborations *and* also do good work solo.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/13 | 600 | 2,600 | <issue_start>username_0: Some people use ps over pdf format for their paper.
Are there some advantages of ps format over pdf format?
Thanks!<issue_comment>username_1: No.
There are no advantages of PS over PDF.
Any modern computer system that can display PS files can also display PDF files. (The converse is certainly not true.)
Any modern computer system that can produce PS files can also produce PDF files. (Again, the converse is not true.)
Any material that you can present with a PS file can be presented equally well with a PDF file. (Again, the converse is not true.)
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: As for the final format, no, there are no significant advantages, as the other answers point out. There are however a couple of quirks in TeX (which is the standard typesetting program in many fields) regarding ps and pdf support.
* [pstricks](http://www.ctan.org/pkg/pstricks-base), which is a popular package for producing drawings, only works if you compile to a **ps** file (there are workarounds, though).
* [microtype](http://ctan.org/pkg/microtype), which is a package for making automatically small typographical adjustments to the document and producing a better-looking line breaking, only works if you compile to a **pdf** file.
So users of the former package are encouraged to use ps, while users of the second are forced to use pdf. Of course there are converters in both directions, so it is not a binding choice.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: PDF was carefully designed by Adobe to fix some problems with PostScript as a format for interchanging files (as opposed to printing). PostScript was a full-fledged programming language, which means that its behavior could be impossible to predict. For example, people have written programs in PostScript that do things like emulating a calculator. In PDF, they removed just enough of the programming capabilities to make the behavior of a PDF file more predictable. (In technical terms, they made it Turing-incomplete.) This is a good thing, since you don't want to trust someone else's software to run on your computer every time you open their document.
This was all great in theory, but more recently Adobe added more programming features back into PDF (by adding javascript), and in fact there are now some security issues associated with PDF. Therefore there is no longer any clear security-based reason to prefer PDF, but in any case PS is essentially obsolete as a document interchange format, and if you give someone a PS file today, they are unlikely to know what it is or how to open it.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/13 | 1,910 | 7,923 | <issue_start>username_0: I have never seen this happen in other research labs in my university and I am trying to get into the mind of my advisor and understand what his intentions are! We are an HCI lab of two people. In last year, we have hired and fired *seven* people. They get hired, work for a month or two, my advisor is not satisfied them and removes them from the team.
My professor is new to the lab, it was given to her upon joining in Summer 2012. Another PhD student and myself have been working since beginning of the lab before the professor. We are the only permanent fixtures.
I am the defacto programmer and I program all the projects in lab. I had asked my advisor for PhD last week, as I completed my thesis defense last year, but she said she needs to check her funding and will get back to me. At same time she is putting out a word to other professors that she needs good RAs.
In the interim, an established tenure professor in our department in operations research had asked me to join his lab as PhD student for a project in data mining. He said I am very good at Computer Science and he needs my skills for his projects. I had asked him if its common in his lab to change people constantly and he told me there were only four people working in his lab for past 5 years and he said always asks for input from his own students in lab before contacting anybody for RAs.
The professor I am currently working with has never asked me or the other PhD student for advice before taking on people or firing them. It puts an uncomfortable pressure on me as I feel that she is not happy with my work and looking for replacement. I really don't like working with new people every two months. So why is my advisor doing this?
*How frequently do you hire and fire people in your labs?*<issue_comment>username_1: It may be uncommon to have high turnover, but so what? You don't know the circumstances of those hires -- perhaps they were favors or trial runs that were likely to fail. Or maybe your advisor has high standards, or just got unlucky.
You might not enjoy the high turnover, but that should be a small factor as compared to your own degree, future job prospects, and own job security. If you're worried about these, you should address these issues directly with your advisor (and not the indirect issue of lab turnover).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: This certainly isn't normal - when people complain about the high turnover in academia they're normally talking about contracts of one or two years rather than a couple of months. However, as @username_1 says, perhaps there are reasons.
IMHO the most important thing is whether your adviser and fellow group members are people you feel comfortable working with, and whether they are giving you the support you need for your research. If not then you'll end up being miserable and producing bad work.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: First, it is uncommon to hire and fire people that quickly in almost any context. Evaluating and hiring good people takes time. Training people to do anything useful takes time: usually more than two months of time. What you're describing is incredibly inefficient and, as you note, bad for morale. It's also bad hiring practice in a small lab to not conduct a group interview with the potential coworkers. To be frank, your adviser does not seem very good at the HR aspects of running a lab.
However, as a counterpoint, it depends very much on the funding situation. A new professor, unless they're particularly lucky, may not have very much funding on-hand. Especially if their funding agencies pay out the award in installments, they may literally have to let people go because the funding has run dry. To be quite honest, a new professor supporting 2 full-time PhD students and their own summer salary is already looking at an annual outlay of $100k-$150, at least in the US (most of which is tuition, since they're supporting two students through grad school). Many grant agencies (e.g., NSF) typically award $100k-150k per anum grants. So they could be scraping very low on their funding and have to cycle through people for that reason (e.g., can afford them for the summer, have to dump them in the fall due to tuition costs). Funding has been particularly tough the last few years.
Secondly, if they are not sure if they can cover your tuition, but the other professor certainly will? It's possibly time to jump ship to the other guy. Currently, having just finished your masters and early in your PhD, this is the best time to do so. If I were you, I would do the following:
1. Talk to the tenured professor to ensure this is a serious offer, backed by grant or internal money. Inquire about how long currently awarded funds are likely to last.
2. If the situation sounds good, ask if it would cause any political problems to talk it over with your adviser. Ideally, you want to do this (they are a reference), but not if it might sink the sure offer.
3. If it won't ruin the new opportunity, tell your current adviser the situation and ask the same questions (is there money, how long).
4. If they're comparable, choose the one that seems like a better fit for your interests and your academic security.
5. If it's lopsided, go for the funding security and find a way to work your research into what you are doing. To be frank, I would avoid any PhD that you can't get funded for. If there's not enough money in the area to train you, why would there be enough to hire you when you finish?
Finally, if your adviser takes it personally that you are exploring other opportunities when they can't assure you funding next semester? Jump ship. A boss who takes things personally is a bad boss. I had a great programming intern last summer, who we would have loved to keep as an RA. Unfortunately, a big chunk of funding was delayed due to Congress playing chicken. A company affiliated with the university offered four years worth of tuition and stipend, guaranteed. We do work he is more interested in and we could almost certainly cover him over that whole period. But the key word is "almost." I told him that I would not blame him at all if he took their offer (which he did). I hope he's doing great over there. If your adviser doesn't have that attitude, it's time to go.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: The scenario you describe is not uncommon in my lab. Let me explain why:
In my department, we get some funding for RA work for M.S. students "free" (i.e. out of department/university funds, not research grants). The rationale behind this is that is valuable for M.S. students to get some research experience, so the department/university wants to make it possible for more students to get these positions.
We therefore have a fairly low threshold for hiring students for these positions. We obviously prefer to hire talented students - we ask other faculty to recommend students to us from their classes, etc. But since the money is "free", we're not as selective as we would be in hiring for positions that are paid out of our grant money.
As a result, there is a lot of turnover in these positions - we hire a few students, try them out for a semester. If they don't work out very well, we don't hire them again the next semester so someone else can have a chance. If they are talented and hard-working, then we hire them back, and also offer additional support out of research grants on top of the department-money stipend they're already getting.
Not all labs in the department do this. Some feel like it's worth it to use the department funds to cast a wide net, in hopes of picking up someone good, and to give many students a chance to gain experience. Others will hire very selectively because they don't want to waste time and energy on random M.S. students, many of whom won't work out.
Perhaps something like this is going on in your lab?
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/13 | 864 | 3,659 | <issue_start>username_0: Assume you are just about to finish your PhD and you are facing the decision of whether to go for a postdoc position or for an assistant professorship. Which one should you choose?
Let's ignore the salary for the sake of this question. Then which of the two is better? What about the benefit of short-time employment and getting to work with lots of different people (in case of postdoc) vs. being stuck at one place for several years (assistant professor). Is it beneficial to work with different groups or is it irrelevant?
Does a career involving several postdoc positions look like the individual could not get other (''better'') employment (even if they deliberately chose one over the other)?
Will a postdoc position give you more time for research because you don't have to teach or have to teach less?
Is it generally better to seek professorship rather than postdoctoral fellowship?<issue_comment>username_1: The typical perspective for U.S. people in this situation is to try to balance the following three items:
1. The desire for a permanent, tenure-track job, and its associated stability.
2. The desire to do as much research as possible in one's life.
3. The desire to not starve to death.
Generally those just completing their PhD's are not eligible for tenure-track jobs that have a large research component, because their track record is insufficient. Therefore it is common to take a postdoc (or two, or five) to bolster the research record. This has the immediate effect of meeting the second and third goals, and has the potential to open up more research-oriented tenure-track jobs. However too many postdocs and it becomes more difficult to get tenure-track jobs (and further postdocs). The implication is indeed as you suggest, that these positions have been taken because the individual could not get a suitable tenure-track job.
Very few people consider "assistant professor" negatively because of being "stuck at one place for several years"; the only reason to turn down such a position is because it may be a bad fit, as compared to the sort of place one wants to be.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Vadim makes some valid points. The one I would amplify on is how good a fit the school with the assistant professorship is as far as your career goals are concerned. You've got to be careful. When I started out, I thought I could go to a small school, build up a research record, and move on to a research university. It didn't happen. I started out at a small school near a research university. My school had an atmosphere that totally discouraged research (I wish I had known that). Teaching three courses a semester wasn't that bad, but keeping fifteen hours of office hours a week was. Throw in committee work, etc., and there wasn't a lot of time to do much research. The school I'm at now has a base teaching load of four courses a semester, and expectation for advising, committees, and so on. They claim to support research, indeed it is a significant component for advancement, but the general climate works against any serious work. What output I have managed, not nearly as much as I wanted, has been a struggle. That being said, I have certainly managed to satisfy Vadim's goals 1 and 3. As far as goal 2, let's just say that I'll need something to do when I retire, assuming I can remember anything.
So, again, be careful. Personally, if you have the ability I would opt for a postdoc or two. But be realistic about what you want your career to look like ten, fifteen, or twenty years down the road. Then, do what you think gives you the best chance to get there.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/13 | 1,786 | 7,517 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm interested in teaching a class at the community college level. I'm not interested in it as a career, but rather because I like teaching people about computer science. How likely is it that I would be able to teach a evening class at a local community college with a masters degree (Computer Science).
I don't have a lot of formal experience teaching (TA/tutoring). I spent most of my time doing research in the lab, but during that time I mentored/managed/herded a number of undergrads.
Maybe being a TA would be a nice way to get my feet wet and see if it's for me. Is that possible, now that I've already graduated?
I have a regular 9-6 job that I would have to work around.<issue_comment>username_1: My mother teaches English at a community college. I know her TA graduated from a different university. Her TA is also my best friend from kindergarten and after said TA's parents died, my mother has been very involved in her TA's life. So I know that it is possible to TA after you've graduated, but it would help to have some connection to the college. However, there might be more of a demand for TAs in CS than in my mother's field.
One way to "get your foot in" might be to take classes at the college. My mom had applied for jobs at this college for years, but it was only after she took a few classes that she got her job. Her classes were in other departments, but when her professors found out she was interested in working there, they introduced her to people in the English department. Suddenly she wasn't "random applicant", but rather "that person my friend introduced me to and I had that nice conversation with".
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I teach physics at a community college and have been on a number of hiring committees for full-time positions, as well as participating in a bunch of hires of part-timers. Different departments and different individuals have different priorities. Some full-timers who have a master's might actually feel threatened by a PhD applying for a part-time position. Often we get applications, for both full- and part-time positions, from people with PhD's that clearly show that the applicant has no real interest in teaching and thinks it should be easy to get a community college job as a fallback. A PhD will typically be somewhat of an advantage in applying for a part-time job, especially if the course to be taught is at a high academic level (e.g., differential equations). The bigger problem is your lack of teaching experience.
There is a lot of randomness involved, and you can maximize your chances if you're in a big urban area and apply for a lot of jobs. Sometimes a full-timer gets sick or there is some other last-minute reason to hire someone to teach a class. In these emergency situations, you basically have to be available, meet the minimum qualifications, and give a non-disastrous interview.
The fact that you want to teach in the evening is a good thing. Many full-timers don't want to teach evening classes, so often those are the hardest to find a teacher for.
I think MHH is right that this discussion is going to be more valuable if we widen it to include full-time positions. For full-time positions, the value of a PhD seems to vary greatly. At my school, for example, the math department has 3 PhD's and 27 people with masters', while the natural science division has 21 with PhD's and 11 with masters'. One department clearly considers a PhD more important than the other does. This may be partly because the math department's offerings are bottom-heavy with remedial classes. For a full-time position, there will typically be a list of minimum qualifications, which are set by law, and a list of desirable qualifications. The two biggies on the list of desirable qualifications are teaching experience and a PhD. It helps if you have both.
When we hire for a part-time position, we're hiring someone to teach a specific course. If the course is low level, then we don't care as much about whether the candidate has a PhD. When we hire a full-timer, theoretically we want someone who can teach every course their department offers, but realistically we usually have something more specific in mind. When someone with a master's is hired full-time, usually that person ends up getting slotted into teaching gen ed courses, remedial courses, or other low-level courses for the rest of their career. Many people are very happy in such a slot, e.g., I hear that many folks in math see teaching remedial math as their ideal job, and they have no interest at all in teaching calculus.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: My parents met in English graduate school. They became more enamored of each other than their program, so they each got out with Master's degrees and taught community college (full time, at the "associate professor" level) for many years. This was a little while ago, though; my father passed away in 2000 and my mother has been retired for about ten years.
In my parents' day, some of their colleagues had PhDs, and my understanding is that the main reason that they never had the academic rank of "full professor" was the lack of a PhD. (Nevertheless salaries were decent, based in part on a strong teachers' union, in which my father played a key role way back when.) Degree inflation in academia is an ongoing process, and I would expect that a higher percentage of community college faculty have PhDs than before. Also the precise meaning of the term "community college" varies quite a lot from one region of the United States to another. I now live in Georgia and eventually noticed that almost nothing is called "community college" around here, but some PhD graduates from my department (mathematics, UGA) go into to teach in what I think are, more or less, what would in other regions be called "community college".
I think the fact that your goal is to teach some courses rather than have a permanent job / get benefits / get a competitive salary makes your goal much more reasonable. Most community colleges have a substantial percentage of "adjuncts"; in my understanding it is quite rare for these people to have PhDs. Wanting to teach courses at night should also make you desirable -- more in some areas than others, but overall it is a definite positive. Also, I would have to think that just about any academic institution in the country teaches courses on computers at this point, so that's a good choice too (the number of people who know something about computers is also quite large, but having a master's degree should get you in the door).
Maybe you know this already, but many courses at the community college level are at the level of a high school course: e.g. many community colleges offer no mathematics course more advanced than "business calculus". (This of course does not mean that such classes cannot have significant intellectual content or that you won't sometimes get very good students: they can and you will. As <NAME> liked to say, "We are not that much smarter than each other.") You should check to make sure that what they mean by "computer science classes" is compatible with the courses that the institution(s) is offering: as above, this will probably vary significantly from one place to another.
But overall, what you suggest sounds very possible, sounds like it could be fun, and sounds like you will be rendering a real service to people. I hope it works out for you: good luck.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/14 | 1,411 | 6,233 | <issue_start>username_0: I have been fortunate enough to get accepted with 5 years guaranteed funding to my 2nd choice graduate school. While the guarantee is great, the funding is only for 9/months out of the year. Would it be rude to ask them to guarantee summer funding to me for the first year until I can write a grant to get on a RAship? I know I should be more appreciative, since not everyone gets funding, but just an increase of about ~3k a year would make living there so much better and I do not want to accept an offer at a lesser institution just because of money.
What would be the most polite way of doing this?
I want to make it clear that I am not trying to get more money for the sake of getting more money, moreover that I am just not comfortable with so little money and such a high living cost in that area.
Thank you for your time.<issue_comment>username_1: I have never heard of graduate students negotiating salary. Where you go to graduate school matters a lot in your career; I have seen many sub-par people from top graduate schools obtain pretty good positions afterwards just on the merit of the fact that they go to a great school; so, another student on your school's waitlist would be just as good as you would be in the future, if they were admitted in your place, assuming that you are not exceptional (which I am assuming, since you said that you are thinking of going to your 2nd choice school). That is, the institution holds all the cards.
At postdoc or tenure-track level, negotiation happens because you have expertise that no one else can replace. But right now, you are quite replaceable, so it doesn't make sense to negotiate.
You could ask, but I can guarantee right now that negotiation will not happen.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: First off, congrats! That is very good news.
I can commiserate with you on the expensive living in grad school (I'm in NYC...). Maybe in other fields it is more common, but I haven't seen very much negotiation in Economics. It seems that there is sometimes a little talk between the student and school to make sure that they even get the funding, but the funding packages we receive seem relatively fixed. I do know that we can get more funding by working as research assistants or teaching assistants. If your funding is a fellowship (basically no catches, you get the money without being required to do anything extra) then you should ask about getting funding by working as an RA or TA. Also, have you received your funding letter? A lot of the schools that I have friends at only have a month or two that you don't actually receive funding. Your best bet is to check with the secretaries or PhD coordinators at your school.
All that being said, probably the best way to find out more is to email some of the other grad students at that school and ask what they have done to stay alive during the summer months when there isn't funding.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: You can always ask, and the polite way to do it is simply to ask politely, while indicating that you have a strong interest in enrolling in the program. The best circumstance is that you have a financially superior offer from another program which is of equal or slightly better quality. Then the graduate program in question may see a small amount of additional funding as a reasonable expense to ensure your enrollment. (If the other program is more than a little bit better, then everyone will be expecting you to go to the better program...unless you have personal reasons to want to go to the less good program, in which case you do not need a financial incentive.)
username_1 "guaranteed" that such a request would not lead to summer funding. Of course no one person could possibly make such a guarantee, and I have *very occasionally* seen additional funding given to graduate students to help attract them to a program or keep them in a program. But username_1's answer is still accurate in spirit: in the overwhelming majority of cases you get what you get.
However the expression **The squeaky wheel gets the grease** is very applicable to academia: people who ask for a little bit more\* tend to get a little bit more. Your request for summer funding is unlikely to magically result in a higher starting salary, but it may well result in your being placed higher on lists for various summer funding opportunities. I think it is a good idea to say something like "I understand that additional funding may not be possible, and I very much appreciate your offer. However, I am sincerely concerned about quality-of-life issues while enrolled as a graduate student, and I would very much appreciate being told of any other funding, scholarship or teaching opportunities that are or may become available."
\*: It is true though that people who don't know the culture well enough sometimes ask for *a lot more* when they think they are asking for a little bit more, and that often causes them to be taken less seriously or ends negotiations. (Imagine if you had an assistant professor job interview at a public American university and, after shaking hands with the department chair, told them that you were holding firm at a $100K starting salary. It is more than likely that you've just talked yourself out of any possibility of a job offer.) There is a real art to asking for something in a way which makes clear that you will be grateful for *any* response that you get, not that you feel absolutely entitled to getting your precise demands. A graduate student asking for extra funding should make extra clear that they are "just asking" and will be grateful for any response they will get. I remember one long-ago friend who was hoping that the MIT mathematics department would "get into a bidding war" with some other department of comparable quality. Of course that didn't happen, and though he did start a PhD program somewhere quite good, I could tell from this behavior (I was a first year graduate student at the time) that he didn't quite get the academic culture. I believe he dropped out within a year. (And then I lost touch with him, but I am willing to guess that he now makes much more money than I do...)
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/02/14 | 810 | 3,546 | <issue_start>username_0: If a person is working in the industry and wants to ask a few questions to an academic researcher (based on a paper published by them), what is the correct protocol to follow?
1. Should they disclose their affiliations right away? Should the academic ask for it right away?
2. Should they say 'I don't want to tell you why I'm asking this for, but can you please tell me so and so'? Should the academic insist on knowing?
3. Any other consideration?<issue_comment>username_1: I am not aware of any specific protocol, nor do I think there needs to be. I think that every academic is somehow *responsible* for the work in their published papers, and that responsibility includes at least some degree of responsiveness to questions about those papers. But, as usual, some ways of going about this will do better in eliciting responses. For me, I would want to know that the person who is contacting me about my paper (i) actually understands it, at least to a sufficient degree and (ii) that corresponding with them about my work will actually be helpful. This includes some degree of knowledge of what they want to do with the work in question.
[I should say though that I work in parts of pure mathematics in which it would take a truly brilliant mind to find direct industrial applications. So most of my correspondence is from students, other mathematicians, or people who aspire to be one of the above. For people who work in more applied fields, please discount this answer accordingly.]
>
> Should they disclose their affiliations right away? Should the academic ask for it right away?
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>
>
If you mean "I am asking this question on behalf of my work for Company X": I think so, yes. When correspondents do not identify themselves in this way, I am less likely to respond at all, and if I do, I will usually ask for some identifying information.
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> Should they say 'I don't want to tell you why I'm asking this for, but can you please tell me so and so'?
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Does *anyone* want to answer a question which is framed in that manner? I would help out a good friend who came to me in this way, but not a stranger.
In general, asking for help from an academic and not being willing to be forthcoming about what it is used for doesn't sound right to me. If you are just prevailing on the goodwill of an academic to publicly explain her work, then have the good grace to say what you need it for. If on the other hand you are actually trying to extract further expertise or information used for some proprietary purpose, then just writing to ask for it doesn't sound appropriate to me. If you want to use someone's professional expertise for some proprietary purpose -- or really any purpose other than just advancing your own knowledge -- then you should invite the professional to enter into a paid consulting relationship, it seems to me. In such a relationship, how much information about the use of the professional's expertise will be provided is something to be negotiated in advance.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Best, read one or more of they articles carefully, say you have read it and like it. To make sure this is not just a polite phrase, talk about something inside the paper that would show you really understand it and are interested in it, ask some questions that may be interesting to you.
You will need to invest some work to prepare for such a conversation, but this is an excellent starting point from where you can then continue without any formal protocol.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/14 | 3,047 | 12,842 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a PhD student. I've never taught a lecture-style course before. I just filled in for my advisor at the last minute, giving a lecture in an undergrad course.
I taught from the lecture slides that my advisor had prepared, drawing diagrams and examples on the whiteboard where I thought it was warranted. I stopped often and asked if anyone had questions, and if nobody did I posed questions to them, e.g., "What do you think is the benefit of this system over that?" "What did you learn about X?"
My impression was that approximately 30% of the class was pretty engaged, asking and answering questions, etc., 50% were taking notes and paying attention but not really speaking up, and the rest were zoned out. I think this is normal (from what I remember from being an undergrad), so I thought I was doing OK.
However, towards the end of the lecture, a few students said that I was going much faster than normal. And, I did get through more slides than my advisor said I should expect to, so they're probably right.
My question is:
>
> What clues do you look for to "read a room" to tell that you're going too fast, even though people seem to still be "getting it"?
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> What can you do to slow down, beyond asking if anybody has questions and bringing up more examples (I can only think of so many examples)?
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I am asking specifically about teaching undergrads, because I think they are more difficult to read than postgrads, or senior academics in the audience of a conference talk. But I would appreciate answers that apply to the latter scenario as well.
Also, I understand that things like clickers and discussion groups can make a difference, but I am asking specifically how to improve my lecturing, not how to restructure classes so I spend less time lecturing.
A related question is [How to improve myself as a lecturer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5236/how-to-improve-myself-as-a-lecturer), where one answer says "Never assume that students follow you" and suggests you "see if they get the idea, sort of get the idea, or don't get it at all." I tried to do this, and it seemed like the students that were willing to engage **were** "getting it." Apparently they were getting it, but I was still going at a speed that made their heads hurt :)<issue_comment>username_1: There are probably many different solutions to your problem. I will focus on what you could consider with your presentation. I think it is very easy to be too fast: you know the material, you feel awkward if there is a silent moment, nervousness/adrenalin kick etc. So there is a basic property of lecturing that prompts one to go faster than we may think.
When using slides you present ready written material for the students to copy. This means they write things while you speak, and what they write may not be what you are talking about. As a result they may split their focus and get confused. In the old days, the lecturer usually wrote on the board while talking. Hence students saw, heard and wrote the same material in the pace it took the lecturer to write it. I do not think the lecturer managed to talk about one thing while writing another, so the whole lecture hall was in sync and at a pace most could follow. This automatic adaption mechanism is partly lacking today, and it is possible to overload slides. It is of course possible to provide slide sheets of the slides to the students, but that will not promote a slow-down *per se*, and I do not think it helps understanding either, because students tend to not take notes as a result (I have no proof of this, but it is my experience when using such sheets).
So if possible, I think breaking up your presentation to lecture more interactively on a white board may help, apart from breaking the monotony of a slide show. To do breaks with questions is a very good way to keep students focussed to continue with that. You also need to think about what students need to take notes, so that they actually have a chance. Finally, I would recommend you to take a course in university pedagogics. In many countries in Europe, such courses are mandatory for teaching and also a requirement when applying for positions. I do not know how this applies in your neighbourhood, but having a course in pedagogics is never wrong; hopefully you can find one.
Finally, reflecting on these matters is good, and you gain experience as you teach. There are also scientific sources such as the [Journal of Higher Education](http://www.ashe.ws/?page=186) and [Higher Education Quarterly](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291468-2273). There are many other sources, and a search on Google scholar on relevant keywords should give additional useful hits. Hopefully your university allows access to some of these journals.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: In my experience it's easy to be misled by a few good students who are able to engage with you and answer your questions. This doesn't mean the majority of students feel the same way of course. I always try and bear in mind the weakest (and often the quietest) students in the class and try and not be lured into accelerating due to a few bright sparks at the front.
Asking if there are any questions or bring up examples is a good way to try and gauge the classes response. But if the class is shy or unresponsive (as is often the case initially) I find it very hard to know whether I'm boring the pants of them or they're completely lost.
A simple trick is to give a short relatively straightforward exercise and ask everyone to do it there and then. It should only take a minute or two. You can then briefly walk through the students and ask them how they are getting on. It should become obvious if many of them are struggling. Walking among the students and directly interacting with them isn't going to suit everyone though and if the class is large (or the seating is inaccessible) it will be more difficult. But it's crucial to get some feedback and if that means taking a more proactive approach then why not? I make sure to smile and encourage them since some students will be nervous if the lecturer asks how they're doing.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: One thing I've done in the past but no longer have need of – because I have restructured my courses to do less lecturing and more in-class activities (which you said you did not want to do) – is to simply help the students communicate non-verbally.
At the start of class, I used to tell them: "OK, I know that I know the material well, and I know you are unfamiliar with it, but I don't know how unfamiliar, so there will be an issue of how fast I am going. I can't stop all the time and ask, so here is how you can tell me to speed up or slow down: If I see everyone nodding their heads up and down I assuming that you are saying, 'Yes, I understand that.' This will make me speed up. If I see you stop nodding, then I will assume you are saying, 'I think I might understand that, but I'm not sure,' and I will start to slow down and start repeating myself in various ways to make sure you get it."
After this introduction, I would start. I started with the simplest material, and everyone was nodding. I started going faster. 75% still nodding; the others were asking questions of those 75%. No worries. I started going faster. Well, eventually, I was covering material so fast, everyone stopped nodding and stared at me with their eyes glazed over. We took a 5-minute break and continued.
All-in-all, actually, it worked quite well, other than the fact that I ended up going as fast as I did. As Peter wrote, we naturally speak about our subjects far faster than students can absorb the information, so having some signs from the students is exactly what we need. My suggestion is that you don't guess the signs, but rather you help them to understand how they can control the speed of the session.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: It sounds like you've done many of the things that one should do in lecture to feel the "needs of the room". Well done ! It is indeed true that undergrads are harder to read for the reasons you mention.
How long is the lecture ? When I teach 80 minute lectures, one piece of advice I was given that I continue to use is to force a 5 minute break in the middle regardless of how I think the room is doing (I have an alarm on my phone set for that time so that I don't forget). The five minute breaks allows students to get some water or take a bathroom break (things that can impair concentration), and it also gives people time to reflect on what they've been hearing and ask questions more "privately". You can also recap the first half of the lecture when you restart.
In a 50 minute lecture, you might find this less useful. However the typical attention span of a person is around 15 minutes (based on numerous studies that I don't currently have citations for - sorry JeffE), and so even in this shorter setting, forcing a break at around 25 minutes might provide the same kind of reset mechanism.
While this doesn't solve your problem entirely, it's a low-cost solution that can be used without extra work/prep.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: One of my favorite teachers during my undergrad program was my honors mathematics professor. I originally started taking honors classes in high school precisely because I hated slow-paced classes, and was sick of the boredom. Overall, this move didn't spare me entirely, of course...but in that particular math class, **the pacing was wonderful**. It might not have been if it wasn't an honors course, but that wouldn't have been my professor's fault: it would've been a matter of the rest of the class preferring a different pace than me.
This professor always kept in tune with the class' preferences across a variety of differently challenging topics in a very straightforward manner: he **polled the classroom at the end of (nearly) each lecture**. It only took a fraction of a minute. It might've gotten just a little bit irksome, but I'm sure it paid off. There were times when the majority was less than happy, and the method often revealed some difference of opinion. After a few weeks, we got quite used to his polling system, but it could've been introduced quite plainly in one day with a PowerPoint or scale of voting options drawn on the blackboard. Simply, his options were: `too fast`, `just right`, `too slow`, and if he felt it necessary, he would sometimes add `way too fast` or `much too slow` as a fourth option or follow-up question. **The class would vote by show of raised hands.** For the most part, people weren't too shy to vote, even if it was to express uncertainty.
This might not be the case outside of an honors course, where I would expect academic self-confidence and participation in general to be weaker...but I tried this a bit myself when teaching an upper-division (non-honors) psychology course at a separate university halfway across the country (USA). I varied the structure of the questions a bit too much, and was occasionally confusing as a result, but would usually make an effort to **introduce the options** I had in mind **before taking votes**. I got a lot of good feedback about a variety of concerns this way without even realizing that the classroom was clicker-equipped, much less with any effort to set them up or read their results.
**Other functions of in-class polling:**
In one particular class, I asked late in the quarter, "How many of you aren't getting the grades you want, but feel you are keeping up with the lectures and reading material and don't know what else to do?" Then, "How many simply can't keep up with the lectures and reading material?" More people answered affirmatively to each than I was comfortable to see. This was probably the most useful feedback I received in the entire course, including course evaluations afterward (the only institutionally mandated form of feedback, sadly) and my own open-ended, short written response question administered halfway through about each student's primary concern with the class. For the people who didn't know what else they could do, I reviewed the variety of resources I'd made available to them, and suggested a few ways in which they could help each other study by using the normally available systems the university provides online, including a Q&A forum and wikispaces for student-coauthored study guides. For those who simply couldn't keep up, I slowed the pace overall, held a review session outside the normal class hours, and made the final test somewhat more forgiving. I wish I could say it was enough for those students, but at least I can say I tried everything I could think of, and as a result, it could've been worse.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/14 | 692 | 2,588 | <issue_start>username_0: Short: It's easy to find bibliographical info, but how to guess page numbers?
I'm writing a paper in English. I want to cite certain book, originally published in French. It is translated to English and Russian. I own a Russian translation. I'd like to reference English translation. I don't have access to other language versions and I'm not going to purchase them.<issue_comment>username_1: After expressing my question, I understood that I can find the English translation in Google Books and look into contents with page numbers. So I can have references like `(1998, 36-67)`. Actually I can even search within a book, so I can find exact page numbers for the passages referenced.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Regarding your original question, if you have access to a Russian translation and you want to cite the English translation, but you do not have access to the English translation, then you really need to focus on citing what you have access to.
Now, I understand it turns out you do have access to the English version as stated in your answer but for future reference, you should not cite a version of a text you do not have acces to. The reasons are more than simply that you don't know the page numbers. It is possible that there is a problem in the Russian translation but the English version does not have that problem. Likewise the opposite could be true. Basically, the two versions could be slightly but meaningfully different. Because of this possibility, you should only cite what you have access to. Otherwise, cite through a third-party "Jones wrote in 2001 (cited in Simpson, 2005)."
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: You should cite the version you have available, since section numbering, pagination etc. can get shifted. The proper way to do it is to simply cite both, for instance:
>
> [Doe06] <NAME>. *Prostory.* Nakladatelsví XYZ, Prague, 2010, 512 pp. Translation of: <NAME>. *Spaces.* Publisher ABC, New York, 2006, 480 pp.
>
>
>
This way, the citation contains the necessary information, and this is completely acceptable. Second option is to make it two citations:
>
> [Doe06] <NAME>. *Spaces.* Publisher ABC, New York, 2006, 480 pp.
>
>
> [Doe10] <NAME>. *Prostory.* Nakladatelsví XYZ, Prague, 2010, 512 pp. Translation of [Doe06].
>
>
>
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Don't cite page numbers, **cite chapter and section numbers**. They won't change irrespective of the translation. Also they are less likely to change after small corrections in reprints.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/14 | 1,337 | 5,518 | <issue_start>username_0: Do people in the industry consider HCI a non-technical field? Do they expect an HCI researcher to have more design and social science skills than technical ones?<issue_comment>username_1: I am a little puzzled by your career goal and perhaps, this is rather early for you to decide.
**Your immediate goals are:**
1. Software Developer
2. Data Scientist
**Your future goal is:**
Entrepreneur
As far as I am aware, you don't **need** a phd to be a software developer and certainly not for an entrepreneur. So, discussion about a PhD in HCI is moot there.
There are also excellent data science jobs available with a bachelors or masters degree pre-requisite but a PhD can certainly help there.
A PhD candidate in HCI usually goes towards one of three ways -
They can gravitate towards usability design/usability studies/usability analysis. This requires ~60% knowledge in social sciences (e.g. theory, experimental design) and ~40% knowledge in the computing sciences - basically in applications (e.g. applied ML, application development)
They can also gravitate towards data analysis i.e what industry calls data science (I am not a fan of that term). For that, ideally they should have ~70% data analysis knowledge (ML is not the only approach for analyzing data) and ~30% social science knowledge. (i.e. if you are in the Facebook data science team and studying rumor propagation then you better have a very good intuitive grasp of cascades, diffusions and homo/heterophily theory). Many data scientists have 0 knowledge of their domain - which is both a reflection of their demand as well as the inchoate state of what "data science" actually is.
Finally, there are those rare few who manage a zen-like balance between social and computing sciences. They are equally good in qualitative and quantitative methodologies and have appreciation for all spheres of knowledge. Generally, I find these folks in academia (which is not to say that you won't find such folks in industrial research - you will!)
**Answers to your particular question:**
**1. Do people in the industry consider HCI a non-technical field?**
No. This depends on what your specialization is and what you have done so far.
**2. Do they expect me to have more design and social science skills than technical ones?**
No. Not necessarily. Again, this depends on who you are and what you have done so far.
**3. Finally, does having a PhD in HCI hinder my chances to achieving my career goal**
Yes, but its not a function of HCI but the fact of being enrolled in any PhD program. As I pointed out, you don't need a PhD to do software development or to be an entrepreneur. There is some advantage in having a PhD if you want to go specifically into data science but you can also see many counterexamples in industry - those who enter the data science domain with a MS and do extremely well.
Therefore, your current plan of action depends on what you want to do immediately. I urge you to ponder and self-reflect whether spending a sizable chunk of your adult life in a PhD is really worth it for you if all you want to do is to write code or start a business or analyze data.
**Most** PhD candidates from my departments and other similar ones in the US (CMU, UDub, GaTech etc.) either go into academia or into industrial research. I know of a few examples of folks who dropped out of their PhD with a MS because they realized that they don't want to do research but they want to contribute to industry in other ways.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: If your goal is to be a software developer, they see your HCI background as a plus to their developer, because you'll understand tasks better and see things that they may not. If you don't have experience in things like UX, design, and user studies, don't apply for the jobs that need them, because they will test you on it. If you do want those jobs, good news! You have two years still to learn those things!
I have a BSc in CPSC with a concentration in HCI and a minor in Visual Studies and Art History. I took the minor because I wanted to learn how to express my ideas better. Eventually I'll go back and get a MSc in HCI. There are multiple HCI jobs open, but you usually do need that experience that you mentioned as you'll be doing things like designing the interfaces and doing research on what is good and what isn't. I am a Software Developer at my job, though a front end software developer. They loved the idea of a person who had HCI and design in their background and respect my opinions on it, but they have other people who do the designs. This sounds like the type of job you want. If that's the case, simply put your degree on your resume with detail on what you learned and excel in because of it, but only apply for software developer jobs. They will respect what you did for school and it can only help you.
To answer your first question, I have always had my HCI concentration be considered technical because I did work with HCI in school. In other words, I made the designs, coded it myself, and defended and tested to show that it was GOOD human computer interaction. So I guess for you, it's only technical if you've been doing work with your concentration in a technical way. If you have people creating the designs and user stories for you, and the low-, medium-, and high-fidelity mock-ups, and then you just implement them, that's not HCI technical, you're just coding while someone else does the hard HCI stuff.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/14 | 2,465 | 9,902 | <issue_start>username_0: I am an Indian student. I am not related to any kind of mathematics research. So I do not have proper idea about it. I may join in as a PhD after a few months. I want to get a picture of the research status in India.
India has several mathematics research centres, institutions and universities. I want to know the status of mathematics research in India. How many and which of them are of international standard? What about the impact factor of their mathematics publication? What is the status of computer science, which is almost neglected by Indian Mathematicians. Is my idea true? I know that none of our institutions and universities in top 200 of the world ranking. Please give me some idea on it and sufficient resource so that I can convince myself.
Suppose I have completed a PhD in India. Will it be accepted internationally. When? Why and Why not?<issue_comment>username_1: You have a lot of questions all interspersed within your question block so I will try my best to answer. Here is a disclaimer:
**Disclaimer:** I have been a graduate student at the Indian Statistical Institute
Mathematics research, especially in theory, is pretty good in India. The top institutes (in no particular order) are:
1. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
2. Indian Statistical Institute (Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai)
3. Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai, Bangalore)
4. The IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) at Kharagpur, Kanpur, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai
5. Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai
6. Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai
All of these are quite good internationally and attract the best Indian students. The entrance exams are quite tough and many of the BS, MS students go on to do PhD at top world institutions. Those who stay, are also quite good and publish papers in the usual top journals. The problem is neither funding nor red tape in my opinion.
The problem is that compared to most "top" mathematics departments, these institutes are rather small (i.e. ISI Bangalore had ~only 20 full time faculty in my time and of those, 10 published regularly). You see, its only in recent years, that regular publications have become quite the norm and its usually being driven by younger faculty (usually those who have done their PhDs from US or Europe).
Please see [him](http://www.isibang.ac.in/%7Eathreya/Research/prepub.html), [him](http://www.isibang.ac.in/%7Ejay/research.html) and [him](http://www.isibang.ac.in/%7Ersreekantan/CV.pdf) for reference in theory and on the applied, computing side, [him](http://www.isibang.ac.in/%7Ebsdsagar/Publications-BookReviews.html) [He is my MS thesis adviser] This is one small example from one school. I can assure you that the situation is similar in the other schools that I mentioned.
Most Indian PhDs go on to do postdocs internationally. Why just last year, we had a postdoc (who finished his PhD in ISI Kolkata and was joining IIT Bombay this year) in the ML lab here. He was great and very smart.
In conclusion, if you get a PhD in Mathematics in India and do good research while you are at it, I don't see why you shouldn't get international postdocs. Tenure track job positions will be restricted to the Indian subcontinent and south east Asia because USA and Europe have their own PhD glut problem. But, thats cool because most of these schools I mentioned are hiring very well. In fact, I plan to apply for several tenure track positions in CS departments in India when I graduate.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In terms of information, I doubt I can improve on username_1's answer. However, I'll add some comments.
First, a disclaimer. I don't know much about Indian academia, but I was a grad student in math for a while, a long time ago, at TIFR. It did not go well. I also know (knew, perhaps) a fair number of Indians doing research mathematics.
First India nominally has a *lot* of universities. However, the vast majority of them are not research universities. At least in mathematics, my impression is that most of them don't count for much on an international research scale. That, of course, does not necessarily mean you will get a bad mathematical education there. It all depends on personal experience, including one's advisor (sometimes out of the way places have good research people), the local academic community, including other students and faculty, and the general atmosphere of the place itself. Plus the internet, with sites like Mathoverflow, is definitely having a levelling effect.
In any case, the important places for mathematics, as username_1 says, are the handful of (mostly government sponsored) research institutes. There are also the various IITs, which do have math departments, which for the most part are better than the "regular" universities, but probably not as good as the research institutes.
If you go to study at the research institutes, I think you can get quite a good mathematics education there. I don't think it is any worse than the education you would get at a good Western university, and in some ways it may be better. For one, thing you will experience less distractions. See below. For example, the School of Maths at TIFR was, and I expect still is, quite a high powered research place, and has good connections with the international research community. There are regular visitors from abroad to give talks and visit. TIFR Faculty travel abroad frequently on visits, giving talks, taking sabbaticals and so on.
However, some caveats.
First, as username_1 says, they are mostly smaller places (though I think the TIFR school of maths is quite substantial). Second, as a math student, you are likely to find yourself *extremely* socially isolated. These places pay very badly, regardless how good a mathematical education they impart. They also tend to be located in expensive metropolitan areas. For example, the TIFR is located at the tip of South Bombay. Bombay is possibly the most expensive place in India. You won't have enough money to do much of anything. Plus, of course, you'll be very busy studying.
These institutes are additionally typically not part of a university campus, so you aren't surrounded by the considerable variety of people and happenings you experience in a regular university environment. You'll be stuck with your fellow students, postdocs and faculty, for the most part.
These issues are to some extent true of a mathematics student anywhere, but they are, in my opinion, more extreme in India. I was a grad student in the US, and it was not nearly so isolated.
There are some advantages for an Indian citizen to being in an Indian research institute as opposed to say a European or US university, however. First, you won't have to put up with being treated like a third-class citizen, and being constantly pushed around by government and university bureaucracy. Second, you'll have all the time in the world to do your research. Indian research institutes, unlike Western universities, don't bother their students with things like teaching duties. Since they aren't regular universities for the most part, they don't have much by way of undergraduate students anyway. There will probably be opportunities to teach courses if you want, though, if only at neighboring colleges.
So, to summarize if you don't mind going years at a stretch doing not much but study maths, you'll be fine.
A final word about areas represented. I think Indian math research institutes skew heavily towards theory. I think there is some CS, but again theoretical. The TIFR for example is entirely theoretical, though I believe there are some people there who do consulting. My impression is that the IITs are more applied. If you are interested in things like machine learning, those might be better places to look at. Areas like statistics are also poorly represented. There is ISI, but not much of anything else at the level of statistics graduate study.
Some of this may be factually inaccurate. I am sure some of it is biased. Factual corrections appreciated; I am always happy to learn.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: This may be institution dependent rather than "country dependent". If the university or other institution publishes a lot of international publications, these works will probably be known for the foreign scientists reviewing your potential future application (they must be competent in the area!). In other words, you need to care more about the status of your institution, laboratory and supervisor rather than about the general status of the country.
It is possible to see problematic laboratories and unsuccessful research projects everywhere. No country is protected.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I think username_1 and Faheem already gave wonderful answers from different perspectives, and I want to add mine:
1. If OP would be open to expanding their interests to Theoretical Computer Science, there is MSR India too, which does great work in addition to the places username_1 mentioned.
2. I know of *quite* a few now tenure-track faculty members in the US who obtained their Master's degrees from some of these top Indian places. And they went on to do their PhDs at amazing US universities.
3. As an Indian who did her Master's in the US, worked for a few years, then went back for a PhD (all in the US), I do wish I had stayed in India for my Master's. While I was in the US doing my MS, it took me a long, long time to adjust to the quarter system, the way you are graded in classes, the way you collaborate, how funding works, etc. I also somehow very suddenly got "tunnel vision" and in the second year of my MS, focused exclusively on getting a job after my MS (as opposed to focusing on doing good research). I think I wouldn't have had that if I had stayed in my own country.
All the best to you!
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/14 | 787 | 3,514 | <issue_start>username_0: I’m approaching the end of my PhD adventure and I’ve started looking around for job opportunities. Recently, I found a job posting that fits my career goals quite nicely, but it has more managerial ingredients in it than pure research. It is concerned with managing/coordinating multiple research teams – something I’d like to do eventually but maybe at a later stage after gaining some more research/management experience as a postdoc.
Yet, I found the job description really encouraging:
>
> Requirements: experience in project management or a strong desire to learn it.
>
>
>
That’s why I decided to try my chances anyway. Lucky enough, I'll be interviewed for this position.
In the past, I have had students (BS, MS) who did their theses and semester projects under my supervision. Additionally, I’ve had a graduate-level course on general management and took the lead role in a small research project. Even though these experiences were valuable, this job would arguably require managerial skills at a higher level.
So, my question is as follows: What type of difficulties/changes should I expect from this transition that I may undergo: from a technical PhD to a research manager/coordinator?<issue_comment>username_1: If you've taken Project Management classes and have taken lead roles in regards to projects and BS and MS students, you'll find Project Management to be a more intense version of that. For example, you'll be needing to ensure everyone is working at the pace they should, getting the needed work done, and be prepared to figure out ways to remedy issues that occur. You will be working closely with stockholders, include managerial people, customers, etc, and you need to have the ability to answer any questions they may have regarding your project, even though you yourself are not the one directly creating that content. You'll need to figure out how to effectively communicate with people under you to get a sense of what they're doing and how things will impact the project. Be prepared to do scheduling of the project, which includes figuring out things in terms of Man Hours required for project in contrast to what you have available as resources. A lot of these things are similar in respect to what you've done in school, though to a higher degree: there's more riding on it, and these people aren't grading you, they're expecting it to be done right the first time.
As far as difficulties, if you have done all the above in classes or with your BS and MS students, then just be prepared for the faster pace and higher volume of stockholders. It can be a bit overwhelming, but doable.
Having a technical PhD will help you in these situations, because you'll have a better understanding of what your workers need to complete their tasks, how fast it will take them, and what it is exactly that you're working on. In fact, it will give you a leg up on other candidates or PMs that don't have technical backgrounds. If you can listen to a technical explanation of what's happening, and relay it to stockholders in a way that non-technical people can understand, you'll be fine.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Doing PhD research usually means following waterfall methodology or iterative waterfall, while most project management requires Agile and Scrumban. You just need one course on project-management methodologies and you can be in and be even better than other project managers who have no PhD experience
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/02/14 | 2,390 | 10,645 | <issue_start>username_0: Having just spoke with my advisor, and speaking on occasion with other professors, I have come to the impression that one should not "subpublish." Let me say what I mean. I'm a 3rd year graduate student right now, and the professors I talk to seem to say that it is not a good idea to publish many small papers along the way to a result: that is, holding fixed the total mathematical content across *N* papers, it is best if *N* is minimized. I was trying to understand why. My advisor cited the reason of "reputation" and I have invented my own reason that perhaps there is an upfront cost to the process of writing and submitting a paper so that although effort per length may be constant, it is to my advantage to pay the upfront cost as few times as possible. (Finding a referee is the only upfront cost that comes to mind, but keep in mind I've never done this before.)
Can someone expand upon how reputation is relevant here i.e. for *fixed mathematical content* why it looks bad to come out with many small papers? Are there also benefits to the community or the knowledge pool that I'm trying to expand however slightly by writing such papers if it all comes at once in one big paper? One would think that if I "subpublish" that actually since my results become available more immediately that it would benefit the community if I did so. The only person it would seem to possibly hurt is me if I were to get scooped.
Are there other ways in which upfront costs to the whole process of publishing may happen?
I am interested in all my questions in both advantages and disadvantages to me, and also to those who would use my work.<issue_comment>username_1: To address the reputation aspect:
Think about a typical reader of your papers. Most likely they will only look at one paper you have written. Unless you impress them with that one paper the likelihood of them reading anything else you have written depends on whether that first paper convinces them it is worth their time to read another. So the more content that is in each of your papers the more impressed the reader will be with you. If the first paper of yours someone reads has a small amount of mathematical content then they probably won't expect too much from any of your other papers.
In your formulation the ideal *N* may not always be 1, but each paper should actually have something worthwhile in its own right to say. You shouldn't expect someone to read more than one paper to get to only one meaningful idea.
A side comment, the author does not find referees. The editor does. Sometimes the author may suggest candidates but the editor or the suggested referee can always say no.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This is highly field specific. In many STEM fields, multiple small papers are preferred because the field moves very quickly and people would get scooped if it took them 2-3 years to write a paper. This is much less of a concern in mathematics. Most mathematicians are very careful and take their time to write thorough and complete larger papers.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: In some situations, people will judge you by counting the number of papers you have written. Administrators in funding organizations or universities might do this, for example, or HR people working for job search agencies or prospective employers. They won't read the papers, and they wouldn't understand them even if they did. So, in these situations, more papers is better.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: In math it's generally better to aim for fewer, longer, better papers. There's nothing wrong with publishing short papers if that's what best fits your discoveries. However, given the choice you should not publish your results piecemeal as you derive them, but rather try to collect and polish them and craft coherent, substantial papers. There are several reasons for this:
1. Publishing partial results piece by piece makes it harder to write understandable papers. A few papers later, you'll wish you had done things a little differently, and you'll start writing things like "by the same idea as in the proof of Lemma 3 in [15]" because the statement of Lemma 3 doesn't quite say what you need now. But it's too late to change it, so your next paper is either cryptic or repetitive, and neither one impresses readers. Or you find an ad hoc way around it, but your paper ends up being a little less natural. Basically, this is a form of [technical debt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt). Once you have enough technical debt, the only good solution is to write a clean exposition from scratch. Every topic eventually reaches this point (which is one reason we have expository papers and books), but in the meantime you'll minimize the problems if you gather related ideas in one place and write them as a coherent unit.
2. If you break your work into papers in unnatural ways, you risk looking desperate for publications. Each individual paper may look like you don't understand the big picture or don't think your work is going to amount to anything substantial. These are not messages you want to send to readers.
3. If you want a serious research career, you need to publish in good journals. Taking a long paper in a prestigious journal and breaking it into three short papers in less prestigious journals is bad for your CV. Experts might know those three papers amount to something substantial when combined, but a non-expert looking at your CV won't be able to tell.
4. Many people in your subfield will form an opinion of you without having studied your work carefully. For example, plenty of people who have never read any of your papers will see you give talks at conferences or will see references to your work. Because they don't have a global context for your work, to a first approximation they will judge you by how good they think your average paper is.
>
> One would think that if I "subpublish" that actually since my results become available more immediately that it would benefit the community if I did so.
>
>
>
If you reach a nontrivial milestone that is genuinely exciting or useful for other people, then that could be a good reason to publish a paper now, rather than sitting on the result while you try to complete a larger project. On the other hand, there's much less value in presenting a steady stream of partial results taken out of context.
Of course career pressures sometimes interfere with ideal publishing. If you're going on the job market soon, then writing a suboptimal paper now is probably better than writing an optimal paper later.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: *(My answer somewhat overlaps with previous answer, but contains parts that in my opinion need to be said. Beware that I am a fundamental mathematician, and that my advices should be taken with extra caution in other fields.)*
I would say that in most cases a good way to go is to **get each paper tell one story**. This both means that the story should be complete, and that there should not be two stories in it.
Now, in many cases choosing the perimeter of a paper is a subtle issue and your interest and the interest of the community do not necessarily align completely.
### Pros for publishing several smaller papers:
* It can be difficult to get a long paper published in a good journal, because of a limited number of pages published each year (this sounds weird at a time when most papers are distributed electronically, but many math journals have this issue). For example I had a long paper, containing different independent results on a common object, rejected by a journal after the referee found the results nice, but the paper too long for its worth. Maybe one of the result would have been equally sexy on its own, and the paper would certainly have been much shorter.
* Your CV will have more lines, and this can sometimes help. Every hiring committee I attended to put an emphasis (too strong in my opinion) on the number of papers of each applicant.
* If there are different results that may be of interest to different communities, putting them in one paper mean that they will appear in only one journal, maybe not read by both communities, and that there will be only one title and one item and review in each database (MathReviews, Zentrallblatt). This can make one or both of the results more difficult to find, less visible, therefore less useful to the community.
### Pros for publishing less, longer papers
* It can be difficult to publish a short paper in a good journal, as it might appear as not tackling a challenging issue. Of course, a short paper solving a long-standing open problem will be easily published, but when you have to convince an editor and a referee that your question is good and that answering it deserves merit, short paper may (unfortunately) hurt you.
* Long papers can impress people on CV. I have heard in hiring committees remarks like "she publishes 30 pages papers, this is serious work" or "Ok, he has a lot of papers, but he mostly seems efficient in maximizing the number of CV lines from little mathematical content". If your introductions are all the same, it can look like salami publishing; in our *publish or perish* era, one is expected to salami publish without looking like he or she is salami publishing.
* Sometimes, two or more results complement each other and are together worth more than the sum of their individual worth. In this case, a unique large paper may be much better than several smaller papers that individually will look minor.
### Concluding comment
You see that I gave each argument both ways. This is why I think the issue is subtle, and that each case has to be considered closely. The "one story" guideline can help but is not very precise. Finally I would advise to try to maximize the benefit of readers (remembering they have limited time); try to imagine what a referee that does not yet know your work will feel reading your paper, and make your choice so that he or she thinks "what a nice result!" (the result needs to be somewhat impressive by itself, but also to be clear and clearly delimited). In most cases and in the long run I believe it will also be close to maximize your own benefit.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: @Jeff-Publishing your work in fewer larger papers or more smaller papers depends on your level, which means that when you are in your formative years, I recommend you to publish your work in more smaller papers and when you are in your summative years, I recommend you to publish your work in fewer larger papers
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/02/15 | 2,186 | 8,914 | <issue_start>username_0: I am soon to finish a long PhD, and am thinking about postdoctoral applications.
As a PhD student I did a lot of quality work and have some publications in respected journals/conferences. However, I did not develop my own research ideas or objectives as a PhD student. This was just the state of affairs and there wasn't much I could do about it. Also, while my work so far is primarily applied and methodological, I am interested in theoretical work. I do not want to continue doing the kind of work I have done so far.
I have a couple questions under the theme of the title:
1. Do I need to sell my PhD work as my own idea in a postdoc application, or is it reasonable to be honest?
2. Will it arouse suspicion in an application to propose research in an area which is not closely related to my PhD research?
3. If I want to be able to develop my own ideas as a postdoctoral researcher, should I seek to clarify that goal, seek positions which advertise that option explicitly, or conceal that goal and instead simply do so once I have a position?
More general question:
1. From my observation and reading, there's an art to developing a research objective/question. Ideally, I would like to have some kind of guidance in doing so. In my experience that is unrealistic. How can I seek meaningful mentorship, but somehow frame it in a manner that allows me to move forward and to maintain financial and intellectual freedom from the mentor?
In my experience for students from mathematics and physics the answer to (2) is often "no". However, coming from an applied area wishing to do more theoretical work, the standards are unclear to me.<issue_comment>username_1: First of all, let me say that your choice of words really rings an alarm bell with me. The general impression is that you are very ready to be inhonest, and (in agreement with that) your default position seems to mistrust your future employer and you seem to expect suspicion as opposed to taking in the situation openly.
Now if someone does not trust me, a natural question for me is: why should I trust them? I would not want to work with someone with this attitude towards work. And moreover, I wouldn't want to have someone messing up the working atmosphere in my group.
(But don't worry: I'm not in the position to hire anyone.)
>
> Do I need to sell my PhD work as my own idea in a postdoc application, or is it reasonable to be honest?
>
>
>
I'd say it is even **necessary to be honest**, and it is most probably futile to try to get away with anything else. Academia is a small world, and phone, skype and email reach very far nowadays. Particularly if you say that your field is so small that you do not care to name it here.
>
> Will it arouse suspicion in an application to propose research in an area which is not closely related to my PhD research?
>
>
>
No. But you should have a positive reason to apply there.
>
> If I want to be able to develop my own ideas as a postdoctoral researcher, should I seek to clarify that goal, seek positions which advertise that option explicitly
>
>
>
I'd say that you are *expected* to develop your own ideas in a postdoc position.
So: Yes, why not. I had interviews where we discussed openly how much own ideas would be possible, welcome, and what the bottomline of things-that-need-to-be-done-no-matter-what would be.
>
> From my observation and reading, there's an art to developing a research objective/question. Ideally, I would like to have some kind of guidance in doing so. In my experience that is unrealistic. How can I seek meaningful mentorship, but somehow frame it in a manner that allows me to move forward and to maintain financial and intellectual freedom from the mentor?
>
>
>
I can ensure you that there are good mentors and leaders, including also mentors and leaders who are even good at teaching leadership in research. But such learning can only work if you trust your mentor. That in turn makes financial and intellectual dependence a non-issue. It may not be easy to find a good mentor. But on the other hand, you could also learn from someone who is not your direct supervisor. That way, you'd have the financial and intellectual freedom.
---
But: if you feel you need mentoring how to develop research questions, how can you feel ready to apply for a postdoc position?
>
> I did not develop my own research ideas or objectives as a PhD student. This was just the state of affairs and there wasn't much I could do about it.
>
>
>
How come? How could your supervisor prevent you from thinking your own thoughts and from having your own opinion and judging of what needs to be done and how? As a research professional, crititcal and independent thinking is one of your core tasks.
Remember: you were a professional already when you started the PhD. If that wasn't necessary, it would be appropriate for an apprentice to apply for a PhD position.
And if you had gone to work in industry instead of in academia, you'd aslo have been profesionally responsible for everything you do.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> Do I need to sell my PhD work as my own idea in a postdoc application, or is it reasonable to be honest?
>
>
>
You need to **honestly** show how your work is your own and you need to show that the research question you worked on is important. The people hiring you want to see that you do groundbreaking work on important problems, they aren't looking for a story about how an original research problem came to you in a dream. You need to talk about what you did. You should devote very little space to what other people did, if any.
>
> Will it arouse suspicion in an application to propose research in an area which is not closely related to my PhD research?
>
>
>
Not if you justify your interest in the proposed research. It would be good to show some sort of conceptual connection between the proposed research and the previous research, but probably not essential if the proposed research is something "hot" in your field.
>
> If I want to be able to develop my own ideas as a postdoctoral researcher, should I seek to clarify that goal, seek positions which advertise that option explicitly, or conceal that goal and instead simply do so once I have a position?
>
>
>
Developing original research ideas (under constraints) is usually the point of a postdoc. It's not really something you need to clarify, and not something that needs to be in the ad. Do make sure that the ad is compatible with your intended research direction, obviously.
>
> From my observation and reading, there's an art to developing a research objective/question. Ideally, I would like to have some kind of guidance in doing so. In my experience that is unrealistic. How can I seek meaningful mentorship, but somehow frame it in a manner that allows me to move forward and to maintain financial and intellectual freedom from the mentor?
>
>
>
The postdoc isn't the PI. At a postdoc position there will usually be a few senior people who can be your mentors. So you'll get mentorship.
*Meaningful* mentorship isn't exactly something you can ask for (or that can be given on-demand). It's like friendship: it doesn't really make much sense to "ask for meaningful friendship," it's something that develops with people who are the right fit for you.
Intellectual freedom is sort of implied in the position, as mentioned before. The postdoc's job is to do original research on a particular topic. Obviously there are constraints to what research you can do, but that's true at all levels: everyone has constraints on the research they do.
As for financial freedom... I'm not entirely sure what one needs to do to get fired from a postdoc, but I think that having original ideas isn't that thing.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: Time for some tough love. What your future employers want is a steady stream of scholarship, increasing in quality, quantity, and self-sufficiency. This includes both those hiring you for a postdoc and those hiring you (hopefully) for a permanent position afterward.
Normally to switch from subject A to subject B requires time and produces a gap in the stream. This is very bad. Even if there is no gap, switching topics renders much of your hard work publishing papers less relevant to future employers. All other things being equal, I would prefer to hire a specialist in subject B rather than someone who straddles both B and A.
If you're <NAME>, you can work your way through the entire [MSC 2010](http://msc2010.org/Default.html); that's just being brilliant and prolific. However if you're a mere mortal it's a bad idea to switch specialties until at least after tenure.
PS. If you are less than forthright about how experienced you are at working independently, this cannot possibly lead to a result in your favor.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/15 | 1,594 | 5,970 | <issue_start>username_0: On 13th August 2013 I received the following email. I have cut and pasted it below. I haven't bothered to insert back any of the links, but can do so if anyone is interested. I would not normally post private email to a public forum, but this is obviously a form letter, one step up from spam.
At the time I dismissed it as one more attempt by a journal to get me to do something for nothing as usual, but then I got a followup from the same person on 12th February 2014. It is in my experience fairly unusual to get a followup to this kind of invitation.
I thought it would do no harm to ask people here what they thought. I haven't changed my mind on it. I don't see any advantage to the proposed work. They aren't offering any money of course. It is not a publication. It isn't an opportunity to get involved in a collaborative project. It looks like a opportunity to become some kind of unpaid new-fangled Web 2.0 type editor for some kind of new-fangled web research platform. It would probably be lots of work. So, I don't see anything in it for me. I'm not sure what is in it for the journal either.
So, to summarize my questions in a convenient fashion.
1. Is there any reason anyone one can think of that I might want to be
involved in something like this? Note - I'm by no stretch of the
imagination a senior researcher. Such an invitation *might* make sense for
a senior researcher, but I don't see why such a person could not simply
create his own web site to showcase his research.
2. Why is the journal trying to organize something like this? I don't
quite see what is in it for them either. Perhaps just the opportunity
to make money off submissions to an ersatz journal?
>
> I came across[LINK][LINK] your “SNPpy--database management for SNP
> data from genome wide association studies.” published in “PloS one”
> and thought that it would be an excellent fit for the "Research
> Topics" initiative in Frontiers. We have recently partnered with
> the [LINK]Nature Publishing Group [goo.gl] to expand our
> researcher-driven Open Science platform, and I would like for you to
> consider suggesting a consolidated topic of the latest research and
> perspectives from your field in a Frontiers journal.
>
>
> However please note that our invitation is not restricted to the
> subject of this work. You are free to propose a Research Topic of your
> choice.
>
>
> This [LINK][LINK]short video [goo.gl] gives you a better overview on
> the potential of Frontiers Research Topics.
>
>
> You may also want to browse on the [LINK][LINK]Research Topics
> homepage [goo.gl] and [LINK][LINK]here [goo.gl] to check the final
> format of a Frontiers Research Topic as an e-book.
>
>
> Like in the example above, Frontiers will create a dedicated homepage
> for your Research Topic, where you can manage contributions and
> maintain an ongoing dialogue with post-publication feedback from the
> research community.
>
>
> If you are interested in pursuing this project, all it takes to get
> started is:
>
>
> - A title and a short description of your Research Topic;
>
>
> * A list of contributors you plan to contact.
>
>
> If you wanted to find detailed information on how to launch a Research
> Topic, please browse [LINK][LINK]here [goo.gl].
>
>
> Please let me know if you are interested in organizing a Frontiers
> Research Topic, and do not hesitate to contact me by phone or email
> with any questions. I’m looking forward to your reply.
>
>
><issue_comment>username_1: As far as I can tell, a "Research Topic" is a collection of papers on a specialized topic. It's basically a special issue of one of their journals, although it's presented slightly differently, and they charge publication fees for the papers.
What really turns me off is the publisher's spamming practices. I've had exactly the same experience you have: they send what's pretty obviously a form letter (populated with your name and one publication title/journal, seemingly randomly selected) and then some months later send a passive-aggressive reminder asking for a reply. Maybe this is a coincidence, but I also got a follow-up message from them on February 12, so perhaps they sent out a whole wave of them on that day. In any case, the fact that they feel they have to advertise by spamming makes me suspicious, and the reminder messages are irritating.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I would suggest a response such as:
>
> Thank you for repeated offer to participate in a frontiers research
> topic. I decline your offer on grounds of not agreeing with this model
> wherein researchers are invited to produce articles seemingly with the
> sole purpose of publishing and get them to invite their peers to
> contribute as well. I am a vehement supporter of open acces
> publishing, but I do not support publishing ‘for the sake of
> publishing’, whereas I also feel that structures to stimulate
> collaboration between researchers should not be run primarily by
> commercial partners.
>
>
> Frankly, the practice of actively recruiting researchers to provide
> articles is tempering my initial enthusiasm for Frontiers.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
>
> my name
>
>
>
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: This topic has received some discussion recently: at least some of these invitations appear to be revenue driven, with no specific reason related to the advancement of science per se. Read reports here of followup emails that received answers indicating an indiscriminate approach that would, in my book, qualify as SPAM.
<http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/11/05/i-get-complaints-about-frontiers/>
I think frontiers should be taken to task about these practices, and their wikipedia page edited accordingly.
I opened a Talk on this here
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Frontiers\_(publisher)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3aFrontiers_%28publisher%29)
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/15 | 1,287 | 5,699 | <issue_start>username_0: I have started solving problems from the American Mathematical Monthly. While I will definitely continue this, I am not sure how much this will help for math graduate school admissions (assuming I submit my solutions and they are recognized by the Monthly). How significant would multiple solutions to Monthly problems be in admissions? What about having the published solution to a problem? One issue is that I don't know how difficult the problems are presumed to be: all I know is that I personally have solved at least one of them!<issue_comment>username_1: It probably depends on the committee members, but I wouldn't expect it to help much.
If you get a really clever solution published, or they publish a problem you submit, that could make a difference. It certainly wouldn't mean as much as a research paper, but it could be viewed as the same sort of thing on a smaller scale.
Otherwise, the potential impact is not large. Solving Monthly problems would be viewed favorably, as evidence of talent and effort, but it's not likely to mean the difference between admission and rejection. (Still, it's worth listing on your CV.)
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I agree with the other answer, but just to add another data point:
You might as well list it on your CV, but you shouldn't expect it to help very much.
I did (along with a few others) graduate admissions for the math department at UGA for four years -- and in fact am about to get involved in it again later this week, despite not being on the committee anymore -- and I remember exactly one student who listed it on his CV. It was sort of interesting but not particularly impressive, and if I remember it right we did not admit him in the end. He had a rather distinctive name and, while flipping rapidly through the *Monthly* problems in the months and years since then, I've noticed that he has submitted several more problems as well. I am starting to wonder what happened to this student...but I wouldn't go so far as to say that I regret the decision we made.
In general I have to say -- and this is a very personal opinion, not a professional one -- that it seems to me that "problems" sections in journals like this are a bit old-fashioned. They do not seem to play a nontrivial role in contemporary mathematical life. I remember having exactly two conversations about Monthly problems:
1) As a first-year graduate student, I did solve a Monthly problem. (This was the one and only Monthly problem that I can remember having thought about for more than five minutes, and I think it is telling that, while I usually have quite a good memory for mathematical minutiae, I remember precisely nothing about the problem.) Rather I remember standing in a mezzanine outside of the mathematics department and telling a fellow student that I had solved a Monthly problem. She politely congratulated me. I asked her whether I should actually submit the solution. She said that she couldn't see why not. I ended up not submitting the solution (thus I can't be completely sure that I correctly solved the problem...and it is telling that I don't care very much!). Okay, that was not my most riveting anecdote.
2) This is slightly more amusing. As a postdoc I remember having lunch with one of my close friends. He told me that he was flipping through the problem section of the Monthly and his eye was caught on a problem that had been proposed...by him. He racked his brains about this and did not succeed in recalling anything about the problem or his submitting it. He did have a friend who was involved with editing the problems section at the time, so he guessed that must have had something to do with it (his friend was very conscientious; it is not plausible that he would have done it as a joke or prank).
I'm not saying that most Monthly problems are easy: on the contrary, I am a relatively experienced, relatively successful research mathematician, and I still sometimes at least pass my eyes over these problems while flipping towards the reviews, and I rarely if ever see one that I think "Oh, surely I could solve that very easily." I'm just not really sure what the point of solving them is: I have plenty of other math problems that I'm trying to solve! It's a little like math contests, only adults can participate too.
To be honest, I think that MathOverflow has significantly overtaken solving Monthly problems as being a minor way for young people to show their talent. There are a small number of undergraduates that I would admit in a heartbeat because I have come to see their brilliance on MO (and to a lesser but still probably sufficient extent, on math.SE). Most of these students are so brilliant that they do not condescend to apply to my graduate program, and I assume that if they did the rest of their application would be so superior that I would not have to spend much time explaining to my colleagues doing the admissions why their performance on math Q&A websites makes me confident that they will be excellent graduate students...but still.
I also think that participation on MO and math.SE is really better than solving problems or doing well in math contests...not better in an absolute sense, but closer to what mathematicians actually do and thus more indicative of academic mathematical career potential (as opposed to raw talent; certain kinds of raw mathematical talent are less useful to a career mathematician than one might think!). Still not that close, of course: the fact that I have a higher reputation on MO than any of several Fields Medalists and other true luminaries that regularly contribute there is ample evidence of that.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/16 | 472 | 2,084 | <issue_start>username_0: Do I need a consent to record audio of a presentation at a scientific conference in USA (provided that the conference does not explicitly prohibit such recording)? I'm guessing since it is not a private conversation, it's okay to record it.
This question is out of curiosity. I do not actually have clear intentions of recording talks.<issue_comment>username_1: I don't know the relevant laws, which may vary between U.S. states, but I wouldn't focus on the legal question. Regardless of whether you have the legal right to make a recording, you should not do so without the speaker's permission. If someone asked me, I would probably give permission, but making a recording without asking feels creepy and inappropriate. If you go around doing this in academia, it's likely to be viewed as unprofessional, and some speakers will become angry.
Even if you ask, people may wonder why you want a recording. (Are you stalking the speaker? Are you going to scrutinize the recording to try to find misstatements? Are you working on competing research and trying to document exactly what was said in your competitor's talk?) If you have a compelling reason to make a recording, it's worth explaining why. For example, perhaps it could help accommodate certain disabilities. Otherwise, you can certainly ask, but it may come across as a weird request.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In general, most large conferences in the US **prohibit** unauthorized audio and visual recordings of conference presentations. Smaller workshops may not explicitly do so, but you should not take this as blanket permission. As username_1 suggests, many people will wonder why you want to record their talk.
Now, if you have a compelling reason to want to follow up on a presentation later, the best way to do this is to contact the presenter after the session, and let her know that you'd like a copy of the presentation, if possible. This is usually preferable to making a recording, which could in principle get you into trouble if "caught."
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/16 | 607 | 2,707 | <issue_start>username_0: The faculty senate at my school recently took a position on a professional issue that was highly confrontational toward the administration. After union negotiations resulted in a pay raise, the senate reversed itself on this issue. It was later revealed that the original position had been advocated by the union as a way of applying pressure in contract negotiations. Some but not all members of the faculty senate knew about the union's advocacy of the action. There was no direct or logical connection between the professional matter (the hiring of a vice chancellor) and the contract negotiations. A large number of union officers are also on the senate.
Do other schools have rules or standards of ethical conduct that cover this type of conflict of interest? Is it considered normal for there to be so much overlap between the union leadership and the senate, or for the senate to act so closely in concert with the union as part of labor negotiations?<issue_comment>username_1: I don't know the relevant laws, which may vary between U.S. states, but I wouldn't focus on the legal question. Regardless of whether you have the legal right to make a recording, you should not do so without the speaker's permission. If someone asked me, I would probably give permission, but making a recording without asking feels creepy and inappropriate. If you go around doing this in academia, it's likely to be viewed as unprofessional, and some speakers will become angry.
Even if you ask, people may wonder why you want a recording. (Are you stalking the speaker? Are you going to scrutinize the recording to try to find misstatements? Are you working on competing research and trying to document exactly what was said in your competitor's talk?) If you have a compelling reason to make a recording, it's worth explaining why. For example, perhaps it could help accommodate certain disabilities. Otherwise, you can certainly ask, but it may come across as a weird request.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In general, most large conferences in the US **prohibit** unauthorized audio and visual recordings of conference presentations. Smaller workshops may not explicitly do so, but you should not take this as blanket permission. As username_1 suggests, many people will wonder why you want to record their talk.
Now, if you have a compelling reason to want to follow up on a presentation later, the best way to do this is to contact the presenter after the session, and let her know that you'd like a copy of the presentation, if possible. This is usually preferable to making a recording, which could in principle get you into trouble if "caught."
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/16 | 497 | 2,313 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a CS/EEE person. A resident of India. I am hoping to apply for an internship in either BARC or TIFR. These are internships related to research. A senior told me that having a Research Internship in his CV counted against him for a technical job interview.
Is this true? Should I rather apply for a Technical Internship instead? The kind of job I am looking to do later is a technical one, not one related to research.
CS/EEE -- Computer Science / Electrical and Electronics Engineering
BARC -- Bhabha Atomic Research Centre
TIFR -- Tata Institute of Fundamental Research<issue_comment>username_1: I don't think this would count against you. It could perhaps be beneficial to have both research and conventional internship experience, but I think the research experience could only help you.
Personally, I have not done any research (I am a Computer Science and Business student), but I do know some people who have had both research positions and conventional internships, and they said that interviewers often focused on talking about their research experience (and these people also got extremely good jobs with companies that a lot of CS students dream of working for).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I can answer this question from my undergrad experience and work ex in India.
**Short Answer**: No, having research experience doesn't hinder your chances of getting into a technical job.
**Long Answer:**
Having a good research project/internship demonstrates your deep thinking abilities and capacity to do challenging work often with minimal guidance. Good companies often admire these skills. In addition to this, research internship along with good implementation part(CS specific), count heavily to your favour.
The advise of your college senior (without any offense) is directed primarily towards service sector companies and is misleading. The reason is not that your research internship would not give you proper skills for the job, but that your research experience may give them an indication that you would leave the job for higher studies. There are many other factors such companies consider for minimizing the attrition rate and maintaining high reserve manpower, and research experience is certainly not at the top of that list.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/16 | 1,891 | 7,983 | <issue_start>username_0: Some time ago, a recently-graduated PhD has sent me a physical (book) copy of his dissertation. The graduate works in a somewhat-related field, but is personally entirely unknown to me (I have some loose connections to the advisor, though). I was reasonably confused by this - I personally have never heard of a custom of sending physical theses to anybody besides maybe parents. I was 100% convinced that I received the dissertation in error (also because the mailing was addressed to my name, but using a wrong department name).
Last week I by chance got hold of the graduate and told him that he sent me his thesis by accident, and asked whether he wants to have it back. He seemed confused and a little bit annoyed that I wanted to give his thesis back - it turns out he actually sent me the book on purpose, assuming that I would be interested in his work. **He told me that he thought it is customary to send a finished PhD thesis to people that he thought might profit from its results.**
**So, is this a thing, at least in some fields? If so, why not just send the core papers or a link to a digital version of the thesis?** Mailing out printed copies seems extremely expensive, and also (at least for me) very unlikely to result in anything else than me having another book gathering dust in my office shelf. I am honestly very unlikely to read an entire thesis, *especially* if I only have it in a dead-tree book version.<issue_comment>username_1: This is not uncommon in the country where I did my PhD (the Netherlands). There you have to print a reasonably large amount of hardcopies anyway, typically people get around 200-300 copies in my field. It is not uncommon to send some copies to researchers that you genuinely believe may be interested in the work, usually people that you have been in contact with before, or are in contact with your advisor.
The cost of the thesis printing and mailing is generally reimbursed by the university (of course, all within reasonable limits). In countries where printing the thesis is not so common, I can imagine that the practice of mailing around copies is not common.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In some countries you print a large number of copies (as stated by username_1), in some only a single digit number which should then be distributed to a specific set of recipients. Regardless it is not unusual that a person might distribute copies to people that might have some interest in it. It is, however, not a must and the recipients is up to the author. When you send a thesis I think it is wise to write an accompanying letter explaining why the thesis is sent to the specific person. To send them without such a personal note may come across as a little odd and can of course be misunderstood.
I did my PhD in the US and made a larger number of cheap copies (do not remember how many) to distribute among friends. I sent a few to others whose research I had built on. This was outside of the, at least then, mandatory five bound copies. In Sweden, where I now reside, printing of about 250 is mandatory and the student can print additional copies at their own cost. We recommend students to think about sending their thesis to people they can imagine would be interested in it. Since the life time of a thesis is usually quite short, most will soon be properly published, it is a good way to advertise your PhD and your work right after you have completed the work.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: This varies by country and probably by field as well, which means I can only speak from my own experience in physics, in the US. What my experience says is that it is exceptionally rare to do this. Typically, a student will have one copy of their thesis printed and bound for their adviser, one for themselves, one or two for the university library if required by policy, and perhaps one or two for the student's parents, if they're interested. Each one of these copies costs $50 or more, and costs are borne by the student, so there is a large incentive to print as few copies as necessary.
More recently (in the past few years), I believe a lot of universities have switched to electronic archival of theses, which means the campus library no longer requires a printed copy. In these cases, a finalized PhD thesis might never get printed at all, depending on the preferences of the student and the adviser.
Certainly, to me, it is unheard of to send unsolicited printed copies of the thesis to other researchers. Of course, in physics some PhD theses are uploaded to [arXiv](http://arxiv.org) for electronic distribution, so interested researchers can get access to them that way.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: I have, so far as I can remember, physical copies of three PhD theses that were not written by my own students. (I do not have a physical copy of my own PhD thesis.) Two of these were indeed PhDs from the Netherlands, where they bind the theses in an attractive way and clearly send them out rather broadly. One of them is from an older student in my department, whose work was very influential to me.
I have certainly been happy to have all of these theses. The one from the student in my department I have certainly consulted at length. The other two less so, but a colleague of mine once borrowed it (and then duly returned it). I am not aware that any of these three theses are freely available on the internet, so it is not purely an empty gesture.
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> Last week I by chance got hold of the graduate and told him that he sent me his thesis by accident, and asked whether he wants to have it back. He seemed confused and a little bit annoyed that I wanted to give his thesis back - it turns out he actually sent me the book on purpose, assuming that I would be interested in his work.
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As you've probably realized by now, your behavior was a bit rude. What are the chances that someone sent you a PhD thesis by accident?? Offering to give back something that someone sends you without first inquiring into the circumstances in which they sent it is really not great behavior. When someone gives something to you -- in circumstances other than a bribe or some similar kind of implicit *quid pro quo* -- the polite thing to do is say "Thank you." It would be a classy move to apologize to the person whose thesis you tried to give back.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: Perhaps it could be of interest that in some countries of Central and Eastern Europe there exists a tradition of sending to many places in the country where the Ph.D. studies are done (especially major libraries and universities) not the full Ph.D. thesis but the so-called thesis summary ("autoreferat"). The sending is usually done by the institution where the Ph.D. studies are done and takes place *before* the viva, so that, at least in theory, the interested parties may visit the viva and ask the questions to the author of the thesis.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: I sent printed copies of my thesis to the people I mentioned in the acknowledgment section. That is about 20 persons. I obviously didn't think they would read it, and in fact the content was already obsolete at the time it went through the printer, it was more of a way of marking the event, and well, letting them know that I thanked them in my preamble.
I would not be surprised, however, that someone would get puzzled if I sent them a copy and they had no direct tie to my work. I mean, I don't send pdfs of my articles to people I think would be interested in reading them...
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: Totally uncommon to me. I'm doing my PhD thesis and if I were that student, I'd send first an email asking whether there is an interest or not. In any case, I'd not expect that someone will read my thesis (book) just for fun or because *that might interest you*. Even PhD supervisors complain reading PhD theses that look like books!
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/02/16 | 1,526 | 6,558 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm a master student and I'm the phase of preparing my thesis. I've searched many papers related to my thesis but I'm a bit confused in what to focus. Do I need to take only a paper (or few papers) and to focus basically on that?<issue_comment>username_1: **NO.** Undergrads may get away with using one (or a few) papers to synthesize the essence into their own viewpoint, but at the post-grad level you should be reading for width and depth, which means using every seminal work in your field as well as exploring the newer papers on the topic. This is particularly important since you state that most of the published research in this area dates from 2007.
And even though you feel that you are not prepared to tackle original research in this area, consider at least having a section outlining possible future research.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I think the best answer to this question has already been given as a comment:
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> You should ask your advisor. The fact that you are asking this question suggests that you and your advisor haven't discussed in detail what your thesis should consist of. It's important to have this conversation, even aside from the particular question you are asking here. (You don't want to risk discovering much later that you and your advisor had different visions for what the thesis should be like.)
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This is a good answer to so many questions on this site (I have started to think that there should be an "Ask your advisor!" closure option), but it seems especially true here. From the OP's comment I can see that the master's thesis is being done in **mathematics**. The expectations and requirements for a master's thesis in mathematics are so highly variable across institutions and countries that I can think of almost nothing (other than "Ask your advisor!") which would be guaranteed to be universally applicable.
In mathematics programs in the US, it is especially unclear what work constitutes a master's thesis, especially in pure mathematics. Unlike the situation in many other countries, there are relatively few full-time master's students in American universities, even compared to the number of master's degrees awarded: in my experience, more master's degrees go to talented, ambitious undergraduates who get them alongside their bachelor's degrees, or to PhD students who have decided to drop out of the program and get a consolation degree. In my case I got a master's degree along with my bachelor's degree at the University of Chicago, and for such a top university you might be surprised to hear how minimal the requirements were: I had to complete all nine trimester courses that first year graduate (i.e., PhD) students take (I did so over two years) and pass a *pro forma* foreign language exam. [In particular **I did not write a master's thesis**.] When I went on to my PhD studies (at Harvard) I found that I was about as well prepared as most of the other students. I don't recall that my having a master's degree came up once during my five years in a PhD program...with the possible exception that some students would, a year or two into their program, fill out paperwork and pay a small fee to get a master's degree, whereas I already had one of those so chose to keep my money.
Having been heavily involved with the graduate (mostly PhD) program at the University of Georgia in recent years, I can say that here a master's thesis is whatever the advisor and student agree that it is, subject to the approval of two other committee members. Writing a thesis is one route; there is another route involving more coursework and some exams. Among master's thesis advisors I've talked to, the sense is that the student should take the thesis as an opportunity to engage with some piece of mathematics at a deeper level than they have done before, to the extent that they have *mastered* it and can show this mastery with an original (or at least, independent) exposition. This description seems rather at odds with the one given in another answer to this question:
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> NO. Undergrads may get away with using one (or a few) papers to synthesize the essence into their own viewpoint, but at the post-grad level you should be reading for width and depth, which means using every seminal work in your field as well as exploring the newer papers on the topic.
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This is probably a correct description of some academic fields, but not for mathematics. Very few mathematics undergraduates are reading "real" math papers at all. The task of reading, understanding and writing about even *one* "real" math paper may in fact be sufficient for a master's thesis. There are even certain papers out there for which rewriting them so as to contain the level of detail and completeness that would satisfy a master's thesis committee would be a real service to the mathematical community. I think that most PhD students in mathematics do not *use every seminal work in [their] field*: I didn't, for instance.
I am not saying that just any old thing will suffice for a master's thesis in mathematics: I am saying that the *global* requirements are very few, so it becomes more important to talk to your advisor.
I have so far supervised one master's thesis. My student carefully read and wrote about two papers concerning geometry of numbers and Legendre's Equation ax^2+by^2+cz^2 = 0. She then tried to extend the techniques of the second paper to diagonal quadratic equations in n \geq 4 variables. Much of this was easy, but the key was the existence of a "magic sublattice" defined in the three-dimensional case by the necessary congruence conditions for Legendre's Equation to have a solution. After much trouble (and some help from me), she was eventually able to prove that for more than three variables such a magic sublattice did not exist. She wrote up a thesis which contained expositions of the two papers she read plus a proof of this result (plus a few more small things, totalling a few pages). I remember that she was concerned that her thesis was rather short: 45 pages double-spaced. I thought her thesis was an unusually strong one and told her so. (If people are wondering, I think her result is not yet publishable -- it's along the lines of showing that a certain proof strategy cannot work, and such things are hard to publish in mathematics -- but that the work could be continued and made publishable. I honestly think that makes it an above average American master's thesis in mathematics.)
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/02/16 | 6,110 | 24,953 | <issue_start>username_0: It has often been said that there is no such thing as a dumb question. And yet - perhaps due only to inattention, lack of sleep, or hunger - otherwise brilliant people sometimes manage to ask some pretty inane questions during talks. ("Yes, but how does the rover manage to drive around on the moon in the first place - shouldn't it just fall back down to Earth?") Or worse: make false or bizarre assertions. ("I don't see how your thrusters can possibly provide enough lift, given that the moon is made out of cheese!")
**Question:** How do you answer these kinds of questions in a way that makes *everyone* feel good about the interaction?
There are sort of three parties to consider here: yourself, the person asking the question, and the rest of the audience. You could, for instance, amuse and satiate the rest of the audience by poking fun at the person ("True, but why would you want to leave a paradise made of cheese?"). Humor *might* win over the audience, but the person who asked the question will spend the rest of the time ignoring the talk and thinking about how little he likes you. In contrast, you don't want to pander ("Ah, interesting point - I didn't realize the moon was made of cheese. Is it Gruyère or some kind of Stilton?") because, although the person asking the question now feels respected, the rest of the audience thinks you're a schmuck.
Perhaps the question could be re-phrased as:
**Question:** how do you convince someone they're mistaken without making them feel stupid? (And what if they're stubborn?)
This situation is especially delicate if the question-asker is an established and respected member of your field (since their questions and opinions will automatically carry some weight and authority) - or worse, a person interviewing you for a job! I'm interested in both external tactics (i.e. what do you say?) as well as internal strategies (i.e. how do you put yourself in a mindset where you're unlikely to react with rude or snarky answers in the first place)?<issue_comment>username_1: This might work better if you are a non-native english speaker. You could try repeating the question: "If I understood you correctly, you are asking me whether the moon is made out of cheese?". This could give the asker the chance to snap back into reality. If he confirms, then all is permitted.
If you are a non-native speaker, you should be given at least one free chance to be repeated a question without annoying the audience :)
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: We are in full agreement that there are in fact dumb (or, more accurately, non-productive) questions, and I do not think that it is your responsibility as a speaker to make the asker of the question feel better about himself to the expense of the rest of the audience.
When this sort of thing happens to me, I try to answer **accurately, politely and to the point** as I see it, just as I would try to answer any other question:
Q: "I don't see how your the thrusters can possibly provide enough lift, given that the moon is made out of cheese!"
A: "I am afraid we have to disagree on the assumptions here. In my experience, the moon is likely not made out of cheese, hence this is somewhat of a non-issue in practice."
I would do the same if giving an interview talk. In that case, I would assume that the asker is likely just testing me. Rambling on, evading, or taking the suggestion seriously might actually be perceived as a negative in that case.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: If somebody asks a dumb question, they're not going to feel good about the interaction whatever happens. If possible, get them back on the right track but avoid saying anything that could be interpreted as sarcasm and move on as quickly as possible.
The most likely thing is either that the questioner has missed something obvious or misunderstood something you said. So, in your first example, just point out that the rover is held there by the moon's gravity and move on. They're going to be embarrassed to have missed something so simple so it's important that you don't make them feel any worse about it; at least they'll probably understand the rest of your talk, now. In the far less common case of somebody making an assertion based on something that just isn't true, point out that the thing isn't true ("Well, the moon isn't made of cheese.") and move on. If they want to debate the point, offer to discuss it after the talk but don't let them derail you: everyone else in the room, you included, came for a talk about your thruster design, not an argument about whether the moon is a dairy product.
Upvotes: 8 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: Two useful responses are (1) to ask to rephrase/elaborate the question, and (2) to ask to discuss the issue after the talk.
Both of those
* Give them time to think about their question a little more.
* Give you time to hear them out and figure out why they asked that question.
Discussing the issue after the talk has the added advantage of preventing anyone from getting embarrassed in front of a large audience.
This also addresses the "mindset" issue: the question might seem stupid only because it is asked in a profoundly stupid way. If you leave open the possibility that you misunderstood the question, a lot of embarrassment can be avoided on both sides.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: I'd say to try to think up of a "smarter" question that is related, but more difficult, and answer their dumb question in the context of answering the smarter one. It would allow everyone to move forward feeling good, and the person that asked the question would be grateful for it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: Just answer the question. You will spend less brainpower and not waste time.
**Question:** "Given that there are 24 letters in the American alphabet, why does "l" come before "a"?
**Answer:** `[If I understand your references[context] properly][As far as I know]` , there are actually 26 letters in the American English alphabet. "A" actually comes before "L," at least as far as I've learned in `[give reference.]"`
Then just move on like nothing happened. Because nothing has.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: The problem with dumb questions is their ability to make you **stop in your tracks with your mouth open**, when you're supposed to be the hardened professional. Its not a good look.
I've spoken on IT subjects to some reasonably large crowds of paying attendees.
Here's what I do to avoid the deer-in-the-headlights effect that weird questions can have.
I immediately respond to the question, by acknowledging it. That puts me back in control of the room, and makes my mouth shut (instead of hanging open in amazement) and gets the folks in the room looking at me instead of the questioner.
To respond I tell them what I think of the question, but I use **these two euphemisms or code-words**:
Instead of saying a question is
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crazy, insane, stupid, or barking mad
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say its
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intriguing
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And instead of saying a question is
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pointless, inane, destructive, or insulting
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say its
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interesting
```
To get this down you have to practise it. Use your colleagues as guinea pigs when you practise your talk, and ask them to come up with some stupid questions so you can ace these "code word" responses.
Tell your close friends, work associates and fellow speakers how you will use these euphemisms or code words (interesting and intriguing), and then when they hear you say
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"OK, that is an interesting question"
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they'll know you mean
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"WHY WOULD YOU SAY SUCH A THING - ARE YOU MAD!"
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You can get some back-up then. If you're really heating up with a flush of horror, and losing it up there, your friends in the know can come and rescue you by chiming in with something.
Let's say, even after that you've got nothing. You've played for time with the response above, saying the question is "Intriguing", but the question is so off the wall you **still** have no way to answer it.
Now what you can do since you have got control of the floor again, is you can go back to the audience with it.
```
"Show of hands - who here has an IT security plan for cosmic rays?"
```
Be careful. You don't want the audience to laugh at the guy, so make it clear you're taking the question seriously, or at least semi-seriously.
The result you're looking for is that others see the question as low priority. Then you can offer to "take it offline" and speak to the questioner after you get off the stage.
By the way, don't worry that the intriguing and interesting code words will become known and you'll be seen as not being sincere. Its a bit of an "in joke" and if folks know it they can have a bit of a chuckle with you.
Its still about the most polite way I know to say something is a bit mad, without really offending people.
Hope it helps.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_8: Since the OP specifically mentions the case of job talks and none of the other answers do, let me concentrate on that in my answer.
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> 1) In a job talk, unless you specifically know otherwise, you should assume that everyone in the audience is someone who could have a direct hand in hiring you.
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In the job talk I gave at my current university, a graduate student asked me a question about the arithmetic of Fano varieties. I began my response by carefully explaining what a Fano variety was and then quickly moving on to say that things like the circle method worked when the variety was "sufficiently Fano" in a certain precise sense. By the end of the day I learned that the person who asked me the question was not actually a graduate student but rather a youthful-looking tenured professor in algebraic geometry. In other words, she had forgotten more about Fano varieties than I would ever learn. Nevertheless, despite the fact that my answer was pitched a little too low for her, it *did* answer her question in a helpful and not condescending way, so she found my more-careful-than-necessary explanation more charming than offensive, and she joined me for lunch the next day. After I accepted the job, she quickly became one of my closest colleagues.
Corollary to 1: In a job talk, you cannot afford to answer anyone's question in a way which pokes fun at them with the hope of gaining points with the rest of the audience. The one person who got snubbed will remember that at the hiring meeting more than everyone else put together.
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> 2) In any talk [i.e., a one-shot performance, unlike a course] you need to answer any single question in a way which keeps the overall talk on track. You don't want to spend more than a minute answering any single question, even if you know the answer and are happy to give it.
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Thus you need to answer all questions in a globally efficient way. Since the question is about "stupid questions", I presume this means questions that you know the answer to. (If you don't know the answer to a question in a talk, probably the best strategy is to *clearly acknowledge* that in the moment you do not have an ideal answer, but that you'll think about it and be happy to get back to the questioner later on. It is tempting to stop short and wrestle with the question a bit -- this shows some positive traits, especially if you come out with the answer -- but it violates rule 2) above.) Moreover a "stupid question" is probably one for which the answer will not be enlightening to the rest of the audience, anticipate something that will come up later, or otherwise be worth spending much time on.
So I think the best way to answer a "stupid question" in a job talk is: directly, politely, and quickly. E.g.:
"Assuming I've heard and understood you correctly, the answer to your question is X. I'd be happy to elaborate, but I think it won't be so relevant to what I want to talk about today, so can we take this up after the talk?"
Note that this phrasing creates a polite amount of reasonable doubt that a stupid question was asked after all.
If all goes well, the questioner will drop the point and you can move on. Unfortunately, especially if the questioner is a high-status faculty member in the department, they may not want to drop it. In this case you should ask them to repeat the question, and you should take another crack at answering it, then say something like "And now I really feel like I need to move on, so that I can get through what I came here to say. But please feel free to talk to me about it afterwards."
Let me also say that I know a few "big dogs" who ask stupid questions that I have trouble believing are actually sincerely stupid questions. In other words, it is not unheard of that someone "plays dumb" during a job talk. I do not condone this behavior -- on the one hand, an interview is a two-way street and the would-be employers should be modelling their best future behavior just like the would-be employees, and on the other hand it is not so clear to me what constitutes a good response to such bad behavior so I'm not sure what they're hoping to gain (I hope it's not just trying to derail candidates that they have already decided they don't like: how ogrish) -- but I have seen it happen. But the above strategy is designed to combat this type of question as well: you want to give little to no offense but become minimally derailed.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_9: "There are [almost] always three sides to a disagreement, your side, the other person's side, and the right side which is somewhere in the middle." Loosely paraphrased from a talk by <NAME>.
Assume that it is your fault (something that you said or did not say) that lead the person in the wrong direction.
"The earths gravitational field is of no significance at this stage of the expedition; this is one of the factors that allow for the possibility of prolonged exploration and experimentation."
"The surface of the moon has a terrain that is very similar to some places on earth and through careful analysis and experimental data our team has concluded that the thrusters will achieve between 7 and 8 thrust juice on each of the potential launch sites."
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_10: <NAME> puzzled over how to disagree with other members of Congress in a manner that would not alienate others - especially when the facts were on his side . He had discovered that, simply by changing a few phrases, he came closer to that goal than he could have imagined. Instead of saying, for instance, "All scientific knowledge clearly rejects that assertion", you avoid the direct disagreement entirely by saying "It is my considered opinion, and I believe, from what I have studied on the subject, that the moon's surface is composed of quite different material. If you feel you have new knowledge on the subject, please get together with me after the presentation. I'd be very happy to discuss this subject with you."
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_11: There are many nice answers already to OP; however this will attempt to answer the related question that was not asked:
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> How do you recognize that a question you've been asked is "dumb"?
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The answer is that you can't. While the question may in fact be dumb, it is also possible that the question is very good and you have misunderstood or misheard it. Perhaps the question you thought was about the moon rover falling back to Earth was actually about the moon rover falling over due to its testing having been conducted back on Earth.
As the other answers have shown, there is no really satisfying way to answer a dumb question, so better to assume that the question is not dumb and rather that you have failed to understand it. My advice is to say that you're having trouble understanding the question, and asking the poser to give you more clarification after the conclusion of the talk.
If indeed it's a dumb question and everyone in the room (but one person) knows it, this defuses the public situation and lets you deal with the poser in private. If you have misunderstood a good question, this allows you to discover this in private rather than embarrassing yourself. And if it's an off-the-wall question that could be either good or bad, this allows those people not interested (i.e. everyone) to leave and not have to endure the exchange.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_12: <NAME> was a master of this. He would look at the person kindly, with interest, and answer politely and to the point. 'It has been show that the moon possesses its own gravity well and that holds the rover to it.' or 'It has been shown that the moon is not in fact green cheese, but is made of off rocks and minerals not so different from the earth'. etc.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_13: For job talks and exams, another point to consider when formulating an answer to a "dumb" question is that the question posed by one attendee may in fact be a jab at another attendee. On my committee I had two faculty members that, putting it lightly, did not get along with each other. During my prelim and defense, I had to tread carefully when responding to questions from either of these two individuals in an effort to "keep the peace."
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> ... as well as internal strategies (i.e., how do you put yourself in a mindset where you're unlikely to react with rude or snarky answers in the first place)
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In this case, my internal strategy suggestion would be to keep in mind that the question may not be what it seems, e.g. may not be "dumb," as I explained above.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_14: There is only one way to answer all questions (other than obvious "joking" ones): Answer it seriously, just like you would a "smart" question.
---
I must share with you guys a question I heard asked at a cooking class. After the chef went through the quantities of a simple recipe, a student asked:
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> How do you make less?
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The chef paused briefly (the stupid question light was clearly "on"), but answered it properly:
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> You add less ingredients. Keep the proportions the same, say half of everything.
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ie, he answered it "seriously".
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_15: Sometimes you can avoid humiliation for the person who ask the question by pretending they mean something else than the obvious, like they're using a metaphor or hyperbole. For example, you could start an answer to the question about the thrusters by saying:
"I assume when you say that the moon is made of cheese, you are in fact referring to the dust filled craters where the soil composition is indeed as soft as a cheddar cheese."
And then you can continue answering about the physics of lifting off a rocket from a soft soil. This way the asker rather gains credit from the public for his amusing way to ask the question, instead of being humiliated.
Likewise in the question about the rover, you can answer about the problems of traction based propulsion on a low gravity body, pretending that's what the asker wanted to ask all along. In this case, you'd probably get some weird looks, but when the person who asks the question is indeed a well respected member of the scientific society, everybody in the audience will assume there's some kind of "high level" joke going on and they're just missing the point.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_16: Your intent is to not make them feel dumb. You need to assume every question is real, regardless of what it is, and so you won't be surprised by anything anyone says.
The first step would be to repeat it back to them. Maybe you thought they said something like "How does the Rover not fall to the Earth?" when they really said "How does the Rover befall on the Earth?" Two very different questions but they sound somewhat similar, and the second question is a little less dumb (despite being strangely worded). Assuming you heard it right, this will allow the user to hear the question again, which might spark them to think about it and say "oops! Never mind!" and laugh it off.
If you did hear it correctly and they're still curious, simply answer it like you would any other question. Don't just outright say "Gravity." and then move on, instead explain the moon's gravitational acceleration and how that affects the Rover's ability to move. If they ask about the moon being made of cheese, explain what the moon's surface is made up of instead of saying "It's not made of cheese." Saying something along the lines of "The moon's surface is a composite of.... This provides a solid base for the Rover, and allows the thrusters to work as expected." would be much better for the student's ego, and provide extra information.
Everyone has asked a stupid question in their lifetime, and you have to think about how you would want to be treated in that situation. If your professor laughed about it, along with the rest of the class, you'll feel not only extremely embarrassed but upset that your question wasn't answered. Having a realistic answer that not only helps you to understand the content better will eliminate embarrassment and cause the students to not be scared to ask questions in the future.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_17: Simple: Tell them the facts.
If they've committed a simple slip of the mind, they will accept your correction. Everyone else will recognize it for what it was and—hopefully—be tolerant of the kind of error they could just as easily have committed themselves. (If the questioner is surrounded by nasty jerks, *you* can't fix that. Even more not-so when considering the format and time constraints of a Q&A session.)
If they persist in their error and they hold a fringe view, offer to debate them after the formal Q&A. If they persist in their error and they're a substantial minority (or more), announce that you will give priority to any question about something else, but proceed to debate them.
In that way, those not interested in the debate will know that you want to satisfy them, while those interested in the debate know that you're not just ignoring them.
If you debate the questioner(s), good debating manners apply:
1. Clearly state your own position and how you arrive at it.
2. Demonstrate that you listen to the opposing side by reflecting their arguments back to them.
3. Try to narrow down the scope of disagreement; in particular, try to find any root disagreements which could be the cause of subsequent disagreements.
(For example, if they disagree with you about whether 2+2=4, they may start from the premise that whatever Big Brother says is true. If you know *that*, you can skip all arithmetical arguments.)
If you keep narrowing the scope of the disagreement, the discussion must sooner or later come to a point where the two sides look at the same evidence and arguments and come to two different conclusions. At that point, I think everyone will have learned what is possible to learn from the discussion, and so it's appropriate to move on.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_18: If you can use your answer to recapitulate something you said in your talk, do so: if the 'dumb' question shows they didn't follow something you said, it is quite likely that others also didn't follow.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_19: Direct them to resources and references.
"The moon is not edible in raw form, as I understand. Dumbledore's papers on lunar culinary excursions discuss this in considerable detail" or "Snape's classic text explains this much better than I can here."
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_20: Here's a rhetorical tactic that I think gives the best results, but requires some advanced mental stretching, and is not something I can always pull off:
**Find a nearby context in which their statement is *correct*, and then re-contextualize.**
This allows you to start off by saying that they're sort of, or mostly, right, and what you say afterward as means of correction will be perceived as much less offensive. I find that most of the time the crazy thing someone is saying actually would be correct in some slightly different situation. The problem is doing the immediate mental search of the "sample space" for the scenario in which the statement is correct.
*Example 1:* Q: "But I was told that the equation *x*² + 1 = 0 has no solution?" A: "That's correct when one is restricted to the domain of the real number line. But remember, in this section of the class we're now using the domain of complex numbers, where it does have solutions."
*Example 2:* Q: "How does the rover manage to drive around on the moon in the first place - shouldn't it just fall back down to Earth?" A: "That would actually happen if Earth was the only body in the universe with a gravity field. But remember, the Moon has its own powerful gravity field, so objects close to its surface will be held there more strongly than to the Earth."
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/16 | 1,529 | 6,449 | <issue_start>username_0: I have been in a rush to accomplish academic goals since I remember myself. Started my PhD right after undergrad and did my Masters on the same time. Now I am about to submit my thesis and feel kind of burned out, having spend so many years in a far from perfect working environment.
Academia has always been my goal (I like both teaching and research and I am not interested in industry), which is why I started a PhD on the first place, but I really feel I need a big break to think clearly of what I really want before applying for a post-doc. I also read this somewhere: "The rest of your life you are going to be a scientist. This could be your last chance to be something else. Take it."
So I thought a "late gap year" would be ideal for me. I would get to travel, which I love, volunteer in wildlife conservation and in schools of developing countries and take some time to clear my mind, so that when I am back, I can take the right decision for a post-doc and be totally dedicated in it.
Up to now I have a decent resume with a 5th paper in preparation (including first-authored) and several international conferences, fellowships and awards. However, I am very concerned on the impact such a gap would have on my CV, since I want to apply in high reputation universities/institutes, where competition is fierce.
Should I tell a future PI I did a gap year and if not, what would be the appropriate excuse for a year off? Also would this gap have an impact in future job-seeking (mainly for positions in academia)? Finally, I am also worried about the reaction of my current PI (who has been asking me lately, which lab I am planning to apply for a PD) when I tell him my plans. The last thing I want is a reference letter from an angry PI.
\**EDIT*\*My field is Molecular Biology. I performed my PhD research at several European countries and I am flexible with post-doc positions (Europe/Israel/US/...) depending on the projects available.<issue_comment>username_1: As usual, if you include information about geographic location (both the current one and the one(s) in which you intend for the future) and your field, you can get more specific advice. Advice which is generalized across all the world's academia is at times extremely superficial.
I will speak from the perspective of American academic mathematics. In this subculture, taking a full year off before starting a postdoc looks bad: the competition for postdocs is extremely fierce right now. For every postdoc position there are at least five other people who wanted that position but couldn't get it. So employers really want to give jobs to people who are sure that they want them, not those who are feeling "kind of burned out" or "need a big break to think clearly of what I really want".
If you take a full year off *instead* of applying for postdocs, then unless you have something amazing to show for yourself at the end of that time, the year off will definitely hurt your applications. Whether or not you can actually do work during a "year off" seems highly field dependent: in mathematics this is certainly possible; in laboratory science this seems much less feasible.
Here is some advice that I would offer you:
1) If you want to take some length of time off, try to secure a job upon return *before you take the time off*.
If this happens then in some sense you do not really have an employment gap, and that will look much better on your CV.
2) Consider taking a smaller amount of time off than a year.
A year is a really long time to put aside one's career. In fact many people would have trouble supporting themselves (especially if they have families or dependents, which I guess you do not) over such a long unpaid stretch. It is also more than enough time for your academic skills to atrophy. In some academic fields (pure mathematics not so much, although in some subfields this could still come into play) a year off is enough to make your entire research program less fresh and cutting edge. Anyway, imagine that you are competing with many talented young people who spent the first year after getting their PhD working their butts off. Do you really want to spot them an entire year headstart? As other people remarked in a closely related question: whether it is fair or not, you should imagine that a big clock in the sky starts ticking the second you receive your PhD. From that point on, people will be evaluating your work not just in an absolute sense but relative to the time elapsed from that point. Adding in an extra year makes almost anyone's profile look much less strong.
I think you should consider taking a shorter amount of time off: either a semester or a long summer. As the American academic calendar runs, you will have a built-in vacation of about three months just by virtue of being an unemployed PhD over the summer. I really enjoyed this time: I moved into an apartment downtown in the city where I grew up but hadn't spent more than a few weeks at a time for my entire adult life. It really was refreshing and recharged my batteries. However, it also depleted my savings: by the time the new semester rolled around, I really needed the paychecks.
If you need much more than three months' break from a career, you should ask yourself: are you sure that this career is really for you?
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: First and most important point: **Taking a breather for your emotional well-being is much better than feeling remorse, fatigue and possible burn-out later.**
Other than that...
* A lot of people have "gap" in their academic activity by working in industry - which can be a lot longer than one year. Women often have gaps when giving birth and taking an extended period of time to care for their (or should I say our?) newborn children. And there are other kinds of gaps. So even if these gaps are not the highly-regarded norm, they're still a de-facto norm.
* We're not all robots who care about nothing but immediate fast-track academic rat-racing. Will you get penalized for this when seeking a post-doc? It's certainly possible; but are you sure you want the "advantage" of appearing to be someone who's under stress to perform all day everyday and can be leaned upon a lot?
* I'm nearly certain that during your year off you will end up doing something that you could be proud to present as what you've done during that year.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/17 | 2,117 | 9,548 | <issue_start>username_0: While writing a paper I discussed its first draft with a certain colleague (he is from a *different* university, so it is not likely that he will be automatically ruled out as a reviewer as suggested in the Visoft's answer). He made a few helpful suggestions but by and large didn't like the paper: he would like the results to be compared with the ones one could obtain using his favorite method -- but this is a separate piece of hard work, and his favorite method is, to put it mildly, far from being universally recognized by the community of experts in the field.
I would like to acknowledge his helpful suggestions in the paper but at the same time I would like to rule him out as a possible reviewer (some journals give you an opportunity to let them know whom the paper should NOT be sent for review).
**QUESTION:** How should one word the acknowledgment of this colleague's helpful suggestions in the paper in a way compatible with excluding him as a possible reviewer, so that the editor who will handle the paper does not get confused by the whole situation and honors my request to exclude this person from the list of possible reviewers?
Also, which is the best way to state the reason for excluding this person from the list of reviewers (conflict of interests, or something else)?
Thanks in advance.<issue_comment>username_1: learning, welcome to Academia StackExchange.
In my opinion you should add the name of your colleague to the acknowledgment section of your paper because he gave constructive hints:
>
> "The authors would like to thank Mr. xxx for the helpful suggestions regarding chapter X, " etc.
>
>
>
Most of the editors rule out automatically reviewers based on their affiliations or proximity with the authors (previous work together, previous shared affiliations, etc). So there are very small chances that a colleague of yours be your reviewer. I only heard of this situation once, on some conference.
If the journal asks you for a list of possible/avoidable reviewers you can list him/her here. However, the list is just a suggestion and the editor might choose another reviewers. Best reason for reviewer rejection is, in your situation, to explain that you worked together.
On a side note, you might mention other methods and rule them out based on some (semi)objective criteria (rarely used, without available implementation, debatable, etc). Anyway, be prepared to accept the reviewer's comments even if they require implementing some rare and weird techniques.
Hope it helps!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: First of all, I assume that you do not mean "colleague" in the narrow sense of someone at your institution? That would make a (nearly?) universally inappropriate choice of reviewer, right?
Regarding your question: I must admit that I don't have much direct experience with "suggested excluded reviewers". I am almost never asked that question on papers I submit; I think I might have done so once: when I did it, the idea was to help out the editors by pointing to someone that they might have thought had a lot of directly relevant expertise but that I knew would not actually be so interested in reviewing the work in question. The point is that I interpreted this as a (ever so slightly pathetic, I might add: I think this occurred at, by far, the lowest quality journal I have ever submitted to) request from the editors for me to help them out in finding a good person for the job, not excluding potential reviewers for "conflict of interest" reasons.
Because of this I am not totally clear on what constitutes a "conflict of interest" for a reviewer: in doing any referee work one volunteers to give one's professional opinion. I don't have any "academic enemies", but moreover I once recommended for rejection a paper by one of my closest friends: and it was a very good paper; I just thought that it was not good enough for the journal to which it was submitted. (Because I knew the person I also felt that he could get a better publication by working on it a little longer, and in fact that is what happened: about a year later he published a magnificent paper in a higher quality journal.) Oh, back to you: is it clear that your colleague would actually be an inappropriate referee for the paper? Were his opinions about doing the alternate method actually fully *professional* opinions, or is that just his more personal reaction to the paper, reading it in terms of his own interests? Moreover, does his alternate perspective really lack validity in some sense? If so, then wouldn't a good editor not choose him anyway?
To summarize the above: it is not clear to me that "X already read my paper, and he didn't like it so much" is a sufficient reason to exclude X as a potential referee. You wonder what the language of exclusion should be, and I agree: you'll have to work a little harder to paint this as a *conflict of interest*: I'm not seeing that.
But okay, now a direct answer: well, they asked you if there's anyone you'd like to exclude, so it's really up to them to evaluate the reasons. If you don't want this person to review your paper I would say so using exactly the reasons you've told us: then it is up to the editors to decide whether to grant your request.
Let me give one other piece of advice which may seem a little shady at first but which I claim is mostly practical:
>
> Consider not acknowledging your colleague in the first version of the paper you submit, knowing that you will put this acknowledgment back in the published version.
>
>
>
Concerning this, let me first say that you cannot do it if his contributions were beyond a certain point: it would then simply be academic dishonesty. But many acknowledgments are subjective largesse: you have not just won an Academy Award, so you don't thank every single person that helped you.
Anyway, the reason why I recommend this if it is possible is to short-circuit the dopey editorial practice -- **which I have seen happen several times** -- that the editors send a paper to a certain reviewer *because she is explicitly acknowledged*. What a frustratingly lazy practice this is.
The editors who ask the author's opinion on referees tend (in my direct experience) to be lazy types, who just might choose someone in the acknowledgments...and might do so thinking they are doing you a favor! So the idea of delaying the acknowledgment to forestall a bad editorial choice seems ethically defensible to me. Finally, if the editors are asking for the author's opinion perhaps they will also ask you for especially plausible referees? If so you should think hard and suggest really good choices: i.e., the most qualified people, not necessarily the ones who would like your paper the best.
**Added**: After airing out my advice to unacknowledge your former collaborator X, I am having trouble standing by it. Based on what you say there is a good chance that X actually would be the referee, and if he can then see that your paper has been modified according to his advice but that you have not mentioned him, then it is possible that he might be personally hurt by it and that this might come out in the referee report. I think the "unacknowledgment" suggested above is only feasible if the version of the paper you're submitting does not bear any mark of X's helpful suggestions. As I said, whether X is an appropriate referee for your paper really is up to the editors to decide. You can help them out by giving them all the appropriate information. Doing much more than that could be ethically problematic...
**Added**: Upon further reflection I can only *clearly* remember the practice of being asked to referee a paper in which I was acknowledged happening once. I'm sorry for the inaccuracy. However that one time was from a leading journal, and I made sure to ask whether the editor was aware that I had been acknowledged in the paper, and he was.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: It is a normal procedure. When sending a manuscript together with the letter to the editor, it is normally possible to list several researchers or laboratories as competitors, not appropriate for the reviewing of this publication. This is especially appropriate if topics overlap and a lot depends on who will publish first.
The editor will simply pick some other competent reviewers.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: As has been suggested by others it is easy to exclude people from being reviewers. You usually provide a cover letter for your submission and you can point out that certain persons have been involved with the work but are not authors. You can thank the person any way you want in the acknowledgement. A person who is involved in work and who is asked to review a paper should also decline with the obvious excuse that they have a conflict of interest. Thus everyone in the process has some obligation to keep reviews on track and objective. It is furthermore possible and even requested at the time of submission to list persons who may have conflict of interest or who are "non-preferred reviewers" due, for example, to personal conflicts etc.
So to answer the main question. you can phrase the acknowledgement anyway you want, it is not the place to list people who may have a conflict of interest, you should do this in the cover letter or, if the submission system provides it, when non-preferred reviewers should be listed. The cover letter, is however, the best place since you can describe the problem to the editor.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/17 | 1,457 | 5,997 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a desire to teach at one of the colleges/universities in my area. I think my experience in industry and my own educational background would be an asset to an IT program. However, I'm finding that when looking for positions, all require previous teaching experience. This requirement exists at the technical college, local community colleges and two universities in my area.
I'd like to start by teaching a night class or two. How does one go about translating valuable industry experience (combined with Bachelor and Masters degrees) to the teaching requirements that are desired by the institutions?<issue_comment>username_1: Get in touch with the institutions you mentioned and offer to substitute. Like everyone else, teachers get sick from time to time or have to go on leave for a variety of reasons after the term has started. When you offer to substitute, you are offering a solution to a problem that is almost an emergency--most professors do not have understudies (yes, large universities have TA's but smaller institutions were mentioned in the question0. Once you have substituted a bit, you will be in a better position to know if you like teaching and you will have at least a minimum amount of experience.
You didn't say whether teaching experience in your field is required, or just teaching experience in general. If it's the latter, you could go overseas and teach English (or teach in an ESL program) or take an education course that provided for hands-on experience.
But I think the easiest way would be to substitute. You could also contact high schools as well, they try to put an emphasis on IT when they can and someone with your industry experience--even if just a few days per month--would be a real catch.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Look for positions for sessional/part time instructors and apply.
An example posting might be [Sessional Instructor](https://www.uoguelph.ca/sessional_ta/sessionjobpost/se28180-mathematics-and-statistics-math2170) or [Adjunct Instructor](http://jobs.uoregon.edu/unclassified.php?id=4253).
Most of them require some evidence that you've done well in a similar course, so it may be prudent to have transcripts handy. It may also be prudent to email the department directly and say that you're interested in adjunct teaching and to ask about opportunities that they have, and to express your qualifications.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I've seen community colleges hire people with less than a master degree to teach IT. These people did have quite a few industry certifications, held respectable positions in the local community, etc. I heard people at the school saying "If anyone questions that person's qualifications, we have enough to support our decision." The CC in question was in a very small town, which I think had a lot to do with that decision.
In the end, your qualifications might be just fine. The issue is whether a school needs someone. The only way to know the answer to that question is to ask. Meet with the appropriate people at some local schools and explain your situation. It is quite common for schools to use adjuncts: partly because they are cheaper, and partly because they have current industry experience.
I have never seen a school which is angry when presented with an additional labor choice. So, you do no harm by scheduling a meeting to see if they would be interested.
As far as the teaching experience, that is more easily gained than you might think. You can see [my answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11422/2692) here to a [related question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/11416/2692).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: From my own personal experience, I recommend seeking out adjunct positions at the community college level. To get some teaching experience, I sought out a school in my hometown which also had apprenticeship-type programs and they were looking for someone to teach a semester's worth of courses for these students. All I had was a M.S. in engineering at the time plus some industry experience. Seek out the current faculty at some community colleges in your area and ask them if they know of any positions for which you could take on as an adjunct. As far as I know, the position that I was able to obtain was not advertised; I found out about it from a professor at the school.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: It wouldn't hurt to find out who does the scheduling for the department, and meet with them in person. Tell them your career goals, and ask them to keep you in mind should any unexpected openings come up. Leave them a business card.
Nothing may happen for a year or two. But, sooner or later, a professor is bound to retire, or take a sabbatical, or be unable to teach because of an illness. A college may be all set on paper, but then have a sudden, last-minute need to hire an adjunct.
This approach requires a little bit of luck, and a mighty good first impression, but it could open a door for you down the road.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: One thing no one has said: Being good at your job does not necessarily make you a good teacher. I have been the lead tech faculty for two good sized schools and have watched a lot of top-notch professionals flame out very quickly (almost including me!).
Make sure you look into the practice of teaching and have a plan so that when you go in for an interview you've got something to say about how you plan to approach your courses.
As for actually finding a job, universities ALWAYS need technical teachers. Don't listen to the pooh=poohers who say you can't do it without a Ph. D. In a lot of ways not having one but having boatloads of industry can work in your favor. You also seem to be thinking "IT," but lots of schools have programs in subjects like web design and they're hard pressed to find teachers! Take a good look at all of the curriculum offered and see where else you might be a good fit.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/17 | 1,130 | 4,553 | <issue_start>username_0: Research is an activity, a process to obtain knowledge, which has been greatly empowered by the scientific method.
We can collect lots of information about research, consider impact factors, etc.
There is data and information there, that data could possibly become knowledge through some analysis, hypothesis testing, and in general terms *research*. So what I'm talking about here is research about research, meta-research.
First of all, I'm interested to know whether this has been done in the past.
Second, if this has been done (I guess so), I would like to know by what name, so that I can search for it. It's easier to find information about fluid dynamics when you know it stands by the name of fluid dynamics.
BTW: I'm not interested in philosophy or epistemology, but science and hard verifiable facts.
There may be some lack of that, whatever that is. Related article: [Scientific method: Statistical errors](http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-statistical-errors-1.14700)<issue_comment>username_1: There has been some research done on citation patterns. See for example <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis>. A recent post asked [Is there an inflation in the number of authors per paper?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16759/is-there-an-inflation-in-the-number-of-authors-per-paper).
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Are you asking about scientometrics?
From Wikipedia: "Scientometrics is the study of measuring and analysing science research." <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientometrics>
It's a major field of study in its own right, with its own journals, etc.
Citation analysis, mentioned by <NAME>, is one area of scientometrics; there are many others. For example, formal studies of the prevalence of research fraud also fall in this category.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: The sociology of science is another possible avenue. It may not qualify as the most data driven way to study science but it does shed some interesting light on the effects of intermediate reports, naming of concepts, and funding strategies amongst many other topics. You may liken it more to the study of scientists rather than of science per se.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: [Philosophy of Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science), [History of Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science), [Sociology of Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_scientific_knowledge), [Scientometrics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientometrics) to name a few meta-sciences.
(General trick for meta-science: use *X of Science*, where *X* is a science.
To generalize it even further, for meta-X, use *X of Y*, for some *X* in *Y*.)
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: In bioinformatics, it is common to do the data mining, generalization and normalization, putting together results of multiple past research projects. See for instance the [Genevestigator](https://www.genevestigator.com/gv/) project that does normalized analysis of multiple available micro-array experiments.
The idea behind this project was that while raw data obtained by different laboratories are largely of the same type, the subsequent processing and normalization is often too different to make the numeric results actually comparable. The project collects raw data and applies the same normalization for them.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: **If the objective of meta-science is to determine what are the good ways to perform science**, it immediately runs into a major methodological hurdle: it is necessarily going to beg the question. That is why work by e.g. Popper counts as "merely" philosophy of science. So if that is the meaning of your question, then the question *"Give me meta-science that is not philosophy of science"* is similar to *"give me an answer to 2+2 that is not 4"*. It will only result in bad answers, because you are excluding the only good answer.
**If the objective of meta-science is to better understand what happens in the practice of science**, then you cannot exclude sociology of science, as science is a social activity (you mention impact factors yourself: I do not think any discipline is better suited at understanding those than sociology, or the related field of scientometrics).
So the question is poorly formulated and cannot be answered satisfactorily. The current first answer (username_4) would be the best answer if the question was modified in such a way that it can be answered.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/17 | 3,984 | 15,704 | <issue_start>username_0: I value the reputation of the journals to which I submit articles. Mostly, I wish to confront my work with the most competent researchers in my field through peer review, in order to have an expert opinion on its quality. In my field, the best ranked/most reputable journals are dominantly subscription-based (although all offer 3'000$ open access (OA) options, that not many researcher choose). So I give priority to reputation/quality over OA policy. On the other hand, I'm well aware that subscription journals are a big weight on universities budget.
So, **does OA\* really help access to science and save taxpayer money?**
The arguments I know about that suggest it does:
I'm aware of the arguments (very efficiently publicized by big OA publishers like [Frontiers](http://www.frontiersin.org/about/openaccess)) that OA is good karma because it gives access to science 'for free'. People argue that when the taxpayers pay for research, they should also get to read the results without paying a subscription.
Reasons for which I'm not sure it does:
I believe that if every article costs 500-3000$ just to publish, and the total number of article explodes, taxpayers (or private scientific funding agencies) are not winning a lot in the change. I also think that people can go to the library to get access to research.
Isn't it reasonable to use the options that we have to freely give access to our work (self-archiving, sending preprint to people who ask politely, etc.).
ps. I published in both OA and subscription-based, and I will gladly submit to OA journals if they end up being the highest quality ones in my field.
\*I'm talking about OA journals with article processing charge. I'm aware of the existence of completely free OA journals (funded by universities I presume), but they are only relevant for a few research topics. And not mine.
**Edit** apparently the science funding agencies of the UK [think that gold OA is not that good of a strategy](http://www.nature.com/news/uk-open-access-movement-sways-towards-low-cost-repositories-1.14953).<issue_comment>username_1: >
> I also think that people can go to the library to get access to research.
>
>
>
You're assuming that libraries can pay for access. That's not the case anymore. Even [Harvard univerity](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices), one of the richest in the world, can't pay for all the journals its researchers need. I think none of the Universities I know have access to all the journals it needs. So, you can imagine a public library won't grant access to all the existing literature.
That's even worse in developing/not too rich countries. In this case, you can notice that most Open Access (OA) journals adapt the cost of publication to the wealth of the country the article comes from (for example [Plos](http://www.plos.org/newsroom/viewpoints/global-participation-initiative/)).
It can also be a problem for small enterprises, that aren't very rich, so they can't subscribe to journals and have to pay "per view", but need access to the latest research in order to innovate. So, non-OA journals are an impediment to the technological progress too.
And I will also add the fact that, even in rich countries, it is not always that easy to go to a library. For example, when answering here on Stack Exchange, I try to add links to research articles which can be more precise than my own answer. If the OP is really very interested in a complete understanding of the answer, he could go to a library. But in most cases, if he doesn't have access to an article through the Internet, it will just waste an opportunity for him to learn.
>
> I published in both OA and subscription-based, and I will gladly submit to OA journals if they end up being the highest quality ones in my field.
>
>
>
However, you're pointing to a real problem here. If the "best" journals are not OA, do you have to compromise your career (or your students') to publish in an OA journal? In fact, some people would answer that the Impact Factor-based ranking of journals doesn't make much sense (see for example [this article](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23805088)). And it is one of the reasons for the creation of Plos One, a "mega-journal" accepting articles only based on their scientific value, and *not* on an estimate of the interest its conclusions might have in the future. But for sure, this is a hot topic.
And another real problem here is money. If the Universities have to pay both for keeping access to non-OA journals, and for publishing in OA journals at the same time, it will be even more expensive. No university can afford it. A proposed solution is *green Open-Access*, where the articles are just put in repositories, and nobody needs to pay neither for publishing, nor for accessing. With a good post-publication peer-review system, this could work. But it also implies a huge paradigm shift, with new problems.
>
> Isn't it reasonable to use the options that we have to freely give access to our work (self-archiving, sending preprint to people who ask politely, etc.).
>
>
>
That is in fact kind of green OA. But, depending on the license you agree with when you publish in a journal, that's [not always possible](http://svpow.com/2013/12/06/elsevier-is-taking-down-papers-from-academia-edu/).
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: To expand on JeffE's comment: the diamond open access (free for *both* authors and readers) certainly does benefit the taxpayers while for the golden open access (the author-pays model) it is less clear, as detailed in the answer by AlexIok. A detailed discusion of differences among different kinds of open access can be found e.g. here: <http://www.jasonmkelly.com/2013/01/27/green-gold-and-diamond-a-short-primer-on-open-access/>
**EDIT**: To make things clear, this answer was written for the original version of the question that dealt with OA in general rather than with the author-pays model.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: On the topic of **save taxpayer money**, I think it is important to consider the question - where does the money to pay the publisher come from, in an "author-pays" system? Presumably, PIs will have to add the cost of publishing into the budget they submit in grant proposals. This may increase the amount the grant giver is required to give PIs, or perhaps they will be able to do less research for a given grant. Either way, the taxpayer may end up paying **more** for research, and it may be research they are not interested in, so even if they can access it all freely, they may not care to.
Now the counterargument to this is that if universities are no longer required to pay subscription fees, the amount they take from a grant should be reduced, and so the PI will end up with more or less the same amount of money as under the old system. I think this may eventually be the case, but the transition time will probably be somewhat difficult, and I would imagine that universities will be loath to give up a very steady source of funding - they will just find some other use for the money if not subscription fees.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: >
> Isn't it reasonable to use the options that we have to freely give access to our work (self-archiving, sending preprint to people who ask politely, etc.).
>
>
>
Many academics don't self-archive, especially for non-recent work, and consider the idea of sending a pre-print out - first, this implies that the reader knows that they can ask for this (given you're talking about the general public, I don't think it's a great assumption to make), and second *that you'll do so in a timely fashion*. Consider the circumstance where you're a faintly scientifically literate family member trying to make sense of what the doctor's are telling you about a loved ones medical condition - it's very possible that sending out a preprint, or a PDF, if you can even find a corresponding author, the email address is still current, etc. will come only after several weeks, which can be extremely frustrating.
Beyond that, if they can't get past the paywall, how do they know if it's worth reaching out to you?
I also think "Will save the taxpayer money" is a little bit of a red herring. The argument I've always heard, and advanced, is not that it will save the tax payer money, but *given they have already paid for the reseach*, Open Access gives them access to what they paid for.
As to whether or not it will save them money, I think that's a question that changes based on the dynamics of the journal publishing industry. Right now, I'd say the answer is no - in addition to authorship fees, I have yet to see a library be able to drop a major publisher because there's sufficient OA coverage in a field (or group of fields). I suspect the cost savings for individual users not having to pay $50 or whatever it is for access to an article pale in comparison to library subscription fees, mainly because per-article readership is fairly low.
Someday, perhaps, but I think cost is one of the weaker arguments for OA.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: ***(Edited to address Anonymous Mathematician's great remark)***
Well, my understanding is that you asked a math question: is it better for the tax payers to have academics publishing in Gold Open-Access, compared to the standard journals? Neglecting the fact that the tax-payer won't have access for free to articles published in regular journals, this could be answered by a comparison between the current **closed system** (all the costs are concentrated in the library subscriptions of journals) and the **open system** (all the costs are concentrated in OA journals processing costs).
It is hard to have good figures, so I will make a number of approximations... Feel free to correct/adapt these as you like. I also consider only Harvard - other institutions may give very different outcomes.
So, trusting this [link](http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k77982&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup143448), the total library expenditure for research purpose is 3 750 000 $ /year for roughly 20% of Harvard's collection - in other words, the total yearly spending of Harvard's library for science publications amounts to the mind-boggling 19 000 000 $ / year (!)
Knowing that Harvard has roughly 2000 faculty members [cf the Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University#Academic_organization), the total expenditure *per faculty* is between 9000$ and 9500$ *per year*.
Given that the typical faculty publish maybe 3 papers per year (depending on the field!), any cost lower than 3000 $ *per publication* in OA journals is worth the money for the tax payer, as this means that the overall cost per year and per faculty is below 9000 $. Furthermore, according to [this article from Nature](http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-science-publishing-1.12676) the true average cost of OA publication is around 2300 $ (with some good journals well below), making the open system a better value for tax payers.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: Let me add a slightly different point. It's slightly off-topic because this is not OA in any of the colorful meanings, but it is on topic for possibilities to lower costs and get the taxpayers access to published papers:
Here in Germany one reaction to the library subscription costs is that now the DFG negotiates nationwide (not only university libraries) subscriptions with some publishers. I believe the DFG is a big enough player to stand their ground when haggling with Springer, Elsevier & Co.
[I found some numbers](http://www.textkritik.de/digitalia/katzengold.pdf):
* total costs for scientific libraries (Germany-wide): 793 M€ / a
* therof infrastructure costs for buildings and staff: 548 M€ / a
* for buying books and journals: 245 M€ / a
* the Nationallizenzen cost ca. [110 M€ / a](http://www.goethe.de/wis/bib/dib/de6630674.htm) (according to the text linked above they started with much less)
* I did not find numbers on how much subscription costs the libraries saved. All in all, I assume that the total costs probably stayed roughly the same (at least that's what I hope) but the availability is increased.
The nice thing from taxpayer's point of view is that everyone can access these papers without the need even to go the next university library (need to get a login, though but that's not difficult).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: There're two completely different aspects to your question. "Help access to science" is completely different from "save taxpayer money", as will be apparent in the following.
**Help access to science**: this is relatively straightforward. The answer is yes, as you can see from [Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access#Readership):
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> OA articles are generally viewed online and downloaded more often than paywalled articles and that readership continues for longer. Readership is especially higher in demographics that typically lack access to subscription journals (in addition to the general population, this includes many medical practitioners, patient groups, policymakers, non-profit sector workers, industry researchers, and independent researchers).
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**Save taxpayer money**: this aspect is much more complex, because where all the money in publishing goes to is itself [complex](https://www.nature.com/articles/495426a), but I'll go ahead and venture the answer "not really".
The reasoning is pretty intuitive. Publishing involves lots of things, and those things cost money. So to actually save money, you need to either do the same thing for less money, or don't do the thing at all.
So the question becomes "is it cheaper for the publisher to publish an OA article than a subscription article?". Drawing on my experience doing editorial work in academic publishing, I am quite confident that the answer is "no". The production process is 100% the same, except that at the end, one bills the author for the APC. Things like the editorial management system, the journal's website, the indexing - they are all the same.
Hence any savings come from other aspects of publishing, like marketing or distribution. Here OA definitely saves on distribution, since OA doesn't involve print journals and therefore doesn't need to be distributed. But then again, it's generally already possible to subscribe to electronic journals only (i.e., you do not request the print journal if you don't want it), which would also eliminate distribution costs. Marketing is a different animal and I am not an expert on it, but my impression is that it really isn't that different. You have $X in budget (in turn this is indexed to the journal's revenue) and you use all of it. Sure you might do something different when promoting an OA journal, but ultimately you still use all the budget.
One thing that isn't complex is whether the publisher gets less revenue if all the journals convert completely to OA. This can be easily calculated by taking the journal's subscription revenue and comparing that to the expected revenue if every paper paid the APC. Here the answer is usually "no"; the publisher does not lose revenue if everything converts to OA. In fact they probably *gain* revenue. This differential is a big part of the reason why publishers are able to waive OA fees for some authors.
So the answer is not really - gold open access simply shifts the money around. To actually save taxpayer money, one needs to do what I alluded to in the second paragraph: either do the same thing for less money, or don't do it at all.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/02/18 | 2,346 | 9,666 | <issue_start>username_0: Although in mathematics the *letters*, i.e., really short articles, just a few pages long, are perhaps less common than in the other fields (see e.g. the comments by <NAME> under his answer to [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17050/acknowledging-the-discussion-with-someone-in-the-paper-but-excluding-this-person/17092)), sometimes such a letter really is the best way to communicate the result. It is also quite clear that for this very reason (that the letters are quite uncommon), such letters are not likely, save for some *very exceptional* situations, to be a good fit for the top pure math journals like the *Annals*, *Inventiones*, *JAMS*, etc.
Apparently in earlier times the best place for publishing letters in mathematics was the French journal [*Comptes Rendus*](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/1631073X). This journal still exists but I am not quite sure whether it is *the* place for letters in mathematics anymore.
Another option that comes to mind could perhaps be the math section of the [PNAS](http://www.pnas.org) but again I am not quite sure how this journal is actually standing with the pure math community, especially outside the US.
There should certainly be other worthy alternatives, so I look forward to the answers pointing them out as well as discussing the journals mentioned above.
**QUESTION:** What are the best (in terms of standing in the math community and being widely read by mathematicians) journals, or perhaps sections of mathematical or even multidisciplinary journals, for letters in mathematics nowadays?
P.S. I am specifically interested in the journals which would tolerate the papers which are on the border of mathematics and mathematical physics (just to clarify, this refers to the subject matter rather than, say, lacking in rigor). The [*Letters in Mathematical Physics*](http://link.springer.com/journal/11005) and [*Nonlinearity*](http://iopscience.iop.org/0951-7715) appear to be a bit too niche, I would prefer more broad-scope alternatives.<issue_comment>username_1: I think this is a good question because I don't really know what "letters" means in the world of mathematical publishing. While I have [a paper published in *Math Research Letters*](http://alpha.math.uga.edu/%7Epete/plclarkarxiv8v2.pdf), I am having trouble pointing to a single way in which that paper is different from any of my other papers: it is slightly short (12 pages) but I have several other papers which are shorter, it contains complete proofs, the syle is not especially conversational or different from the norm...
With regard to *Comptes Rendus*: it still exists, and it is still a very high quality journal, so far as I know. I do not have a *CR* paper, and I wish I did, but setting aside the limitations of my own research achievements I am not sure exactly what papers to submit to this excellent and highly French journal. My understanding though is that it is roughly analogous to *Proceedings of the AMS* but of higher quality (or better taste?). For instance [I have a *PAMS* paper](http://alpha.math.uga.edu/%7Epete/atkinlehnerfinal.pdf) and think that would be in the right ballpark of *CR* but that I would be lucky to get it published there.
It was suggested in the comments that the publications in *CR* are more like **research announcements**. I don't think that's true. They're short, punchy and written in a somewhat telegraphic style, but they certainly do include proofs. Quite recently I had the occasion to go to the actual library and pull off the shelf a *CR* paper. It was lovely, and short enough so that I transcribed (and translated, but big whoop: mathematical French is so easy that *I* can do it) it in its entirety on my notepad. (If you're interested, it is Guy Terjanian's first paper, referred to [here](http://alpha.math.uga.edu/%7Epete/shortfinitesatz.pdf)...and as I learned slightly to my chagrin, one could regard the research contribution of this note of mine as being a fleshing out of a mild Alon-style generalization of Terjanian's argument. Actually there is another theorem he proves in that paper as well which is more interesting. To me this is a *CR* paper *par excellence*: a small but perfectly polished gem.)
I also think that *Enseignement Mathematique* is somewhere in this constellation of journals: more apparently elementary than *CR*, less laconic, but still high quality work which is somehow in "good taste". And note that the title of the journal would lead you to think that it publishes expository papers, but I don't think that's really the case.
After all this, let me come back to where I started:I am not sure what a "letter" is in this context, other than a short paper which is high quality and is written in a relatively laconic way. I have, unfortunately, zero expertise with physics, including the substantial portions of mathematics that overlap with physics. Maybe the concept of a letter is better understood by that portion of the mathematical community?
Added at the end: okay, let's see how *MRL* describes itself:
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> Dedicated to rapid publication of complete papers of original research in all areas of mathematics. Expository papers and research announcements of exceptional interest are also occasionally published. High standards are applied in evaluating submissions; the entire editorial board must approve the acceptance of any paper.
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Thus there is some kind of vestigial connection with abbreviated papers, expository work and research announcements, but by and large it is no longer what that journal is about. I think this is rather typical.
**Added**: Since I was specifically asked to comment on PNAS, and I am a little gun-shy about leaving things in comments at the moment (see the meta site for more on this...), I will add the following non-answer answer: I have very little direct experience with PNAS. I tried to think of a single paper that was published in that journal and I came up with Milnor's "Eigenvalues of the Laplace operator on certain manifolds", a famous one page note. Based on that one paper (!!) I will guess that PNAS is like *CR* but for laconic treatments of even more important results. (I will also guess that most of their papers are more than one page long...)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: As username_1, I do not quite know what a letter is: short papers are usually quite similar to regular paper, only shorter and usually called notes.
Concerning the venue suitable for short articles, there are quite a few. First, you should now that most journal could accept short papers, but certainly you have more chance to get accepted in a journal specifically targeted toward short paper (except if you solve a known problem or reprove a notoriously difficult theorem, in which case no reviewer can use the length of the paper to argue it does not have much merit). Let me give my impressions on the journal that come to mind (to remind that this is from a biased perspective, I will often refer to the French mathematical community), limiting to journals that to not claim being restricted to a subfield -so called generalist journals.
* **CRAS** (Comptes-Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Paris): this journal publishes both research announcements and complete short papers. The announcement part is less and less relevant, but I do not know whether it is less present now. Sadly, while CRAS published top-notch papers, it cannot afford to be very selective anymore. It also suffers from the research announcement role: French hiring committees often blankly dismiss CRAS papers, partially because they may be only announcements.
* **PNAS** (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA): this journal is not very well-known from French mathematicians, but publishes some quite good papers. I think it has a particular taste, but I cannot find the word to describe it. Beware that even if it has a page limit, the format is very dense so articles are not necessarily that short overall.
* **PAMS** (Proceedings of the American Mathematical society): this journal is explicitly for short papers, but the page limit recently moved from 10 to 15 (AMS format). As far as I can judge it is selective, and sometimes publishes excellent papers. It is reasonably well regarded, benefiting from the sisterhood of Transactions AMS.
* **Bul. LMS** (Bulletin of the London Mathematical society): this journal is the LMS counterpart to PAMS, and is somewhat similar (although a little less known and considered, maybe). Since the LMS series has three journals (Bulletin, Journal and Proceedings in increasing order of paper size) instead of two for the AMS, I guess that the average Bulletin paper is somewhat shorter than the average PAMS paper, but the different format makes it difficult to judge.
* **AMM** (American Mathematical Monthly): this journal is well-known and extremely selective. It publishes papers of general interest, of varying length. The notes are typically a few pages long. It is even possible to publish mathematical facts of a few lines, in a grayed box. Since it is considered somewhat recreational, publishing in the Monthly gives less weight to a CV than its harsh selectivity would do for any other journal.
* **Elemente Math.** (Elemente der Mathematik): this is a Swiss cousin to AMM, much less known and much less selective.
* **MRL** (Mathematical Research Letters): this does barely belong to the category of note-publishing journals: it does not usually published paper more than 30 pages, but the average paper there is not a note as far as I can judge.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/02/18 | 1,054 | 4,796 | <issue_start>username_0: For some reason, I was always under the impression that people that are included in the acknowledgement section of paper are not contacted to review your paper because they would be predisposed to give a favourable review. However, after reading the discussion in [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17050/66) it seems like it is standard to send papers out for review to people in the acknowledgements section if there is not another conflict in place (like being from the same institution, for example). Which is it?
**Do editors send a paper out for review to people in the acknowledgements section?** Can I suggest a person I acknowledge for helpful comments as a potential reviewer (assuming there aren't other conflicts of interest)? If the field matters then I am interested primarily in mathematics, theoretical computer science, and biology.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> For some reason, I was always under the impression that people that are included in the acknowledgement section of paper are not contacted to review your paper because they would be predisposed to give a favourable review.
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This is certainly true in my field (software engineering). I was also reasonably confused by the underlying assumption of the question you linked. It certainly does not seem to make sense to me to ask people that are clearly closely related to the authors for fair peer review.
What **does** happen a lot in practice is that authors mentioned in the bibliography of a manuscript get asked to review a paper, especially if the editor is not from the same field and does not know any experts in the field by heart.
Apparently, this is particularly common for grant proposal evaluations (at least in Austria), as the people assigning reviewers there are usually not scientists themselves. Hence, they rarely have deep insight into who the big players in a field of study are, and instead select persons that are not obviously related to the proposal authors and have published a healthy amount of related papers cited in the bibliography of the proposal.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: The acknowledgement is there to thank people for their help in the work. It is not a place to provide information to the editor on who may have conflicts of interest. You list such persons in a cover letter with an explanation for why there is a conflict. This will make the situation clear to the editor. Persons in the same department will pretty much be excluded by default but if an obvious connection is not present it should be pointed out in a letter. It seems a little odd to thank someone without there being any connection to the work so I would not recommend trying to suggest such a person as potential reviewer. At the same time a person who ha a conflict of interest should decline to review with the excuse that there exists such a conflict. I would say such behaviour is good etiquette and good ethics.
I know there have been instances where a person received a strong reject review on a crap paper by a high-ranking scientist and then used the name in the acknowledgement thanking for input on an earlier version of the manuscript. The manuscript was almost the same but the signal was the high-ranked scientist approved it and so reviewers were unwilling to reject it. Hence the acknowledgement is not a place where a seasoned editor would look for valuable information.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I think you're talking about my comments.
Unfortunately I am speaking from direct experience. I did have the occasion to think more carefully about this since seeing your question, and at the moment I can remember exactly once when this occurred. (I have refereed probably about 40 papers over the years, and I can't tell you that I went back over all of them...) So once is only once. But this one case is awfully distressing: it was at a very famous journal, with a very famous editor, and the acknowledgment in question was very far from random or frivolous: the paper was, in fact, a continuation/improvement of a recently accepted joint paper between the author and me! So in my mind this somehow "counts twice". But do other mathematicians know for sure that this happens? I would be very interested to know.
Let me also add that it almost never happens that I get asked for a list of recommended or excluded referees: I think once or twice out of about 30 submissions.
It it tempting to speculate more broadly about why this practice -- which I think everyone here agrees is not kosher if authors do not clarify/disclose information about potential referees -- may in fact exist. But actually I have some academic work of my own to do tonight (and not so much "tonight" left). So maybe later...
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/18 | 1,065 | 4,643 | <issue_start>username_0: As the title puts it, what is the real meaning of this stage of a peer reviewing process and how are the odds for having a submitted paper accepted change if it's accepted for this stage? (Does it mean anything other than the editors decided not to reject it from the start?)<issue_comment>username_1: This means that the paper is sent out to reviewers and the chances of acceptance are at the mercy of the reviewers. If the reviewers find it good enough , it will be accepted(usually pending additional experiments). How the actual odds change depends on the journal but I'm not sure if most journals even publish these statistics in detail. I would sit back and wait for reviewer comments as you've done what you can. Congrats on the paper.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I actually tried to figure some of this out recently as I've been working to get my first article published. I will try to elaborate on the little bit that I know about the review process and maybe others can chime in and let me know if I more or less have the process right.
First, you submit your article to the journal. It is then received and submitted to one of the associate editors I believe. I don't know how carefully they read it in this stage, but they make a decision whether to "desk reject" or send it out to the reviewers. If they desk reject your paper then no one else at the journal gets a real look at it. (I think this is what the accepted for first look means; that your paper is not desk rejected)
If they decide that it is worth having someone take a look at it then they inform you that it is accepted for a first look. At that stage they send it out to several other reviewers. For the papers I've submitted it has usually been 2 or 3 reviewers. They take somewhere between 3-9 months to read the paper carefully and provide good feedback. They then submit a recommendation for what should be done with the paper either 1) accept, 2) reject, or 3) revise and resubmit. If they accept or reject then the outcome is relatively self-explanatory. If they ask you to revise and resubmit, it means that they thought it was pretty good, but that they had some issues with the paper that would need to be cleared up prior to accepting the paper for publishing. You can make the revisions that they ask and then resubmit the paper and you once again get one of the 3 decisions.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: "First look" is a stage in the ScholarOne Manuscripts (S1M) system used by many journals. The First look stage means that your manuscript, after an "Accept" decision is scrutinized to see if it adheres to journal standards (a.k. Instruction for authors) and that figures are of sufficient quality (resolution for bitmaps). The journal editor(s) handle(s) this stage. Your paper may be returned to you to fix specific formatting problems BUT NOT changing the content. See [S1M pdf](http://mchelp.manuscriptcentral.com/gethelpnow/training/admin/tutorials/productioncenter.pdf)
So "First look" is not a general name for a stage but is specific to S1M. Other systems or journals may of course be using such a term for other purposes but it is not a general publishing term. The stage it represent will, however be found in all journals.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: I attached the guideline of S1M system, saying that "
MANUSCRIPTS ACCEPTED FOR FIRST LOOK
If your paper is accepted but minor updates are required before the final files can be sent to production you will be notified of this and will find the paper listed under "Manuscripts Accepted for First Look". Click the link and then click "submit updated manuscript". Further instructions on how to upload your final files can be found on the screen that follows. "
That means the MS is accepted with minor revision without peer review.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: The workflow in each journal and conference might be ***very roughly*** comparable (because they all draw on the same mass of experience in the job, because people overlap/move from one to the other, because they pilfer ideas they see in the competition), but nothing suggests they will use the same terms to describe substeps in the process.
The only way to find out what exactly some uncommon term means to *that* journal is to ask them. Sure, you might chance upon someone who knows their terminology in detail here, but you won't recognize them if so either.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: This means that the paper has been accepted for publication pending some minor changes like appropriate files/ images/ abstract etc
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/02/18 | 2,861 | 12,501 | <issue_start>username_0: Since I need a break from the reviewing...
Often in my field I review papers from researchers in Asia (reviews are not double blind) which are poorly written. By poorly written, I don't mean that the prose is not pleasing to the eye, that there are problems with how the writing flows, or that there are innocuous typos or spelling mistakes. Instead, the grammar used by the authors differs seriously from normal English, and often produces significant changes in the *meaning* of sentences.
Usually such papers are ultimately readable, but one has to go back and re-read sentences or paragraphs several times to infer the meaning (and this is with strong knowledge of the research area!), so I generally won't reject a paper solely for this reason. However, I would feel remiss in my duties as a reviewer if I didn't instruct the authors to improve this aspect of the paper. I'd like to provide helpful advice for the authors without just giving them a laundry list of the errors.
Typically I highlight a few places where I had significant trouble understanding what they actually meant to say, and suggest seeking a professional editor before publication.
**Are these reasonable things to suggest?**
**What other suggestions can I make?**<issue_comment>username_1: To comment on language is fair, to suggest improvements and even making corrections goes beyond what can be expected, depending on the degree of problems. There is of course a fine line between when something can be salvaged with a little editing and where things start to lose meaning. Many journals and publishers provide services (albeit often at a cost) for non-native speakers. What you can do is to try to help the author(s) if possible by providing examples and making minor corrections. But, it is not your job to be a service. You should state your opinion about the paper, clearly separating the scientific aspect (indicate if your think the science holds) and the language issue. It is particularly potent to state when the language obscures the scientific message. In the end it is the editor who should decide what must be done.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: [I speak from experience with math journals. As always, if things differ in your neck of the woods, I'd like to know.]
The quality of the writing of an academic paper is one of the two main things that the referee is being asked to evaluate in her determination of the suitability of the submitted paper (the other of course being the content of the paper). In mathematics the quality of the writing and the quality of the content are usually largely separate entities, although I think it is an oversimplification to regard them as totally separate (to write a math paper well requires more mathematical thought than to write it decently, which requires more thought than to write something badly but that a qualified expert can see essentially does accomplish what it sets out to do). I *think* that this is less true in the humanities, but I'm not fully qualified to say more than this.
The "default" for math journals is that they say that their papers should be sufficiently well written in order to be published: of course this is a nearly useless statement.
I include that vacuity to contrast it with what *certain* other journals do: namely explain to what extent expository considerations are weighted in with the "content" of the paper in arriving at a decision. For instance some journals say that they welcome "expository" papers. In my experience *they rarely mean this*; much more often what they actually mean is that it is unusually important to them that the papers be well written, and that a research paper which has fewer results but that is truly attractive in its writing may be worthy of publication. The MAA (Mathematical Association of America) journals take exposition much more seriously: for the *Monthly* they seem to be about equal; for *Mathematics Magazine* and *College Math Journal*, good writing seems to be more important than content. I am tempted to tell a personal story here, but I will save it for a more appropriate time. Well, except for this: I got a referee report back from the *American Mathematical Monthly* saying "I give this paper an A for the mathematics and a B for the writing." For any non-MAA journal that would have been a strangely worded stamp of approval, but for the *Monthly* it made me nervous, and I worked hard on yet another revision.
There are also some research journals which have a reputation for accepting sloppily written, but contentfully deep, papers. The one which stands out in my mind is the *Asian Journal of Mathematics*. It sounds bad, but in my field I get the impression that if you have proved a great result and for whatever reason can't indulge in the luxury of writing it up properly -- by properly here I mean "formally completely and correctly", not "well"! -- then *AJM* is the journal for you. And it sounds worse than it is: if I'm right then it's good to have journals like that, and in some ways of course they are better than the journals which publish perfectly polished, but very minor, work.
Anyway, back to your question. What to do if the writing is bad? The answer is that you should indeed report on this and try to discount the value of the paper appropriately (neither too much nor too little), according to your best understanding of the demands of the journal (or conference?). It seems quite reasonable to me to write back to the editor asking whether the journal (or the editorial group) has definite opinions on the desired writing standards. Working off the cuff, it seems reasonable to identify three levels of bad writing:
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> 1) The prose is not pleasing, the writing doesn't flow, and so forth. In other words, the style is bad, up to the point where the paper becomes less pleasant to read but no farther.
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I think that for many journals and conferences this would be a minor offense. Especially, if you are participating in an international academic scene, then really the authors are doing the academic world a great service by writing in a language that the vast majority of the contemporary academic world has learned to read. You speak particularly of Asian authors. Well, it is rather gracious of them not to write in, say, Chinese, isn't it? For this level of bad writing I think it is best to mention it but make clear that it doesn't really detract from the paper. It would be nice to offer to help out in the editing, if you want to, but it is not clear that it's your job.
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> 2) The writing is bad enough so that it interferes with the meaning, and an expert has to work harder to read it than she would for a decently written paper.
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This seems to be what you are describing. Here I think I would really ask for guidance from the editors of the journal: the worth of the paper should be downgraded for this, but by how much? A paper which one has to struggle to read but ultimately succeeds in doing something brilliant or ground-breaking is still a great paper. (And in my field, very few brilliant or ground-breaking papers are really "easy to read". At a certain point you get past the writing altogether...provided the writing lets you!)
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> 3) The writing is so bad that a qualified expert is unsure of the meaning, either at multiple lesser points or at at least one key point.
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In this case you can't certify that the content is legitimate, so you have to recommend the paper for rejection, right? You should indicate exactly why you are rejecting the paper; in many situations, a paper which is rejected for bad writing (but not obviously defective content) may only then get the attention to writing that it actually needs and then come back as an acceptable paper. When I reject a paper for bad writing (which rarely happens, but it has happened) and I suspect that the content is also not sufficient, I try to at least hint at that in the report...otherwise the danger is that everyone's time (including yours!) will be wasted by a revision which is more superficially acceptable but still defective on a deeper level.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I can speak with some authority in this subject, since I did my PhD in Asia.
First of all, yes, their English writing skills are sometimes real bad, which usually happens in small Universities that do not have budget for proof readers.
When I reviewed such papers, I sometimes rewrite full paragraphs for them and show them what would be expected from a well written documents, I take the time, because I know they are doing their best effort, and probably will take those suggestions at heart.
I also recommend them books, like Strunk and White, The Elements of Style, which is not perfect, but gives good pointers on how to write correctly. You know, the whole Give them a fish or teach them how to fish.
My decision ultimately is never guided by the writing, but I always note to the editor that the paper is in a stage where it needs heavy rewriting so it can hold up to the standards of publication of the Journal (I usually review for a high regarded Journal, which tends to be more picky on the grammar thing)
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: From your description of having to read sentences and paragraphs several times to figure out what they mean, it seems that the writing is a significant hindrance to people understanding the paper. Since a paper is only written once but (hopefully) read many times, the burden should be on the writer, rather than on the reader.
For a journal paper (and assuming that you feel it has sufficient technical strength to be accepted), advise the authors to consult a native speaker or other expert to improve the writing and advise the editor not to accept the paper until the writing is improved.
For conference papers, it's harder to know what to do, since there's only one round of reviewing. Ultimately, though, it's the PC's problem, not yours. Write your review about the technical quality of the paper, advise the authors to improve the writing and advise the PC that you found the paper hard to understand because of the quality of the writing. They can weigh up whatever factors they want to take into account when deciding which papers to accept.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: I used to work for a company that edited academic manuscripts prior to peer-review submission for foreign academics/researchers looking to get into English journals. Most of my work revolved around biomedical articles being submitted by researchers in Asia (namely, China, Japan, South Korea, and India), with the occasional article coming out of Turkey or penned by a foreign author working in the U.S. Although I like editing a good deal, I've spent an regrettably high number of hours being a glorified grammar/spellchecker in the academic context. In addition, I've also served as a peer-reviewer and as an invited editor for an academic journal.
Here's an image of a sample manuscript I had to work on while employed at this pre-submission editing outfit.  This isn't even one of the bad ones, where I bent over backwards to decipher what the author meant. This sort of thing can be incredibly difficult to do, and can require some back and forth between myself and the author. It's not a question of polish; sometimes the translation just isn't interpretable. Had I received anything that requires this much textual hewing in my role as invited editor, I would have told the authors that a native speaker needed to run through the piece. I've redacted enough manuscripts for labmates in grad school to know that even native speakers can have trouble writing a fully-formed paper on their own, so I see no reason to shy away from suggesting the same sort of route be taken by a non-native author.
Equally as important, if not more so, is the question of clarity in terms of the science being communicated. I've seen numerous instances of methodology getting so muddled in translation that the whole study put forth by the authors became lost in a sea of confusing syntax. Reproducibility is a large enough issue in science as it stands, and any further obfuscation will only hurt the quality of the field.
In sum: don't be afraid to suggest major linguistic edits to the authors, and feel free to recommend an editing service.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/18 | 1,087 | 4,125 | <issue_start>username_0: I will soon start my thesis, and have read a bit of literature, particularly a few short papers. One professor recommended using a template, displayed below. However, I generally feel that the questions in the template don't apply well to the papers I have read, and my answers get very "artificial" or "forced", while some aspects are not answered by the template at all. Obviously no template can fit perfectly for every paper, but perhaps there are better templates out there.
Are there any standard templates for this purpose? Perhaps a list of questions to ask oneself when reading? Or other structured ways of note writing for scientific papers or similar literature?
>
> **Title**
>
>
> Title of paper
>
>
> **Citation**
>
>
> Authors
>
>
> **Abstract**
>
>
> A short summary of the paper.
>
>
> **Issues**
>
>
> What are the issues that the paper addresses? Describe the problem.
>
>
> **Approach**
>
>
> What did the authors do? How did they approach the problem. What did
> they do? What methods did they use?
>
>
> **Conclusion**
>
>
> What are the authors conclusion? What do they claim about their
> results.
>
>
> **My Conclusion**
>
>
> What do you think about the work presented in the article? Explain
>
>
> **Rating**
>
>
> Give a score [0 - 10] 0: awful, 10: brilliant.
>
>
><issue_comment>username_1: It can't be any more minimalistic than that.
Basically you have some metadata: title, citation, abstract, comment (your conclusion) and rating.
That fits every intellectual work, you could apply it to movies, songs or anything that has an author and about which you can have an opinion.
Then there are a few other fields that cannot be any more minimal:
* issues: why is the paper written and published? There has to be a reason for that work to have been done, presumably people don't enjoy wasting their time.
* approach: which is basically what they do. There was a reason to do something (and then publish it) an "issue" and something has been done about that "issue" so that it is less of an issue in the future.
* conclusion: there was an issue, something has been done, is it still an issue? are there more open issues?
Quite simple if you think about it.
Survey papers and so on basically solve the issue of summarizing something, they cite other papers, so you should also fill this template for those other papers.
Are you having trouble with some other kind of papers? This seems to capture everything that is relevant. Do you miss something?
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I had a template for myself, pretty similar to that one:
>
> * Journal name, article name, reference information
> * One-line description of the problem
> * "What They Did"
> * My conclusions
>
>
>
The issue was that, in almost all cases, I was studying their paper to better understand either (1) the field in general or (2) how to solve a problem I was having. I found that, **for note-taking purposes**, focusing on mainly what they did and then recording for posterity my *own* conclusions and thoughts about their research was much more useful than re-reading my synopsis of what *they* concluded.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I have been thinking about this since asking the question, plus I have done some actual note taking.
For me personally, I have found the following points to be helpful:
* Why did I read this paper: Perhaps my professor recommended it, in which case it probably is relevant despite what it initially seems to me.
* My takeaways for the thesis: Ideas, inspiration or references, that I can use for my thesis
* General takeaways: What I learned, that is relevant/interesting/useful, which however are not directly useful for my thesis.
* What I did not understand (entirely): Maybe some terminology, maybe some theory. I am writing them down, so I might get a chance to ask them later, or I might revisit it later after having gotten a better understanding.
* What I should (perhaps) look into: Projects, literature, websites. Typically other papers that they reference in the paper.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/18 | 1,247 | 4,627 | <issue_start>username_0: A couple of weeks ago I met this person who had come to our institute for an invited talk. Her domain of work was same as my area of research. Later I discussed with her some of the topics and asked her if there are any openings in her company (she is in the industry as an R&D head). She responded: *"Send me your CV, I will look into it."*
Now I want to write to her. How do I begin with that? Should I send my CV in the first mail itself? If so should I also include a cover letter? What's the best way to introduce myself?<issue_comment>username_1: Well... there are lot of important variables not mentioned, but this is how I will generally draft it:
>
> Dear Madam Give-me-a-job,
>
>
> It was great talking to you after your talk on Jan 17th, 2014 at
> My-Little-Institute. I found your experience and nature of your job
> fascinating. In our conversation about pursuing a career in
> Whatever-you-are-working-in, you were so kind to offer giving comments
> to my CV. And if you don't mind, I would love to take up your
> generous offer.
>
>
> Attached please find my CV. I would love to follow up with you in two
> weeks and set up a phone conversation to discuss how I can strengthen
> my profile so that I can be a more competitive candidate in this job
> market. Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to your invaluable critiques and suggestions.
>
>
> Sincerely yours,
>
>
> <NAME>
>
>
>
My approach:
1. Don't treat it like a lead to a job. She might just say that to be nice. If I come off too pushy, I may not even get a chance listening to her comments. For that reason, I *will not attach a cover letter* that details my experience, research interest, and why I am suitable for the position. There isn't even a job, a catch-all cover letter is difficult to write and hard to be made impressive.
2. Ask for follow up and act on it. A lot of the "send me your CV" didn't get follow up because the candidate really just "sent the CV" and that's the end of it. I specifically tweaked it as wanting advices from her, making it easier for both parties to engage in another conversation.
3. No need to worry about "what if she really just gives me comments?" She probably knows and remembers. If my CV is really good, she will mention the availability of openings. If there isn't or I am not good enough, then I can use this chance to flush out weaknesses and improve them.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: I wouldn't make a big deal of it:
>
> FirstName,
>
>
> Good to meet you the other day. Interesting presentation.
>
>
> Attached is my CV as discussed.
>
>
> Best wishes,
> Your full name
>
>
>
Most people are busy and they're not going to read more than a couple of sentences anyway.
Also, the longer the email, the more desperate and obsequious your tone; save time and your dignity - keep it brief.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> Hello (Speaker-name),
>
>
> We spoke on (date here) when you came to our institution and presented
> on (topic here). I very much enjoyed your speech and our discussion
> afterwards on (a few words on what you talked about) and possible
> openings in your company. As discussed, I've attached my cover letter
> and resume for your consideration.
>
>
> Thanks so much, and I look forward to hearing back from you!
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
>
> (Your name here)
>
>
>
My post is making the email a bit less formal, as I assume you talked to her in an informal way. By bringing up where you guys were, when you met, and what you talked about, you're likely sparking her memory (unless she gave two talks and had identical conversations that day, which is unlikely). I'd also keep the email relatively concise, because your intent is to seek jobs, not make a new friend.
Personally, I would attach my cover letter, because the cover letter gives a better indication on not only what your skills and past experience is, but also on what your desired position is. It also gives the employer a bit more indication into what you're like as a person, and whether or not they'd want to hire you.
This is all, of course, assuming you're emailing her and not mailing it. If you mail it, I would put a shorter version of this email into the cover letter and only send the cover letter and resume.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: CV and cover letter in an email and maybe send physical copies as well.
Just a friendly brief email with the attachments in the companies preferred format.
Make sure to mention the sort of position you are looking for in the cover letter.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/02/19 | 414 | 1,794 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a paper already submitted to a journal. Now, I want to try and submit an abstract to International Congress of Mathematicians 2014. The abstract basically contains the same thought and spirit of the submitted paper though I plan to rephrase it differently from the abstract and introduction of the submitted paper. Does this violate publication ethics?<issue_comment>username_1: Not ethics, but you do need to check if it violates the policies of either the journal or the conference. That's something that you should be able to find out from their websites or by contacting them directly.
Sadly, ICM doesn't seem to list an explicit policy about dual submissions on the website, so you'll need to email someone (probably `<EMAIL>`) to ask.
In my experience, a dual submission to a journal and a conference has been allowed, whereas a dual submission of the same work to two journals, or to two conferences, has not been allowed. Even then, some conferences are less strict.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: If you are submitting an abstract for a contributed talk or poster at the ICM and your paper is submitted to a math journal, then there is no issue. The mathematics community does not consider the abstract to be a publication and there is no conflict with simultaneous submission of a paper. In fact, this would be common.
If you are writing a paper for the ICM proceedings (i.e., you are giving an invited talk), then this could theoretically be an issue. It would be polite and proper to inquire with the journal to make sure they are OK with it, but they will certainly say yes. ICM proceedings papers are considered expository, and being invited to speak is an honor, so there's no way anybody will interfere with it.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/02/19 | 1,089 | 4,986 | <issue_start>username_0: Note that in experimental fields it is not uncommon that an abstract is required to have "specific" unpublished results 9 months or so before the conference. The problem is if you are a theoretical/mathematical researcher in these lab based fields often your mathematical model and derivations are the crux of your research and a numerical exploration comes later. How do you write an abstract for these fields highlighting that you derived the model, proved a bunch of existence and uniqueness properties (that they likely don't care about) and have just started your exploration of numerical examples (likely the only thing they care about) without having anything definitive to say yet about your numerical examples.
The most definitive thing I could say about the numerical examples is, "We show that for a given set of parameter space we observe X and for another set of parameter space we observe Y. This is the consequence of X being true in contrast to Y being true in our field of application". To be clear I don't know anything about the structure of the parameter space that yield the two distinct X and Y scenarios yet, but I do know that both X and Y are possible given some preliminary simulations, and that the difference between X and Y is interesting.
One thing to note is this is not a conference that includes a proceedings. You have an abstract and a talk, but no paper comes out of it. Papers are strictly for peer reviewed journals in this field. The answers to this question [How to write abstract for conference when you have no results yet?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7428/how-to-write-abstract-for-conference-when-you-have-no-results-yet) seem to be more geared towards fields where papers come out of the conference.<issue_comment>username_1: It does depend on the type and reputation of the conference, but in my experience most conferences that are not publishing their proceedings will accept all abstracts that are clearly written and have no overt language, logic, factual, or similar critical problems. Looking at the question you linked to, I think exactly the same advice that is posted there is relevant to conferences with no published proceedings. I say this because the goal of your abstract here is primarily to attract attention and get people to attend your talk. (But, does this conference publish its abstracts? Some do.)
Following the advice given in the answers to the linked question will achieve this goal without putting you in an ethical challenge or leading you to claim things that turn out to be untrue or, worse, so misguided or ambitious that it's embarrassing.
It's up to you to convince the reader of your abstract that you *will* have compelling numerical results by that time. This comes from explaining your methodology and approach in a way that will seem reasonable and so can be reasonably expected to lead to exciting, specific results. If you don't expect to, then maybe your project isn't well designed or well suited to this audience.
It never hurts to have a short abstract regardless of the conference rules on length. KISS! (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is appropriate here. If you are severely lacking anything interesting to say right now, it could be as straightforward as a paragraph version of: "We will present numerical results from a novel form of mathematical analysis of problem X, which will impact Y." If the audience is interested in topics X or Y then they might well show up regardless of their confidence in what new results you'll have.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Writing as a mathematical modeler in Epidemiology, and a regular submitter to conferences with these types of requirements, which are dominated by empirical research findings, this is something that's hard, if you approach it from the direction you have - with the numerical results coming at the "end" of your research.
It would be good to have *a* numerical result, because as has been mentioned, while you might not view these as the crux of your research, it may very well be the crux of why someone is *interested* in your research. Even as someone who does appreciate the theory side of things, I'm often rather more interested in the numerical results.
That being said, these conferences are mostly looking to avoid "Will be discussed" results, where there's no means to evaluate if you've done anything, or if it will be interesting. The latter is especially hard for deciding whether a presentation becomes an oral or poster presentation, because giving one of the precious oral slots to someone whose going to largely be discussing a slew of null results is (often) irksome.
You do however *have* results, and that should be enough to make it past the bar. If X and Y are both possible within the parameter space, and that *means something for the field*, then that is a specific result, and you should expand on why that's interesting.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer] |
2014/02/19 | 502 | 2,206 | <issue_start>username_0: Say you develop your own research project during your PhD years and want to carry on the research project with you to post-doctoral and beyond, are there any restriction that you can or cannot carry on the project?<issue_comment>username_1: In general, this depends primarily on your supervisors (old and new) and/or funding. If they give you the green light you're good to go.
If you have been working with industry or parts of your research have been patented there may be legal issues if you intend to collaborate with other parties (both companies or universities).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: As soon as the article is published, any laboratory can plan experiments described in that article, continuing the research. I see no reason why the original author should not be allowed.
However this is often not as good idea as it may look like. Assuming the PhD student have worked seriously over PhD time, all "low hanging fruits" of the topic may be already picked up and published in journals. And if your parent laboratory continues that project as well, they put up the competition that may be very difficult to win.
The probable exception would be if the continuation of the topic requires to apply methods that are not well developed in the originating laboratory, and you are starting a post-doc in the new laboratory with your current project.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: From a career perspective, it's a bad idea to carry your PhD project as your **primary** work further into your career. It's perfectly normal for people to finish up the publication of papers related to one phase in a later phase of their career, but it's not so good to keep working on basically the same project.
The reason for this is that you don't want to be "pigeonholed" as a researcher who only studies a narrow topic. In most fields, it's not conducive to a successful career, because it makes a researcher look as if uninterested in other research fields (even if that's not the case).
So even if the funding and willingness of the advisors is available to support such a path, it's not one you should follow (absent a very specific reason to do so).
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/19 | 2,711 | 10,455 | <issue_start>username_0: First of all, this is about plagiarism in the sense of stealing ideas. Copy-and-paste plagiarism is included but not likely to happen in the cases relevant for this question.
Considering the publication of a paper prior to peer-reviewed publication on the ArXiv (or another preprint server), there are usually two main positions considering a possible theft of the idea (or somebody coming up with the same idea):
* If somebody manages to publish your idea in a peer-reviewed journal before you do, you can prove that you came up with the idea first or at least independently if you have published your paper on the ArXiv. Therefore it is a good idea to publish papers on the ArXiv before they have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
* If you publish your paper on ArXiv before it is published in a peer-reviewed journal, others may steal your work and publish it peer-reviewed before you do and thus take the scientific credit. It’s difficult to attack those people since the ArXiv is not peer-reviewed. Somebody could make a living of plagiarising ArXiv papers. Therefore it is a bad idea to publish papers on the ArXiv before they have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Are there any **example cases** (or even studies) supporting either of these statements? Such examples would include, but are not limited to:
* Has a peer-reviewed journal ever withdrawn a paper because it plagiarised an ArXiv paper?
* Are there well-known cases of “unpunished” plagiarism of ArXiv papers?
* Has anybody ever successfully resolved a priority dispute with a publication on ArXiv?
* Has anybody ever accused somebody of plagiarising an ArXiv article (with the fact that the plagiarised article was published on ArXiv affecting the outcome).
Note that it is really examples and not a theoretical analysis of the statements, I am looking for. (Neither of the two positions fully reflect my opinion and some of the soft premises¹ are debatable. However, debating about these viewpoints on a theoretical basis or attacking some of the premises is usually futile.)
---
¹ e.g., that scientific credit is only decided by peer-reviewed publication<issue_comment>username_1: >
> If you publish your paper on ArXiv before it is published in a peer-reviewed journal, others may steal your work and publish it peer-reviewed before you do and thus take the scientific credit. It’s difficult to attack those people since the ArXiv is not peer-reviewed.
>
>
>
This assumes that peer-reviewed publications determine scientific credit, which may be true in some fields but isn't universal. In mathematics, it is not relevant at all for assigning credit. Peer-reviewed papers are of course more thoroughly checked, but they do not give you any additional intellectual credit, so this difficulty does not even arise. (In particular, for assigning credit an arXiv paper beats a published paper with a nontrivially later submission date.)
>
> For example, has a peer-reviewed journal ever withdrawn a paper because it plagiarised an ArXiv paper? Or are there well-known cases of “unpunished” plagiarism of ArXiv papers?
>
>
>
This is a difficult question to answer, because how could you tell? If the plagiarist doesn't copy any text, but rather just takes ideas, then it's virtually impossible to prove that anything was stolen.
In mathematics, it works like this. If someone publicly circulates a paper, then there's a brief window in which people who have made the same discovery independently have a chance to announce this fact and claim a share of the credit. They should do so more or less immediately upon learning about it.
By contrast, if too much time elapses, then the community doesn't count it as simultaneous discovery, but rather at best rediscovering something that was already known (which gives far less credit to the rediscoverer). There's not a clear cut-off for the timing, but I see it as follows: days later is definitely OK, weeks later might be OK, months later is generally not OK, a year later is definitely not OK.
The biggest weakness in this system is that there's a window in which it's possible to steal someone's ideas and claim you came up with them independently. This is certainly uncommon (indeed, claims of independent discovery are uncommon, regardless of whether they are true or false), but it's hard to know for sure how rare it is because of the difficulty of proving plagiarism of ideas. Most claims of independent discovery are obviously true (because there's a manuscript that couldn't have been written so quickly, or there's a history of talks or discussions with other researchers, or there are nontrivial variations on the ideas and applications), but every once in a while someone makes such a claim without clear evidence.
Even when there isn't much documentation, I'm inclined to believe claims of independent discovery. Faking this takes a lot of chutzpah and effort, it's not something you can get away with repeatedly, and it's an awkward situation you wouldn't want to put yourself in unnecessarily, so it seems reasonable to give people the benefit of the doubt.
In practice, I don't think the real danger is outright theft, where someone who wasn't working on this topic at all notices a new paper and says "That looks nice! I think I'll steal it." Instead, the most worrisome situation is when someone was actually working on similar ideas, but hadn't really finished sorting out the details. When they see the paper, they immediately recognize some of their ideas, and the remaining details feel so natural that they say "Yes, that's exactly what I had in mind. This paper is merely fleshing out my ideas." They honestly believe that they had practically completed this work, when they might have been somewhat further than they thought. There's a whole continuum here, from people who are basically right in their beliefs to those who are completely wrong, and it's not clear where to draw the line.
Of course I have no idea how often someone claims independent discovery based on exaggerated beliefs (again it's basically unprovable), but I imagine it happens occasionally. It's certainly unfortunate if it takes place, but it's not nearly as bad as outright theft. The worst-case scenario is having to share credit with someone who is less deserving.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: There are difficult parts in your question, but it is easy to find examples where posting in arXiv did establish priority. In fact, you can open random published papers, and find that a decent proportion of them cite arXiv preprints (I found one at [my second random try](https://doi.org/10.1214/EJP.v20-3176 "Yinshan Chang. Loop cluster on discrete circles. Electron. J. Probab. 20: 1–32 (2015)")).
To give a famous example, <NAME> published his [groundbreaking papers](https://arxiv.org/search/math?query=Grisha+Perelman&searchtype=author&abstracts=show&order=-announced_date_first&size=50) only on arXiv, and was credited for them to the extent that he was offered the Fields medal and the Clay prize of one million dollars (as is well-known, he declined them both).
These papers were digested by the community over several years, giving rise to several sets of notes by different groups of mathematicians, all of which of course credited Perelman for solving the geometrization and Poincaré conjectures; some of these notes, containing clarifications, details or alternative proofs of part of Perelman's work were published, sometimes in top journals. This part also provides an interesting example of online publishing (on a web page, not on arXiv, but seems to the point) establishing precedent, see the following [erratum](https://projecteuclid.org/journals/asian-journal-of-mathematics/volume-10/issue-4/Erratum-to-A-Complete-Proof-of-the-Poincar%c3%a9-and-Geometrization/ajm/1175789085.full "<NAME>, <NAME>. Erratum to "). In short, the authors of a published paper wrote an erratum to acknowledge that they failed to properly cite a preprint which was only circulated online and not formally published, while they used some of the ideas contained in it. This is the way any reasonable journal and authors are expected to treat such cases, at least in mathematics.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I have found [this](https://web.archive.org/web/20150813221617/http://arxiv.org/new/withdrawals.aug.07.html) link. It seems that arXiv itself has a plagiarism policy.
Also [a paper](https://web.archive.org/web/20190819045634/http://additivegroves.net:80/papers/PlagiarismDetection_full.pdf) describes "large-scale application of methods for
finding plagiarism and self-plagiarism in research document
collections." entitled as "Plagiarism Detection in arXiv".
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: According to <NAME> (in *[Superconductivity: a Very Short Introduction](https://books.google.it/books?id=GxUWMrm4dxsC&lpg=PP1&dq=superconductivity%3A%20a%20very%20short%20introduction&pg=PA120#v=onepage&q=preprint&f=false)*) dealing with priority and plagiarism was exactly the reason people started circulating and indexing preprints online in the first place.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: >
> Has a peer-reviewed journal ever withdrawn a paper because it
> plagiarised an ArXiv paper?
>
>
>
Here is an example for this:
[Paper A](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168900218311501) was retracted, because it plagiarized [paper B](https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.98.023005) which had previously [appeared](https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.02646) on the arxiv.
Paper B was submitted to the arxiv on 7 May 2018 and submitted to *Physical Review D* on 9 May 2018. Paper A was submitted to *Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A* on 8 May 2018.
This timeline shows paper A must have plagiarized from the arxiv version of paper B, and did so before paper B had been submitted for peer review. Presumably, the arxiv timestamp will have helped making this an open-and-shut case of plagiarism, although other avenues of proof may have been available.
This example was found by scouring [Retraction Watch](http://retractiondatabase.org) entries related to high energy physics (one of the oldest and most prolific fields to use arxiv). A secondary conclusion from this exercise is that retraction due to plagiarism are rare in this field.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/19 | 750 | 2,796 | <issue_start>username_0: What are the most common ways to find open postdoc positions in physics, in Europe?
I use [inspires](http://inspirehep.net/collection/Jobs) and [academicjobsonline](https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo), but on both sites, there almost haven't been any new positions in my field (4 in total since december).
Are there any other sites / tricks I'm missing?
(EDIT: my subfield is theoretical QCD)<issue_comment>username_1: Many jobs are only advertised on the website of the respective universities. Often professors post positions on their home pages or group pages, so it may be a good idea to keep an eye on them. Sometimes job openings are also mailed around to colleagues, so it is a good idea to let people know you're on the market, so they can forward these announcements.
Depending on your particular subfield there may be other relevant websites as well.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Perhaps you should also look at <http://jobs.physicstoday.org/jobs/work_function/postdoctoral-research> , <http://www.jobs.ac.uk/jobs/physical-and-environmental-sciences> , <http://www.eurosciencejobs.com/jobs/physics> , and <http://jobs.sciencecareers.org/jobs/europe/postdoc/> .
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: From my experience, most postdocs in high-energy physics have application deadlines anywhere between the previous September and the end of December. That is, for postdocs starting in fall 2014, you need to be filling out applications in September-December 2013. At this time of year, though, there are just not many people listing open positions. It's not just you; I've been looking at the listings as well and very little has been posted since the first week of December.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: Open positions in public institutions often will & have to be announced on a public job database, not so likely on private job databases where you find mostly industry positions (e.g. in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands).
Often higher academic positions are listed in printed newspapers in Germany.
Another option is to look on the sites of the national phyiscal societies (e.g. <http://www.pro-physik.de/phy/stellenmarkt/jobsHome.html>)
[In this answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/455/213) I gave some tips how to find websites of research groups specializing in field X, you can add here "positions".
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_5: There are various listings of jobs and sites where open positions are advertised, for example
<http://de.physnet.net/PhysNet/physjobs.html>
The sources listed in other answers are also available. For your field, there is also the HEP Postdoc Rumor Mill
<https://sites.google.com/site/postdocrumor/>
that should be starting the 2016 version before too long.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/02/19 | 1,739 | 6,693 | <issue_start>username_0: My university recently made a direction that lectures attendance is mandatory. Now my question is, are there any studies that compare mandatory and not mandatory lectures quality? The university is trying to increase its quality and this was its main step this year.
More description:
As lecture quality comparison I mean, when is it easier to concentrate, study, teach and learn? When lectures are mandatory, there are a lot of students that doesn't have real interest in subject and are disturbing and making noise. That influences all students, as you can't hear what professor is saying, professor is disturbed and interrupted in teaching. So are there any studies that prove this?
Is this in overall a good step of university? I believe that good professors can motivate students to come to lectures, and if lectures are empty, it's a sign of something (not necessarily bad quality of professor) and this doesn't solve it at all, or am I wrong?<issue_comment>username_1: My school also has a mandatory attendance policy. While some uninterested students do cause problems there are classroom management techniques to handle that. For example when my students get out of control I warn them. If they continue then I remove them and mark them absent for the day.
While I do understand you are looking for studies I want to make clear that there is not much reason for lectures to drop in quality just because you have a forced attendance policy.
All that said, I could see how in-class activities have lower participation in such a situation and that could lead to reduced learning for the group.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: It's a great step for the University. If a student comes to the lecture, they will learn something whether they intend to or not. This should, theoretically, raise the grades of the students in the classroom, which will raise the grades in the University as a whole.
Think of this in a case where you're in a lecture and the professor puts his notes online. Students see this and decide they don't need to go because they can simply read the notes themselves and learn it on their own. This doesn't necessarily mean the prof is bad, it just means that the students are a bit lazy. Even if they do end up reading the notes (which is rare), they're still missing out on critical notes, hints the prof may give, and emphasis on certain topics. Even asking or hearing other students questions. When I was a student, I was in a class that was full and our professor posted his quizzes online, making it so you just had to look up the answers on the internet or take the quiz with a student that did attend class. In the end, I was one of 5 students out of 60. That class had a very low class average.
It's true that students could be in the class that are disruptive, but having mandatory attendance doesn't restrict the prof from kicking those disruptive students out and taking away their attendance for that day. I certainly wouldn't hesitate to remove extremely disruptive students. And if they're there but don't care about the topic, they shouldn't be in the class anyway, or should at least understand that you need to take the class and should make an effort to understand it.
I don't have a study to show you about this, but if you look at it from the view where it's good and think about it, it's pretty obvious there are reasons for it. Schools without the mandatory policy look at schools that have it and see that there's benefit for it, which is why that put it in themselves. No school would put a mandatory policy in without checking into its effectiveness, especially if it's the main step to making their school better.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: In fact there are many studies undertaken in this topic. Below you may find the link to some of these papers.
* [Classroom attendance: Factors and perceptions of students and faculty in US schools of pharmacy](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877129713001639)
* [Student nurse absenteeism in higher education: An argument against enforced attendance](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0260691709002330)
* [Student and teacher attendance: The role of shared goods in reducing absenteeism](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775712000325)
* [Why do students miss lectures? A study of lecture attendance amongst students of health science](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0260691712002420)
* [Does lecture attendance affect academic performance? Panel data evidence for introductory macroeconomics](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477388013000613)
* [The impact of charter school attendance on student performance](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272706001393)
You can find tons of papers in this topic. Look at this [link](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleListURL&_method=list&_ArticleListID=-524267511&_st=13&view=c&_acct=C000228598&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=12975512&md5=a36fef0c6b3e326ad9b150e3ada774a3&searchtype=a) and [her](http://scholar.google.com.my/scholar?q=effect+of+student+attendance+on+learning&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5)
Hope it helps
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: The answer to this question is that the question has no answer, because classes are not all alike. If you're taking a foreign language, then obviously attendance is extremely important. If it's a creative writing class, then students are critiquing each other's work in class, and there's no substitute for that experience. Classes come in different sizes and are taught using different methods. If the class is 500 students in an auditorium, and the professor gives old-fashioned straight lectures, then maybe watching the lecture on video would be just as good -- if not better, since you could repeat some parts and skip others. If the class is 25 students and the professor uses modern interactive teaching methods, then attendance is probably extremely valuable.
The idea of having a university-wide rule strikes me as a stupid idea. It's one-size-fits-all, which I've argued doesn't make sense. It's an improper violation of academic freedom. What it sounds to me like is this. This school got worried about their "success rates." Success rates are not a good measure of the quality of education, for a variety of reasons. At the community college where I teach, students consider it normal to take every class two or more times in order to optimize their GPA. (They can drop up to the 12th week and get a W on their transcript.) Furthermore, success rates can easily be raised simply by lowering standards.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/19 | 868 | 3,521 | <issue_start>username_0: Here is my situation, I got a MSc from a renowned university in Europe and I have been working as a lecturer in a non-EU country until now. I am in my mid thirties (upper part =)) and I have came to an important decision to make:
* I have been offered to work as a full time lecturer with all my benefits in a local renowned university in the country that I am staying
* At the same time I have an offer to follow PhD studies in a ZA university, but I am not very keen about it, mainly because the problems with the crime rates and low salary per month
I have seen that there are a lot of possibilities for getting funded PhD positions worldwide, but I am afraid of the following:
* That after my studies and if I do not get an academic position in the place that I did my PhD studies, to not be able to get another academic position as the one that they are currently offering me (I will be ending my PhD at 42 years old approximately)
I have a high interest for academia, unfortunately the universities in the country that I am working are not so much oriented to research, but only to lecturing. That is why I feel like bored and stressed to do the same task everyday, to do research is very hard because I must occupy my little free time and most of my ideas get stuck after a while (mainly because there are not other academics to talk about problems encountered along my projects)
I would not really like just to end with the MSc and I feel that is something missing in my life, this has lead me to a problem of anxiety and depression.
Any advice?
Thanks<issue_comment>username_1: First of all, nobody can tell you what the best decision *for you* in such a decision is.
That said, what you need to look at are the *opportunity costs* of your different options. What do you gain from each of the different possible choices? Equally important is to ask yourself what will you have to give up to pursue those choices.
For you, you need to ask yourself:
* How important is being a researcher compared to being a lecturer?
* How difficult do you think it will be to get a position when you finish your PhD?
* Is your offer of graduate admission worth the upheaval it would cause in your life?
And other questions like these. Once you get a feel for how important these issues are *to you*, the easier it will be to make a decision. It will still be a very tough decision (these sorts of choices always are), but **ultimately it will be your decision, and you'll need to be comfortable with the decision you've reached.**
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You are contemplating a choice that has a high risk of failure.
1. Risk of not completing Ph.D.
2. Risk of not liking research.
3. Risk of not finding even a lecturer position afterwards, much less a research position.
4. Risk of unhappiness due to the conditions during the Ph.D.
5. Risk of being academically unrewarded/isolated even in a research position.
If all things unfold perfectly, then you will achieve a research position in some years. You may like this more, but will objectively be similar to the position you have now: indoor work, no heavy lifting, job security and benefits, education field, some things you like and some things you dislike.
This seems like a poor risk, particularly for someone already pushing 40 -- the potential upside is smaller. My advice is to correspond with scholars at other institutions, to achieve your spiritual fulfillment while still earning a good paycheck.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/19 | 1,027 | 4,421 | <issue_start>username_0: For the past year I have been doing a postdoc in a Neuroscience lab, the position advertised was for computer science.
For the first year, the work was mostly related to my discipline, but my PI's funding got cut and now he has been pushing me to write and do experiments in an area that is entirely out of my expertise or even my field (electrodeposition/ impedance characterization). To be honest, I do not like the area, and was not written anywhere neither in the job posting or the offer letter.
I got a postdoc offer in a different University, and have already accepted, but my PI is pushing me to delay my start date or even come back over the summer to finish these experiments and the paper. (Probably at my own expense, the position is in a different US state)
As I would like to apply for a Tenure track position after the coming Postdoc, I would like to know how much can this affect my chances, would a publication in a field that is not even remotely similar to my own (Machine Learning) can hurt me more than help me?
I've tried to think on ways to turn it around so I can come with a feasible explanation on how is a paper on that topic even going to help build my ML expertise, but so far I have come with nothing.<issue_comment>username_1: A legitimate scholarly publication can only help you (although it might not help much). If you're really worried you can always just leave it off your cv.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I agree with vadim's answer above:
>
> A legitimate scholarly publication can only help you.
>
>
>
As for the concern about the 'helpfulness' of a paper in an unrelated field, I would tend to see it as a positive thing, showing that you are not restricted to working/thinking in/knowing about one area only. You have proven that you are capable of scholarly research in a tangential area; this should help rather than hinder your TT search. Of course, you may find that some possible positions will be unappealing to you if you really hate electrodeposition/ impedance characterization. If that possibility is a large concern to you, then you might consider leaving the paper out of your CV.
However, I do not believe that leaving the paper out of your CV would be a good solution, unless the paper is also of very poor quality, in which case the point above does not apply and you really don't want to use this experience when searching for tenure track jobs. If the current project is of poor quality, you may be better off moving on to the next, more compatible post-doc, and also politely declining your (current) supervisor's offer to continue/finish the project you are working on now.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: My feeling is that a publication in a totally different field will simply be ignored and certainly wouldn't help, unless the job you're applying for is specifically interdisciplinary and across departments.
A publication in a different subfield can help or hurt depending on its quality (and somewhat on how you're selling yourself).
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: Interdisciplinary research, especially at the interface between computer science and biology, is pretty hot at the moment. In that sense, a paper in neuroscience could even be helpful, especially if you later want to apply machine learning to that kind of area.1 The down-side is that doing these experiments takes time, which is time you could spend doing something else.
If it wasn't for the fact that you already have another job lined up, I'd say you should weigh up the possible advantages (increased experience of possible applications of your ML research) against the obvious disadvantages (time spent away from your core expertise). However, since you *do* have another job lined up, just go for that. Tell your current PI that you appreciate his efforts to keep you in a job even after his funding got cut but that the work he has for you just isn't your cup of tea. You're under no obligation to come back and finish the experiments (and, hey, if push comes to shove, your new employer can't give you that much time off, right?) and, since you're not an expert in that area anyway, your current PI can probably find somebody who can finish them better than you could.
---
1 If even makes sense... As you can probably tell, I know next to nothing about machine learning and even less about neuroscience.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/19 | 556 | 2,193 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm writing my professor. She has two surnames. So far, I've been using only her first surname; however, I'm curious whether that's, generally, how I should address a professor with two surnames. I don't know whether the addressee's culture affects the answer, but the professor is from Spanish South-America. (I've noticed that some Spanish people use only the first of both last names, but most English people who take two names ask others to use both names.) Also, I don't whether familiarity matters but we communicate frequently enough that I begin my emails with 'Hi Dr...' instead of 'Dear Dr...'.
Thank you<issue_comment>username_1: You cannot do any harm if you are more polite when writing to someone with a significantly higher academic state than yours. So unless she's ever written you a mail signed less formally, stick to the formal way of writing.
It's actually quite unlikely that she gives any attention to it. When she replies, the way she signes at the end is how you should title her next time, with "Prof." added, which she'll very likely exclude.
Example:
You write: *Dear Professor Doe-Toe,* ... *Sincerely, <NAME>*
She replies: *Hello,* ... *Regards, <NAME>*
Next time you write: *Dear Prof. Doe,* ... *Best regards, <NAME>*
---
There are people who are really really informal. One professor at my university always uses just the first name at the end of e-mails. She really does not care, but politeness in my environment (Czech) says that you shouldn't reply so much impolitely.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Mexican here!!
We also have two surnames, and to be perfectly honest we do not mind if you use both or only one of our last names.
People call me Dr Palafox and my former advisor (Who is the head of the CS department) Dr Benitez. We are talking people from all the spectrum of workers, from administrative and cleaning staff to general directors. So is perfectly fine to use only one last name.
Actually is going to sound weird if you end up using both names, because we rarely do. Even the President is rarely called by his 2 last names, unless is a very specific situation.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer] |
2014/02/19 | 1,001 | 4,277 | <issue_start>username_0: I am interested in pursuing a degree in Computer Science. Universities I've reviewed have "Major In Computer Science" , but give "Bachelor's in Informatics or Computing". There is no "Bachelors In CS", I simply couldn't find it. So **are Informatics and Computing the same as CS ? or IT?**
When I was looking for programming jobs, degree requirements were mostly CS. If I go to the university I mentioned above (Major in CS, but Bachelor's in Informatics), will I be able to write in my CV that I have CS knowledge?<issue_comment>username_1: This greatly depends on the country the university is in, and the language spoken there. For example:
* In Croatia, *informatics* and *IT* are really roughly a same thing.
What you want to study, in the strongest technical uni in the country, would correspond to something maybe best translated as *computer studies* (with a possible specialization in *computer science*).
A *computer scientist* from Croatia speaking with another Croatian might get slightly offended if somebody called him an *informatician*.
* In France, the only term they have to describe computer science is *informatique*, and the person doing that for a living would be *informaticien*.
Many French people will be talking about "informatics" when speaking in English.
* When I personally speak in English, I would never mix the terms *computer science*, and *informatics*. If I wanted to refer to somebody who might not be doing research (any more) I might switch to *computing*, or be more specific with the field.
I might be biased since I'm Croatian and come from that culture, and I'm not fully sure what the difference between *IT* and *informatics* is, but there's a definitive difference between *informatics* and *CS* in my mind.
The bottom line would be: **don't look at the Universities title when choosing, look at their program instead**. Look for classes whose descriptions match your interests and skills you want to obtain. If the program matches with your interests, that that is most probably the right university for you (without talking about the Uni's quality right now).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Sadly, I believe the most accurate answer is: it depends on who you ask.
Examples: Where I live, there is [Whatcom Community College](http://whatcom.ctc.edu) which has a Computer Science degree that dates back to the 1990s or earlier. It was largely about "computer programming" (which I'm going to mix together with "software development" as basically describing the same thing). A local state university [WWU's Computer Science department](http://wwu.edu/cs) also focused on computer programming.
In contrast, WCC's "Information Technology" (a.k.a. "IT") focuses more on tasks about how to set up and maintain computer networks and already-created computer software.
However, when I became a college instructor, I met a co-instructor who had an older Computer Science degree from another state (California), and he was not a programming expert. His expertise was in handling computer networking and troubleshooting situations on networks that were already set up. When I spoke to some business leaders (managers/owners) and told them my opinion of Computer Science referring to programming and IT referring to implementations, the majority disagreed and felt like my terms were reversed.
[username_1's answer](http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/17196/30772) goes to show that people have different opinions. I would be inclined to go the safe route, and assume that Informatics, like the other terms, are actually not completely defined by a single centralized source that everybody agrees with. If you think you can get more specific based on some patterns or trends that you notice, I caution you to be careful because my experiences indicates that people don't universally use the terms the same way. So if you're making an important decision based on what you think the terms mean to some people, then verify before proceeding with any dependent assumption.
(Despite all that I just said, I've still noticed nationwide posts do seem to refer to skills like technical support, and upgrading/maintaining infrastructure like handling backups and network services as being "IT".)
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/02/19 | 2,190 | 9,047 | <issue_start>username_0: I work in a lab. This evening, thinking that my advisor had already left for the day, I started telling my peers in the lab that she has a bad attitude about a few things, and she was showing off a lot about her work last summer. Out of nowhere, she walked into the lab and was visibly upset, and I feared that she had heard what I said.
I just finished my masters and had asked my advisor about pursuing a Ph.D. She kind of gave an OK and I am supposed to meet with her tomorrow morning to discuss about it. Although our relationship has been on and off at times, I feel bad because she helped me a lot in past and now she will feel I am an ungrateful jerk.
What will be the best way to approach this issue so that I can minimize the damage to our relationship?
**Update**: My advisor said she doesn't have funding so she cant take me as a PhD candidate, which I know is load of crap, she has lot of money. As one of the answers advised, I thanked her for her help over the last two years. I am torn, depressed, angry, and tearful. Most advisors help their students find jobs; mine just told me sorry and good luck. Fortunately, another advisor had offered me a position; I had planned to decline, but now taking it seems to be my best option.<issue_comment>username_1: Well... I am not an entirely mentally normal person so take my suggestion with a lot of salt.
The damage is already done, and you probably cannot do too much on her side. Your side, though, can be fixed. If it bothers you enough to make a new account and ask this question, you probably do care, right?
This is how I will approach it:
1. Before the meeting, prepare a thank you card and/or perhaps some little snacks/gifts (chocolate usually work, as long as she is not diabetic Other choices are small office plants, coupon to a nearby restaurant, etc.)
2. Go to meet with her and act as if none of these had happened. If she confronts you, apologize and emphasize that the experience made you feel very bad as well. Remember to emphasize the feeling. Depending on the outcome, if she confronts, then talking about PhD project is probably a bad idea. Leave the gifts and thank you card, and tell her that "I fully understand why you are upset, I hope you can give me another chance to talk about this in another time. I'll be outside in the lab if you need to talk to me."
3. If she does not confront you, then go ahead and talk about the PhD project. Pay attention to it, because it may actually be things you spend a few years on.
4. When it's all set, regardless of the outcome, give her the thank you card and the gifts. No need to mention your stupid chat. Just say something like "Just my thanks to your constant help through my Masters studies, and I look forward to working with you as a PhD candidate." Or if you're unlucky "Just my thanks to your help through my Masters studies, I learned a lot and I hope these little gifts will make up for all the hard times I caused you."
If she talks to you about the PhD, then she has forgiven you (unless she is a psycho who has decided to torment you.) If she decides not to and withdraws the offer, your thank you gift will also work. Either way, you'll have a chance to express your thanks, and that probably can help you feel better about your mishap.
---
And please be professional in the future. Badmouthing is a really bad habit.
Upvotes: -1 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: From what you have said, I am not sure even if she heard you. All you need to do for now is to **STOP** this attitude. You will never find a *perfect* supervisor... Yes, you can talk with a friend about how difficult your life is with this supervisor. But this should be out of the lab and avoid -- as much as you can -- other students with the same supervisor.
* Show her that you value her research and expertise (in case you don't value her research, then find another supervisor).
* Do not talk about anything happened unless she started the talk.
I completely disagree with @Penguin\_Knight on the gift thing. Being so nice in a typical meeting indicates something weird is happening. Do not do it. (I believe this is a cultural thing some people may see it really good others will think about it in a very bad context.)
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: If you have an issue with your advisor you should approach her about it in private, calmly, clearly, and with an open mind and an idea of what you want. If you choose to speak to others without approaching her then you cannot be surprised at unexpected consequences.
As for the current situation; if your advisor definitely heard you, then apologizing to her in person, privately, would be the honorable course of action. Of course, if there's a chance she did not hear you, this would not turn out well for you.
So, I recommend that you simply approach her with your concerns as you originally should have (and do it soon, because if she did hear you, the longer you wait the more permanent the damage may become). Also make sure you have a clear idea of what you want to get out of the conversation ahead of time. This is a reasonable approach whether she heard you or not. If she didn't hear you, then this brings your concerns to light in a mature manner. If she did hear you, this opens up the potential for a conversation about the incident. If she chooses not to mention it, at least you approached her with your concerns and gave her an opportunity to legitimately hear where you were coming from.
Also, whether she heard you or not, don't simply pretend that this situation didn't happen; go into it with the mindset of "yes, it *did* happen, and that means it's time to have a real conversation about the issues that have been bothering me before the tension gets even worse".
Do not grovel, this only shows that you do not feel comfortable with your ability to handle confrontation, and raises *many* red flags (too many to list) and defenses (even subconsciously) to the person you are groveling to (one of the worst cases being that the recipient takes it as "I can't believe you think I'm so foolish as to fall for your grovelling" and thus fails to reciprocate any respect).
Do not be close-minded or have a "putting your foot down" or "shoot first ask questions later" attitude, this will normally put somebody on the defensive immediately and kill most chances of progress. Be calm, clear, and treat her with the same amount of decency and respect that you would expect from anybody else -- even if you strongly disagree with her behavior. Going into these kinds of things with a clear head (and a clear goal) will also help give *you* confidence that can keep *you* from getting on the defensive and closing doors / burning bridges.
And most importantly, do not forget that you may not get what you want out of this conversation; but at least you will end up doing your best to be reasonable and work with the situation. The relationship may not be perfect, but it is there and it is up to you to make the best of it.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: I completely agree with username_3's answer. If you are sure that your advisor has heard you, then a sincere apology would work best. Something similar happened with me long ago, and I scheduled a meeting with the offended colleague early next morning, before anyone else was in the office. My apology was sincere and she immediately understood that I had no problem with her on a personal level, just that I had a problem with her working style. She did make an effort to change her style as she realized it was inconveniencing me. We had a fabulous relationship afterwards and never mentioned that incident again. But I definitely learnt a lesson: when you have a problem, discuss it with the person concerned and not with anyone else.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: I disagree with some of the comments above saying that you made a mistake. If you sincerely and objectively believe that she is really bad, then not complaining is making a mistake; though you could probably do better in choosing the venue of submitting your complaint.
To answer your question, you must go deep into yourself and ask yourself what do you really want.
On surface, I have two contradictory things:
A) You want to do a PhD with her;
B) You think she is an incompetent advisor and explicitly talk about it.
You need to ask yourself:
1. Is she so bad that she deserves your negative comments in open public?
2. If (1) is true, then, is she the best advisor you can find?
3. If (2) is true, then, do you actually want to do a PhD?
Of course, everything comes with a reason. You might have some good reasons that you want to make a public complaint. Find the true reason, and honestly communicate with your advisor. If your advisor understand you, then no damage is last.
Do not fabricate some fake reasons or explanations and hoping she can understand you. Do not pretend to be nice just to get she advising your PhD. Follow your true heart.
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/02/20 | 804 | 3,340 | <issue_start>username_0: following different CS conferences I see the following phrase very often:
>
> Due to many requests, the submission deadline has been extended.
>
>
>
Or something similar to this.
I won't overestimate if I said 80% of the conferences (I have followed) have this attitude. This brings me to the question of whether this is true or people (conference organisers) admit a lie when say this. Why does this attitude exit in CS conferences? Do other fields experience the same thing?<issue_comment>username_1: Extensions are common in conferences because many people procrastinate and or otherwise just need a little more time to complete their paper, prompting a heavy demand for extensions. Unless the conference is overwhelmed by submissions (which is very rarely the case), there's usually room for a little bit of flexibility in the submission deadline.
It's not a lie... Organizers tend to anticipate it based on past experiences in previous conferences.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: *Warning: personal opinion.*
I view conferences that regularly shift submission deadlines as a little suspect. You're right that this happens in CS conferences, and it soon becomes pointless because everyone expects the extension ("[Nobody expects the extension!!](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WJXHY2OXGE)"). But your estimate of 80% is rather off. Almost none of the (many) conferences I submit to have deadline extensions for submission of the full paper.
And don't underestimate the level of pleading that goes on. People will always ask for an extension if they have even a smidgen of hope that the pleading will work. It's only when a conference takes a firm stand for many years that people stop asking.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: This is outside CS, but in my field, I've only had three conferences extend submissions, and they were all for low numbers of submissions.
* One I know because the day a office mate and I submitted (the last official deadline day) we were abstracts 001 and 002, and we were not early morning people. This one, ironically, is probably the closest to your experience, and arguably *was* a CS conference, even though I'm not in CS.
* One has a chronic problem with this, because the session they're recruiting for (its a big enough conference that there are multiple sessions each with their own abstract committees) is a lot of work without much payoff.
* One was because the sequester made travel by federal employees in the U.S. impossible, which meant a quarter of the abstracts were suddenly gone. So the "late breaker" deadline got moved way back.
So in my experience its fairly *uncommon*, and either symptomatic of a larger problem with submissions, or some unforeseen circumstance.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Usually when a conference extends a deadline it means that they don't have enough submissions, or that the ones they do have suck, and they're hoping to find a couple more good ones if they can.
If it were a case of a couple of people needing extensions, the conference organizers would just privately contact those people and allow the extension. You only *publicize* the extension, when there aren't enough submissions in quantity or quality.
I'm not in CS, so YMMV, but I suspect it's the same.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/20 | 593 | 2,317 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm preparing an NSF proposal. I ordinarily like author-year citations because they seem more scholarly and give the reviewer instant information about who(m) I am citing. However, multiple people have advised me that it makes the text hard to read, and I've heard that the *most important thing* for NSF proposals is that they are easy to read.
But still- I hate flipping back and forth between text and citations- it seems like that causes a readability problem of a different kind. At the same time, numerical citations are much more concise and help me make my page limit.
So I am in a bind. What do you people think?<issue_comment>username_1: In terms of reference formatting, this is the only paragraph I can find in the [NSF guide](http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/gpg/nsf04_23/nsf04_23.pdf):
>
> Reference information is required. Each reference must include the
> names of all authors (in the same sequence in which they appear in the
> publication), the article and journal title, book title, volume
> number, page numbers, and year of publication.
>
>
>
Thanks to @Suresh, I misunderstood the meaning of it and I agree that the instruction does not specify either numeric or author-year format.
However, the page limit is 15, all inclusive, numeric system would give you a few more lines at the end. And you don't need to hate flipping back and forth, because the reviewers will do the flipping. However, should you feel so strong against it, call and talk to the grant program manager or contact person and ask if you can use your preferred system.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: My advisor actually gave me a copy of the proposal for an NSF grant that funded some of my research, it had numerical citations. But also note that this is the style most commonly used in my field (machine learning).
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: I have reviewed many thousands of NSF proposals (and written a few dozen, many funded) and strongly recommend numerical. You should note that even the NSF Guide uses numerical (for footnotes).
Reviewers tend to like the following order: Author(s) Journal Volume Pages Year
Make sure you use first and last pages: ie 2311-2318 not 2311-18 which is ambiguous
You may find EndNote or Papers the way to go for references.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/20 | 2,391 | 9,501 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm in mathematics, though I don't know if the answers to this will be field-dependent. There have been previous good questions that answer what to ask graduate students [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/353/what-are-some-good-questions-to-ask-current-graduate-students-when-visiting-scho) and only somewhat relatedly [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8507/what-questions-should-one-ask-to-the-former-current-students-of-a-professor-befo/8514#8514) (about what to ask students of potential advisors). However, I don't know what good questions are to ask professors themselves. The big question is, of course, "will I be happy at this school?", but it's not clear to me what the 'right questions' are to help me get a feel for this.
Essentially, what should I know about the program/school that are suitable questions to ask a professor during a meeting at these visit days?<issue_comment>username_1: Good question. I am a tenured (associate) math professor at UGA. To be (too?) honest, I sometimes find graduate visitation days to be slightly awkward. With most of the students, they and I *want* to have something to talk about; for many of the students, we *will* have something to talk about at some future point; for a few of the students, we will become so close that it will be hard to remember these first awkward conversations.
I just remembered a visitation day where I almost sullenly plopped myself down at a barroom table next to a certain prospective student and a bunch of current students. They were more trying to have a conversation than actually having a conversation. At one point the topic turned to some elementary topology problem the prospective student had in mind for some reason. One of the current students was studying topology and she got interested and started to try to work it out. Alas I was still bored, and after a few minutes I quietly uttered a few words. The current student paused for a second, then her eyes lit up, and very soon after I got my chance to politely excuse myself and get another drink. That prospective student is now my PhD student, but the bond was not forged on that day.
But still, we should try.
>
> 1) I hear you study X. I've studied only a little bit of it so far, but I remember learning about Y. Can you tell me a little about your work?
>
>
>
"Can you tell me about your work?" is a very natural question that sadly can often be a showstopper. The honest answer for many professors when talking to perfectly capable students who may later turn out to be *their* students is often "Not very meaningfully, no." Above I tried to frame the question in a little better way. How is it better? Well for one thing, asking a professor in a department you're visiting what they do can come off as lazy: almost everyone has a wealth of information available on their webpage now. If the student really cared, wouldn't they look a little bit in advance? So the framing of the question shows that the student has looked a little bit in advance. It also clues the professor in to what might be an appropriate level at which to pitch the explanation. If X is number theory (as it is for me), then if Y is "Wilson's Theorem" I'm going to say something very different than if Y is "the Chebotarev Density Theorem".
Still it's probably best not to say too much. I remember asking one professor this when I was a prospective student and he said, "Yes, I study number theory, as do several other faculty members here. I guess what distinguishes me is that I've also become very interested in representation theory, and my work uses that to a larger extent than the others. Does that make sense to you?" The person who said this to me was <NAME>, and yes it did make sense, and as a two sentence orientation to who he was and what he did it functioned brilliantly then and it still does, but I see now what a lot of confidence and experience he must have had to know to say so little. And he asked me if I understood, and if I hadn't he probably would have said something else: he seemed like a nice guy...and it turns out that he is. (I don't remember what I said after that. I think it would have been like me at the time to try to show some knowledge by asking a question -- that's a young math student type of thing to do. So I'll imagine that I asked "What kind of representation theory?" because I would have known that there were finite groups, Lie groups and so forth. And Gross would have replied "Algebraic groups". At that point I would have had to admit that I was totally lost...and my being lost would be of no lasting significance: suffice it to say that I have since learned about that topic!)
>
> 2) Do you do any computer work?
>
>
>
I think that's an increasingly important question. Nowadays a math student has to locate himself on the spectrum of more computation / less computation. If you're thinking about working with a faculty member, you definitely want to know this.
>
> 3) Are you interested in real-world applications of your work? Have you ever done any consulting or other outside work?
>
>
>
Again, a key question. You should already be starting to think about these sorts of questions for yourself. I, for instance, have absolutely zero contacts in industry, so I would be a terrible advisor for a student who was inclined in that direction, even if we had common mathematical interests.
>
> 4) How long have you been here?
>
>
>
That's a nice question for one human being to ask another. The professor will probably respond with some personal information about the town or their housing situation or their family or...something.
>
> 5) Where did you get your PhD?
>
>
>
You would think that would be a kind of backward-looking question to ask a professor, but actually academics ask each other that kind of thing all the time. Sad to say we really do try to have little portions of the CVs of hundreds of people memorized, even though we can look much of it up instantly if needed. Also this question subtly asks the professor to put himself in your shoes. It may also lead to some kind of insightful contrasting between the professor's PhD experiences / program and the current PhD program. On the other hand many faculty did their PhD at better places than the ones in which they are currently employed, which can be a little embarrassing. But there are various ways to spin this; maybe a temporal comparison is more interesting than a programmatic comparison. If a faculty member is old enough they can tell you that their graduate stipend was 75 cents a day plus all the potatoes they could carry, or something fun like that.
>
> 6) Do you have any PhD students? [Then ask plenty of followup questions.]
>
>
>
That's getting serious. You want to find out whether the professor is even on the table for being a potential advisor. And if a professor names his students, you can then go and seek out those students and talk to them about their advising experience...that can be very enlightening.
>
> 7) Are you happy here?
>
>
>
That's a bold question, and you might try to come at it a little obliquely, but again it's a very standard question for academics to ask each other. Currently academia has an itinerant feel to it: we are all looking elsewhere around the terrain and asking each other, "Hey, long time no see, could you show me a blade of grass over there? Hmm, that's pretty green, right? I mean, do you think? How does it compare to *this blade*, would you say? Greener? In what ways?"
Sometimes when you ask this question you may hear that the professor has already made or is currently making plans to leave!
>
> 8) How would you compare this program to other programs Y and Z?
>
>
>
Again, we're good at this, by and large. Even if we inflate our own program (it seems to be called for to do this at least *a little*), we are likely to be quite honest and rather knowledgeable about other programs. If you go to five different places and ask around, you're likely to get some good consensus data.
>
> 9) What advice would you give to a student who wanted to be successful in your program? Are there any specific pitfalls to be avoided?
>
>
>
That's an obviously good and relevant question.
Note that you can't ask "Will I be happy here?" for a simple reason: **we don't know**. If you're lucky, we know **here** and we know **us**. We don't know **you**. I think that you can in some ways get better information about the answer to this question by talking to students than to faculty, but any way you slice it, it's something you're going to have to largely figure out for your own. No one at the visitation day is going to know you like you do, after all.
Good luck.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Some questions that I think are all too relevant to mathematics PhDs are
What percentage of entrants get the PhD?
How many years funding are there?
What percentage of students finish before funding runs out?
How do those without funding survive?
Does the university allow ABD status and so no fees?
Where do graduates of the program go?
At what stage are you confirmed into the program and what do you have to get confirmed? eg quals or orals?
Are supervisors required to meet with students regularly? how much time do most supervisors give to their students?
How many students are in the program? what are their backgrounds?
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/20 | 1,128 | 4,802 | <issue_start>username_0: Last year I have been submitting my CV to different faculties for a lecturing position. Of all the ones that I applied only one was more serious and wanted to keep in touch (institution A), the other one (institution B) was completely silence and only they reply with a general "we are interested, but we will tell you when there are open positions". Actually the following has happened:
* Institution A has offered me a full time position with good salary, and the freedom to make research or even to work in other places part time.
* Institution B contact me a few days before the offer of institution A, telling me that they would like me to work part time with them; when I told them that I would like to have a full time position they started to tell me "that procedure is going to take time". A couple of days passed and I got the offer from the job that I mentioned in the first point.
* Now last week Institution B called me and they told me that they want not only to offer me a full time position, but also a position as a student coordinator of the career. The drawbacks are: the salary is 14% less than A, the hours are not; fixed that means that one should stay for overtime unpaid if the goals have not been reached, the research is keep to the minimum and I will not have the chance to work in another place part time. The only benefit is that I will be have a higher rank than in A. This same institution has already booked me for some partial hour lecturers in a couple of courses. I have been sincere with them when they called me and I told them that I have been offered another position (from institution A), so I need to wait to their answer. Even with that institution B has continue insisting me for getting the job with them.
So by factors of time, research and money; institution A seems a pretty good choice, but how I can reject politely the offer from B without being "marked" for not working there or not to burn bridges with them. Maybe somebody could say "why I do not want to burn bridges with them?, well it is just to have like a backup plan. Also institution B has the story that they are used to cut off their lecturers at any time they want, so what to do?
Thanks<issue_comment>username_1: What stood out to me is:
>
> This same institution has already booked me for some partial hour lecturers in a couple of courses.
>
>
>
Have you, in any time, either written or orally, communicated with institute B indicating that you will take up the position (even just the part time one)? If so, the *polite thing* would be to honor this commitment with Institute B, even just for one term (if you really want to work at Institute A, you can try to talk to them to see if they can arrange for the offer to be deferred for a year or a term).
If you have *not* indicated to institute B that you would take up the position, and they, *without your knowledge*, advertised you as a part-time lecturer for their courses, I would be very, very wary of joining their faculty. It is simply not the case that a department can strong-arm a potential hire into working there *just by listing his or her name on a website*.
---
Aside from the above: the job market is competitive. It is expected that you will be looking out for your best interest. As long as you have not made any formal commitment to either of the institutes, you are free to choose which one to affiliate yourself with in the future. If you really prefer the offer given by Institute A, you should just be honest and reply to Institute B and say that Institute A has given you a better offer and you regret that you will not be able to work for Institute B.
This really should not be a situation that counts as "burning bridges". From your description it sounds like just the normal competitive hiring process. If the administrators at Institute B are the type that will hold your declining of their offer against you in the future, I really doubt you will want to work for them anyway. (That just doesn't sound like a healthy work environment.)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: You should very politely say to institution B that you appreciate their efforts to get you an offer, but it's not as good as your other offer. Then there are three options:
1. Say your better offer is for 15% more money. This commits you to institution B if they raise their offer 15%. If they don't raise their offer, it commits you to institution A. If they raise their offer less than 15%, you may choose.
2. Say your better offer is for 15% more money and no overtime, and that you will need 25% (or whatever you choose) more money to make their offer competitive.
3. Say your better offer is for twice the money. They can't match this, so this commits you to institution A.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/20 | 980 | 4,105 | <issue_start>username_0: Our university provides computer lab rooms for the students. We will soon build some new ones, and possibly re-build some of the old ones, and we are looking for new solutions.
What we have now looks like this:
From my experience, and a [Google image search on "university computer lab"](https://www.google.com/search?q=university%20computer%20lab&tbm=isch), it seems similar to other universities all around the world.
But we would like to re-think the old ways and provide a better environment for the students, as envisioned in [CDIO workspaces](http://www.cdio.org/implementing-cdio/standards/12-cdio-standards#standard6) ("Workspaces and laboratories that support and encourage hands-on learning of product and system building, disciplinary knowledge, and social learning").
Perhaps a new floor plan with smaller rooms,
or new furnishings, something like what is described in
[New Design and Synergistic Collaboration Revitalize Gallaudet University's Harkin Computer Lab](http://www.pupnmag.com/view/article.php?articleID=6234)?
We would like to hear from others who can share experiences from some alternatives. What have you tried? Did it work?<issue_comment>username_1: Just a couple of comments from local experience (CS Biased).
* When building your lab, you have to ask what it is that makes it special. In many universities, you can expect that some very high fraction of the students are going to have their own laptops (this will vary by discipline, of course). Simply providing a generic computer may be a waste of resources -- a desk and a power-plug, with an external monitor and keyboard could be sufficient.
My take is that a computer lab today should serve a distinct purpose: Teaching a course on computer graphics: Have a lab with beefy hardware that will minimize waiting time when attempting renders. Teaching a physics lab? Perhaps have a data-capture system integrated into the workstations.
In the same vein, labs get used more when students see the value of going to the lab. A lab with large (or even dual) monitors will get used more, because it's A) less likely the students have that equipment at home B) more likely the students will understand the value of using that lab -- higher productivity for example.
* Consider a 'virtual lab': If the reason the lab is there is because of a peculiar software requirement, think about providing a virtual machine instance of the lab machine for the students to use at home. This can ease the grading workload on TAs too, by eliminating platform differences as an excuse.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: As Matthew says, many people may have their own laptops. Obviously, this depends on the university. I know of universities that make laptop ownership compulsory. Perhaps you could comment on how common it is for students to have their own laptops and bring them to the university. So you should think about what kind of value you can add for such people.
One possibility is to have laptop docking stations available. Or if not, at least have external keyboard, mice, monitors available that can be plugged into a laptop.
Nice big good-quality monitors (26 inches or larger) are a good idea, and are not that expensive these days.
Good ergonomics is a must. Buy the best workstation chairs you can. I have the Steelcase Leap, which is not perfect but a decent chair. Keyboard trays are probably also a good idea. Humanscale is popular. Of course, there are many other brands, depending on location.
Adding some whiteboards around the room would also be reasonable.
If you are keeping actual computers in the lab, then consider having computers running operating systems different from those students may have encountered. Encouraging people to use the free Unix-like systems that are now common in scientific enterprises is a good idea. E.g. the systems based on the Linux kernels, the various \*BSD systems. If such systems are already widely used in your university, this is probably unnecessary.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/20 | 664 | 2,895 | <issue_start>username_0: A student at my college will graduate soon and go to the US to study full-time, on a visa. His family however, are planning an important event sometime in the middle of the semester, and they hope that he can return to his home country for two weeks, then return to the US to finish the semester.
* During that semester, he will only be taking courses and will not be receiving any grants.
Do colleges typically have a policy prohibiting such arrangements? Are professors generally willing to accommodate such requests, e.g. adjusting deadlines for homework?<issue_comment>username_1: Colleges do not prohibit such events because colleges *can't* prohibit such events. On the contrary, colleges have policies explicitly permitting absences for certain specific reasons: travel on university business (including athletics), documented medical emergencies, deaths in the family. There is typically a special grade of "Incomplete" awarded if the material missed is critical, such as a final exam; the student takes the final soon upon returning and the grade is adjusted accordingly.
As for what the professors will do, this is highly variable. Some will be accommodating and will extend deadlines, others will mark missed work with zero, while a few might even kick the student out of the course.
Luckily, there is a simple solution for this student. While enrolling for classes, at the very beginning of the term, he should speak to the professors involved and explain the situation. If any professor is particularly hostile, then he should take a different course instead. In extremely unlucky circumstances, a specific course will be essential to take that term (and no later), and the professor will be very hostile. In this case it might end up that the student takes longer to graduate.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: The answer will highly vary according to the institute, or even according to the professor because some institutes leave the professor to decide.
What the student should do is to e-mail or meet with the professors who will be teaching in his/her chosen courses, and inform them that he/she will be a away for two weeks, give the professors the actual dates of departure and return.
Usually, deadline can be moved and sometimes even exam can be rescheduled. But it's mostly about how flexible the professors are willing to be. If the professors wouldn't accommodate, then the student should not take that course.
Also, the student should make arrangement about getting the lecture slides or notes that he/she will be missing, and perhaps ask for the lecturers' permission to let a friend of the student's to record the lecture, if possible.
Just remember all of these communications should be done preferably before the semester starts. Never just disappear for two weeks and then come back to negotiate for accomodation.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/20 | 459 | 1,805 | <issue_start>username_0: Is there examples of mathematicians who had to lose years before proving themselves in the field? I'm asking since in most of the cases I noticed a steady career path for most of the mathematicians.<issue_comment>username_1: <NAME>, as he writes "I finished studying in 1976 and got a Ph.D. a year later. Getting an academic position would be too much luck, and the best thing I could hope for was the job of a computer programmer at a factory of agricultural machines... As a result, I practically stopped doing mathematics." The context here being the he was Jewish in the Soviet Union and made trouble for him. He did not really start working on non-archimedean analytic geometry until 1985 and then did not really return to academia until 1987 when he was able to emigrate to Isreal.
The quote is from his introduction to: "p-Adic Geometry: Lectures from the 2007 Arizona Winter School" published by the AMS.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Not a theoretical mathematician but <NAME> was trained and employed as a chemical engineer. He came up with a map projection useful for a United States Geological Survey (USGS) satellite-based mapping system (Landsat), then was hired by them as a cartographer. He published several more map projections and recast others to take advantage of electronic calculators and computers.
He was over 50 when hired by USGS.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: A large number of Mormon mathematicians have taken time off for a 2-year mission, including <NAME> (a founder of geometric group theory), <NAME> (found minimal generating set for mapping class group), and <NAME> (recent Annals paper on string theory). Very little time is spent on math during a mission.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/02/20 | 761 | 3,171 | <issue_start>username_0: This forum looks like the perfect place to ask a question that is being bothering me for a long time.
I'm 22 and a college dropout for numerous reasons (economic and mostly because I didn't like the major that I was studying, which led to depression, etc.)
Anyway, I recently discovered MOOCs (coursera, edx, udacity, OCW-MIT, etc.) and khanAcademy and I immediately fell in love with science and more precisely computer science. I also fall in love with the brain and love to think about thinking, decision making, logic, critical thinking, neuroplasticity, etc...
I also appreciated cognitive psychology and the philosophy of the mind but I haven't gone any deeper to those two.
So, you can say MOOCs changed my life because I'm able to learn things that I never would have consider ever studying.
I'm thinking of pursuing a Cognitive Science degree which can expose me into computer science and some kind of neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology.
The only thing is that here in Greece, Cognitive Science is only a postgraduate degree so I have first to finish an undergraduate degree in Computer Science or in Philosophy and History of Technology (those are the only two majors from which students are accepted for the Cognitive Science degree).
My question is, should I spend the next year of my life into studying for a test that will get me to the University (in order to get to a University you need to give exams in May, I'm not ready to give it this May so I have to give it on the May of 2015)?
Is it worth it to study Computer Science for four years to pursue the Cognitive Science degree which is my primary goal ?
PS: The possibility of studying abroad is out of question given the economic situation of my family, unless a scholarship for studying abroad is available.<issue_comment>username_1: Think further ahead: what do you want to do *after* you finish the Cognitive Science degree?
Do want to go into academia and work as a professor (probably after some research postdocs) in the field? If that's your ultimate goal, then that's the most straightforward career path.
If it's something else, figure out what the prerequisites for that thing are. There are too many people who got into grad school pursuing a degree in something because they thought was cool only to discover that after they graduate, they have nowhere to apply their degree.
Whether it's worth it depends on you. Weigh the costs to you against the benefits to you.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: As a EU citizen you have access to the education in the entire European Union, so you can look around for the Cognitive Science programs in the other EU countries too. It is quite possible that some of them would not require a previous graduate degree and would be taught in English.
It may happen that there would be tuition fees (if I recall correctly, this is the case e.g. in the UK), but as a EU citizen you also can work in any EU country without almost any extra formalities (pretty much under the same conditions as a citizen of the country you are in), so you can earn the money to support yourself through your studies.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/20 | 231 | 882 | <issue_start>username_0: I think I have good results for publishing a paper in a math journal, but I've never published one. I need a propose about any good math journal in mathematics for young mathematicians who have never published a paper. It can be with impact factor or with international board.
Thank you in advance.<issue_comment>username_1: If you're a student you should consider Involve, or other publications geared toward student authors.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: If you are a high school student or an undergraduate, then you might want to read the answers to [Journals for undergraduates](https://mathoverflow.net/q/36850/12357), [Math journal for high school students?](https://mathoverflow.net/q/7329/12357), and [What are some examples of journals that will accept undergraduate student research?](https://mathoverflow.net/q/49197/12357).
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/20 | 1,222 | 4,639 | <issue_start>username_0: Due to various department sortings and organizations, I have a degree that is, functionally, a computer science degree but because it belonged to the College of Mathematics, the degree is formally "Mathematics".
Unfortunately this leads to many employers thinking that I have a mathematics background when the reality is far from this: I don't think like a mathematician or particularly enjoy its work.
Is there something I can do with my CV to reduce this bias? Is it as simple as changing "Mathematics" to "Computer science" even if it isn't the official title of the degree? Are there other options?<issue_comment>username_1: Depends on the employer. Any academic employer will look at your publications, rather than what your degree actually says. So I see no problem there
If this is for an undergrad degree, I think is out of the scope for this particular forum, since this is mostly oriented towards jobs in the Academia.
But I do think you might have problems with different titles in your undergrad, I would recommend mostly just applying for jobs and in your CV make the comment that it is oriented toward CS, many universities CS departments spawned from the math department, so I do not think there should be much of a problem.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: I would list it directly with the degree. I have a similar issue in that my degree is Geodetic Science, but my focus was in (at the time) computer-assisted mapping, now known as GIS. People try to call me a geodesist, but I'm not really. I would use something like:
M.S. Mathematics (specialty: Computer Science)
*Edit: I finally remembered what the various tracks were called in our department--a concentration, not a specialty. Other synonyms include focus, even research or research topic.*
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: In your CV, state that you have a degree in "Mathematics, specializing in Computer Science" or something like that. If you're sure it's not misleading, you could even say you have a degree in Computer Science from the College of Mathematics, Whatever University.
In either case, explain in your covering letter.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: This is a very relevant problem for majority of the engineering school graduates in Sweden. Based on the [Bologna Process](https://www.google.se/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process&ei=nRYHU-LgBcaBtAb1v4GAAQ&usg=AFQjCNHHyHQYAwGMfuy3r_fm5XZlr1gtsw&sig2=jgHcO8q9MisKWKxVnBLw1Q&bvm=bv.61725948,d.Yms) all MSc level programs are essentially cut into two bits; one that roughly corresponds to a Bachelor's (approx 3 years) and one that corresponds to Master's (approx 2 years). So far so good, the issue is that you get 1 diploma and you are supposed to have 1 title however there are numerous ways you can do your 3+2.
What they have done to amend that is to formulate it as:
>
> M.Sc. in Engineering X with specialization in Y
>
>
>
which could be something you do in your CV as well.
---
**PS:** I have the same issue even for my PhD, my group is part of a department that has a much different focus compared to what I do. So much so that there is pretty much zero overlap between my departmental association and my day-to-day research.
Even there the I will be getting a PhD title with a description along the lines of:
>
> PhD in [dept\_name] on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
>
>
>
Of course one would and should write more about the actual work regarding the PhD, like the thesis title, and a short description of what it's about.
It really is a clumpy way to describe what you "are" and what you have "done" but it's getting harder and harder to define and classify research as fields start merging into one another.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: I would suggest, for your CV/Resume, that you present yourself as a Computer Scientist and you present the University up-front, as opposed to the college, and that you frame the PhD as being in [Computational Mathematics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_mathematics), and then list the topics that you studied, classes that you took, and technologies that you used in getting your degree (depending on how you prefer to frame it), and then finally your actual degree. e.g.
* Studied algorithms, numerical methods, and symbolic methods.
* Took Monte Carlo methods, computer simulation, theory of computation
* Used R, Matlab, and C to solve multithreaded Linear Algebra problems
* You were presented with a PhD in Mathematics with a concentration in Computer Science
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/20 | 1,045 | 4,378 | <issue_start>username_0: My CS department greatly lacks invited talks hosted by faculty members and/or seminars organised within/by the department. Except for the seminars done by graduate students as a requirement for their degree, during the last year there was no seminar organised by the department/faculty member. If curious, the department size is relatively small (around 20 faculty members) and some faculty members are well-known figures in their areas. As a PhD student I like seminars and wondered how to address this to the department.<issue_comment>username_1: It's hard to change the culture of a department as a student. You should definitely tell your advisor, and the department chair, that you wish there were more lectures. You might also talk to other students and encourage them to express their feelings if they feel the same.
Then you should take action. Is there a student chapter of the ACM at your school? If not, organize one. Then organize monthly seminars by inviting faculty and students in your department and from nearby schools to present their work. If you can get a little funding, invite one of the world leaders in your area to give a seminar at your school. You might be able to get funding through the department or through the ACM (I know SIAM gives funding for such things).
It requires work, but it sounds like it will be worthwhile to you. It is also a great excuse to meet important people in your field.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: We have somehow the same problem (not that we don't have seminars - but we don't have enough in my opinion). The graduate student association in our department (CS as well) tried once to organize such seminars. There were many interested professors and students, especially when it comes to topic that are not very technical [a professor told me that such lectures are more useful for the students].
However, to make these seminars frequent, it was found that the best thing is to do is to make the seminars specific to one topic. In order to do this, there is a need for a group of researchers led by a professor (or more) - all working on the same area. Some professors tried to do something like that, however, only the big labs were successful in this mission (i.e. labs with many professors and students). Issues are:
1) finding large number of speakers,
2) intellectual property, some researchers simply do not want to share their ideas with others. [in fact, the association tried to do a conference each year, but the fear of IP theft was the biggest obstacle and the lack of motivation for researchers to publish in an non-indexed conference].
Conclusion, you need a lot of support in order to organize frequent seminars in your department, but it is not impossible. Talk to young professors, they are the most motivated.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Your faculty isn't huge but, at the same time, it's bigger than many research groups that have successful seminar series.
The first thing you need to do is to establish why there aren't already seminars. If the reason is just that nobody has bothered to organize any, you can deal with this; if the reason is that the faculty members aren't interested in attending seminars, you might be wasting your time.
One important piece of information that's lacking is your location. If your university is in, say, the middle of North Dakota, it's going to be difficult and very expensive to organize a seminar series with external speakers. Every speaker will need flights and a hotel and, even when you pay expenses, speakers are unlikely to take a 2-3 day trip just to give a seminar to 20-30 people. On the other hand, if you're in, say, England, and there are several other universities within two or three hours' travel from you, things are much more practical.
A good way to get the ball rolling might be to organize informal lunch-time seminars. Start with the grad students and try to get a few faculty on-board. The idea would be to have a 30-45-minute whiteboard talk while people eat lunch. No slides, so people don't have to spend hours preparing; lunch-time so it's not taking time out of people's days; typical topic would be "What I've been working on recently", so things stay relevant. Once you have a seminar culture started, you can think about doing something bigger.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/21 | 1,110 | 3,963 | <issue_start>username_0: We are writing a paper, and want to share the raw data.
My advisor suggests that I share the data as an Excel file, but I believe that a plain text file (such as a text-delimited or comma-delimited file) would be better.
1. Is there a standard format for sharing data?
2. How do I convince my advisor that a plain text file is a better format for sharing data?<issue_comment>username_1: No.
Depends greatly on the field and kind of data.
Some fields do have relatively standard formats:
* In Astronomy, [FITS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FITS) is considered pretty much the standard for imagery.
* In machine learning, CSV/TSV is relatively common -- though as the data set sizes get larger and richer, other formats come into play. You can troll the [UCI ML Repository](http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/) to get a feeling for what's common.
In general though, I'd argue that plain-text based formats are what you want to preserve. If, happiness of happiness, your paper becomes hugely influential and you only provide an `.xls` file, you can bet the first thing that's going to happen is a bunch of ersatz plain-text copies will appear.
If you want to annotate your data, and that's what is swaying your advisor to Excel, perhaps consider something like XML or JSON -- easy for the computer to process and plain text based, yet free-form enough that you can annotate it however you'd like.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I agree with everything username_1 has said. But I wanted to offer some additional thoughts on your second point about convincing your advisor to use a plain-text file format. Demonstrate any of the following:
1. Send the Excel file to a friend running Linux and ask them to open it.
2. Save the Excel file in Excel 2007+ format and try to open it in an Excel version from 2003 or earlier.
3. Try to open the Excel file in a text editor to make changes.
Then repeat all of the above with a CSV/TSV. The portability of the plain-text format will be shown to be unmatched.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: **1. Consider non-proprietary format as a good practice**
You might find an argument in the <NAME> [5 star approach](http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html). When discussing Open Data (something we should be embracing more in academia as well), he presents the following:
>
> Under the star scheme, you get one (big!) star if the information has
> been made public at all, even if it is a photo of a scan of a fax of a
> table -- if it has an open licence. The you get more stars as you make
> it progressively more powerful, easier for people to use.
>
>
> ★ Available on the web (whatever format) but with an open licence, to be Open Data
>
>
> ★★ Available as machine-readable structured data (e.g. excel instead of image scan of a table)
>
>
> ★★★ as (2) plus non-proprietary format (e.g. CSV instead of excel)
>
>
> ★★★★ All the above plus, Use open standards from W3C (RDF and SPARQL) to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff
>
>
> ★★★★★ All the above, plus: Link your data to other people’s data to provide context
>
>
>
It is best to publish in an non-proprietary format (csv would be fine) as you claimed.
Stars 4 & 5 are for Linked Data structure which is a nice thing to aim.
**2. Publish in a reliable repository thinking long-term preservation**
Citation and versioning are very important if you want to alter something on your data-sets in the future.
I would recommend you publish your data in [Figshare](http://figshare.com/). Research made publicly available of figshare gets allocated a DataCite DOI at point of publication. It supports versioning as well.
Another alternative for a repository is [DataVerse](http://thedata.org/) suggested by [username_2](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17230/is-there-a-standard-format-for-sharing-data/17357#comment34434_17357) below
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/02/21 | 1,830 | 7,882 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm a TA/grader for an online course in introductory programming. We have students ask us questions related to homework/labs/etc. on Piazza where we can have quick back-and-forth with questions and answers.
However, some students ask questions that are either require very basic logic, or are one of the first parts of the course. Also, some students ask for what we think of their code after every little change.
I (at least) try to ask them back questions that will lead them logically and to think critically about the material, and to come up with a solution themselves. However, this leads to not much success.
My question is how to best respond to students who ask us these questions.<issue_comment>username_1: You refer to a "quick back-and-forth" in your question. A danger with being *too* responsive is that it becomes easier for a student to ask the TA than it would be to reason it out on his own, look up material from earlier lectures or from the Internet, etc. It also encourages students to "check in" with the TA more often, e.g. about tiny changes to their code.
Perhaps limiting your responsiveness could help. For example, announce that you will visit Piazza at 4 PM every weekday and answer all the questions that have accrued since your last visit. Don't answer questions multiple times per day.
That way, students won't expect immediate "coaching" from the TA, and might be more motivated to work through small problems themselves.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If some of the questions are very basic, they could probably be answered by fellow students.
I often encourage students to answer questions posed by other students on the discussion board. It's nice to log on and see a question already answered, even before I've read it. One professor I know even awarded some extra credit to students who answered questions, with excellent results.
Also, you could also provide some feedback that helps define the ground rules as you go along. For example, early on in the term, at the end of an answer, you could append something like this:
>
> I didn't mind answering this question, since it's still early in the course. However, as the course progresses, I'm expecting this forum to be used for more substantial questions, rather than simple checks. Students shouldn't need to ask for help here for such basic issues; this isn't supposed to be the first place you go every time you encounter a small snag. Make sure you've put in a good effort into solving your problem first.
>
>
>
Maybe not every student will get the message, but such feedback may steer most students toward the desired behavior.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: My answer is a bit tangential, but should help somewhat.
**Archive your Q&A:**
I face similar problems, but on an annual, seasonal base. Every semester I find myself answering the same fundamental questions. Then I thought I should probably spend my time on more valuable activities, so for different courses I set up a WordPress or wiki site to compile a list of Q&A. Whenever there is a question e-mail to me, I posted the question (in a de-identified format) and my answer. Students can comment on the blog or directly edit the wiki if they have anything to add.
Now, six years down and the sites are going well... I can't be happier that I made the decision. The initial investment was high, but it started to pay off pretty much instantly.
**Provide a questioning protocol in the syllabus:** In my syllabus I also included a section called "What to do if I have a question?" In the section I put information about how to search different resources, how to test the codes step by step, how to find a popular discussion board and what are some I would suggest, what other reference books one can use for more/less advanced readers
I specifically explain *how to properly ask a question in e-mail*. For instance, I specify that in the e-mail they should describe what they are trying to achieve, software that they use, data set that they use, problem (with relevant error message and screenshot.) I also specify what are not the right ways to ask question, which includes:
* "Please take a look and see if I am on the right track." -- *We do not check your homework without you specifying a question. The grade will tell you if you were on the right track. And the suggested answer scheme will guide you to improve your work*
**Consider giving some very explicit hints, and ask the student to identify what went wrong:** This one hits me hard, because I felt giving the steps to them make them learn less. However, there have been some students who were really lost. And in those case, I would consider calming them down by providing an anchor point, which is the steps to the right answer. I then follow up with them by asking "Now, you have the suggested steps guiding you to the answer, compared to your original scheme, can you identify what might have gone wrong?"
**Be very sure that you did give enough examples and self-assessment opportunities:** When developing questions, I will make sure to start with some that are very similar to the examples I show in class or notes. Sometimes, we may want to try to tweak the questions right from the get go by introducing what we think are "simple logic." That, to me, is not the correct approach. If the task is how to deal with XYZ, then show them how in the class, and then test them the exact same skill sets in the beginning of the assignment. From there and on, you can start introducing slight variations, so that now it's about XY'Z... just a bit of a twist, bit by bit.
For us who have sorted all topics nice and tidy in our brain, we can immediately tell the unimportant from the important (think a super nice walk-in closet on a lifesyle magazine.) For the students, their pieces are like a pile of things in a dorm room. For that reason, I wouldn't worry too much if they ask seemingly very simple questions... because when you don't have all the pieces laid out structurally, some simple stuff can look huge.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: When I was a TA for a computer programming course for non-majors, I would give a lot of assistance for a while, but stop short of giving the answers away. This allowed the ones having a difficult start on the material to get started, but they could see that I was not going to "spoon feed" them. When they were stalled on a critical issue which I knew they had been instructed about, I would just redirect them with questions or refer them to the source material.
Normally, they realize what I am doing and then have the requisite "ah ha" moment and come up later to explain what they had figured out on their own. I would confirm it and everyone was happy. I guess I call this "being an adult", but I suppose it takes a lot of discernment and mastery of the material, plus familiarity with handling the TA situation. (As I said, being an adult.)
I had one decisive moment when I was a student and the TA pointedly did not explain what I was doing wrong in a programming assignment. I learned what I was doing wrong on my own, although it took a while, and I never forgot the lesson, and I was grateful to the TA, and I tell the story every chance I get. (See? It is catching.)
One thing I **do not agree with** is to expect other students to be available to answer such questions. It is fine if someone *wants* to "help", but then they are taking on the responsibility (for being an adult) and I don't condone or condemn. No one should be *expected* to teach their peers: that is not why they came to class.
(Of course, this was ages ago when there was a "computer lab" because students did not have their own computers, let alone online classes or resources like discussion forums. I guess adulthood has changed.)
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/21 | 5,423 | 22,497 | <issue_start>username_0: I am studying a combined bachelor of engineering (electrical) and bachelor of mathematics; I just started this year and will graduate in 2018. The reason why I am doing double degrees and not a single degree is because I love both electrical engineering and mathematics and I could not ignore any of them. So with this in mind, I am thinking of doing two PhDs when I graduate (one in electrical engineering and one in mathematics). Is this a good path or I should concentrate on only one of them?<issue_comment>username_1: It is essentially impossible to do two PhD's concurrently, but if you like you can begin a second PhD after completing the first. Keep in mind that many people drop out of (even the first!) PhD, and are generally quite drained by the time the conclusion arrives.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Loving two fields is not a good reason to do two PhDs.
The work you do in a PhD is so specific and focused that I guarantee it will "ignore" most of mathematics *and* most of electrical engineering. <NAME> has a great illustration of this: [PhD school in pictures](http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/)
By the time you finish your current degree, you'll have a better idea of what specific area (i.e., subfield) of research you are most interested in (if you still want to do a PhD at that point). Then, decide whether it would be more at home in a mathematics or EE department, and apply to grad school accordingly.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: Going 100% for two subjects might be hard.
One way, which might however be an opportunity for you, is to write an electrical engineering PhD that is very mathematical. Vice verse there are certainly many mathematical problems that arise from electricity question.
If you do this you will surely be able to study at both fields. Also, no matter what field you would choose, you would need to make sure that your thesis really belong to that field.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: I suspect that most people who ask about the possibility of doing multiple PhDs are missing something fundamental in what a PhD is and what it's for. This is an understandable misperception because the general populace knows little about what PhD programs are all about, to the extent that even most people who enroll in a PhD program *think* they know what they're getting into and then find out that what they had in mind is an approximation to the truth (sometimes a good approximation and sometimes not).
In the various fictive media (novels, comic books, television, film...) having multiple PhDs -- often in confluence with a very youthful persona or explicitly pointed out that they were attained at an early age -- is a standard trope for a certain type of characterization: depending upon the genre it can signal super-genius types, intellectuals, or nerdy/socially awkward types. For instance, Professor <NAME> graduated from Harvard at the age of 16, and he holds PhDs in Genetics, Biophysics, Psychology, and Anthropology as well as an MD in Psychiatry. This is obviously meant to be a real-world grounding for his vast mental powers. On the TV show *House*, the youthful medical student <NAME> has previously attained PhDs in applied mathematics and art history, and the characterization is less positive: they are not trying to suggest that she's a genius *per se* -- House is the genius! -- but rather that she has an extremely overachieving personality type.
Of course, <NAME> and Martha Masters are fictional characters. Moreover I imagine they were written by people who are not so familiar with PhD programs. In real life, having PhDs in Genetics, Biophysics, Psychology and Anthropology is not the hallmark of a super-genius: rather it would mean that the person is pathologically obsessed with graduate study. PhD's are not merit badges -- more of them is not better. Rather a PhD is the necessary and grueling training for a specific type of professional career.
If you are *interested* in a subject then you read and learn about it. You get a PhD in a subject because you want that subject to be an essential part of your career (which of course ought to imply that you are very interested in the subject). Moreover, although the PhD provides specific technical training in a certain subject, it does not provide **exhaustive** training: in most cases people spend the rest of their careers continuing to train in these areas. Rather the point of a PhD is to give you enough specific training so that you can henceforth direct your own training and learning. Otherwise put, a lot of what you do in a PhD is **learning how to learn**. But learning how to learn is actually a rather robust and subject-independent skill. If you learn how to learn genetics, then if later on your interests turn to psychology or biophysics you will be in a much different and better position to *train yourself* in these areas. In some ways, doing a PhD in one of these subjects and then turning around and doing another is like becoming an internet millionaire who wakes up one day and decides that she wants to sell electronics...so she shuts down her website, gives all her money away, and starts the business out of her parents' basement. (Or maybe it is like what happens in some of my dreams: I am doing high school all over again, and somehow it is not going as well as it did the first time around.) Why are you starting over from scratch?!?
It is true that "academic transfer" makes better sense between some fields than others. If <NAME> got a PhD in art history and then decided that she wanted to do applied mathematics instead then she would not have been able to "segue" from one field to the other: she would indeed have had to go back to school. But that makes her story a bit sad: getting a PhD is very difficult and very time consuming, but it is not really a feat of strength, and getting two PhDs in two unrelated areas does not show how much of a super genius you are; it shows that you really changed your mind considerably about what you wanted to do with your life and maybe wasted a lot of your time. No matter how smart you are, I don't see how you can get a PhD in art history and then one in applied mathematics without spending at least eight years. You can't just skip to the end and pass the thesis defense by virtue of your preternatural brilliance: there is coursework, residence requirements, and various other mandatory things which necessarily take time. Her character is comic-booky: it is not really plausible that she could have these two degrees and have gone on to be a medical student while still being in her 20's, no matter how brilliant. [Well, "no matter how brilliant" is a little too strong: if she had graduated college at age 16, then the math works out okay...] Moreover, for someone who is that brilliant it would really be sad that she can't seem to figure out anything else to do besides infinite schooling.
Electrical engineering and mathematics are rather closely allied fields. For sure do a PhD in one or the other. While doing a PhD in either one you can choose the amount of involvement you have in the other field, i.e., you can do a very mathematical electrical engineering PhD or a math PhD on a mathematical topic with important applications in electrical networks. Then after you get your PhD you can continue to learn and train in one or both fields as you see fit. It is entirely plausible that you could land an academic job in one department while having gotten your PhD in the other department. This is an ambitious goal, but any academic job is an ambitious goal. Getting the second PhD is unlikely to be directly helpful once you have it, let alone worth the sacrifice of 4-6 years of your life!
**Added**: By the way, when you mention "mathematics" and "electrical engineering": I think of [<NAME>t](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Bott), a brilliant and beloved professor whose long career at Harvard ended while I was studying there. I think that his story will be inspirational for many people with this confluence of interests. Check out his bio: he balanced his early interest in these two fields nicely...and only needed one PhD.
Upvotes: 10 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_5: Are you also interested in getting two jobs or having two families *simultaneously*? At some point in life people make decisions, long-term decisions that chart out a path for their lives.
The fact that you love both subjects is nothing but positive, and the fact that you have the drive and will-power to pursue higher education in both is admirable. It really is... But here I have lay out some points to consider:
* Is it *possible* to do a PhD in two disparate fields simultaneously: probably.. I reckon it depends on the faculty/university and what they are willing to accept. Normally you can't get two PhDs from the same faculty (at least here it is not possible) and again, normally, universities do not accept other professional commitments while doing doctoral studies (with the exception of medical reasons). That is especially the case if you are officially employed as a grad student and not on stipends.
* Is it advisable to go for two PhDs in disparate fields simultaneously: no, probably not. Doing a PhD alone is challenging, and I don't mean "*OMG, it's too much work*" but rather "*OMG, wtf am I doing here!*" or "*OMG what am I gonna do with my life?!*". Don't believe me? Just look at the most voted questions here, a healthy portion of them are about managing the mental burden of PhD studies.
* Have you considered doing a cross-disciplinary PhD where you get to play with both subjects, meld them in a pot and make something awesome out of it? ;)
Hope it works out for you, best of luck!
**PS** - also worth reading: [When does one go for a double doctorate?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1836/when-does-one-go-for-a-double-doctorate)
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_6: **It's too early for all that** - it is impossible to know now what you will enjoy by the end of your first degree, and there is no bonus for deciding early. I started my Physics degree loving space and looking forward to rocket science, by the end I wanted to do theoretical quantum physics, and now I do scientific/numerical computing. If you enjoy Maths and EE, you may end up enjoying a specific part of EE, like signal processing or quadrotor flight algorithms, etc.
**You won't want to do a second PhD** - A PhD is characterised by a lot of legwork, a lot of self-discovery and usually a capitulation to reality over hope in order to get something finished for the thesis. The important parts of that are not worth repeating. The only time a second PhD is worth doing is if you realise after completing one that you want to do research in another field, and that you can't make a path from one field to the other. A PhD is essentially the first step on a research path in a particular field, so make sure it's a field you want to do research in.
**What happens after the PhD(s)?** - A doctorate is just a step on a path to being a researcher, a lecturer, a professor. It is often the last piece of education people do just for the sake of a qualification. Afterward, if you go into research, you will have to choose a field, closely related to your PhD topic. You cannot go into two fields; the closest is to go into an interdisciplinary area between the two, hence quadrotor flight algorithms or sigproc. If you don't go into research, some experience of work would be a far better qualification for your CV than a second PhD.
**My advice** - Spend your current degree exploring the different fields. When you're intrigued by something in a course, follow it up with the lecturer, do some additional projects in your own time. Lecturers love people with enthusiasm and drive for a topic, and they will find time and resource for your project, perhaps with an eye to larger projects later. That process will be instructive, and help you understand what work you enjoy.
I realised I enjoyed numerical computing when I spent hundreds of hours expanding on a genetic algorithm project in my second year. Two years earlier, I wanted to build rockets. I would still like to build a rocket, but I would derive much of my enjoyment from simulation and design, rather than fabrication and testing; you will find that there are specific fields that match your skills and pique your interest, so **accept that you will specialise**, at least for a while.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: I do suggest completing your Bachelors first to see how you feel about progressing onto postgraduate studies. Having said that, I'm an individual who is completing two Masters degrees simultaneously. It may seem like an impossible task, but really it isn't.
Just like you I love both fields and really didn't think I should choose one over the other. I also work full-time (Executive position), and lead a pretty full life with sports, yoga, meditation, etc. It's all about knowing how to organize your time and still maintain balance.
So, if at the end of your Bachelors you feel you can do it, go for it. Why not? It's your life. The key is try to balance your life. You don't want to find yourself coming to a point where all you do is work and have no play. Then again, if you love your fields that much, work can be more like play. This isn't an impossible task at all. Passion for what you do, coupled with focus and organization are the key to your success. Really. Take it from me.
At the end of the day, do what feels right to you. *You* know what's best for you, not anyone else.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_8: Definitely not. Try to concentrate on one first and do the other as a hobby. You will get a lot better because you don't have double-pressure. Alternatively, when you finished the first doctor degree work for several years (I'd say 10-20) and then you can possibly start with the other doctor degree.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_9: Truthfully, there are few, if any, reputable universities that will allow you to pursue 2 PhDs at the same time. Also, most universities will not accept students who already have a PhD, especially when they overlap with one another.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_10: In most cases you simply will not get offered the second PhD, even if you apply, and this remains true also if you try to do these two PhD positions in different countries. I am not aware if these are written rules, or unwritten rules, but, really, mostly no avail.
Unlike master studies, PhD is often supplemented by stipend that, while small in general, is enough to sustain a living. Probably because of that there are some efforts to avoid a "professional PhD student" who would keep "studying" till retirement.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_11: I'm on my second PhD, 40 years after the first one. My first one was in mathematics, and I worked as a university teacher in maths for many years. I agree with the general advice given here. A PhD is as much research training as anything else. In the course of it you work intensively in a specialised area and learn how to develop an achievable project that can be done in the time you've got. You will pretty much be living and dreaming your project. It would be very difficult to be so intensively involved in two completely unrelated projects at the same time.
In your case, see how your current course goes. If you're still enthusiastic about both fields, look around various universities and see where there are interesting projects across both areas - aiming to do one PhD, and then maybe a post-doc position of some kind, if things work out that way. I knew a guy who studied the applied maths/engineering of the very high-speed spinning machines used in the textile industry - weird instabilities could lead to disaster. Another project I came across involved applying image processing techniques that had been developed for astronomy to classifying microscopic images of cells for medical research. There are lots of interesting hybrid fields out there: the more engineering/physical side of robotics, remote sensing, aspects of fibre optics, the bionic ear and bionic eye - lots of innovative signal processing needed!
As for my second PhD, it is in fine art, but I'm writing computer programs to "evolve" artworks (not a new idea, but there's plenty of room for new work). I need to engage with the history of art and other aspects of the discipline, since I'm in an art school now, though one if my supervisors is in computer science.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_12: It's barely even a good idea doing one PhD, let alone two! What you need to decide is what career you want. If it's to be a researcher, then doing a PhD is appropriate, because it is training to be a researcher. Once you have that career, why do another one, unless moving to a vastly different research area that requires very different research methodologies?
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_13: First of all, in your case, it should be obvious that it is way, way too soon to even think about a PhD of any kind. In many ways even one PhD is too much these days - given the employment market today, opportunities for PhDs are slim to none. Best advice? Keep in mind that having a PhD often closes more doors than it opens.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_14: An important difference between a bachelor's degree and a PhD is this: when doing a PhD, there is no maximum amount of effort one can usefully put in, nor is there a maximum level of attainment one can achieve. (Whereas with a bachelor's, once you have got top grades in all your courses, there's not much more you can usefully do.)
Supposing, what is very unlikely, that you have the academic ability and the huge amount of motivation and energy it would take to do two PhDs simultaneously. Then instead you should do one PhD, but:
* in a shorter time than is usual
* writing an astoundingly good thesis
* publishing significant work
* which you have largely done on your own
* and having gained an exceptional depth of knowledge about your chosen field
For you to do all or most of this will be no more work than two simultaneous PhDs, but it will get you a lot further. Graduate students who do PhDs like this (they are quite a few) tend to quickly build prestigious and desirable careers for themselves, whereas 'professional students' who spend their lives amassing diplomas in different fields usually don't.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_15: **You can not sail in two boats, a foot in each ?**
First make up your mind about GOALs in life, what are your objectives .
See how best to get them.
PhD for what purpose , NOT just for sake of having on Name plate outside house or for filling CV.
Worry not, you have enough time to take that decision, but Decide about your GOALs today, you will have a better life, well managed.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_16: The answer to your question depends on your goal.
In my experience in the software industry, if your goal is to go into industry, a PhD often gives the impression of someone who is "overly academic". Someone who holds a doctorate may be seen as someone who preferred to stay in the comfort of academia. I imagine someone who had done two PhDs would be practically unemployable in the eyes of many hiring managers.
If your goal is to work in industry: I'd advise dedicating time to locating a company with highly skilled teams doing work that really interests you. Build relationships with those people and go work on those teams. I imagine working as a team on a real world project might be more enjoyable and inspiring than a PhD. You'll probably learn faster and broader too.
I'd advise observing the general demeanor of people doing PhDs too...
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_17: To add to some of the existing answers, a desire to do two PhDs in different fields may be a sign that you want to combine your interest and skills in those two areas. This is very reasonable. There are also arguably several better alternatives for combining two fields in a research career than completing two separate PhDs.
The main option is to **do a PhD in one field that links in with the other field**. With regards to the linking, you can have a PhD supervisor who works at the intersection of the two fields, you can get a co-supervisor who works in the second field, you can self-teach yourself the other field, or you can do formal training in the other field.
To make this discussion concrete, I can point to many examples where a person combines skills in one field to complement another.
* I personally completed a PhD in psychology, but have endeavoured to acquire skills in statistics (through courses, self-teaching, a Post-Doc with a statistician, etc.).
* I know a student who has a law degree and is completing a PhD in forensic psychology.
* I knew a professor who had published books on music, and studied the psychology of music.
If after your undergraduate studies you find that you still enjoy engineering and mathematics, you may be able to find a PhD in one of these fields that links with the other.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_18: I have a PhD in Computational Biology. I have worked in that field, various engineering fields, am currently in management at a large corporation, and have even worked in finance. The point being, that once you have a PhD in a technical field, you generally have the credibility to switch fields to a number of other technical fields. It certainly takes some work to do so, but quite a bit less work that earning a second PhD.
Furthermore, about 80% of the process of getting a PhD is learning how to research and the other 20% is learning subject matter. This carries a couple different consequences in regard to pursuing a second PhD. First, while you could finish a second degree much faster than a first, there is a certain amount of structure to graduate school and you will invariably waste time developing (or rather proving that you have already developed) skills that you learned the first time around. Second, once you have the research background that a PhD confers, you can quickly learn the subject matter required to conduct novel research in a relatively similar field - it's not easy, but it's not that hard either.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/21 | 1,222 | 5,116 | <issue_start>username_0: The field of research is the biological sciences.
Graduate student B worked on the project for 2 years: he did experiments to gather genome-wide data and analyzed part of that data. He defined the direction and feasibility of the project, and developed the methodology; if it were not to him, there wouldn't be a paper.
Post-doc A picked up the project for 1 year after graduate student B left the lab, analyzed the data, wrote the paper, contributed 4 key figures (exactly half of the figures) and at least half of the scientific conclusions.
It was agreed upon that A and B would be co-first authors, but currently they are listed as B, A, et al.
Do you think A would be entitled to feel some kind of injustice at not having his name listed in alphabetical order? Is there a consensus that co-first authors should be in alphabetical order and is the editor likely to point this out?
[edit] Additional information:
In this field, you can specify 'co-first authors' at the time of submission, and it is written as such under the author's list on the final publication as "X an Y have contributed equally to this work". Which of course is a big source of conflict.
Thanks :)<issue_comment>username_1: I don't see any way to view this other than as a misunderstanding or miscommunication. (Not necessarily an innocuous misunderstanding: perhaps someone is trying to pull a fast one of some sort.)
I am a mathematician, so maybe I am especially sensitive to logical issues, but I can't think of a situation in which someone tells me something that sounds like a logical contradiction in which I wouldn't just say, "I'm sorry: I must be confused because that sounds contradictory. Could you please explain it again?"
My only guess at the resolution of the contradiction is that someone is in fact trying to change their mind about the ordering of the authors. I know little about the conventions and nuances of author ordering (because in pure mathematics the order is almost always strictly alphabetical), but I do think I understand the meanings of all the terms involved, so I can only imagine that if you submit a paper to a journal saying "by Bravo, Alpha, Charlie....Please note that Bravo and Alpha are co-first authors" then the editors will respond by calling attention to the contradiction. What else?
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: >
> Should co-first authors be listed in alphabetical order?
>
>
>
How is being *co-first authors* supposed to work in general? I come from a field where authors are typically ordered by contribution, but, **by definition**, there has to be exactly one first author. Being the first author of a paper is not some honorary title that can be split - it is simply **the first gal/guy on the author list**. Hence, by convention in my field, this is also the gal/guy that the authors have agreed upon has contributed most to the paper and should receive most recognition.
What is important here is that just because "A" is the second author of the paper, it does **not** imply that he did not do anything substantial. It merely means that the authors have agreed that her/his intellectual and technical contribution was at least a tiny bit less central to the paper as "B"s.
>
> Do you think A would be entitled to feel some kind of injustice at not having his name listed in alphabetical order? Is there a consensus that co-first authors should be in alphabetical order and is the editor likely to point this out?
>
>
>
No, "A" has no right to require alphabetical ordering. The editor will not care, because how would he even know that "B" was supposed to be a *co-first author*?
The more important question here is whether "A" has a right to feel injustice because she/he in fact believes that her/his contribution was in fact larger than "B"s, hence, that "A" should be the first author. This is a question that we cannot answer. Note that the number of figures contributed per author does not seem extremely important. Likewise, who ultimately submits the paper is not the deciding factor. That "B" has spent multiple years working on the project sounds like she/he had in fact a lot of impact on the work, though (assuming that she/he did in fact not just idle around and procrastinate, which we cannot tell of course).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: When talking about Grad Student B, you said
>
> if it were not to him, there wouldn't be a paper.
>
>
>
If that's not a good definition of "most important contributor", I don't know what is. B should be the first author. If you want to make sure that A gets due credit, and the journal in question allows this, I would suggest adding a footnote specifying who did what (I typically ask my undergrads to do this when they write joint term papers).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I've been in a similar situation. Getting offended won't help anything. Alphabetical order is just as arbitrary as random order.
But on your personal CV and website, feel free to list yourself first if you are indeed a co-primary author.
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/02/21 | 4,028 | 16,889 | <issue_start>username_0: Progression in academia, in general, seems and feels extremely linear, i.e. you do your undergrad, then you do graduate studies, then you do a post-doc (or two, or three ... ) and eventually if you are good/persistent/well-connected/... enough you might get funded to start your own group and live the rest of your professional life in chasing grants, fighting with faculty and editors etc [*yes, I am exaggerating*], which I don't find particularly appealing.
Alternative to this scenario is to quit academia and go to the industry, often labeled as "selling out" by senior scientists I have personally met and discussed this subject with.
But life in general never gives a clear bisections, like you do either A or B, but there are typically a number of options to choose from. Thus I figure there should be some shades of gray in between the white and black. As a resource to other doctoral students I figured we could perhaps accumulate the possible career paths for people that have finished their PhDs, besides trying to climb up the ladder of academic ascension.
The ones I can think of are:
* **specialized (lab) technician:** working for instance with complex instruments. I have noticed in our lab that having an experienced technician operating and maintaining the heavy instruments is invaluable for the group. Not only for the sake of projects going as smooth as possible, but also for teaching grad students how to properly use the instruments.
* **popular science author/editor:** I have read quite a few popular science books by people with PhDs on fields that I know little about (here's [a good example](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1851688331)). Similarly, magazines such as Illustrated Science typically need a middle layer between cutting-edge science and interested (but not adequately educated) readers.
* **research position at industry:** I am really going on a limb here, as I don't personally know anyone who is actively doing just that, but companies in several different fields actually do research; either in collaboration with universities, or in-house. I am inclined to think that such a position would include less grant-seeking, and publishing headaches (perhaps replaced with other types of headaches).
* **production position at industry:** from what I understand this is the more typical scenario where people that go to industry after doing a PhD end up in. Based on my discussions with people (in academia) these positions typically include little to none intellectual development or acquisition of new skills. Thus not-so-desired or looked-down-upon by academics.
My question(s):
1. what other career paths are there, that I might have missed?
2. am I correct in my understand of the above 4 paths? are there any insights that you would like to add?<issue_comment>username_1: I am assuming that you're talking about career paths for PhDs in STEM fields. One major area of employment that you missed is the national lab path. The lab route is, in a sense, a middle ground between industry and academia. A scientist at a national lab is engaged in basic science research. The labs do work for government organizations like DOD, DOE, DHS, all sorts of acronyms. Rather than writing grant proposals you would be writing proposals to take on projects for these agencies. Depending on your area of expertise, you may be expected to publish your results in journals, or publish results as technical reports. At Pacific Northwest National Lab, there is a fundamental sciences directorate that is committed to basic science research (chemistry, physics, engineering, biology, mathematics) that mainly publishes in journals, and there is a national security directorate that mainly publishes technical reports (often classified).
There are also many research labs that contract to the federal government such as HRL, Matrix, MITRE, and Lincoln Laboratories.
Scientists at government labs publish without the "publish or perish" atmosphere of academia. They enjoy more freedom in choosing their own career path than a researcher in industry. There is also more respect (and demand) for interdisciplinary research than in academia. Since you are competing for federal dollars, the research you do is also more likely to be used than research in academia.
For completeness -- In addition to the scientist path at research labs, many choose to go into project management. This requires a deep knowledge of the subject area, and pays better, but you might stop doing the actual research yourself.
I've done internships at Pacific Northwest and Los Alamos national labs, and my comments are based on discussions with employees at those labs.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I think you can add:
* teaching,
* several kind of management jobs in the industry where your PhD can be an asset (see [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16983/transition-from-phd-to-project-manager-position) for example),
* or even creating your own startup! In fact, doing your PhD, [you might have come across some ideas](http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html).
>
> research position at industry: I am really going on a limb here, as I don't personally know anyone who is actively doing just that, but companies in several different fields actually do research; either in collaboration with universities, or in-house. I am inclined to think that such a position would include less grant-seeking, and publishing headaches (perhaps replaced with other types of headaches).
>
>
>
Many companies have a research department. Some do quite fundamental research, but most of them are rather development-oriented. In the latter case, it is an other way to consider things: you want a product that works, even if you don't understand precisely how it works. It can be very interesting too, but it is different from academic research; you might like it or not.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: A nice piece of advice on going to industry is here [How to leave academia [and go to programming, data science or quants]](http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/leaving_academia.html) (at least I've found it valuable).
I guess the question is what you've learnt (some you take for granted, like ability to be manager of your own project), which kind of connections you made, what is the kind of job you would like to work, etc. Then, well, you can think about *all* jobs, forgetting that you were a PhD (except that additionally you can consider a very few highly academia-related, e.g. science popularization, lab technician).
And then, at least among my friends (and places I am looking by myself) is it is mostly "jobs in tech" - software engineering, web development, quants and data science. The last one seems to be one where a PhD student can have an edge (over s standard programmer) due to being immersed with different numerical tools (and general research methodology, etc). There are even some courses aimed at PhD graduates, for example [Insight Data Science Fellows Program](http://insightdatascience.com/) (or [BigDive](http://www.bigdive.eu/), which is more general, but I wholeheartedly recommend it, as an alumnus).
In the case "what are you missing" - I wouldn't split it in 4 paths. Especially as in many places there is no clear distinction between production and R&D (it may depend more on actual company, project, people involved, your drive to learn, etc).
But clearly, you miss whole "free" part related to being a consultant, freelancer or starting your own business.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Selling out? Hardly!
I am a researcher in industry, and I love it. I get to work on important problems and my work is expected to translate into real products in roughly 5-10 years.
While working on my PhD, I felt that the academic mindset was overwhelming. I have never had any intention of doing anything but research in industry, but I was certainly in the minority.
Some of my reasons for choosing my career path were/are:
* Many people in academia seem to be overly focused on publishing, even before they can make reasonable and meaningful conclusions (which can contribute to a mass of conflicting literature). To me, conferences are for discussing interesting work, but publishing is for disseminating conclusions (& supporting data) that can have a meaningful impact on a field of knowledge. In industry, I have to write up reports all the time, but only the important stuff gets published.
* I am a scientist, which is just the modern term for a "natural philosopher." I take my role as a philosopher very seriously, but as much as I love knowledge, I believe it is irresponsible to use other people's money to pursue research that is unlikely to benefit those people in a timely manner. Pure research is a hobby; Applied research is a job. In industry, I am free to pursue pure research when I have spare time, but I get paid to work on real problems.
* In an academic setting, it is far too easy to pursue research in a very narrow field in which everybody knows everyone else. No thanks! I love that my job forces me to work outside my comfort zone, with a wide variety of people that I would never interact with in an academic setting. I have grown personally and professionally from these interactions.
* Working for a company, I am usually guaranteed funding for something... but not necessarily things I think are important or interesting. As with any funding agency, I have to propose research projects that the company is willing to pay for. I have some early-stage projects that require minimal funding, but also others that require huge investments and therefore must offer much in return. However, I can also apply for funding through both private and government agencies. We often do this when we want to pursue a new area of research and/or collaborate with other organizations. (Note that we also fund grants for others too, so some of my work involves reviewing those proposals.)
Granted, very few people can actually get a job doing research in industry. It is highly competitive, and you often need far more than just a PhD. I worked in industry for 2 years before starting my PhD, but internships can also be great experience. (Unfortunately, most PhD programs frown on internships or other outside jobs... which is very disappointing!) Of course, networking also helps. I have found that most research jobs are not advertised, so you have to actually talk to people. In my case, I asked the VP of research for some career advice and ended up with a job offer.
I hope this helps. Doing research in industry is very different in some ways, but similar in others.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_5: One option that's not quite included is what I'll call the "**we love you for your brain**" option.
In certain parts of STEM (especially physics/math/computer science), you can get a certain kind of industry job not based on the subject of your research, but merely as someone with "analytical thinking" skills. Wall street 'quants' are the best example of this.
If your specialty is a different non-STEM discipline a similar phenomenon can occur. People coming out of the humanities with strong critical writing/reading skills can end up in grant-writing positions, or technical writing positions with corporations, and so on.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: My very limited understanding comes as that people with psychology doctorates often become school psychologists, social workers, or counselors.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: Well, as a grad student who has no interest in academia, I have my eye on industry positions. I should also mention that I am a social scientist. The typical route is to enter into a research or evaluation firm. I'm interested in pursing those jobs.
However, I've known since I started graduate school that academia was not for me, and I also acknowledge that getting a Ph.D. in social sciences doesn't necessarily mean you have developed skills that are critical for jobs outside of academia. I'm often baffled at how ignorant my peers are to the hiring environment that exists beyond the walls of academia, and the mentality is usually, "well, if academia doesn't work out then industry job will be easy to nab." Anyways, as a result of being cognizant of the demands of industry jobs, and how I can foster those skills through the projects I work on in graduate school, I've taken to developing my quant skills. I'm the go-to person for quant questions within my department and in my network of friends, some of which are in industry. I've also taken to extending these quant skills outside of my field whenever I have time. I want to work as a data scientist. However, this career path requires social scientists to learn a lot outside of what you are typically exposed to in academia. Therefore it's not uncommon for me to learn about a particular analysis in my field, and then spend the next few months playing with that analytic framework with business data, sports data, stocks, etc. I've had to learn machine learning, and find outlets to practice those skills. In addition, the same can be said for learning to program better.
My point is:
It takes considerable effort in the social sciences to develop skills that will make you not just employable outside of academia, but in demand. Fostering those skills while in graduate school, in addition to the requirements of the program, is a very important thing to do.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: You already have some answers to your first question, but I can provide some for your second question.
**Lab Technicians:** I know one or two of these, and they typically don't have PhDs, so I am not sure that I would characterise this as a post-PhD career. But I am not an expert, so I might be wrong about this.
**Popular Science Author:** Seriously? This is way harder than becoming a tenured professor. It would probably be a lot of fun to write a book, but there is basically zero chance of making it your career.
**Research Position in Industry:** Absolutely a possibility. There are tons of people working in different fields of research in industry and government. Often it might be more focussed towards solving specific problems rather than blue-sky research like in academia. I've actually been working for two years in government and last year I was back in academia and I have to say that the research environment in academia was a lot less stimulating. Everybody keeps their data secret and all they care about is publications. I love teaching but at the moment I am quite glad to be out of academia again.
**Production position in industry:** It's hard to say what you mean here, but I guess for STEM people, software development is the most common one. There are lots of good jobs for software developers and there is a whole culture that goes with it. I know many people from academia who have gone into this area and it sounds like they often find it to be a rewarding career. As for no intellectual development or acquisition of new skills, it's quite the opposite. Most of the developers I know are encouraged to educate themselves all the time, and often they are forced to anyway because of new technology! (Of course, I am sure that it is quite possible to get a boring dead-end job in this area as well.)
As for your first paragraph, I don't think you are exaggerating.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: Here are several popular career paths. For completeness, I include yours as well.
Within academia
===============
* **tenure-track professor**
*Essential skills*: ability to attract funding, publication/citation, networking, creativity/luck, hard-working
* **scientist (national labs)**
*Essential skills*: , relevant research, ability to attract funding, creativity/luck, publication/citation, networking, hard-working
* **non-tenure-track professor/visiting professors/scientist/postdoc**
*Essential skills*: good relation with your boss, publication/citation, hard-working
* **lecturer/teaching professor**
*Essential skills*: teaching, networking
Outside academia
================
* **journal assistant editor/popular science author/PR**
*Essential skills*: scientific writing
* **Legal assistant/patent researcher**
* **production/management at industry**
*Essential skills*: relevant experiences and credentials
* **specialized (lab) technician**
* **R&D at industry**
*Essential skills*: relevant skills (see below)
* **developer**
*Essential skills*: relevant programming skills (cf. LeetCode), experience, hard-working
* **data Scientist**
*Essential skills*: relevant experience (cf. Kaggle), statistics, hard-working
* **quant**
*Essential skills*: relevant experience in finance and statistics, model building, luck, hard-working
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/21 | 951 | 4,201 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a first year Master's degree student of computer science in Northern Europe. I am paying for my living expenses and do not have any kind of assistantship or funding. I have a full funding admission for the same subject in Canada. I would like to know if it is a good idea to accept the offer and start my studies there and also continue my current degree remotely (Since the second year is about completing the thesis, and I can do it while I'm in another place) or drop my studies completely here (since I would like to move to Canada or USA later and have money issues to continue my current studies).
If I do have two MSc degrees in the same subject, would is have any negative or positive effect on applying for a phd degree later?
Thanks in advance<issue_comment>username_1: Having two MSc degrees is not unusual. And it can only be positive. However, you might find it not so useful at the end of the day.
In general it is not necessary to have two degrees in the same subject, so people would rather concentrate into getting only one, with the maximal grades, as it is sufficient either for getting a job or a PhD candidate position.
On the other hand, having another degree from another university shows that you could work succesfully in another environment, maybe with a different speciality or focus. The reason why people would take a second degree is often because of this focused extra experience, and because they can use their previous credits and/or knowledge to complete their second degree quicker ("double degrees" are common wherever there is an agreement between universities).
However, my advice would be to go for this second degree only if there is some added learning value to it, as it is not necessary for the PhD itself, and you would rather use this time for preparing specifically to your future research, which will in all cases be much narrower and require much time. On a side note, once you get your PhD, as a researcher, your MSc's will not be much value anymore, especially if they are exactly in the same field.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: The first question is whether you even have the option of working on both degrees at once. I'd assume you don't, since positions with full funding are generally based on an assumption that you will be devoting full effort to them. They may formally rule out other employment/studies, and even if they don't the department may become upset or feel tricked if they discover you are also doing something else at the same time. (And departments can sometimes react similarly even if the position has no funding: even if you are paying your own living expenses, they probably consider themselves to be at least partially subsidizing the costs of your education.)
So you shouldn't try to do both degrees at once unless both departments officially agree to it. Even in that case, I think it's a bad idea. Success in graduate school is based on quality, not quantity, and this approach can't be good for quality. You'll be writing your thesis remotely, with far less contact and advising than you would have had in person. That alone will make it harder to do your best work, but at the same time you'll also be participating in a different full-time program. You might not be able to do good work for both at once; if you can, then you ought to be able to do great work if you focus on just one (and doing great work at one program is much better than doing good work at two). The same reasoning applies no matter how talented and hard-working you are: if you can do great work in both programs at once, then you ought to be able to do amazing work by focusing on one.
>
> If I do have two MSc degrees in the same subject, would is have any negative or positive effect on applying for a phd degree later?
>
>
>
Having two MSc degrees might be a small negative, by making you look unfocused, but it probably won't make much of a difference either way. Ultimately, you'll be evaluated by your academic achievements (papers, thesis, outstanding performance in courses), judged primarily by quality rather than quantity, so you should try to maximize these achievements.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/21 | 811 | 3,536 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a PhD researcher in my first year. For the first 3 months all my supervisor made me do was read related papers on IEEE, so a LOT of literature review.
Recently in trying to recreate the result of another paper I was reading, I wrote some code on segmentation that appears to work really well and has got my supervisor's attention and interest. He thinks this may lead to a publication.
He asked me to write a technical report on it. So I wrote a simple report in MS Word which included a brief explanation of the method with graphs and result images but he said this is not what he wanted. What he expects from me is a IEEE style report/paper, including introduction, algorithm/method explanation, mathematical representation, experiments, future work etc.
The problem is that I believe he thinks too highly of my code, its just a for loop applied at different settings. That is all..
What is the mathematical representation of a for loop? How do I make it look more professional? As I know my reports are those of an undergrad standard.<issue_comment>username_1: Quite possibly, your supervisor is encouraging you to write early, to learn how to write, and to get into the habit of writing your results down.
You would gain a lot by watching this youtube video by Haskell inventor <NAME> on [How to write a great research paper](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dkRsTqdDA). Part of his message is that you can do the research while you are writing, meaning that many ideas will come to you as you are writing things down.
You ask how to write a paper. Didn't you just read a whole bunch? Pick one that you found easy to follow and inspiring. Model your paper on its structure and style.
Regarding the actual work. A formal model of a for-loop has already been done, so I suspect that this is not the right level of abstraction to consider. What is the data to which your for loop applied? What did it mean? What did the parameters mean? How are the results of your code interpreted? Were some better than others? On what scale?
*Part of science is learning to ask and answer the right questions.*
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: From the wording of your question, it looks like what you wrote can be summarized as "I wrote this code and obtained these results". Even if your code and results are correct (I assume they are, if they got your prof's attention), this is not a publishable paper. The reason is that "I wrote this code and obtained these results" is something that you can say of any piece of code that actually works, no matter how trivial or mundane. What your prof is expecting you to write is a paper that says "I wrote this code and obtained these results, *and this is interesting to you, dear reader, because...*". There are a bunch of reasons why your code is interesting: it might run faster than standard code for certain cases; it opens up a different way of attacking a certain problem; it shows that a certain cases have some properties that set them apart from their complement class; and so on.
If you had decided to go into industry after getting your BSc, you would be paid to write code that works, period. In grad school, on the other hand, whether your code actually works is to some extent secondary (cf. Knuth's quote "Beware of this code: I've proven it correct, but I haven't run it yet"). What matters is whether your code teaches your peers (grad students, postdocs, profs) something new about your (sub)field.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/21 | 1,522 | 6,592 | <issue_start>username_0: My work got accepted into a very good category in a very good conference in my field. Due to complicated visa issues it will be very hard for me to attend that conference.
If I don't attend the conference they are certainly going to remove my work from the proceedings.
I am worried I won't be able to claim any sort of achievement if I don't attend this conference.
Can I still add it to my CV and specify that my work got accepted in this conference in a very good category?<issue_comment>username_1: If your paper gets withdrawn, then there may be no public record that it ever was accepted (and if there were, it could potentially be misconstrued as a withdrawel for other reasons). I can't say I've ever seen such an item on a CV.
On the other hand, even if you cannot make it to the conference in person, you can try to either:
a) have someone else give the talk in your place.
b) give the talk via telecommunication, e.g. Skype.
Both options are certainly not too unusual in my field (theoretical computer science/math). If you have to go for the second one, make sure not to leave contacting the conference organizers for the last moment, and be aware that this causes quite some work for them. If you can provide enough detail on your visa issues that it is clear that it's not just "You waited too long to apply", most people will be quite understanding.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: You will need to find some way to have the paper presented. At the most recent conference I attended, a speaker was unable to attend for visa reasons and sent in a video talk. That talk was played back by a friend who also took some (simple) questions.
At pretty much every conference I've been to in the past few years in the US at least one person has had visa trouble, so it's not uncommon at all. But you will need to do due diligence to try and get the visa as far as possible. Once that fails, then the above three suggestions (someone else, a skype talk, a video talk) become available, depending on what the conference organizers want.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I recently gave a presentation at a conference on behalf of a colleague who was unable to attend, so it's certainly a possibility in at least some fields (I'm in theoretical computer science). I had nothing to do with the research, but I do know the person, so I was able to talk to them beforehand and get a decent briefing on the material.
If you know some of the other attendees, that may be a possible route to getting your work presented. In my experience of glancing at the rules of various conference (all CS though), there is only a requirement that the work is presented - it doesn't strictly say by whom, and that at least one of the authors registers.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: This happened in my lab. The solution was to either present the work by a co-author, or present the work by a lab mate that was attending the conference.
Pay attention that in the second case (non-author, lab mate) you need to get in touch with the *conference staff* in order to expose the case to them and make sure they agree. Some conferences consider it a *paper withdrawal* when none of the co-authors attends the conference to present the work. Also, you will still have to pay the author fees, even if you can't assist to the conference.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: As you know, most conferences accept papers on the condition that one of the authors attends the conference to give a presentation. Of course, sometimes things come up and somebody who planned to attend cannot; organizers are sympathetic to that, as discussed in the other answers.
However, I think it's worth pointing out that, if you knew at the time of submitting the paper that getting a visa would be difficult or impossible, you should probably have agreed that one of your co-authors would attend the conference from the start. If all your co-authors were in the same situation, it would, I think, have been best to contact the organizers for advice before submitting.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: Have you considered converting your presentation to a poster? If the conference organisers have accepted your presentation as a talk, then they should - I expect - accept a poster from you on the same topic, even if you can't attend owing to your visa difficulties.
If you submit a poster, your contribution will at least be on record. Additionally, you might be able to convince someone at the conference - via your network of collaborators - to spend a few precious minutes of their presentation talk to advertise your poster, adding, perhaps, that but for your visa difficulties, you would have been in attendance to present your work orally.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_7: I have encountered multiple instances of this. Once, the airlines messed up my connections so badly that I did not make it to the conference (which was in a remote region) although I had given myself 48 hours "leeway" for just that eventuality. We ended up setting up a Skype connection (voice only - the internet connection was quite poor) and the talk was well received. I have to say though, that not seeing your audience and gaging their reaction / understanding is a HUGE barrier to effective delivery.
On another occasion, a hurricane caused severe flooding of the house of an academic acquaintance, and he chose not to travel abroad to give a presentation - instead he dealt with the flooding, insurance, etc. He asked me to give the talk for him, and we discussed it at length so I would be able to present effectively. The only problem was that I could not answer follow-up questions: instead I put up the author's email information as the last slide so people could follow up with him directly.
On a third occasion, travel restrictions (funding) required me to stand in for a colleague; while I was not an author on the paper, I was very familiar with the work (from my group) and was able to present and field questions from the audience. That is the ideal scenario.
On no account should you simply be a "no show": that will affect your acceptance at future conferences (even though it is "not your fault"). Everyone understands that stuff happens - but the show must go on. So find a sub - preferably someone you know and trust, with knowledge about your work. If necessary, just call all the other authors who are presenting in the same section - they are likely to understand the material best. And presumably you know some of them from other conferences?
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/22 | 1,491 | 6,409 | <issue_start>username_0: My GPA of bachelor is about 3.0, and I just want to know how much it would approximately be in German Grade? Would it be lower than 2.7 in German Grade?
I have read other questions on this website, but none of them could help me, can you simply tell me how to convert GPA to German grading system?<issue_comment>username_1: If your paper gets withdrawn, then there may be no public record that it ever was accepted (and if there were, it could potentially be misconstrued as a withdrawel for other reasons). I can't say I've ever seen such an item on a CV.
On the other hand, even if you cannot make it to the conference in person, you can try to either:
a) have someone else give the talk in your place.
b) give the talk via telecommunication, e.g. Skype.
Both options are certainly not too unusual in my field (theoretical computer science/math). If you have to go for the second one, make sure not to leave contacting the conference organizers for the last moment, and be aware that this causes quite some work for them. If you can provide enough detail on your visa issues that it is clear that it's not just "You waited too long to apply", most people will be quite understanding.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: You will need to find some way to have the paper presented. At the most recent conference I attended, a speaker was unable to attend for visa reasons and sent in a video talk. That talk was played back by a friend who also took some (simple) questions.
At pretty much every conference I've been to in the past few years in the US at least one person has had visa trouble, so it's not uncommon at all. But you will need to do due diligence to try and get the visa as far as possible. Once that fails, then the above three suggestions (someone else, a skype talk, a video talk) become available, depending on what the conference organizers want.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I recently gave a presentation at a conference on behalf of a colleague who was unable to attend, so it's certainly a possibility in at least some fields (I'm in theoretical computer science). I had nothing to do with the research, but I do know the person, so I was able to talk to them beforehand and get a decent briefing on the material.
If you know some of the other attendees, that may be a possible route to getting your work presented. In my experience of glancing at the rules of various conference (all CS though), there is only a requirement that the work is presented - it doesn't strictly say by whom, and that at least one of the authors registers.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: This happened in my lab. The solution was to either present the work by a co-author, or present the work by a lab mate that was attending the conference.
Pay attention that in the second case (non-author, lab mate) you need to get in touch with the *conference staff* in order to expose the case to them and make sure they agree. Some conferences consider it a *paper withdrawal* when none of the co-authors attends the conference to present the work. Also, you will still have to pay the author fees, even if you can't assist to the conference.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: As you know, most conferences accept papers on the condition that one of the authors attends the conference to give a presentation. Of course, sometimes things come up and somebody who planned to attend cannot; organizers are sympathetic to that, as discussed in the other answers.
However, I think it's worth pointing out that, if you knew at the time of submitting the paper that getting a visa would be difficult or impossible, you should probably have agreed that one of your co-authors would attend the conference from the start. If all your co-authors were in the same situation, it would, I think, have been best to contact the organizers for advice before submitting.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: Have you considered converting your presentation to a poster? If the conference organisers have accepted your presentation as a talk, then they should - I expect - accept a poster from you on the same topic, even if you can't attend owing to your visa difficulties.
If you submit a poster, your contribution will at least be on record. Additionally, you might be able to convince someone at the conference - via your network of collaborators - to spend a few precious minutes of their presentation talk to advertise your poster, adding, perhaps, that but for your visa difficulties, you would have been in attendance to present your work orally.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_7: I have encountered multiple instances of this. Once, the airlines messed up my connections so badly that I did not make it to the conference (which was in a remote region) although I had given myself 48 hours "leeway" for just that eventuality. We ended up setting up a Skype connection (voice only - the internet connection was quite poor) and the talk was well received. I have to say though, that not seeing your audience and gaging their reaction / understanding is a HUGE barrier to effective delivery.
On another occasion, a hurricane caused severe flooding of the house of an academic acquaintance, and he chose not to travel abroad to give a presentation - instead he dealt with the flooding, insurance, etc. He asked me to give the talk for him, and we discussed it at length so I would be able to present effectively. The only problem was that I could not answer follow-up questions: instead I put up the author's email information as the last slide so people could follow up with him directly.
On a third occasion, travel restrictions (funding) required me to stand in for a colleague; while I was not an author on the paper, I was very familiar with the work (from my group) and was able to present and field questions from the audience. That is the ideal scenario.
On no account should you simply be a "no show": that will affect your acceptance at future conferences (even though it is "not your fault"). Everyone understands that stuff happens - but the show must go on. So find a sub - preferably someone you know and trust, with knowledge about your work. If necessary, just call all the other authors who are presenting in the same section - they are likely to understand the material best. And presumably you know some of them from other conferences?
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/22 | 1,482 | 6,152 | <issue_start>username_0: After so many incidents happen that my advisor trying to bad mouthing to my committee, sobstege my publication, secretly removing me from my PhD projects I feel I cannot trust my advisor anymore. Now, I feel everything he said was insincere and full of lie. My advisor always says positive thing but all end up negative. He is not consistent of what he said and what he actually does which disgust me. I don't want to let him handle my manuscript or assign me project because I always fear that he will do something underhanded. If I really grant a PhD from my advisor, I would be ashamed of such lineage. All I want now is live in bubble space undisturbed focusing on my own topics. I want to be myself as a phd student and one day as a professor. What should I do? Please help!<issue_comment>username_1: Switch advisors. There is really not much else you can do\*.
\*If the person does something truly unethical and you have definitive proof you can try to bring it up with someone who has more authority.
---
You say that that isn't an option, and it sounds like you're planning to stick it with this advisor until you get your PhD. Things to think about:
* Do you think it's realistic to get a PhD at all with this advisor?
* Are all of his grad students just as miserable, or just you? What are the successful students in his group doing?
* Who are your letters of recommendation (you need 3, typically) going to be from when you apply for postdocs/jobs after you graduate?
Nuclear options (purely for completeness, I **don't** recommend them):
* Apply to a PhD program somewhere else (you don't have to finish this one, you can apply while you're still in this one, actually, and only quit the program if you get accepted somewhere else).
* Quit academia. (Warning: it's hard to get back in once you're out.)
---
>
> I am not sure how you define "successful" (fellowship, publication, support)? I know there are people who were quite supported by my advisor because they know what my advisor like, and it's their way to get ahead. That's fine and that should be the norm but I'm not the norm.
>
>
>
Successful means publications (well, that depends on the field), research that is progressing in a clear direction, completion of milestones towards the degree. The advisor having successful students ultimately is measured by how good the jobs the students he graduated got are.
It sounds like he has students that are content to have him as an advisor.
It also sounds, from your [other question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16153/losing-faith-in-my-phd-advisor) and the comments there that you think that your advisor is incompetent, which means that you don't take him seriously.
This creates at least half the problem, because if you don't take him seriously, he won't take you seriously, which, among other things, includes telling his colleagues about how terrible you are, and not trusting you to write a manuscript for submission.
If you're staying in this PhD program with this advisor, you will make your own life a lot easier if you at least imagine that your advisor might not be incompetent.
When he gives you an idea for an approach, make an honest effort.
If it doesn't work, try to figure out why. If you figure out why, don't look happy about it: look concerned about it. If you have an idea that you think will work, propose it as a solution to this problem you just found. And by "propose" I mean actually ask him for what he thinks about it, and be interested in what he has to say.
This is what "taking him seriously" means. If you start doing that, he might start taking you seriously for a change.
Also try to have insightful research-related conversations with some other faculty (preferably the rest of your committee), maybe even have one or more of them meet with you and your advisor when you discuss research ideas (make sure to plan meetings so that everyone is in the loop, don't try to surprise anyone). Build those professional relationships for some good recommendations.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: When I read your question I must take into account that I am hearing one side of a dispute, so it is likely to be biased and incomplete. I don't know who is in the wrong but I can see a few pointers. Firstly you make very few specific complaints about what your advisor has done. You say he is trying to sabotage your publication and remove you from projects. It is the job of your advisor to decide when your publication is ready. He has much more experience of this than you do. He can see better than you what direction you need to go in.
No advisor takes on a student to sabotage them. An advisor can only have a limited number of students and they want them to succeed. You claim that things he says are insincere which means that he is saying positive things that you will not accept. It sounds like most of the anger is on your side. You even indicate that other students are getting along with him.
If there is a personality or culture clash between you and your supervisor it may be possible to talk to your department head about a change, but it is more likely that you are on a slippery slope towards failure and it would be better that you listen to your advisor who seems to be trying to help you. Put your ego aside and consider the possibility that your advisor who has been working in the field for many more years than you may know it better than you. If you still genuinely think that your ideas are better and you want more independence then you need to discuss this calmly with your advisor. He may agree to let you take that route but that is only likely if you are exceptionaly talented. If he doesn't he should explain why and you need to listen and find a compromise.
One last thing, your English grammar is not very good. I dont know if you are an English speaking native, studying in an English speaking country or writing papers in English, but if any of these are the case then you need to improve your English. It will have a bearing on your ability to communicate with people including your advisor.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/22 | 1,340 | 5,586 | <issue_start>username_0: I have decided to apply to PhD studies and in one part it says that my CV should contain: *"Study curriculum with rankings"*.
What does that mean? because they are also asking me to submit my studies transcripts.<issue_comment>username_1: Switch advisors. There is really not much else you can do\*.
\*If the person does something truly unethical and you have definitive proof you can try to bring it up with someone who has more authority.
---
You say that that isn't an option, and it sounds like you're planning to stick it with this advisor until you get your PhD. Things to think about:
* Do you think it's realistic to get a PhD at all with this advisor?
* Are all of his grad students just as miserable, or just you? What are the successful students in his group doing?
* Who are your letters of recommendation (you need 3, typically) going to be from when you apply for postdocs/jobs after you graduate?
Nuclear options (purely for completeness, I **don't** recommend them):
* Apply to a PhD program somewhere else (you don't have to finish this one, you can apply while you're still in this one, actually, and only quit the program if you get accepted somewhere else).
* Quit academia. (Warning: it's hard to get back in once you're out.)
---
>
> I am not sure how you define "successful" (fellowship, publication, support)? I know there are people who were quite supported by my advisor because they know what my advisor like, and it's their way to get ahead. That's fine and that should be the norm but I'm not the norm.
>
>
>
Successful means publications (well, that depends on the field), research that is progressing in a clear direction, completion of milestones towards the degree. The advisor having successful students ultimately is measured by how good the jobs the students he graduated got are.
It sounds like he has students that are content to have him as an advisor.
It also sounds, from your [other question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16153/losing-faith-in-my-phd-advisor) and the comments there that you think that your advisor is incompetent, which means that you don't take him seriously.
This creates at least half the problem, because if you don't take him seriously, he won't take you seriously, which, among other things, includes telling his colleagues about how terrible you are, and not trusting you to write a manuscript for submission.
If you're staying in this PhD program with this advisor, you will make your own life a lot easier if you at least imagine that your advisor might not be incompetent.
When he gives you an idea for an approach, make an honest effort.
If it doesn't work, try to figure out why. If you figure out why, don't look happy about it: look concerned about it. If you have an idea that you think will work, propose it as a solution to this problem you just found. And by "propose" I mean actually ask him for what he thinks about it, and be interested in what he has to say.
This is what "taking him seriously" means. If you start doing that, he might start taking you seriously for a change.
Also try to have insightful research-related conversations with some other faculty (preferably the rest of your committee), maybe even have one or more of them meet with you and your advisor when you discuss research ideas (make sure to plan meetings so that everyone is in the loop, don't try to surprise anyone). Build those professional relationships for some good recommendations.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: When I read your question I must take into account that I am hearing one side of a dispute, so it is likely to be biased and incomplete. I don't know who is in the wrong but I can see a few pointers. Firstly you make very few specific complaints about what your advisor has done. You say he is trying to sabotage your publication and remove you from projects. It is the job of your advisor to decide when your publication is ready. He has much more experience of this than you do. He can see better than you what direction you need to go in.
No advisor takes on a student to sabotage them. An advisor can only have a limited number of students and they want them to succeed. You claim that things he says are insincere which means that he is saying positive things that you will not accept. It sounds like most of the anger is on your side. You even indicate that other students are getting along with him.
If there is a personality or culture clash between you and your supervisor it may be possible to talk to your department head about a change, but it is more likely that you are on a slippery slope towards failure and it would be better that you listen to your advisor who seems to be trying to help you. Put your ego aside and consider the possibility that your advisor who has been working in the field for many more years than you may know it better than you. If you still genuinely think that your ideas are better and you want more independence then you need to discuss this calmly with your advisor. He may agree to let you take that route but that is only likely if you are exceptionaly talented. If he doesn't he should explain why and you need to listen and find a compromise.
One last thing, your English grammar is not very good. I dont know if you are an English speaking native, studying in an English speaking country or writing papers in English, but if any of these are the case then you need to improve your English. It will have a bearing on your ability to communicate with people including your advisor.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/22 | 2,286 | 9,689 | <issue_start>username_0: **Background:** There is currently a proposal for a new Math Teaching site that will be entering private beta once enough people sign up. One question that came up during its question is (basically): Is teaching math significantly different from teaching any other subject? Would it be better to broaden the scope to all education?
I had my own opinions, but I don't have enough experience teaching non-math classes to know. And now I am really curious about variation in teaching methods across disciplines.
Therefore, I have this question:
>
> Is there any evidence (such as refereed sources) to show that teaching mathematics and related fields uses significantly different methods or skills than teaching other subjects?
>
>
>
Conversely,
>
> Is there any evidence that teaching ability and/or techniques transfer across a wide variety of disciplines?
>
>
><issue_comment>username_1: One evidence that some *teaching abilities/techniques transfer across a wide variety of disciplines* is the existence of the [UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF)](http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ukpsf#whatisframework), which *"provides a general description of the main dimensions of the roles of teaching and supporting learning within the higher education environment"*.
I'm currently attending a training course at my university to obtain some qualifications for this framework, and this course is attended by people from many disciplines (from maths to history, including medicine or economy), and the teaching techniques we are learning do not depend on the field (and the people in charge of the course are explicit on that fact).
Of course, some particular aspects can be specific (for instance, techniques specific to teaching in a laboratory with potentially dangerous equipment might not be relevant to mathematicians), but for instance, learning how to conduct an interactive exercise can be done similarly in most fields.
Now, perhaps the proposal in question looks for techniques for very specific topic, for instance, how to teach Pythagoras theorem, or some nice examples of matrix operations.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: At the University of Georgia [we have a program](http://math.coe.uga.edu/) (which is not identical to a "department", but is close enough so that the distinction has always eluded me) in **Mathematics Education** and thus we have undergraduate *mathematics education majors* and also *mathematics education graduate students* (both master's and PhD).
There are certainly close ties with both the mathematics department and other education disciplines -- e.g. the mathematics courses I teach have a substantial population of mathematics education majors -- but such undergraduate majors also take plenty of courses with the name "Math Education XYZW". These courses are split into "content" and "pedagogy" courses. This distinction was very hard for me to wrap my mind around (it literally took me a few years to do so, although obviously I was not working very consistently on it!): see for instance
[this page](http://www.coe.uga.edu/mse/academic-programs/mathematics-education/b-s-e-d/program-of-study/major-courses/), and please read carefully: the courses that they list as Content are actually in the math department (one or two of them are taken mostly by math education majors, but many of the others are also required courses for undergraduate math majors). Rather the distinction between "content" and "pedagogy" -- which are the terms used by UGA students and faculty who talk to me about this -- is a distinction being made between two types of courses in the longish list of Professional Education courses. Thus e.g. compare
>
> EMAT 3800.
>
> Course Title: Connections in Secondary Mathematics II
>
> Course Description: Exploration of secondary mathematics topics related to number and measurement with an explicit focus on reasoning that connects critical topics of secondary mathematics to one another and to problem situations. Sample topics include proportional reasoning, number theory, and probability.
>
>
>
and
>
> EMAT 4800
>
> Course Title: Teaching Secondary School Mathematics I
>
> Course Description: Introductory ideas about mathematics education, including current mathematics standards and policy documents, learning theories, and teaching strategies. Students will explore how secondary students think about and learn mathematics, examine how to select and modify tasks, use appropriate technology, and apply their learning in an accompanying field experience.
>
>
>
This seems to give rather strong evidence that the answer to the OP's first question is *yes*: Math Education is rapidly becoming distinct enough from Education in general to count as its own discipline. (Obviously there remain many connections and commonalities between Math Education and other kinds of Education, just as virtually any academic field overlaps significantly with others.) In particular, yes, math education students learn math-specific teaching methods. This is indirect, though strong, evidence that there are differences between the teaching methods of various subjects. But my other point is something that is not explicitly in the OP's question: more than just teaching methods, techniques or ability, there is actually **additional content** that math teachers learn and that other teachers (and students of mathematics who are not intending to teach!) do not.
Let me also introduce you to my colleague [<NAME>](http://www.math.uga.edu/~sybilla/). Beckmann (who was trained as an arithmetic geometer and holds a faculty position in the UGA mathematics department; her office is next door to mine) is truly\* one of the very top American experts in the field of mathematical education of teachers. (Beckmann is also largely responsible for my awareness and understanding of the issues presented above. In fact I will contact her and ask her to look over this response to make sure I have gotten things right.) One of her initiatives over the last few years has been to promote the idea of an explicitly identified **mathematics teaching community**. In this regard, please see [this article](http://www.ams.org/notices/201103/rtx110300368p.pdf) and [this website](https://mathematicsteachingcommunity.math.uga.edu/). Also, Beckmann writes on her webpage "Longer term, we plan for this project to include an electronic self-organizing journal."
**tl;dr**: Yes, this is definitely a thing. It is a thing which has grown in recent years and is liable to continue to grow in the near future...and everyone seems to agree that we want/need it to grow.
\*: So much so that I need not justify it here: just search the web for her and you'll see it right away.
**Added**: My colleague <NAME> took time out of her busy workday [on Saturday!] to quickly look over what I wrote above. She pronounced it "basically accurate" and went on to add the following:
>
> Teaching methods in math are definitely different from other disciplines. Work of [Lee Shulman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Shulman) and [Deborah Ball](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Ball) on mathematical knowledge for teaching has been transformative for the field in that regard. Some sources to refer people to: the CBMS Mathematical Education of Teachers II on the CBMS website. It refers to various other sources. Math education is a separate discipline with a large body of research amassed over the last 30 - 40 years. It connects to other education research but is its own separate field. At UGA, the math ed program is within the department of mathematics and science education (it used to be a separate math ed department but was joined for administrative reasons some years ago).
>
>
>
I added links to the wikipedia articles on Shulman and Ball, and I recommend at least skimming these. Shulman is responsible for the idea of **pedagogical content knowledge**, a concept which is rather slippery at first [or at least, it was to me] but really seems to lie at the heart of an answer to the OP's question: it is precisely the material that you need to know as a mathematics teacher that you do not learn in your mathematics courses and cannot learn in non-math specific education courses. To nail it down more specifically than this is beyond my expertise -- e.g. the above two course descriptions were intended to convey this distinction but looking back it seems even more complicated: none of EMAT 3800 would be appropriate material for aspiring teachers of most subjects other than mathematics, and *some but not all* of EMAT 3900 would.
The two linked wikipedia articles give entry points into the vast body of literature
on these matters; people who were interested enough to read this far are encouraged to delve into the literature itself. And when you do, come back and tell me about it! I am an academic mathematician and thus a mathematics educator, but I have no specific training in mathematics education.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_1: The methods we use in physics are certainly different from the ones used in math. We have lab courses. Also, there is a huge pedagogical literature on overcoming students' preexisting conceptions of physics, and the literature seems to show that straight lecturing never does an acceptable job of overcoming these preconceptions. The classic paper is Hake, "Interactive Engagement Versus Traditional Methods: a Six-Thousand Student Survey of Mechanics Test Data for Introductory Physics Courses, Am. J. of Phys, 66 (1997) 64, and I believe it's available online.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/23 | 807 | 3,257 | <issue_start>username_0: I recently came across a friend who is applying for a PhD in my lab. He happens to be from Brazil, on an F-1 visa. He was told by my advisor that his citizenship status affects the sources of funding available to support his work. I was always under an impression that the principal investigator applies for research grants and funding does not depend on visa status (if any) of the students under his guidance. Was I wrong in making this assumption?<issue_comment>username_1: It absolutely depends on the source of funding. Each organization has their own rules. By and large, the NSF (since you mentioned F-1 visas I assume this is US-centric) allows foreign students to receive funding from grants, but this intent has to be disclosed at the time of submitting the grant request.
DARPA has slightly tighter rules although I'm reasonably sure foreign nationals can be funded. But if you're from a "country of interest" like Iran, there can be other complications.
Finally, while these are not PI-requested grants, the NSF-Hertz graduate fellowships are exclusively for US citizens.
p.s This even applies to PIs. There's a large DARPA program that you're not eligible to apply for unless you have a SECRET clearance, for which a necessary but not sufficient condition is that you're a US citizen.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: The question (or the supervisor's answer) does not indicate clearly if the supervisor is planning to incorporate your friend into one of his grants as support personnel, or is planning to have your friend write his own doctoral fellowship grant.
For the first option, the student's visa status does not matter in most of the cases. I have seen CDC and NIH grants used to fund foreign students. My PhD was also funded by NIH (I was not listed as an investigator) when I was holding an F1 visa.
The only wrinkle I can think of is that, the PI (principal investigator) might have budgeted a full time salary of, say, $50000 a year for an assistant. Due to F1 visa's limitation, the student has to be a full-time student, which means he cannot get full-time salary as a worker simultaneously. The usual approach is to resubmit a minor adjustment and change the budget into $25000 part-time salary and $25000 scholarly support. At this point, some problems can occur as some grants might have specified that they wouldn't fund school fee (which means your friend may have to look for scholarship to supplement his study. But he will have some stipend from the grant), and the agency may also question the feasibility of cutting a position's time in half. etc. Otherwise, I cannot think of other significant reasons.
For the latter case, then visa status matters a whole lot more. If your friend is going to write his own grants, it is true that a lot of grants do not accept proposal from non-US citizens. Try to scout around some grant websites such as [Grants.gov](http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/home.html) and do a search. The site allows you to screen out grants by applicant's visa status. As far as I have seen, PhD fellowship grants mostly welcome all kinds of visa status.
So, in conclusion, clarify with the said supervisor, and start assessing the grant availability.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/24 | 2,904 | 12,612 | <issue_start>username_0: I am soon finishing my PhD in computer science and I decided to leave academia for the industry (not industry research).
I am not clear about what to include in the CV.
I currently structured it like this:
* Education
* Work experience (including teaching positions and internships)
* Selected Honors, Awards & Fellowships
* Programming Skills
* Selected journal publications
* Selected Workshops, Schools & Conference Talks
which in its current version results in a two page CV.
I am neither sure about the ordering of the above items as well as the importance of each.
For example while I have ten publications I only mention two of them in the CV. On the other hand I mention about eleven Workshops, Schools & Conference Talks. I think this is not the right balance. On the other hand I am not sure how much companies (like Facebook, LinkedIn, ...) care about theoretical publications. I also do not mention any research visits I did.
So my question is, what academic information do you include in a CV for non academic positions and how important is each of the items?<issue_comment>username_1: I don't see any reason to omit your publications, since in your proposed ordering they are at the end. You definitely want to indicate your programming prowess as soon as possible. It might also help to insert a line above the Education section indicating your areas of expertise and interests. This is useful for bots that look for keyword matches.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The current structure of your CV looks like an academic CV to me. You put too much emphasis on the academic credentials. You definitely need to rewrite it.
What the industry (not industry research) companies are looking for are your **skills and experience**. They are not interested in how many publications you have or how many conference talks you gave. They are interested in how much you know about **solving problems** so that you can help them to make money.
I would suggest you to emphasize your programming skills, the contents of your publications (what kind of problems you solved in those papers), the internships, etc.
Don't under-estimate your teaching experience. Emphasize it. Many hiring managers had told me that they like the teaching experience on my resume. I asked them why. They said I must know how to communicate because I can teach. Knowing how to communicate to others is an essential skill in industry.
Good Luck!
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: You may find the website [Versatile PhD](http://versatilephd.com/) helpful, as it provides guidance on how to transition from an academic research track into the non-academic market.
The most important thing to keep in mind, though, is that you need to stop thinking in terms of the incentive structure of academia (i.e., firstly publications, secondly grants, positions, and awards) and start thinking in terms of skills that you can offer.
This usually means you need to organize your resume in terms of employment or projects and the skills and competency you demonstrated therein. If you have project management skills (supervision of research assistants, for example), programming skills put to use in projects, or other skills (meeting deadlines, working collaboratively with others, etc.) these are the things to emphasize as bullet points under jobs/projects rather listing out academically-valued output (pubs, presentations, grants, visits, etc.).
Also, if you're applying for entry-level jobs in industry, I see no reason why your resume should be longer than one page. If you have an online presence, you can always have a longer CV online that possible employers can look at if they're intrigued by what you have to offer from your short-form resume.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I am not sure if you are writing a CV for particular position or a CV to put on a web-page.
A common advise is to **[fit the CV to the particular position](https://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/cv.htm)** (What makes a good CV? section) you are applying for. So lets assume that you are writing something like your CV template.
In such a template I would suggest to put as much papers, experience, skills and relevant information as you can think of. This may significantly shorten the time of CV preparation for any particular position in the future.
Later on, when you will prepare a version of your CV for particular job, you will delete all points which are not relevant as you want to keep your CV as short and as relevant as possible.
So to answer the question: **you should put that academic information which is relevant to the application**. In some jobs, it can be relevant that you are able to write long texts, in some others that you are able to lead a group of people, speak in public or your innovative thinking and so on. So put everything now and choose the relevant content for each CV later.
If you feel that the list of the conference talks, or the papers is way to long you can include only 5 the most important or the ones which can be easily checked. In case you really want to emphasize the quantity of your work, put list of the papers/conferences on a separate paper or provide a link of such information in the accompanying letter or mail.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: **tl;dr: The industry hiring process is entirely different from academia. You'll have to adapt but it isn't that hard.**
*Note: It's not clear from your answer whether you're in the US or elsewhere so please translate my US-centric answer to fit your situation.*
I received specific advice on this subject when I was doing the same thing years ago. It's a variant of "speak to your audience":
1. A one-page resume is for the human resources filters.
2. A detailed CV is for the people with whom you want to have a detailed conversation.
The human resource filtering problem is a serious one. From the point of view of HR, everyone in the world is applying to the job, regardless of experience, requirements or even location. HR might not even know what all the technical jargon means but they're looking to filter that pile down as fast as possible.
So, you need to write the one-page resume carefully to fit the position description and set of requirements. Yes, they're looking to see if you've ever held paying work and who they can call to confirm that. However, they're also looking for certain called out buzzwords and key points.
For example, if they use the phrase "required experience elements" in the position description, make sure that your resume has a bold "Experience elements:" section. If the description asks for "Java", make sure your resume describes your use of Java for each position or project that you list.
In short, the resume is all about taking away their excuse to say "No."
The CV is an entirely different thing. Someone who's interested in your CV knows a lot about the details of the position and wants to have a detailed conversation with you. With the CV, you have the ability to reduce a lot of the friction: you're already volunteering plenty of the "tell me about this project..." content up front.
Here's what I did:
1. Rewrite the resume from scratch for every job, tuning the words to fit the position description. It's not that onerous: it's only a page.
2. Offer the CV in correspondence. These days, I would probably point them to LinkedIn or careers.stackoverflow.com
3. If I was called in for an interview, I would brought several paper copies of my resume and CV tucked in to my portfolio of previous work.
Repeat all of the above far more times than I like to remember and eventually you find a paying job....
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: Since others have this covered fairly well, I'll add only this: make sure that your main bullet points are recent!
Here's a few examples:
When you're applying to colleges, they want to know what you did in high school. They don't care about K-8(in the US). They want to know extracurricular activities, standardized test scores, etc.
When you're applying for grad school, they want to know what you did in college. What's your overall GPA, what's your major's GPA, GRE scores, extracurricular activities, undergrad research positions, internships, etc.
When you're applying for your fifth job in your career, they want to know what you did at your previous jobs. They may still be interested in knowing your Alma Mater, graduation date, and GPA, but they're less interested in all of the details. You've had 4 jobs since college, and they want to hear about your successes in those jobs.
Likewise, when leaving academia for industry work, they will want to hear about your grad work first and foremost. Others have mentioned the kinds of information you should include - such as skills - so I won't say much other than to say these look good:
* Education
* Work experience (including teaching positions and internships)
* Selected Honors, Awards & Fellowships
* Programming Skills
Teaching experience can easily translate into communication experience. Communication is a great skill to have in the industry, and if you're able to communicate with technical and non-technical folks alike, that is a *huge* advantage.
Honors, awards and fellowships are proof that you're not lazy, that you're motivated, have initiative, etc.
On the other hand, your last two bullet points about publications and workshops probably won't gain you much, if anything.
In short, make sure to highlight your accomplishments in college, nothing earlier than undergrad, and focus on your graduate years.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_7: I'll just add a few points a couple of friend as recruiters told me.
The Interviewing process usually goes through HR first, believe me, they could not care less about your publications.
That is the short form CV, is the one you usually give out first. And since is HR people who will be looking at it first, you have to put emphasis on WHAT tools you know how to use.
For example:
* My research consisted on the optimization of distributed systems
That is mute for an HR, and more than one TI manager. But if instead you rewrite.
* During my research, I used extensively tools like HADOOP and JAVA in a team setting, using collaboration systems like Github (even saying subversion might not help at all).
Both sentences are saying the same, but in the second one you are specifying which tools did you used.
Remember that academic buzzwords like "parallel computing" , "probabilistic inference", etc. Do not mean much for many recruiters. They care about the tools, and how long have you worked with them.
If you have a github repository with some examples, that might help them as well (I'm assuming you are a programmer)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: Assuming you're looking into joining a Dev Shop, I'd ensure that your CV includes your engineering skills.
What do I mean by engineering skills?
Which source control tools are you familiar with?
Which test frameworks have you used?
Have you used any CI tools (i.e. Hudson)?
Which Agile methodologies do you use?
Have you contributed to any open source projects?
Do you have a github account so that interviewers can see your code?
There is a perception that developers from Academia tend to be a little light on these skills, so it's important to ensure your CV describes them.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_9: If you already have industry experience, then highlight it *prior* to your academic achievements. Given that you don't have any industry experience, exploit your PhD thesis **as an actual project** in term of how did you manage, designed, developed and why it is significant especially to industry. It automatically qualifies as a project if it was not in theoretical computer science, otherwise you need to justify how the theoretical aspect is valuable for industry. From this point of view, you can add your PhD time frame as your *work experience* and demonstrate that research was actually working on a project. For many tech companies, even personal pet projects are considered valuable, so in that sense a good research project is invaluable.
Your CV should flow from a Summary, Skills, Experience and then Education. Remember, the industry is interested in your computer science skills not your qualification. The final and probably most important point is that you should aim for organizations closer to your field or at least the jobs which are closer to your skills rather than applying to every single developer/analyst position.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/02/24 | 957 | 4,112 | <issue_start>username_0: I've been in engineering PhD for 6 months and now considering transferring to another university. The reason is not academic, but family -- I'm in a long distance relationship with my boyfriend. We're both serious about this relationship and plan to get married. However if I keep doing my PhD in my current university, we'll be separated for many years
I am considering transferring my PhD to university closer to him. My questions are:
1. Should I contact the potential future advisor first before telling my boss I'm leaving?
2. When should I talk to current advisor and how (focus on my family reason?)
3. Is it possible to get his letter of recommendation, or I'll screw up this relationship entirely?
4. will it possible to transfer to an university better than my current one? (honestly getting to a higher place is not my purpose, believe or not, but around my BF's place are almost all very good universities (1 tier higher than my current one), which actually refused me when I applied them last time. So I'm very concerned if I could be able to enter them now)
One thing that comfort me is that because I work hard, my current advisor seems have good impression on me. But I don't know whether this will help. If anyone have any ideas, would you share your suggestion?<issue_comment>username_1: If your advisor is generally an emotionally sane person, he should be able to understand your position. If your advisor is not, you're better off finding out as early as possible, and then to run.
That said, the right time to talk to your supervisor is right now, for two primary reasons:
1. As you're working in a lab, it is quite likely that your supervisor would want to hire a replacement for you, which takes time.
2. Your supervisor may have contacts to the relevant universities, and be able to help you moving.
When it comes to what to talk about, there are two important aspects besides your wish to be closer to your family:
1. You'll want to reassure him that you are not leaving unfinished things around. Wrap up your experiments as far as possible before you leave, and be available to work on manuscripts after you're gone, too.
2. Do you plan to take your thesis topic with you? If so, you probably should discuss intellectual ownership with your advisor. Even if you feel it was your idea, he may disagree.
Finally, is there any risk that your current lab has some "secret techniques" that you'd "hand over" to the competition? If so, try to address potential concerns.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: **I did this.** I moved to a higher-tier department that had previously rejected me, after two years in my first PhD program, to be close to my SO. My former advisor and the other faculty in my research area were nothing but helpful and understanding.
The sooner you talk to your current advisor the better. The last thing you want to happen, no matter how friendly and understanding your advisor, is for someone to ask him "So why is Jae leaving?" before he knows you're thinking of leaving.
Be honest and direct. Keep in mind that you are asking for help—which is your advisor's job—not for permission to leave. Try to bring your advisor in as a collaborator in your move. Reassure him that you will finish whatever tasks are still on your plate, and that you are willing to help choose, train, and/or mentor your replacement if his thinks that would be appropriate. (Follow through.) Try to leave doors open for future collaboration, either through visits or remotely.
Finally, ask for a strong letter of recommendation, and for suggestions for potential advisors to contact. Since your target schools have already rejected you, you need strong evidence of excellence beyond your undergraduate record. Your current advisor is the strongest source of that evidence; people will take his letter very seriously. Conversely, *not* having a letter from your current advisor will raise a red flag.
Finally, if you can pick up a master's degree before you leave, that will raise fewer eyebrows when people look at your CV in the future.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/02/24 | 1,122 | 4,523 | <issue_start>username_0: As a male Ph.D. student in engineering, I have not had a problem with long hair at any of the reviews I've attended with funding agencies, conferences, etc. However, I wonder if search committees will view long hair in a negative light.
I would particularly like to know if anyone has known of any instance in which a male candidate's long hair worked against their chances of obtaining an academic position, but I've edited this question title to be more general with respect to a candidate's outward appearance attributes *which are under their control*.<issue_comment>username_1: First, let me place my answer in the context of American academia. I'm sure that in some other parts of the world social conventions are different.
Contemporary American academia is one of the more formally progressive and tolerant subsets of western society. There are American schools which recognize a student's right not to have any gender! Although this is an extreme point, academic culture places a premium on toleration of personal differences, to the extent that most hiring committees are instructed not to take such "irrelevant things" as personal appearance into account.
But do they? I think all human beings do, in some ways. I do believe that people who are more physically attractive make more attractive job candidates, all other things being equal (and there are lots of studies to back this up). Recently for health reasons I lost a substantial amount of weight, and I think that my relations with undergraduate students are noticeably better, e.g. resulting in higher evaluations. Of course this probably has at least as much to do with the way I (nonverbally) communicate that I perceive myself: being more comfortable in your own skin shows.
As a result, if long hair feels natural and good to you, then I would recommend that you keep it. Like Samson, it may somehow be a source of strength for you. I was going to say that even the fact that you're asking about it seems slightly strange, but then I remembered that as a graduate student I would shave my goatee every fall (when I was teaching) and let it grow every spring (when I wasn't). I have now had a goatee continuously since getting a PhD in 2003! I also used to dress more nicely for class than I otherwise would. While I still think that one should not wear clothing which is especially ratty in any professional context, I have long since learned that nobody cares whether I wear sneakers or a jacket or anything like that.
The other thing is that it is not 1964 anymore: the men who were long-haired youths in the 1970s are now some of the senior people around, and many are still proudly growing long what remains of their hair. Both of the men who have been department heads in my time at my present job grow their hair longer than what conservative mores would recommend, and the current chair has hair halfway down his back. It is really no big deal.
Let me say finally that the odd faculty member who mutters something sour about your hair probably had other reasons not to like you. And if not, do you really want colleagues who are so superficial and intolerant? Times are tough, but I think one needs to make feeling comfortable in one's own skin a high priority.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: We all agree that they *shouldn't*, but the truth is that probably they *are*, at least some of them. It's difficult to control subconscious feelings.
You can try to play the game in your favour, though: wear an elegant, smart outfit and make sure your hair is well groomed (there is a difference between "long hair" and "hasn't seen a pair of scissors in years"). What people are usually biased against is not long hair *per se*, but the feeling of untidyness and negligence that they associate with it; you have to disprove this unconscious mental association.
(Disclaimer: I've had long hair for 1/3 of my life, and cut it a couple of years ago).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: You are making a mountain out of a molehill. Just cut your hair and grow it back when you get the funding, job or whatever. Just keep it neat. Dress up nicely and conduct yourself well. Unless your hair is like the guy below, you should be fine.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_4: *By request:*
The simple answer to your question is the [Luxuriant Hair Club for Scientists.](http://www.improb.com/projects/hair/hair-club-top.html)
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/02/24 | 882 | 3,727 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm in a conundrum.
Due to a change in areas half way through my PhD, I find myself at the end of my training with no significant publications. I have one in press, and several in prep so in the next year I should have 3-4 if all goes well. I'm also at a top ten university in the US and have good recommendation letters etc...
My issue is: I need to get a job as soon as possible **in Europe** to be with my partner. I have applied to both post-docs and to some assistant professorships at smaller schools in his city thinking I should at least try but I'm feeling seriously under-competitive where the norm in my field is at least three papers by graduation.
I have an option to stay on as a grad student for a 6th year at my institution, but it would have to be remotely (as I will move to Europe anyway) and frankly, I don't want to have to do that (both because it's too hard to do research and I make little money). But it is a safe option, and might give me time to write up all the backlogged data I've recently acquired.
**So my options are to take an extra year with very little pay and apply later, or apply extensively and effortfully to jobs that will probably reject me, though there is a small chance I'll get one.**
In your experience, will people even consider PhD's with very few pubs, or impending pubs, and if so, are there things I can do to make my application look more competitive, e.g. should I explain myself (I don't want to make excuses though) or highlight grants and presentations?
Or should I just cut my losses and suffer through living abroad with no money and taking the extra time I would have spent applying to a million places to write up a bunch of papers and then try again next year with more confidence and competence, and maybe landing a better job?
Thanks!
UPDATE: I ended up getting short-listed for five institutions, two of which are top-tier, and ultimately was offered two assistant professorships and one post-doc. I am sure I would have been better off with more pubs but I'm glad I ended up applying for reach jobs as ultimately I think I ended up with some great choices, met a lot of people in the field, and most importantly, got a job!
Thanks for all your input.<issue_comment>username_1: Disclaimer: this question is seriously underspecified. For a reasonable answer we would probably need at least the city you are looking for, your field, your qualifications beside publications, etc.
That being said, I feel that the Assistant Professor market in Europe is **insanely** dry in most fields, and, honestly, getting an Assistant Professor position directly after your PhD graduation is very unlikely even with an extremely good CV. If your CV is not **absolutely** top-notch for your field, I am afraid applying is largely a waste of your time. On the other hand, at least in my field, getting a PostDoc is often comparatively easy and uncomplicated, and reasonably payed in many places. A PostDoc is also a really good time to write up a backlog of publications and improve one's CV, so maybe this is what you should be shooting for.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Just to clarify, OP, you are listing the papers in press and under review under your publications too, right? You don't have to wait till the thing is actually printed to put it on your cv, so long as it is absolutely unambiguous what status each paper has, whether it is under review, been sent back for revision, accepted for publication but forthcoming, etc.
You should also list current working drafts if but only if those drafts are good enough that you would not be embarrassed to email them to a search committee member instantly upon request.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/24 | 1,346 | 5,740 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm having some trouble understanding exactly what the [American Physical Society (APS) transfer of copyright agreement](http://journals.aps.org/authors/transfer-of-copyright-agreement) does and does not permit, and I was wondering whether someone here may have a clearer insight or previous contact with them to know exactly what their position is. Their [copyright FAQ](http://journals.aps.org/copyrightFAQ.html#eprint) is, I feel, not clear enough on the subject, and it's not quite clear how I should contact them about this.
The relevant paragraphs from the copyright transfer agreement are, I think
>
> 2. The nonexclusive right, after publication by APS, to give permission to third parties to republish print versions of the Article or a translation thereof, or excerpts therefrom, without obtaining permission from APS, provided the APS-prepared version is not used for this purpose, the Article is not republished in another journal, and the third party does not charge a fee. If the APS version is used, or the third party republishes in a publication or product charging a fee for use, permission from APS must be obtained.
>
>
>
and
>
> 4. The right to post and update the Article on free-access e-print servers as long as files prepared and/or formatted by APS or its vendors are not used for that purpose. Any such posting made or updated after acceptance of the Article for publication shall include a link to the online abstract in the APS journal or to the entry page of the journal. If the author wishes the APS-prepared version to be used for an online posting other than on the author(s)’ or employer’s website, APS permission is required; if permission is granted, APS will provide the Article as it was published in the journal, and use will be subject to APS terms and conditions.
>
>
>
The latter one looks pretty inclusive, but it does not specify whether all licensing schemes for e-print servers are acceptable or not. Similarly, in their I am worried, in particular, by a note in the [arXiv license help page](http://arxiv.org/help/license):
>
> The Creative Commons Attribution license in particular, permits commercial reuse and thus conflicts with many journal agreements.
>
>
>
In particular, posting to an e-print server may be construed as overstepping the rights granted by point 2 of the agreement, since it can be used by a third party as permission to republish it in print and charge a fee for it. If that is the only objection, then choosing a [CC Noncommercial-ShareAlike](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) license would be compatible with the above.
I have two specific questions about this.
* **Is my reading of these publicly available documents correct?** Did I miss important information either on these or other publicly available resources?
* Does anyone have specific experience with them regarding this question? Is there some specific contact for these matters?
(I believe the [non-exclusive license to distribute](http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/license.html), which is the most restrictive arXiv license, is definitely compatible. This question is mostly about the Creative Commons licenses.)<issue_comment>username_1: I don't think you can use any CC license with such a publishing agreement.
Point 4 allows you to post the article to preprint servers. This covers the [non-exclusive distribution license](http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/license.html) that Mangara mentioned in a comment: You permit arxiv.org to reproduce the article on their website. Importantly, you don't grant any rights to anybody else with this license.
If you put your article under a CC license, you would grant **anybody** the right to reproduce it (under conditions depending on the exact type of the license). Whether it is published on arxiv.org or not doesn't really matter here – arxiv.org will just be one of the potentially many users of this license. Looking at the [arxiv help page](http://arxiv.org/help/license), this is hidden behind the specific wording they use. For the non-exclusive distribution license:
>
> grant arXiv.org a non-exclusive and irrevocable license to distribute the article
>
>
>
which makes it clear that you are giving permission to arxiv.org and *not anybody else*.
For the CC license, they say instead:
>
> certify that the work is available under either the Creative Commons Attribution license, or the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license
>
>
>
that is, you don't give a license to arxiv.org specifically, but to the general public, and arxiv.org is just going to make use of that general license.
I don't think your publishing agreement allows you to issue a CC license, even the noncommercial one. The publisher does not allow you to grant a license to anybody, just specifically to "free-access e-print servers".
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: CC licences are incompatible with arbitrary restrictions
--------------------------------------------------------
Paragraph 2. of the copyright transfer agreement that you cite allows you "... to give permission to third parties to republish [...] provided the APS-prepared version is not used for this purpose, the Article is not republished in another journal, and the third party does not charge a fee."
Offering the content under a CC licence means that you're giving permission to third parties to republish that content, period. Even if they would republish it in another journal or charge a fee.
You can't give those permissions according to the APS agreement; and you can't require those restrictions under a CC licence; so that doesn't work out.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/24 | 1,294 | 5,769 | <issue_start>username_0: I have published a paper in a fake journal. I want to withdraw the paper from that journal.
After successful withdrawal from the fake journal, can I can submit the same paper to a legitimate journal?<issue_comment>username_1: I see two main barriers for this to happen, and I would not attempt to cross either unless the circumstances were truly exceptional.
* If your paper is already published, you will most likely have transferred either the paper's copyright or a very wide license to the original journal. You can probably force the journal to retract the paper, but if you want the copyright you will have to ask for it back, and it is legally up to them whether they want to give it back or not.
* Most journals have a policy of only accepting works which have not already been published. This would make it very hard for your paper to get into the second journal, and the editors would most likely have to make an exception to their rules. This is up to them, and I would advise you to contact them beforehand to see whether they would be willing to do something along these lines.
The worst case scenario is one where the paper is very visibly retracted, you do not get the copyright back, and you cannot republish it anywhere. I can't really imagine any degree of shadiness of the original journal that would make this outcome preferable, because a retraction will leave a very visible, very black mark on your publication record for a long time. As mentioned in the comments, retractions are vivid indications of academic misconduct, plagiarism, or just plainly incorrect findings, and rarely of anything else. Therefore, you should be really careful that this doesn't happen.
I would advise you to take this in stages. First, read all the documentation you have available. Read very carefully, in particular, anything you have signed, either in paper or electronically, to the original journal. Check all their publicly available policies, and particularly those on licenses and copyright. Check also what your new target journal states as their requirements that submissions be 'new, unpublished work'.
Armed with this information, contact your new target journal first, to see if they will re-house your paper after it's been withdrawn, and what conditions they would require for this. Do not move forward until you have good assurances of a good home for your paper, or you risk ending up with a homeless paper.
After that, you should contact the original journal. If you gave them the copyright, you will have to ask for it back but you should be prepared for them to say a plain no. I suppose that if you gave them a more restrictive license then you can ask that they take it down and find out how you can revoke it, but you should be aware that author contracts do not normally include anything like that. Be polite and explain why you are doing things but be prepared for things to turn adversarial; you are after all out to affect their revenue stream.
---
Mostly, though, why don't you consider your options in terms of fixing the damage this publication has done to your record? Publishing in a predatory journal without knowing it is something that can end up happening to anyone (which is why one should always exercise maximum care when opting for a new publication venue).
Keep in mind that the venue of publication does not affect the quality of your paper, but only (potentially) how it is perceived by others. This can be palliated by other means: for example, take the paper to conferences and explain and defend your findings to your peers. Work especially hard at making sure the material finds its way to the hands of people who will use it and cite it, and that will help validate it as good research in a possibly shady journal.
If the journal is not very visible or accessible, post it to an eprint repository if it is possible (though of course only if other republication options are exhausted and allowed by your original journal, or if you are prepared for your relation with them to turn adversarial). Consider building a bigger paper, formally a derivative work, which you can then publish in a journal you're happier with.
In short, there are many options available to mitigate the damage done by a paper in a journal you (and whatever review boards you might come across) don't like. Think them through before you attempt something which is as potentially damaging as this.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: First: I'm not a lawyer, and StackExchange is not a place to pursue legal advice.
Depending on exactly what you mean by "fake," you might want to consult a lawyer. If the journal lied or mislead you then you may have grounds to litigate for contract fraud. It may be possible to revoke the contract, get an injunction against further publication or distribution of your paper, or claim monetary damages. Arguing this successfully would require showing that the journal *knowingly* mislead you with an intent to profit off your work. There are other reasons to claim that a contract should not be enforced as well.
Be warned that merely having an unsatisfactory outcome is not illegal. Making a bad deal is not generally something the courts are going to protect you from.
A random website synopsis for US contract fraud: <https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/what-is-contract-fraud.html>
A random website synopsis for when a contract is unenforceable: <http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/unenforceable-contracts-tips-33079.html>
I'd also consider the possible ramifications to your career before pursuing any course of action. Litigation is a high-visibility thing and at best it would seem you're going to come across as naive or gullible.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/25 | 1,595 | 6,798 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm struggling with deciding to which type of school to go in order to gain a better research experience. Basically, the research experience is the most important factor for me to decide my college, since I want to be a strong applicant in PhD admission. Most reputable, research universities are far larger than LACs (liberal arts colleges), and they (except for top schools like HYPSM) are not so friendly places for those who want to conduct their own research and engage in research from Sophomore or even Freshman. To get rich research experience, I want to be involved with research as early as possible and not only during the summer but also throughout a year. Just for example, Reed College has mandatory Senior thesis like Princeton, and profs are eager to help even Sophomores to do their research. However, in research universities, I can take graduate-level courses and touch with cutting-edge research as a research assistant. So, I can gain more advanced knowledge than those in LACs.
Could you tell me your recommendation both for me and those who have the same aspiration?
\*If my question is too vague, please just compare UC Berkeley/University of Michigan vs. Reed College/Carleton College. I'm sure this will be a good comparison, since the quality of the students are almost equal.<issue_comment>username_1: I wouldn't say that any university "type" is universally better or worse for gaining undergraduate research experience. The culture with respect to undergrad research varies so much, even within one school.
My advice is to look up the Biology faculty in the schools you are considering, and identify those you would be interested in working with. **Do your homework** - don't just spam the entire department. Then email them:
Dear Professor {X},
I am {applying to, accepted into} the B.S. program in Biology at {University}. I am interested in pursuing a PhD in {specific area related to X's research} when I graduate, and am hoping to start doing research early in my B.S.
I am very interested in your ongoing research on {subject area}. {Say something intelligent about subject area that demonstrates your ability to contribute.} Do you take on undergraduate research students?
(I highly recommend reading the tips here for contacting a prospective research advisor: <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/advice/prospective.html>)
By doing this, you'll get a good sense for where you're most likely to have undergraduate research opportunities, and a head start on finding a potential research advisor.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I went to a small liberal arts college and worked at a large university lab, that had undergraduate interns. From both experiences I agree that it is the lab and not the school that matters. However, there are conditions that you will be more or less likely to find, depending on the type of school. In general liberal arts colleges will give you more personal attention and large universities will have more resources. Funding at liberal arts colleges is focused on undergraduate education and funding at larger universities is focused on research.
**Personal Attention:**
*Liberal arts:* A lab is led by a principal investigator or PI. Liberal arts colleges often do not have graduate students or have few graduate programs. So, at a small liberal arts college you will work closely with your PI and get to know them well. I left my college with great letters of rec that helped me overcome a poor GPA (due to a medical problem in my first two years) and get into grad school.
*University:* The undergrads were trained by PhDs and post docs and had little contact with the faculty. Post docs and PhDs can often be great teachers, though, since they either are students or were students recently and might be able to anticipate the student's perspective. At a university, they will normally write your letters of recommendation and the faculty will sign them.
**Independence:**
*Liberal Arts:* All of our grants were training grants, so the emphasis was on teaching, as opposed to producing results. This means you will get to do more independent work. I got first hand experience with the equipment (EEG) and techniques (analysis of FMRI and EEG data) that few undergraduates get to use. Additionally, I know of at least two of my friends who published, as first authors, in major research journals. This is not uncommon in my school.
*University*: The undergrads had to learn a program that is no longer used by most labs in the field. There was little room for mistakes (all of the labs grants were research grants), so the undergrads were given the task of modifying previous work and really did not develop any understanding of how the program actually works. However, this lab was an older lab. I also believe students at an older lab at my undergraduate school had a similar experience, where the methodology they were taught was not consistent with current standards in the field.
**Connections:**
They are pretty equal in this area. Liberal arts college professors often collaborate with people at larger institutions and can connect you with other labs. I have friends who got summer jobs at Stanford and CalTech this way. At the large university, one of our undergrads got to go to Oxford for the summer, because of the professor's connections to a lab there.
**Equipment and Resouces:**
*Liberal arts:* We did not have access to some of the most expensive equipment (an MRI, for example). However, one of my professors also worked at a local university that had access to an MRI and we got to use it there. Ideally, you should get some lab experience at a major research university, so you are exposed to techniques that require more expensive equipment. You can do this during summer internships. Getting more experience at different labs will look good on your application.
On that note, a liberal arts college is more likely to have grants that will help students study at other institutions. My college had several such grants for student research grants. Additionally, all senior thesis was funded by the department. The senior thesis funding and one of the summer fellowships both require students to focus on their own original ideas. In most fields the first author is the person who had the idea for the project. This is how undergraduate students were able to become first authors.
*University:* Universities will have the best equipment, but they are less likely to have funding for student research. The institution I worked at had grants for students, but they were only for work at that university. They also had no specific grants that would allow students to propose their own projects, based on their own ideas.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/02/25 | 1,474 | 5,492 | <issue_start>username_0: This question is in response to [this very interesting question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17374/how-to-withdraw-publication-from-fake-journal-and-resubmit-to-legitimate-journal). The original post mentioned that they wish to retract their paper from a "fake" journal. I don't know what a fake journal is but better safe than sorry so I want to make sure what defines a fake journal. In the comments, other people also mentioned "shady" journals and "predatory" journals. This is the first time I encounter these descriptions so I would like to know more about what they entail. I would be interested in hearing about your experience with such journals as well, if any.<issue_comment>username_1: A "fake" or "shady" journal is a low-quality journal that does little or no quality control.
They are often called "predatory" because they prey on people who are under a lot of pressure to publish, charging high author fees for promises of quick publication. (Since they do little, if any, peer review, the time from submission of a paper to publication is often very quick in these journals).
They often engage in deceptive practices to make themselves appear legitimate, such as:
* Pretending to be affiliated with a reputable professional society
* Claiming an "impact factor" when they do not have one, or when they have an "impact factor" from some entity other than Thomson Reuters ISI
* Listing important academics on their editorial board, when these people never agreed to serve in this capacity.
Publishing in one of these journals can be very damaging to your academic career. At best, it shows that you don't know what journals are considered reputable in your field; at worst, it makes you look like you are trying to "get" publications without doing the work required to publish in a reputable, high-quality journal.
An academic librarian named <NAME> kept a list of open-access [journals](https://web.archive.org/web/20170111172309/https://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/) and [publishers](https://web.archive.org/web/20170112125427/https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/) that **he** considered to be "predatory." (The links are to archived versions of the pages). His lists were quite well-known - you may hear people refer to "Beall's List" when talking about predatory journals.
Between the growth of open-access and the Internet making it possible for literally anyone to start a "journal," these "journals" have been popping up at an alarming rate. The NY Times even ran a [story](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudo-academia.html?pagewanted=all) about it recently.
Upvotes: 8 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: <NAME>, who works for the University of Colorado, Denver, maintained a [list](https://web.archive.org/web/20170112125427/https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/) of predatory journals. He also publishes his [criteria](https://web.archive.org/web/20170103170856/https://scholarlyoa.com/2012/11/30/criteria-for-determining-predatory-open-access-publishers-2nd-edition/) for determining which journals/publishers are predatory. (both links are to archived version of the pages) The criteria are numerous (and I find many of them amusing). The main thrust of the criteria are such things as:
1. Lack of transparency (in both business model and editorial process)
2. Disregard for intellectual property
3. Promise to publish anything in exchange for money
4. Dishonesty (in business model and editorial process)
5. Poor (or no) peer review
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: ... and a very good question indeed. The present answers do a good job, but it's worth emphasizing that there is a whole continuum between legitimate journals and what amount to conning schemes.
"Predatory" is used to describe a journal that hinges its business model on getting article processing charges from authors, whilst providing a very low quality journal. "Fake" is less defined, but it carries the connotation of a journal that pretends to carry out rigorous peer review but in fact doesn't (which is what makes it damaging on a CV: it looks like you too want to skip formal peer review but pretend you still did it).
"Shady" is a much more informal term, and denotes a journal anywhere in that continuum. I intentionally used this term in [my answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/17376/820) to keep it broadly applicable, in terms of any journal of possibly not-so-good standing which is, after publication, thought to have a negative impact on one's CV.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: There is a special class of 'fake journal'. Some long-standing real (but minor) journals, which are listed on the Web of Science, but only have print editions and haven't moved online, are having fake websites created by criminals, which are purporting to be the official website of the journal. In essence, the identity of a real journal has been 'hijacked'. Obviously, the websites charge 'article processing charges', which is why these scams exist, but the articles 'published' are NOT listed as part of the output of the journal on the Web of Science. Most of these journals have been forced to very quickly enter the internet age to try and fight this! This is surprisingly common - see the (archived) list of hijacked journals here: <https://web.archive.org/web/20170111172313/https://scholarlyoa.com/other-pages/hijacked-journals/>
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/02/25 | 515 | 2,142 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm interested in going to grad-school but I have been working at a "real job" as a software engineer for the past few years (since I graduated with a BS in Math in 2010). What are the best ways to to break back into the academic world? How can I spin my work experience in a positive way to departments?
Ideally I would be getting a phd to study Mathy CS, or CSy Math.<issue_comment>username_1: We see a number of students who apply to graduate school after an undergraduate degree in math/cs followed by some years spent working at a not-any-realler-than-faculty job. In short, what admissions committees would like to know is:
* what have you been doing since then, and in what way does it influence your current interests and desire for grad school
* have you continued working on projects on the side ? (not a problem if not, but good if yes)
In other words, I don't view work experience as a negative in CS. In fact it's a bit of a positive because the student then usually knows what they want to do and is a lot more focused about it. There's a lot more maturity as well.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I have seen people coming from top companies like Google into PhD and still they struggle a lot during their PhD. So, when it comes to research, the work experience is not everything. You can see it from a couple of different perspective.
1. Given that your "real job" is relevant to your future program, a good practitioner style CV would be beneficial.
2. Also, if your "real job" is truly cutting edge AND you maintain good relationship with your past organizations AND you can demonstrate that you can use your industry experience to involve organizations in a way that it will add empirical component to your research, THEN it is quite an attractive offer for universities. Too good to refuse.
3. However, if your "real job" is yet-another software engineering job and distant to your future program, then your industry experience is somewhat irrelevant.
On top of it all, for US universities a low academic scores such as GRE could be deal breaker with or without experience.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/02/25 | 2,894 | 12,055 | <issue_start>username_0: **Main concern:** I am looking at PhD programs in Germany and the UK (vs US programs). Ideally, I would like to end up at a small liberal arts college (I got my BA from one). So I know I want a program with teaching requirements. I think this rules out France and Switzerland, but I believe many German PhD programs have teaching requirements. I also think the UK has teaching opportunities as well.
*Are there other factors I should be thinking about?*
**Specific Concerns I've thought of**
First, am I wrong in my assumption that there are only small liberal arts colleges in the US? Or are there places in Europe, where you can get the same research, teaching, and mentorship balance?
I know that liberal arts departments are smaller. Should I be worried that a foreign school that is good in my field might not be known in the department that I am applying to?
Also, I had a friend at Oxford, who said that she would need to do a postdoc (in a field that doesn't normally require them), because US universities will not see her 2 year masters + 3 year PhD, as equivalent to a master + 5 year PhD in the US. I'm in the sciences and my field doesn't normally require a masters. Should I also be concerned?
**Reasons**
I am currently a Master student in a European program that allows us to do research in multiple countries (theoretically anywhere that will take us, but we have specific connections to France, Germany, and Switzerland). So far I really like the science culture here. I like how easy it is to collaborate with and even work in different labs. In my experience, PhD students in the US just don't have the mobility that EU students. I have an interdisciplinary focus, so this is very attractive to me. I also am interested in a very specific topic and there is better funding for it in Germany and (I think) in the UK.
In the US, it is hard to find a school with more than one lab working on the topic, I'm most interested in, so I like the idea of applying to the lab rather than the school. I am willing to consider working on related areas, but I'm not sure if I can spend 5 to 7 years working on something that is only tangential to my main interests. On the other hand, my Master program has a general focus and I would be interested in taking more classes that are specific to my main interests.<issue_comment>username_1: It's hard to get a job teaching in America unless you do the degree in America. This is because so much of getting an academic job, especially at a small teaching college is going to depend upon personal connections.
Think about it from their point of view. The hiring committee wants somebody who is a good scholar, a good teacher, and a good citizen of the department (in some order, which factors are more important differ from school to school). It's really hard to evaluate somebody in depth along all three of those axes. It's even harder when you have a pile of three or four hundred applications for one job. So you use shortcuts.
One quick shortcut is no Ph.D. in hand, or a Ph.D. from a place that has a bad reputation. That cuts your pile to 200 or so applications. Then you look and see who doesn't have any good publications or presentations. Now you're down to 100 or so candidates, all of whom are very strong, but you're only going to be able to interview about 20 or so. So the next thing you look at is letters of recommendation. The way you get from that pile of 100 to the pile of 20 is by having letters of recommendation from people that members of the search committee have heard of. There's a chance that they've heard of your famous german mentor, but there's an even better chance that they haven't. Take two scholars X and Y of equal ability, but where X is an American and Y is a German. Let X and Y have equally good publication records and so on, it's still far more likely that the search committee has heard of X than that they've heard of Y, because they've got to conferences with X and heard X's papers and been impressed by him over drinks, etc. This matters hugely in terms of getting hired in the ultra competitive world of academic hiring, and so doing a degree abroad is always going to handicap you.
The only exception I can think of are Oxford and Cambridge. American scholars tend to know the names of those folks, and those two universities have such a strong reputation that you might not get penalized in this way having the degree from them. Everywhere else is a danger zone.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: There is no specific requirement in the UK for teaching as a part of a PhD. The exception is when a University grants funding on the proviso that teaching work is undertaken - however, this is a separate contractual issue to the academic requirements of obtaining the PhD itself.
Having said that, most departments in the UK rely upon their PhD students for teaching (normally running tutor groups) and the available hours are handed out as evenly as possible. All you can do is to ask the department to which you are thinking of applying if teaching hours are available.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: I have not lived or worked in Europe, so discount accordingly, but my understanding is that, *yes*, "liberal arts college" does not really exist there. Also higher education in Europe is (at least in many parts; less so in the UK) already significantly more specialized than most US undergraduate education: the "Diplom thesis" that Germans write to get what is chronologically closest to an American bachelor's degree is often of a greater depth and sophistication than an American master's thesis (in mathematics, anyway). I am not really making a direct comparison, but one key to your question is that American liberal arts colleges and American research universities lie on a certain axis with respect to educational philosophies, and on this axis a European university would not lie between them but on the research university side.
Liberal arts colleges look carefully at their applicants for their familiarity with the issues of the above paragraph: they want their candidates to have had some direct prior experience with the liberal arts side of things. Candidates who have gone only to American research universities have real work to do to convince liberal arts colleges that they understand and value the liberal arts college product, to the extent that I think they should be doing some teaching-related activity which is above and beyond standard graduate student teaching. With this kind of additional work and attention, research-university candidates can still be successful...but I have still found that liberal arts colleges pay a bit more attention to **pedigree** -- i.e., where you got your degrees -- than research universities of the same quality.
So I think that doing your graduate training in Europe would be a strike against you, yes. If I were at a liberal arts college, I would worry that the culture of teaching in Europe is so different from that of the US that some of the acquired teaching experiences could actually be detrimental to acquiring good American liberal arts teaching practices. That's my general answer. The fact though that you went to a liberal arts college yourself is a huge point in your favor: that seems to be the best possible way to show familiarity with the liberal arts college ethos.
Overall I would say: if you know that your goal is to end up at a liberal arts college, doing graduate work in Europe is not the best preparation for that, no. But since you have liberal arts college experience, it shouldn't absolutely exclude you; rather, if for other reasons you find a European graduate program very desirable, you should be thinking from the beginning about how to keep yourself attractive to liberal arts colleges while doing so (e.g. a summer teaching opportunity in the US).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: While my answer is pretty close to <NAME>'s, I'd like to put it a little differently: by doing a Ph.D. In Europe, you are taking a huge risk; there's a reasonable chance (not surety, probably not even balance of probability, but real chance) that you will end up with a record that will make you completely unhireable at a liberal arts college. Similarly, no matter what, you will be closing off the possibility of some liberal arts schools who are not going to consider a foreign Ph.D. Keep in mind, no matter where you're applying, there are going to be people with strong teaching records from institutions in the US in the candidate pool, and it's going to feel much lower risk to hire one of them rather than someone with a foreign Ph.D.
I want to emphasize, I'm not saying all, but some number will. I would only consider staying in Europe if you see a benefit that outweighs that risk, which I am not seeing in your current question, but I don't know the whole situation.
(Of course, you're taking a reasonably large risk by getting a Ph.D. anywhere and hoping enough liberal arts schools are still hiring by the time you finish. Nothing in life is sure.)
One good experiment: look at the CV's of young faculty at the sort of schools you're interested in being hired at. See what you find on them; that will probably be more valuable than whatever we're telling you.
You should also know, a lot of American academics think that in Europe, quality teaching is valued even less than in the US (I'll note, I'm not making a judgement about whether this is true, but simply that this is a widely held bias), so even if you have considerable experience with teaching in Europe, it may not actually help much. Schools are going to look not just at quantity but quality. They like to see class evaluations and reports from classroom observations, for example, so look carefully at what you'll be able to get those wherever you're going in Europe, and whether the courses you'll be doing are at an appropriate level.
**tl;dr**: it's possible that one could make this work out, but it's a big risk, so I would only consider it if you see a big benefit on the other side.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: It's not impossible to get a PhD in Europe and then get hired in the US. I got my PhD in the Netherlands and a couple of years later got shortlisted for a tenure-track job at Stanford, no less. One of my grad school advisors got his PhD in Belgium and then got almost immediately hired at a SLAC (he then decided to return to Europe after a few years), as did a girl who was in a cohort a couple of years behind mine.
The reason why these stories are relatively uncommon is because the structure of graduate programs in Europe and the US is quite different. In Europe, there tends to be a disproportionate emphasis on producing a dissertation. I've met a number of people who have spent their *entire* time in graduate school (three or four years) working on their dissertations to the exclusion of everything else. In contrast, in US programs, the dissertation is just one requirement among many; before you even start to write your dissertation, you have to spend a couple of years taking courses, write one or two qualifying papers, and/or pass a qualifying exam. As a consequence, students with a US PhD tend to have a breadth of knowledge that students with a European PhD typically lack. Unsurprisingly, the European students that get hired or shortlisted in US institutions are invariably those that make a deliberate decision to delay writing their dissertation until their last 12-18 months, so that they can have a couple of years to take the kind of courses and do the type of research that gives them a breadth of knowledge comparable to that of their US peers.
So, if you want to study in Germany, what you want to look for is the kind of school and the kind of advisor that will push you to get out of your narrow topic of research and dabble in other subfields. If you can't find this much, you'll be better off going to a US graduate program of comparable standing.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/25 | 1,113 | 4,740 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm a first-year student at a top 100 university studying computer science. I have looked at all the different fields of software for which I can get into and I am personally most interested in exploring a career in AI and/or machine learning.
Basically, I am wondering what my college studies should look like in order to make my interest a reality. Its obvious that I need to learn computer programming but are there any other less obvious topics which I should study up on? I have heard that I need to know every field of math, quantum mechanics, physics, and a bunch of other stuff, what is the reality of this?
Last question, is graduate school necessary if I want to go into an advanced field like AI? Are there any paths other than graduate school which I can use to get into the career?
Thanks for your help.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> [I]s graduate school necessary if I want to go into an advanced field like AI? Are there any paths other than graduate school which I can use to get into the career?
>
>
>
"Go into AI" is pretty broad. What sort of job do you want to be doing? Theoretical research? Software development? Engineering? To get an idea of what jobs are out there you can look through the job postings at Google Research, Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Amazon Research, and so on. All of these do ML and AI.
They have position all along the spectrum from things that only require undergraduate degrees to things that require PhD's. I have no experience with the non-PhD path, so I can't tell you much about that, but a lot of their internships are geared to ML/AI PhD students spending their summers there, and then those same people get their degrees and apply for research jobs at those companies.
>
> I am wondering what my college studies should look like in order to make my interest a reality.
>
>
>
I can tell you what is useful to know for ML and AI, besides programming: In computer science, you need to have a good grasp of the theory, taught in courses like Theory of Computation and Algorithms. Some schools also teach an undergraduate AI course. Machine learning can be viewed as the intersection between computer science and statistics, so basic statistics is important. A lot of AI and ML has to do with (mathematical) optimization, for that you need a good grasp of linear algebra and multivariate calculus. Some methods (like neural networks) require understanding differential equations and partial differential equations (but I would put those down as fairly optional, you'll learn the relevant material if you ever need to).
The reality is, if you are going to go to a graduate program in AI/ML, you'll learn all the AI/ML-specific things you need to learn there. What you need to know to get accepted into the program is very variable on a program-by-program basis, but the reality is that the coursework probably won't be the most important thing in the admission process. If you're going straight for a job out of college, employers probably won't care much about your coursework either. It will be all about how you do at the interview, which will be very variable on an employer-by-employer basis.
---
At the end of the day, my suggestion is to think about what job you want to end up doing and work backwards from there to figure out what you need to do to get it.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Firstly, I congratulate you for thinking in these lines at your initial engineering days itself.
My answer for you is that, no subject is ignored to make a machine (lifeless object) intelligent. But still focus on these subjects like Eng.Maths, \*data structure (code it understand it), compilers design, os, dbms, nlp, ai, etc-- to expertise in the space of Artificial Intelligence. Don't consider them just as a subjects learnt it like a Pro.
For most of the C.S.E students completing their B.tech, will have two option either research or Development.
But many of them will fail in understanding what they are capable of. For this matter I would ask you to get good mentor first and do some projects on ML, AI. Understand the algorithms. You should do the projects that you are nowhere less than a typical AI developer.
Having all this done, by the end of your course you will be able to figure out either to go for research or development.
***As per me,***
If any student wants to explore more insights of the Algorithms/Mathematics or want enhance the existed algorithms or really passionate to design a new algorithm they *can go for Research.*
If any student wants to make business out of the existed technology then they *can go for Development*.
Hope this will be helpful to any cse student.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/25 | 1,178 | 4,999 | <issue_start>username_0: After you have finished a PhD when does it become inappropriate to ask your advisor for advice, read over a manuscript, or do any other "advisor things"? Presumably if every student an advisor ever had continued to act as if the former advisor was still his/her advisor, the professor wouldn't get anything else done. Basically how should one interact with the former advisor once the PhD is finished?<issue_comment>username_1: My advisor, at two different points in my academic career, said:
1. "I am your advisor for life. You can always count on me."
2. "I think it's time for my old students to start finding new people to comment on their work."
I took away from this that your advisor should always be available at some level, it's part of the point of taking on students. You are part of their scientific (or otherwise scholarly) contribution. At the same time, post-PhD you have to develop your own network of support, which is part of your growth as a scholar.
But how do you know when to do this? I think the best answer is simply to ask your advisor (see, they're always there to answer the hard questions). Hopefully they'll give you an honest opinion - either to keep asking them for help or that they think you're ready to fly on your own. Either, if you don't feel confident that you have enough peers to count on, it's probably a sign that you both can still ask your advisor for help *and* that it's time to put some more energy into expanding your professional network.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Honestly, I'm not sure if it ever becomes "inappropriate" to have your advisor continue to give you advice, to read manuscripts, or even to help write them (as long as that person gets authorship credits), unless of course, your advisor says, "No".
Many universities however evaluate a tenure-track faculty member based on his or her ability to do independent research, which means that if your entire CV is filled with publications co-authored with your advisor, they will not consider you as doing independent research.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: After the Ph.D. the advice should get more career-y, and less student-y. So less, "hey will you look at this paper for me" and more "i've got this really great paper, but i'm not sure whether to publish it in a Journal X, or just expand it into a book?" Or, "man I hate my first job, but i'm getting close to tenure, do I need to go on the market again and try to move up before I get stuck?" stuff like that.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: All the answers here are very good. I'd just like to add one extra point.
There are often two kinds of advice one looks for in one's career:
* What should **someone** do in this situation ?
* what should **I** do in this situation ?
The first class of questions are things that often get asked on this forum, and are relatively easy for someone more experienced whose advice you respect to answer. And in fact it's useful to cultivate a few such people whose opinions you respect. When you're a student, most of your questions are of this kind.
The second class of questions are much harder: they're not really about the situation but about you. So the person answering has to know both the situation and understand some things about you. Sometimes (and not always) an advisor can provide that dual insight since they are both experienced, as well as experienced in understanding you. Again, this is not true for many advisors, but it can be true.
Of course, the best person to answer the second type of question is yourself :), but sometimes the perspective from outside helps.
What typically happens is that as you "leave the nest", you stop asking your advisor for answers to questions of the first kind, and you might occasionally still ask them for advice on the second kind of question. There are no hard and fast rules here.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: A few years after finishing my PhD I emailed my advisors (I had two) asking for advice about something. I prefaced the email with something like, "How long after finishing a degree is one entitled to ask one's advisors for advice?" One of them responded, "When they start asking you for advice, you might want to reconsider."
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: Note that something industry has been trying to do is encourage more employees to seek out mentors and/or become mentors -- either in working effectively with the company, or in specific skills (which may result in the new kid teaching the oldtimers).
Try not to waste their time with trivia you could teach yourself, and have the grace to be embarassed if you have to ask for advice on something you really should already know... and accept that sometimes the right answer is going to be "go read X and come back to me if you have specific questions" -- but if someone has the answer you need, there's nothing wrong with asking them how to approach the problem.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/02/26 | 1,046 | 4,427 | <issue_start>username_0: I am trying to understand this regarding aspects of funding only and not quality of research.What is difference between funding an PHD and an MS student.
I thought both took courses, get some stipend and advisor funds them.Maybe for PHD they fund students for 5 years instead of 2 years of MS ?
Is there any other major difference?
I understand PHD student's research output expectations are completely different.I am asking this question with specific regards to state universities in US.<issue_comment>username_1: *Disclaimer: this is US-specific and quite likely engineering specific.*
The only potential difference is that the rates for funding Ph.D students (post-candidacy) might be different to that of an MS student. But the difference is usually between types of funding(RAship, TAship, etc), not who gets funded.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: This is a US-based answer and maybe specific to Mathematics, but I think this generally applies.
From my understanding, the difference is only whether or not you have been admitted to the PhD program or not. Many times it is the case that you can be admitted to an MS program but not a PhD program until after you have passed some type of qualifying exams.
Depending on the university, you may see an increase in your pay after successfully completing the necessary qualifying exams, etc.
It is not necessarily the case that an advisor will fund you during your MS or PhD. At many universities, you will have an offer of a TA position (not related to research, as the name suggests), and you are required to teach / grade / hold recitations (depending on the university) in order to fulfill your TA contract. Often, you can attain funding from an advisor so as to 'cover' your teaching load for the semester or potentially the summer. The benefit here is that you are primarily spending your time on research and are not under a TA contract.
Often, if you have been admitted to a PhD program and passed your qualifiers, you will have the opportunity to teach higher level courses that a MS student would not.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Other answers pointed out that the amount of support for PhD students (post-qualifying exam) can be higher than M.S. students. However, in addition to funding levels, funding **sources** for PhD and M.S. students can be very different.
For example, in my lab (US, engineering), most of the M.S. students working as research assistants are supported by funds allocated by the **department** to the professor every semester. This money is given specifically for the purpose of creating extra educational and training opportunities for M.S. students, through participation in research.
Then, in my lab, the funds that support PhD students usually come from their advisors' **research grants**. (A small number of PhD students are funded by the department for a year, but this comes from a very limited "pool" that is separate from the M.S. student money, comes directly from the dept to the PhD student - not the professor - and is much harder to get. Some PhD students are funded by external fellowships, like NSF Graduate Research Fellowships.)
You didn't ask about undergraduate researchers, but we also have those in my lab, and they are often funded by the NSF from Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) grants.
Thus, in my lab there are certain funds that may be used only for undergrads (from NSF via REU grants); certain funds that can go only to M.S. students (from the department, via a pool of money allocated to create research opportunities for M.S. students); and certain funds that can go only to PhD students (from the department, via a pool of money allocated specifically for one-year PhD fellowships). Then there are funds (mainly, from the professor's research grants) that can be used to support any kind of student.
This is of course just an example - other labs will have entirely different "pools" of funds that they may draw from, which may or may not have restrictions as to who may use them.
It is entirely possible for a professor to be able to fund an M.S. student (because it comes out of departmental M.S. research opportunities money) and not a PhD student (because they don't have enough active research grants, or all their grant money is already committed, and the department PhD fellowship pool is empty).
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/02/26 | 601 | 2,577 | <issue_start>username_0: I just finished my masters studies. My question is, **will my age (29) affect my chances of getting a funded PhD position?** I finished Bachelor of Engineering when I was 24 (took 6 years to graduate, normally my program was 5 years). I worked as a Lab course assistant (teaching the practical part of the course at a local university) for 2 years before I started my MSc a bit late due to financial reasons. I started working in industry a year ago (for same financial reasons) in a computer science field but irrelevant to the research area. I know that most of PhD *scholarship* positions *officially* require the applicant's age to be under 35, but do not they prefer someone who is 25 rather than 34?
I have two conference publications, one in IEEE, and about to send the third for journal publication. My field is computer engineering with a focus on the software side and I am trying to apply in Europe mainly.<issue_comment>username_1: The short answer is: no. Quite the contrary, many universities value the experience (preferably from industry) so it is beneficial. Also, your conference papers will be the most important factors in getting the PhD position and/or funding. I'd also emphasize that you should highlight the fact that you have a journal article (preferably A or A\*) in progress.
I have not seen any such requirement which is restricting PhD or any academic degree to a specific age. In fact, doing so is illegal in most (read: all) European countries as it comes under age discrimination.
To narrow it down further, different funding bodies could impose their own restrictions per project, for instance DAAD's grant that you mentioned is "to promote and fund young artists" according to them, that is why it is restricted to a certain age group. A similar example could be feminist studies where it could be restricted to a single gender. Again, this has nothing to do with general conditions of admission.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In general, the idea of age restrictions is not to punish non-traditional educational paths, but to target "younger" professionals who are just getting started in their careers, rather than "returning" students. Thus, in some cases (including the DAAD link provided), you'll notice that there's a two-pronged requirement: either be under a certain age *or* have procured the degree within the last *X* years. This allows programs some flexibility while not excluding candidates who have made their way in a manner other than the traditional route.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/26 | 3,053 | 10,897 | <issue_start>username_0: I recently saw this infogram circling around various social networks:
It appeared in [this Tweet](https://twitter.com/AdamGDunn/status/432520636716441600/photo/1) with the following claim:
>
> Got a PhD? Your chance of becoming a Professor is 0.45%. Good luck.
>
>
>
Being a bit sceptical of the claim and of shiny info-grams in general, I traced the image back through [this blog](http://occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald/2014/02/08/thinking-about-the-pipeline/) to [this report](http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2010/4294970126.pdf) by the Royal Society (see page 14), featuring various reputable academics in the introduction. The report cites a number of other reports from UK organisations as its source (I did not dig deeper). The infogram seemingly pertains to graduates of PhDs in the UK in STEM fields.
I find the figures literally incredible. I cannot believe them. Fewer than 1-in-200 PhD graduates become professors? This would imply, for example, that STEM professors in the UK would need to graduate 200 PhD students just to "repopulate" themselves.
I would like to compare these estimates with figures sourced elsewhere. And so my question is:
**Are any other studies or sources of data for estimating the number of PhD graduates who end up with professorships?** (... preferably within the STEM areas and not restricted to the UK)
---
There is a related question specifically for the maths field and referring to tenure-track positions but none of the answers really address this question: [What percentage of phds in math actually get a tenure track academic job?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8236/what-percentage-of-phds-in-math-actually-get-a-tenure-track-academic-job)
EDIT: Pointer to a follow-up question asked by @gerrit: [How many PhD students does a typical STEM professor graduate during their entire career?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17461/how-many-phd-students-does-a-typical-stem-professor-graduate-during-their-entire/18096)<issue_comment>username_1: Under stable situation, this probably can always be approximated by dividing the number of professor positions by the number of the PhD student positions, and normally makes numbers below 10 %. Same way you can calculate your chances of getting any other reputable, sufficiently well paid position below professor.
Apart lots of hard work, making to professors also requires a great deal of success. Counting on this is same as counting on getting a gold medal in Olympics: somebody does, but if this is the *only* your reason to participate, be ready for disappointments.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: It's a shiny info-gram, but I think there is a lot wrong with it:
* It transports the (common) misconception that the 53% leaving to industry after their PhD are sort of *failed professors*. At least in CS, and probably a lot of other STEM fields as well, many PhD students start with the full intention of leaving academia sometime. Hence, the better question the diagram should be asking is *How many of those that want to become professors actually do?*. Basically, I could come up with similar low percentages for every field. Let's say less than 1% of all working population of a city works in supermarkets. Does that mean that supermarket jobs are horribly hard to break into? No, because most people do not have the career goal of working in a supermarket in the first place.
* Similarly for the 17% non-university research. In CS, good industry labs (like the ones at IBM or Microsoft) are preferable options for many researchers, so they would not take a professorship even if offered.
* As already stated by commenters above, the title *professor* means different things in different places. In Austria, for instance, many high school teachers are officially "professors" (tenured even), despite not having a PhD or ever doing research. In Great Britain, very few people are professors (most are lecturers or senior lecturers). In Madrid I know an academic research lab (not affiliated with a university) that calls their staff members *research professors*. Job titles are almost never clear-cut.
That being said, I do think that there is a problem. If we assume a reasonably stable system (number of professors in a discipline stays more or less constant), then every tenured professor is in average allowed to see *one* of her/his students through to also become a tenured professor. Given that many tenured professors (at least here in Europe) maintain groups of 15+ PhD students at a time, I is pretty obvious even without digging into the data too much that the job market for professors is insanely competitive (which, incidentally, captures my personal experience hunting for tenure-track positions pretty well).
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: An article in Physics World has more information, and appears to be the source of the figure in question (I'm not entirely sure if it is the *original* source, as the article draws it data from elsewhere). The article is [available to subscribers](http://physicsworldarchive.iop.org/full/pwa-pdf/25/10/phwv25i10a40.pdf), and the full citation is:
* *<NAME>. "The academic pyramid." Physics World 25, no. 10 (2012): 54-57.*
It appears to be [presently mirrored here](http://images.iop.org/dl/physicsweb/2012/PWOct12graduate-careers-web-small.pdf), and my information is drawn from the mirror. It answers some questions on data sources that were lost when the image got its own life without proper context. Data are for STEM fields, and are relevant for the United Kingdom. The figure caption reads:
>
> Transition points in typical academic scientific careers following a PhD. Based on data from the Higher
> Education Funding Council for England, the Research Base Funders Forum and the Higher Education
> Statistics Agency’s annual “Destinations of leavers from higher education” survey.
>
>
>
Furthermore, the article states:
>
> Statistics
> suggest that the vast majority of people who
> complete science PhDs will never obtain a
> permanent academic post. This is vividly
> illustrated in a diagram published in 2010
> by the Royal Society as part of a report on
> the future of scientific careers in the UK
> (figure 1). Drawing on data from various
> UK sources, the diagram follows a “typical
> academic career” through a series of post-
> PhD transition points, when large numbers
> of people leave the university environment
> for careers in, say, government or industrial
> research. These data show that less than
> 0.5% of science PhD students will ever
> become full professors, while just 3.5% will
> obtain lower-ranking permanent positions
> as research staff at universities.
>
>
> For physicists, that 3.5% figure is probably a little low. Slightly older data collected by the Institute of Physics and the
> US National Science Foundation suggest
> that the fraction of physics PhD students
> who obtain permanent academic jobs has
> historically hovered between 10 and 20%.
>
>
>
(...) But many more *do* want to stay in academia:
>
> Indeed, according to an August 2012 survey carried out
> by the American Institute of Physics (AIP),
> nearly half (46%) of new physics PhD stu-
> dents at US institutions want to work in a
> university. The next most popular career
> plan among those surveyed, attracting 18%
> of responses, was “unsure”.
>
>
>
For more information, the article points to the UK group [Vitae](http://www.vitae.ac.uk/), UK science advocacy group [Science is Vital](http://scienceisvital.org.uk/), and the [US NSF Statistics page](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics).
So, for physics, it appears between ¼–½ of PhD students who want to get permanent academic positions, ultimately succeed in doing so. That's a quite different figure than 0.5% (but still problematic, as the article discusses in some detail).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Just looked up some numbers for Germany:
* In 2013, 8700 PhDs were finished in maths/natural sciences.
* average age at finishing (all fields): 32.5 a
* average age at becoming professor (maths/natural sciences): 40.5 a
* predicted number of retiring professors in 2021 = in 8 years = when last year's fresh PhDs reach the average age of becoming professor
(maths/natural sciences): ca. 190
190 : 8700 ≈ 1 : 46 or 2.2 %
Some of the tables show only overall numbers, and no details for maths. But I think that this result is influenced by the fact that the majority of chemistry and biology students go on for a PhD (though I guess that a non-negligible fraction leaves for industry [slightly] before finishing the PhD - which after all may not be that different from doing a PhD in order to get a better entrance position in industry).
Sources: Statistisches Bundesamt
* [exam statistics](https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/BildungForschungKultur/Hochschulen/PruefungenHochschulen.html)
* [university staff statistics](https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/BildungForschungKultur/Hochschulen/PersonalHochschulen.html)
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_5: Another related data point quoted from the article "[The disposable academic](http://www.economist.com/node/17723223)" in the Economist.
>
> Indeed, the production of PhDs has far outstripped demand for university lecturers. In a recent book, <NAME> and <NAME>, an academic and a journalist, report that America produced more than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000 new professorships. Using PhD students to do much of the undergraduate teaching cuts the number of full-time jobs. Even in Canada, where the output of PhD graduates has grown relatively modestly, universities conferred 4,800 doctorate degrees in 2007 but hired just 2,616 new full-time professors. Only a few fast-developing countries, such as Brazil and China, now seem short of PhDs.
>
>
>
The ratio of doctoral graduates to new professorships reported here (16% for the U.S. figures, 54.5% for Canada) is orders of magnitude higher than the statistics quoted in the question (0.45%).
Though the quoted numbers are not directly comparable with those of the question (quoted numbers are not STEM while those of the question are STEM; quoted numbers are from US/Canada while those of the question are from the UK; etc.) it is hard to understand why there would be an orders of magnitude difference.
(Perhaps there is some semantic difference in what "professor" is interpreted as, perhaps having a stricter meaning in the UK -- suggested by <NAME> in his comment -- as being something closer to having an endowed chair.)
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/02/26 | 881 | 3,469 | <issue_start>username_0: When using an online library, tool, framework or something similar, what is the proper way to reference it in an article?
(I work in Computer Science). For example, I want to say that many popular implementations of the method presented in *[article reference]* use a slightly modified version of the main formula. I mention some examples for the implementation (e.g. [OpenCV](http://opencv.org/), [VLFeat](http://www.vlfeat.org/man/man.html)).
When thinking of a way to reference this, I have several dilemmas:
* I could *put a small explanation in a footnote* or *add it to the list of references*
* I could use the link to the *main webpage* or to *an online manual*
* do I reference it at all?
[This question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5482/4249) about how to reference Python is somewhat similar. The difference is that the tools I want to reference are fairly well known in my community (unlike Python for biologists).
In short, **I am looking for a good way to acknowledge tools, frameworks or libraries *not associated to any article* in my writing**.<issue_comment>username_1: If there where an article related to the presentation of the tool, framework or library then a proper citation should be used.
If you are looking for a good way to acknowledge tools, frameworks or libraries not associated to any article, (such as the case of Python) then you can do this in a footnote.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: I'd put emphasis on the **literature review** section of your article and/or thesis. From this perspective, there are two possible citation styles. First, instead of referencing a programming language, reference the concept that you are writing about. For instance, instead of saying
```
C++ (Stroustrup, 1986) is a programming language.
```
say
```
Stroustrup (1986) extends C to develop object-oriented programming by doing so and so.
```
In this way, you enrich your literature review and not simply accumulate references.
On the other hand, if the tool is quite novel and not used anywhere in literature yet, then cite who and where it was developed. For instance, SuperComp has developed SuperLang that you want to cite. It could look like this:
```
SuperComps (2014) develops Superlang for this and that so on and so forth.
```
The reference for it could be an online resource, book, manual, etc and will simply follow your referencing style e.g., APA, Harvard, etc.
So, you can simply cite OpenCV, VLFeat as either website, online resource, related paper, or patenting or licensing author(s).
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: A good citation has the following properties:
* Gives credit where it is due for an (idea, tool, dataset, etc.) that is not your own.
* Directs the reader of your paper where to look, if he/she wants to verify that your claims about the (idea, tool, dataset, etc.) are correct.
Any of the following can be used to cite a tool, as long as the above properties are satisfied:
* If the authors of a tool explain how they would like it to be cited, follow those recommendations.
* If there is a paper or tech report about the tool, cite that, because that is what the authors would probably want (if they didn't specify).
* If there is no paper or TR, cite the website of the tool.
Of course, in most cases, you're not the first person to cite the tool - go search Google Scholar for the name of the tool, and find out how others cited it.
Upvotes: 3 |
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