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102871 | My department delayed my viva and is being unprofessional. Should I report this?
I submitted my PhD thesis to my department last August for examination. However, I found out from my supervisor that my department only sent my thesis to examiners last November for examination. So it took them about 3 months to get my thesis to examiners. Before submitting my thesis, my supervisor already has elected examiners to examine my thesis and they all agreed to do so. Thus, there would be no problem in getting examiners to examine my thesis. And crazy thing is, when I confronted the staff who is supposed to handle my thesis examination, she nonchalantly said that she was so busy handling something else and she apologized for purposefully delaying my viva because her plate was full. I was beyond furious to learn how unprofessional she is when handling my thesis. Now I am thinking to lodge a report to the Dean of my school regarding how unprofessional my department was in handling my viva voce. But then, I'm scared that my department will have their vendetta against me when they found out that I made a report. Another option is to lodge a report to the Dean once I graduate from the PhD program but that seems like a cowardly move.
What should I do?
What part of the world is this taking place? In the USA I submitted my thesis directly to my committee, the members of which I had chosen. This setup you describe seems very different and you lack agency in the process.
Sadly in a developing country in Asia
Duplicate or at leasr heavily related to this q : https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/102860/72855
Not duplicate. I already called the person in charge and she explained the situation as above. This is totally different scenario. Perhaps I shoulf amend the thread together
Already contacted them and the person in charge purposefully delayed my thesis submission to examiners. Now should I report her unprofessional behavior to the Dean? That's I'm asking here.
Is it possible your supervisor wanted to read your thesis first, before passing it on? If that's what happened and your supervisor is busy and your thesis is quite long and complex, the delay doesn't seem surprising to me.
What is a viva? What do you expect to accomplish by reporting? Is your supervisor aware it did not go out until November? I would not call the delay purposeful. Too busy is negligent. Purposeful would be put it to the side to hurt you or some other intent.
Yes, supervisor already read everything and approved the thesis prior to submission. Since examiner is anonymous to student, person in charge in my department is responsible to send the thesis to examiners. But she delayed the supposed submission to examiners because she was busy
@Paparazzi A viva is an oral exam where the candidate defends their thesis, as explained here.
The title and the description do not match. Your description is clearly of incompetence, not purposeful delay. There was no purpose -- sending the thesis to reviewers just didn't happen.
A viva is an oral defence typically for a PhD. Masters' thesis does not generally require a viva. (@NicoleHamilton: the link you gave is subscriberwalled, we can't view it.)
@smci Archive.org has a copy of the article here: https://web.archive.org/web/20170917152759/http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ld/resources/presentations/viva/
I assume English is a second language for you.
Purposefully is not the correct word here.
in a way that shows determination or resolve
Purposely is what I think you mean
on purpose; intentionally
To me it does not sound like the delay was on purpose. It was negligent of the staff not to take the time to complete this fairly simple task. A three month delay is not reasonable and I can understand you are upset.
For sure the department as a whole did not do this on purpose.
I don't see how going to the Dean would help you. I don't see how that would speed up the process at this point.
If you do go to the Dean I suggest you not use words like on purpose or unprofessional. Communicate the problem and how it impacted you. It is fair to name the person responsible for the delay.
Maybe your supervisor could tell the examiners there was a delay and ask them review quickly.
I would vote for this answer without the first part included. Just start with "To me" without nitpicking the English. I think many native speakers would not know the difference between purposefully and intentionally
@Dawn I did not include that to nitpick. Sorry you took it that way.
If you think @Dawn's comment contained a helpful suggestion, you can always edit your answer to incorporate it.
Complaining about this won't speed up your defense or get your thesis to your committee any faster. It will just make you disliked within your department. Accept the loss of time, do your defense, get your degree, and start your next job. Unless there are specific rules against doing so, take the lesson that when getting your thesis to your committee and scheduling your defense date, no administrator will ever take the issue as seriously as you. So instead of delegating something you care a lot about to someone who doesn't care at all about this task, you could do these tasks yourself and get them done under a timescale you like.
In my school:1. Supervisor approved the thesis before being submitted. 2.I sent the thesis to person in charge in my department so she could send the thesis to respective examiners. Also in my school students cannot be made aware who their examiners are, hence the person in charge has the responsibility to get thesis sent to examiners.
This assumes the OP is in the US, which they clearly are not.
seems like under this system the students are being treated like babies and not being allowed to take responsibility. I bet this type of mismanagement happens often. Finishing PhD can be a very good time in your life because you should have time to relax and enjoy life. Try to slow down a bit and enjoy the moment because you will probably be overworked when you start your next job.
eh I think it's fine as is
In some countries, such as Germany, the process is much more bureaucratic than in the US. It’s not that they’re treating the candidates as children; it’s just a very burdensome process.
Still an active participant would be able to follow up on the stages of bureaucracy, "hello, was my thesis distributed to my examiners?" etc
Indeed, in the UK contacting your examiners prior to the exam would be seen as serious misconduct and would leave you open to accusations of trying to tamper with the examination process.
Yes, you should report this to the dean.
If you are afraid of retaliation, then you can wait until your degree is awarded.
It sounds like your real problem is that your department does not have enough staff to fulfill its obligations to students. It is (normally) the dean's responsibility to ensure adequate staffing, so it is very appropriate to tell the dean about it. Just state the facts, leaving out your feelings about how you were treated.
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95066 | How to cite three things in the same sentence
If all A, B, and C are from the same reference [1], what is the shortest way to cite them? Is this clear?
I use A, B, and C [1] in my paper.
It is concise, but it is like you are not giving a reference for A, and B. How can I have a better sentence?
The original "I use A, B, and C [1] in my paper." is not quite clear for the reasons you've mentioned.
Better:
I use A, B, and C in my paper [1].
How about this?: I use A, B, and C [1] in my paper.
How is my suggestion?
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72995 | Why do journals require authors to provide funding information?
Recently I have communicated a manuscript to Springer journal. In editorial system I was required to furnish funding information. If the funding information is available then does that mean that I have to publish my work through open access by paying fee from funds that have been sanctioned to me?
Although the journal is not open access journal but I am afraid if they ask for article processing fee after acceptance of manuscript. My sanctioned funds does not cover article processing charges
Are you talking about "Our submission systems will offer the option to include your funding source in a standardized way." from the Springer web page?
I don't know if this is the reason in your case, but many journals require disclosing the funding source as a way of managing perceived or real conflicts of interest. This is especially important in medical studies, which are often funded by pharmaceutical companies. Here's an example.
Do you wish to pay for open access? If not, nobody can force you to. Acknowledging and disclosing funding is standard for academic articles.
Your situation is a bit too vague, does your funding source require you to pay for open access (which I think is pretty stupid, but I know it exists) and you would prefer not to but are afraid that disclosing that funding will reveal that you do not abide by their policy? If that is the case, the journal doesn't care, it's between you and your funding agency.
@CapeCode : My sanctioned funding does not cover APC. I have furnished them(Springer) my funding source.
I am afraid if they ask for open access fee after acceptance of manuscript Does this journal require APC payment for all submissions? If yes, then you will have to pay regardless of your funding. If not then it's unclear why you're worried.
@CapeCode, actually some funding agencies now mandate open access. The Wikipeida page talk about the mandates more.
@RichardErickson having a self-archiving mandate is not the same as forcing authors to pay for gold OA.
@CapeCode, I agree self-archiving is different than paying for gold OA. However, funding sources can require a great deal as a condition of the PI accepting funding. Some funding agencies seem to be moving towards requiring open access. For example, the Welcome Trust "encourage – and where it pays an open access fee, require – authors and publishers to licence research papers using the Creative Commons Attribution licence". In the future, funding bodies such as this may require all research they fund to be open access.
@RichardErickson I understand that. In my second comment above I asked OP if that was a requirement from the funding body. As a side note, I think it's sad that funding agencies encourage such a bad practice. But at least it's their own money they're throwing out the window.
Funding information is often required even when a journal has no open source option to it. The source of funding is a major potential conflict of interest, and as such is a key piece of information in evaluating a paper.
That being said, it may also be used to determine things like whether or not they should give a break on open access fees, whether it needs to be deposited in Pubmed Central, etc.
In addition to Fomite's answer, there is another reason to demand funding information: to ensure that any possible conflicts of interest in the research that arise because of funding are disclosed. This is particularly an issue in medical research, where many studies are funded by industry.
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9071 | What effect does a good research paper have on a university's reputation and worldwide ranking?
What effect does a good research paper have on a university's worldwide rankings?
None. One good paper makes its author(s) look good, but does not make the university more or less remarkable (either in term of perception by the research community or rankings). It takes a lot of good output (papers, conferences, etc.) for people to start saying “hey, that university has great research done in so many research groups, it looks like a great place”, and for whatever rankings to be affected.
Unless by “good” you mean “outstanding”, not in the academic sense “quite okay but I’m writing in hyperbolic style” but in the meaning of “exceptionally good; clearly noticeable”. One groundbreaking (Nobel level, if you wish) discovery made at a single institution will help it.
One groundbreaking (Nobel level, if you wish) discovery made at a single institution will help it. — [citation needed]
@JeffE if the University of X creates, say, an AIDS vaccine that is talked about in the media, it creates a lot of good (national and international) publicity for it. I have a few examples in France of universities whose funding dramatically improved after they received the spotlight (I'm thinking about Pierre Gilles de Gennes and Jean-Marie Lehn's institutions, for example)
A single good research paper typically has a very small impact on the university's ranking and prestige. However, universities are very large organisations. Any one university may be producing thousands of publications each year. Thus, the presence or absence of one publication is unlikely to change the ranking of a university on some prestige or publication based league table.
That said, each publication (and especially the "good" ones) does play its role in the overall evaluation of prestige. Thus, if a single good publication contributed .01% or .1% of the total citations (or other prestige generating effects) that a university received in a given period, then that is still important. I remember hearing that a study that received a lot of publicity was supposed to have generated $200,000 in free advertising exposure for the university. Presumably similar quantifications could be applied to university prestige. While the contribution of one publication relative to the prestige of an entire university is small, the absolute value may still be substantial.
Furthermore the influence of one good publication on prestige naturally amplifies as you go to smaller groupings from nation to university to faculty to department to research group to individual researcher.
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161640 | Is there a bias against mentioning your name on presentation slides?
Is there some sort of unwritten rule in academia that you shouldn't mention your own name explicitly on presentation slides? I have seen this time and time again, if you cite work in the middle of the talk and it happens to be your own work, people abbreviate their names. For example, they only write their first name. 'Miller' is abbreviated to 'M.', but all other names are spelled out in full.
In 25 years in academia, I've never seen such a thing. If there's a bias, it's field dependent: could you please specify your field?
@MassimoOrtolano sounds like Mathematics. Here it seems to be somewhat the norm
@MassimoOrtolano Certainly in the part of physics I know it is also quite common that in references, people fully abbreviate their name, i.e. the reference would be "A. First, B.S., and C. Third", where B.S. is the person presenting.
Personally, what I would find more interesting than the reason why people do it now is the history of this - when, where and why this started. I think nowadays people mostly just do it because everyone does it.
Yeah in math people do this quite a lot. It surprised me to hear that it’s not common in other fields.
It is common in the sense that being in your own presentation people attending it easily connect the initials to you, the presenter. But it is not a rule. Formally, as @Anonymous Physicist has told us (I down voted his/her answer by mistake...), is more a mistake. Another point, eventually, is to be reticent on citing much of your own work. But this is a complete different story.
@Alchimista: At least in pure math, I don't recall seeing citations very often in slides. Yes, there will sometimes be a reference slide (or two), in which references are normally given "in full name", but normally you'd not include the reference every time you mention a theorem. Instead you'd have "Theorem (X.-Young-Zephod [3])" or something like that.
It also helps when others share your family name (e.g. your spouse, parent, child, or sibling, or maybe it's just common). There's no shortage of examples in my field. This way you know if the person who proved the theorem is the speaker or not.
@Inkblot well that is also true. It comes down to the use of citations in general.
@shalop: Yes, it's common in mathematics. I have the impression math has a strange mix of ego and bragging vs showing humbleness.
There is nothing wrong with mentioning your own name in full in citations on your own slides, and nobody would think anything of it if you did. However, there are a number of reasons why people do this.
Replacing your own name with initials is a subtle way of emphasizing that it is your work that is being cited. You can think of it as a “humblebrag”.
Since you are usually talking about your own work, you end up citing yourself a lot. Replacing your name with initials simply saves space, especially if you have a long name.
To me, it is always a hint saying "What, you don't remember my full name, better pay attention who is giving the talk!". In conferences with many talks and a broad scope, it is easy to forget the name of the speaker, and I would be happy if I were reminded.
@user151413 How does writing the name in full in references tell the audience that this is the name of the speaker? To remind the audience who you are it is better to put your name in the header/footer of the slides.
All I'm saying is that whenever I see such an abbreviation, I have to actively think what the name of the speaker is, which is disruptive, and maybe even check the program. I think that's one real reason: It looks like understatement, but in fact it is telling the audience: Yes, this is my paper. (I guess that's your point 1, and that's why this habit always struck me as mannered.)
To clarify: I am not saying that writing the full name tells the audience it is the name of the speaker. But writing the abbreviation does, and it makes it awfully clear that you forgot the speaker's name. If it were just for the reference, there would be no reason to point out it is the speakers reference in the first place, so it is about the self-advertisement.
These are reasons people use, but they are incorrect reasons. The actual result of using initials is confusion.
@AnonymousPhysicist if it is confusion you want to avoid use the space saved by writing initials to give the arxiv identifier of the reference.
If you really don't want to include your own name, I'd say use the ArXiv identifier only and omit the initials, since the initials do nothing to disambiguate the reference. Exception: The professor formerly know as "XYZ." http://www.columbia.edu/cu/chemistry/groups/zhu/
I think 1 is the main reason. It’s indicating it’s your result. If you write the whole name people might think it’s a result by someone else with the same surname.
@AnonymousPhysicist The actual reason why people use initials, I think, is "because that's what I have seen other people in my field do".
Humblebrag might the best way to explain that behavior. For some reason, mathematics is all about ego and bragging. At the same time, everything is expected to be "humble". Which is obviously inconsistent and more a matter of very strange etiquette.
In my experience in pure mathematics, it seems to be somewhat of a norm not to write your full name when citing yourself and just use initials. I have seen this on many conference presentations or any other talks using slides.
When giving a blackboard talk it has the advantage of using less space on the board which typically is a scarce resource.
On the other hand, I have also seen the occasional talk where this "rule" was not followed and I do not think that this left a bad impression on anyone.
Blackboard space is much less scarce than space on a slide!
But writing a name on the blackboard takes much more time and energy...
Agree using initials is totally normal, but it would seem very odd to me to use a full first name and initialize the last name, rather than the other way around. I generally don't know the presenter on a first-name basis, and I would normally refer to a manuscript by an author's last name, not their first - I might ask a colleague if they read the Miller paper, not if they read the paper by Bob M.
@user2705196 If you are are pure mathematics but you hate giving blackboard talks there is something seriously wrong with you.
I meant the additional cost of writing out your name is larger when doing so during a blackboard talk compared to when giving a computer slide presentation. That's maybe where the tradition comes from! Nothing against using the blackboard but minimizing extra stuff to write is key to a good blackboard talk...
@NuclearHoagie In my experience in math one uses only the initials of the last name, and the first name is rarely, if ever, used in any citation.
To the question, briefly: Abbreviating as described is common in math, but I can't imagine anyone reacting negatively or at all to variations in something so minute.
An alternative motive from a mathematician's perspective I don't see in the other answers or comments:
My surname is fairly common. So I use just an initial in my slides when referencing theorems I've worked on as a concise clarification that I am the person referred to. I'm not aware of anyone else sharing my surname in my field of specialization, but that's hardly a guarantee. This has nothing to do with encouraging memorizing my name, as that's in a header/footer on virtually every slide.
The bias is against self-aggrandizement, and that's what helped establish the norm Christian mentioned in their answer: If you cite yourself a few times, and you use your name, it is as though you bring people into a room where you show them many images of your name. Of course that's not the contents of the presentation, but there is at least some element of that. So, symbolically, you self-deprecate by limiting your self-mention to a single letter. Your full name on the first slide of the presentation is actually common, though (so people know who's giving the talk if they've forgotten or don't know what's on the schedule today); there's no bias - that I know of - against that.
In conference presentations, there is a bias against mentioning one's own name because the speaker knows their own name and doesn't realize their audience has forgotten who is speaking.
It's not an unwritten rule; it's a common mistake. If you are citing your own work, do write your own name correctly so people can find the reference if they want to.
Please Anonymous P. could you change a comma or so? I have mistakenly down voted instead of a plus 1.....
That’s why you put your name in a header/footer.
Downvoted because "unwritten rule" and "common mistake" is a false dichotomy.
@Xerxes "it is not an unwritten rule because it is a common mistake" would be a false dichotomy. What I wrote is not a dichotomy.
That depends.
I saw one prof get credit for someone elses work by putting his name on the slide and pointing to the other persons results!
Why do you want your name on the slides?
Isnt the title page on the first one enough?
Especially at bigger conferences with lots of parallel sessions, people may come after you have already started.
The question is about citations of the author's work, not including their name as part of the slide template.
@Sneftel - that is not how the OP is worded. It was about the name on the slide not the name in a citation.
From the OP: “ if you cite work in the middle of the talk and it happens to be your own work”. That’s pretty unambiguous. Read the other answers to get an idea of the context around this practice.
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116817 | How do SJR and Web of Science journal rankings and quartiles differ?
I want to know about how journal quartiles (i.e., Q1 to Q4) calculations differ.
Web of Science (WoS) uses Journal Impact Factor Quartile the journal’s rank in category (X) is based on where the journal stands relative to the total number in the category. InCites (WoS) displays the best quartile for journals that appear in multiple Web of Science Research Areas. When a research area is specified, the quartile for that particular journal and research area is displayed.
I've recently submitted an article in a ISI journal.
This journal (urban design international) is ranked 36 out of 40 journals in the "urban studies" category; when I searched it in the Scopus, it was showed as a Q2 journal. But according to the web of science calculation, it is Q4 (36/40 = 0.9, Q4>0.75 ~ 0.9 = Q4)
So my questions are:
How are SJR journal quartiles calculated?
How can SJR and WoS journal quartiles differ so much (e.g., Q2 in SJR and Q4 in web of science)?
Which ranking (SJR or WoS) is more important or valid?
When someone asks about journal quartiles, which system is more commonly used?
Presumably, when you say SJR quartiles, you mean the rankings presented by Scimago. I previously posted details about how journal ranks and quartiles are estimated on scimago.
There are several key differences between WoS and Scimago that lead to different journal ranks (and quartiles):
Database of journals: WoS rankings uses web of science indexed journals and I think Scimago uses Scopus ISI indexed journals. Scopus is much more inclusive than WoS and also provides better coverage in some disciplines (e.g., social sciences) than WoS. In some disciplines, simply being listed in WoS suggests that the journal is at least a reasonably strong one in the discipline.
Source of citations: Indexing different databases mean that the citations used to evaluate journals are also based on different databases of articles. WoS has a more exclusive set of journals and the coverage is not as balanced across the sciences. The consequence is that metrics based on citations per year per article (e.g., impact factor, citescore) will be higher when using Scopus, and this difference will be amplified for social sciences and other disciplines with less WoS coverage. However, although journal metrics based on citations per year will be lower in WoS, this in itself wont necessarily affect journal rankings within disciplines, because in many cases all journals within a discipline will be broadly influenced.
Definition of an article: I believe that Scopus/Scimago and WoS define articles differently. In particular, I believe that Scimago categorises some items as articles that WoS does not. In general, most citation metrics have a formula that divides citations in a given period by number of articles. I believe this scopus approach reduces citations per year indicators for some journals that include a lot of non-standard article types (e.g., Nature and Science).
Metric: Irrespective of the database of citations used and definitions of what is an article, impact factor and SJR are different citation metrics. See my previous answer about how SJR works. In short, SJR is based on a 3 year window, and impact factor is based on a 2 year window. SJR also has a bunch of corrections to reduce discipline-specific differences in citation practices and a way of weighting certain citations more highly (based on the prestige/impact of source). While I think SJR is much better than impact factor, this might not change within discipline rankings too much because most of these differences between metrics address discipline-level differences.
So, why is it that a journal can be Q2 in Scimago and Q4 in WoS? I think this is most likely due to the database of journals used. WoS is more exclusive and particularly deficient in certain disciplines. So for example, a journal may have a reasonable reputation (e.g., ranked 35 out of 100 in Scimago), but only ranked 35 out of 40 in WoS, because there are a whole pile of journals in Scimago that aren't even listed in WoS.
Which indicator of journal quartile is more valid?
First, I think that SJR as a metric of impact and the more inclusive journal database are better and make the sicmago metrics of journal impact more valid. Of course, at some point, you need to ask about what it means to speak about the rank or quartile of a journal. What should the criteria for membership in the population of journals from which a rank is obtained? The WoS criteria is quite high. Most people would agree that predatory journals with no legitimate peer review should not be included.
I think an argument could be made that Scopus / ISI is sometimes too inclusive (e.g., it includes some journals that have questionable peer review). But I think the stronger argument is that WoS is too exclusive. So perhaps the Scimago/Scopus interpretation aligns more naturally to what we might think of as a rank or quartile. I.e., of the legitimate journals (or at least, reasonably legitimate) in a discipline that are published, where does a given journal sit.
What quartile is typically used? It's difficult to say how people will interpret a statement like "this journal is Q1" without you specifying the source. It's a bit like when you say "this article has 50 citations", but you don't say which database this citation count is based on (e.g., WoS, Scopus, Google Scholar).
In contexts where it matters, you should clarify which source you are relying on. That said, my impression is that the Scimago quartiles are becoming more popular. For example, at my university we are encouraged to mainly publish in Q1 journals, where quartiles are based on Scimago.
As a minor practical point, access to WoS citation metrics is by subscription only and the user interface is terrible. In contrast, the interface for scimago is public and quite user friendly.
Thanks for taking the time to edit the question and write such a comprehensive answer.
Thanks very much for the perfect answer. It must have taken a lot of time.
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89655 | How to find double blind peer review journals in physics?
I have tried googling but couldn't get a definitive answer.
Could anyone suggest/list Journals that allow a double blind peer review for physics, preferably, particle physics.
I'm voting to close this question as "shopping" questions for specific journals are off-topic here.
From what I know, there are some journals from World Scientific such as International Journal of Modern Physics D which allow double blind.
Why is "double blind" your principal concern?
There are many sites that will list major journals by discipline and sub-discipline.
Here is a listing of Physics journals with bibliometric data http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?area=3100
Once you've found relevant journals, just read the journal website to find out how they do peer review.
However, normally the "double-blind" aspect would be a minor consideration relative to other criteria for choosing a journal, such as impact, relevance of manuscript to journal, and quality. In other cases, you may be able to request double blind review if you are particularly concerned about that aspect.
Thanks. I was wondering which high impact journals for particle/general physics allow double blind review, a review in which the reviewer doesn't know the identity of the author, nor does the author know the identity of the reviewer.
@DominikCar Yes, and Jeromy is telling you that this is a somewhat odd thing to be concerned about (also, almost all reviews will be blinded such that the author does not know the reviewer). Do you have some specific reason why you need that?
So why is double-blindness relevant? A crackpot paper is a crackpot paper whether the reviewer knows the names of the authors or not.
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86502 | What do you need to know about potential supervisor's publications when attending an interview for a PhD?
I have been advised that it is a good idea to read papers written by a potential supervisor before having an interview with them for a PhD position.
I can make sense of the summaries and introductions, but that is all.
Do supervisors ask applicants about whether they have read their papers?
Do I attempt to summarise vaguely what the paper is about?
What sort of questions may be asked about papers?
Can you just say something along the lines of ' I find it very interesting that you did a recent article in ????' for flattery?
If your supervisor has (recently) published a review paper that's a really good place to start. At least in the fields I'm used to, these tend to be more likely to be actually written by the academic (as opposed to a PhD student or postdoc), and they'll be a much better route into the topic than a paper on a minor technical point. My supervisor actually recommended some papers from his group when we first informally discussed a PhD -- but I already knew him a little.
I'm confused how you became interested in this potential supervisor. Was there anything that intrigued you or drew you to this person?
I would, in fact, ask the opposite question: Why would you want to work with someone if you are not interested in their work? Of course, I wouldn't hold an oral exam or something with a prospective PhD student, but I would hope to be able to have a substantive discussion about my field with the student.
Thus: I wouldn't ask "Have you read my work?" because to me, it would be obvious that the student has read some of my work. Out of interest, not because I asked for it.
BTW: I wouldn't recomment you to say something along the lines of 'I find it very interesting that you did a recent article in...'. Say something substantive, challenge me, tell me why you are not convinced by that article, ask me about it -- yes! But don't try to flatter me in a blunt manner.
Good luck with your applications!
+1 for being much more clear than my answer in terms of being able to challenge and have a substantive conversation - I think I may have unintentionally suggested flattery when that wasn't my intent. The whole point really is that this should be the fun part of your PhD interviews. This isn't where you have to deflect questions about why your GPA suffered that one semester or why only your quantitative GPA scores were good - this is research, this is the fun of doing a PhD, and if you aren't interested in someones work why are you interviewing with them/even doing a PhD.
I would not expect a direct "Have you read my papers? Please summarize them in 5 minutes or less."
However, potential supervisors will likely want to tell you about their research and it will be obvious whether you are lost or following along. Try to understand their published work at least well enough to ask some informed questions. Be prepared to have a conversation. You don't have to be an expert yet on their research but you should be knowledgeable enough to follow along.
If you are wanting to spend something like 5 years in their lab hopefully something they are doing is interesting to you - you should be prepared to ask about that as well: "I saw you did some work on laziness in physicists, are you still working on that? If so, what became of the project? I thought it was really remarkable how much the laziness was anticorrelated with time spent on StackExchange, I would have expected the lazier physicists to spend more time there."
The above answers are both great. I will add my two cents, since it seems this point is not apparent from the -nevertheless- great answers.
You should read the papers of your potential PhD supervisor not because you find somewhere advice to do so, but because you are interested in her/his research and you want to pursue similar line of research. Any other reason is the wrong reason.
More than likely you will co-author papers with your supervisor. So you need some common ground in order to work together effectively. During your meeting you should get a feel for how well you could work together over a period of 3-5 years. No matter how much you think you know, over time you will discover that you over-estimated your knowledge.
The prevalence of co-authorship varies by field. So I don't think the answer needs to be amended.
What does this add over the other, existing answers? You outright state that this is just a rewording of other answers! Is it needed?
@user2390246 I meant that they are great answers. I did not mean that my answer a rephrasing of their answer. I added something that I see is missing from the above, great nevertheless, answers. I do not think it deserves a downvote.
Sorry, I felt that the other answers already made the point about needing to be interested in your supervisor's research for its own sake. Maybe you can edit the answer to bring out what gives it a different perspective?
I can make sense of the summaries and introductions, but that is all.
That is a problem. If you are so unfamiliar with the field that you cannot understand anything about the methods, how can you know if this is what you want to do for the next 5-6 years? A certain amount of training is expected to happen during a PhD but graduate school is not like undergrad. There are no TAs. Great majority of PIs do not have the time to hold your hand and teach you everything. You need to seriously consider if you have the necessary background to do a PhD in this field.
Do supervisors ask applicants about whether they have read their papers?
They will ask why you want to join their lab. If the plan is to say "I haven't seen your work but XYZ", XYZ better be good!
Do I attempt to summarise vaguely what the paper is about?
You could try asking a question about the paper. You probably should admit straight away that you don't understand the methodology very well. Perhaps the PI will be willing to explain it to you! (This actually happened to me several times, most scientists are very eager to talk about their research)
What sort of questions may be asked about papers?
Future directions, next experiments to do, etc are popular questions since that is exactly what you would be doing if you joined the lab.
Can you just say something along the lines of ' I find it very interesting that you did a recent article in ????' for flattery?
You can but you will likely be asked what you like about the article.
NOTE: I am a biomedical researcher, not a physicist.
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52267 | What is a "good" PhD dropout rate, and how would we know?
In a few questions/answers on here (e.g., here), passing reference has been made to the difficulty of determining a good/acceptable/healthy dropout rate for a PhD program. However, I haven't seen any questions directly asking how this question is or can be addressed. In practice, it seems this question must come up. If a lot of students drop out of a program, the faculty (not to mention the other students) must begin to wonder if something is awry.
The difficulty, of course, is that an ideal dropout rate is probably neither 0% nor 100%. (If no one drops out, the program is likely to be too easy; if everyone drops out, the program is probably too challenging.) How do departments/schools deal with this question in practice? How do they distinguish between "good" dropouts (where the faculty and student agree dropping out is best for all concerned and there is no ill will) and "bad" dropouts (where the dropout is due to burnout, a harsh environment, lack of funding, etc.), and track those outcomes over time? How do they avoid self-protective rationalizations (e.g., "our program can't be too/hard easy" based on review of the program content rather than the dropout rates)? Are there established ways of looking at the dropout pattern and evaluating it?
As a sort of side note, I'd be interested in hard data on dropout rates. Although there are numerous popular-press articles and blogs lamenting the dropout rates, the only concrete data I've been able to find is this slideshow and a few other things that seem to be drawing on the same data. (It's rather surprising that there is so much discussion of the "problem" with so little discussion of how to decide whether it's actually a problem or not. There seem to be many articles saying "the dropout rate is so horribly high!" and very few saying why it's considered high, and what would be considered low or normal.)
Just to clarify: I recognize that the dropout rate is not the only meaningful assessment of a program's health or quality. My question is not "How do you decide everythig about a program based just on the dropout rate?" My question is "How do you decide what the dropout rate is telling you about the health and quality of the program?" You will of course combine that information with other kinds of assessments of the program.
Dropout does not depend only on the difficulty of a program but also on student's personal choices and on possible conflicts with the advisor(s).
This is a very interesting question. I know of a PhD program that was shut by university after too many students were leaving ABD, and I've always wondered how they decided when to throw in the towel.
@MassimoOrtolano: Of course. That's another reason why it's hard to figure out what an "okay" dropout rate is, and I'm curious how people handle that.
Surely an ideal drop out rate is zero? The aim must be to take on only those students who have both the aptitude and desire to finish the course, and have a clear understanding of what they are getting themselves in for.
Some quantitative information on dropout rates can be found for UK institutions and US. I think the US data is the same source the OP linked. This doesn't give any indication of the cause of dropouts but is a useful starting point.
One hears anecdotes, e.g. of some top math programs in the US, where large numbers of MS students are admitted in order to staff the required teaching assistant positions, but with awareness that only some fraction of those students will get funding for doctoral studies. However, I don't have firsthand knowledge of such a program.
Where I went in Sweden, any dropout is a serious matter, that should be avoided if possible. If a student is too weak to not complete the program, he/she should not have been admitted in the first place, as it wastes both the institution and the students time. Of course, there are other, unforeseen circumstances (personal tragedies), but these are of course something that are extraordinary as well.
Ideal dropout rate is 0%, no doubt. You want a system well designed to support students that "get lost on the way" and students properly chosen, students that really want to get a PhD and are able to do so. How on earth is good to have a system where people drop out?
My view is that some students will drop out because that is what they want to do, and what is best for them. In such a case, getting them not to drop out would be a disservice. I agree this number should be small, and over some spans of time it might be zero, but if a program went, say, 10 or 15 years without any dropouts, I might be suspicious that degrees were being handed out willy-nilly, or conversely that students were being browbeaten into finishing when it wouldn't benefit or satisfy them in any way.
The algorithmic answer, semi-serious: perform a calculation involving how many living persons hold PhDs, how many students are currently enrolled in PhD programs, and an arbitrary determination of how exclusive you want the club to be. The Army only promotes so many Generals, no matter how many Colonels deserve a star.
I would think the most obvious way to do this would be to conduct exit surveys when a student says he's leaving without the degree.
@AlexanderGruber: That thought has occurred to me as well. Do you know of any schools that actually do that?
I don't think there is a "good" dropout rate - without knowing why students drop out, the number is meaningless. But my overall view is that education (on any level) should be measured by the improvement in knowledge/skills/competence/... it provides to students and not by its ability to classify students into those who pass and the rest.
In this view, ideal (but unachievable) drop out rate is zero as you make sure that only students that are a good fit for the program enlist and then you do your best to lead them to maximal achievements they are individually capable of.
In the real world, it is hard to know for both the student and the institution whether the program is a good fit. Also people and their priorities change over time. So I guess there are a few "valid" reasons for dropping out:
The student's life situation changes (e.g. has a child)
Although the studies proceed well, the student realizes that he/she wants to do something different with his/her life. This should not include the case when the student had incorrect information on what the study program is actually like.
Early in the program the student realizes that he/she is unable to fulfill the expectations of the program (that were known to him/her before enlisting)
The student behaved in some unacceptable manner and was asked to leave.
To me the goal is to have very few dropouts of this "valid" kind and exactly zero dropouts for other reasons. In particular I think that if students fail because they learn midway that your program is too hard for them or because the environment is too harsh or because their ideals of what the study program would look like were shattered, than it is a failure of the institution (although often the student is also at least partially responsible).
Per the first bullet, “unexpectedly” doesn’t seem a necessary qualifier. Even if the change was foreseen, the significance of the change could have been underestimated, leading student and/or institution to believe that the student could or would continue despite the change. Many new parents, for instance, planned on returning to work (of any kind) prior to actually having the baby, but wind up not doing so.
Interesting. Most comments seem to agree with you that the "ideal" dropout rate is zero, and that the "realistic" target dropout rate should be pretty close to zero. Given this, it seems quite shocking that (at least according to the data I've seen) the actual rate seems to be over 30% and in many cases around 50%. This is a colossal disparity between desired and actual outcomes. Do you suppose that means that even the "practical" near-zero rate is too optimistic, and inefficiencies and human foibles will always lead to significantly more dropouts for "invalid" reasons?
"If students fail because they learn midway that your program is too hard for them ... it is a failure of the institution" I disagree with this insofar as the information can be available and accurate but still have the student not expect the load. To use some made up numbers as an example, say a prospective student is currently working a job with a 40 hour workweek. They are then told by their future supervisor that they will realistically have to spend 50 hours each week for their course of study. The student thinks about this as 125% of their current workload and thinks that it is (1/2)
@DTR very manageable, but part-way through the program they realize that the extra 10 hours are much less efficient, much more exhausting, and have a much greater impact on other areas of their life than they were expecting. The university in this case gave full and accurate information, but the student wasn't actually able to use it. tl;dr - There are some things that you cannot really tell until you get into the work itself, and there's not much you can do about that as the student OR the university.
@DTR By "midway" I mean approximately after more than a year in the program. I think your case is included in the "early leaving" clause within the reasons I consider valid.
@MartinČerný Ah, that seems logical. Thanks for the clarification.
@KRyan You are right, I have removed the "unexpectedly" qualifier from the first bullet point.
@BrenBarn From extremely casual observation (I don’t have, am not pursuing, and have never pursued a PhD, I have only observations of numerous friends and colleagues who fit in one of those categories), I would guess that a lot of the disparity comes from simple failures of communication: the student and/or the institution failed to get a complete and accurate description of themselves through to the other. Considering that students are actively “selling themselves” (and so are many institutions), and also pressured to rationalize away any concerns they have and accept, this is no surprise.
it is a failure of the institution — That could be a failure of the institution. Or it might indicate a willingness by the institution to take risks on students who might succeed, instead of accepting only applicants with 4.00 GPAs from MIT and Harvard.
As a dropout, this may be an anecdote, but I have observed that myself and almost everyone else who dropped out did so because of personal reasons (health, marriage, children, financial, etc). There was only one person who left the program after multiple failures of the qualifying exam.
The basic assumption was that everyone who has been accepted has met a certain bar so the program should not be too rigorous for them.
As a freshly minted PhD, I would suggest that the drop-out rate must be combined with more qualitative assessments, such as mentor conflicts, level of committee involvement, administrative entanglements, commitment level, technical difficulty (e.g., statistical background), study complexity, and much more. While a drop-out rate gives you a summary statistic, or the "what", it does not give you the "why". I suggest that most PhD candidates are more interested in why so that they can finish. For example, high or low drop out rates did not figure prominently in my seven year program. Rather, I was more concerned with how I would complete the program, avoiding pitfalls along the way. My mentor was quite instrumental in helping me sidestep many of those pitfalls. For me, my mentor was key reason why I completed, although my commitment level also saw me through several pitfalls.
Dropout rate is a metric among others to evaluate a program. A dropout rate of zero would probably be best as only student who can complete the program would enlist. But in real-life, it will most likely not be zero because of many factors. The dropout can be because the program is hard, but also because of various other reasons such as the student changing career path, or anything else. Because of that, I don't think that it would be good to evaluate a program based on a single metric like the dropout rate. The dropout rate itself is influenced by other criteria such as the criteria for selecting students in the program, etc. One needs to see the global picture and consider many factors to evaluate a program.
I agree a program shouldn't be evaluated solely based on dropout rate. My question is how to assess dropout rate, because once we have an idea of how to do that, we can combine it with other assessments of other aspects of the program.
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52227 | How do departments evaluate and update their course requirements?
To begin with the main question: how do academic departments evaluate their course requirements? By that I mean, how do departments decide if they are requiring too many classes, not enough classes, not the right classes, etc.? The question also could be generalized to "how do departments decide what classes to offer"? I'm especially interested in evaluation of what courses should be required, but I'm also interested in how that interacts with the overall course offerings of the department (e.g., what might lead departments to reorganize classes to reduce overlap).
I anticipate that the answer will vary quite a bit depending on the size of the department, the field, the type of school, etc. I welcome that variety. What interests me most is whether there are established decision-making processes for this. (For instance, is it something that is specifically looked at when a department undergoes external review, and if so, how exactly does the external review committee evaluate it?) I'm interested particularly in coursework requirements for grad programs, but would be interested in relevant comparisons with undergrad programs as well.
The background: I graduated from a PhD program about a year ago and have a number of friends who are still in the program. Over the last few years (beginning in my last two or three years and continuing to the present), there have been some shifts in the department in terms of the size of incoming cohorts and the funding decisions for the new students as well as ongoing funding for more senior students. This has created an environment of worry and uncertainty among some grad students who fear that there is an increasing disconnect between the assumptions of the department funding process and the reality of student progress. (Simply put, people worry that most students will run out of funding before they finish, because the funding is for X years but nearly everyone takes more than X years to finish the program.) There is a perception among some of the students that one contributor to this problem is the heavy coursework load, both because it delays students from starting on their own research, and because logistical hurdles (e.g., not having the right classes offered when you need to take them) make it difficult to complete the requirements in the supposedly "normal" time.
I did a bit of informal research and found that the coursework requirements for my department, compared to those of many other departments at the school (some related to my department, some not). are substantially greater (in terms of number of units required) and less flexible (i.e., much more "you must take course X" and less "you must take one of these three courses"). The department's requirements are also somewhat heavier than those of departments in the same field at other comparable schools.
So what I'm curious about is, is this a reasonable approach to evaluating coursework requirements? I don't mean to suggest that this alone would mandate changes; no doubt many kinds of information would be considered together. But is it the sort of thing that departments (or external review committees) would do to get a sense of how reasonable the curriculum is? Is it the sort of thing that, if known, would be expected to arouse concern among the faculty? If not, what sort of thing would? How do departments assess their course requirements, and what would make them think they should be changed?
This doesn't answer your question, but I think your friends would be entirely justified in bringing their concerns to the graduate director and/or to their advisors.
@Anonymous: That has actually been done. As far as I saw, the only response was "the faculty want to keep the requirements the way they are". Current students may no more, but as far as I saw there was no real explanation of how the faculty decided that.
Departments ought to be concerned about their graduation rates. If the rates are low, it is a good idea to find out why and make changes. This could be changes to the curriculum, it could be changes to the admissions policy, or any number of other things.
Benchmarking is certainly a reasonable approach to review the current rules, although niche marketing often gives incentives to introduce distinguishing features that are consciously pitched against the prevailing practices.
I presume your department has a curriculum committee. Request a meeting and see where that leads.
That's a good point. Do you know what standard of comparison a department would use to decide whether their rates were "too low"?
I disagree that low graduation rates necessarily indicates a problem --- it might be a sign that department does not graduate students who are not competent in their field (in majority of the US universities, a C grade average indicates near total incompetence, but suffices to obtain a degree).
@BorisBukh: That depends on what "low" means (which is why I asked for clarification on that). If "low" means "low relative to other comparable programs", then I think it would indicate a problem.
@BrenBarn Being different from majority is not a problem if the majority is wrong. The grade inflation, and the degree entitlement syndrome are problems where the majority is wrong.
@BorisBukh: Ok, but the question here is, how do you tell? It is also possible that low graduation rates are a sign of unrealistic expectations, a toxic environment, poor administration, inadequate funding, etc. The question I'm asking is how do you evaluate the requirements.
@BrenBarn My comment was not an answer your question. I only objected to the answer by user3697176 that low graduation rates necessarily require changes (the first sentence). That is all. As you correctly say the reason might be a bad one, in which case is needed. Or it could be a good one.
@BorisBukh it might be a sign that department does not graduate students who are not competent in their field — But that's still a problem. If a significant fraction of students in your program are failing out, there is a serious mismatch between your expectations and your admission standards.
@JeffE Good point, I did not think of the admission part. However, it does not invalid my point: predicting future performance in something that student never done before is very difficult , and is subject huge errors. In my opinion, many schools graduate a number of incompetent students (for various reasons: from compassion to ranking manipulation).
Here (Department of Informatics, more or less Software Engineering with a hearty dash of Computer Science) when recently reformulating the curriculum we started with the curriculum suggestions of ACM/IEEE, and worked from there to flesh out course definitions. Some courses are given by general requirements of the university (common science classes, for example). We also looked at curricula at other schools in Chile and elsewhere.
For graduates, the courses offered depend in part on the interests, research and specializations of the lecturers.
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85558 | Is there a publication that critically reviews the effectiveness of academic accreditation bodies?
It seems there is a general belief that when a university fails to meet some accreditation body's standards then the university is somehow less than genuine.
Is there any objective proof that accreditation produces excellence in higher education ?
I ask this because I see my university always trying to game the system. Little effort is placed towards the real goal of being a better university. Rather, we merely try to jump through whatever hoop has been placed by the accrediting body. Rather than trusting faculty to have the best idea of how to structure the university (in which we build our careers, so, you'd think you might trust us) we instead restructure things merely on the whim of an external body which does not know nearly as much about what is best for the university!
It seems to me, at many universities the assessment process is largely financial with no real attention to excellence in education. Faculty pretend to engage in the assessment process, but, we don't really care or respect the process because it:
reduces the autonomy of professors
it has half-informed "experts" trumping the opinion professors who are actually already performing real assessment all the time.
It is by now obvious to me that assessment at my university is actually damaging to academics! Is this a quirk of my institution (which values the input of faculty at a tragically sad rate) or is this common?
My larger question, is there a publication in which a critical review of accreditation bodies and how they fail in their supposed mission ?
My larger question, is there a publication in which a critical review of accreditation bodies and how they fail in their supposed mission ? This what lawyers call a leading question ...
I don't think even the accreditors would honestly say their job is to produce excellence. It's more accurate to say that their job is to prevent incompetence.
@AlexanderWoo so they claim... but, at my institution, accreditation leads to incompetence. All of the meetings of my university are centered around meeting the demands of the accreditors. Consequently, we rarely have time for any sort of genuine introspection as an institution. When the accreditation body makes a demand we drop everything, ignore usual rules of changing rules for majors etc..., and make drastic changes without the reasoned approval of the faculty. The quickness of our response ought to raise red flags. But, no, they love us and even place us above other more real places!
@ConcernedHuman: It's no secret that the standards of accreditors are very very low, and they prize obvious evidence of meeting these very low standards over less obvious but equally valid evidence of meeting higher standards. Ultimately, it's the fault of your institution, not the accreditors, that it doesn't value meeting a higher standard than that demanded by accreditation. Accreditation is not meant to produce excellence, just ensure that a very very low bare minimum is met.
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90241 | How should degrees be listed in an e-mail signature?
I have the following degrees:
PhD in Information Technology (Computer Science concentration)
MS in Systems Engineering (MSE)
MS in Engineering Management (MEM)
BS in Computer Science
What would a proper e-mail signature look like?
Examples:
Dr. Bob Roberts
PhD IT, MSE, MEM
or
Dr. Bob Roberts
PhD Information Technology
MS Systems Engineering
MS Engineering Management
BS Computer Science
And it is generally regarded as incorrect to prefix your title and to repeat it after the name. Even with a single degree, you should either say "Dr. Bob Roberts" or "Bob Roberts, PhD". Saying "Dr. Bob Roberts, PhD" isn't good. So, if you really want to list all of your degrees, you should probably omit the title before your name. Aren't you going to include High School, Junior High, Elementary, and Kindergarden as well? It all seems a bit excessive. I think I would just stick with "Dr. Bob Roberts". Including the rest seems rather unhumble.
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
There is no formal academic convention for email signatures, although your university or institution may have formatting guidelines. You can simply include as much or as little information as you want the recipient to know.
Personally, I think your name and position are sufficient and listing every degree you have is a bit redundant (and, as others have pointed out, pretentious). People will probably infer that you have a BS and MS if you also have a PhD.
I listed my degrees to communicate my area of expertise (mostly internally), I am in a VERY diverse school, where the PhD student sitting next to me, might be studying something completely different. So if it provides useful information, is that still problematic? Although I am now considering deleting that section, in light of your answer.
There are cultures where a MS is not a requirement for a PhD. This being said, for normal communication, I think using the Dr. title is enough.
@A.T.Ad: You don't seem to be the person asking the original question, but I would expect your official position to cover your 'area of expertise'. If you feel the need to specify, do so by specifying your position. Don't just rattle off all your degrees.
@A.T.Ad It's not necessarily problematic, it just has the potential to come off as trivially boasting. If it conveys useful information, I wouldn't be too concerned. For example, for a Professor of Ethics with an MS in Biology, listing both might help to inform people of diverse (relevant) experience. However, it's rather pointless for a Professor of Biology to list a PhD, MS and BS all in biology - also mentioning the additional degrees doesn't add anything, except perhaps ego padding. -- Rule of thumb: only list them if they indicate expertise not implied by the most advanced title.
@A.T.Ad: Do you really think people would go on to read your signature to find out your area of expertise? Just put that on your website.
@R.M. Just out of curiosity, have you ever actually acted on such information that was included in a signature? Generally when I'm emailing someone I already know who they are and have a reason to email them. If I want to find someone who has expertise in area X I wouldn't send a mail to everyone and then check their signatures to find whom I'm looking for.
@Voo Good point. (Though following that argument to the logical conclusion, any degree/position listed in the signature is superfluous.) I was thinking less about searching for someone with expertise, and more emailing in one context which touches on another (e.g. when talking about bioethics with an ethics expert, discovering they also had an MS in biology may be useful) -- but true, I've never personally been in a situation where such an email sig was useful.
This is very culture-dependent. In Germany (and Austria, according to one of the answers) only listing four qualifications might be considered subversively informal. On the other hand, in the USA it is probably four too many.
@Roland : But that is different from UK/US where the "Dr." would not be included.
It's supposed to be an email signature, not a CV. "Dr Bob Roberts" already says that you have a PhD. The rest is redundant, because having a PhD implies that you probably have a master's degree (which nobody cares about, because you have a PhD), and almost certainly have a bachelor's degree (which nobody cares about, because you have a master's). And, hey, you probably got some qualifications in high school, too (which nobody cares about, because you have a bachelor's).
So the only reason for including all that stuff in your signature is tooting your horn. And, in an academic context, it looks crass because you're drawing attention to the obvious. "Oh, look at me, I have a PhD and a master's and a bachelor's!" Well, er, so does everybody else on the academic and research staff. That level of qualifications is implied by the fact that you work here.
If you'll allow me, i'd like to play devil's advocate. Don't list your degrees in your email signature. The signature is there to format email more like a letter. It's not the place to communicate your experience. I'd recommend setting up a personal resume website or a linkedin page to showcase your experience.
Allow your message content to communicate your command of a subject, don't rest on your letters.
+1 I usually sign my e-mails "Patricia", unless I am being really formal, when I use "Patricia Shanahan", but just for this occasion: Patricia Shanahan, PhD, MSc, BSc, ARCS.
@PatriciaShanahan It's good to know that you treat Academia.SE as a really formal environment. :-D
@PatriciaShanahan Today I learned: the level of formality we attribute to commenting on SE is directly related to the naming conventions of our usernames. :) Apparently you, David, and myself are all quite formal; chuck, not so much.
I am advocating this - the default should be to keep emails as informal as possible and appropriate.
I want to give a different perspective.
Do what is common practise in your institution/region (i. e. what your collegues or other comparable people do).
Here in Austria, it seems to be common practise to list all your titles (maybe except for BSc/BA if you have a MSc/MA because people are not so used to these two titles). I often see multiple doctor titles and honoris causa titles in signatures.
In my view, many people here see a signature (if there is any) as a place where you state your "official" name - and, at least here, this includes your titles. "Bob" in a signature would certainly be viewed as unprofessional and strange. (But then again, I am not sure if the commenters suggesting writing "Bob" are serious or joking.)
While many people on this site view many titles as "bragging", not including them can certainly interpreted as an insult to the others - like you are saying "you guys including so many titles are pretentious".
So in short, do what your environment does.
However, I have never ever seen someone stating the field they received their titles in. (Although there are titles like "BA (FH)" (FH meanging Fachhochschule, "university of applied sciences"), which appear sometimes. Probably they have to be stated in exact this way.)
The advice to do what other people in the same situation does is excellent. But I think somebody would have to be almost paranoid to interpret somebody not including something in their signature as a judgement on those who do. What next? "OMG, he's wearing a different coloured shirt to me! It must be an insult!"
Yeah it's culture dependent. Using just your first name in professional circumstances is quite common in the US, but seems incredibly weird to Germans and Austrians (so no, not a joke to just sign with "Bob"). That said I wouldn't use my titles in emails or conversations, it's more something to put on formal documentation or requests where it really does make a difference (certainly use every title you have when trying to rent an apartment..). There is a bit of a generational divide too it seems to me.
Slightly different German perspective. Listing titles is rather uncommon here, but it is common to give rather more details on your institute. For business, full company name, address, phone and tax number and possibly trade registry number etc. are often mandatory. So "blacksaibot, head of IT, company X" would need to give more details on X.
Exactly! A year ago I registered at a GP in Czech Republic and now after a year a nurse came to me, "don't you have another title?". Medicine here is all about the titles. It is strange to be called a doctor when you are a patient, but that is how they do that here. They expect all the titles.
Are we speaking about e-mail signatures in academia or in industry / rest of the world? There is probably a difference between them. (And, by the way, my "use Bob" was serious.)
@BigMadAndy: well, I think in industry a single Dr. + field (unless position implies field) is quite sensible. My research affiliation email signature gives neither Dr. nor chemist as the institute name implies what kind of shop I speak. Similarly, were I "Dr. C B, head of chemistry lab" I wouldn't put the Dipl.-Chem. But "Dr. C. B., CEO" doesn't tell people that we can dive into subject matter so my business card says that I'm C. B. and (in small print) Dipl.-Chem. and Dr. rer. nat (but omits the CEO forbalance). Felt already bit awkward at first. Long CamelCase lists I mostly met in UK.
Either:
Dr. Bob Roberts
or
Bob Roberts, Ph.D.
unless one of two things obtain. First, your organization has a set of internal customs or formal rules regarding the signature. Second, if your degrees are in different areas. For example,
Bob Roberts
Ph.D. Management Science
MS Nursing
For interrelated fields, the Ph.D. supersedes the master's degree and ceases being relevant. It is also relevant to show certifications that are not superseded by the doctorate.
Nice; Brief and concise!
Your signature indicates how you want the person you're writing to address you. If you want be called by your first name, sign "Bob" or "Bob Roberts". If you want to be called "Dr. Roberts", sign "Dr. Bob Roberts".
No one is going to call you "Dr. Bob Roberts PhD IT, MSE, MEM", and what do you really hope to accomplish with that signature?
Another way to do this would be to just include your linkedin profile link. That way anyone interested in learning about your credentials can just click on there. Something else I see common in Academic settings is to link to their personal webpage for the department. That page usually lists their resume, educational credentials, what paper they may have presented in the past, etc. Ofcourse ensure to setup the webpage and add all the relevant information there.
I never had an email signature. Can't think of something to put there that the person I'm communicating with doesn't know already or can easily find out if interested in having that information.
When something is relevant to the other party I'll mention it in the email, not on the signature. If exchanging more than a few emails, having long signatures becomes annoying (IMO).
As for the question, I'd keep the signature as simple as possible, e.g. John Doe, PhD. This way you're not adding additional lines to your name/signature combo, while still informing everyone that you have a PhD and everything else that comes beforehand.
You can list your other degrees if they are relevant to your work. For example, if I were an art therapist, a BA in fine art is relevant to my work, so I'd list it. But don't list the BS in Psychology that led to the MS. And you would list any licensure first, if you have it, such as MFT.
While in grad school I was told by my dissertation advisor that in formal correspondence you should not refer to yourself by Dr. The proper form would be:
Bob Roberts, Ph.D. in and not,
Dr. Bob Roberts.
Medical doctors seem to violate this convention quite frequently though.
That's because medical doctors are MDs, not PhDs. Also this is very culture specific; in the UK, writing Dr Bob Roberts is far more common than Bob Roberts, PhD. Or, as others have pointed out, just plain old Bob.
May I guess that you (or rather, your dissertation adviser) are American? Certainly in Commonwealth English, it's normal (and correct) to write "Dr." before someone's name, regardless of what type of doctorate they hold.
Yes, American. The advice applied to self-references only. Referring to someone else as Dr. would of course be perfectly normal. I guess his point was that you would not introduce yourself as, "Hello, I'm Mr. Bob Roberts", so the same logic should apply to Dr. as a prefix. These are by definition English honorifics intended to address a person with respect. Therefore use in the case of a self-reference would seem inappropriate. I can see why at a medical center people would refer to themselves as Dr. in order to distinguish themselves from the nurses and janitors.
You shouldn't put any of that in your email. There is a general correlation of Ph.D.s who call themselves Dr. or use the ,Ph.D. being the weaker ones. Even if not true in your case, it will still come across that way. And not just to the general public, but other Ph.D. holders. (Same thing applies to retired military ranks unless you are writing a letter to the editor.)
First Last
(optional) position and/or org
cell phone number
email
You include the cell so people can call you. Lots of people use email sigs for finding phone numebrs and get annoyed by others who don't list it. (Of course if it is an email you don't want the cell included, edit it out.) Include the actual email since many email programs or physical printouts list your name in the header but not the email adress
I've seen
Fred Davidson, M.D. Ph.D
which i personally like because it's all in one line and the fact that the md and the phd are together makes it look more powerful rather than separated.
This is something of a different case. the MD and PhD degrees both lead to the title "Dr" and, in the context of medical practice or research, it's good to distinguish "I'm an physician" from "I'm an academic" from "I'm both a physician and an academic."
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90611 | What can first author do if co-author who submitted paper put himself down as corresponding author without first author's permission?
N is the first author for a paper (PhD work) and there are three co-authors, B, C and D.
B and C are from the same department and the author D is from different department but they are all from the same institution. B had the biggest contribution in terms of the experimental work and N spent a long time writing the paper.
The paper was sent to all for revision. After the paper is ready, the co-author submits the manuscript considering herself as the corresponding author without the first author permission. The problem is that she gave an incorrect email address of the first author to the journal.
Is this situation illegal? Can the first author contact the journal and at least change his correct email address?
Illegal??? That seems pretty extreme.
Can I do something about this?
Contact the editor, if you don#t have the editors info and your co-author will not forward it to you, contact the editor-in-chief.
Isn't it logic that the person submitting the manuscript is the corresponding author?
You don't say what field you're in. In the life sciences fields I'm familiar with, "Corresponding author" has no prestige or value attached to it, but is merely an indication that this person is doing the administrative work associated with processing the paper, handling requests for reprints (almost nonexistent now), etc. Instead of assuming malice, why not simply ask the coauthor to correct your email for you?
I have received the submission confirmation but on an email address that is temporary. I asked her to edit my details but she said it is too late now and you don't need to do anything as I am the corresponding author. She really annoyed me with doing this. She knows that I started the process of submitting but she did not give me the chance to finish it myself.
Why did you want to finish it yourself? Do you think there's some prestige or value attached to it? If her understanding is that "Corresponding author" is a minor administrative role, then she could have taken it over as a favor to you. You seem upset far out of proportion to the issue.
Who of B, C, D, is the submitting co-author?
I did not understand what you meant Walter
Probably the reason the submitter sees no reason to change the email is because it really doesn't matter. It won't be in the publication in any way, it's just for you to receive emails about the publication process. I think you are way more concerned about this than you need to be. If you are losing access to that email address imminently and can't have mail forwarded from that address you could ask the editor to update it for further correspondence.
Legality doesn't really come into this, but academic ethics most certainly does.
The real problem here is that the paper was submitted without a clear agreement amongst the authors that it was ready for submission and about who would submit.
From your story and comments, I assume that you are "N", but you don't say which of co-authors B, C, or D submitted. I am guessing that one of those co-authors is your advisor, and I believe that's who you need to have a conversation with.
If your advisor was the one who submitted (or told the other co-author to submit), they may have had good reason for doing so, or may have thought that you had already consented to submission.
If your advisor didn't think the paper was ready to submit, they need to know that it has happened so that they can help defend both of your interests.
Depending on what happens in your conversation with your advisor, there are three basic paths from here:
It was a misunderstanding of some sort or a basically harmless error, and nothing needs to be done,
The journal editor can be contacted to change paper meta-data, or
The article needs to be withdrawn and resubmitted at a later date.
From what you have written so far, however, it is impossible to tell which is the appropriate course.
I assume that your field is one of those where "first author" is important (indicates how much work N contributed) but "corresponding author" just means the person willing to handle correspondence about the paper. If that's correct, and if the order of authors wasn't changed, and if I were the first author N, then I would be happy that B or C or D has volunteered to take over the work of dealing with future correspondence.
If "gave an incorrect email address ... to the journal" means that an incorrect address will be published in the paper, then I would write to the editor to try to have it corrected. If, on the other hand, it only means that the journal can't reach me by email, then I wouldn't worry about it, because the journal is supposed to contact the new corresponding author, not me.
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91045 | Is it possible to publish a paper when the research was done many years earlier?
Is it possible to publish a paper when the research was done a number of years ago?
For example, can I write a paper from my Masters thesis which was done in 2011 and try to publish it in 2017?
what is the domain? what does your thesis talking about? does it deal with the timely manners issue? ...
Hi @Asmat, welcome to Academia.SE. We prefer questions that could be useful to a range of people, rather than dealing very specifically with your circumstances. Therefore, I have edited your question to emphasise the more general question. However, if you don't like my edits you can "rollback" to your original version by using the "edit" button.
At a minimum, you will need to update the related work section to take into account relevant papers published in the intervening years. After doing that, you should be able to tell whether the paper still advances published knowledge enough to be publishable.
Yes, IF the research is still relevant and novel.
When you publish a research paper you never write when was the research performed, you merely describe the research and explain why it is relevant. If the research is still a new/different method, then it doesn't matter when you did it. No one is going to ask. If the method was novel then, but now several people have published about it and you can not add anything to the current literature, then it is not worth publishing.
Just follow the same criteria that you would use if the research was done last night to consider if its worth of publication.
"you never write when the research was performed" - this is field dependent. In my field (ecology) it is very common to mention when data were collected since temporal fluctuations are often found in wild populations.
@user2390246 but then the research may no longer be relevant.
@user2390246 If I do not understand wrong, you do not write when the research is conducted, but you are giving full information about the data. You may as well have processed the data 2~5 years later, as it happens a lot with this type of research. Do you generally say that, or do you just say when is the data from?
@AnderBiguri Yes, that is true, we would give the year(s) of data collection but not when the data were analysed. To be clear, I completely agree with your general recommendation, just wanted to point out that in some cases the reader does get some information on when the research was carried out.
@Walter Not necessarily, as in ecology having historical data about an issue is worthwhile. Heck, there is an effort to transcribe and annotate old 19th century ships logs, as that gives a record of what the climate was back then. What the historical record of weather/ecology was like back in 2011 hasn't been invalidated since, and provides a valuable resource for people attempting to compare it to what's happening in 2017, 2035, etc.
http://astro.ic.ac.uk/bmay/home Dr. Brian May is a great example of old research being published later. Dr. May completed most of his research in the 1970s, but was distracted by other employment (the rock band Queen) and finished his doctorate in 2007.
In addition to Ander Biguri's answer: Yes, check the relevance of your intended publication against the current literature, as you would do for a publication about "contemporary research" performed recently. Equally check to which extent you may / have to cite your master thesis as literature reference, for example if it deposited on a open-access repository.
Such a delays happened in the past, for example because the results were judged of military importance. H. C. Browns publications eventually leading to a widespread use of boranes as reducing agents in organic chemistry are one example, as some precursors were suitable high-density materials foreseen for rocket engines:
(source, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1953, 75, 186–190; doi: 10.1021/ja01097a049).
Or an other (doi 10.1021/ja01097a055) in the same journal, citing a thesis at the University of Chicago submitted in 1946, expressing his hopes that (in 1953) "It is anticipated that this article will soon be published in a more accessible form."
Instead of an embargo, a considerable delay between recording the research data and publication may occur even today. Imagine, for example, you want to publish your results in a journal after successfully filing for a patent application. Hence, in agreement with your patent attorney, you may send the compuscript to the publisher to gain "academic priority", but with the request to delay the publication intentionally up to a date that is convenient for the patent.
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91364 | Is 100 hours per year of teaching a heavy load for a lecturer?
I have recently been appointed as a lecturer in a scientific department. This is a permanent position. The responsibilities of the position include: teaching, conducting high level research, administration tasks, mentoring and supervising students. The teaching load is 100 hours/year, which I found a little bit excessive.
My question is: are 100 hours of teaching a heavy load or is this common in academic institutions (universities)? In particular, scientific departments (chemistry, mathematics, physics ...).
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
There is a problem with this question in that the position is traditionally called "assistant professor" in the US system while "lecturer" in the US is a teaching position. Your position is not teaching only I understand.
From the description of the position it sounds like it's akin to a UK or Australian Lectureship - but as @dilworth says, it would be useful to clarify what country it is in.
The load seems reasonable for an established lecturer, but is a little heavy, by UK standards, for a first year lecturer. It might be worth asking for a partial teaching (or marking or tutoring) release for the first year.
Many universities, including those in the UK and US, talk about the split between research, teaching and admin. A split of time of 40% research, 40% teaching, and 20% service is not atypical at a UK Russel Group university. In the UK, the work year consists of about 1800 hours (37.5 hours per week times 48 weeks a year). With a 40% teaching load, you should be doing 720 hours of "teaching". I have never heard of a Russel Group university with a teaching load lower than 30%. The non-Russel Group universities I am familiar with don't go above 60% teaching time.
Teaching obviously consists of more than just standing in front of students lecturing. My UK university work load model credited us with time for supervising undergraduate final year project students, our mandated office hours, marking, tutorials, and lecturing.
We typically had 40 office hours (2 hours per week of the two 10 week semesters) and 150 grading hours. This left about 530 hours of traditional teaching time (tutorials, lectures, and practicals). For every hour of tutorial and lecture, we are given either 4 or 8 hours of prep time depending on if it is new teaching or not. This means an established teacher would have 132.5 hours of lecturing a year and a new lecturer would have 66.25 hours of lecturing a year.
4 or 8 hours prep time?!?!? We get 4 for a brand new course, 1 else (even if you're taking over from someone else, which means you have to prep a lot yourself).
@JessicaB The question is: "What is included in prep time?" You might need to design weekly exercise sheets, you might need to write a script/lecture notes, maybe you need to discuss with TAs or students, etc. If it is only "read the text you will write at the black board once", then 8 hours is of course a little bit much...
@Bemte Writing exercise sheets and lecture notes is included within that time. So is getting to and from the lecture, and dealing with students' queries after the lecture or at any other time. We don't have any TAs to talk to.
@JessicaBjess so are you standing in front of students 300+ hours a year, or is your research/teaching/administration breakdown different. What I didn't mention was that the workload model was developed such that we could justify 40% teaching time with our 100+ contact hours a year.
@JessicaB: Would agree with you. I've heard maybe double time in preparation ( 2 hours preparation per hour lecture time ). Time needed can of course vary if you need to reinvent and reproduce everything ( brand new course ) or just get to learn already produced material.
How much you get and how much it takes are two very different things. I reckon it takes me about 16 hours to develop an hour of teaching the first time, and maybe 4 or 5 to refresh it every year. Now am I credited with that in my workload allocation? Not a chance. This is why we all work 60 hour weeks.
RCUK grant applications usually regard a working year as 1,679 hours (36.5hrs a week * 46 weeks), not 1,800
Amusingly (I guess) my reading of the OP was "100 credit hours", or say, 50 hours per week, and I thought "hmmm, seems somewhat excessive". My U.S. lecturer position has me in front of students 360 total hours a year (or I guess recently reduced to 312).
From a Spanish perspective, 100 hours per year is tiny. In the University of Barcelona, most full time lecturers are expected to deliver 240 blackboard hours a year. Even part time lecturers teach up to 180 hours a year. The only kind of lecturers that teach less than 100 hours a year are those in the lowest ranks of part time lecturers, who just teach 2 or 3 hours a week (60 or 90 hours a year).
What are the publication expectations? We are expected to put out at least one paper in an >15 IF journal every 3 years.
Full time professors may get teaching load reduction for great research productivity. However, at Barcelona University (the case I know) the most productive researchers still have to teach 120 hours a year, which is a large reduction but still higher than the 100 hours/year asked by the OP.
I'm in mechanical engineering at the University of California, Davis. Here are the typical "blackboard" hours per year (9 month positions):
Research Faculty (60% research, 30% teaching, 10% service)
1st year: 84
2nd and on: 126
Teaching Faculty (70% teaching, 20% research, 10% service)
1st year: 210
2nd and on: 252
Full time lecturer (100% teaching)
378
I'm non-permanent at a similar institution and have 120 hours of lectures a year. Clearly, your place is more friendly.
My teaching load is not measured in hours, so I'm not sure if it compares directly with yours. In any case, my "blackboard time" is about 130 hours per year (4 classes). On top of that, preparing assignments and exams, marking exams, office hours, mentoring of graduate students, committee work, and a research program.
Many departments I know have a lighter load, that would imply close 100 hours per year.
In which country and discipline, may I ask?
Canada. Area, Math, but what I say applies with very small differences to any other area.
I'm not so sure. I've 80 "blackboard hours" per year in Austria as a postdoc. Other answers here suggest an even larger variety: 240 in Spain and even ~ 600 in India.
The median teaching requirement among top-30 math departments for full professors would likely be 2/1/1 on quarters or 2/1 on semesters, which would correspond to 120-135 blackboard hours. Some are as high as 180 (2/2 teaching is not at all unreasonable). Some departments in the top 10-15 have reduced their requirements in the past few years to 1/1/1 or 1/1, which would be 90 blackboard hours. This is about as good a deal as you will find is the US.
The bare data of "100 hours" is not very meaningful. In France (continuing the big list), the legal workload of a lecturer or professor is 192 hours of teaching per year, in all departments in all universities. There are serious caveats:
This number of hours corresponds to a number of "travaux dirigés", which google translates as "tutorials". It is understood that 1h of lecture is equivalent to 1.5h of tutorials. Therefore a professor (presumably in extremely good standing with their department) could theoretically teach 128h per year, assuming they focus on lectures and nothing else.
It is also understood that 1h of blackboard time corresponds to roughly 4h of total work time, including preparing the course, the exams, proctoring, grading, etc. Because French universities are dramatically underfunded, this also includes idiotic stuff like filling Excel tables with students' grades or booking lecture rooms yourself. So 192h is really 768h in theory. Multiply by 2 to account for research (the people who wrote the law are probably idealists) and you get 1536h, which is almost equal to the annual legal working time in France (1607h).
This workload has no provisions whatsoever regarding supervision of students: undergrad projects, master's theses, PhD theses. We do all this pretty much on a volunteering basis. Or it counts as "research", who knows.
Some administrative duties - heading a lab, a research team, a department, being responsible for a degree, a very large course, being on the administrative board, and so on - carry a teaching reduction. The reduction is somewhat laughable compared to the amount of work necessary for these duties.
Someone reasonably senior and with a good research record can get access to teaching buy-outs using grants or special kinds of sabbaticals that I don't feel like detailing. I know people who haven't taught the full 192h/year in years.
Having been appointed lecturer in France some time ago, I can only say that I wish my teaching workload was only half of what it currently is. I'd have to say that 100h/year is a rather good deal.
A humorous anecdote: in a committee constituted of international experts evaluating candidates for a three-year grant (that contained clauses for the aforementioned buyouts), a German colleague asked if the 192h mentioned on the applicants' files were referring to the entirety of the grant's duration, which was already funny in itself. For comparison, this third of 192h/year (64h/year) is what we ask of PhD students here.
Since this is turning into a big-list summary of practices in each country: in Italy, the typical load is:
120 or more hours/yr for a professor (full or associate)
70-80 for a tenure-track position
60-66 for a junior research position.
80 and 66 are hard limits, at least in my institution, 120 is not --- some take more hours of teaching (kind of) voluntarily, and some get away with fewer --- especially those that have administrative roles. This applies to all university staff; in the Italian system there is no separate lecturer position focused on teaching.
Our system, though, requires you to spend more time on exams than in other countries; for instance, for some courses I have to offer the students up to 8-9 attempts per year to take the exam.
This, plus lecture prep and office hours (which are not counted in these calculations) means that you spend more time teaching than those numbers seem to imply.
This document of Poltecnico di Milano seems to say that the minimum amount of teaching is 350 hours per year? https://www.polimi.it/fileadmin/user_upload/il_Politecnico/statuto_regolamenti_eng/8_Regulations_teaching_commitment.pdf
@Michael Yes, but that does not count only teaching, but all time devoted to students: lecture prep, office hours, supervising undergrads and graduate students, giving exams, sitting in graduation sessions. In Pisa we have the same guideline for professors (associate and full: lecturers/assistant profs are not considered "professori" in the Italian system, but "ricercatori"); I think that it is a national legal requirement. That amount of time seems more or less accurate, but since in practice no one keeps a detailed timesheet of these activities, it is often just a requirement on paper.
In China's practice, the main part of the work of a lecturer in an institute of higher learning is to teach, so 100 hours is only the workload for him within a semester. The good thing is that at least the teacher can have more exchanges of ideas with the young people.
My experience in UK Russell group university engineering:
Every Lecturer is expected to teach 2-3 modules. Each module has ~35 contact hours (lectures, tutorials, labs). So, 100 hours sounds about right.
In addition, we have 10-12 undergraduate/graduate(MSc) project supervisions that we need to meet on a weekly basis.
We also have weekly tutorial meetings (some academic some pastoral).
When you bring funding, you buy out teaching and this goes down.
In institutes of technology in Ireland a lecturer currently delivers 17 contact hours per week for two semesters of 13 weeks each, giving 442 contact hours per year (this applies in institutes that are semesterised, which is the majority of them). For several years until recently the weekly load was 18 contact hours.
There is also the more junior Assistant Lecturer grade in the institutes of technology, which basically means that there are an extra 2 contact hours per week, giving 494 contact hours per year.
I should clarify that these are hours in a classroom in front of students: preparation time and setting, marking and administration of exams and assessments are separate from this, as of course is research.
Contact hours in universities in Ireland are another story and they vary somewhat beween universities and departments. When I lectured in a maths department in one of them, I typically had 6 contact hours per week giving about 156 contact hours per year.
So 100 contact hours per year would probably not be considered excessive by an Irish academic.
In New Zealand, in my department, we also have 100 contact hours per year. These hours only include lectures and not tutorials or laboratories.
So you have to give tutorials and labs on top of that? How many additional contact hours would that make for?
Yes. We have tutors for first two levels, but not for the 3d or 4th year where we generally have one lab/tutorial per week. I guess if one of the courses is without tutors it would lead to an additional 12 hours per course. Our semesters are 12 weeks. Also, we have office hours.
So basically then about 124 hours (12 hours per tutorial, one tutorial per semester, 2 semesters per year)?
My problem is that there doesn't seem to be an international standard to compare teaching loads of university staff on an international level. For US faculty, I have often read about the X-Y scheme, where X denotes the number of courses taught in spring, and Y the number of courses taught in fall. But how much workload or classroom hours does "one course" imply? Most people here talk about hours of teaching per year - but how do they spread over the year, considering semester weeks and breaks, preparation time and actual classroom hours?
In Germany, we talk about classroom hours. University professors typically have 9 classroom hours per semester, professors at universities of applied sciences 18 classroom hours. One such hour equates 45 minutes and is only to be done during semester. There is two semesters per year, lasting approximately 15 weeks each. Preparation times and exams are in top of those classroom hours. In other words: a university professor would face about 200 classroom (60min-)hours per year and is still expected to mostly focus on research, while preparatory/exam time comes on top of those 200 hours. A professor working for a university of applied sciences would look at 400 hours with almost no research obligations.
Is this anyhow comparable to the amount of hours discussed above?
In the US, most courses are "3 semester credit hours", which equates to 3 hours per week in the classroom for a roughly 15 week semester. Under this scheme, a single course would involve about 45 hours in the classroom. For someone with a (fairly standard for average research universities) 2+2 teaching load (2 courses in the fall semester and 2 in the spring), this comes out to 180 hours per year. Most faculty in the US teach at institutions that are not research universities with loads of 3+3, 4+4, or even 5+5. 100 hours per year in the classroom is extremely light by US standards.
That's not much, to be honest, many university lecturers in India are expected/made to deliver 100 hours in 2/3 months.
How many times each year?
I would suggest to compare this workload within your university and with those closest to your situation(recently hires, salary, benefits etc). If this workload turns out to be same as everyone else's than accept it. Good luck with your job.
I am a lecturer in the UK, and my teaching load is 200 contact hours per year. I think this is higher than average in the UK because our university is post-92 and quite teaching-oriented. This is also (supposedly) lower than average in our university because I have an additional workload allowance for research.
At my university, a typical teaching load varies from 200-300 hours/year. If you are worried that 100 hours is excessive, being a lecturer may not be the right fit for you.
In some countries, e.g. the U.K., "lecturer" is an academic rank, analogous to "assistant professor" in the U.S.
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14813 | Will it hurt me if my advisor's last name is before mine alphabetically?
I'm a graduate student in theoretical particle physics, where the standard is that all author lists are alphabetized. However, even in other disciplines of physics, it's quite common for author lists to be ordered by the amount of the contribution. At some point I will probably be judged by people who are not entirely familiar with the standards of particle theory, and even if they are they probably have subconscious biases towards earlier authors.
I also happen to have a last name that's around the middle of the alphabet. I can feasibly find an advisor whose name is after mine, but the most natural choices (including my current advisor) all happen to be before mine alphabetically. My current choice makes me a bit worried because most of his other students also have names before mine alphabetically. I'll probably have a number of publications with other people in the group, and it's not unlikely that I'll be the last author on most or all of these.
Is this something that I should be seriously worried about? (My heart tells me no, but my brain isn't sure.) Will I have much more trouble in the future than comparable candidates who are listed earlier? Or is it a fairly small effect which is much less significant than choosing a good advisor in the long term?
I can feasibly find an advisor whose name is after mine - no...just, no!
@TCSGrad Maybe that's not exactly the right way to say it. There are good choices for advisor who have last names after mine doing things that interest me. It's just that none of them are at the top of my list of people who I think "I want this person as my advisor" in absence of this consideration. Anyway I realize this question objectively comes off as a bit silly, and indeed that's my hope.
If you have not yet published anything, now is the time to change your name, perhaps to Logan Aardvark.
Alternatively, if you feel uncomfortable being the last author, feel free to add my name at the end of the list in any paper of yours. :)
Change your name to Logan Aingi.
Hmm. Are you also worried about getting undue credit and an unfair advantage by having your name appear first?
Trust me, you don't have it that bad. :-P
Yes, there is a subtle unconscious bias. Even in a field where author names are always alphabetical, papers will be cited in talks as Author1 et al, so if you happen to be Author1 your name will be slightly more disseminated.
Is it true? Yes. Is it fair? No, not entirely. Is it a big deal? No. Should you change your advisor as a workaround? No.
The best way to overcome this bias is going to conferences and getting your face and name known to other people in the field. So it won't matter if your name is Aardvark or Zwingli, because people will know you anyway and know that you did some respectable work.
Another thing you can do to reduce the impact of this bias on your CV is adding a statement on the lines of the following sentence that I put in mine:
"As is common practice in mathematics, the author order is usually alphabetical and does not reflect a difference in contribution. "
(by the way, I can relate: I have been alphabetically last author on 86% of my joint papers).
In fields where author's names are listed alphabetically -- like mathematics -- it is a very bad practice to say "Author1 et al". More strongly, barring exceptional circumstances when you refer to a theorem by multiple people you should say all the people's names whenever you say any of them.
And a big +1 for the suggestion of simply adding a line to your CV to clear up any misconception that people in other fields might have. But I would put things more simply and more strongly than you have. I would suggest something like "The ordering of the authors' names does not connote differences in contributions. It is strictly alphabetical."
I have no idea about its credibility, and I'm certainly not trying to discourage Zhang's or Zyskowski's out there. But you might find this article interesting:
L. Einav, L. Yariv. What's in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on Academic Success. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20 (2006), 175-187.
We present evidence that a variety of proxies for success in the U.S. economics labor market (tenure at highly ranked schools, fellowship in the Econometric Society, and to a lesser extent, Nobel Prize and Clark Medal winnings) are correlated with surname initials, favoring economists with surname initials earlier in the alphabet. These patterns persist even when controlling for country of origin, ethnicity, and religion. We suspect that these effects are related to the existing norm in economics prescribing alphabetical ordering of authors’ credits. Indeed, there is no significant correlation between surname initials and tenure at departments of psychology, where authors are credited roughly according to their intellectual contribution. The economics market participants seem to react to this phenomenon. Analyzing publications in the top economics journals since 1980, we note two consistent patterns: authors participating in projects with more than three authors have significantly earlier surname initials, and authors writing papers in which the order of credits is non-alphabetical have significantly higher surname initials.
It's absurd and ludicrous to take this kind of bias into account when choosing your advisor, though...
I knew about this paper; that's actually what led me to ask this question. However, it is good to hear that it's not something I should be concerned with in terms of picking an advisor.
"... or Zyskowski" -- or "Żywotny".
Based on my own experience, even if your last name comes before your advisor's, your own research community will regard any joint work with your advisor to be primarily your advisor's work, despite your advisor's protests to the contrary, until you start publishing independently. The Matthew Effect is a much more significant than your position in the alphabet.
(My name comes before my advisor's, and I've advised students with names before mine and others after mine. I work in a field that orders authors alphabetically.)
No, not so true, surely not in my subject (boundary math/CS). It quite depends on the advisor and on his attitude, and especially in small communities like ours, the students get recognized very well by their contribution.
Yes, surely in your subject. I'm a theoretical computer scientist.
Ok, then it's clearly a very varying thing.
@tohecz: I am also in mathematics, and I agree with JeffE's answer, at least up until the "advisor's protests to the contrary part". If I read a recommendation letter from someone that I trust and she goes out of her way to explain the student's contribution to the work and explain that it was substantial, then I will believe her. But across all of mathematics there is a certain positive "percentage discount" on joint papers with one's thesis adviser. As a thesis adviser, I don't find this practice to be especially irrational.
I work in a field [chemistry] where historically (before academic search engines), the advisor's name was always first, since that was probably the person you had the best chance of identifying when you went to your local library and sat down with the print version of chemical abstracts.
The modern practice is to list authors by intellectual contribution (which usually puts the adviser last, but not always). To add to the confusion, some advisers still operate by the older method.
Many journals now want a statement of author contributions to appear in the text. This type of statement removes any ambiguity over who did what, and resolves both the author ordering problem and the sadly still recurring vanity author problem.
For example: B.N.N. designed the synthesis and prepared key intermediate 1. J.V.V. prepared derivatives A and B. B.N.N. and J.J.V. characterized the compounds. H.G.T. and A.B.C. coded and compiled the computational models. B.N.N. and H.G.T. designed the study and wrote the manuscript.
Please, always specify which subjects your post applies to. I have never read or written an aritcle with other than alphabetical order of authors.
Yes it will. The problem is not the alphabet, it's the advisor and others, the readers. I am not at my library so I can't link to the psychologic rules behind it.
but
as you asked 'Is this something that I should be seriously worried about?' the point is, you can't avoid the problem - live with your (his/her) name (hair color, size and, and, and), and think about doing the best ...
You can't avoid psychological problems, so better not to take care, if you can't change it.
I answer with a tautology: Take an advisor who is good.
Think about:
Frank Wilczek,
Edward Witten,
Athony Zee,
Bruno Zumino,
Barton Zwiebach. etc.
Their last names initials are W or Z.
(They are in HEP theoretical physics, particle physics, like you.)
They hardly get anything for the authorship sorting. But they are doing fantastic well outstanding. They are hired by TOP institutes. Keep their names in your mind. Keep it up.
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19041 | How do authors deal with figure copyrights when writing review articles?
Assuming I'm writing a review article and I'd like to use figures
after [1]" or similar? How am I expected to deal with copyright? Obviously a review article is going to use existing figures, more or less--that's the point. It seems from sites like IEEE that the expected practice is to pay, per figure, for each graphic used. Is that really how things work? Or is there some "fair use" clause that can be invoked?
As a practical issue, you will probably want to contact the publishers of the papers anyway, in order to get the original high-quality image files.
I somewhat doubt that you "obviously want to use existing figures" in a review article. At least in my field, a review article is more than just summarizing previous work. Usually, much more time is spent on comparing and contrasting these works, so in all the review articles I wrote and recently read, the problem really never even came up. If you feel you need to copy & paste an entire figure, chances are you are too close to the source material to produce a review that actually adds value.
The rules vary widely by publisher here. It also depends on whose work you're "copying." If it's your own graphic, then there's usually no issue associated with it. However, if it belongs to someone else, then you should either request the permission from the rights holder, or redraw the figure yourself (if it's a schematic, then this would eliminate copyright issues).
Similarly, a journal or publisher may allow you to reuse people's work from within the same publisher's journals without fee. But again, this is something the individual publishers determine.
Usually you have to obtain a permission (there are exceptions, for example if you "redraw"¹ content). Your publisher may request permissions for you! Here is a how to for the most common way, if you have to do it on your own:
Search for the title of the paper containing the figure you would like to reuse on Google (for example: An RNA-Sequencing Transcriptome and Splicing Database of Glia, Neurons, and Vascular Cells of the Cerebral Cortex)
Identify the website of the journal and click on it (sometimes the first result refers you to a reference aggregation site, researchgate or personal webpage) (in my example this would be http://www.jneurosci.org/content/34/36/11929 )
Look for a button or link saying "Rights and permissions", "Request Permissions" or similar. Every journal has it at a different spot and sometimes it is hidden behind some floating "Info box" (Tip: Search for the words right or permission in your browser) (see screenshot for the location in my example)
Following this link you are usually taken to the Copyright Clearance Center on copyright.com which can automatically proceed most of your requests
Follow the steps indicated at the Copyright Clearance Center, indicating how you want to use the content (in your case this would be "Republish in a journal/magazine) (in my example I have to identify the correct publication first, then enter the year of publication, and afterwards choose how I want to use it)
You will eventually get to a page where you have to select which rights you would like to procure (e.g. publishing worldwide, doing translations, modifying the figure and son on). Important here is also do select your role in this process too (on whose behalf are you requesting copyright) (see screenshot for the categories to be filled in in my example)
Afterwards a price should be quoted for you, which may be 0 if you are allowed to reuse without paying.
Accept the conditions and terms on that page
Print a .pdf copy of the confirmation for your documents. Usually they'll also send you an email. You will likely be asked by your new publisher to send them this permission statement.
Make sure to acknowledge the publisher in the figure caption. Example: Figure 1: description of figure. From Crowell et al. 2014 (reference), with permission from StackExchange (publisher).
If you cannot find a Rights or Permission link on the webpage of the article try the following:
Identify the publisher of the journal in question
Search on Google for the name of the publisher together with "Reusing figures", "Permission and Rights" or "Permission request" or similar. Major publishers usually have instructions on how to do this somewhere on their web page.
If you cannot find that information either or if you have a specific question write to the publisher's permission department (most of the times you can find that email address on their website). From experience I can say that they are slow to answer and that they usually send you a generic "please do it the usual way" email first. Just write them again in that case. Consider that this takes time (they give 30 business days (~ 1.5 month) as expected answer time), so don't do it last minute.
As aeismail mentioned there are good chances that you can reuse your own, previously published content and content published in the same publication you plan to publish your paper in, without to much hassle (write to the publisher's permissions department).
¹meaning: substantially change so that it can be considered a new work, see also Figure reproduction, adaptation and redrawing by Wiley.com
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16589 | How to cite a conference paper in an "extended" journal version?
I recently presented a paper at a conference which was published in its proceedings. Now it is time to submit an "extended" version with "30% new content". The new content isn't a problem, I've added several figures, a couple of genuinely new findings and some helpful illustrations that I developed while preparing my talk. However, the instructions from the publisher state:
In the extended paper clearly cite the conference paper and list it as one of the references.
In my opinion, this can be interpreted in one of two ways:
Write a new article that assumes knowledge of the proceedings.
This is kind of a scary option because it implies that it really has to be a new work.
Explain that an earlier version exists and what's new here. This is a comforting interpretation but seems kind of uncharacteristic for the style in most journal articles.
What's the best path to follow here?
I write something along the lines of:
This paper is an extended version of work published in [1]. We extend our previous work by A, B and C.
Note that some new figures etc. will probably not really count as new content (this would probably be called new presentation rather than new content). New findings and new data, that's what people will really be interested in.
One common pattern that I often see in my field is that the conference paper has most of the ideas in place, but a rather cursory evaluation. The journal extension then has the ideas of the conf paper + whatever input came out of discussions at the conference + a more or less large-scale validation. The "nucleus" of the paper is reproduced more or less in verbatim. To be fair, I am not sure if this is even ok from a copyright point of view, but it certainly is common practice in my field FWIW.
"New findings and new data, that's what people will really be interested in." - actually, this may be quite field-dependent; I have come across various instances where, for instance, the extended journal paper described all elements of a visual notation rather than just showing some exemplary ones, or where it used the additional space for describing several different examples rather than just one minimal one. I'm not sure whether that counts as "new findings and new data", I would cautiously rather call it a "more thorough explanation of the old findings and old data".
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9077 | Doing extra research worth the effort?
I am currently doing research for my masters and also doing a full time job from 10 to 7 excluding the weekends.By the end of our research ,all of the students would get at least one good paper. I am also expected to get one. I have two more opportunities for research.
One comes from one of my semester projects on computer simulation.My professor told me that I might get a good publication out of it if I extend it a little.I have done most of the work on this project.I only have to do about 20 or 30 percent more work on it.
The second opportunity is regarding GPU acceleration.I haven't started work on this one.
I was wondering that will it be worth the effort if I choose to go ahead with these research opportunities? I am free on the weekends but I am worried that I might get burned out if I work all the time. Would it be beneficial for me if I plan to go into teaching in a few years? Would it be beneficial if I plan to go for a PhD?
Why the close votes? Seems like it is reasonable to want to know when doing extra research during a MSc program will be beneficial.
Doing more research and get publication are always good, especially if you want to go for PhD and/or follow academia path. However, as you're working full-time, I wonder if you can do intensive research as it's a very hard work. So, my answer is: Yes, it's worth to do more research but you need to reschedule your time and prioritize which activity you want to do most: work or research.
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9081 | When does a researcher become a computer scientist?
When do you call a researcher a computer scientist? Are Master degree holders computer scientists? Are Phd degree holders computer scientists? Is there a certain level of experience after which the researcher will be called a computer scientist?
I reaaaally doubt that you will get a constructive, objective and useful answer to this question.
When do you call a researcher a computer scientist?
A runner is someone who runs; a writer is someone who writes; a researcher is someone who does research; a computer scientist is someone who does computer science. So if you're doing computer science research, I will call you a computer scientist and a researcher, even if you aren't yet published, even if you work full-time as a plumber, even if you're still in junior high school.
Is there a certain level of experience after which the researcher will be called a computer scientist?
No. There is nothing you can do to make other people call you anything.
But to call yourself a computer scientist, the only requirement is that you are doing computer science. So in that sense, yes, there is a certain required level of experience: More than zero.
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91413 | Is it okay for a reviewer to share an under review manuscript with their colleagues?
In a research meeting I mentioned I was doing some peer-review for a conference and disclosed the general topic it was about, without any further details. Immediately my colleagues demanded I disclose information about details of the paper, authors, and they even suggested I should share the paper with them immediately, and they swore "they would not share it with anyone".
I refused and said this was unethical behavior. They all got really angry and took it personally, saying that sharing a manuscript under review was completely normal and ethical, and even recommended and the problem was simply that I did not "trust them".
What is your experience with this? What are your thoughts?
"they swore that they would not share it with anyone" -- "they said sharing it was completely normal". See the contradiction? :)
Do you already know that this paper wasn't publicly shared, e.g. on a pre-print server? Either way, it'd seem like a courtesy to the author to let them know that people are interested in their paper, potentially allowing them to share it or engage in discussions about it at their discretion.
Consider the paper as not existing, except for the purpose of your review. Unless you are permitted to have sub-reviewers with permission of the editor, in which case you act as intermediate editor, you must not show the paper to anyone and should not actually even mention its existence. You never know how competitive a topic is. Your colleagues have a very loose understanding of ethics.
It's not just a matter of trust. It's a matter of contamination. We alter our own memories all the time. It's very easy to think that we came up with an idea that someone else originally came up with. I know, I do this all the time. This is why maintaining a proper boundary is so crucial. It keeps people honest, even at the subconscious level.
@Walter, I don't agree with that. You are paid by someone, generally the taxpayer, so everyone has to justify how and where they spend their time. What do you answer in a status update meeting when it's your turn to describe what you did yesterday if you were peer-reviewing? Nothing? You make something up? What is unethical is to hide that you are peer-reviewing while getting paid for it in your job.
Where did you get that this happened at a conference/meeting? This happened, as stated in the question, at a research meeting where everybody is present (status update, to be more precise) and I don't see how this has to be kept a secret. The journal/venue/topic is relevant because we all belong to a group/institution and we are not welcome to spend our paid time peer-reviewing in all journals/venues/fields, so it's important to mention it. If we accepted all peer-review invitations, we would not be doing anything else.
While I agree with @Walter that you should be very careful what, if anything, you disclose about a paper that you are reviewing (and that it's probably best to disclose nothing), I think that calling it 'unprofessional' and 'borderline unethical' is a judgement call at best, and calling it 'stupid' is just uncalled for. I think that it is enough to say that it was an error, and leave the editorialising at that.
Ask the author, person in charge, for permission. Either way problem solved.
Echoing the other answers: NO, "sharing" is not ok, especially with people whose interest is manifestly acquisition of information, rather than helping you give an expert review. Obviously. For that matter, this episode should cause you to seriously question the morality/ethics of the people who tried to bully you into "sharing". They are cheaters... sorry. Yes, we all have to learn how to "get along" with cheaters, but/and it is important to know who they are, ... and now you know, sadly. My sympathies.
+1 for outright calling his/her colleagues what they are; OP should be constantly vigilant henceforth knowing they have dubious ethical standards.
Do not share this manuscript.
It is one thing for you to solicit input, under an agreement of confidentiality, when you recognize there is another expert who can help with the review.
It is totally different when someone demands that you share it, not because you are getting help with the review, but for their own edification. The manuscript is confidential. Keep it that way!
The bullying, manipulative approach doesn't help the offenders' case, either. It may be they are legitimately able to help give expert analysis, and it may also be perfectly normal for them all to share their papers with each other (regardless of ethics or how it's done elsewhere.) But the demand of trust, the contradictory statements, and the general sleezy tone makes it sound more like "used car salesman" than "trusted academic."
Sharing articles like this does happen, sometimes it's fine, but it probably happens more than it should. If in doubt, the simplest course of action in this situation is to get in touch with the editor for whom you are carrying out the review. Ask them if they are happy with you sharing the manuscript, or selected details from it, within your research group. You then don't have to shoulder the blame if the answer is "no", you can just blame the editor.
Note that some journals provide specific guidance. The instructions for a review I carried out recently included this:
[I]f you are planning to get help with your report from a colleague (e.g., as a way of providing mentorship and training with reviewing), we do ask that you keep any such consultation to a small number of people (1 or 2) to respect the confidentiality of the review process. On rare occasions you may also want to consult with a colleague outside your group to gather additional input, and in such situations please contact us beforehand to verify that there would not be a conflict. When you submit your review, we will give you an opportunity to acknowledge anyone who did assist you to give them credit for their contribution.
To be honest, if as an editor I received a question per this suggestion (the simplest course of action in this situation is to get in touch with the editor for whom you are carrying out the review. Ask them if they are happy with you sharing the manuscript, or selected details from it, within your research group) I would wonder what part of confidentiality the reviewer didn't understand.
"Sharing does happen" -- all sorts of bad things happen all the time. People get robbed. That doesn't mean the poster should share the manuscript or that it's OK to share it. "sometimes it's fine" -- What's your justification for saying that? The peer review process is supposed to be confidential. I do agree that asking the editor is a fine idea.
@FredDouglis I mostly meant this in the sense that OP has initially refused but their colleagues do not seem to be taking no for an answer. If they have a refusal from the editor that is much harder to argue with.
I think asking the editor is insulting, time-consuming, and embarrassing. The rules are quite clear.
@D.W. Maybe I've been a bit too relaxed in what I have said, but as demonstrated by the quote in my answer, there are certain situations where it is acceptable to pass on a manuscript to colleagues. I agree with the points made in AliceD's answer, which maybe puts it better than mine.
You'd really be insulted if someone said, "I'm unsure about the analysis in section 2, but my colleague invented that technique, so I'd like them to weigh in"? This seems like a win for literally everyone involved: better reviews for the journal (and author), easier time reviewing for the reviewer, etc.
+1 for quoting specific written guidance. (This answer would be better if you could add a citation to attribute the quote to its source).
@Matt, yet that's not what is going on here.
My bad--I thought you were replying to scenario described in this answer. I agree that "GIVE ME THE PAPER YOU'RE REVIEWING" is totally insane.
@FredDouglis: I don't think your attitude helps: if you discourage "if in doubt, ask the editor" people will do things you'd have wanted to avoid - and you won't even know about that. It may be that in the case of the journal you are editing, the confidentiality agreement is strict and clear - but I've also been reviewing for journals that say you may ask more expert opinion on particular points of the manuscript (typically after discussing this with the editor - so I conclude they were different journals from the one user2390246 refers to). While I agree the scenario in the question is ...
... clearly outside the ethical "share the manuscript" scenarios, I'd also say that you need to allow people who are new to reviewing to get their bearings (otherwise you'll soon end up either with crappy or with no reviewers because they were never allowed to learn how to do a review). And the way to do that in the most confidential fashion is to ask the editor.
@cbeleites, i was assuming that the requirement for confidentiality was either explicit (as is common) or implicit, and that it was obvious from the discussion that it was not being shared to solicit expertise.
The above answers are valid and I support them fully. By the sound of it your co-workers were demanding to look at it, whilst the review process is indeed a strictly confidential process.
Nonetheless, I just wish to add an exception to the rule:
Sharing a manuscript under review is fine when inviting others to look at it too as part of the review process. Typically, the big chief honcho of a research group is constantly flooded with review requests and often they can't handle it on their own. In this context, it is actually great when busy folks share this burden, because multiple parties benefit:
The department's head as it reduces workload;
The postdocs, grad students etc who are helping out with reviewing as they learn how to be a good referee;
The manuscript's authors as they will receive a much better review because multiple people have looked at it, instead of just a super busy head-of-department who hasn't have the time for it.
Count me among those who consider garbage the practice of farming referee reports out to postdocs and grad students. If one cannot write the report, one should turn the request down. It's perfectly reasonable to suggest to the editor using a postdoc or grad student as a referee, but when Professor X agrees to review a paper, one expects that it is Professor X who reviews it. This answer gives a lot of good reasons for declining the referee request and suggesting someone else as a reviewer.
@DanFox If Professor X passes on to a grad student, who perhaps has never reviewed a paper before, they can oversee the process and at the very least provide some quality control. They may well add their own insights as well. I don't see where the great harm lies.
@DanFox - I concur with user2390246 - if a bunch of postdocs and grad students have had a look at it, the review can be discussed in the group. I've learned a great deal from such a process for sure. Of course the invited referee should agree with the final review report.
AliceD, all true, but also already noted in the earlier responses.
@DanFox I completely agree. I actually find that behavior as unethical and corrupt as ghostwriting. When you submit to a highly-ranked journal, you expect that your manuscript is reviewed by an expert in the field that the editors contacted, not by someone else, particularly a student. I often hear that this is done for the benefit of students but I honestly don't think so. I think it's pure greed. If a professor thinks that student is qualified to make the review, then he should recommend the student as a reviewer so he can get the credit. Let's see what the editor thinks about that.
@Pablo once my supervisor was confident I was up to the task he recommended me as a referee for the journal. So from that point on the journal contacted me repeatedly and directly to review. So it is a process that goes a step further then simply passing on the review to one of your students. Instead, it's about training and recommending good referees to the journal.
@AliceD, I understand your point, but that's still unethical and no author likes their work sub-reviewed by a student. There are many ways to train students to do good peer-review that don't involve playing around with the real process of publishing. For example, giving an already published article, or an article for a local workshop you are organizing to all of them, and then comparing and discussing the reviews. It would be the same as arguing that writing an article where your supervisor gets the credit is good for you, cause you learn to write...
@Pablo - I get your point too, but the sharing of referee tasks is so commonplace that I am actually flabbergasted by the heated reactions to this practice :-)
@AliceD I think the commonplace nature is very lab-specific. In large labs with PIs who see themselves as big-shots it might happen a lot; in my own experience I have never worked with a PI who farmed out refereeing. I'll also say from the other side that it can be really obvious sometimes when a reviewer was a student and probably not actually one of the people originally asked to review...
I suspect it is also very discipline-specific.
@Pablo: "you expect that your manuscript is reviewed by an expert in the field that the editors contacted, not by someone else, particularly a student" - while the professor may be an experienced expert in the general field, one of their PhD students may indeed be the more knowledgable expert concerning a particular problem that the manuscript is about. "he should recommend the student as a reviewer so he can get the credit" - this may be field-specific, but I have yet to meet someone who'd care about getting credit for reviewing. It's a service to the community, to keep things running. ...
... There is simply no expectation that the outside world will ever take note of the fact that someone has done a given review - and this applies even in cases where the list of reviewers is public, and the reviewing system provides a way to indicate who actually wrote most of the review. At least, that is my experience. "Let's see what the editor thinks about that." - while that sounds like a decent procedure, I fear it is actually destined to produce worse results than the alternative. I for one cannot imagine a situation where an external editor could possibly have a better insight in ...
... the current and overall topics that each member of a research group is knowledgable about than someone from within that group. To me, it seems like the editor may have a good grasp about the approximate boundaries of expertise of the group as a whole, but they simply cannot be qualified to do the micromanagement involved with assigning the single reviews to the best-fitting members in the group.
@Pablo, wrt. rewieving by an expert (and in full agreement with O.R.Mapper's point): as PhD student I was explicitly reminded that I already hold a professional degree (my Diplom [Master's]) and are therefore considered a fully responsible professional in my field. And that reviewing is part of the professional tasks. I'd now say the more so, as PhD studtents typically are not asked to review out of the blue but either because they are author to a paper with related topic or have been suggested as reviewer for the manuscript (e.g. by their supervisor).
Honestly, it seems whoever told you that has a very particular definition of what "professional" means. Did he also consider you "a professional" when it came to salary, office, and travel, or in that case you were just "a student"? Just asking. By definition, a graduate student is someone who wants to become a researcher and the PhD is the "certificate of achievement". A graduate student, particularly at the beginning is unaware of the literature, the state of the art, etc... and handing over reviews to him is bad for both the community and, particularly, himself.
@O.R.Mapper I have heard the argument of "I do it for the community" many times before, and I can't but laugh. Accepting to peer-review an article improves your networking: you are known by publishers, you might be invited to be an editor in the future, etc... Basically, the more you review, the more authoritative you are considered in your field (makes sense). It brings lots of opportunities. Question: don't people list "Reviewer for Journal X" in CVs? The problem, as usual, is that too many people want the reward (status) while convincing others that doing their work is good for them.
@Pablo: "I have heard the argument of 'I do it for the community' many times before, and I can't but laugh." - I have done plenty of reviewing, and I have always considered it a mere service to the community. I fail to understand what you find laughable about that. "don't people list 'Reviewer for Journal X' in CVs?" - I have not heard about that idea yet. In the research environment I know, it is understood that reviewing manuscripts is a normal part of one's work, everyone does it from time to time, and no-one would care about it enough to actually list any particular venues. As always, ...
... this may differ by field. But I can definitely tell you that, say, in all doctoral theses of colleagues that I have read, one's scientific merits were exclusively the list of publications, grouped by publication type. Reviews were nowhere to be listed, and while my publication list was looked at and commented on during my own doctoral exam, no-one even mentioned reviews. Many of the points you list may be true even across all fields - and yet I think reviewing is totally insignificant in goals like networking or being known, compared to other methods of being scientifically active.
I have peer-reviewed (when and if I could) because I consider part of the job and I think the issue is really easy. You get an invitation. Are you qualified, have time, and willing to do it? Yes: then you accept it and do it properly. No: then decline it and, optionally, suggest someone else you think is qualified to the editor so that they can contact them directly and repeat the process. Any other approach, like passing it around to students while you are still officially the reviewer is unethical and corrupt and does no favor to anyone except the person who is "officially" the reviewer.
Unless there's some explicit okay to the contrary, you would normally regard a review as completely confidential. Even if it weren't a formal requirement, in my mind it's what the author(s) have a right to expect. If they want to share it ... there are often ways to do so, and if they haven't done it, it shouldn't be your choice to share it.
On occasion I have shared the general topic of a paper under review where that was relevant. That is, I have once or twice said something like "Oh yeah, I agree topic X is becoming more popular lately - I refereed a couple of papers on it just recently".
By contrast, anything that would give explicit details of the contents of a paper or identify its authors (even with blinded reviews it's often pretty obvious who the authors are) would contravene the either the near-universal expectation of confidentiality or more typically a journal's explicit requirement of it.
In short -- don't share it. If you think there's a really good reason to, ask the editor -- who will almost certainly tell you no, and for good reason.
Maybe there's another alternative: the OP's colleagues could send the author requests for a preprint of the paper. If the author says yes, then there's no harm done imho.
My PhD advisor was reviewing a paper and wanted me to look at the math (it was complicated); he still got editorial permission first. I did look at it, and I found a simple problem (the paper's authors used a $log_2$ result as if it were a $log_{10}$ result and got a [beneficially] wrong answer).
I was 'raised' to never share anything about a paper under review, including the topic! Plus I have known an unethical professor that used an idea from peer review to write a very similar paper. So suppose the paper you are reviewing is rejected at this journal for some reason, but the author still should retain all rights to his idea. He may get it published elsewhere.
But by showing it around you have effectively published his idea behind his back in a way others can steal it. One of the people interested in this can write their own paper, and perhaps with better contacts, reputation or just better writing, get published and steal the credit from the original author.
That is not fair or ethical. Even telling somebody about the topic or the title could trigger interest in the problem that did not previously exist, along the lines of "Hm, that gives me an idea..." That leads to pre-emption also.
I think the only advantage you can ethically enjoy, as a reviewer, is that IF the paper is accepted and GOING to be published, you have a significant head start on following up based on any new insights in the paper; giving proper credit where credit is due.
You should never share what is supposed to be confidential without permission of the editor, not even with friends you trust -- because the friends they trust may not be people you can trust.
Your collegues complained, among other things, that your unwillingness to share the paper demonstrated distrust on your part --- and well it should. Had you been willing to share the paper without permission, you would have been giving the author reason to distrust you. Your collegues demonstrated remarkably unethical behavior and, to refute their claim, have proven they cannot be trusted.
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78077 | Is having a personal blog that addresses controversial political topics possibly damaging to an academic career?
I am a Ph.D student, and I've been considering for some time starting my own blog as a hobby, to write mostly on philosophical/political topics that interest me; these are definitely not related to my field of research (at least, not most of them). As it happens, some of the topics I want to address are controversial, and much of what I would write could be interpreted as being offensive to one group or another.
Let's assume I want to look for a tenure-track position, and later on get tenure. Ideally, I hope everyone would agree that such a personal blog should not alter in any way my case for obtaining the position. In practice, I am concerned that the existence of such a blog could be used to attack my case for the position (and later on, my case for tenure) on the grounds that the opinions therein found are "offensive" or even "hate speech" (as might be interpreted by some very sensitive people in these modern times). More subtly, one imagines it could cause some decision-making persons to develop an effective bias against me, which would probably have a negative effect.
Thus my question in the title. I am looking both for personal experiences that people have had, and for some statistical data that may answer the question or a closely-related one (such as, does non-trivial political participation affect academic career? etc.)
See How detrimental is involvement in politics to a scientific career? and Academic freedom and unpopular or offensive views, both of which have very good and comprehensive answers. I'm not sure there's much more to say on this topic...
You may want to consider keeping the two things completely separate. However, for an example of a professor running a high-profile, extremely controversial political blog, see http://legalinsurrection.com. (Keep in mind this guy had tenure when he started his blog.)
You can anytime remove your formal identity from the blog, and use a "writer" name.
ff524, thank you for linking to those questions, which are very relevant. I think my question is a little different/more focused, but in any case, the answers and examples given there have convinced me to keep such a blog anonymous.
I do not see this as a duplicate of Hypercube's question; this question is specifically about running a blog about Lentes' political views, Hypercube's is about his/her political activism more generally.
There are definitely examples when an angry pitchfork crowd doxed bloggers, and started a campaign to have him fired from his position. Some cases were successful, some not. In general, it is a risk.
Let's start with this: as a professor you will be in a position of power over quite a few people. Part of the job of being a professor is to responsibly manage a number of employees and respectfully interact with students. If you really did (recently) practice hate speech, then that does legitimately disqualify you.
However, when this becomes an issue you will probably never hear about it. Think about that from the position of the hiring committee: They have a number of applicants, most will be somewhat suitable for the job, but one will be stronger on one point and another stronger on another. So there are so many ways in which you can justify any decision. So when you do write down the justification, you will choose the one that will give the least problems.
I suggest you set up your browser to do automatic spell checking.
In practice, one never writes down any justification at all for decisions not to hire someone.
In germany an ordered list of candidates is made that does need justification.
To be clear, I am not really concerned about saying hateful things because I harbor no such opinions and find them absurd; I am, however, concerned that, per recent campus trends, some very easily offended people may find some different opinions so difficult to them that they label it as "hate speech". Having read the answers to the linked question, I am now convinced that, if I have such a blog, I have to make it anonymous.
An anonymous blog is probably a waste of your time. The problem with anonymous blogs is that you will be convinced you are right, and they will be convinced you are wrong, and nobody will learn anything. It is usually much more productive to talk to people. They are usually much more reasonable than you think, and they may actually have a point. They may exaggerate a bit, but that does not mean the point is not there. Also be careful about blaming others for being offended. It is usually best to respect the feelings of others even if you don't understand them.
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77456 | Should an intern who wrote most of a paper and where the first author contributed little request to be first author?
Background: A little over a year ago, I wrote a paper for an internship (during high school) at a major university medical center. My contribution to the paper was basically everything except conception and some editing/revision (mainly phrasing, not content). The author list, in order, is: immediate supervisor, me, other intern, senior person in group, and PI. The other intern put in about 3 hours of work which were not used in the final manuscript before disappearing to another country and not responding to my attempts to contact. My immediate supervisor, frankly, had very little contribution and is not giving the paper the attention I would like; they took a year to submit the paper (rejected the first time by a reach journal), is taking excessively long to resubmit or get back to me about it, and is usually radio silent.
I have a pretty good relationship with the PI, who seems somewhat aware that my immediate supervisor is not being responsive or attentive. It's from work done during high school, so I don't have very much experience with these politics.
Can and should I ask the PI (or someone) about changing the order of authors?
and what actions would be appropriate for me to take to try and get the paper finally submitted relatively soon?
Who came up with that author list in the first place?
I think it was my immediate supervisor, but I'm pretty sure the latter two signed off on it.
I think you should talk to the PI about the order of authors. Don't frame the conversation as a demand/plea/request to change the order: phrase it as a question from a very new researcher who put a lot of work into a project and wants to be shown the ropes about why author order is the way it is. This is not a cover story: I really think that virtually no high school student could know the conventions of author order in the publications in a specific academic field. So although it is possible that you deserve to be first author or come in some other place, I don't see how you can reasonably know that without gaining a lot more information about the conventions of the field.
Here is another question to ask your PI: what are the consequences for your career of the author order on the paper? This is not my neck of the academic woods, but I would guess that a high school student being an author on such a paper is already getting about the maximum amount of credit without being first author. It may well be the case that the ordering of the other authors has something to do with their academic career...and they may or may not be doing it in what we would agree is a totally ethical way, but unless your contribution was really exceptional, it may in fact turn out to be worse for everyone involved to make a big fuss about it.
I want to end by saying that academic politics really only matters for academics. I'm not (at all) saying that you don't have the right to engage in the jockeying for authorship position...but you may have the luxury of not needing to worry about it. That is a luxury, by the way...
I agree with Pete L. Clark's first paragraph in that you should be first sure you understand the conventions of author order, especially in regard to paper contribution, before you suggest any changes. It would be a great start to a conversation with your immediate supervisor or PI.
You say you've done almost everything, but I would suggest thinking about and listing each of the contributions you made. When authors are ordered, it's not necessarily the amount of time they've spent but the type and quality of their contribution.
Did you come up with the original idea?
Did you design any of the experiments?
Did you suggest any changes to any involved experiments/prototypes?
Did you run any of the experiments?
Did you analyze the data?
Did you interpret the data?
Did you write the paper?
etc. ...
Since I don't know the specifics of the situation or the field it's difficult to give you my personal opinion on whether you deserve first authorship or should ask for it. If your involvement comes down to essentially following specific instructions (running already designed experiments, writing up the already interpreted results) without any or with little creative input from yourself, then I don't believe you do. Since this paper has already been submitted once, the time has passed for you to ask unless you personally make significant changes or additions.
Asking for first authorship (or an authorship in general) without a good understanding of conventions can have a negative impact on your relationship with your immediate supervisor without gaining you anything. In my personal experience I've heard interns ask for an authorship when their contribution was pressing the start button in a series of experiments because 'it doesn't affect the other authors,' which is both laughable and ridiculous.
Another note of caution - the paper review process often takes months, and can extend to over a year in some cases just for the first round. Since this is again your first work, make sure you understand where the delay is coming from before getting too anxious. If the delay was in fact on them, was it because significant changes had to be made? With the current rejection, I would not ask your supervisor why the re-submission is taking so long, but how you can help address any of the reviewer comments to make it suitable for re-submission or submission to another journal. Ask for a copy of the reviews if you don't have them already; it may be very clear why it is taking so long if there are large issues to be resolved.
So it would make sense to ask about order of authors, at least to better understand the process behind it?
The field is nutrition/medicine.
Also, if it's of note, my contribution specifically was: methods design; execution/data collection; data analysis and interpretation; drafting the manuscript. PI conceived the concept and asked me to do everything between conception and finalizing the manuscript and send him the draft. The revisions, according to MS Word revision tracking, were mainly syntactic. The figures/tables are exactly as I made them. PI periodically advised me on direction.
I think it's worth asking that question, if only for your future papers. I'm in engineering/robotics so I couldn't tell you what is normal in your case. I was surprised at first how conventions can vary across fields so i would never consider it an unreasonable or unexpected question as long as it's asked politely.
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208744 | publishing a paper in a journal with different scope
Several times I have read papers published by the journals where the scope of the publishing journal is totally different (if you consider the scope of the journal as it is explained in their homepage. In some cases, I am sure that there is no related/ or even some close system keywords for submitting the paper). Therefore, the papers I am talking about are not even on the borderline.
How these papers get published by such different journals? How the authors deal with selecting the system keywords from the journal's list when they are extremely different? (which clearly means that the journal's aim and scope are extremely different with the paper)
I think the answers range from "it's a predatory journal so they don't care" to "well, the editor liked it", to it's not actually as unrelated as you think (perhaps your expertise is more narrow; perhaps there are indirect applications not clear to you). I'm not sure what usefulness an answer will have for you - what problem are you trying to solve?
I am trying to understand if I can send one day a paper which is an extension of those especial papers to the same journals with those unrelated keywords, and not seen as naiive or mad to do something 99-100% impossible. In the past I have had two such papers and gave up sanding the papers when I saw the list of the jornal keywords that I should select in the submission system. But I still everyday that I see the papers in the same situation, I ask myself how they have selected keywords and how the journals accepted to review those papers. (actually, I am not talking about predatory journals.)
Who is your intended audience for a paper that you publish in a journal with the wrong scope? If I were to publish a set theory paper in a number theory journal, it wouldn't be seen there by set theorists. It would be seen by number theorists who would find it incomprehensible or uninteresting or both. The only reason I can see for such a publication strategy is that the paper is so lousy that I don't want set theorists to see it, yet I want to be able to list it on my CV.
@Andreas Blass: So, based on your last line, we must be careful when we want to such papers in our work, yes? Also, when we select one of them to extend? Since (if it is correct) specialized journals might be doubtful about the reference paper to be weak. Is that right?
@m123 I don't recommend writing and publishing lousy papers. Anyone who insists on publishing lousy papers should indeed be careful. A lousy paper might admit a good extension, but in that case I'd finish the extension and publish that.
These decisions are made by people, not machines. The reviewers can advise whatever they like and editors probably have some leeway in going outside the "stated" scope of a journal. They might choose to publish what they consider a very high quality paper if it is outside the scope. And some papers might also get printed for no other reason than that there are page quotas and deadlines that need to be met, so a paper outside scope might be preferable to one that is of low quality but within scope. Humans. Ain't we weird?
Therefore, I can try them and have hope not to receive a rejection by scope? but how can we select the keywords/edicts in the submission system when there is no related one? and one more question is, based on your last lines, in means that publishing in unrelated journal doesn't affect the negative first impression/judgement of others who haven't read the paper throughoutly? With a reason like: specialized journals have access to more professional reviewers who can evaluate the paper more precisely?
Trying them seems risky. The keywords are mostly to help the editor choose reviewers. If you are out of scope it may be harder for them and a desk reject more likely. Had your question been "Should I submit an out of scope paper" I'd have suggested not. At a minimum it will tie the paper up for a while.
So, are the authors who publish these kinds of papers taking risk? Or the have some background information about their target journal that I don't have? (for example, they know that the journal has an editor who his field is the same as them, or the journal publishes a specific topic too although seen as unrelated)
Can these papers get evaluated equally to those published in technical journals of the same scope as the paper?
Things vary. Impossible to say for sure. Just don't depend on exceptions to happen.
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163663 | possibility of paying fees by bitcoins in IEEE transactions?
Is it possible to pay IEEE transaction fees/charges by bitcoins?
I don't think so. At least for the IEEE Transactions I know of, payments are managed by RightsLink, a company external to IEEE. In the help center of this company, you can find information on how to pay:
How do I complete the RightsLink order? How can I pay the charges due?
It is there written that (bold mine)
Select your preferred payment option (invoice or credit card)
and
If you submit your order with the “invoice” payment method, you can pay that invoice later using a credit card, wire transfer, or check.
They want the good ol' dirty money!
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112254 | Google scholar citation counting suddenly drops, very recently
Very recently, I had noticed that almost all scholars, from all countries and from all different universities, that I am aware of, their Google scholar citations counting suddenly drop (of the scale of 10, to 100 to 1000 to 10^4 counting, depending on your academic ranks and total citations).
One can check https://scholar.google.com/
Many people (almost all people) are affected.
Is there some policy changing?
Also it looks that the Google Scholar citation counts much less than ADSABS-Harvard system http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html, is there a reason behind it?
You'd have to ask Google about this- they apparently changed how they search for citations and decide what sources to include. FWIW, I haven't noticed any such change in my Google profile.
Which email do you recommend me to send to Google Scholar? I never knew one can reach them. Thanks!
I haven't noticed this. Only Google can answer this, but perhaps if you look at lists of citing articles you will be able to notice which ones have been removed and then can guess why.
"I had noticed that almost all scholars, from all countries and from all different universities" -- how did you collect this evidence?
I looked at the Harvard link that you provided and see nothing. What do you want us to look at? Vote to close as "unclear what you're asking".
It is true, I find the google citations suddenly drop again and again...
Please give links if it is possible, whom should I contact?
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96331 | How to correct the missing citation counts/citing References in the Google Scholar?
How could we correct the missing citation counts and the missing citing References in the Google Scholar suppose you have a Google Scholar profile?
For example, I find that other resources such as https://inspirehep.net/ and http://www.adsabs.harvard.edu/ that links to arXiv may have much precise and better citation counts for a few particular publications of mine, while the Google Scholar misses many citation counts/missing citing References.
I am a physicist, an engineer, and a natural scientist. But I don't mind to receive comments from experts working in other disciplines.
Perhaps the best way is to stop worrying about it - while Google Scholar is nice, it is free so you get what you pay for...
You could write to them at [email protected], stating your issue.
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194323 | Green card sponsorship policies and timeline for tenure track faculty
I would like to find out about "industry standards" for when, and on what timeline, US universities will sponsor applications for permanent residency (aka green card) for new tenure-track faculty.
I'm asking from the employer's point of view. It seems that my institution's policy is that we will sponsor an application for a new tenure-track hire after they have been in the job for one year. However, we just recently had a candidate turn down an offer we made, saying that although they were very attracted to our position, they had another offer from an institution that was willing to sponsor them immediately, and that this was a very important consideration for them.
Of course there may have been other factors not mentioned, but all the same it is a very disappointing way to lose a candidate. As such, I would like to find out what norms may exist across US academia, to get a sense whether we are competitive with respect to what most other institutions do. If there is wide variation and no real standard, that would be useful to know as well.
Related to this, since I'm not as knowledgeable about immigration issues as I might wish: I am assuming that the main reason for having such a policy is just that the university wants to make sure the new faculty member is likely to stay on, before investing the money for application and legal fees (which I'm aware can be substantial). But I am wondering if there are any other relevant factors in deciding when to sponsor an application, other than pure financial risk, that I don't know about.
For context, this is at a public R3 university, and the hire is in a STEM field (though I think our policy applies for all new hires in every field).
Somewhat related but not answering this specific question: How long does it take to get a green card as a US faculty?
Hm. I've not paid attention recently, but 10+ years ago my R1 math dept in the U.S. would always help green-card applications, and, I think, pay most of the costs...
@paulgarrett: Do you recall whether they would start the process immediately when the person started working, or whether they would wait as we do?
I think even in the preceding spring... once it was "sure" that the person was really coming, and not accepting a different position elsewhere. My dim recollection is that everything was sooo slow that starting in March or so in the previous spring just barely made things work well.
Here's one data point. As far as I know, at my university (a top 50 small liberal arts college), we sponsor after one year in the job. I do know of a case, however, where the sponsorship happened later, in the last year of the person's visa instead. But that was a long time ago, and I think now we sponsor the green card faster. I do not think we have ever sponsored before a person even started, but maybe we should consider that.
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87654 | How can I post my own version of a published SPIE paper on arXiv?
SPIE policy for web posting of papers states the following:
SPIE grants to authors (and their employers) of papers, posters, and presentation recordings published in SPIE Proceedings or SPIE Journals on the SPIE Digital Library (hereinafter "publications") the right to post an author-prepared version or an official version (preferred version) of the publication on an internal or external server controlled exclusively by the author/employer, provided that (a) such posting is noncommercial in nature and the publication is made available to users without charge; (b) an appropriate copyright notice and citation appear with the publication; and (c) a link to SPIE's official online version of the publication is provided using the item's DOI.
This authorization does not extend to third-party web sites not owned and maintained by the author/employer such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, YouTube, etc.
SPIE content published under a Creative Commons CC-BY license is exempt from the above requirements.
Emphasis in the above text is mine.
So if I understand correctly, once the paper is accepted in SPIE (journal or proceedings) for publication, then I cannot post it on arXiv (since the arXiv server is neither exclusively controlled by me/my employer). I am talking about my own version, not the published one.
I tried to submit my own version on arXiv and they understandably rejected it saying that they cannot accept anything that has a journal copyright. So is there a way around it for me to submit my article to arXiv?
If not, I think I can surely post it on my own website, right? I will post the copyright and the DOI in that version.
any updates on this post? I have the same question.
Some SPIE journals have following in the author guidelines Authors may post draft manuscripts on preprint servers such as arXiv. Once a manuscript has been accepted, the full citation of the published journal paper along with a link to its Digital Object Identifier (DOI) should be added to the preprint record. Still confused about what rules apply if text was corrected during proof of article.
Some update on this.
It states SPIE's official "SPIE Article-Sharing Policies" website:
(https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/article-sharing-policies, accessed 2018-06-18)
What about arXiv?
Authors may post draft manuscripts on preprint servers such as arXiv. If the full citation and Digital Object Identifier (DOI) are known, authors are encouraged to add this information to the preprint record.
So is there a way around it for me to submit my article to arXiv?
It's reasonable for you to ask SPIE for permission to post the paper to the arXiv (under conditions (a), (b), and (c)). They might not grant permission, but it can't hurt to ask. Even if they deny permission, at least you've given them feedback about what authors like you want.
One possibility is that they actively object to posting on the arXiv. In that case, you are probably stuck. Another possibility is that they don't specifically object to the arXiv, but don't want to authorize arbitrary websites they are unfamiliar with or other websites they object to. In that case, they might grant you permission. If they do, then that should suffice for the arXiv administrators.
If not, I think I can surely post it on my own website, right?
Yes, assuming it is controlled exclusively by you or your employer. (That's true for most people's websites, but it could fail in unusual cases, for example if you are treating a social network page as your home page.)
I would add that using the institutional repository of the institution (if they have one) would be the better option than posting the paper on the personal website because they guarantee persistence and long-term archiving.
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143807 | Publishing a novel idea without experiments and results
I wrote a technical paper on a novel idea related to internet technologies. However, I don't have resources to conduct large scale experiment. Also, the numerical results cannot be consider as well. In the given situation is it wise to publish the idea paper in a low quality journal or submit it on arxiv?
It will likely just get lost in the noise either way. Interesting ideas need some validation.
@Buffy for validation I need large scale experiment. I was thinking to share with resourceful professors but I am not sure if it is a good idea.
what are you trying to achieve?
Ideas are like ...opinions...: everyone has one.
"Just an idea" is not research, and is not typically publishable. An idea based on a substantial compilation of existing research may be publishable, in which case the added value is the synthesis. I see this semi-frequently in my field (which is different from yours), but these types of "ideas papers" typically have other value to other readers in that they are written from the perspective of experts in the field. It's not a way to enter the field. They also double as review articles, but I somewhat doubt your technical paper serves as a review.
Publishable in this context means being able to put it somewhere that people will see value in it. Of course you can always pay someone to publish it, but that doesn't really have value.
Thank you Bryan! when I am saying Idea it is in detail description of system with mathematical representations and discussion on their use within exiting system. However, its all a theory! In computer science these kind of paper exist but came from experience and well known researchers. I don't have such kind of profile, so I need validity.
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86244 | The reputation of a researcher: number of Citations vs Quality of publication
From my social circle and from google scholar I learn that sometimes a trendy work with very less scientific depth gets more citations compare to a less trendy work with high scientific depth. So the question is how to determine the quality and reputation of a researcher?
What do his topic colleagues say about him?
Note that quality and reputation are not at all the same thing. The way you determine the quality of an academic's work is to study it and evaluate it...pretty much the same way you determine the quality of anything, in my experience. If you don't have the time or expertise to do that, you can look for other things that are correlated with quality to a greater or lesser degree.
Number of citation is a visible metric (quantity), so it is easy to evaluate someone based on that. Quality of work has already been judged by reviewers. Is not it?
Can we determine the quality of work by mean of conference/journal where the article was published?
@MBK Of course. That's why in the CV/applications etc. one sees and judges the publications rather than the citations (which are rarely mentioned, at least in TCS). Keep in mind that citations take few years to appear as people discover your work. Also the more specialized your work, usually the more deep it is and the less citations will receive (due to specialization).
@PeteL.Clark Agree. The best way is to judge by reading it. But a "famous" paper has more chances to come into your attention and even then it's a subjective metric of quality. Objective metrics usually correspond to the quality of the journal/conference. A FOCS paper is 99% of high quality, even if it receives in the next years very few citations, and this can happen for many reasons.
@PsySp lets suppose two candidates apply for an academic/researcher position with same number of publications one has published in highly reputed journals/conferences but has quite few citations and other has published in average journals/conferences but has a lot of citations. Which candidate will be consider more suitable?
@MBK depends on how the PI ranks their work. In that case I suspect that the PI would be in a better place judging, based on subjective criteria. My feeling is that higher quality journals are a better ticket for academic jobs. It definitely demonstrates certain capabilities: citations might be matter of luck. Publishing to highly prestigious venues is not. All being equal, then maybe citations come into play.
@MBK That's why, at least in my field, Impact Factors (which are based on citations) of journal mean virtually nothing.
Can we determine the quality of work by mean of conference/journal where the article was published? — Absolutely not!! Excellent papers sometimes appear in "mediocre" venues, and even the best venues occasionally publish shiny garbage.
Quality is not easy to define in general and this is even harder when it comes to scientific work or even scientists. One may say that any judgment of quality is subjective and hence, as Pete L. Clark suggested, you have to form an opinion yourself, e.g. by reading the articles/books or listening to talks if you have the chance. You may also ask colleagues about their opinion to help you to form your own opinion. To see that quality is subjective: The formulation of your question suggests that for you, high quality work has to have some "scientific depths". For other people "high quality" may mean "great and simple ideas" (which may not be too deep, after all).
Reputation, on the other hand, is something that is more related to a community, so you can get a good impression of someones reputation if you ask colleagues who are in business for some time. To see that quality and reputation are not the same thing you may get a response like "He/she has a good reputation in the field but I do not like his/her work very much."
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99574 | For schools that require "at least 3" letters of recommendation for a grad school application, is it smart to send 4?
I am applying for math PhD and may have 4 letters of recommendation: One from my masters advisor, one from a professor I'm doing a small project with, one which I did undergrad research with and took grad algebra with, and one I took grad complex with. The last one is more recent in terms of me knowing him, but I did very well in his class.
For schools that either say "at least 3" or do not specify, should I do all 4 letters? Do I run the risk of the committee choosing the first 3 that they see, and discarding the 4th?
Only if the fourth recommendation is helpful. You should have your other letter writers form a committee to determine whether or not the fourth letter will be helpful. Only the letter is confidential.
Personally, having one extra (a 4th) is probably not a bad idea. However, there are risks involved. First, just the logistics for interacting with 3 people for getting 3 recommendations is challenging enough. If you add a 4th person to ask for a recommendation then your work may go up by a good amount. Second, having a 4th raises the risk of having a negative statement from a recommendor that could hurt your chances.
Thanks for your input. I have asked all my recommenders if their letters will be strong, and I'm planning to ask the 4th writer this as well. So, in principal, I shouldn't have any weak letters unless they lied to me. If the 4th writer says he cannot write a strong letter (which may very well happen), then I will not ask him to write a letter.
I cannot confirm your first argument. In my opinion, if one asks 4 persons, this involves not much more costs then asking 3 personen and the chances to get 3 letters are much higher as if one asked only 3 people.
Also one bad letter out of 3 is worse than one bad letter out of four, so, yes, you can hurt your chances if the 4-th letter is worse than the first three but you can just equally well improve them if it is better. Formally sending four doesn't violate the requirement, as stated, in any way, so just play it by ear.
The biggest reason I mentioned the cost issue is because I have been both a PhD student asking for recommendations and have been asked for recommendations. In this day, when all of us are being overloaded with information and requests for help I feel guarded. Overall, I really don't think a 4th is a bad idea. It shows you have done extra work.
(This might be obvious but) I'd like to add that if the instructions eg. ask for specific reasoning behind the extra letters of recommendation despite not explicitly forbidding them (this was the case for me, even though the short advertisement asked for "at least two"), it's most likely a good idea to actually have some reasons besides "I want to send more recommendations so that my application would automatically look better".
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95928 | How to correspond with academics as a young researcher in high school?
I just started my freshman year of high school, and one of the electives I'm taking is a year long research project where we can choose any topic, do an experiment, and write a paper about it. I chose to do a research project with mathematics, specifically a really cool subject called class field theory.
I understand the topic, most of the current papers and literature I've read on it, and I have done an experiment on a certain cause/effect. The problem now is to analyze the data I've gotten and write a paper. It looks really promising, but I will occasionally have questions on certain topics that are really hard to research online. For this, I usually try to contact a researcher who is knowledgeable in the subject I'm researching and just ask if they would be interested in giving some of their time to answer some of my questions.
For example, the way I structured my last email (that spurred this question):
Hello Dr. *****,
My name is *****. I'm 14, and I live in South Carolina. Recently, we were assigned a year-long research project, which I chose to do on Hilbert class fields of global function fields. In one area of my research, I encountered a problem with [short, general topic of problem].
I see that you have taught a lecture on class field theory (including Hilbert and ray class fields). I have studied the lecture notes and it has given me a lot of clarification, but I still have a few questions that I feel most of the resources out there do not address.
I've also read some of your work and it seems right up my alley.
I appreciate your concise yet poignant and very understandable way of explaining things. I was wondering if perhaps we could start a short correspondence to help me understand what I'm writing about, and to gain more knowledge of class field theory.
With gratitude, ****
The response I got to this, and unfortunately to the majority of responses I get to similar emails, is condescending in tone and treated me as a child. Of course, I understand this, as I am a child, but in this specific area I would not like to be treated as one. I tried to just not tell my age, and I got much more enthusiastic reactions, but what was suggested to me was to "talk to my advisor" or cited other resources that are not available to me as a highschool student.
Is there something I'm doing wrong in my emails? I've never been part of the whole "academia culture", so this is just me trying my best to sound professional. In any case, what can I include in my correspondence or generally do to be respected as a young researcher?
Do you have an advisor? The people you contact seem to help you very well, but it sounds as if your questions can be answered with the material available/published, or they are of 'common knowledge' to people experienced in the field (such as an advisor in normal cases).
@Mark I have frequent contact with a professor at my local university, who has taught a class on this subject but has not published any papers or done any research in this area. He and I worked on a few of my questions and were able to solve them, but he couldn't figure out any of my other ones. Although that doesn't preclude "common knowledge to any expert", I am pretty sure it isn't.
Can't he get you some of the papers you need? You might find out which ones you need from reading abstracts which should be freely accessible.
Too many embellishments and irrelevant information, go straight to the point of your real questions.
My advice as an outsider who has had overall pretty good results from cold-emailing researchers: first of all, only email them if they are the best person in the world to answer your question (or nearly the best), for example if you're asking about some new idea in one of their research papers. Otherwise ask on math stackexchange or math overflow depending on how advanced the question is.
Second of all, if you do end up emailing them, be specific, concise, and to the point. In your case, I would just ask one of the questions, and include a brief explanation of why I think it relates specifically to their research, and give no introduction of myself. Ask a question that can be stated briefly, is closely related to their research, and is most likely to demonstrate sophistication on your part, so that you will build credibility with them and they will be more likely to want to continue the discussion. Then in future emails you can ask more of your questions.
Just to clarify what I mean by "the best person in the world to answer your question": I mean whoever has the most comparative advantage, not whoever is most able. For example, if you had some moderately advanced (but not research level) combinatorics question, maybe Terence Tao would be the most likely person in the world to be able to answer it, but it would probably be more appropriate to ask a grad student, who could still probably do a fine job of answering, maybe with probability epsilon less than Terence Tao.
I’m curious, how does one do an experiment on class field theory? Does it have applications to physics?
It's not one of the communities I'm involved in so there may be some obvious reason this wouldn't work, but but if you have specific, objective questions and you can show you've made an attempt to research the answers yourself... why not just post them on Mathematics.SE? (I know the equivalent would be fine on Biology.SE, for example.)
Why not try reaching out to a grad student instead? In my experience they can be flattered by the attention and are (marginally) less busy than your average professor.
@TomPrice: Someday I dream that people will learn to spell my last name correctly...
"what can I include in my correspondence or generally do to be respected as a young researcher" => Publish papers, or "prove" that you understand the topic you say you are working on. Professors receive tons of mails of cranks, so receiving a mail from a 14 years old who claims to have questions on a specific field of math will immediatly pass as cranky. If you want to be taken seriously, state the specific question, with the specific vocabulary of the field, that you want an answer to. This will show to the professor whether you are a crank, a beginner, or neither.
There are a number of great math summer programs for high schoolers, many of which include a research component. (These frequently offer some sort of financial aid, so don't let that be a reason not to apply). This would be an ideal way to meet mentors who are interested in helping high school students. Two particular wonderful programs, The Ross Program and PROMYS, are both number theory focused. Also, I'm a graduate student interested in number theory. Send me an email (look at my profile) and I can recommend some resources to learn more about CFT.
Have you tried asking on http://mathematics.stackexchange.com ? Always better to ask people who want to answer.
@Paul Yours is the best answer.
I believe you are not yet a young researcher. To be one you need to have nearly completed your PhD. You are simply a gifted, curious, and motivated high-school student. However, you might explain briefly what you have read and understood
This may just be my personal experience, but when I was your age in high school, I emailed a few highly-regarded computer science professors whose research fell much in line with my own research. Both professors responded, and I was able to speak to one of the professors for about half an hour, and keep up a steady correspondence over email with the other. My emails laid on the flattery much more than yours did, yet both professors were able to answer all my questions. I really think the biggest factor in play is the character of the professor you're emailing.
Minor point: I doubt if "poignant" is really the word you're looking for.
Researchers tend to be very busy advising their own students, and often don't have much free time to commit to supervising others. Recognize that you are asking someone who is very busy to spend some of their limited time on something that (1) may or may not be interesting to them, (2) is not part of their "official" professional responsibilities, and (3) is likely to take time away from their "official" professional responsibilities. (That is why "talk to your advisor" is a common response; they aren't brushing you off, so much as they are redirecting you to someone who is personally responsible for helping you, and has committed to investing that time in you.)
For this reason, emails to researchers asking questions that they don't feel personally responsible for answering, often go unanswered.
You also wrote that you believe the answers to your questions are not going to be immediately obvious, even to an expert:
I have frequent contact with a professor at my local university, who has taught a class on this subject but has not published any papers or done any research in this area. He and I worked on a few of my questions and were able to solve them, but he couldn't figure out any of my other ones. Although that doesn't preclude "common knowledge to any expert", I am pretty sure it isn't.
which suggests that you are asking for a fairly substantial time investment.
And you are asking for an open-ended commitment in your email:
I was wondering if perhaps we could start a short correspondence to help me understand what I'm writing about, and to gain more knowledge of class field theory.
I would be extremely reluctant to say "Yes" to this without any clue of how advanced you are in the topic, what you are expecting from me, and whether it would be an interesting or useful correspondence for me.
It would, however, be appropriate to send a short, actionable email, on a question that is directly related to the researcher's published papers. For example:
Hello Dr. *****,
My name is *****. I'm 14, and I live in South Carolina. I am working on a research project related to Hilbert class fields of global function fields.
I was wondering if you could answer a question about your paper, [name of paper]. [Specific question that you are looking for an answer to.]
With gratitude, ****
P.S. Would it be OK if I asked some further follow-up questions on this subject?
See
When asking research-based questions, what are some good practices to maximize the rates at which people reply to emails?
Increase chance of reply when e-mailing an eminent researcher?
for additional suggestions
For questions that are not related to a specific paper, but are more general questions about the field or your own work (that you and your advisor are unable to answer), I suggest Mathematics Stack Exchange. People are more likely to invest time in answering a stranger's questions for no professional benefit on a platform where that's what they do.
Yes, researchers are very busy. In physics, some researchers have been known to ignore emails from graduate students (vs. professors) as a matter of course.
I'd also leave out the part about the age. (I'm 14..). It does not seem relevant to the rest of the email and could provoke some of the 'condesending' reactions that OP spoke about.
+1 for suggesting Mathematics Stack Exchange as a better place to ask than a random researcher
@Obie2.0 the shock implicit in your use of italics is unwarranted. Some professors have been known to ignore emails from other professors as well, and even from their department chair. But that's simply a sign that they're overworked (and that they're human and sometimes have human flaws just like everyone else).
@DanRomik - My point was rather that if some professors consider email from graduate students to be a distraction from their research, that will likely go double for high school students. Yes, I am talking about professors who don't consider questions from graduate students worth their time, not professors who are so overworked they also don't respond to anyone else. And yes, I've known professors like this.
Yes, don't waste an email to ask if you can ask a question! That introduces all kinds of uncertainty. Just ask.
The sentence "I understand the topic, most of the current papers and literature I've read on it, and I have done an experiment on a certain cause/effect." does not inspire confidence. How on earth would one do an "experiment" on a "cause/effect" in class field theory? I'm a professional mathematician who knows something about that subject, and I'm scratching my head right now.
I think you're focused too hard on "respect". I personally don't deal with undergraduate students as equals, and I almost never interact with kids who are younger than that. I think you should dial back on your expectations.
The suggestion that you speak to your mentor (which you've admitted you have) is a good one. While sometimes faculty are willing to answer technical questions from strangers (if they have time and the questions are sufficiently interesting), it is unrealistic to expect them to devote a lot of time to mentoring you. If you've really exhausted the resources available at your school, I would talk to your teachers and the professor who is already mentoring you and ask for introductions to people who could help you. Approaching strangers by email is rarely a useful strategy.
"Cause/Effect" is a bad word. I use that term because that's what the project specifications make me frame it as, but it's really just studying maximal unramified extensions of global function fields and how it "affects" a certain space associated with it (because each extension of a function field corresponds to subgroups of the function field that form a cool space with some interesting properties),
@TreFox: OK, that sounds more reasonable. I suggest describing it like that in the future; you are more likely to be taken seriously.
And you're right, I'm setting my expectations way too high. Due to my inexperience in academia, I never really considered the pressure and lack of time researchers have. Sadly, I live in a relatively small town where no one in our universitiy's math department can really help me past the basics.
@TreFox: What I suggest then is that you make more of an attempt to learn the kinds of things that your local mathematicians are willing to teach you rather than focus on learning advanced topics. I can't imagine that they are really incapable of teaching you new things (though they may not be the specific things you want to learn). At your age, it is more important for you to develop your mathematical maturity and problem-solving skills than to learn any particular topic (and certainly becoming active in research can wait; that's just not a good use of time at your level).
@TreFox There's nothing wrong with setting your expectations high, as long as you accept that high expectations are hard to fulfill. Though this answer is certainly correct in saying that most of the time emailing strangers doesn't work, that's not to say it can't work. I've done it in the past and gotten a ton of "no"s, but also every once in a while a "yes" comes along.
Good luck with your research project, it sounds really cool. I'm a math professor and occasionally get emails from people asking me for help, and in fact recently entered a brief email correspondence with a high school student who asked me some questions. So I think I may be able to offer some useful insights in connection with your question.
Is there something I'm doing wrong in my emails?
No, I think the email is very well written. I can't think of any way it can be improved (except maybe tone down the flattery a bit, but who knows, that might appeal to some recipients). Certainly, as you may already realize, lying about your age or misrepresenting your circumstances to try to get people to give you a more helpful answer than they would be inclined to give otherwise is a very bad idea, and is likely to backfire in some unpleasant and potentially damaging way.
In any case, what can I include in my correspondence or generally do to be respected as a young researcher?
As I said, I can't think of anything else you can do in your correspondence that you're not already doing. But if I'm reading between the lines of your question, I get the sense that you have an expectation that your doing the right thing should somehow guarantee the positive outcome you are wishing for. That is not the case.
Let me explain: the reason professors aren't taking you up on your offer to enter a correspondence has nothing to do with you doing something wrong, and everything to do with the fact that professors are very busy people, who aside from having almost all their professional time occupied with their teaching, research, and other duties that simply cannot be ignored, are also constantly getting bombarded with unsolicited emails from complete strangers asking for advice, help, or trying to interest them in various projects. No matter how exciting or interesting each individual offer is (and trust me, most of them aren't), there simply isn't enough time in the day to give each one the amount of attention it is asking for.
In addition to time being a very scarce resource for a professor -- much more scarce than my 14-year old self could have ever imagined, so I will assume you will find it difficult to imagine as well and hope that you will not find this assumption condescending on my part -- there is also eye strain and physical fatigue to consider. Myself and most of the professors I know spend much too much of our days typing on a keyboard and staring at screens. It is unhealthy and leads to physical discomfort and sometimes pain or even injury, and yet we continue to do it, because (a) much of our work duties that we simply have to do involve those activities; (b) we really enjoy our work and are passionate about it; and (c) after finishing our work we also enjoy doing other things that normal people do on a computer (like facebook, chatting with friends, posting on StackExchange etc).
Now let's go back to your situation. When viewed in the context of what the life of a professor looks like as I described above, do you see how an offer to enter an email correspondence with a 14-year old to help him or her understand an advanced area of mathematics, which is something that would be very difficult to explain even in person to an adult with plenty of background, simply isn't appealing, and is not something that the typical math professor would consider an efficient use of his/her time and other limited resources? It's really not your fault, it's just the way things are.
Let me conclude with some positive advice to offset the somewhat pessimistic opinion above. I think there are in fact plenty of people who would be happy to talk to you in person, at least for a limited time, if you could find an opportunity where you are both physically present in the same place. And moreover in many parts of the U.S. there are all kinds of programs catering to talented youth who are interested in mathematics. I'm not very knowledgeable about this subject (and specifically about South Carolina) so I'll leave it to others to comment about, but generally speaking I think you are on the right track, and in particular the idea of talking to professors at a local university near you, as you seem to already be doing, should be a very good way to help you and connect you with useful resources. Good luck!
I think the main problem is this line:
I was wondering if perhaps we could start a short correspondence to help me understand what I'm writing about, and to gain more knowledge of class field theory.
Despite the word "short", this sounds like a huge endeavor -- I'm happy to send a few one-off answers, but I don't really have time or interest in committing to a lengthy correspondence. It may be better to just put your top 1-2 questions right in the initial letter; this may lead to a correspondence, or he might just answer the initial questions; either way, it's a better outcome.
This line also rubs me the wrong way:
I've also read some of your work and it seems right up my alley. I appreciate your concise yet poignant and very understandable way of explaining things.
This is a bit vague (why is it right up your alley?) -- try citing a particular reason why you chose this professor -- they are very unlikely to reply unless they think that you really need to talk to them in particular, rather than just any math professor (the concise/poignant is a good start, but a technical reason would work better).
Finally, I would be a bit more concise -- in the sciences, brevity is an art form. Maybe something like this:
Dear Dr. *****,
My name is *****. I'm working on a project involving Hilbert class fields of global function fields. In one area of my research, I encountered a problem with [short, general topic of problem].
I read your paper about **** and found it very helpful. I was hoping I could ask you for a few clarifications -- I'm still in high school, so no one at my school really knows anything about this. My main questions are:
(1) ****
(2) ****
I'd really appreciate any insight or advice. With gratitude, ****
Finally, you will likely have much better luck at local or less well known schools than at "famous" top-10 schools.
Your draft dwells on your motivations. Try to appeal to the other person's interests. This is general advice from Dale Cargenie's How to win friends and influence people, a book that helped me.
We assume the professor is proud of their teaching and wants to help students into their field, but is a busy person who can't commit to a ongoing correspondence.
Perhaps
Dear Professor X,
Your lecture notes in super theory were a great help to me—I'd love to take a course of yours in person one day. After re-reading, there's a couple of intricacies that still elude me. No doubt you could explain them clearly.
Can you help?
...
Thank you for reading.
That gives the professor opportunity to confirm their reputation by answering your questions, without committing to an ongoing correspondence. If they don't reply, it must simply be that they are busy.
If you respond gratefully and sincerely "Thank you so much. This helps with my work on Z [now you can mention it]. I appreciate your time", you've built rapport so that you can write to them again in future (perhaps for advice on admissions?). If you bother them too much, they will stop replying.
Best sleep on the message before sending it. In my experience, at the point I finish writing an email to a professor—or just after I send it—I realise my error in understanding!
The x-men are real?!
It is somewhat surprising that this is occurring in mathematics, where there are a lot of prodigies running around!
There might be a few things you could do differently in your emails to people working in the field:
If you are attending a well-known "magnet" school in math and science, this could be mentioned.
You could explain in a bit more detail why you chose your topic.
Alternatively, you could explain the problem in a bit more detail.
All of these would be to get the reader to realize that you aren't wasting their time with a "crank" email, but are seriously asking them for assistance.
Make your enquiries specific, clear, relevant (to the academic's academic research, or to a past publication), and concise. In the subject line of your message, ensure that the nature of your enquiry is clear (e.g.: "[research enquiry] clarification on X in your article '[name of article]'").
Ensure your message addresses the academic with appropriate formality: a salutation such as "Hi" or "Hello" is inappropriate; you should use "Dear Prof. [surname]," and close "Yours sincerely".
Show the academic that you have already "done your homework" (e.g.: "I have already read A, searched online resource B, but could not find clarification on point X"), and ask him/her whether he/she can point you to any relevant literature you have not already read (explain that you do not JSTOR access &c., but that you are willing to buy a few relevant texts if they are highly recommended).
Show the academic that you are genuinely knowledgable and interested in the subject (your credentials, or lack thereof, are less important than tangible engagement in the field: if, for example, you find a mistake in someone's paper, people will take you seriously no matter what your age).
It is probably better not to mention that you are minor, although you should acknowledge any limitations in your knowledge of a topic.
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90584 | How to cite online-first published articles? Should you include link to earlier ArXiV version?
When one cites an article which appeared online-first in a journal of mathematics, but which is not in print and has no volume number yet, I have read that one can just use the DOI instead. But do you think that in this situation it is appropriate to add the link to the arXiv version anyway?
Here is an article about citing "advance online publication" in APA style.
Once an article is in the form of advanced online access at the publisher, you should generally cite this version, and not the ArXiv version. The online access is the final version of record. Page and volume numbers are cosmetic.
The exact form of the reference will depend on your citation style. But I agree that including the doi in the reference is helpful as this will not change. In contrast, the year of the reference may change.
Here is an example from the post above:
Muldoon, K., Towse, J., Simms, V., Perra, O., & Menzies, V. (2012). A
longitudinal analysis of estimation, counting skills, and
mathematical ability across the first school year. Developmental
Psychology. Advance online publication. doi:10.1037/a0028240
So in general the reference really shows almost no difference to a standard reference. It's just that the volume and page numbers are missing. You might append some text to indicate that it is "advance online publication", but this is optional in many cases. And you should probably include the doi (either in doi:10.. form, or in http://dx.doi.org/10... form). The doi will be helpful especially where the paginated version comes out in a subsequent year.
Obviously, depending on your citation style, you'd need to adapt the above. But the basic concept is the same: Authors, year, title, journal, doi, optionally some indication that it is an advance online publication. Basically, follow your normal citation strategy but omit the volume and page details and include a doi.
By the way (if here is a German native-speaker): How to translate "Advance online publication" into German?
In the citation that you use for your preprints you may use any citation style (the only criterion I follow there is that it should be as easy as possible to track down the references for anybody who reads the paper). For published versions, often the publisher decides how the references should look like. Sometimes they add dois (or other identifiers) themselves. Some may strip the link to the arXiv version and in that case you still may add the arXiv version as another entry and references it separately. Anyhow, if people search the paper by title, several search engines will bring up the arXiv version anyway.
All the journals I browse have a notice on the online-first PDF stating how they want them cited. After all, that is the main reason they put them online first - to get them cited more quickly.
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79570 | What time of the year do government agencies in the United States typically hand out funding?
Are there any specific seasons, months, weeks which have shown to be the time at which the majority of funding is handed out by Government agencies in the US? Are there any reliable studies that have answered questions around this topic in the past?
@BrianBack - that's still probably too vague to answer; some agencies have year-to-year funding (and so don't know how much they have until Congress passes some form of spending bill) while others have guaranteed amounts every year, regardless of Congress's (in)ability to pass such bills. If you could narrow it down even a bit further it would likely help.
Fellowships and summer activities certainly have typical yearly deadlines, but do you just want to know about specific research grants of thy kind that professors and lab groups/institutions apply for? The NSF, DoD, and NIH are just a small selection of government agencies in the US, as such a huge amount of funding is federal. The NSF for instance lists year round.
Many programs at the NSF have application deadlines on a specific yearly (or twice yearly) schedule, with awards coming out about 6 months later. However, these are spread around the year, so there's no one time of year that's applicable to all areas of research.
I'm curious why you want to know? Most people only care about proposal deadlines for their particular field, which as others have already pointed out, can be spread out over the entire year.
The agencies I'm familiar with (NIH) have published review cycles, and list not only the submission dates, but the approximate dates of first disbursement. Failing this, an email to a program coordinator will probably get you the info you need. Also, many institutions have grants coordinators whose job it is to know exactly this information (since it accounts for a large proportion of a departments' income). See if you have access to one
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80870 | Lab tech had research project that is now being developed by honours student: Who deserves to be first author?
I worked in a lab as a lab tech and developed my own research project that I've been working on for over a year. I'm currently only working part time as I have a full time job. My supervisor recently got a new honours student who's been working on collecting data for the same project and has expanded the project for her thesis. My question is, when our research gets published who should get first author? I developed the project, collected data, created a poster for a conference, and will most likely be involved in the writing process. However, the new student has expanded the research project, is collecting data (more consistently than I am, because I'm only there part time, and will be writing a thesis for her honours. Who should get first author if the project gets published?
I think the first thing you can do is discuss this with your supervisor. There might be a long way from now until the publication, so who deserves to be first author might change. But discussing it now can put the things straight and make you feel better. There is always the option of sharing the first authorship.
I wasn't aware that you could share first authorship. How does that work?
If you're an academic and want to stay in academics, you could be the corresponding author. If not, why do you want to be first author? You might deserve it, but then it doesn't bring you any profit, does it?
@Karl Good point. It's true that if you don't plan to become an academic, first authorship would not give you any gain. But then again, if you have contributed enough to deserve it, why not...
@Krista You add an asterisk and you add a footnote "These authors have contributed equally". If it's the first two authors, then it's shared first authorship. It will still be Author1 et al, though.
@Karl I do plan on staying in academia and my field is quite competitive. Being published as an undergrad would better my chances of getting my dream job in the future.
There is no general rule on how you determine the order of authors. In some areas (like Mathematics, for example), the order of authors does not imply the relative size of their contributions --- it is typically alphabetical. This strategy has its benefits: for example, we are less likely to include "star" and "virtual" co-authors, because there is no way of distinguishing them from real ones. And of course it simply saves time and helps to maintain good relationships.
In some areas, the contributions of each author are explained at the end of the paper (e.g. "data collection: Dr A, Dr C; statistics: Dr B, Dr C; visualisation of results: Dr A; writing the manuscript: all authors").
If neither of the above helps, the best way to handle author ordering is to discuss it before you start working together. Definitely, by the stage you have your first draft everyone has to agree on this, and no last-minute changes can be done without full and active consensus.
I don't think it's the OP's obsession about the order of the authors. Plus, I don't think it's a question about which system works better (alphabetical or not). It's obviously field related and although there is a general rule, the lines are sometimes unclear.
In many fields, a first author paper counts a lot more on your CV than a second or subsequent author paper. So I think it is a sensible concern.
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110407 | How to deal with journal requirements to share data when data comes from industry and industry partner would not permit sharing?
Many authors, especially in manufacturing, use data from real manufacturing companies (not from a lab experiment) for their research. They are asked to report only the results from their analysis on those datasets in journal papers without publishing the underlying data due to confidentiality agreements with the companies. However, I see that the journals are increasingly asking the authors to deposit the raw data so that the research is reproducible. On the other hand, the companies are not ready to make their internal data go public but they are ok with publishing the summary statistics on the datasets. As a result, authors face difficulty in publishing their research results in journal papers.
Any strategies to handle this situation effectively and convince editors about the non-availability of the datasets to other researchers?
Related: Can you publish studies based on confidential customer data that comes from private companies?
The recommendation I always give is to clearly state where the data was obtained from and what strategy was used to select it. If it’s data owned by a commercial partner who is not willing to allow open sharing of the data, you’re unlikely to get them to change their mind, but for the end goal of supporting the reproducibility of the research, clearly stating your sources is a good second best. That will give other researchers the opportunity to approach the company directly and sign their own NDA to get access to the data.
This is a good answer and a reasonable solution. The decision to share data should rest with the company/institute/individual author, not the journal.
I am going to question the premise:
You ask: Any strategies to handle this situation effectively and convince editors about the non-availability of the datasets to other researchers?
I'm going to say: You can't and you shouldn't.
It isn't that the journal editors don't believe you when you say "This data is not able to be released for other researchers."
They don't really care why it isn't available,
but they do believe that without that data, it is not the kind of article they want to publish.
Some options which may be valid depending on circumanstances:
Find a journal that is Ok publishing without data. (For understandable reasons these might not be as good as the more stringent ones)
Create a new synthetic dataset, that has similar properties to your real data, and present your primary results on that. (And mention as a secondary point your results on the real data)
Work out what it would take to make the company happy to release the data:
Perhaps removing identifiers (E.g. for personal identifying data k-anonymity is a common technique)
See also the related question:
Can you publish studies based on confidential customer data that comes from private companies?
Finding the proper journal, or other medium, is the critical thing here. But I've had journals that ask for data welcome submissions with a statement that data are restricted due to prior agreements.
+1 for "You can't and you shouldn't". It's important that data's available to other researchers so that they can reproduce your results, and so that they can compare their method with yours. Publishing results based on private data is unhelpful - how is anyone supposed to evaluate/trust them? If anything, working to convince the company of this is far more useful than working to convince the journal that they should accept unreproducible work.
@Stuart Golodetz- While I'm not disputing the importance and desirability of reproducible data, the 'how is anyone supposed to trust' question seems a little odd to me. I'd like to think that in academia we operate on a certain level of trust, that people are generally being honest with their research. We maintain this by keeping a steep deterrent- loss of credibility if exposed. It would otherwise be quite impossible to check every aspect of research work and evaluate it's accuracy. There are potentially so many ways something could be misrepresented, we couldn't proceed without trust.
@user153812: It's probably too strongly worded - I wasn't intending to imply that I automatically assume research based on closed data to be untrustworthy (99% of the time that's not the case). That said, data openness is one of the things that would encourage me to trust a piece of research more, all other things being equal.
@StuartGolodetz I think simulating a synthetic data-set and providing your source code to run with that data-set and then producing a few extra figures using real-world data too goes a long way if you can't publish the data
@WetlabStudent True, it's much better than nothing!
@Lyndon White makes a good point about the journal reserving the right to decide what kind of articles they would like to publish. Though I'm in agreement, I would like to raise one point of caution.
Publishing is a commercial enterprise, and is driven by economic considerations and profit margins more than increasing reproducibility. The fact that these aspects are actively discussed on ASE is a sign that gradually researchers are becoming aware of how skewed the market is.
In this scenario, a journal could demand data on the grounds of scientific reproducibility, and make this data available to subscribers only. This feature could increase subcriptions from rival industries as well as research labs. In effect, the journal would then be selling data from one source to another. The authors would be willing to turn a blind eye because the journal is prestigious, while the source of data (eg. industry) would grow increasingly distrustful of this journal, widening the industry-academia gap. I find it difficult to see this as a good sign.
The only solution that comes to mind is the erection of mutual non-disclosure agreements between the journal and the author, that permit the author to decide (atleast in part) who gets to see/use the data. This has its own flaws, but it could be a start.
That said, most journals which do demand data availability expect it to be open, not behind a paywall, whether or not that paywall belongs to the publisher in question. Most publishers are unwilling to accept stewardship of data, instead expecting authors to use existing public archives to make the data available. Where publishers do facilitate data sharing themselves its through a separate product they’ve invested in, like figshare (Springer Nature) or Mendeley Data (Elsevier).
@Jez- thanks, I'm glad you brought up this point. I'm also glad someone down-voted my answer, because it shows that people hurt by this viewpoint are reading this. At present, publishers 'facilitate' data-sharing by shepherding authors to a separate, free service. They may (hence the 'could' in my answer) at any point, choose to charge for this. Since you mentioned Mendeley (now owned, not 'invested in' by Elsevier), I quote from their FAQs: (1/2)
(1) "In future, we plan to offer paid-for versions of our repository service to academic institutions." (2)"The terms which you accept by creating a Mendeley user account and posting data, grant our service permission to 'publish, extract, reformat, adapt, build upon, index, re-distribute, link to and otherwise use [published data]'". These two points pretty much allow the potential misuse I am talking about in my answer. (2/2)
I downvoted this answer not because I would be hurt by this viewpoint (I'm not), but because your "scenario" (1) is speculative at best and (2) does not help in answering the original question.
@silvado - Thanks for clarifying. A downvote is constructive only when you comment about the reason for downvoting, as seems to be the general practice on ASE. Hence my impression that it was either a vested or a 'troll' downvote. Anyway, I respect your opinion, but (1) my comment to Jez contains a statement from one such publisher that describes a very similar scenario ("in future we plan to..."). So while it may not have happened yet, it may be shortsighted to dismiss it as "speculative at best".
@silvado - (contd.) (2) As is evident from the beginning of my answer, it is a caution to be taken with Lyndon White's answer, not standalone. Ideally it should have been a comment, but considering the length and readability, I chose to put it as an answer instead.
"Publishing is a commercial enterprise, and is driven by economic considerations and profit margins more than increasing reproducibility" That may be true higher up, But data availability is often decided by editors who are professors and have a vested interest in data reproducibility. When a big publishing company makes a profit-driven move, sometimes the editorial board and editor and chief immediately resign, which can really hurt the journal. https://retractionwatch.com/2018/11/28/majority-of-journals-editorial-board-resigns-after-publishers-handling-of-letter-about-move-to-open-access/
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99215 | If asked to provide separate list of publications in addition to CV, should CV still include list of publications?
I am applying for an assisstant professor position, and asked to provide a CV, as well as a separate list of publications. Should I still keep a "publications" section in the CV, or refer to the separate list by writing something like "see enclosed list of publications"?
Even when asked for a separate list, I still keep the list in my CV whenever I apply.
Yes, I would say so. A CV always should list publications.
It may be that for some reason to do with their search process, they find it convenient to have a separate document that only lists publications, rather than digging through the CV to find it. But that doesn't mean you should remove this list from the CV.
When we put ads on mathjobs, sometimes we ask for a separate publication list, but I think this is mostly a function of whoever put the ad on mathjobs, rather than what people looking at files want. Personally, I prefer to look at everything on the CV, and am annoyed when I have to look at the publication list separately.
Might be worth mentioning, that for certain grants, it does seem to be expected that the CV will not contain any publications (judging from length requirements that would make this basically impossible).
I think this depends on whether they put page limits on the documents. If they do, I would not waste pages on duplicating the publications but only list them in the separate publication document.
A reasonable compromise could be to list a short selection of your most recent or most important publications in the CV and then provide the full publication list in the separate document.
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73588 | What to do when you plan to submit a paper and a senior colleague is independently pursuing the same research idea?
I am an assistant professor in a business discipline. A couple of months ago, I came across (through casual chat) that a senior colleague of mine plans to pursue a research idea that I myself was also planning to pursue. I asked whether I could join her and her co-author on the project and she declined. But she said I could work on it myself. We didn't share any details of our thoughts afterwards. So we don't know what exactly each other's research question and progress on the project.
I went ahead and explored the project with the research question I had in mind. Now I have a finished draft of my work. I don't know the status of my colleague's project.
Now I would like to submit my paper to a journal. But I am not sure whether I should publicize it by e.g. posting it online/on my website. I am afraid that my senior colleague (she will be on my tenure committee) will be pissed off if I do so. She may think that I am scooping her. On the other hand, without publicizing it, people in my field (or potential referees of my paper) will not know that this work is mine and the paper may not get exposure/comments (which may not be critical).
What should I do? I don't think I have done anything unethical, but somehow I feel that I am stuck in a dilemma.
How about approaching her with :" Hey, how's everything going? I just would like to get your thought over my draft paper that I'm planning to submit soon ".
Thanks. She is very aggressive personally and I do not want to piss her off or invoke any actions from her now before I see a more clear prospect of my paper being published well (our field is very competitive). I am also worried that she may forcefully add her and her co-author onto my paper or allege that I steal her idea and ask me to kill my paper. Honestly speaking, in the very beginning I am very happy to collaborate to share my thoughts. But now I have pursued it in a long way based on my own thoughts. Adding them onto my paper/killing my paper seems a bit unfair to me. @seteropere
How about privately send the paper to a few people who are most likely to be interested?
The fact that the colleague in question will be on your tenure committee seems to, on the surface, complicate matters. However, it's not like you had a conversation with her, made no mention of a possible collaboration, and took the idea and ran with it:
You reached out to her by proposing a collaboration on the research topic, which she declined.
Thus you should do with your manuscript whatever is normal in your field to disseminate the ideas contained in your paper; e.g., submit your paper for peer review, post the manuscript on your webpage/upload the manuscript to a preprint server (if this is normal in your field/OK with where you plan on submitting your manuscript), etc.
Also, if your conversation with your colleague was key in your research progress on the topic, then I think an acknowledgment in your manuscript stating that fact would be appropriate.
I'd like to clarify that you should only put this on your website or upload to a preprint server if that fits within the norms of your academic community and the requirements for submission of the journal in question (which is in the answer but somewhat indirectly). In some communities this is normal and allowed, and in some it is not.
Yes, indeed. This is what I had in mind when I wrote "you should do with your manuscript whatever is normal in your field to disseminate the ideas contained in your paper" @BillBarth
Right, but the stuff after the colon appears, to me, to be more imperative. I.e. that those are the norms of some community and that OP should do it that way. I think it's more subtle than that.
Thanks! The initial conversation was very brief and not very informative. I believe that my research question is more interesting and fundamental to our field. I don't know how exactly she'll position her paper and whether she has done anything yet. We didn't talk about it at all after she declined my proposal of collaboration. In my field, people usually post their working paper to a preprint server but it is not mandatory. It is a bit subtle given that she is on my tenure committee. Maybe I will simply submit it to a journal and see how it goes and not post it online yet? @BillBarth
The politics of this are lost on me as I'm not in a tenure-track position. If you have someone in your department who was supposed to advise you through your tenure process, you might talk to them, off the record, unless it's her. Lacking that, you might just skip the online posting and go straight to journal submission unless people expect a preprint to be on SSRN or the like to have the opportunity to workshop the paper with you before it goes to a journal. She knows she declined to work with you, so she would be completely unethical to hold that against your tenure case.
From your comments, it seems that this is not specifically relevant here, but if you are on reasonably good terms with your colleague who you know is working on a related paper you could offer to try to arrange simultaneous publication. In this situation you both submit your papers at the same time to the same journal and include this information in your cover letters. In my experience (having done this a few times) journal editors are very open to this and are willing to work with you, and it can be good for your relationship with your colleagues -- showing that you're eager to be cooperative while still not being scooped.
Of course, there are many potential problems with this. In one case we'd agreed to co-submit with some colleagues, but had overestimated our progress and were a few weeks behind them. They held on to theirs for a little while but we told them not to worry about it, and they ended up beating us into publication by a month or so; but we remained on good terms and I think we all appreciated the others good will and cooperation. Similarly, one paper may need more rounds of review than another, or one may be accepted while the other is rejected. But the main point is the initial presumption of good will, and the rest is more or less out of your hands.
However, this really is only a real consideration when (1) you know the other group is at a very similar state, (2) you're both on good terms, and (3) want to remain that way. In the specific case here, even if (3) is true, (1) doesn't seem to be and (2) seems dubious. In this case, following your field's normal publication-type process seems very reasonable.
Thanks, and I also appreciate your great suggestion. In my case, I am not sure whether the other group has done anything or whether they are still pursuing it (they may have tried something and then dropped, which I don't know either). Basically no information about (1) at all for me. I obviously wanted to keep good terms... @iayork
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1510 | What are the pros and cons of submitting same paper to more than one open repository?
What if I submit a same preprint to several open access repositories, e.g. arxiv, vixra, philica etc.?
I guess doing so would give to a paper more visibility. But would it be a bad practice? Would it be unethical? Scientific community would complain or blacklist me? Is there any copyright issues, or other notes that I should know? What do you advice?
I know it's unethical to submit a paper to more than a journal (or maybe conferences), but here I want to know about preprints and open repositories.
From the viewpoint of the repository (although, I am speaking primarily from the viewpoint of a university institutional repository), it would not be considered unethical or undesirable for authors to submit their work to more than one repository. Open repositories are built to increase access to the products of research and creativity, by making works publicly and freely available online. Submitting work to more than one repository is another way for an author to increase accessibility to his/her work.
The only copyright issue present would lie in the relationship between the author and the publisher that published the author's article. Most journals allow authors to deposit preprints of their work, that do not contain any edits or revisions from the publication process, in open repositories. Others allow authors to deposit preprints of their work that have been revised to show the revisions made in the publication process, and a few journals will allow authors to deposit the final publisher's version of the article. Some publishers will want their authors to wait a few months after publication before making their works accessible through open repositories.
Journals rely on the quality and originality of the articles they publish to build a reputation. As most journals charge subscription fees, the originality of their articles is important. Open repositories do not operate on this model, so the ethics of publishing in the journal do not translate to depositing your work in an open repository. Most repositories require their authors to sign a non-exclusive distribution license to deposit their work, which allows the repository to make the work accessible online. As a non-exclusive license, authors retain the right to submit their work to journals, other publications and other repositories.
Different open repositories have different functions. Institutional repositories capture the research and creative outputs of their host institutions. Subject-based repositories capture the work being done in a specific field. Because repositories exist for different reasons, I would see no problem in submitting your work to multiple repositories.
Preprints also generate a DOI for the paper. I hope that won't be an issue?
In addition to the great answers by hnltraveler and user102 on the moral aspects of the question let me add some more technical points:
Duplicates in scholar search services
If you are searching for publications with Google Schoolar or similar you will find that these systems already aggregate multiple sources for the same publication.
Examples
Google Scholar
Microsoft Academic Search
Web of Science
So you wont confuse your audience with multiple identical versions (just be sure to update all of them if you change something).
Licences
Preprint services let you choose the license of your work (for example Creative Commons) and with many of these even other people could re-upload your work onto other services. As long as you hold the copyright to your work (or remain the right to publish a preprint version) you can upload your paper to as many repositories as you like.
References/Persistent Identifier
Some preprint services like Zenodo allow you to set a relation to another source (via Identifier like DOI): Zenodo Example*
Related identifiers:
Identical to:
10.17605/OSF.IO/FN5ST
You can also add multiple references to the same work in your ORCID profile: ORCID Example*
References to my own work as I didn't find other examples really quickly enough.
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79067 | Question about reference letters on mathjobs
I have a mechanical question about the mathjobs interface (I believe this is not off -topic since there is a correct answer and this answer would remove uncertainty for other mathematicians in future job cycles). If I list a reference letter in my application to a position, but the reference letter is submitted after the formal deadline (or at least after I submit the application), will that reference letter be automatically added to my dossier at the university in question or do I have to re-submit all of my materials?
The reference letter is automatically added to your applications by mathjobs when it is uploaded by your letter-writers, and there is no need to resubmit.
However, I recommend sending gentle reminders to your letter-writers!
The reference letter is automatically added to the file at mathjobs.org. However, if someone has downloaded an earlier version of the application, they may not see the new/updated letter of recommendation.
Thanks Brian and Aru. @Brian Borchers, do you have any tip about what I could do to deal with this potential problem? I've already put in my cover letter who my recommenders are.
I'm afraid that there's nothing you can do about this if someone has downloaded an application from the mathjobs.org site.
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15492 | Copyright and ownership for rejected papers that are edited based on peer review
I submitted a paper to a journal and I got extensive reviews, and the paper was rejected, but they encouraged resubmission if I successfully did a bit more science and made other drastic revisions. Note this is not the same as being conditionally accepted; I had to resubmit the paper. Well I did this and the paper was accepted the second go around with minor revisions.
The Journal has the policy that you may post a copy of the preprint, the draft prior to review, on your personal website with a link to the final article which is behind a paywall.
My question is, since they rejected the first draft of the paper, can I ethically call the second draft, the one with major revisions and extra science, the pre-peer review paper. It was the raw draft submitted prior to the second set of reviews after which they accepted the paper. Or because that paper did benefit from the first set of peer reviews, I should post the original first draft? My guess is that I am allowed to post the second draft; what do you think?
Have you asked the publisher?
Are you sure this is the policy? I thought it was more normal that you could use the final version you sent the publisher after peer review but before the journals editing and typesetting.
Not Wiley Blackwell: "After publication of the published final version, the right to self-archive on the Contributor’s personal website, or in the Contributor’s institution/employer's institutional repository or archive. This right extends to both intranets and the Internet. The Contributor may not update the submitted version or replace it with the published Contribution. The version posted must contain a legend as follows: This is the pre-peer-reviewed version of the following article: FULL CITE, which has been published in final form at [Link to final article].
It seems clear to me that the answer is post what you call your second draft. The first "round" is a closed chapter because of the reject decision. You should consider your new round as the round of relevance for the final publication; it is a new paper, the old is "dead". The first round draft will be so different from the final that it cannot represent the final version. If you receive a major/minor revision, it means that the submission has intrinsic values that are clear to the reviewers and editor and in such cases the early drafts carry with them enough to mirror the final product. So from this perspective the reject decision is a clear line of separation.
I am sorry if my answer comes across as stating that reviewers work "belong" to the publisher. I do not think they do. One has to check the copyright of each journal to find out but most journals includes copy editing and type setting into what they copyright. Since reviewing is a voluntary exercise, I think they need to contract reviewers in order to get them into their realm. Maybe that would be a good question to pose here?
@dgraziotin: If you go there, you end up asking why do journals get any copyright at all, and that's a separate discussion... which is unproductive in these comments, and hopefully will be sorted out soon anyway.
Just to add to Peters excellent answer (+1), one of the purposes of publication is to establish priority on discoveries and inventions, and this is established by the "submitted" date that appears on the final published paper.
If the journal is suggesting that you could submit a revised version as a new paper, then the submission date will be the date of the revised version, so it is only fair to treat the second version of the manuscript as the first draft of that paper.
Some journals have decided to get rid of the "revise and resubmit" option following review so that papers are either accepted or rejected (with the possibility of resubmission). This is done so that the journal appears to have a rapid processing time from submission to final publication. I think this is deeply unfair to authors as it is misleading and also could prevent them from getting fair priority on their discoveries. Generally it is also not actually treated as a new paper as it is sent to the same set of reviewers. The journal shouldn't be allowed to have their cake and eat it as well, either it is a new paper, or it isn't - if they reject a paper, they should have no rights over it whatsoever.
I really like the "The journal shouldn't be allowed to have their cake and eat it as well, either it is a new paper, or it isn't" point. If they wanted that "first draft" to be the one posted they should have conditionally accepted the paper.
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75275 | PhD student where TA work leaves little time for PhD. Is it even worth it to finish this PhD?
Background: I started a PhD in a CS-oriented field about 8 months ago, after completing my masters. At the very start, I was given a lot of duties besides my PhD project, such as responsibility for several of our servers, various software and hardware, user accounts, etc. I also serve as a TA to different courses every semester. After all that, I estimate that in terms of time, 15% of the working week is maybe left for research work. In my project I work alone (this is nice), but my project as well is more ambitious than that of other people, as already confirmed by my advisor and colleagues.
Problem: I started a PhD with the hopes to research an issue at depth and gain expertise in that field, now I find I don't actually have time to seriously devote myself to research activity. I was apparently hired to be some kind of an "assistant", but not one that should be called "research assistant". On top of all, I'm paid much lower than what I could earn out in the open, or what I should be paid given the amount of hours extra I put in. I am really demotivated because I entered the PhD with different intentions. FYI, I have no desire to continue in academia as a career, neither do I need the "Dr." title to be more marketable or for ego purposes or whatever - the only reason was fun of the kind I get very little.
Question: I can't decide if it's worth it to stay, I also don't want to be spoiled and foolish. I won't take your word as command, but would be nice to just get honest 3rd party opinions, or sharing if you're dealing with the same situation.
EDIT: thanks all for sharing thoughts and giving some advice. I marked as "answer" the comment with the most subcomments. I already talked to other PhD students and it seems most don't have it as tough as me. I guess with all these tasks eventually the quality of my research will suffer, and I will talk to my advisor about this particular point, as I believe this should be a concern for him as well.
As a first step, stop performing tasks that are not explicit to your research and TA responsibilities. You have no obligation to any IT support. Stand firm and tell your advisor that you have to focus on your PhD.
Hobbes: "You have no obligation to any IT support." I agree that he shouldn't, but it is nevertheless possible (and at least slightly implied by the rest of the message) that he does.
That is possible, but I would simply tell the advisor that I will no longer be performing those tasks. Worst case, the advisor pulls funding and they have to find another source. It is definitely inappropriate for the OP to be expected to perform these tasks while in a PhD.
Does your TA list a nominal number of hours per week (for instance, 20)? The TAs that we give have a 20 hour nominal amount, but the students really don't use 20 hours. If you have an agreement like that, but are working more than 20 hours, you can bring that up with the Dept. head or Univ. administration. They could be in labor law trouble if you signed up for 20 hours and are regularly working more.
There are a few things that you ought to know before you make your decision to stay our leave.
Nearly every grad student I know of have been through the thought you are thinking about now.
Actually, the fact that you're being paid at all means that you're above half the population out there.
If you really believe you got the toughest research project, then look again. There were many grad students who said exactly the same thing before they realized they are wrong (myself included).
You may request for your burden to be reduced, although there is no guarantee your request will be granted.
Make sure you hear the experience of others both in and out of your institution. Once you're rid of the "why me!?" complex, make your decision.
Ebe, thanks for the reply. As mentioned in my post, the fact that my project is difficult has been confirmed by other people, and while it may not be the toughest of all PhD projects on the planet, it certainly is challenging compared to what others in my department are doing.
The thing is the TA letter which clearly mentions your responsibilities. If your supervisor ask you to do something, it's often nice to do it for him out of respect. From my personal experience as a TA in computer science PhD.
If anyone else asks you, you can deny them or better ask them to please communicate via your supervisor. In that case they will never use that communication channel and even if they do, supervisor will not allow you to carry out the work.
TAs are paid less (as in my case) but if you compare that all your tuition fee and other fees are also waived then it's more than enough.
Refusing unrelated work will not effect your PhD, what's in your thesis is what you did. And you cannot justify that you didn't do well because you were busy in other IT works.
So finish it, give time if someone ask for work just say you have a meeting to prepare, deadlines and busy in that.
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85840 | Is it okay to add mention of a grant in the acknowledgements at the proof-stage when the grant started after the paper was submitted for publication?
Some time ago, I have send a paper for publication at a respected journal. The peer review took some time, and eventually the paper is in the production stage. The paper was submitted when we were working at a grant proposal. Some months ago, the grant proposal was accepted and currently we receive funding from the grant. Since the paper was submitted before the grant was active, the question would be if it is fine if we add acknowledgements at the proof stage for the current grant. I add that for dealing with the referees remarks, we have also worked at the paper, work that correspond to a time when the grant was active.
Unless I miss something, the situation is pretty clear: the research was done and the paper was written before the grant was accepted, I do not think it makes any sense to acknowledge the current grant.
@PsySp I think in general I agree with you; however, the OP's question regards the time spent working on the paper under the new grant, so the situation isn't quite as clear. Maybe one could reword the question of how much support for a paper needs to come from a particular grant to justify an acknowledgement. >0%? 1%? 10%? 30%?
@BryanKrause OP says "The paper was submitted when we were working at a grant proposal." So 0% time was spent on the paper since the new grant started. However, the only way I can see around is if some revisions were done while working under the new grant. Then they could say this work was partially supported by such-and such
@PsySp Last sentence of the OP: "I add that for dealing with the referees remarks, we have also worked at the paper, work that correspond to a time when the grant was active." In my opinion, it would depend on how substantial that work was. Responses to referees can be simple edits or sometimes require substantial new experiments.
@BryanKrause I agree with you. If the revision included just corrections of typos then no ack would be required. But if the paper was revised in a major way (whatever this means) then I think the most appropriate is to write what I mentioned above.
I think you need to look deep within yourself and do some introspection about the reason why you are thinking of adding an acknowledgement.
If the reason is that you genuinely believe the work you did on the corrections to the paper was substantial enough that the grant agency truly deserves to be acknowledged for its support in making the paper come to a successful fruition -- sure, go ahead and add the acknowledgement. No need to overthink the issue.
But if on the other hand the reason is that you are essentially looking for an excuse to add an acknowledgement so that you can later list the paper in your final or periodical report to the funding agency -- perhaps due to a feeling of insecurity about your ability to produce more substantial work later on in the life of the grant for which you can add a more sincere acknowledgment -- in that case, no, sorry to disappoint but I think such an action would be borderline unethical (and in my personal opinion falling on the wrong side of the border, though not by much), and would also look quite ridiculous should anyone (e.g. the program director at the funding agency, or a panel reviewing a future grant application) later scrutinize your report about what you did for the grant.
What if your reason is "because the grant agency requires it"?
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100029 | What are the differences between a presentation in academia and a presentation in industry?
I think that I am pretty good at presenting my work during my PhD, and I am still being invited to conferences for some papers I did 2 years ago.
Now, I am working in industry. My manager always complains about my presentations and my reports.
I tried my best to follow his guidelines, but still he does not understand my presentations.
What might be the expectations in industry different than academia in terms of presenting some work?
It would seem that you are failing to present your work effectively... Major rethinking is probably necessary. Beyond that, it seems that no one on this site could really answer your question in any precise way.
... that is, your remark that you are "excellent at presenting work I did in my PhD" has to be taken in a very qualified way: for certain_audiences, perhaps this is so. Apparently not for all. Also, statistically, many novices' notion of "excellent presentation" is fairly unrelated to more-expert, more-jaded, more-sophisticated notions of that. Different people desire different things at different times in their trajectories.
There are two problems with this question. One, you seem to ask the wrong people. Workplace SE seems to be a better site because your problem is industry workplace related. Two, My manager always complains about my presentations and my reports.. You need to clarify what are his major complaints. Without knowing the complaints, how do you expect people to help you to address them?
You need to tell your managers what they want to know, rather than what you want to tell them.
From your pseudo I'll take that you are a physicist. Is your manager a physicist too ? Because, as paul garrett pointed out, the audience type is important. Do you present to other colleague or just your manager ? In the former case, do your colleagues share your manager opinion ? Additionally, being invited to a conference is more likely linked to your research quality than your presentation skill. I have seen terrible presentation from highly ranked scientists...
@paulgarrett I'd be happy to answer this question if it weren't on hold. I do think this is the right forum for it.
@ElizabethHenning As is, I think it would be probably a better fit for Workplace SE.
@ElizabethHenning I did vote to reopen... but/and I'd hope that the questioner can add some helpful details.
@MassimoOrtolano Workplace SE might send the OP here because the question asks how to transition from academic experience. Arguably more people here than there would be interested.
@ElizabethHenning I asked there in chat, but probably you're right that there is more people here that would be interested.I voted to reopen.
The comments above are correct--you're probably pitching to the wrong audience, and your presentation skills are probably not as good as you think they are. To put it undiplomatically, the great majority of (STEM) presentations in academia are horrible, but after a half-decade or so of grad school you become inured to this and recalibrate your expectations. You've probably noticed that a genuinely engaging and accessible academic presentation is often judged to be less deep and interesting than an incomprehensible one. This is not going to be the case in a business environment.
The key difference is that the focus in a business presentation is on utility: You're not just trying to convey information, you're trying to be useful to your team and to the company. What are the people in your audience going to do with the content of your presentation when it's over? They want usable information, and they want it quickly and efficiently. Here are some ways to do this:
Include a "30,000-foot view" and (metaphorically) keep it in sight throughout the presentation.
Keep the narrative of your information focused. That is, make sure it's clear why each piece of information is relevant to whatever point you're trying to make.
Leave detailed background explanations to follow-up questions.
Be parsimonious and efficient in your flow of information. Pictures are generally better than words.
I'm assuming you're in a role where you process and produce data, so that your reports and presentations are informative rather than persuasive. But many of the same principles would apply if you are trying to convince your audience of something.
A final remark: People who give business presentations practice them. You probably have access to tech for recording a video of yourself, or at least a screencast with audio of your presentation. Use it.
"great majority of (STEM) presentations in academia are horrible" this is so TRUE, I wonder if there is any research about this.
I don't know what is your employer feedback to the presentation but in general, one thing that I noticed that in academia we tend to emphasize methodology for about 10 slides, and in the industry, they only have one slide of the method and 10 slides of results and implication of results aka. discussion.
If I were in your position, I would use the narrative language of a TED talk. Why this format? because this form is most suitable for the wide audience. I assume that your boss and people in your collective are from various background.
We need more info about your current job, what industry is and who are your co-workers professionally. But if you are people from different backgrounds, you need to find a common denominator for all of you, so your ppt can be clearly understandable to the wide audience.
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74890 | How to get a list of researchers ranked by their h index?
One way of identifying influential researchers in a field is to rank researchers by their h-index.
I found only a list of researchers ranked by h-index for those with very high h-indices ( >40). However, I cannot see the ranking researchers that are under this number.
Is there a way to get a complete list of researchers in a field classified by their h-index (e.g., h-index > 5)?
"To know the most influent researchers in my field, I have to know the list of reaseracher ranked by their h index." - I believe many people here will strongly disagree with you on that point.
Yes you are right.
Depending on where you look, h-index at the order of magnitude of 5 can well fluctuate by some 10 points.
No problem, the goal is to find the active resarchers that made a significant contribution in my field.
I softened the first sentence, because it was worded in a way that distracts from the underlying legitimate question. i.e., how do you get a list of researchers ranked by h-index
You can get a list of researchers who have Google Scholar profiles and have identified themselves with the field, ranked in order of total citation count by searching for researchers in that field on Google Scholar. That's not quite the same thing but will give you some of the answers you are looking for.
yes, this is a great answer because my goal first to get the list of researcher who have significant contribution in my field. the h-index is just a mean and citation number id another mean for that. You can put this an answer and I will accept it.
You can get a list of researchers who have Google Scholar profiles and have identified themselves with the field, ranked in order of total citation count by searching for researchers in that field on Google Scholar, via https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?hl=en&view_op=search_authors. That's not quite the same thing but will give you some of the answers you are looking for.
Supposing that the h-index could be used to measure researcher influence (which is debated), I would strongly suggest, in addition to @Significance, to use at least the three main sources: Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. In What do bibliometric indicators measure?, 2007, Kermarrec et al. showed the high disparity in coverage and results, and the sensitivity to errors (same names, duplications). This information can be complemented by Which h-index? – A comparison of WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar, 2008, Bar-Ilan. The bias observed with Google Scholar is highly dependent on the field.
Using a measure with three different tools (after some cleansing), and plotting the profiles on a 3D axis might help to avoid "missing" influential authors who lay off the main diagonal (data from Bar-Ilan's paper):
A pending issue is the difficulty to get authors assigned to a field. Journals can be associated to differents fields, and you could make a rule like: "an author who has published at least x papers in a journal from the field is taken into account". A drawback is that an author in that may have an high h-index mainly because of papers published in different fields. So although "influential" in your sense, he might as well not be influential at all in your field.
A solution could be to collect DOI of papers, and then use retrieval tools as the ones described in Scientometric/bibliometric data retrieval from a list of DOI.
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64806 | When is it appropriate to describe research as "recent"?
I want to write: "A recent study ...",
The particular study I want to cite was published two years ago. I don't think that this is very recent in terms of journal appearances. But it is the most recent I could find compared to similar studies, which is what I want to emphasize.
But what are the general semantics of "recent" when referencing sources?
If the date of the study matters, why not "A study from 2014...."?
The date can be made out from the bibliography, so it would be redundant to add that information to the sentence.
It is an ineffective way of saying "This is important!" As a reviewer I would probably tolerate descriptions of anything from the past ten years as "recent."
In my mind recent is anything that is new enough that it hasn't been fully absorbed (worked its way into later research, publications and into people's minds). That might depend on recent to whom -- a 20 year-old mathematical theory might well be too recent to have fully worked its way into engineering practice, so if you're writing to the engineering audience it could be appropriate to call it recent.
Redundancy is not a bad thing in academic writing.
Keep in mind that recent to you may not be recent to a future reader. If you have something more specific to convey ("most recent at the time of writing", "unsettled", "currently the hip and trendy thing that gets grants"), you'd be best served being more specific. Otherwise, your reader will have to look at your paper's publication date and try to work out what you meant from context.
@mdiener - The best part about your suggestion, I think, is that, 10 or 20 years from now, the wording would be as accurate as it is today.
I also think it depends on the field. In astronomy, for example, a two-year old study could be considered recent when examining galaxy evolution, but a two-year old study on exoplanet populations is likely already quite outdated.
Good question. The semantics of the word "recent", in general, and in academic writing, in particular, is not clearly defined (that is, fuzzy), which makes its practical use quite tricky, as evidenced by your question.
While @vonbrand's answer offers some valuable insights, such as considering the fluidity of a particular scientific field or domain, I would suggest a more practical solution to this problem, as follows. Consider literature that you reference in a particular paper. What is the temporal range of the sources? I think that this aspect could guide you in to where the word "recent" is appropriate and where not so much.
For example, if you cite sources from the current century as well as 1930s, then a paper from 2010 should be considered recent, but not one from 1950. If, on the other hand, your temporal range of references is rather narrow, say, recent 20 years, then you should refer to as "recent" for sources that are from approximately last 4-5 years. You can come up with your own rule of thumb (10-20% of the total range sounds pretty reasonable). The most important aspect would be not the actual value (for the rule of thumb), but rather your consistency in applying it throughout the paper.
@thrau: My pleasure! Thank you for kind words and accepting.
It depends on the area. If you are talking about slow moving areas, "recent" could be a decade ago; for something that moves fast, what was published last year is old hat.
Perhaps the easiest way out is to be more specific, "a study three years back..." (besides, the study might be several years back, or be a decade long study, but the journal issue just came out, so the publication date isn't necessarily telling).
As previously mentioned, the meaning of 'recent' depends on the topic of study. What is considered recent in mathematics may not be considered recent enough for computer science. My computer science professors have generally stuck with anything five years old as being the 'oldest' an article can be. Two to three years is generally better, especially in the tech field as things progress at a much higher rate. A good thing to look out for is when an article might pass the 5 year mark, someone will most likely have adapted the methodology or research findings in a more recent article. Best of luck!
It depends.
If you refer to something that has a precise date, you should be precise. I see no advantage in writing "A recent study showed..." over "The study X from 2010 showed..." The latter contains more information and reads as least as good (in my opinion even better, because it's more precise). A similar case is "The problem posed by X at the meeting Y in 2010..." (better than "The recently posed problem...").
One case in which "recent" could make sense is "The field X has attracted much attention recently" because usually one can not pin down an exact date for this event. However, in most cases this reads more like a self-perpetuating empty statement (if there is a simple reason why the reader should care about the field X then give that!). I have to admit that I myself also wrote sentences like this, but looking back it reads a bit weird. Nowadays, if I read "this field has attracted much attention recently" I really read that the authors do not know a good reason why their problem is interesting but feel that they should.
On a slightly related note, how would you feel about "This field has attracted much attention recently because reasons"?
I would say, the more precise the better. Probably in such a sentence just giving the reason that you feel that make the field exciting is enough. The additional information that these exciting facts resulted in "much attention recently" seems not so important. I would find it even better if the sentence would tell that the field is relevant and not that its fancy right now.
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179163 | How to highlight changes made in the manuscript as part of a revise and resubmit?
We have a journal paper that got correction requests and need to be resubmitted. The changes need to be highlighted in the manuscript. How do you mark the changes? Is changing the text color enough? What if the reviewer/editor does not have a colored printer? or has color blindness?
I tried underlined text but the manuscript looked ugly and I am afraid this journal has early version that goes live after acceptance as is. Any suggestions from experience?
Edit:
Thanks for all the responses. Just for clarity: I assumed that the changes need to be highlighted in the manuscript. The editor did not specify.
Why do you think the changes need highlighting?
They are lots of changes. They may or may not have tools to show differences.
Perhaps ask the editor, if you think you will get a quick response. You could also return two versions of the corrected manuscript, one with changes in colour and one without.
Ask the editor how to mark up the resubmission.
Related older question specifically for LaTeX: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/42519 At the time it was closed as off-topic, being too specific, I now closed it as a duplicate of this one which is more general and with more answers.
And if you use LaTeX, you can have a look also at this one on TeX SE.
Does this answer your question? What changes should be notated in a journal resubmission?
@AnonymousPhysicist and other close voters: that is an entirely different question, and this one cannot be considered a duplicate of that.
@MassimoOrtolano The questions have the same correct answer (use latexdiff) so I consider them to be duplicates.
@AnonymousPhysicist Lol. Not everyone uses LaTeX
@AnonymousPhysicist It’s the question that makes a duplicate target: one asks about the what, this one about the how. Furthermore, not everyone uses LaTeX, not even every journal, and even among LaTeX users latexdiff can be overwhelming sometimes.
@MassimoOrtolano That's just not true. "What" and "How" have the same answer as provided by Avid. If you changed both questions to specify MS Word instead of LaTeX, they would still have the same answer.
Questions are duplicates if they should have the same answer.
TL;DR Explain the changes in a different document
Send the new article without any marks and a separate document where you detail how you have included the changes suggested or why you have decided not to include them.
For instance:
Reviewer suggests including topic X, we have done so in Section 6.4
Reviewer suggests including topic Y. However, we disagree because of Z.
I agree with @Buffy on the need of having a publishable paper without modifications.
I don't find it necessary either to have the changes marked letter by letter.
However, I believe it is convenient to mention in which part of the paper the changes have been made. If the reviewers are the same, they will find the resubmission easier to follow. If they are different, they will still find a publishable paper to read.
This works in many cases, but some editorial workflows do want to see the changes directly indicated in the text.
A similar approach would be to send 1. a publication-ready version, 2. the same version with line numbers printed, 3. the older version with the line numbers printed, 4. a document explaining the changes by referring to the line numbers, e.g. line 20-30 in V2: clarified the blabla on lines 30-40 in V1. If the editor really cares, they'll read it.
@RLH Of course, always follow the editor guidelines, if any. I'm assuming there aren't.
@PatrickT I find a difference here between major changes and small changes or typos. In the latter case, it may be interesting to use line numbers. In the former, I would rather go with sections. Major changes are likely to imply rewriting full sections or making changes in the structure and may not be easy to follow with line numbers.
This seems like a "frame challenge" answer to me: OP has already decided that the changes "need to be highlighted"; they want to know what's the best way to format them.
@FedericoPoloni You're right in a way. However, I don't understand the question as a formatting one (Unlike the older one that has been mentioned in the comments). My impression is that OP has not considered an alternative, and their comments show that they don't like how highlighting looks.
I recently received an update that had the new paper, and a marked up version with color-coded highlights showing changes made for each reviewer’s comments, as well as a separate response to reviewers (with the same color-code). It made it really easy to see what the authors had done.
In my field a version with marked changes is always expected, and as a peer reviewer I really appreciate it. So I consider this answer wrong.
See contradictory answer at https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/21720/13240
@AnonymousPhysicist This is not the case in my field, I have never been requested to provide one. I have not received any as a reviewer either. I understand how it may be useful for small changes but still don't think it is always necessary.
If you are writing in Latex, I recommend Latexdiff; its default seems pretty good:
(Image shamelessly stolen from Track changes with latexdiff).
Sometimes it chokes on some equations and complicated nested environments, but in general it's a great tool that does not require you to track changes by hand.
So, what I am suggesting including in a revision:
a clean, "publishable" version of the revised document;
the output of latexdiff (between the previous and current revision), to display changes;
a separate "response to reviewers" document that addresses the major points raised by the referees (there's no point in describing minor changes such as "yes, we have corrected typos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5").
Isn't that more a tool for the reviewer than the author?
@Buffy No, the reviewer often doesn't get the Latex sources (and anyway doesn't want to spend time learning how to compile them). It's been very useful for me as an author, also for exchanging revisions with coauthors.
It is useful tool, but the changes they requested a lot (major). So I think it will look very messy in my case.
@randomname I generally include both a clean copy and a latexdiff copy (along with a response-to-reviewers list of changes) to make it readable while satisfying any requirement for a directly-marked document
A slightly simpler LaTeX package is changes
@ChrisH Good suggestion; there is a major difference though: changes requires you to mark changes manually with a special syntax; latexdiff aims to produce them automatically given the initial and final source file.
@FedericoPoloni I almost assumed as much from the name of latexdiff and the use of a makefile, but didn't check. That means the two packages are optimised for different use-cases, and for me changes was more suitable; in a properly-organised collaboration, version control should lend itself to latexdiff. I'm now vaguely wondering about whether latexdiff plays nicely with Overleaf without too much effort, as the last couple of papers I've been involved in have used that, with its own change-tracking for the authors.
@ChrisH With Overleaf, there is nothing automated as far as I know, so I think you'd have to (1) download manually a copy of the old .tex file before the first submission; (2) download manually a copy of the whole project before resubmission (3) run latexdiff locally on your computer. But if that level of effort is fine for you it should work without further troubles.
This is the correct answer! I would point out, though, that latexdiff has some bugs and complex documents often require manual correction before they will compile.
There is more than one way to do this. Often the journal editor states exactly what you should do. If not, you can always ask the editor.
The most common and most accurate method is to use the change tracking function of MS Word (under the Review tab). That way you have an exact record of everything you deleted and inserted. The big disadvantage of this is that if you delete a large section, it gets moved to the right margin and is pretty messy. An alternative is to track only your insertions, not deletions.
Some journals ask you to highlight your changes. I don't think you have to worry about color printers as the reviewers will most likely read your revised paper on the screen, not hard copy. Color blind reviewers might see your changes in gray, which is OK too.
The final important step is to submit a separate document that describes your changes persuasively. Set the document up like this:
Reviewer 1
Comment: Please clarify your argument about xx on p. 3.
Reply: I have reframed the argument as follows: "xxx"
Do this for every comment from every reviewer to show that you've done everything they asked you to do. If you disagree with a comment, explain why (diplomatically). Including this document also helps the journal editor detect unfair and incorrect criticism from reviewers, which happens a lot, including when the reviewers don't really read the paper.
One option that clearly indicates the changed parts, is colorblind-safe, and doesn't look ugly would be to highlight the changed portions with vertical black change bars along the outside edge of the page.
Example of this type of change-highlighting in the wild:
If you are using Microsoft Word, then you can use the compare documents feature. Simply use the original submission and the updated submission in the compare documents dialog. Put label changes with "Author" to ensure anonymity (i.e., blind review). This will generate a track changes version of the document showing the changes made between the original and revised documents.
You can then upload this track change version as part of your submission (perhaps in addition to the final version without track changes) to highlight the changes you have made.
Other answers have addressed the workflow and submission aspects, but regarding the actual marking up, underlining is a very useful way of showing changes
This is precisely because it's too ugly to make the final version and not routinely used for emphasis (bold and italic may appear in the final document). It also prints well whatever your printer. I've used it quite a bit in internal reviewing, where the reviewer, e.g. co-author, may be working on screen or paper depending on whether they're in the office or travelling when they get time to have a look (even in one case on a Kindle with B&W e-ink display).
It also pairs well with strikethrough for removed text.
LaTeX packages soul and ulem (with the [normalem] option) will allow you to do this if you're using LaTeX and don't want to use a more specific change-tracking package.
I'm assuming the editor hasn't actually required you for a marked up document. In that case, follow their instructions.
Otherwise, I would just write the new version, making the changes you feel warranted. Don't bother to mark it up. When you resubmit it, send the editor a separate communication that says something like "We addressed all of the reviewer comments except...", and detail the ones you left undone along with a bit of reasoning.
The new reviewers might or might not be the same as the old ones. What they want to see, in either case, is a good, publishable, paper, not obeisance on conformity to their earlier comments. The editor can pass this document along with the paper.
If you start to mark it up with many changes you then get faced with indexing the changes to the reviewer comments. Messy, hard to read, and, moreover, it can force the reviewer into a mind-set that isn't optimal for a good paper. Comparing the old to the new isn't the point.
This answer contradicts the question. In my field, it's always required that the changes be marked. And it's always a good idea. Indexing changes is easy if you use line numbers.
https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/21720/13240
@AnonymousPhysicist, given my first paragraph you are incorrect to make such assumptions. What happens in your field isn't universal. And, "indexing" changes isn't easy if the changes necessitate a rewrite. Fine for trivial stuff. But the world isn't as simple as you'd like. Write a better paper. Address the reviewers concerns. A markup can be a total mess.
I'm not incorrect that this answer contradicts the question.
@AnonymousPhysicist, see the update to the question as well as the accepted answer. If you think I haven't answered, then flag it. But I find the attempt in your (frequent) comments to influence others to be unfriendly.
I have viewed those things. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19756/how-do-comments-work
Aside from a separate document, where you can much better and in a more focused manner reply to the requests of the reviewers, I tend to prepare a full diff, even if only for myself.
latexdiff was already mentioned, but if you use some kind of a version control for you paper (you rather should if you use it anyway for your code), there is another option. Here, I use git.
git diff --word-diff --color <old-state> HEAD file1 file2 file3
will give you a difference output, colored, on a terminal. Let's improve that with ansi2html and few tweaks:
use a script to convert terminal colors to HTML
adjust it a bit with sed
use a make rule to generate it automatically, e.g. when building a PDF:
Here is the complete rule for your Makefile (if you have one).
diff.html : content.md content.tex full.bib Makefile
git diff --word-diff --color submission1 HEAD content.md full.bib | sh ~/bin/ansi2html.sh | sed -e 's|<style type="text/css">|<style type="text/css"> pre { white-space: pre-wrap; } |g' > diff.html
Here is how it looks like in the final diff.html:
There are many other fancy things, like letting a CI build your paper on each commit to a remote repo, but that's a story for another time.
The vast majority of reviewers don't understand diff, and therefore would prefer latexdiff to this approach.
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88535 | Is it self-plagiarism to summarise a topic in the introduction of two of your papers using similar references and examples?
I have written two papers, let's say X and Y, about a concept, let's say A.
X is about other overview of concept A and how it can be improved in general.
Then I have another paper i.e. Y discusses about relationship of A with reference to one particular topic.
As both papers are literature driven papers (can be called as literature reviews) and the focuses are different. However there are some sections which are overlapping with each other. Therefore I have given similar examples and used many common references.
My question is, is it a case of plagiarism ? I have written both papers separately and not copied text of one into other, rather sometimes the sense is same. I would appreciate your thinking and advices in this regards whether it can be counted as a case of plagiarism ?
Thanks in advance.
I thought the general advice is you can't plagiarize yourself. Plagiarism by definition is trying to pass someone else's work off as your own, or improperly referencing it. As long as you have the all the right references I would imagine you'd be fine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism#Self-plagiarism
@OrangeDog mentioned in a comment above the concept of self-plagiarism. I have definitely been in a position in a program committee where a paper was rejected because it had large parts completely in common with another paper without giving appropriate context. I think @Saturnus is on the mark with the comment that it doesn't matter if they cover the same material if they are written differently rather than copied, but only up to a point. It also matters what the content is. Literature reviews with common references make perfect sense; I think in the example provided here, you ought to be in the clear.
But I wanted to respond in order to provide a somewhat more general answer.
If someone wrote a paper about project X, and they had an extensive introduction and a section with a couple of pages about use cases, say, and then they wrote a new paper about X, there are a couple of cases:
Is the new paper an extension of the earlier paper, for instance a conference-length paper going beyond an earlier workshop-length paper, or a journal version of a workshop or conference paper? Then it's fine to include earlier content verbatim, with a comment (usually a footnote to the title) that the paper is an extended version of the workshop paper. Aside: this really complicates double-blind reviewing, as people typically omit the self-referential footnote, and reviewers have to guess.
Is the new paper substantially different, even if some content is the same? Small amounts of overlapping content, in my experience, are OK, but if it's not quoted or referenced as coming from the earlier material, it may be a red flag if too much. Think about what automated plagiarism detectors would flag.
Finally, beware of the "least publishable unit". Whether the content is literally identical (and self-plagiarism) or merely semantically identical, you want to be sure enough is different. Again, in the description provided here, they sound different enough. I'm referring to others who may come across this in the future, wondering about reuse across papers....
+1 for the warning about the least publishable unit. You want to be sure you're not writing one of those, and not seen to be writing one.
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78945 | Should you send refined version of manuscript to editor three months after initial submission?
I submitted a paper to a a good mathematics journal about 3 months ago, and have not heard anything yet (based on some of what I've heard this is fairly normal). During that time I made some significant edits to the introduction and some of the proofs (the original proofs were not incorrect but now they are easier to read/understand).
Should I send the updated version to the editor? If the paper is already being reviewed, then I wouldn't want to muddy the waters by submitting something new. That's my only concern at the moment. Thoughts?
I feel like we've had this question before, but I can't find it at this point. The general consensus was do not send through an update. If you get a revise and resubmit, then incorporate the changes then.
I would not do it. If the referee is happy with the submitted version, you should add the changes when you send a revised version, explaining what you did with the utmost detail.
Keep in mind: if the changes are significant, and only to make the proof nicer/easier to read, it might not be worth doing it. Perhaps just add a remark explaining how to do it in a nicer way, or something like that. If you change the manuscript too much, you risk the referee to be very annoyed that he spent a lot of his/her (free) time reading and understanding the paper, and now he has to do it all over again. This is, of course, if the editor is also not very annoyed.
Minor changes are expected and very common, but major unrequested changes might not the best idea.
I would value the readers over the referee, and would certainly advise against not implementing improvement in the final paper. Making a paper nice to read is part of the job, and an important part at that.
I agree though that it might be unwelcome to resubmit a new version: the changes could occur after receiving the referee suggestion. They need to be good changes, and to be duly documented, so next time try to polish your work before sending it, but don't let a suboptimal paper in the open.
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88840 | Can I be successful as a lone wolf researcher in mathematics?
I am not a people person, and therefore I usually work alone. I'm quite content with this, and I have actually been able to achieve some wonderful results (to me, anyway) working this way. However I worry that nobody else will really care about my research.
Are there examples of modern day mathematicians who have been successful (as recognized by the mathematical community) working alone?
How can I get more people to be interested in the problems I'm interested in, without being able to connect on a personal level? Even if I'm not able to collaborate with anyone, I'd like to create some level of dialogue between other mathematicians and my publications. That is, I'd like for them to perhaps answer some of my questions, and for them to pose new ones that I could possibly answer. So far, I have failed to achieve this.
Please [edit] your question to clarify: 1) Do you aspire an academic career? 2) If yes, what have you achieved so far in that respect? 3) If no, do you care about publishing your work? 4) Did you publish any of your work so far and if yes, how?
I know that it does not directly answer the question: however, one has to ask why one expects to get something out of others which one does not want to invest oneself. My experience is that people do not like such an imbalance of giving and taking; why should they be interested in dialogue if OP isn't. There are exceptions, either because the work is astonishingly brilliant or in cases such as Fermat, where one suspects his isolation was due to being a judge at the time of Richelieu; any undue social interaction could have cost him job, freedom or life. That being said, try a blog.
I am not in the field, so I can't give you real insight. Only that, yes, in specific cases like maybe Perelman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman), it is possible. But it is not likely to work.
You were not clear on whether or not you are a student in an academic department. If so, one of the expectations people have is that a Ph.D. or even an M.S. implies the student has improved his willingness and ability to collaborate with his advisor and other students, and to be a functioning member of his academic environment. Almost regardless of your research accomplishments, employers expect a minimal level of sociability--and of course especially if you are in a teaching institution.
Do you at least give good talks?
Does your research build off of existing research?
Why conduct science if you have no interest in collaborating?
From the body of your question, I'm concerned your title is focused in the wrong direction. You say that you want to create a dialog between your work and other mathematicians, that you want to ask questions of other researchers, and you want to solicit new questions from your conversations with them. Is it possible what would actually help you most is an answer to the question in your third paragraph? To discover ways to achieve those goals, rather than validation that lone wolf success is possible?
If by this you mean can you do a career without coauthoring, then yes! If by this you mean can you do research in a vacuum without any context or relation to others' work, then absolutely not.
@Wrzlprmft I would like to work in academia. It is still very early in my career, though I have published two papers. The referee(s) have given me some wonderful feedback, but I still worry about falling into obscurity.
Successful is a social measure. Why would a lone wolf even consider trying to get good scores on it? It kind of goes against the definition of lone wolf doesn't it?
I think it's common in maths or theoretical CS that people mostly spend their time working alone - when proving theorems, developing algorithms etc, we need to focus on doing that, thus we need the alone time. It's different from people who mostly just use the concepts, just use the existing tools/libraries/codes without delving further into the heavy theory - those people collaborate because they are doing application and dont need to focus on the heavy theory which needs more full-focus and more difficult to talk about.
And after you work on your research or at least have an idea, then you can try to find like-wise people who might be interested in the topic - which might be difficult to find depending on how narrow it is and if the other party has time to spend or not. But still most part of the work will be done alone..? Since only after working on it, can we discuss it, isn't that so..? sorry if i am mistaken.
Plenty of mathematicians are introverted, quiet, and typically prefer to work alone. (Also, plenty of mathematicians are extroverted, boisterous, and prefer to work with others -- but I believe the profession does a reasonably good job of welcoming various personality types.)
All successful mathematicians whom I know spend some of their time and energy engaging with the mathematical community. Going to conferences or chatting with colleagues are good ways to do this. There are also ways such as MathOverflow to interact with mathematicians online. And simply reading the (contemporary) work of other mathematicians is also a form of engagement.
If you want your work to be appreciated by others, then I recommend taking the time and energy to appreciate others' work. For example, are there any questions asked by others, for which your work gives any insights? If you can help people answer questions they are interested in, then it is quite natural that they might take an interest in your own work as well.
Good luck!
I will try to follow the advice in your third paragraph!
The questions in the body of your question are quite different from the one in the title. I will address the titular question
"Can I be successful as a lone wolf researcher in mathematics?"
by going out on a limb and predicting that the answer is, simply, No, you cannot.
It's true that there are people like Perelman, Wiles, Yitang Zhang and other notable (and less notable) examples of "lone wolf researchers" who have become very successful. But the fact remains that those examples are few and far between. My experience is that among ordinary, "mere mortal" working mathematicians, it is normal to see people producing the occasional solely authored paper, but one hardly ever encounters a researcher who has not had coauthors on at least, say, 50% of their papers (my own ratio is about 50% coauthored papers, and I've been told that that's an unusually high proportion of solely authored works).
What this suggests is that by limiting yourself to not collaborating at all with others, you are confining yourself to such a small group of people that most of us professional mathematicians here have trouble naming more than 2-3 people (all of whom are extremely famous) belonging to it. Unless you know something about yourself that we don't that leads you to believe you have a reasonable shot at being the next Wiles or Perelman, I don't think I'm taking too much of a chance by predicting that in fact you aren't (and that's not an insult in any sense since obviously I'm not either), and that your chances of making a successful collaboration-free career in math are very close to zero.
+1 for being blunt. Being a successful researcher is hard and doubly so if you are doing it without help.
Among the lone wolf researches we must not forget Victor Porton, who works in the field of the OP (general topology). Also, neither Wiles (who obtained essential help by R. Taylor and N. Katz) nor Perelman really are "lone wolf researchers" in the sense of the OP. These people worked on well-known problems, which by virtue of their importance are interesting to many people (the OP, like Porton, works on isolated problems which have no connections to main stream subjects like algebraic geometry or algebraic topology).
I think this is among the most philosophically troubling and challenging questions in mathematics research. I wish there was a clear answer one way or the other.
The majority of mathematicians are, I think, working very hard to achieve publications and collaborators. Many will say that networking at conferences is crucial. In fact, some will argue that the whole essence of a mathematical proof is that it is a social construct, and that the very best strategies are to work with others and explain it to others.
However, I can't help but recall a number of researchers in recent years who did work almost entirely alone for many years: Wiles, Perelman, Zhang. And in fact these are uniquely the figures who broke open the pinnacle, hard, long-standing, important problems: Fermat's Last Theorem, the Poincare Conjecture, and the Twin Prime Conjecture.
Personally I have an outstandingly hard time reconciling these observations. As far as how did those lone figures get attention: By working on, and solving, such incredibly hard and famous problems that no one could ignore their results.
One attempt to reconcile these observations involves the idea that some people have a talent for "wearing different hats", that is, switching between the perspectives of a creative problem-solver and a critical peer who aggressively tries to find the flaw in the solution.
I think an important element of this issue is Survivorship bias - the most logical synthesis between the observations that 1) some solo figures are successful, and 2) most mathematicians try to collaborate is that success with the solo approach is so rare that only the most successful who solve the hardest problems are ever recognized.
@BryanKrause: Perhaps, but based on the existing sample, it seems equally valid to infer that the hardest problems are only solved by the solo approach. For example, are there any teams of mathematicians who have solved a Millennium Prize Problem?
@DanielR.Collins Only one of those problems has been solved (sort of an impossibly small sample size), and the person given credit, Perelman, who you mentioned, refused the prize on account of, in his opinion, an at least equal earlier contribution by Richard Hamilton. So, even if he primarily worked alone, his work was closely influenced by others in the community that he read. Of course don't know enough about the personal biography of Perelman to know to what extent he interacted with colleagues outside of reading the literature.
@BryanKrause: Of course I agree that reading literature is indispensable. Zhang has said the same. (Not that we need someone to tell us this.)
@DanielR.Collins The classification of finite simple groups is an example of a difficult, important problem that was solved by a whole mathematical community.
@DanielR.Collins and with regard to Bryan's comment, I think part of his point is that Perelman regarded Hamilton's contributions of equal importance, and Hamilton is a mathematician that is active in the community and has collaborators. So it is perhaps unfair to say that the Poincare conjecture was solely the work of a "lone wolf".
I will take the following to be your question, rather than what appears in the title: "How can I get more people to be interested in the problems I'm interested in?"
I suspect that if you imagine some other mathematician working in a solitary fashion, but wishing for some professional interaction, you might surprise yourself, with your ability to find a solution for him or her.
Wouldn't you suggest that s/he make the first move? And not be discouraged if the first attempt doesn't get you anywhere?
Some ways to take the initiative to connect with other mathematicians:
Math SE
write to the author of a paper that interests you
you might need to compromise and branch out a bit from your own niche
go to talks, chat with others over cookies afterwards
go to conferences -- again, here, please don't limit yourself to your own niche
visit another university, and write to someone there ahead of time to say, "I'll be in your area in the month of x, may I give a talk about my work while I'm there?" followed by a very short description of your possible topics, along with links to publications
volunteer to tutor math undergrads who are having some trouble with a class -- this will help you get out of your shell, and help you improve your math communication skills; also, it will make you more visible and attractive to other mathematicians.
I recommend that you do some reading about how others with limited people skills have negotiated this in their lives.
Congratulations on taking the first step.
To answer your first question, here is an example of a highly successful mathematician who never collaborated with anyone: http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/search/author.html?mrauthid=177585 (William Austin Veech).
It is worth noting though, that collaborations are just one aspect of participating in the mathematical community - one still needs to give talks, write papers, get hired to an academic job, be on committees, be chair of the dept, ....
Louis De Branges is another well known mathematicians who works almost exclusively by himself. Of his more than 80 publications, only a handful are not solely-authored.
The obvious downside being that he De Branges has annouced multiple wrong proofs. One could argue that this is happening since he is not open to collaboration. In fact he has claimed to have proven Riemann Hypothesis!
@mystupid_acct most mathematicians would be extremely happy to have authored a body of work equal in importance to that of De Branges. The fact that some of his claims are controversial is indeed interesting but does not invalidate his legitimate, important contributions, and indeed it's not even obvious to me that it should be considered a "downside".
@Dan It is. His work is often not taken seriously, so achieving grants is almost impossible, as is publishing in decent venues or even having people believe in his results.
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126352 | How to report an author who doesn't share the last name but had similar first name as mine, is adding my articles in his profile on google scholar?
Recently, I got to know that a person who doesn't share the last name but had a similar first name as mine, is adding my articles in his profile. Ironically, my most recent published article didn't appear in my profile, but it already appears in his profile. When I inquired and requested him to remove my articles from his profile, he just ignores my emails. How to handle is the situation? I found his LinkedIn profile, should I contact his school? How one can trust the "google scholar profile" of a researcher; especially if it's that simple to add other person's work and there is no way to report or flag fraud etc. This man has 8000+ citation; who knows he is adding other people articles, maybe to achieve some short term goals.
I realize it's frustrating, but do note that it's within the realm of possibility that he let's Google Scholar update his profile automatically, and that he didn't see your emails. Also consider if you can include a middle initial in your publications going forward, in order to reduce the risk of getting confused with different authors.
@Anyon I always add my first and last name, his first name is same with me, not the last name. I am surprised how google can automatically add article just based on same first name. I always use my email of my institution and this person has verified email of his institution on google scholar. This is making me suspicious as he is doing intentionally.
I see. I assumed you shared the same last name - and had similar first names (as you write in the title, but not the post). It'd be good if you could edit your question to make this clearer.
Why downvoted? Instead of just downvote, please share your opinion if there is something wrong with this question.
@Anyon thanks! I updated the question
Maybe it is an issue you can clean up much faster with Google as the admin of Google Scholar instead of the other person.
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82543 | Getting an academic position right after an industrial based PhD program
I am about to end PhD within next 5-6 months. The PhD program I am enrolled in is different compare to normal universities PhD programs. During first 2 years I took course work from a regular university as an exchange student and afterword I start working in a research institutes whose prime target is to develop projects for the local and international industries. Luckily or unluckily I am in the section where we deal with various small scale projects; during my 2.5 years of stay I worked on 6 different projects. These projects address totally different issues and topics are independent to each other. Therefore I didn’t get chance to focus on a single topic which can be my PhD thesis.
As a first author I have published 5 SCI articles including two in top notch journals but all of the articles are not related to each other. In the given situation I am unable to write a good dissertation. I have just 4 months left to fine tune my thesis. After PhD I want to get an academics position but I am bit worrying about my profile.
Is it something positive to have the articles published in different
areas which have no link to each other?
How much PhD thesis is important for evaluation process?
As I was working closely with the researchers who mostly focus on standardization and patent activities, none of them has a single SCI publication after graduation even my supervisor had 2 publications around 15 years ago. I am worrying whether the recommendation letter of my supervisor and team leader will be acceptable and effective for the academic position?
Actually, this is a question for your university, you are enrolled to. If they offer "industrial" PhD program, they should explain the criteria for "good" PhD thesis. It is entirely possible that 5 SCI papers are plenty, given the orientation of the program.
If, on the other hand, you are worried about your future career after PhD, yes, there is reason for concern. You enrolled in a program that fits people who want to get employment in the industry, not in the academia. In my opinion it is not the question of what your CV or PhD thesis says, the question is whether you learned enough of the basic research stuff you will need as an academic scientist (as opposed to the industrial developer).
If I would be faced with a candidate like you, I would be very interested in the content of those 5 SCI papers and would like to know which parts of the research were exactly your responsibility. If you implemented a solution, but someone other did rigorous experimental evaluation on all papers, then I would consider you less qualified than someone who did the experimental evaluation part as well (which is usually the case with first authors on journal papers, written in academia).
The unrelated subjects on the other hand would not be a disadvantage.
thank you for your answer. we are the only two authors for all those 5 articles, me and my adviser. In fact his contribution is no more than proofreading. Regarding PhD thesis, is it common practice in academia to evaluate the candidate based on thesis work? or as you said they will be more interested in published articles?
Depends on the university and perhaps on the PhD evaluation committee. In any case, future employers in academia would definitely weight your publications far more than your PhD work.
If your first round of applications are not successful, you could build up a more focused publication list through one or more postdocs. You may also want to consider getting your feet wet with teaching by working as an adjunct instructor for a semester or two.
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188820 | How can I generate an elegant (academic) static CV web page?
A friend of mine has a personal website, including a CV laid out on a page of that site (i.e. not a downloadable PDF/ODT/DOC) document. I want to help them spruce up that page somewhat.
Now, this could be made into a more complicated question if I said I also wanted the style of the CV to match the basic style of pages on that website, but let's forget about that for now, and just ask: Is there a utility, or web app, which can be given a CV (in any format - in a JSON file, by feeding into some web forms etc.) and lay it out elegantly in static HTML+CSS?
Notes:
The result must have no Javascript, animation or animation-like effects (i.e. no "onmouseover", no CSS hover pseudo-elements etc.). So, "static" in the strong sense of the word.
Naturally I'm interested in producing an academic CV, but if I had something for a non-academic CV I would probably be able to adapt the generated HTML for my needs, or whatever.
My first instinct would be to copy and paste it by hand, so I can adjust everything to my taste in HTML directly. Why do you want to convert it automatically? Does it have to be updated frequently from another master document?
@FedericoPoloni: Not sure I understand what you mean by "copy and paste it". Paste where? Do you mean editing by hand? Of course that's possible, but I was hoping something reasonable is available without going to that trouble yourself. And one can always embellish by hand, so starting with a nicer baseline for that would be good to. Also, the CV needs to be updated occasionally, and I would rather my friend be able to avoid HTML + CSS editing by hand as much as is possible.
Depends what you use to edit HTML, but in the worst case if your editor doesn't do copy-paste a ODT->HTML converter will work. But if you don't want your friend to edit HTML by hand, are you sure that a static website is the best solution? Wordpress, a wiki, a static website generator working with Markdown, all seem better choices.
@FedericoPoloni: 1. Why would I convert an ODT? That's not what I asked about. 2. A static website is what my friend has, I'm not going to change that.
It is not clear to me what the input format is then. How would your friend want to write their CV? How do they deal with formatting, for instance the occasional word in italic or diacritic? Does the input need to be shared with another version of the CV? Or is it just for the convenience of not writing HTML directly?
@FedericoPoloni: The input format will be whatever the web page generator tool needs. Right now, the CV is inconsistently formatted anyway. No, the input does not need to be shared with another version of the CV. It is not just the convenience of not writing HTML - it's the convenience of not having to format, lay out and style the CV.
You can find templates from site generators like Jekyll and Hugo, for example al-folio or Hugo Academic.
@GoodDeeds: Those seem like website templates. They're interesting, but - I'm looking for an HTML page generator (without dynamic elements, navigation bar, sub-pages etc.)
I am not sure I understood you, those templates do generate fully static HTML pages from config/data files populated by the user. You can configure the output to be on a single page entirely if you like. There is no need to edit HTML directly anywhere unless you want to specifically customize something.
@GoodDeeds: I followed the two example links, and did not see static pages. But I'll take a closer look at how to configure them to create a fully static page. If you can describe a complete procedure - that would be an answer to this question...
I have personally only used Hugo Academic, and IMHO its documentation details the steps quite well. But the example site is a static site -- there is no backend, nothing is generated dynamically -- so maybe I am still misunderstanding your requirements.
@GoodDeeds: The example site is full of scripts, has a navigation bar which scrolls the content up and down etc.
I think that ORCID is what you are looking for. However, it generates their website, not your website. If you must control the site yourself, hand written HTML is still the way to go.
@einpoklum Usually by "static" people mean "served directly from HTML/JS/CSS files on disk, not generated on-the-fly by PHP/Python/etc (and a database) when the client requests a page". If your concept of "static" includes "no Javascript", then I suggest you make it clear.
@FedericoPoloni: Edited to clarify that.
@einpoklum, you can create google site
@learner: Not relevant to my needs.
Based on your requirements, markdown-cv seems like a good option.
To use it, you write the CV in Markdown (the same format that's used in Stack Exchange), and use Jekyll to convert it to HTML. Documentation can be found here.
Screenshots for reference:
Markdown Input:
Rendered Output:
I have no affiliation with this software.
My read on your question suggests to me that you could start at the basic level with raw HTML. Let's stay platform agnostic in your workflow.
Get a text editor that promotes its ability to work in raw HTML.
Review an on-line tutorial that instructs how to work with the beginning elements in raw HTML.
The most basic format will have HEADER and PARAGRAPH elements as its only input. You may eventually include LIST elements. HEADERS would include such things as Education, Experience, Publications, Proposals, and Professional Affiliations. PARAGRAPHS and LIST elements would be under these headers. All the effort at this stage is simply to copy + paste the current information into the new HTML.
Once the basic HTML works and has all the content required, move to formatting. The standard approach for this is to incorporate a CSS style header or CSS style file. Will you need lots of CSS styling commands? Not really. Define the text size and font face in each ELEMENT (HEADER, LIST, PARAGRAPH). One distinct advantage with HTML (over PDF) in this case is the ability to use relative font sizes, allowing the person viewing the page to scale for their own needs. One certain reason also to include a basic CSS is to define the view for different platforms such as desktop versus tablet versus mobile device.
Can this process be automated? Perhaps. But ... for what you are asking ... the time you would invest to find, set up, and establish proficiency with an automated tool is likely not minimal. Alternatively said, you can probably find a good application that will allow you to do WYSIWYG layout designs of Webpages, but it will likely over clutter the source with its own ELEMENTS (e.g. SPAN, DIV, ID), perhaps include additional page settings (e.g. width=...), and maybe even end up putting in javascript code. By implication in you posting, you are seeking to avoid this. Also alternatively said, you may find a tool that will allow you to take the current input, run it through a filter, and have it automatically produce a new HTML to a different format. Then you will likely have to learn how to design your desired filter for old -> FILTER -> new.
You may struggle with raw HTML editing to achieve elegance in the Webpage design. Be prepared at that point to need additional CSS ELEMENTS. Rather than learn how to do this with raw HTML on your own, consider two options. Find a professionally designed template that provides what you want. Copy and paste the content from the old CV to the template. Otherwise find a WYSIWYG Web page design application, layout the content in the format that you want, push a button, and get a Webpage. The advantage is that you can format in almost any way you want.
As to adding content dynamically to HTML, the only way to do this is using a server-side script method. One example is to allow your friend to keep a CSV file for publications, download that file to the Web server, and have the Web CV automatically update with the most recent list. This avoids the need for anyone to have to re-edit the raw HTML later, e.g. simply to add a new publication to a list. This step could be a later investment in your effort, but only when you have confirmed that the server can support server-side delivery of scripts.
In summary, an automated tool to convert from an existing format to a new format may not exist or simply be too much work. Doing raw HTML coding is the most future-proof approach. It may however not provide you with an end result that you consider to be the most elegant. If so, consider copying into a template or using a WYSIWYG application. Finally, assure yourself that someone else (e.g. especially the owner of the CV) will be able to reproduce the approach that you take to put content together with format, especially if you will not be responsible to update content later.
Even if you use raw HTML, I would suggest to use a CSS framework like Bootstrap, otherwise it becomes difficult to make a website that scales well to both desktop and mobile.
I've done this (many times, many sites) and my results are anything but "elegant", especially since I have a geeky mind-set, not an artistic one. It is pretty hard for a beginner, especially a geek, to get an elegant result.
@FedericoPoloni Added note to support your comment.
@Buffy The OP thankfully did not ask for or define a level of elegance. We might spend hours otherwise bouncing this question on and off the list because the answers for what application to use to obtain the most elegant site will always be subjective.
Hmmm. I can't define elegance, but I know it when I see it. (Misquoting Justice Potter Stewart)
@Buffy Agreed wholeheartedly. Or as well … I cannot objectively define all parts to ugly but they sure do stand out when I see them. Yet another reason to not try to take this question in that direction.
@Buffy After some consideration, I've added a nod to using templates or WYSIWYG editors to address the OP's reference to elegance.
I understand the suggestion, but it is literally not what I asked for. "the time you would invest to find, set up, and establish consistency with an automated tool is likely not minimal." <- actually, the existing CV my friend has is not that consistent with the rest of their website, and not even entirely self-consistent... also, if the generated CV is not super-complex and convoluted, then making it consistent should not take that long. I hope.
I've change consistency to proficiency and stressed automated tool. You may take only a little time to do the work manually. This is indeed exactly what I recommend. I doubt that you will find an automated (as in input old, press button, output new) application that does what you want in a fully automated way (as in without you needing to work at something manually anyway) or in an easier way than doing the translation manually.
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180478 | Software platform for out-of-academia research collaboration
I've been volunteered (sort of) to help a subgroup of an activist group set up some on-line platform for (better) collaboration, and organization/storage of a base information. The subject is environmental issues and climate change more specifically, in the country we're in. I'm not talking about "collaboration" in the sense of authoring research paper, but in the more general sense of contributing information, effort, opinions, skills and contacts towards addressing "researchy" questions which come up in the context of that kind of activism, and synthesizing information and insight.
Have you had the experience of using some kind of distributed software platform (web-based or otherwise) or collection of tools which could serve this purpose?
Obviously there are "trivial" and more generic mechanisms such as a file store/joint web drive; a wiki; a discussion forum. But any of these sort of needs to be "twisted" into serving that purpose, and would not be that great in itself.
Notes:
The "research" group has no funded staff, nor full-time volunteers; it is somewhere between 10 and 50 people with limited time resources and variegated professional and academic backgrounds.
By "research" I mean mostly non-original research, with novelty being mostly or entirely in integration, analysis, comparisons, etc.
Google has many of those tools, no?
I suggest https://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com as a better home for this.
@JonCuster: No, but do enlighten me.
@Buffy: I could also have asked this on softwarerecs.stackexchange.com . It's somewhere in the convex hull of these three sites. But - I am first and foremost interested in the experience of academics with online collaboration platforms, which is why I chose this site.
Search on Google Workspace. Google is much more than email.
If you Google search "collaboration software", you'll find a bunch of options.
For chatting that can include multiple people in the same channel, there's Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Google Groups, and that's just the one's I've used. There are are far more options out there. These also allow you to send files to other people. Some of them let you have a file storage outside of the chat feature.
If you need the ability to store lots of files for individual modification, there's Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and again, these are just the one's I've used. These tend to be unversioned storage. If you need to keep track of older versions of files, such as for software code, then you'll be looking for repositories like GitHub, BitBucket, or Team Foundation Server (now Azure DevOps).
If you need something where multiple people can be modifying the same file at the same time, Google Drive does that decently. It also has all the "normaly" file formats, such as spreadsheets, regular documents, PowerPoint presentation style software, and many more.
I haven't used any free website hosting for well over a decade, so I can't recommend anything for a wiki, but it wouldn't surprise me if Google had something that could be used for something like that. If you need something more robust, you can buy a domain and hosting service from GoDaddy, BlueHost, HostGator, Wix, 1&1, SquareSpace, or 1000 other places. Many of them have price reductions for non-profit organizations, if you are listed with the IRS. Some have easy to use drag-n-drop website builders to use, others host Wordpress, Drupal, or other easy to use site builders, which tend to include plug-ins for forums and wikis.
For a comprehensive option, Google shows up across most, if not all, of these categories.
There are far more options than I've listed, or can list. Except for the website hosting services, most of the options I've listed are free. They may have paid options, but the base software/service should be free to use. Some of the paid versions are based on how much you use it and others are based on how many collaborators you are working with. Definitely do your research to make sure it's the correct software and price for your needs.
Even though you don't expect to write scholarly papers, it wouldn't hurt to keep yourself open to that option, as well as other things you don't expect to do at the moment. You may end up doing a wider variety of collaboration than you expect. And when you need to collate that info into a paper on an individual basis, it doesn't hurt to have all of your work in one workspace.
Speaking of workspaces, using an online system will not only make things easier for your members to move information around, but it also serves as a backup to prevent anyone from losing all the data when their laptop or other device fails.
Hopefully this answers a few questions that underlie your stated one.
I'm not affiliated with any of these companies or pieces of software. I've simply used them or come across them in my personal or professional capacities.
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38906 | Will your undergrad GPA affect your graduate GPA in US?
Will your undergrad GPA affect your graduate GPA in US?
These GPAs are separate and they will not affect each other. As far as I know, this is true not only in US, but also in other countries.
No, the two GPAs are separate.
This is not always true. But it is certainly always true if you attend a different school than where you did your undergrad. If you attend the same school, and you took grad coursework while completing the undergrad degree, depending on your schools policies, your grad GPA may include the grades from those courses. This is a rare situation to be in though.
@WetLabStudent I think this is the first time I've seen a comment that was substantially longer than the question and its answer combined!
@WetLabStudent, I was in that situation, and the grad class I took in my last undergrad semester did not count towards my undergrad GPA. I reserved that course's credit for grad school. My university only allowed the course to count towards one degree and, therefore, one GPA. I doubt any university allows the course to count twice.
@BillBarth which is why I said "depending on your school's policies." Unless you have verified this is how it works at every school, the qualification is important. I know of at least one school that does not count graduate class grades to your undergrad GPA, so in that case, they wouldn't be counting it twice if they counted it towards your grad GPA.
Unless you know of a university that allows you to count it as both grad and undergrad credit, I believe the effect on GPAs is the same.
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77929 | Writing referee report: found major error, now what?
I'm writing a referee report on a paper. This paper is interesting and, if correct, would be worth publishing. However, I believe they have a major mistake in their method which invalidates their results more or less entirely. I am 90%+ confident that this method is in error, which will affect their results in (possibly unpredictable) ways.
How should I address this in the rest of the paper? I could write the rest of the referee report assuming that they haven't made this mistake - but I think that could be a waste of my time (and their time, since it'll take me longer to do).
If a referee had this sort of problem with your paper, what would you like to happen?
Edited to add:
One of the major concerns I have with just rejecting, focusing on this point (as recommended by Raghu and others), is the (time and $) cost of re-running things. Saying, "This is wrong" but not going through the rest of the paper could lead to a second referee report where they've fixed the error and re-done everything. If I then say, "Also, Experiment B doesn't mean what you think it does," re-running Experiment B may have been a waste. How much consideration of these factors do you think a referee owes the authors?
You can just write to the editor about this particular point. If it indeed is an error, your job is done; if it is not, then there is a serious flaw in the exposition of the article, and the editor can request the authors that they revise this before further refereeing happens.
Interesting idea, and it might be possible. Though I think given the broad scope of the journal, the editor might not feel competent to make that call without consulting the authors, which means that it's like submitting the referee report anyway.
"This paper seems to suffer from a serious flaw in X. Unless this is fixed or clarified, I would recommend rejection" sounds like a perfectly legitimate report to me. No one's interested in the validity of things that are already wrong. The editor gave it to you to review because they expect that you have the competence and expertise to make such a determination. Papers that are just wrong or horrible do not need a painstaking review of every part of the paper; determining it to be wrong/horrible is already an adequate review, as long as you judge it so in good faith.
I'll add that it's also a good idea NOT to write anything else when you're recommending rejection (or major revision). The addition of more "fixable" points just makes it more likely the editor will make a mistake. Maybe he/she will decide "most things were fixed, it can be accepted now". Putting a single major rejection-worthy item in the report makes the process more robust.
@VonBeche although I agree with you on the rejection part, I think that when recommending revisions (either minor or major) you should list all of your concerns. I hate when I receive the second review with "You just fixed what I told you, but then there is a) b) c) that I did not comment in the first review and now I want you to take care of..." making the review process an infinity regression thing...
If there's a "major mistake in their method which invalidates their results more or less entirely" it seems pretty clear that you should explain this in your review, and not bother writing much else. (This seems so obvious, I wonder if I'm misunderstanding your question.) Why on earth would you "write the rest of the referee report assuming that they haven't made this mistake," if you're quite sure that the mistake exists, and that it invalidates most of the paper? What purpose would it serve, for the authors or future readers?
The OP said they are 90%+ sure that it's a mistake, i.e. there's a ~10% chance that it's not. I guess the point is that it wouldn't be good to reject the paper if it isn't a mistake after all.
@Nathaniel Part of the job of an academic/scientific author is to write papers that are convincing and clear; and convincing and clear papers are the kind that (good) journals publish. A paper that leaves you going "there's a 90% chance this is just plain wrong" already fails that. Plus, for all we know that 10% is just a reflection of a lack of confidence in the OP. Some people just aren't comfortable with definitively saying bad things, too.
@zibadawatimmy agreed with all of that. (I was just commenting on my interpretation of the question, not the answer. If it was me, I'd probably write a review saying "it appears that there is a serious flaw in the paper. I might be wrong about that, but if so the paper should be revised to clarify this issue before resubmitting.")
If the authors fix the alleged mistake (or demonstrate that you are wrong), the time for "minor" comments on the rest of the paper is after that point. You don't know what effect the fix-up will have on the rest of the paper until you have actually seen the revised version, so there is no point doing the reviewing work twice (and even less point in writing up a review of the parts that are unpublishable because of an earlier mistake).
Updated the question in response to Raghu's point. I think there is a real question here about how much consideration referees owe authors on this sort of issue.
It might be polite to write something like the following:
In Lemma 3.2.5, it seems that the authors assume that the ABC is XYZ, and that this is critical to most of what follows. But after studying the argument carefully, I don't see why this is necessarily the case. Could the authors please clarify?
In other words, give them the benefit of the doubt. If the authors are not cranks, then this will do as much good as claiming that they made a mistake, and will potentially cause fewer hard feelings. (And if they are cranks, you don't much care either way -- so may as well assume they're not!)
There is no need to continue with the referee report. Just send something like the above to the editor. The authors might withdraw the paper, or devise a workaround, or explain why their method is in fact correct. In any case, editors appreciate careful checking and you don't need to worry that such a brief message will make a bad impression.
The answer to your question depends on whether you think the mistake can be fixed with reasonable efforts (i. e. without redoing the work from scratch). This can be discipline specific, for redoing the analysis of a painstakingly assembled dataset is not the same thing as overhauling a purely theoretical work. If in your view it cannot be fixed, this provides ample grounds for rejecting the paper. Otherwise the referee should help the editor answer the crucial question whether to reject the paper or to request a major revision. In this case the rest of your review report should provide the clue whether the paper is worth revising and whether the authors are fit for this task.
I agree with Raghu's answer that you don't need to go through the rest of the paper until the error is addressed and with Anonymous's answer about how to phrase things. But if it were me I would also tell the editor something like (assuming this is what you think):
The results are interesting and important and would merit acceptance in this journal (after minor edits) if they are correct. So I'd recommend that the authors revise and resubmit if they are able to clarify the above point or replace this with a different argument.
Basically you want the editor to know whether they should be encouraging resubmission of a corrected version. You want to be clear that it passed the initial "are these results interesting enough" screen before you got to the harder "are they correct" screen.
Personally, you are the referee, and thus by definition, you are the expert the editors and publisher are relying upon to deal with this sort of thing. Go with your gut.
You should probably write out just what you wrote above bluntly. There seems to be a mistake that makes interpretation difficult until the matter is cleared up. If the journal asks you not to put any recommendations for publication to the author directly, but they ask you for your opinion on the matter, you should make it clear in the confidential section that you believe any revision would require additional review.
If I were in your place, I would write to the editor explaining that I have these doubts on the manuscript, which I cannot verify based on my knowledge/experience, and you let the editor decide based on his experience and the other reviewer(s).
At the same time, I would mark it for rejection, propose my theory and make it clear that if they can answer to your concerns adequately, the manuscript is worth resubmitting (and possibly publish).
If you don't have the knowledge/experience, you have no business marking it for rejection. And if you mark it for rejection you can't make clear that resubmission should be permitted. These are incompatible options. If it should be reconsidered if the problem can be fixed, you recommend 'major revision'. If it shouldn't be reconsidered regardless, you recommend 'rejection'.
I think it's not so straightforward in this case, as the reviewer is mostly certain that there is a major methodology mistake. I think that when someone is assigned as a reviewer, they have to inform the editor of all their concerns and the editor will decide further. There is no automatic procedure. An editor actually reads our comments and can decide whether our reasoning for rejection or major revision is valid. (also the editor knows who you are and what experience you have when he assigns the review. he wants to know your opinion)
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91748 | Refereeing a lazy, but correct paper
When refereeing a paper, I often have objections to the work that do not rise to the level of using the coercive powers of a referee to delay or reject the work. For instance, I find myself wanting to write: "If I were you, I would be embarrassed to publish a paper with [such unclear writing/such a silly comparison to experiment/so few parameters studied/incredibly ugly figures]."*
If the paper is not wrong or incoherent, just lazy or badly written, I don't feel justified in rejecting the paper or requiring a revision. I also don't want to invest hours of time acting as a language editor or graphic designer for figures.
Is there a politer way to express this sentiment and encourage the authors to improve their own work? Or should I simply take on good faith that the authors have done the work to the standards they are willing to publish, and that these may differ from my own?
*note: this is distinct from the case where the paper is so unclear that you can't tell whether their work is correct or not - where I think rejection is appropriate. I'm also assuming that this is not a terribly selective journal - in fact, it could be a journal like PLOS ONE, which explicitly says that importance to the field is not a relevant criterion.
Note: I've edited this to address a couple of points made by answers, and to focus away from the writing part, which has been answered in the past. Bad writing is one aspect of this question, but general author laziness is the larger one.
Some journals will require major editorial revisions before accepting articles. For example, I've seen manuscript that were accepted only after they went through an outside editing service. (The research was sound, but the manuscript poorly written).
I find slide 12 of Jeff Offutt's "Rules for Reviewing Papers" incredibly useful.
Richard - interesting! This is not customary in my field, but I suppose I could recommend the authors use an outside editor.
@lighthousekeeper - I think the issue is not what recommendation I should make to the editors, but how I phrase my suggestion to the authors.
Or should I simply take on good faith that the authors have written as well as they can, and my standards are not theirs? It is irrelevant if the authors did the best job they could or not, and what their standards are. You are the referee, so it is your standards that the journal is asking you to apply. If the paper is so badly written that it cannot communicate its findings effectively to the scientific community, you should not hesitate to reject it on those grounds.
You seem to be in the mindset of not causing too much trouble for the authors. Consider also your responsibilities to the paper's future readers.
What do you mean by lazy if not sloppily written? It can only mean substantive flaws or shortcomings. These are appropriate reasons to recommend rejection or revision.
I think there are two important factors here:
Reviewers are typically the closest subject experts a journal can locate.
Most journals have (or want) a target audience that is considerably broader than the expert reviewers they enlist. Think of the industrial practitioners, novice grad students, and other interested non-experts.
If it takes you a lot of effort to parse and understand a paper as the related expert, it seems entirely plausible that a non-expert would not follow the paper at all. Particularly if the poor exposition is so bad that you can only follow the train of thought because you as an expert can fix errors in your head or make logical leaps, then it's definitely beyond the scope of the general reader.
Both are valid complaints that could lead to a rejection of a paper, depending on the particulars of the work and the venue.
There are other avenues to address these problems than simply rejecting the paper. If the work otherwise is adequate, you might say so but tell the editor that the work does not meet the language standard for this journal and let them handle it. Some journals have a notion of "conditional acceptance" or "shepherding" where an agreement is worked out between the authors and editors that certain items must be addressed or revised prior to publication (however, they need someone to oversee such papers, so you might be volunteering for the role if you suggest it!).
Nobody wants a rejection, but most authors do want their work to be read and appreciated by others. Addressing these issues is a short term frustration for authors but a long-term win in terms of the visibility and impact of their work.
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
You seem to be assuming the premise that a paper ought to be rejected solely for being wrong or for being so poorly written that its correctness cannot be verified. I reject this premise - it is decidedly wrong in my discipline (pure math) and I'm pretty sure it's wrong in most other disciplines, certainly in the case of prestigious journals (Nature, Science, PNAS, etc.) that have to be selective and reject the large majority of papers they receive, many of which are not only correct but also quite well-written and significant and still end up being rejected.
The bottom line is that you as the referee are being asked to evaluate the paper for its overall contribution to your area of research. That includes not only correctness but also significance, originality, and the ability of the paper to effectively communicate its findings to the research community. You are being asked to apply your standards (possibly calibrated based on any guidelines you receive from the journal), not the authors' or anyone else's, and you can and should reject the paper for any flaw(s) that significantly diminish its impact and contribution. In my opinion that can also include poor writing, except possibly if the results are so groundbreaking (e.g., a poorly written but still verifiable proof of the Riemann Hypothesis) as to overshadow all other considerations.
Edit: following your clarification and citing PLOS ONE as an example of a journal whose standards you have in mind, I checked out their publication criteria. They include the following criterion:
The article is presented in an intelligible fashion and is written in standard English.
PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. We may reject papers that do not meet these standards.
If the language of a paper is difficult to understand or includes many errors, we may recommend that authors seek independent editorial help before submitting a revision. These services can be found on the web using search terms like “scientific editing service” or “manuscript editing service.”
So, as you can see, my answer above clearly applies to PLOS ONE, and, I'm pretty confident, to many other journals of lesser stature than Nature and Science.
I've edited the question to clarify. I'm not talking about Nature or Science here, but journals like PLOS ONE and many others, where the acceptance criteria are focused on validity, not on impact. This is where I'm comfortable accepting the paper, but feel the authors have been lazy in aspects of paper-writing I value, or are slicing the salami pretty thinly in terms of the Least Publishable Unit.
The role of peer review is not just to check that the manuscript is original, correct, and significant, but also whether its clear, concise, and well presented. In fact, from my own experience as author, reviewer, and editor, as well as from anecdotal evidence from other editors (also in other fields), owing to reviewing process, almost every revised manuscript is greatly improved over the original submission.
The authors of a manuscript that suffers in the way you have described will greatly benefit from improving their style, because more people will read, understand, and cite it. Hence they should appreciate your comments.
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18898 | How do I convince my professor to keep me as his student?
This is a continuation of my previous question, I believe my advisor doesn't think I am smart. How should I deal with this?
It just so happens that when I asked my prof for feedback, he decided to just drop me. Obviously I had asked for feedback when I saw some signs recently which indicated that he wasn't very happy.
Now what do I do?
I really liked talking to this prof. I was enjoying the discussions. I thought things were well. But he seems to think that I get stuck with simple things! He probably also thinks that I am overambitious (in the few instances that I have tried discussing some other topics with him).
I wrote to my prof asking him to reconsider his decision and reflecting on what could be the issues of his disappointment and what I could do to improve. Obviously he didn't reply.
I met the grad coordinator.
He has schedule another between with all three of us.
I wonder whether I should be optimistic about that meeting!
That is a very strange reaction unless there's a lot of context that we're missing here.
I agree that this sounds like some context is missing here. Without knowing what actually caused the professor to want to kick you out I am unsure how to answer the question.
Dropping someone is also rather extreme as a means to avoid giving feedback. Even if he's dropped you *he should still answer the &^%ing question because he had a responsibility toward you. But once he's ignoring your messages that's for the grad co-ordinator to get into. Like xLeitix says, I don't see how you can proceed until you discover the problem.
It's possible that you really aren't capable of doing the work, and that your advisor thought about this for a long time and decided that the kindest thing to do would be to drop you now, before you waste more time.
It's also possible that you weren't really applying your advisor's criticism - for example, you weren't taking him seriously when he told you not to get distracted by new ideas, but to focus on making progress on your original research. Your advisor felt that he was wasting his time because you weren't listening to his advice.
You should really talk to this professor's other students, and find out how they experience him as an advisor. If the other students get along just fine with him, and only you have this problem, then it's possible he just can't work with you.
However, in that case, he should really have spoken to you about the possibility of dropping you before he did it. (Not just making comments about your work, but explicitly telling you, "I can't keep working with you if this continues; this is what you need to do to show me you are making enough progress to continue.")
In any event, I'm going to answer this question as if you are a capable student, and your advisor is just unwilling to let you learn and work at a reasonable pace. (Obviously, I don't know you, so I don't know if this is true.)
In that case,
If your advisor isn't prepared to deal with a student who is capable, and clearly eager to learn and improve, then you should really reconsider wanting to work with him.
There is a professor like this in my department - brilliant, great to talk to, and there is a lot one can learn from him. But he is under a lot of pressure to produce results (he's new, like your advisor). He is constantly making "threats" to get his students to produce work (e.g., telling them their funding the next semester depends on whether their next conference paper is accepted - although he doesn't follow through on these threats). He isn't willing to let students grow and develop as researchers - he expects them to work up to his standards, immediately.
This professor's students are leaving him in droves. They are either leaving school with an M.S. (instead of sticking it out for the PhD), or switching to another advisor. As a result, he's only published one paper in the last two years (which is far, far below standard in his field).
So, you should think about whether you really want to work with this professor, and consider asking the grad coordinator for another advisor. If this advisor is not a capable advisor, you will not be successful with him, no matter how brilliant he is.
If you decide you really want to work with this professor, do not approach this meeting as a student who is begging an advisor to keep them on.
Rather, come as a student who is willing to stay with this advisor, but understands that both of you need to change for this to work. He will have to give you a reasonable chance to learn from, and apply, his constructive criticism. In return, you will agree to take his advice seriously, work hard, and do your best to improve and succeed.
Talk about how highly you value this professor's experience, and how much you want to learn from him. Explain that you take his concerns (about getting stuck with simple things and getting distracted with new ideas) seriously, and want to work on fixing those things - but that growth takes some time.
And of course, if you are able to work things out, and you continue with this advisor, make sure to talk to him often about what he expects from you, and how you are living up to his expectations. Work hard to apply his advice and improve your research skills, and make him aware of these efforts so that he doesn't think you are ignoring his advice.
For your first section, i recently saw someone post this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect which may apply?
@ff524 (1) Given that I have had a great run with course grades I can't be totally sure that I am incapable. (at least my graduate coordinator says that he thinks and has validation from elsewhere that I am smart) May be all of them are wrong..but I don't know.. (2) There are no other students to talk to - he is a brilliant new prof and I am the first student to talk to him. (3) I really want to work with this prof - he seemed to be very nice to me till suddenly this happened!
@user6818 So what happened? Nobody just "decides" to kick out a student (it's a big hassle for the prof. as well) out of nowhere. Edit: also, I should add that good grades are not a very good metric for research capabilities.
Do not under any circumstances in any sense force someone to be your advisor that doesn't want to be. Your advisor has incredible influence over your success not only while doing your work, but afterwords, as he or she would be the most obvious person letters of recommendation should come from.
Some advisors are of the "throw them in the pool and see if they swim in my field" type, others are more of the "this is a sort of apprenticeship where I will guide you into my field" type, and there are many other possibilities. Choose one that doesn't want to get rid of you.
The last thing you need is to have the person who has the most influence over both your academic life and great influence over your post academic life to have grudging feelings about the whole affair.
I end with an old joke, but one that maybe sums up my recommendation.
"A good lawyer knows the law. A great lawyer knows the judge."
I don't really believe in that as a principle for lawyers or for myself, but I do think that trying to make the opposition situation work, where antagonistic feelings have developed, is going to be disastrous.
Consider how the rest of the grad students in your group are faring and this professor's history with past students. If there are recurring problems with students, then you don't want to work for this professor. If there are no such recurring problems, then he is probably correct about your aptitude for this work at this time in your life. You are going to need to take a step back an re-evaluate yourself and what you should be doing right now.
Hearing from the comments that you are his first student, my inclination would be to drop him if I was less than 1/3 of the way through my research. Being a brilliant contributor to his field does not mean he is a brilliant advisor. In fact, he is the most inexperienced as advisors can come, having never graduated a student. He has no context in which to judge you other than what he remembers what his graduate student colleagues were like at a different school.
The OP said in a comment on my answer: "There are no other students to talk to - he is a brilliant new prof and I am the first student to talk to him."
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26130 | Should I host my academic website under my institution domain or under a domain of my own?
I'm a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering in France. My institution provides a dedicated storage space to host our academic websites, which is reachable via the institution domain (something like http://people.institution.org/John.Doe/).
I try to have a tidy website of a few pages listing my publications, research area, contact, etc. It is currently reachable through my institution domain. I try to also put some efforts in SEO when people look up for my name or particular research area on search engines.
I'm in my last year of Ph.D. and I will undoubtedly move to other institutions in the next few years. Would it be preferable to host my academic webpage on a dedicated domain http://www.johndoe.com? This would prevent the need to do the SEO all over again each time I switch to a new institution.
The only advantage to use my institution domain is the affiliation, but this information is present on my website anyway.
My experience has been that your university webpage will receive more traffic and more notability through search engine otherwise. Based on some of my work put on my page, I am the top result for at least one keyword which has resulted in being asked to review papers! I doubt this would have happened if I hosted it on my own.
Why would it receive more traffic ? There is no academic website list on my university site, apart from our research group page (in which I can modify the link to my website). As I said I was able to bring my website to the first page of results for selected keywords so I guess that shouldn't be different on my own domain.
Well, .edu domains are considered well in terms of Google's algorithms. You can also always mirror or redirect traffic from an .edu url. That might be the best thing if you already get traffic. My uni gave actually hosting space as in, .edu/~name
.edu TLDs are only used in the US so it's not relevant in my case (my institution uses a generic .fr TLD), but your remark is indeed of interest for people in US universities.
Actually a lot of the supposed "extra value" attributed to .edu domains is based on myth; if you do some searching you'll find that for the most part there is no significant benefit.
Some institutions don't even provide webpage set-up or space thus it would be wise to keep your own site. That said, you save about $50 a year by using the university site. I would use it if my university provided space.
@strnk Actually, .edu isn't exclusively used by US institutions: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona uses upc.edu. But, anyway, non-US .edu domains are very much in the minority and, as you say, your institution isn't one of them.
Besides redirecting your own webpage as nayrb mentions, if your institution is amenable, they can set up url forwarding to automatically forward to your current url (as well as with email), even long after your uni accounts expire.
@Kimball : it's possible, yes (see Raphael's answer ), but it doesn't apply in my case unfortunately.
@strnk: Ah, I didn't read that far down on the answers. That's too bad. My postdoc department did that for me, and I figured many universities would be willing to do so for people at the post-bac level, as it only requires a miniscule amount of resources.
How popular is your website? How many links are there to it in the wild? Is your institution going to agree on maintaining a redirect at that address for a couple of years? If it's primarily a professional website about you, then I agree with Ben's advice. But if your website has a lot of generally useful content and many links to it, changing address is going to be a very significant problem when you change institutions. At least if your IT dept. won't agree to a long term redirect.
I used to think the same way as Ben but now I regret not getting my own domain because of all the broken links that moving is going to cause ... if your current institution agreed to a redirect, that's great. But your next one might not agree (my situation).
if you do some searching you'll find that for the most part there is no significant benefit — [citation needed]
Please check https://register.domains/ which allow you to register a personal domain (e.g., www.johndoe.com) that remains consistent regardless of your institution. It also provide tools to manage DNS and redirect traffic, ensuring your academic webpage stays accessible during transitions.
Why don't you just do both? By both, I mean use both URLs. I "do both", so when I graduate, I'll still have my site for others to see. You can do this in many ways, but I had my university student page auto-redirect to my personal home page. The code for that is like a one-liner.
This grants me the opportunity to refer people to different sites depending on the situation. I think myname.com is undoubtedly easier to remember than the nuances in my university student site URL: people.school.org/first.last ... On the other hand, if the situation is more institution-based, perhaps it's better to stick with my college's name. You've got options this way.
Having a redirect really isn't the same as having both. I have my own site and of course my department links to that on my faculty profile and the standard .edu/~name is a redirect link. But I don't think that would be considered "both" as my info is only on one site.
Related suggestion: if you are going to have both, use canonical links.
Both are good points for sure. TBH I should revise the answer a bit. I was not really considering the faculty case because of my (perhaps invalid) interpretation on OPs mention of leaving the current school though. Plus a department faculty page requires almost no effort to maintain at my school; faculty/postdocs email research/publication updates to the webmaster who changes their dpt. page. Lab group/personal site obviously a different story!
Thank you for your answer. I think I will mainly host my website on a domain of my own, and making a redirection from my university page to my domain.
I find it really strange that no one has mentioned the possible reputational benefits of using the university's website. I don't think there's any way to write this without sounding like a snob, but I'll say it anyways; people are snobbier than they like to admit, and academia is probably worse than many other fields. If you're at an at all prestigious institution (even actually, if you're at a not so prestigious one), you want to emphasize that affiliation. Of course, your work has to stand on its own two feet ultimately, but people will be more open to it if they see you're connected to a serious institution, rather than some dude in his basement (remember, there's always something they could be doing rather than reading your paper). Most academics keep a mental rolodex of where people are located for different purposes, like knowing where to send students or where they might like to visit. Why make it harder for them to figure this out?
A couple of other commenters have mentioned that you should be building your own brand, not the universities, but I don't see how you separate those. Usually, the university has a much stronger brand than you do, so you want to steal a bit of it for yourself. If you're in a situation where this isn't the case, it's still a virtuous cycle where improving the department's reputation should ultimately pay you back, and shouldn't stop you from moving.
That said, I've certainly experienced the trouble of moving my website (many times), so I see the appeal of having a stable website that doesn't have to be moved, but why not both?
+1, this is the only answer so far that bears even a remote semblance to my experiences in academia. (Well, except @RoboKaren's remark about content management systems. That one's spot on.) The implied view in some of the other answers of treating your current employer as your antagonist in your academic career is frankly bizarre.
+1, you are discussing the untold importance of our affiliation, I was expecting someone to talk about it. I'd love to see other people view on that. As per "why not both": it would be a burden to maintain two separate websites. If they just have the same content then it's not even useful to keep them both... I'd rather go for @rch answer for that purpose: redirecting my university page to my own domain.
@strnk: FWIW, the redirection also works the other way around, always, with no hassle at all (in terms of setting it up and potential conflict with your institution's interests).
Reasons to use your own host/tld:
You don't expect to be at your current (or future) institution for very long.
Your institution uses a painful CMS system, requires you to use ugly templates, or has content or size restrictions.
You don't want to ask your department head or IT manager/webmistress for permission every time you want to update your page.
Your personal brand is more important than the university brand (see #1).
You are part of a multi-university project.
You created your own domain website when you were a graduate student and never found a good reason to switch to your employers' sites, even a dozen plus years after graduation (my case).
etc.
Reasons to only use your university website:
It's the default position.
It doesn't cost you any additional hosting or domain registration fees.
In many cases, the department or IT admin will help you set it up using one of their templates, meaning you do not have to learn web design
In some cases, the database that populates your research publications will be pulled from your Faculty Annual Report (or vice
versa). This means that keeping the university CMS happy results in
less paperwork overall in terms of reporting your research
activities to the university.
The google-juice (SEO) of the university will likely be higher than your own.
Some may argue it looks more professional to have an .edu/~name site rather than a private.com website.
Loyalty
etc.
And of course, one can always do both. The cons of doing both are:
Requires updating both.
Visitors may be confused about which site to go to (or you have the same info mirrored, which leads to #1)
Keeping your website on your university is the default position so I didn't think it required explanation. I'll edit to add.
I'd like to suggest 3b. for the reasons to only use one's university site: Sometimes, these include a central (for the department, or even larger organisational units) database of publications and templates that automatically show a filtered view of each website owner's publications are available and maintained already. Even when that central database is not updated "centrally" (such as a secretary always entering all new publications made by someone from the department), it means at least that only one of the co-authors of each publication has to input the publication data.
@O.R.Mapper - done. The A.SE CMS engine doesn't allow for nested lists so I added your reason as reason #4 in the use-the-university list.
@RoboKaren: OT: Actually, it does: It seems than you just need to indent the nested list items by at least one more space than the parent level.
If I double indent, it'd list it as 3* or 3+, not 3b. As far as I can tell, one can't do style a. b. c. d. ordered lists in A.SE. If it's possible, let me know!
I think you should do both, but in a different way that has been suggested by Raphael and by rch. Both of these other suggestions involve doing some sort of invisible "redirect" from one page (almost always the temporary institutional page) to the permanent page on your domain. RoboKaren suggested having two pages which is the closest to my answer. I suggest you should create a page on your institution but have it be a small "soft" redirect that asks people to click through.
Keep an institutional page but keep it very simple. Have the page give the following information (at most):
A short narrative biography of you and your research or teaching interests.
A nice recent picture of you. [Nice, but optional.]
A link to your CV on your website. [Optional]
A list of 2-3 recent selected papers. [Optional]
A very prominent link to your actual homepage on your domain. I do this with text like, "For more detail on my research and teaching, visit full academic homepage.
Ben Webster is correct in citing the importance of association with your institution for status reasons In order to get the benefit, put the name and the logo and/or seal for your institution prominently on your personal page in a way that makes it clear that you are associated with the institution but also clear that it is your personal page.
This is what I have been doing for years. One benefit is that many institutions make updating institutional pages tricky (e.g., you need to go through a webmaster). This is a nice compromise in this situation because you only need to update the biography, picture, etc. infrequently.
I wonder why you propose putting teaching material on the privately-hosted site. Arguably, this material that a) belongs on the institution site and b) never has to move with you. More so, it should probably stay even if you leave.
@Raphael, you are right. I put material that is specific to a instance of a specific course (i.e., COM597B in Spring 2014) in the course management website run by my institution. I put general resources or curriculum I have developed (curriclum for a course on innovation and online communities) and that I have used and will use at any institution on my personal website. I agree that my curriclum should stay available to students at my old institution. That said, few institutions will promise to keep websites up after you leave.
I see, that makes sense. (The point "they'll take it down, anyway" keeps coming up and I don't think I like that situation; researchers' websites are sometimes the only place to get preprints and other information. My department still hosts websites of professors that have been gone for 13 years. Even students keep their email accounts.)
@Raphael, the preprint stuff is a big issue. If it's allowed, it's always a good idea to put preprints in an institutional archive (usually run by the libraries) in addition to a personal website. No website is permanent.
belongs on the institution site and never has to move with you — Both of these assumptions are incorrect. At my university, copyright to instructional materials belongs to their creators (but they must give the university a permanent royalty-free licence). And if you plan to continue teaching after you graduate, of course you want to maintain your own teaching materials.
You are trying to find a design solution for a technical problem that does not exist.
You mention SEO as your primary concern (for whatever reason¹). So when you move your professional website to another institution, (have your admin) put a 301 (Moved Permanently) in your old website's .htaccess and search engines will automatically update their databases accordingly.
This assumes that you can keep your old (sub)domain/page at least for a few months; as far as I can tell, this is common. Many groups/departments maintain lists to alumni at their current position, anyway; it is as much advertisement for them as it is for you (if you're good).
Note that you can still use one domain as an alias for the other. Which direction you choose is probably irrelevant in most cases. I'd argue that it is important to have something at an institution URL so that you have a representative address that looks official and leaves no doubt that you are, indeed, the John Doe from the University of Illustriousness and not some dude who happend to be the first to register john-doe.com.
As a researcher, I figure that your publications are your business cards. These are indexed in other places and your moving does not change how they can be found (and thank the powers that be for that!). Search engines pick up on your new website in a matter of days (for some you can even trigger indexing yourself) which should be enough, assuming that there is little more value but contact data besides the publications there. But ymmv.
Occasionally, one finds an institution, such as a previous employer of mine, which claims that it is technically impossible even to forward email to somebody who has left!
@DavidRicherby That's a bummer. I guess there is no upper bound on incompetence after all. That said, I would assume that group/department websites are often under more accommodating care (advisor/department staff) than email services (central technical division), so website forwarding/linking may actually work out better than email in such cases.
While I agree with your point on redirection my employer doesn't provide any way for me to do that after the end of my contract. No 301 redirection on my old web site nor even e-mail redirection.
@strnk Hm. Can you set up the 301 before you leave, pointing towards a place you control (and put a temporary clone of your site)? A couple of days, weeks at most are enough for Google et al to process it.
If I have a "place [I] control" then I would rather use it as my main server and put 301 redirections to there since it's more permanent. That would avoid the hassle of having to copy my website back and forth and possibly adapt it to a server config each time I move to a new place.
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9747 | Can I successfully adapt to an advisor who will not push me to work?
I am currently a first-year graduate student, now in the process of figuring out who I'd like to have as my thesis advisor. Of course, compatibility of research interests is quite important, but personality and work style are too.
The issue I'm currently facing (though it sounds odd to cast it in a negative light) is that the professor with whom I'm most compatible research-wise, is the most polite, nice, and soft-spoken person I've ever met. In lecture and in conversation, he is self-effacing, will go out of his way to make things comfortable for you, never says a bad thing about anyone, etc.
Now, even though I love my field, I've been a procrastinator for as long as I can remember, and my concern is that I'm eventually going to lose my focus / energy if my advisor is constitutionally unable to say things like "You ought to have read more this week", "You should do a better job of this write-up", etc
My question is, should I opt for Professor Tough Love whose research I like slightly less, but who will do a good job of keeping me working, or should I go with Professor Nice Guy? If I do go with Professor Nice Guy, what strategies could I employ to make sure the effect of his coddling is minimal?
I've discussed this with peers, and I received the following advice:
You're going to have to become self-driven eventually - might as well start getting practice now.
Meet with Professor Tough Love regularly, sort of as an unofficial second advisor, who (besides discussing technical material, which is of course beneficial) will give me the impetus I need.
Directly ask Professor Nice Guy to give me more structure, and to be more demanding of me.
Thoughts about these? Any other suggestions?
I realize there's some overlap with How to avoid procrastination during the research phase of my PhD?, but I suppose I'm asking specifically about what to do when my advisor is not automatically going to be a resource for helping me avoid procrastination.
Thanks for all of your help in advance!
My advisor is also far too nice and not nearly as verbal about issues or demanding like my previous bosses. I have realized that I can leverage my goal of impressing him to motivate me.
I work for Professor Nice Girl and her feedback and must point out that getting honest and useful feedback becomes an issue. If everything you do is really really nice then this becomes a source of frustration (to put it politely) after a short while.
To be sure, chooosing your advisor is one of the most important decisions in your academic career. That is not to say that people don't switch advisors for one or more reasons (they do), but it's probably best to take the time to figure it out now (which it sounds like you are doing by asking the question in the first place!) so you aren't faced with that decision later.
It seems to me that you may be asking the wrong question, to some extent. Relying on your advisor to push you is more or less the opposite of a good way of growing into being an independent researcher -- who is going to push you when you become that assistant professor and you're on your own? Furthermore, the last thing you want your advisor writing in his/her recommendation letter is, "Great researcher when pushed to complete the work!" You also don't want your advisor to think that he/she has to push you -- this may just lead to a poor working relationship between the two of you.
My advice is to ask Professor Nice Guy to be your advisor, but also start working now towards limiting the procrastination on your own. That advice is predicated on your comment that your research matches his the best; that should be the driving factor and not some grand idea that you'll get pushed harder by one prospective advisor or another. Tips for how to get a good plan together are outside the scope of this topic, but at the very least you could start by fixing a date you'd like to graduate and working back from there.
As for meeting with the other professor regularly, by all means do that if he is amenable to the idea. I met regularly with my advisor and another professor and all parties were happy with the arrangement.
Given the number of questions on this forum about dealing with intransigent advisors, I'm surprised you even have to ask. I understand your concern about Professor Nicenik, but ultimately the first and third pieces of advice you mention are what I'd suggest as well (ie you're going to need to be self motivated, and you can ask your advisor to help, as long as you don't rely on it).
I wouldn't necessarily recommend consulting with Professor Toughski on a regular basis, although informal chats from time to time might help.
I'm a procrastinator too, in fact I'm procrastinating right now! I'm also a 3rd yr PhD student with a Prof. Nice Guy style supervisor. If you think your supervisor wont be able to 'force' you to do the work then that's not really a problem. You just have to know how to work with it. Here's a tip:
Tell you supervisor at the end of each meeting where you expect to be by next meeting. If you're anything like me you don't plan on procrastinating, it just happens. You'll be motivated to say you'll do the work in the meeting because you have the best intentions. You'll then have to stick to it out of the meeting because Prof. Nice Guy will be expecting you to have completed what you said you'd complete. It's a hack to force you to act like Prof Nice Guy is Prof Tough Love!
Hope this helps, I should probably get back to work now. Oooo youtube.
In addition to other good answers: It's not entirely clear but that two issues are being blurred here. After all, a person can give useful critical feedback while still being positive, and, oppositely, can be a jerk without imparting useful advice. However, it seems to happen quite often that at least in our mental constructs (as in @adbar's answer) over-simplify or caricaturize.
"School" often has the strange effect of encouraging an odd passivity, that people take no initiative, but only respond to "threats" (of bad grades, of embarrassment). Obviously this is undesirable, but seems to be what we have. Years of conditioning in such a system creates an unfortunate frame of mind. Equally obviously, unless one plans to take a job in which "motivation" is a boss standing over you and threatening you, being a self-starter is a critical virtue to cultivate. Academe, vaguely-structured or unstructured as it is, may be an extreme case.
Clearly one cannot instantly become a self-starter, and, equally, some degree of procrastination seems universal. Requires some degree of vigilance to fight back.
Grad school might be the time to change the source of "motivation", depending less on "teachers' threats" and more on personal goals.
If/when that part of the question is recognized as separate from "personality", there does remain a very serious issue of getting useful information from an advisor. I believe that it is possible to remain completely civil and personally respectful, even sympathetic, while giving accurate technical/scientific opinions. If it is the case that the nice-and-polite person is also not imparting information, that's bad, and it would also be bad if an intimidating, mean person didn't actually impart useful information (but was just scary).
So I'd try to be sure to separate the issues of motivation and information-acquisition.
I'd say it depends on the ultimate outcome you want? Academia is one of the most unstructured professions you can find, so I'd say that unless you can overcome some of the procrastination, it'll be pretty difficult to keep going with it. On the other hand, I have friends who intentionally picked supervisors that would push them, for exactly the reasons you described, and were in technical fields with intention of going to industry. I don't see anything wrong with that course of action either. It depends on what works for you too. Personally, I find encouragement really motivating, but hate being told what to do, so actually think that Prof Nice Guy sounds better all around. That's a personal choice though.
If you're doing a PhD with the intent of going into academia, here's an excellent article with a few more factors to consider too: http://genomebiology.com/2013/14/4/114
"Subscription required" to access this article...
I gave an answer here that could interest you. In short:
You need to determine how much time you want your advisor to spend on your case. Maybe someone who has a lot of time to discuss various issues with you is preferable even if he/she is too 'nice'...
And nice or not, your advisor has to be firm and polite, as he/she will more or less be your mental punching bag, so with whom can you imagine to live in your head during 3+ years ?
Noooo, I would never use my PhD supervisor as a mental punching bag! I find it quite strange that you assume (you said it in your other answer as well) that everyone treats their advisor this way.
This is the weirdest question. Motivation should come from within!
Why are you relying on others to direct and dictate your goals in life?
If you want to be truly successful with your degree, stop worrying about
the "Nice-Guy" being too nice, and start being interested in your chosen
field. If you have sufficient interest in the field, you'll not require
anyone to drive you.
-1 For "Motivation should come from within!" . Very often motivation comes from without - not from people telling you to get motivated, but from your life experience. Or for Mathematicians: Abstract-theoretical-life experiences... OP: Don't "start being interested". You aren't interested enough, don't try to artificially fix it.
The comment was supposed to mean that the OP should have already considered the reasons for their interest in the field. Using that knowledge, they need to dig deep when the going gets tough. When you are lost out in the woods, you must sometimes force yourself to keep trying to survive. That type of motivation is obviously internal. Failing to go out and learn more about their field is not the fault of their supervisor.
You're going to have to become self-driven eventually - might as well start getting practice now.
Yep, this.
Meet with Professor Tough Love regularly, sort of as an unofficial second advisor, who (besides discussing technical material, which is of course beneficial) will give me the impetus I need.
Might help, but as a seasoned procrastinator you may find it easy to dismiss their tough love as a wooden spoon (if I may mix metaphors).
Directly ask Professor Nice Guy to give me more structure, and to be more demanding of me.
Could try, but technically s/he is doing all these things, just in the nicest possible way. You can ask a person to be more scary, but I don't think you'll get very far.
Warning: Prof Nice Guy may be nice, but that does not mean they are stupid. They can see things are not progressing, and at some point pull the plug -- always in the nicest possible way. Or blithely allow you to fail the whole thing.
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19427 | How does accepting a full time lectureship position at a top 15 University affect one's chances of future employment?
I have recently seen several positions titled something like "Senior Lecturer in [insert field]" at top notch universities such as MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, etc. The job description usually includes curriculum development for the department and advising undergraduates and early career adjuncts. The position is always full time with full benefits and usually has a fixed multi year contract with a high course load. Are such positions looked highly upon when seeking future employment? Ideally please answer the question for people with the following potential career goals (as I believe the answer would be different for each one, as I want this question to be valuable for as wide an audience as possible)
If the career goal is:
Tenured Professor at tier one research university
Tenured Professor at school that highly values research (but not a T1 research University)
Tenured Professor at a Liberal Arts college or state university (Wants some research but main focus is on teaching)
Tenured Professor at a purely teaching focussed Liberal Arts College or community college
I suspect that the position would be looked highly upon for career (4) and lowly upon (assuming you don't publish much) if career (1) is the ultimate goal. It is, however, unclear to me how these positions would be seen in an application corresponding to the middle two careers.
Lecturer positions tend to overwork you in courses such that research time is little to none. If you really want a tenure track position at a university with a research focus or semi-focus, you need to continue publishing in quality journals. If such is the case (in your scenarios 1-2), you may consider a postdoc research position instead.
If scenario 3 or 4 is your ultimate goal, get good teaching marks and recommendations is paramount and a lecturer position is ideal.
I think your answer is generally true. That said, some universities still want/expect teaching experience.
I'm not so certain this is true for (3) given the more recent desires of liberal art and state schools to hire people that are actively publishing. Can you elaborate a bit more on this?
@MHH: Ultimately, if research is a component of the job, one needs to continue publishing... But if teaching is weighted significantly higher than research, one can make due publishing in less reputable outlets and focusing on obtaining good teaching evaluations.
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18410 | Should I reward points for an incorrect answer if it is the result of misinformation presented in a TA's office hours?
So a TA came to me asking for advice. He gave wrong information in office hours leading a student to a wrong answer.
The TA showed the student how to solve the problem via the wrong statistical test - the assumptions for the statistical test he used do not hold in this case. The answer generated from this test yields a test statistic that doesn't make any sense when you think about it's meaning. Kind of like if you were asked to "find the length of the fence that encloses ..." and your method produced the answer of -50 meters. The TA provided the student with step by step instructions, but did not do any of the numerical calculations. Had he done those calculations he would almost certainly have caught his mistake.
The student complains that she should not be punished because her TA made a mistake. TAs can change HW grades, if they have good reason to do so, and this TA wants to correct his mistake by rewarding the student the points on the problem. I told the TA that I would get back to him as I don't want to give my advice in haste. I think I want to say something like this.
to the TA: "Thank you for asking for my advice in this situation; it is indeed a difficult position to be in. However, this situation concerns me, not because you gave wrong info or bad advice, as we all occasionally make mistakes, but because you seem to have told a student the method for answering the question. While it's OK for students to get help from their TAs, it should only be by reviewing concepts and asking them 'leading questions' that nudge them in the right direction. Note I am not saying that what you did is objectively wrong, as I should have been more clear in my instructions at the beginning of the course, but in the future telling students how to do a problem, in my opinion, is unfair to the students who can't make your office hours."
to the student: "Your TA contacted me recently about changing your HW grade. While I sympathize with your situation, and understand that it is very frustrating to receive bad advice/information from your TA, it is ultimately your responsibility to make sure your solution is reasonable, and therefore I can not give you full credit on this problem. Ultimately the majority of the points you lost were not for using this incorrect method (the TAs error), it was for not interpreting your answer and realizing it made no sense. As stated on the first day of class and in the syllabus I require all students to interpret their answers to make sure they make sense. Please come see me if you would like advice on how to check your answers as this is a very important skill in all scientific disciplines and in life in general. TAs, solutions manuals, and even professors make mistakes. Never trust something just because it was told to you by someone with more authority."
Is this the right thing to do?
I would like to speak for the student. IMHO, you're too harsh to him. The reason he is in your class is to learn. If he knew how to make sure your solution is correct, he would be in a more advanced class.
"my solution?" I never gave the student a solution (or anything for that matter). I do however, understand your point but I want to encourage independent learning and use this as a teaching moment. Perhaps I should ask the student to come visit me and discuss error checking, but then at the end of the meeting give the points back.
(I also am inclined to think that not giving points back to the student in this situation is standing on a valid principle but is almost inevitably going to annoy the student to the extent that it will interfere with (i) their performance in the course and (ii) their opinion of you. Is the principle worth that much?)
this is STEM, wrong means exactly what you think it does; I just removed the quotes
I meant the student's solution. In other words, he is in your class to learn how to check the solution. I was quoting the words you wrote. Sorry about the confusion. At any rate, I think it's your and the TA's responsibility to help him to learn. What I would do is to explain it in the next class to all the students, not just that one, so that everybody, the students, the TA and even yourself learn it as a lesson. Just my 2 cents worth.
"Never trust something just because it was told to you by someone with more authority." Sorry, this is weak. The TA is your assistant. The TA is your representative. If the TA is flawed, that's not the student's fault; that's your fault for not vetting a better TA.
Further, the very essence of your teaching position consists of people "trusting" because you're someone with "authority". Sure, learners should check their work to understand and verify, but it's unrealistic to expect that students should raise suspicious eyebrows to each and every word that's taught until they can check it and verify for themselves. Not all knowledge is as simple to verify as an algebraic equation. As a general principle, yes, it's good to have a questioning mind and not take everything at mere face value. But realistically, it's unrealistic to expect such as an absolute.
@Coldblackice I'm not sure what university you are at. But at most large universities in the US, you do not choose your TA; they are assigned to you (at least for lower level classes).
unrealistic to expect that students should raise suspicious eyebrows to each and every word that's taught until they can check it and verify for themselves — On the other hand, they won't learn to raise suspicious eyebrows unless they're actually shown (not just told) the consequences of not raising suspicious eyebrows.
@MHH Then this is a bureaucratic issue between you and the university; not the student.
@MHH If the university is solely in control of who represents you as an assistant, then I suggest either 1) making sure TA's are constantly up to par with your teachings/pace, 2) petitioning univ for a new TA (if former is unfeasible), or worst case scenario, 3) at least making it overtly apparent to students upfront that TA's are "one of them", so to speak, and should never be trusted at mere face value; though wording it a little more diplomatically, of course :)
@JeffE Then this scenario can double as a great learning opportunity for everyone -- don't penalize the student, use this scenario as an example to teach the "Question everything" mindset, and lastly, redress the technicality of where exactly the TA's "authority" lies; i.e., should TA be considered on par with teacher's authority/knowledge, or on par with any other student in the class, or somewhere between the two -- and then set a future rule for officiating similar occurrences in the future (i.e., whether or not the fault will lie on student's shoulders).
dn't penalize the student — So, there are no actual consequences, then? Also, in STEM fields, instructors and TAs don't have authority but rather expertise; the answer isn't correct or incorrect because I say so, but because it's objectively correct or incorrect. And people's lives depend on your being correct.
I'm building on Pete Clark's comment. Look up emotions and learning under the affective domain. Scientific research tells us if a student develops significant resentment or loses trust in a teacher it can seriously impact the students ability to learn from that teacher. Also, frequently students have not worked enough with a particular field to get a feel for what is a reasonable answer and what is not.
I agree that in principle, the student is responsible for critically evaluating information from all sources and rejecting any that's incorrect. I wouldn't simply award the student points for the incorrect solution, but on the other hand it seems unhelpful to just mark it wrong and leave it there (and despite your explanation, the student will likely perceive this as unfair). In similar situations, I've done one of two things:
Allow the student to revise the answer, and regrade the problem; or
Discard the problem for that student, and recompute the score for the assignment based only on the remaining problems.
+1 For the first bullet point. Just ask the student to redo that problem and to ask you any questions about it (so he gets the "correct" help if he requires it) and then you grade the resubmission. As to the second bullet, I'd say the student should do the problem because the student does need to know how to do the problem and HW is a good practice/feedback mechanism.
If you discard the erroneous problem, what would you do to the ones that figured out the correct solution despite the incorrect instruction? Discount their work as well? Award them bonus mark? They possibly had spent extra hours trying to research the problem themselves that wouldn't have been necessary if they had received correct instructions in the first place.
@LieRyan: I'd give them full credit for a correct colution and apologize to them for the confusion, but I don't think it would be appropriate to award them additional points in compensation for their time. Grades are supposed to measure the quality of a student's work, not serve as an arbitrary reward/punishment mechanism. If I felt that in figuring out the issues involved, they had really shown exceptional initiative and understanding, I might consider bonus points.
No other student saw the false instruction in this case. Hopefully if many students saw this false instruction (like in a TA section) than most likely the error would have been pointed out by one of the good students, and likely a very informative discussion would ensue. I'm going to have the TAs go over this problem in section, presenting the wrong solution and then asking the class why it's wrong and truly making this a learning experience for all. I've been told by the other 20 TAs that many students did exactly what this TA did.
I generally like the idea of disregard a problem when the reasonableness of the problem for measuring competence is called into question.
At the moment I'm not sufficiently clear on what the TA did and why it was wrong: in plenty of contexts "[telling] a student the method for answering the question" is exactly what TAs are supposed to do. But again, I'm not sure exactly what happened nor what your understanding with the TA was.
So let me only address the issue of what to say to the student. The principle that they are ultimately trying to get at what is actually correct, not what any one other person tells them is correct, is certainly a key one in a STEM field. In fact, to me this is one of the distinct and pleasant features of mathematics in particular: my freshmen students are very chary to point out even the most trivial errors in my boardwork, but they will eventually learn that if I forgot to multiply by 4-x then (i) my answer is wrong, (ii) it is partially their responsibility to point out that my answer is wrong (the consequences of it being wrong are going to hurt them more than it hurts me, since they are trying to learn how to do problems that they haven't done before), and (iii) if they do point out that my answer is wrong they can be confident that I will react to it constructively rather than defensively.
Students in STEM fields need to learn how to correct the errors that they encounter from teachers and texts, and they do: story about how I mangled something in my graduate course this morning and the students got me to see that what I had done was bogus omitted (okay, drastically abridged). But lower level students have so much trouble with this: errors which to us look insignificant ("of course it should say this...") can really ruin their day. They're trying so hard to get a clue, and many of them are working in a state of cognitive dissonance that comes from having 99% of their inherent intellectual curiosity beaten out of them in their pre-university education. In other words, they have unfortunately been highly trained not to try to understand but rather to do what they're told. Most university students do clearly understand that more is expected of them and, thank goodness, many of them eventually regain the intellectual curiosity they lost, but you can't be an effective university instructor without knowing that many many students are just going to swallow anything you say which is too complicated for them to chew through in five seconds.
So when an instructor of any kind tells students something wrong, it is a big problem. (Wrong is really the nightmare limiting case; I spend so much time trying to avoid correct explanations that I have learned from experience they will interpret incorrectly.) If I say something in a lecture and realize later that it's wrong, I will come back and fix it in the next lecture. If I have something which is wrong on study materials, I will try to correct it and send out a new copy ASAP. If I tell them something that's wrong while they're studying for an exam, I won't wait until the next lecture but send along an email owning up to and fixing the mistake.
This is pretty much my point: students should -- ideally, and eventually -- take responsibility for correcting mistakes, sure, but so should we, and the two are not mutually exclusive. Giving students points back when we make a mistake does not undermine the lesson of their own responsibility, in my opinion: it just does needed damage control. When I ask a false question on a midterm or final exam (and it does happen, unfortunately) I either throw it out from the grading or give everyone full credit. I am not testing them on their ability to correct my mistakes: to do doesn't seem instructive to me but obnoxious. I remember once that a PhD student whom I was preliminarily advising took a qualifying exam which had a whopper of a false problem on it. As soon as I saw the problem my reaction was "I will be shocked if that turns out to be true." But I have more experience than the students and the luxury of having that reaction: my being wrong about it has no significant negative consequences for me. It turned out that the student had received less than full credit for his solution to the false problem! My reaction to that was essentially "WTF? Please grade this exam again." And they did.
I would strongly advise you to give the student the points back on the homework assignment. (Added: or discount the assignment, or let them redo the problem, or whatever so long as they are not getting irrevocably dinged for the TA's mistake.)
And sure, do make it a teachable moment -- talk to the student about how they can learn to better adapt to the very distressing situation of being given wrong information. Tell them that at some point they will acquire enough expertise to look at an "authoritative document" and say "I will be shocked if that turns out to be true." But don't allow the TA's mistake to lower their course grade. They'll never forgive you for that, and they won't learn how to correct their mistakes in the future.
I edited the question a while ago to include the example. The TA gave a full solution minus arithmetic calculations. Ironically, had he done those calculations he would have realized he was wrong, as the numerical answer was nonsense (kind of like getting int_0^1 x^2 dx = a negative number). I do agree with almost everything you say though. I like the idea Nathan gave of instead of giving the points back, not counting the question for their grade (this way she doesn't get an unfair advantage over students who came up with a wrong answer on their own) but also doesn't get punished.
@MHH: Thanks, I did eventually see the additional information you provided. And yes, making sure that whatever you do will not give an unfair advantage to the student is certainly a good idea (although similarly to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, for years I have dimly suspected that given all the "axioms of fairness" I feel like I should apply to grades, I could logically deduce that I must give every student an A). But really in many courses one problem on one homework will count negligibly to the final grade. The effect on the student's psyche may not be negligible, though.
Another thought I had, by the way, but managed not to put in my answer: "If I were your TA, I would have kept this to myself: better that the instructor knows about neither the mistake nor the remedy, perhaps. Better for the TA, anyway."
Having said that: I do get frustrated as an instructor when students go elsewhere for help with their homework and get less than fully competent help, which they then try to take out on me. For some reason this hasn't happened for a little while, but for years I used to get complaints like "Even my tutor couldn't do this homework problem." It made me so frustrated: I don't know who the hell your tutor is; I certainly didn't vet his CV or anything like that. Why are you drawing any conclusion from this other than that you may want to find a different tutor?!?
@PeteL.Clark "...other than that you may want to find a different tutor?!?" Or a different teacher ;)
@PeteL.Clark yeah, I assume the TA confessed to me mainly out of a guilty conscience. The TAs have the power to change grades on HW without consulting me if they see fit, so I suspect most would just to that.
As an instructor, I wouldn't draw a strong distinction between myself and the TA. The TA is part of a team that the instructor leads, and so the instructor should own TA mistakes as if they were his own. That may bear upon what sort of response makes sense.
In other words, they have unfortunately been highly trained not to try to understand but rather to do what they're told. This is a very good point :)
While I sympathize with your situation, and understand that it is very frustrating to receive bad advice/information from your TA, it is ultimately your responsibility to make sure your solution is correct, and therefore I can not give you back the points.
How is a student supposed to make sure their solution is correct, if not by seeking help from external sources such as TAs? I don't think your logic holds up here, and for that reason, it's not reasonable to penalize the student for the TA's mistake.
On the other hand, I'm not suggesting giving points for incorrect work. Some "neutral" solution, like omitting that problem from the computation of the student's grade or allowing them to redo the work, seems appropriate.
Please come see me if you would like advice on how to check your answers as this is a very important skill in all scientific disciplines and in life in general. TAs, solutions manuals, and even professors often make mistakes. Never trust something just because it was told to you by someone with more authority.
I don't think it's really practical to tell your students never to trust something just because it was told to them by someone with authority. Of course they should try not to do so more than necessary, and hopefully "necessary" means less and less over time, but some amount of trusting people with authority is necessary to jump-start the learning process.
It may be useful to make the point that even people with authority - professors, TAs, etc. - are beholden to a higher authority, namely correctness and self-consistency. If a student thinks something seems inconsistent or wrong, they should look into it further, by doing their own derivations and/or comparing multiple sources, until (hopefully) they eventually come to understand the thing that didn't make sense in the first place. If someone has made a mistake, it will be revealed in this process.
"I don't think it's fair to tell your students never to trust something told to them by someone with authority." I think you left out the key word in the passage you quoted: just.
If your teacher told you that the optimal fence like to enclose a pin was negative one hundred meters, you would trust him? This was a case where simply interpreting the answer would have led to suspicion.
Sure, if you're the faculty member who knows the subject. The student is probably very confused, that's why they 1) sought out help, like every faculty member tells them to, and 2) trusted that help. If they understood the material they wouldn't have done (1), so they wouldn't have had to evaluate it or not.
@MarkMeckes fair point, I think I found a way to edit it.
I agree with your council to the TA but you should give the student the points (or not use this assignment toward the calculation of the student's grades).
Is it fair that the student is receiving credit for incorrect work? No, but the point of any learning environment is to promote learning and I think your draconian adherence to grade fairness in this case would undermine that environment.
This student appears to have made a good faith effort to learn, and the TA appears to have made a good faith effort to assist learning. Exercising some compassion will ensure that this continues.
If you were the one that taught the material incorrectly, would you still hold the student accountable for your mistake?
The TA is your assistant. You must take responsibility for what the TA is teaching. The TA's words are your words by proxy. However you resolve the situation, you should address it as if you personally made the error.
Perhaps the error was so obvious that you'd expect the student to catch it even if it came from you, and finalizing the grade is reasonable. The fact that your TA made the error instead of you is immaterial to that decision.
A student cannot be expected to trump their instructor's judgment when they know who grades the answer. What if the student said, "yeah I had my doubts as well, that's why I spoke with my TA?"
Although I think you should give the student points or a redo in any event, I think you should also consider whether it was realistic for the student to be able to point out his TA's mistakes? Would most the other students awarded points be able to do this?
Often in statistics the mathematical derivations require a much deeper understanding than simply learning to use the tools. True in many disciplines in fact. It sounds like you're holding this student to a much higher standard, which is why I think you should reconsider your position.
So if you were told by your instructor that an optimal pot of coffee contained negative 30 grams of ground coffee beans, you'd not try and figure out if the instructor made a mistake? This particular example didn't require deep intuition; It required thinking about the problem rather than blindly copying a recipe from a cook book. I have told my class up front that this will be different than the standard intro stats class and that I will expect them to think and interpret data (within reason). This has surprisingly led to great teaching reviews (I thought there would be more resistance)
That said I am glad I posted this question, because I do agree that this time, punishing the student via their score is a bit too harsh. Thanks for your feedback.
If you think his/her error demonstrated a lack of understanding that other students demonstrably posses, then it's harder to fault your stance. But did the question allow the other students to demonstrate such proficiency, or to borrow the cooking book analogy, did they get points even if they just followed the recipe?
Oh yes this student and others that followed this cook book method were rewarded partial credit. The student wants full credit.
From my experience, homework exercise are there to help students learn, and are graded fairly lightly. The fact that your TA showed your student how to solve a problem, might or might no be a problem depending on the circumstances. For example, if a student had showed effort and reasonable understanding of the problem, and the TA explained the problem so that the student understood. No Problem. Of course if your TA just did a problem of the student, then there is a problem.
How difficult was the problem that you TA explained wrong? The fact that your TA doesn't understand the material, at least not all of it is a problem, in my view. Does your TA come to your lectures? Your TA should understand the material well, and they should be able to explain it. It is his job to help the students, not confuse them.
I would explain the right method to the student and give them full credit for the problem, and have a talk with the TA to make sure that they understand the material.
the TA made a reasonable mistake; the problem arose because he only told the student what to do, like a step by step recipe without asking the student questions to see if she was following (a full solution minus numerical calculations). He did not get to see the numerical answer that resulted. If he saw that he would have realized his mistake (since the answer that method would give is nonsense). After seeing the answer I am sure he would have been able to redo the problem correctly. I think this was just an honest mistake by the TA.
OK, I still think the fact that the TA gave a wrong method is a problem, perhaps he should be more careful. You could advise him to due the assignment themselves first. As for the student, if the answer obviously made no sense, like negative variance, I would probably still give her full credit as the mistake was on our part, but advise her to be more careful next time.
I worked as a tutor the last few years of my undergraduate studies and I wanted to add that to a student seeking help, a TA (or tutor) is someone you believe. Your student would not think that what the TA said was wrong because they are a TA. If the TA made an honest mistake, as a teacher, you should bring both the TA and student together and explain what was wrong. You could then give the student half credit if they answered in the way that the TA erroneously showed them. You could use this experience to help the rest of the class. I do not profess to understand STEM, as I have a degree and History and am working on my MA in education, but I understand teachable moments. If you want to prevent this in the future, meet with your TA and make certain that they are helping students using the correct process.
This is very specific to STEM. In history it would require an unreasonable amount of work for a student to verify everything an instructor or TA said. In some STEM classes we cover about 5% of the material covered in a history course. A class may only go through 70 pgs of material total over the whole semester! We focus on understanding and independently verifying nearly all of it. Answers to questions should at a minimum always be checked by interpreting the results. The student failed to do this. They were not punished for the error, they lost points for not checking their answer.
I think the best thing to do is let the student re-do the task, and have a talk with your TA. Making a mistake is human, but if he worked out the whole problem using the wrong method - without realising the result didn't make sense - I'd say that's an issue.
You expect your students to interpret the results of the calculation, and you expect them to choose the right method of solving it on an exam, so when a TA makes such a mistake, I'd question him.
I'm not saying that making a mistake is the problem, it's the nature of the mistake. When I lecture on programming, I sometimes make "thinko's" or get a design element wrong, but I won't make a whole algorithm in a faulty matter. It's a bit hard to compare lecturing programming to the more mathematical courses, because blackboard mistakes in a calculation are easily made and overlooked.
Yet, I have never used the wrong throughout a whole problem, I'd realise I'm using the wrong method as one point or another, surely when the result is wrong (Once again, easier to notice in programming), but you'd expect a TA to be able to interpret the result, no?
Ofcourse, I have no idea what the actual mistake was he made, but from your post it seemed like a key mistake.
Invalidate the question and apply again, if possible, renormalize the grade if not, to the whole class, to be fair...
Expanding:
Sorry to be blunt, but, as others said, you made a mess. Any attempt to rationalize it would be pointless, just take the hit (remember: your TA... and everybody makes mistakes, how do you deal with them that's important).
If you just award the points, you risk other students coming out of the woodwork saying the same thing or worse, because it is not really a fair option, neither is not awarding the points. Since both options are unfair, redo the whole deal.
My point is that this part of the assignment/exam is now tainted. Any result from it, should be removed. For the whole class. Drastic, I agree, but, IMHO, the best way to deal with it.
If you still have time/availability, re-explain the topic to the whole class, making perfectly clear the right way, the wrong way and why the wrong way doesn't work and re-apply the assignment/exam. This way you even expand what they learn by showing one possible pitfall...
If you can't, remove that item from the grades and scale the value of the other items to fill the void.
Either way, make everything public and clear to everyone. Sometimes even the smell of "cover up" is worse than the mistake.
Can you please expand a bit?
The notion about the "fairness" of reliance on TAs for advice being in question because not all students may be able to attend a TA's office hours is an utterly false premise. Instead of being "equal protection" it's "equal jeopardy." Bad idea.
If a student is so brilliant that they need no instruction to get correct answers, or if you're such a brilliant lecturer that you reach every single student with the exact best way to deliver the material for 100 percent comprehension...then eliminate TA/student interaction entirely. However, in my experience, such students and such teachers together are countable on one hand in a given university, usually with fingers left over for other tasks.
If the student came up with the answer that she should have, using the incorrect method, then she should receive credit...if she redoes the solution using an appropriate method, which in your grand mangnaminity you should bestow upon her. And yes, she should be chagrined to have not noticed the nonsensical answer.
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78928 | Late recommendation letter
I'm about to apply for postdoc positions in the US through mathjobs. I already did it last year, so I have my reference letters from the previous time (which are probably pretty good).
Now here's my situation: During the last year, I was lucky to solve some well-known open problems in my field (well, it's not going to earn me a Wikipedia entry, but the tiny group of researchers in my esoteric field is impressed), which will probably turn my application from "good" to "outstanding". In order to really make my application look better, my reference letters should address the recent results, so I asked my letter writers to update their letters. Most of them did so, except for one (who didn't reply to my emails). The problem is that I should submit some of my applications by November 1, and as I didn't hear from that letter writer for several weeks now, I'm afraid that he might not update his letter by November 1.
Question 1: When job ads on mathjobs say something like "screening of applications will begin on November 1", do they really mean it, or do they mean something like "screening of applications will begin on mid December, but we want you to submit your application early"?
Question 2: What would you do in my situation (assuming that the relevant letter writer is currently abroad and I have no other way to contact him)? Should I contact the relevant search committees and ask them to check that reference letter a bit later, once it gets updated?
Question 3: If a letter of recommendation is updated on mathjobs past the submission of an application, which version of the letters is available to the search committee? What should I do in order to make sure that they read the updated version?
It might not be a bad idea to try to contact someone else that knows you and/or your work for a recommendation letter, to replace the writer that doesn't reply to your e-mails.
Question 1: When job ads on mathjobs say something like "screening of applications will begin on November 1", do they really mean it, or do they mean something like "screening of applications will begin on mid December, but we want you to submit your application early"?
It depends on the department. It is however well known that many faculty members drag their feet with recommendation letters, and this happens more or less independently of the quality of the applicant. So in my experience it is common to allow a grace period of a couple of weeks to allow the letters to trickle in.
Question 2: What would you do in my situation (assuming that the relevant letter writer is currently abroad and I have no other way to contact him)? Should I contact the relevant search committees and ask them to check that reference letter a bit later, once it gets updated?
Frankly I think you're too worried about the entire situation. You did some exciting new work: great. All but one of the letters will describe this exciting new work. The other letter may not. So when people read the letters they will see that your exciting new work is so new that one of your writers is a little out of the loop. I see no big problem here. If one of the letters is more negative than the others, that drags your application down. If one of the letters is less informative than the others...frankly, that usually happens and is really much of the reason why you get multiple letters.
Question 3: If a letter of recommendation is updated on mathjobs past the submission of an application, which version of the letters is available to the search committee? What should I do in order to make sure that they read the updated version?
Hmm. I believe what happens is that if the file has not been read by anyone, the letter updates without recording the change. If it has been read, then both versions of the letter appear. But I am not completely sure about this.
In summary: you solved some well-known open problems in your field. That's the dream. You say that this will probably turn your application from "good" to "outstanding." Well, I agree. Congratulations, and I hope you enjoy your postdoc.
Question 1: It depends. In my experience on hiring committees it means that no one will look at the applications until after November 1, that some industrious members of the committee will immediately start looking at applications on November 1, and that other members of the committee won't get around to it for some weeks after November 1. A well organized committee might meet in mid November and screen out 90% of the applicants at that point. A badly organized committee might not do anything until January. You have no way of knowing, so the best that you can do is to have a complete application in place by November 1.
Question 2: I'd get a complete application together now, and submit it for those jobs with early deadlines, even though you don't have this new letter of recommendation yet.
Question 3. You can update the letter of recommendation later, but there's no way to be sure that the committee will look at it. In particular, if you've been screened out in the first round, they'll probably never look at any updates to your application. If you're invited to participate in some kind of an interview (at a meeting, by skype, etc.) than they might look at the updated material. When/if you're contacted to arrange an interview, be sure to mention that you've updated your material on mathjobs.org and ask them to look at the updated material.
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40983 | How to cite a source that has vanished due to link rot?
My colleague is writing a manuscript about a subject that is rarely reported in the mainstream literature (predation events). A few years ago on a fishing forum she found a photograph that demonstrated this phenomenon pretty well and saved it to her computer, but unfortunately between then and now the original source has vanished: Google Reverse Image Search can't locate it, the website is no longer running and is also unavailable in the Internet Archive. The original URL to the photo was also not retained.
What's the proper way to cite this source? It's not critical to include but it would definitely improve the final manuscript.
Can the photograph still be found on the internet archive?: https://archive.org/ - if yes, you may cite (1) the additional url and (2) the archive'd URL. Also, the archive may still have owner information.
Maybe this is silly, but has she tried to put the image in "Google Images" and see if she can find a new source?
Before worrying about the citation your colleague needs to gain permission to use the image in her work. She needs to contact the owner of the image and ask them for permission. The image could then be used and the citation could be a "personal communication" or the URL of where the image was taken from with the access date.
Finding the contact details of the image owner will undoubtedly be difficult, especially given that the image is not actually on the forum anymore. But if the forum is still active perhaps a question could be posted on there (with the image) asking if anyone knows who took the photo / how they can be contacted and perhaps she'll get lucky.
Edit: As pointed out by StrongBad if your colleague is not planning on actually reproducing the image in the document then seeking permission for its use is not required. If she just wants to describe the image, I guess the only option would be to cite it using the URL where it was, with the access date. However, given that the reader could not then actually find the image themself and look at what your colleague was describing, it probably wouldn't provide that much useful information to the manuscript.
You do not need permission if you do not include the photo in the manuscript. Without permission, you could still describe/analyze the photo, but you would want a citation for this.
@StrongBad very good point. I have updated my answer to reflect this.
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147358 | Avoiding "Zoom bombing" in virtual conferences and seminars
With travel restricted by the COVID-19 pandemic, many academics are organizing online seminars and conferences as a substitute for regular in-person university seminars, colloquia, and research conferences.
In real life, seminars are usually open to anyone who wants to drop in, and every attendee can be seen and heard and may ask questions. So an obvious approach is to organize the event using video meeting software such as Zoom, and simply post the link on a public website so that any interested person can participate. However, this also opens the event to "Zoom bombers", random people who just want to disrupt the proceedings with annoying or offensive video / audio / text chat - such abuse has unfortunately become very common in public Zoom meetings.
What best practices exist to keep such an event as open as possible to legitimate participants, and let them interact with each other and the speaker in a reasonable way, while reducing the risk of disruption and abuse?
What are the pros and cons of these strategies?
Strategies could be general, or involve specific features of certain software.
Some strategies I've thought of, and their drawbacks:
Create a password for the meeting. Then the question is, to whom should the organizer give the password? If they only give it to people they know, it excludes people who might be interested but whom they happen not to know. If they distribute it to large mailing lists of interested academics, it raises the chance that it will fall into the wrong hands.
Offer to share the password by email upon request. This requires extra time from the organizer to respond to those emails, and to manually verify the credentials of each requester.
Require a nominal registration fee, as real-life conferences often do. This requires setting up an online payment system, which can be a lot of work, and may exclude people who are only casually interested, or who don't have funding, or who work in less wealthy parts of the world. It may also involve the organizer in a lot of bureaucracy with their university as to how the fees will be managed and spent.
Use a "waiting room" feature, where participants must be approved immediately before joining. However, as far as I know, the host only sees the participant's name. If they see an unfamiliar name, how can they tell whether it is a troll, or a legitimate researcher whom they just happen not to know? Conversely, I don't think there is anything to stop a troll from masquerading under the name of a famous academic.
I am wondering if people have thought of better solutions, that are specifically appropriate to academia. Such strategies might take advantage of specific features of the academic community, e.g. to authenticate genuine researchers (.edu addresses? accounts on preprint servers? ORCid IDs?). Answers could also address the pros and cons of such strategies as they apply to academia in particular, and how well they fit with people's existing expectations for academic conferences.
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Conventional public meetings have always been susceptible to abuse. The usual approaches apply: (1) Put a bouncer at the door to prevent uninvited or bad characters from entering (2) Don't give everyone a microphone or a billboard (3) If a participant does something unacceptable, warn them. If they persist, kick them out. (4) Moderate/Censor/Filter anything that goes through the microphone / projector (5) Take legal action against persistent abusers.
@Xantix: I thought about that, but the parallel breaks down in a few ways. First of all, for someone to disrupt an in-person academic seminar, they actually have to travel somewhere; for a virtual seminar, a few mouse clicks suffice. The cost of an attack is orders of magnitude lower. Second, #5 is effectively impossible; there is no easy way to identify a Zoom bomber, who will typically have taken steps to conceal their IP address, and it's unlikely that law enforcement will take an interest.
@Xantix: Indeed, not only can't you punish a Zoom bomber, you can't even prevent them from logging back on with a new account five seconds later.
@Nate Eldredge: The cost of an attack may be lower, but so is the cost of blocking offenders. You don't need a team of bouncers, just a few key clicks. It should be fairly easy to identify & block their IP addresses, too, which increases their cost of attacking.
@jamesqf: See chat for response.
How about using something other than Zoom? Other softwares support features that can help with this. Moreover there are some serious security and privacy concerns about Zoom (see e.g. this statement by the FBI and this investigation by the NY attorney general; Bruce Schneier has written an overview of the concerns here).
In our department we use BigBlueButton (website, Wikipedia) for our classrooms and seminars. It's a completely open-source and free web conferencing system. There are a few services out there that host servers but they're completely overloaded at the moment. I'd say your best bet would be to get your IT services to host a server for your department. With BBB by default new users don't have their webcams activated, and you can prevent them from doing so. You can even prevent them from using their microphone and require them to virtually "raise their hand" before a moderator allows them to speak. That should cut down a lot of the abuse. You can also set up the service so that an account is required before accessing the meeting. Unless the abuser is very dedicated, they probably won't bother creating dozens of accounts to continue bothering people after being kicked out, I hope.
Also, something obvious: many abusers are specifically targeting Zoom and going into random Zoom meetings. Unless you've somehow attracted abusers who are specifically targeting you, if you use something else (especially something hosted by your own department), you probably won't have any problems.
Note: I'm only recommending BBB because that's what we use at our department, but there are other services out there. I know another department has set up something called "Panopto" for example, and another something called "Classilio" - you'll have to look that up, I don't know much about it. For informal meetings we use Jitsi but it doesn't seem adequate for hosting a seminar. But in any case, if a software doesn't meet your requirements, you should definitely look into switching to something else, especially with the privacy concerns...
Zoom has also features like "mute all participants", "do not allow participants to unmute themselves", etc.: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/203435537-Mute-All-And-Unmute-All
To be clear, BBB has the same problems that Zoom has with the possibility of vandals "bombing" meetings, and the same solutions and their trade-offs applies. The problem seems simple: without authentication, anybody can enter the meeting, no matter what platform is used.
I know the host can mute and unmute participants, but how do you tell whether the person you're about to unmute is an abuser?
@NateEldredge: You only unmute participants individually, either because you know who the participant is or because they asked to be unmuted via chat.
@NateEldredge Just have them type in questions to the moderator, and the mod filters the questions and only unmutes askers with good questions, or the mod reads good questions to the speaker. It works for radio stations, at least.
@user3067860 good point, I was writing something similar.
But remember that this requires that you have a moderator (separate from the presenter) and that the moderator have at least a basic understanding of the topic.
@HansOlsson I've seen livestreamers do it with just one person, if you can pause to read through questions (no typing responses, just respond out loud). But it is easier with a moderator. Even if the moderator is just filtering out obviously not-real questions and banning anyone who asks joke questions.
The features discussed in the comments seem sufficient in the case that the organizer knows the participants, e.g. classes, committee meetings, etc.
I don't think this question has a single right answer. I'm going to answer for the case where the conference is open to interested academics and the organizer doesn't know all the potential participants. This isn't specific to Zoom, either. I think this would work for most on-line conferencing systems.
Require preregistration using Google Forms or a similar tool. Ask for full name, email address, and some vetting information such as the URL of the applicant's academic web page. The vetting questions will likely change depending on the nature of the audience, and perhaps with experience. You'll need a registration deadline so that you can send out passwords.
There are several tools for sending bulk email from a .csv spreadsheet such a Google Forms provides. I use the mail-merge add-in for Thunderbird. I'm told Microsoft Office has an email-merge feature. Look through the list, delete any that don't pass vetting, and mail the meeting link to the rest.
"Look through the list" will be the time-consuming task. If one expects more than perhaps 50-100 participants, I'd download the list daily, clear it out, and vet applicants one day at a time.
Edit: It will be hard, but not impossible, for a troll to masquerade as a famous academic because the invitation will go to the address in the registration, which, for famous academics, is likely to be well-known.
I've just done some poking with Google. Excel appears to have a way to highlight cells that do not end with a specified string. So, the Google form says "academic email address required" and the formula lights up in red any addresses that don't pass the filter described just below. Deleting them is still a manual process unless one wants to learn the Visual Basic stuff used to "program" excel, but finding them becomes easy.
Further to Federico Poloni's comment, start with a simple rule, e.g. addresses must end in .edu in the US, or .ac.uk in the UK. Look at the addresses that get flagged and adjust the rule accordingly. Of course, that means no automagic deletions, but you can group the flagged addresses using a filter for manual deletion in a batch. Yes, this is a certain amount of "make it up as we go along," but I imagine we'll be doing a lot of that for many months.
Outside the US, people have academic addresses such as @unipi.it, so the approach in your last paragraph won't work in an international setting.
You don't need VBA to do this, conditional formatting and IF() can be used.
@FedericoPoloni Sure it will; one just has to work through the exceptions.
@SolarMike You can mark them with conditional formatting. The only way I know to delete rows based on cell values required manual intervention. If there's a better way, a hint would be much appreciated. Although I've retired from teaching, I still run workshops for my institution, and I do this a lot.
@bobbrown I think most universities in the world do not have an .edu domain.
@Dirk Didn't read the last paragraph, did you?
@BobBrown you can filter based on color, select all rows showing by shift-clicking, then right click and delete. That's still technically manual, but it only takes a few seconds.
In addition to Zoom "meetings," they have a "webinar" option for calls:
https://zoom.us/webinar
(Note that this feature is only available in certain paid versions, I believe)
This option is designed for meetings at which most people are silently listening. The audio and video of participants are off by default, and can only be turned on by one of the hosts. Alternatively, there is a mechanism in these for submitting text questions, which go to a moderator queue and then are shown to everyone.
I recently attended a webinar of this type, and it ran smoothly. I think it would be much more difficult to disrupt than the usual meeting style.
It looks like this is an extra-cost add-on to their paid versions. The ability to host a webinar with 100 participants is currently USD 40 per month, with more participants costing more money. I guess you can compare it to your regular seminar budget for tea and cookies.
We had the same problem and ended up with a solution like this:
The seminar series web page contains information about the seminar program, plus instructions for joining the seminar mailing list.
The Zoom link is shared only through the seminar mailing list some time before the event.
There is no password.
The mailing list subscriptions can be moderated, but I don't think there is need to really "check the credentials" of those who are joining the list.
This is low-effort for the organizers and legitimate seminar participants, and it would be relatively high-effort for someone who wants to do Zoom bombing (in particular, you will need to plan ahead and subscribe in advance, so if you are just right now bored and drunk and would like to do something silly, it doesn't sound too exciting to subscribe to a seminar mailing list that would make it possible to maybe do some Zoom bombing next week).
From what I understand, there are various internet forums where bored students can share a meeting password and ask for internet trolls to bomb their teacher. See e.g. this news article that discusses them.
+1 for the low-effort solution which is enough in most cases. Just like cheap bicycle locks can be easily defeated by an experienced thief, but they are still useful in most cases, as they prevent casual passers-by from stealing your bike.
It would more useful to have a password and put the password in the email with the link. That way, you would at least prevent Zoom bombing from people trying random meeting numbers,
The current phenomenon of "Zoom bombing" seems to come from the fact that Zoom meeting IDs can easily be guessed.
So you may be overthinking this and should try to publish the conference password on the institute website. This will not be found by people who just try to bomb random conferences.
When someone is explicitly targeting your conference, you won't have much chance to prevent it, while keeping it open to everyone even when you do not know them.
I would consider at least trying to use a meeting with a rather public password and only change when you actually run into problems.
I think most times a student in the class gives away the Zoom codes. I've seen people on social media specifically ask for other people's "zoom codes" so they can join.
@MCMastery: This might be true for high school and low-level university classes, but not so much for seminars and conferences, whose participants are a bit more mature. Also, I don't remember a talk so boring that I'd ask 4chan to raid it :)
@MCMastery but are these codes being given to people who will create problems?
@MCMastery When someone especially wants to interrupt your meeting (maybe a student with a bad grade) you will need to make it private in some way, e.g., by communicating a password via a mailing list. But this is true for any medium that is open to everyone. And bold people may even come in and disturb real meetings until security forces them to leave.
It seems to me that the current state of things is that you can't, without some support from Zoom's side. Even if you set up a meeting password, a malicious participant can give it to a bomber. Even if you vet names, a bomber may spoof the name of a legitimate user.
You need accounts to solve this problem.
The crucial issue is that Zoom (EDIT: at least the way you are using it) has no concept of users or authentication. The problem can be solved if you require a form of personal authentication: a malicious user won't give their personal password to a bomber, because their name is attached to it.
You need trusted accounts.
This requires you to have some form of trusted authentication: if you have accounts, but users can create one in two minutes with [email protected], that's as good as nothing. Orcid may be more vetted (I don't have experience in how easy it is to create an Orcid account if you are not an academic). A "walled garden", such as schools that use Microsoft Teams or a corporate Google Suite for their internal needs, may work if all participants are inside the garden (and have independently authenticated accounts).
You can require academic addresses to create accounts, and check manually that their domains are legitimate. If we had a working global academic authentication infrastructure, it would have helped solving this problem probably. There are some attempts to create one: Shibboleth, Openathens, Eduroam. Probably Eduroam is the most widespread, so they may help. But you can't just use their credentials without some support from both them, and the video-conference service.
Of course firms are pushing for their walled gardens instead, and schools and universities blindly use Microsoft or Google because they are cheaper.
Zoom does have a concept of accounts and authentication, though, if you pay for it. See this page for integrating an existing authentication systems with Zoom. The fact that the US government doesn't use it when they should and get problems because of it doesn't mean that it's unavailable.
@ErikA Interesting, thanks! In particular it does already support Shibboleth, which is already quite common in academia.
Would be cool to have a capcha-type question, which is very specific to the seminar.
I am moderating a facebook group in a very specialized research field, mainly for researchers (all members either have a PhD or are on the way to get one). Hence, I ask a few questions which are very basic for the members, but highly non-trivial for laypersons.
That could be a solution, but you would need to have only a very specific answer possible. While in maths this is doable (say, a basic integral and you expect a number back), even in physics it becmes more complicated (except if this is a name such as Maxwell, or the answer of a basic physics problem). OK, after reading myself I think this is a cool idea :) (+1)
One of my questions is to provide the canonical next integer in the sequence 1,1,2,5,14,...
Yes, for mathematicians this is probably obvious, or they can look it up in OEIS. An absolute deterrent for anybody else, though (I am an ex-physicist and had to look it up :-| )
You could publicly share the meeting ID (and password, if required) before the meeting. Once the meeting has started - or maybe a few minutes later - you lock the meeting such that no new participants can join.
This will not protect you from determined troublemakers that attend the meeting from the start, but it prevents Zoom bombers from randomly dropping in.
This approach is the digital equivalent of locking the door after the meeting has started.
What happens in a locked meeting if someone's connection breaks down and they want to rejoin?
@darijgrinberg Good catch. I couldn't test a loss of connection, but if a guest of a locked meeting leaves the meeting, the guest cannot rejoin.
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78729 | How to type a foreign language author name with special characters?
How do you cite (in APA) the authors last name when it is a foreign language with special unknown characters that can't be identified by most word processors.
characters that can't be identified by most word processors How did the journal print it?
If you want to get the most helpful answer then you may benefit from saying what the character is, and what language it comes from. It may be worth looking how it's been cited in existing publications though.
Most modern word processors support Unicode, which contains code points for the characters of basically every language on Earth. So unless your co-author is Klingon, I find it difficult to believe that your word processor does not support these characters. Maybe it is a problem with the font that you are using. (By the way, there is a proposal to include the Klingon alphabet in Unicode).
You take the necessary steps to make sure that you can type the character in your word processor. In this day and age computers can represent pretty much every script used (remember people in your author's country also use word processors from day to day).
Have you tried closet English equivalent? For example leaving an accent mark or similar.
@Greg if you do that, the citation won't be correct and harder to connect to the author's work
@Greg There's also the question of what's an accent mark that can be left out and what's an integral part of the letter that might look like an accent mark to others. For example in my language we have common issues with c, ć and č. In Latin, they look similar and foreigners tend to think of them as a variations of a same letter, but they're different and in original versions, it's quite easy to see the difference: ц,ћ,ч.
@Greg Then we also have the Đ letter. If you leave out -, you'll rename George into Dorde, which makes no sense and instead a different transliteration of Djordje is used, which probably won't be immediately obvious if you don't know the language.
@Emilie Many reference database cannot handle such characters, so it is an issue that already exist, without OP doing anything and most probably handled by the author manually.
@AndrejaKo If you don't like how foreigners spell your name, use a professional name with reasonably clear spelling, it is that simple. If we don't asume foreigners shoudl be able to read Chinese or Japanese character sets, we shouldn't assume they read other character sets ( of much more minor languages). I use standardized name for professional purposes, others can use too.
@Greg Or people could figure out that it's 21st century, not 19th and that other cultures exist too and not assume things about them. Also database point mentioned in the other comment is completely moot. If a database can't accept a Unicode name, maybe it's time for an update.
@Greg: "If we don't asume foreigners shoudl be able to read Chinese or Japanese character sets, we shouldn't assume they read other character sets ( of much more minor languages)." - I have thought about that reasoning various times before, but I have come to the conclusion that people do not think in "character sets". Character sets are somwhat arbitrary, and arguably, Unicode is just one big character set, anyway. People rather think in scripts. Seen like that, it seems indeed reasonable that someone using Latin script should be able to use a previously unknown diacritic on a Latin letter.
Some foreign languages don't include strange letters like J, K, Q, W, X, Y in their alphabets. But usually they have the courtesy to represent English names properly. Why shouldn't we do the same for their letters?
Try shapecatcher.com and detexify.kirelabs.org to identify the characters. Then proceed from there by inserting a Unicode char in a Unicode font or a latex command (depending on whether you are using MSWord or some form of LaTeX). Once you have identified the character, also try an online search engine to find out spellings easier for you, e.g., the romanized ones.
If everything else fails, ask the sources where you got the name from. The contact person can be an editor, a publisher, a coauthor, or the author himself/herself. Some authors maintain homepages with a correct spelling of their name; if it is the case for the author in question, take a look at their HTML code.
One very important addendum to this answer. Detexify does not recognize most characters from foreign alphabets. Shapecatcher does.
Google the webpage of the author. If this is unicode, then cut and paste the special character into Google. Otherwise, find his name rendered in unicode somewhere on the internet, and Google the character. This should take you to a webpage that tells you what the character is. You can then Google to find out how to type it in your word processor. Or (depending on the word processor) you can just cut and paste the unicode.
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89970 | How should undergraduate student respond when the PI of their lab asks them to provide feedback on a research paper?
I worked on a research project earlier this year with a group of people. The paper has been written up (not by me) and sent to the team to review it, give feedback and approve it before it is submitted for publication. I am just an undergraduate student and this is my very first experience with this. Most other people on the research team are much older and more experienced than me; so I do not have any critical feedback to give. The paper seems great to me.
Anyways, I am wondering how to state my approval when I email the PI? Replying with “I approve of this paper” seems too entitled for me since I am so inexperienced. So what would be the best way to reply back with my approval?
I think experienced people know what you can contribute. Just look over your parts, double check them and say, your parts are good to go, or X,Y... need to be done. You may want to check whether other parts of the paper have a link to your part. For example, if you did the experiments, the abstract or intro may not highlight your results or claims are not supported by your results.
You can always check the grammar. There are always commas missing, and fixing them you can contribute positively to the paper.
A reply such as "Thank you for the opportunity to review this; I see no changes that need to be made." is appropriate. This confirms that you
Read the paper and
Are in agreement with the content and presentation.
As a participant in the work and especially if you're listed as a co-author, point 2 is important. However, point 1 lets the organizer know that you've completed your task so that they needn't wait any longer on your feedback.
An additional thought:
Most other people on the research team are much older and more experienced than me; so I do not have any critical feedback to give.
Don't let age or experience of other team members influence how you perform your review.
You have every right (really, a responsibility) to raise any issue you identify so that it can be addressed. Furthermore, I've often found that less-experienced team members tend to make very rigorous reviews of all the details, often catching details that others miss. Take this as an opportunity to dive into the work and learn the intricacies of it (especially the parts you weren't involved with). This will allow you to gain understanding of the field and allow you to more effectively perform another type of review: that of the overall nature of the work and the cohesiveness of how it's presented.
Also, as you perform the review, you should bring questions to your team members. They understand you have little experience (you're an undergraduate, that's expected). However, displaying interest in the work and gaining knowledge in the field is a good thing.
I am slightly at odds with “Thank you for the opportunity to review this” as it would be unethical (or even misconduct) not to have every author review a paper before submission.
It's not clear if OP is a co-author or just someone who participated in the work. I agree: everyone on the team should be given the chance to review the publication and pleasantries shouldn't be needed regardless of role. However, the 'thank you' also alleviates some curtness in the response if it was otherwise omitted.
@Joel Although I didn't write any of the paper, I am listed as a co-author. So I participated in the work and my name is listed as an author on the paper.
@aspire94 Thanks for clarifying, it might help to note that in your question. The use of 'please' and 'thank you' in email correspondence is my personal style but a response such as "I've reviewed the paper and see no changes that need to be made." is perfectly acceptable. The main point of my answer is to clearly communicate the two points I listed.
@aspire94, +1 to Joel for pointing out that it is still very useful for less experienced eyes (who haven't been glazing over) to read the paper. It is quite possible that you'll notice something that might be unclear to a general reader, (or an obvious typo) but that the authors did not notice because they are too familiar with the prose.
TL;DR: If you do not find anything to criticise on a paper, strongly consider the possibility that you were too coy.
If I give a paper of mine to a bachelor student for internal review and they do not have anything to criticise, I assume that they did not thoroughly read it, underestimated their concerns, or are afraid of criticising senior collaborators.
This particularly holds if they are a co-author.
(And this also applies to peer reviewers by the way.)
Every paper that has not already received feedback by thousands of people will be imperfect.
It does not necessarily have to contain hard mistakes, but there almost certainly are parts that can be misunderstood and explained better – not to mention spelling or grammar flukes.
The challenging part of writing a paper is not to correctly write down your results; almost everybody¹ can do that.
The challenging part is to explain your rationales, methods, and conclusions to readers that may not be extremely familiar with all the details of your research.
Therefore taking this reader’s point of view is essential for good paper writing.
However this gets increasingly difficult if you are very familiar with a subject, such as your own research.
Therefore somebody like you is probably a better proxy for the paper’s intended audience and a better person to provide feedback on the paper.
This does not only apply to subject expertise but also to language:
I often write sentences that I consider to be to the point and easy to understand, just to find out that my internal reviewers had to read them three times to understand them – which means that another reader may not understand them at all and they need to be fixed.
If your seniors are wise, they are aware of this and will take any criticism coming from you seriously, not only regarding the paper’s didactics but also regarding possible mistakes:
If anything seems fishy to you, it may also seem fishy to reviewers and the paper may need to be improved, be it by fixing an actual mistake or by better explaining why there is actually no mistake.
Also, consider that your seniors may judge you like I did if you do not provide any criticism whatsoever.
You may even waste their time as they may feel the need to consider another internal reviewer due to your lack of criticism.
Therefore I strongly suggest that you carefully read the entire paper again and be as nitpicky as you can, in particular with respect to easy understandability, consistent notation, spelling, and grammar. You will almost certainly find something.
¹ who is capable of obtaining publishable results
Beginners are often already nervous about "doing it wrong." It's fine to advise OP to read with a critical eye. But you can make this point without exacerbating the anxiety a beginner may already have. I think this answer would be strengthened by taking out the first sentence.
@aparente001: Fair point, let me rephrase this.
Hey there, Wrzlprmft -- the first sentence doesn't hit me between the eyes any more, but it still makes me too uncomfortable to be able to upvote the otherwise strong answer. I don't want to keep arguing, but I did want to acknowledge the improvement, and let you know my honest reaction. Anxiety is very real, when it occurs, and in that case, nothing is gained by making it worse. I can see that your way of seeing this question is a simple if no defects or errors detected, then student not trying hard enough or not being honest. But I don't think that criticizing the student will...
... help him or her notice more things in the paper that could be improved.
@aparente001: I can see that your way of seeing this question is a simple if no defects or errors detected, then student not trying hard enough or not being honest – Yes, but the lack of honesty comes from good intentions. Anyway, let me add a third option to this (see my edit). — Where do you think I am criticising the student in a way that fuels anxiety. Saying that they are probably too coy is only one step short of saying you are being too anxious.
Well, I interpreted "coy" as being not honest, and I did take it to imply that the intentions weren't bad. But it's still a criticism, largely from the way you put it. "You are almost certainly being too ____" doesn't feel the same to a person who's already feeling anxious as "Be careful not to inadvertently _____". And note that I've never seen anxiety be reduced by just telling the anxious person not be be anxious. It's more helpful to validate whatever mix of feelings and thoughts they are having. In this case, OP wrote, "I do not have any critical feedback to give. The paper seems ...
...great to me." If our goal is to help someone learn to read manuscripts with a more critical eye, are we really going to succeed in that goal by telling him that if he can't find anything wrong, he's "doing something wrong" or "being too coy"? I don't think so. // By the way, the advice I gave in my answer, of finding at least one thing to give positive feedback, is, in my experience, surprisingly helpful in developing critical thinking. // Thanks for asking; that's how I see it, and I just want to say once more that it's okay if we don't agree on this.
Cute edit! (I still think the best way to develop critical thinking abilities in students is to (a) ask them to identify what they liked best, and (b) catch them doing what you want them to do, and give positive reinforcement.)
@aparente001: Sure, but that’s rather hard in a Q&A environment like this.
We can do (a) here (see my answer), and although (b) is primarily the PI's job, we can notice that OP bothered to come here and ask, and bothered to get involved in a research project as an undergrad, and bothered to read the paper and try to look for something to improve. So, there are actually already things to provide positive feedback about, if we want to.
If you've checked the paper to the best of your ability, particularly those parts with which you were closely involved, and you have no criticisms or concerns, then just say so. There isn't any special wording to use - just be clear that you consent to submitting the paper in its current form (it would be unethical for them to submit without your consent).
For instance, you could say:
I read through the paper and it looks good to me. I think it is fine to submit. Thanks everybody!
Just don't delay - it sounds like you've made your decision that the paper is okay, and your co-authors will be very frustrated if the submission of the paper is held up while you agonize over how to draft your email.
You are required to read an approve the final version of a manuscript to be included as an author. This is common practice. It is recommended criteria for authorship by many journals and the Vancouver convention.
You should at least check the sections based on your work and make sure that you agree with how they are communicated and the overall message of the paper (abstract and conclusions). All you need to do is confirm that you have read it and approve of the current version.
However, some specific comments will make it clearer that you've actually read the manuscript. It is not uncommon in our research group for students to suggest changes or even take a role in writing or submitting manuscripts themselves. This is a crucial part of research and you are being trained as a researcher.
Do not hesistate to suggest revisions or point out mistakes. Believe it or not supervisors still make them and need proofreading assistance too. Of course do so in a polite manner, it is likely an honest mistake or ambiguity given how pressed for time most academics are. They'd rather have it raised now than once it's gone to review or to press.
Read it with a critical eye, don't assume that as a beginner your contribution isn't valuable, and send a brief message to give it a thumbs up; a quick turn-around will earn you brownie points.
All that's been said here already. But I wanted to add:
In your thumbs-up email, mention at least one thing that you really like about how it turned out. This positive feedback will be most effective if it's honest and personal.
For example, I especially liked the section about possible applications of the technique. I wasn't involved in that part of the paper, but it helped me appreciate the big picture better. (That's just an example. It could be anything, really, as long as its from the heart.)
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156462 | How to know whether references, tables, and figures are included in journal word limits?
Whenever a journal asks for "Articles should be limited to 3500 words + 5 figures/tables", do they mean the texts in the tables and figures will not be counted in the 3500 words limit?
Also, will the reference section be included in this word limit? Or, it just means only the Abstract, key-words, introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections will be bound to 3500 words limit?
In my experience the answer depends on the journal.
@AnonymousPhysicist The journal do not have further explanation regarding this. They just mentioned "Manuscripts that do not adhere to the following instructions will be returned to the corresponding author for technical revision before undergoing peer review." Will I first submit it, then check what they tell? Or, can I send an email to the journal regarding this? This is the first time I am submitting a paper.
Ask your supervisor AND check recent papers in the journal.
Ask the journal
Voted to reopen since the question is answerable. See my answer.
That depends on the journal. Therefore you should ask them.
E.g. https://aip.scitation.org/mmm/authors/jsprep (mirror):
Contributed MMM Manuscripts should not exceed 3500 words. Abstract, title, author list, references, and acknowledgments are all excluded from the 3500-word limit. Figures, tables, and equations, however, are included and must be accounted for by calculating a word count equivalent to the space they occupy.
https://jasn.asnjournals.org/sites/default/files/ASN/PDF/jasn_ifa.pdf (mirror):
Original Articles are limited to 3500 words (including significance statement, abstract, and main text, excluding Methods) and eight data figures. Methods, references, figure legends, and tables are not included in the word count
FYI Why do so many publishing venues limit the length of paper submissions?
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157848 | Using the h-index to compare researchers from different fields
We are all aware that the h-index of a researcher is the metric for evaluating the cumulative impact of his/her research publications. I am asking the question regarding a doubt that arises when we compare researchers based on the h-index.
I come from a background of theoretical physics where we come across two types of researchers: (1) those who works on theory and (2) those who works on data analysis (mostly within a collaboration). For example, consider the following two researchers:
One is a senior professor who works on quantum field theory and string theory and has produced several outstanding papers over 25 years. His total citations = 7311, h-index = 40, i-10 index = 57.
The second has obtained his PhD in gravitational wave astronomy about 3 years ago and is presently a postdoc at Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics. Most of his papers involve doing data analysis as part of the gravitational waves collaboration. His total citations = 31121, h-index = 46, i-10 index = 75.
So, in my opinion, it wouldn't be a wise idea to compare them based on their citations and h-index since the more experienced researcher has a much lower h-index even though he has produced several outstanding papers in his area of expertise.
My Question:
In view of the above example:
How do you compare the quality of two researchers when they are in different fields of research? Are there any other means to evaluate the quality of research?
How do you evaluate researchers where most of their citations come from papers where they are one of a large number of co-authors and their non-collaborative works are cited much less often?
Do not try to compare the quality of researchers using metrics such as h-index. It cannot work.
Following @AnonymousPhysicist, it cannot work especially over different fields. Differences are completely meaningless. Elementary school math should tell you that.
... especially meaningless when one person is part of a large group of collaborators.
You could look at their actual research instead of some number. See also What is a fair metric for assessing the citation impact of journals across disciplines?, and How to measure achievement in a field where large collaborations are normal?
See also https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/105632/how-is-an-experimental-particle-physicist-evaluated. One answer claims that in some areas it is common to have a 40+ h-index on PhD graduation.
Reliance on any single index has many confounds. And these flaws are amplified when you attempt to compare academics across disciplines.
That said, there are more thoughtful ways to make use of metrics.
Here are some of the main things that should temper your use of h-index:
Proportion of first-author or lead-author papers (e.g., 1st, 2nd, last author): All else being equal, the esteem attributable to an author in publishing an academic paper is increased when the author leads the work.
Number of authors per paper: All else being equal, fewer authors per paper suggests that the author of interest is contributing more to each paper.
Average time since publication: Papers accumulate citations over time. So, an academic with many recent publications may have many papers that will ultimately contribute to their h-index after a period of time has elapsed for those citations to accrue the requisite number of citations.
Discipline-specific citation practices: Disciplines vary in their referencing practices. The two big differences are (1) number of references per paper, and (2) citation half-life, which is to say the time it takes an article to receive half of all the citations it will ever receive. People who are in fields with more references per paper, get more citations and as a result, a higher h-index. People in fields with shorter citation half-lives see a more rapid rise of their h-index, although eventually (10 to 15 years after publication), differences in citation half-life will generally matter much less. In addition, citation databases vary in coverage of different fields (e.g., web of science probably makes biomedical researchers look much better than computer scientist compared to Google Scholar).
What are you trying to measure?
Here are some fairly orthogonal elements from which you can conceptually derive other indicators:
Annual Output: Their contribution in partnership with others to Annual Academic Output, where output corresponds to overall value: some kind of product of both quantity and quality (or impact).
Personal Contribution: The proportion of their contribution to that output.
Career length: The number of years that they have been making this impact.
So, from this perspective, h-index is mostly a function of annual output, career length, and the vagaries of discipline-specific citation practices.
Personal Contribution Indicators:
If you are interested more in personal contribution, you might get some of the following indicators:
Number of first-author and lead-author papers. This could be broken down based on the quality of the output as indexed by things like discipline specific journal ranking (e.g., Q1 on Scimago) or annual or total citation counts.
Fractionated paper or citation counts. E.g., sum of papers where the value of each paper is one over the number of authors. This would mean than one sole-author paper equals 10 10-author papers. Other weightings are possible to incorporate the value assigned to first-authorship or incorporate the assumption that actually having 10 10-author papers is more valuable than 1 sole-author paper.
Productivity indicators:**
If you are comparing researchers at different career stages, it can be important to control for the fact that people with longer careers have had more time to publish and more time for those publications to get cited.
If you are more interested in research productivity, then you probably want to focus on indicators of either average annual academic output or output over some recent time period (e.g., last 3 years, last 5 years, etc.).
A few indicators include the following:
H-index divided by years since first publication. Variants include the annual rate of increase of h-index over the last five years. Note that this does not control for variation in personal contribution or discipline citation practices.
Number of first or lead author papers per year. This could be adapted to focus on number of such papers in journals of a certain quality.
Average annual increase in annual citation counts over the last x years.
Summary:
All citation-based metrics have issues. That said, if you are aware of the limitations of the different metrics and draw on a complementary set of indicators, you are more likely to make a considered assessment of an academic's research impact.
In general, it makes most sense to compare researcher metrics to discipline-specific norms. It's important to characterise their publication style: quality versus quantity, degree of involvement in each paper, small number of authors per paper versus many authors per paper, etc. And it's also important to be clear on whether you are interested in recent productivity versus total career output versus total career impact.
More importantly, metrics are heuristics. Where important decisions are being made, they shouldn't replace reading the person's actual work or seeking out assessments by knowledgable experts.
Thanks for the detailed answer. Are all these factors considered during postdoc selection process and faulty recruitment process?
Comparisons are often difficult even within a single discipline due to varying practices. For example, I publish in algorithms and bioinformatics. Algorithms papers tend to have equal authors, while author order matters in bioinformatics. Bioinformatics papers tend to have more authors and get more citations. Metrics get weird if you regularly publish algorithms papers that people in bioinformatics find relevant.
Seems like relatively easy problems to solve.
How do you compare the quality of two researchers when they are in different fields of research? Are there any other means to evaluate the quality of research?
Compare to the median in their field. For example, search up the metrics of ~10-20 researchers in the first field and calculate their median h-index. You can also calculate the standard deviation. Then you can place the researcher into a percentile, and compare that.
How do you evaluate researchers where most of their citations come from papers where they are one of a large number of co-authors and their non-collaborative works are cited much less often?
You can exclude outliers by removing them from your sample before calculating the h-index.
By the way, there's a relevant section in the Wikipedia article on h-index you might be interested in.
Thanks for the Wikipedia link
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71948 | What to do when a manuscript is still under review after 14 months? withdraw?
I have submitted a manuscript to a journal, but after 14 months they have not given me any answer while I have sent email to them many times. Now, What can I do?
(I only received a revision 12 months ago, and after I sent the revise version of the manuscript, I have not received any response. Also, a mailed them many times to everyone who I can find his/her email, but no response. It's current status is under review.)
Have to tried contacting the publisher or calling someone in charge of the journal?
Have they not responded at all? Or have they responded with "in review"? Is it a topic with significant theoretical components (which may take time)?
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Can you clarify your question. The first part implies that you you submitted a manuscript for the first time and have waited 14 months. Then you say something about it being a revise and resubmit and waiting 12 months.
I was an ejournal senior editor for four years. Although few of them are really professionally acceptable, there are numerous confounding factors that can cause a break between an editor and authors. These include unanticipatable reviewer declines, lingering sponsoring institution policy changes including threatened journal cancellations, journal management system breakdowns, and of course, gross editor mismanagement. A submitting author should hold a journal to a published timeline (including any extensions the editor requests and the author formally accepts) and withdraw their manuscript quickly for resubmission elsewhere if that timeline or negotiated extensions) isn't being met. This withdrawal should be written (electronically is fine) with copies to the Journal editor AND the Department Head of the sponsoring department/institution. An acknowledgement from either is to be welcomed but not necessary to terminate the relationship and allow the author to move on. When resubmitting elsewhere, an author may be requested to submit evidence of previous submission termination. I only made this request once (out of 300 manuscript submissions) and it was willingly supplied.
In your conditions I would withdraw the paper. Find the editor surface mail and send a formal withdraw letter explaining your reasons and precisely says that if you have no answers within a month you will consider your paper as withdrawn.
Send the same letter to the editor via email. Wait a month and in case of no answer start submitting elsewhere.
It arrived to a friend. After the surface mail letter, the editor answer that the paper for some unknown reason was simply lost!
It arrives, we can simply hope that it won't arrive too frequently ;-)
although the most simple way, but it is not reasonable to withdraw after 14 months!! There must be a solid reason for this unethical irresponsive behavior of the journal. As an author, you have unveiled your work for a privileged community and your work/ideas might (might be with a low probability but it is a might!) be exploited/hijacked simply by various individuals correlated to the editor-in-chief/editor/guest editor/JEO Assistants/whoever that has access to your submitted paper. Suppose your precious experiments and ideas are studied by members of paper generation business networks that absolutely exist nowadays (call for pubpeer.com researchers' comments to get the picture). Unfortunately the editor who is not committed to make a first decision according to the journal's timeline is not ethical and also not reliable at all, and so is not the journal for employing him/her. There are some legislations such as ethical codes held up by some publishing companies that may help, however not prevalent. In serious cases filing lawsuits against the editorial board or even the publishing company is absolutely helpful, although costly. The scientific community must make a solid plan for such unethical behaviors of some editorial boards.
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16832 | Why upload to academic preprint sites like arXiv?
The recent question about the legality of uploading to arXiv 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.)
probably not worth a full answer, but another is the absurdly slow review process in math. I have a paper that's been on the arXiv for 4 1/2 years that is still waiting on a decision.
I don't think this is really a duplicate: this question is specifically about arXiv, whereas the other question is more generally about publishing working papers e.g. on personal websites. The answers are very different, too. Voted to reopen.
This is definitely not a duplicate, since the revised version of the other question is specifically about working papers discussing work in progress. The arXiv, on the other hand, is mostly used for posting essentially finished papers (i.e., ready to submit to a journal or similar).
Note that you can also upload "postprint" (the accepted manuscript) to the preprint archive. That's what I do with those of my papers that fit on arXiv: in my field it is still a gray zone whether a previous manuscript on arXiv would be compromising the novelty.
@cbeleites: That's interesting. In math it's clear that a previous manuscript on the arXiv is fine, but in some cases unclear whether posting the accepted version violates the publication agreement.
@MarkMeckes: that's true, not all copyright transfer agreements allow this. But nowadays many do. Also see the changes in German copyright law which allow this now for publicly funded projects after 1 year embargo.
Related: Are there any examples for an ArXiv publication nurturing or preventing plagiarism?
@BenWebster but then why one would submit on journals, if their papers get equally reviews in there? Or is this incorrect?
@Ooker One submits to journals mostly because one wants tenure. From time to time, one also gets useful feedback from referees, but that's very unpredictable.
In mathematics, there are several reasons to post to the arXiv:
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.]
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?
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.
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.
Great summary of the appeals. Makes me wish my subfield actually was bigger on arXiv / preprint usage!
@MatthewG. Somebody has to start the trend! Why not you and your collaborators?
@DavidRicherby It's a good point, and one I'll be raising next time the research group gets together.
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?
Definitely varies by subfield -- Looking at it I see the CS section indeed appears healthy, but I've never read a paper which came from arXiv. Must be my subfield-- or perhaps it's big gap in my knowledge base.
It varies a lot. A crude approximation is that the closer the field is to mathematics (TCS, ML etc) the more likely you are to see stuff on the arxiv. For example, I don't think anyone in computer architecture posts on the arxiv.
Very subfield-related. In software engineering, I have so far seen a grand total of zero relevant papers in arxiv (however, I do not follow it closely as the ROI is very small in my field).
What are the similar websites like arxiv in engineering and other sciences?
@parsa: I don't know. Ask it as a new question if you like.
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:
write and polish a paper
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)
submit to the target venue
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.
if the work was accepted at the target venue, good for you
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.
This makes a good point about the different time frames of research and publishing. In some fields, like math, the validity/interest of a paper may depend a great deal on other, very recent papers, by the same authors or not. Frequently those older papers are not yet in print, maybe still being refereed, when the newer papers are being refereed. Without access to the older papers, it can be difficult or impossible to make a reasonable decision about the publishability of the newer paper. But this argument is less for an individual author than for an entire field.
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?
See http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16831/is-it-legal-to-upload-a-paper-to-arxiv-when-it-is-under-double-blind-review-for?noredirect=1&lq=1
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 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.
@TobiasKildetoft why doesn't it answer the question? It explains why it would benefit your community and so indirectly yourself. It seems to me a valid reason "Why would one be concerned about getting a manuscript on arXiv, if it's already under review with a journal"
It seems to be an explanation of why it would be of benefit to the scientific community if there was a requirement to publish on arXiv. This is not what the question asks.
@TobiasKildetoft It explains why it would benefit the scientific community if people do it. A requirement is just a way of enforcing this. I have reworded my answer to put the emphasis on people rather than on requirements.
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5348 | Should the personal/research statement be technical?
Related: Choosing research ideas to include in a statement of purpose
I know I must describe my past and current research in my personal/research statement or statement of purpose. But do I use technical terms?
I was given the advice that since the people reading my statement are mathematicians (I am applying to US for applied mathematics), they should know what I am talking about.
Although I am applying to applied mathematics, it would also be nice to hear from other fields (biology, computer science, engineering etc) about this.
At least in computer science: Yes, but.
What admissions committees are looking for in your application is strong evidence of research potential. One of the indicators of research potential is the ability to write about your chosen field in its native language; not just technical terms, but their proper usage and context. In particular, if you are describing your past research results, or a particular future research problem, you should describe it just as any professional researcher would.
However, there is technical language and technical language, and you want the former. The vast majority of your statements should be understandable to a general audience of (in your case) applied mathematicians, not just to experts in your chosen subsubsubfield. For the really technical details, cite the literature or point to your own work on your web page. (The ability to effectively explain your research to non-experts, demonstrated knowledge of the literature, and willingness to embarrass yourself in public by posting your work to the web are also strong indicators of research potential.)
I believe there are two types of documents: statement of purpose and research statement. The research statement describes what are you going to do in the PhD.. am I correct ?..I saw this requirement in the CS @ Oxford.
@seteropere - UK application process is different from the US. For the UK, you need the statement I mentioned and a research proposal (pick a project, details of how you plan to do the project) + supervisor before applying. For the US, you don't need to pick a project, supervisor or have a detailed research proposal. Just the general statement of purpose.
In the US, the research statement is called a "statement of purpose". But if you want admission to a top department, you need to write a research statement.
@JeffE - Thanks for taking time to answer my question. To clarify: when you say "research statement" you are referring to a description of the applicant's past, present, future research like what you described in an answer for the related question. For the UK, this is also the best way to meet the statement of purpose requirement. However, in the UK, they also require a detailed research proposal (can be ~6 pages) outlining step by step how you plan to e.g. acquire data, analyze the data, what kind of reports you will produce when for a specific research topic agreed by a supervisor.
in your first sentence of the last paragraph, I think you mean "there are everyday language and technical language"
@Ooker. No, I wrote it correctly. "There are dinner jackets and dinner jackets. This is the latter." — Vesper Lynd, Casino Royale.
Meaning of a quote in movie Casino Royale (2006)
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139543 | How does Google Scholar rank search results?
I am attempting to identify how Google Scholar chooses which publications to rank highly in search results.
I'm aware that Google Scholar uses metadata from academic websites, but therein my understanding of the process ends.
My query: What parts of Google Scholar's process for indexing and ranking search results is public, and where can that information be found?
Here is what the about page says:
Google Scholar aims to rank documents the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each document, where it was published, who it was written by, as well as how often and how recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature.
Here is an academic article that attempted to deconstruct the ranking algorithm: Beel et al 2009, PDF
They suggest that two key factors were the citation count (more citations pushes the article higher up the search list) and the search term appearing in the title. They review a wide range of features.
Note that the article is 10 years old and the algorithm has presumably been updated over the years.
References
Beel, J., & Gipp, B. (2009, July). Google Scholar’s ranking algorithm: an introductory overview. In Proceedings of the 12th international conference on scientometrics and informetrics (ISSI’09) (Vol. 1, pp. 230-241).
I think it is part of Googles business model to keep that information secret. If they specified how the rank is calculated people would try to game the system and it would become less useful.
The algorithm, which is what they keep confidential, is just one component in a process. Looking at how they do search rankings on their traditional search engine, you can find other factors including the popularity of sites and the money spent on promotion. I'm just unclear on what, if anything, they have likewise disclosed about the process for google scholar. I don't want to extend those details revealed on their main service without evidence they also apply.
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72419 | How to present participation in undergraduate research experience programs on CV when applying for jobs in industry?
I am mathematics undergraduate student interested in joining the workforce out of undergraduate (quant finance and data analysis). The past few summers I have been participating in pure math research programs (REUs), and I am struggling to write a résumé section for the REUs.
If any mathematicians are reading this, my most recent REU problem is PDE regularity. I'm at a loss for words on how to explain that to a layperson without making it sound useless.
How do I effectively talk about my work/results in the context of a resume read by applicant tracking systems and human resources?
This sounds like a question for industry people (i.e. [workplace.se]). I'm not sure a bunch of academics are the most qualified people to answer this... (Don't cross-post, though)
Where did you do REU? Academic institutes or industry companies? Lp regularity and blow-up of solutions to pdes from fluid dynamics are not too far away from industry if you apply for jobs in large aerospace companies.
I don't think people consider going from undergrad to a job "transitioning from academia to industry". Without demeaning it, it's probably the most normal thing to do after undergrad. You also won't have the same issues as people transitioning from academia. For example, people won't expect you to have experience coming out of undergrad, while after a Ph.D you need to sell your time in academia as a reasonable alternative to industry experience.
Buddy its a transition from a resume focused on academia to a resume focused on getting jobs in industry
As a general note, do not use so many contractions and abbreviations. Writing terms out in full, at least the first time you use them, will never be wrong and may save a reader some time and effort.
You need to think of your resume in terms of what it tells the expected reader about your suitability for the job you are seeking.
Don't try to explain the subject matter of your research project "to a layperson". If the project does relate to a potential job, the hiring manager will either be a mathematician who understands the area, or will have mathematicians who understand the area on their technical staff, or at least will have arranged to consult a suitable mathematician on the hiring decision. If it does not relate, the reader of the resume probably does not care what the project was actually about.
A research project may tell a potential employer other things about you. Can you work independently on a specified problem? Can you write a coherent, readable report? Is your work good enough to lead to being accepted for a research project at a high prestige institution?
Also, this has been asked quite a few other times. Look at the "related" questions as they may be helpful.
@DaveKaye none of the related ones seem actually related. Can you post the ones you find relevant? Thanks!
@small.pde Hmmm....they seemed more related when I first looked. So just to give general advice (from someone who made the transition from industry to academia and back) you have to turn your academic work into more of what industry pros will be looking for. That's going to be things like discrete, accomplished tasks. Did your research unravel some result that had been previously unattainable? Did you give presentations on that work? Did you teach to students and have meaningful outcomes from that? It's gonna be along those lines that you'll have to convert your resume. Good luck!
Without demeaning your accomplishments, undergraduate mathematics tends to mean you're barely getting into academia and mathematical research. In fact, I am in the middle of my PhD with some published papers and that's still the case. Because of this, what you're learning/researching in undergrad is not as esoteric as it may seem. The topics at REUs are usually chosen because they are easily approachable by undergraduates and widely applicable.
Let's take Lp-regularity. Sure, you can dig deep into pure-math, looking into Lp-regularity of PDEs on manifolds etc., but this is actually a very relevant topic.
You say you're interested in quantitative finance? One of the biggest areas of research and application in quantitative finance is stochastic (partial) differential equations (SPDEs). Many models in the field (including the Black-Scholes model) use different forms of stochastic differential equations. Understanding the regularity results of these equations is crucial to understanding the error estimates for the numerical methods which are used to solve these models. One of the biggest recent results in the field (which resulted in a Fields Medal in 2014) is Holder-regularity of some solutions to SPDEs (and using a Holder-regularity approach, "Regularity Structures", to famously solve the KPZ equation), and people have already shown how this framework can be used to make numerical methods for previously-intractable SPDEs. In fact, in many cases one can only understand "the solution to SPDEs" via Sobolev spaces and Lp-regularity, making it essential to understand the numerical methods and simulation. So simulating financial models with low error requires the mathematics you learned.
But many PDEs require understanding Lp-regularity since many PDEs require talking about Sobolev spaces. In fact, one of the main uses of modern mathematics in industry is Finite Element Methods (FEM, or Finite Element Analysis, FEA). All of these numerical methods are derived for solutions in Sobolev spaces, this is not a fringe topic: this is central to the simulations used in the areospace industry, the petroleum industry, NASA, etc.
Also, some of the main methods in Data Analysis (especially in manifold learning) these days are closely related to optimization on PDEs, usually proving convergence in some weak norm and using facts about the eigenvalues of LaPlacians that you'd be familiar with.
All of this said, I think the best thing to do would be to scramble through Wikipedia and find out how what you learned is related to all of these different fields. Or pick up the Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics and see how the study of PDEs is showing up in systems biology, genomics, medicine, finance, computer science, etc. You don't need to know all of it, but a good understanding of where you currently stand would give you a good perspective on how you're useful. I am not an industry person so I can't recommend on how exactly to put this in your resume, but with this understood you should be able to cater resumes to the jobs you're applying for.
Even if you don't end up doing something directly related to PDEs, I think most people would like that you have some understanding all the new stuff that's going on. At the very least, you will seem "experienced with math and number stuff".
I feel that this doesn't answer my question. My question is how to put my work on a resume so that it gets past the human resources desk and into a trader's hands
Understand how what you've done is useful for the fields you're applying to. I told you where to look in quantitative finance. You're one step away from having a theoretical background in the PDEs for Black Scholes under certain conditions etc., and understanding what "the Greeks" really mean. Having that on a resume can be key for some quant positions. If you truly look at how these parts of PDEs are related to the jobs you're applying for, your resume will write itself. As I said, this type of research is not esoteric at all, and it's highly applicable.
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90339 | Should the first page of a thesis chapter have a header and footer?
I am writing my Master's thesis.
I find it unprofessional to prevent the first page of the chapter to take headers and footers.
Should the first page of a thesis chapter have a header and footer?
not that it matters too much, but you write it is "unprofessional to prevent... to take". This is a double negative. So do you think it's a good idea or not?
If your institution or supervisor have a fixed opinion on this, adhere to this. Otherwise, consider the following:
Having both, a header and a footer, makes your layout rather crammed, so it’s not a good idea anyway.
Usually, the header of a page layout contains the page number and the title of the current chapter or section (varying on odd/even pages).
Usually, the chapter heading is designed in such a manner that it is open to the top.
In this case, using a header on the first page on a chapter is bad for two reasons:
It breaks the layout of the chapter heading.
Except for the page number, it contains redundant information: Your chapter title and your section title will be on the same page.
As the page number is rather small, it can be stowed away at the bottom of the page, so it is there for the purposes of citing page numbers. For leafing through the thesis to find a particular page, a gap in the page numbering at the head is not a problem.
Hence it’s quite common in professional typesetting (just look at some textbooks) to omit the header on the first page of a chapter and instead have a solitary page number at the bottom of the page.
Many universities have quite specific requirements for formatting and layout of theses and dissertations. You should first check these requirements with your university's graduate college (or whatever entity oversees the approval and publishing of theses/dissertations) before you alter formatting.
This cannot be emphasized enough. Please follow your university's rules on formatting very carefully when you submit your document.
@SeanRoberson Instead, I cannot emphasize enough that not all universities have rules on thesis formatting, and thus I think that we should be able to provide more information on the rationale of certain stylistic choices.
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91781 | Would adding paragraph about the motivation provided by someone who doubted me to my final year project acknowledgment be unprofessional?
In my final year project, and since it will be my last postgraduate year, I want to add a taste of truth in my Acknowledgment, where I think it's the personal part of the project, where you are allowed to express yourself.
After thanking my professors, supervisors, parents in a very formal and professional way, I am eager to add this paragraph at the end.
I had a period where I was the underdog in the high school, I was treated badly, and I lost motivation to study because I wasn't encouraged, all my work and even good results in exams were not even appreciated. I was called the stupid dude, the person who thinks he knows but knows nothing, and ... and all of the this was by my math teacher, not my colleagues.
After that I was accepted in one of the top universities in Lebanon, in one of the hardest entrance exams, with an acceptance rate of not more than 15%. And after entering the university I was a top student.
For that I have written in the last paragraph of my acknowledgment:
Since it’s the end of the years I spent in the Lebanese
University-Faculty of Engineering, I’m glad to thank the math teacher
who once told me: "you will never pass the entrance exam of the
Lebanese University-Faculty of engineering, my nephew failed surely
you will fail ". Thank you dude, you were my motive, and proving you
wrong was one of my goals.
Would this be unprofessional?
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
"Professional" is not what you should be asking. You should be asking "will I be better off if I write this or if I don't?" You will be better off by whatever feeling of revenge you feel if you write it. You will be worse off if somebody reads it and reacts negatively to you because of it in a way that matters. The odds of this are hard to evaluate, but probably very low. The "professional" thing is not to include it. Going forward, I would suggest this event doesn't matter but it is practice for holding your tongue in difficult situations.
I would refrain from adding this to the written/electronic version of the project report. It's very personal and uses colloquial language that should be avoided in a formal report, even in the acknowledgement section.
Having said that, you may still give to that particular teacher a copy with your personal hand-written dedication.
Btw, great example of negative motivation (or what it's called): a negative comment with positive result.
Although it could feel cathartic to "stick it" to this teacher (who was clearly quite rude), it probably isn't worth it. I wouldn't recommend that step.
+1 for giving that particular teacher a copy with a hand-written dedication.
I certainly think it could be worded in a more positive and professional way. It comes off a bit salty and as if all your research work was to prove one man wrong.
If I were to read your work, I would certainly get a bad initial impression.
He could write it subliminally, in such a way that only he and the teacher would know (assuming the teacher would read it). For example, "It's the end of my time at the Lebanese University-Faculty of Engineering and I’m glad to to have passed the entrance exam through all the challenges. Ultimately, I am thankful to the teaching staff who believed I would be able to scale this hurdle, for it requires adequate mentor-ship to succeed in such endeavors".
@A.T.Ad That's beautiful :) I truly hope the asker does that. Perhaps adding the name of the relevant teacher would be helpful in clarifying the point being made. It wouldn't be harmful in your version.
@A.T.Ad I'm going to use your Paragraph, it's well written and explains the point I want to deliver, which is mainly never allowing people's opinion to be your reality.
@A.T.Ad Nicely written! Subtle, professional, and well executed.
@elia: Please do reword it, so it isn't verbatim traced to this site...
I originally wrote this as a comment, but as I am seeing different opinions in several answers here I feel like I need to write a full answer:
Although it could feel cathartic to "stick it" to this teacher (who was clearly quite rude), it probably isn't worth it, and definitely is not worth showing it to this particular teacher.
Don't do this. No, it is not professional, it won't gain you anything.
People who know your situation might think it's funny - these are the people you should share this with, in another context, or anonymously somewhere if you are looking for some validation. Post it on Reddit under a throwaway, let people comment on it here.
People who don't know your situation well, or who have a positive predisposition toward the person you are referring to, or just don't know you are likely to have a different opinion. They might see this as petty, vindictive, or just disrespectful. It just isn't worth your trouble.
If this teacher was that rude to you, unless you think it was intended as motivation, they've shown they aren't worth your time at all anymore. You achieved what you wanted to achieve - move on and be your own person.
A bit immature and passively aggressive. :)
I too would advise against adding the passage as is. Yet, I'd suggest you replace it with something targeting at people who may be reading it, focus on perhaps how to stay true to one's dream and don't give up even faced with adversity or discouragement.
Second, would you like to reconcile with the teacher? It's clear that you're not over him (since you use "dude" I assume it's a male) and would go so far to dedicate a paragraph to his comment. Why not pay him a visit and tell him the good news? He could be upset about his nephew's failing at that moment. I do think after these many years, you both may have a different feeling. Give it a thought!
Let the negative nagging feeling go and enjoy your career.
Unfortunately, yes, it's unprofessional.
You could perhaps say something like this instead: "I'm glad to give special thanks to the math teacher who motivated me with his words about the Lebanese University-Faculty of engineering's entrance exam."
Only you will know what you really mean by that.
I had seriously been considering dividing my Ph.D. dissertation's "acknowledgments" section into expressions of gratitude and a few paragraphs with condemnations - of university management for oppressing the junior academic staff and for some things they had done to me which, well, are beyond the scope of this answer, but are quite terrible and sometimes illegal (I took them to court, too - and won twice). I actually couldn't wait to have the university library admit a copy of that into the archives for posterity.
But then some time passed; and I gave it more thought; and I realized that other than a brief (though sweet) sense of vindication, it would better to take the high road and keep the admonishments and denunciations out my dissertation. Looking back at it years later, I know I'll feel I did the right thing.
Still, you know what you really should do?
Go visit your old school, and ask the headmaster for permission to speak to the senior class. If they let you do it, you could use that opportunity - not to make a personal attack against that Math teacher, but to give your story as an example of why they should not be discouraged by nay-sayers, even if they are the supposedly all-knowing teachers.
And - you can always write an article or opinion piece and try to get it published in a newspaper. I can guarantee you it'll have more readers than your thesis :-P
Don't. It seems immature and passive aggressive. And it belittles yourself and your work if you indicate that you spent years doing what you did not out of interest in the subject or because of job prospects or whatever, but to spite this one person (and it gives undue power to that person).
If it is important for you to mention the episode, then do so; but do it in a straightforward and honest way instead of ironically, and try to formulate it "positively", such as:
My high school math teacher once told me I would never pass the university
entrance exam, but my parents (? or whoever..) never stopped supporting and
believing in me, for which I am eternally grateful.
Or:
My high school math teacher once told me I would never pass the university
entrance exam, which was hurtful and disheartening; but in the end I succeeded. If you are a teacher: Please refrain from belittling your students; if you are a student: please do not let yourself be discouraged by disparaging remarks.
This is one of the best answers on this site. Well-thought, well-explained and with pratical suggestions
Don't even spend a second of your valuable time on writing to or about these lousy (peep). Send them to (peep) when you see them in person. Or tell them to see Figure 1. Meet them after work outside the building and let them know how good you are such that they avoid you in the future. But don't leave any written trail of your attitude. It's better to remove them from the Acknowledgements altogether.
You're a student, not a professional, so "professionalism" is a category error.
However, I find your proposed paragraph rather crass and it suggests that you've spent years and years harbouring a grudge against this person. You might consider something along the lines of the following, which still tells the funny story but does it without (IMO) making you look bitter and obsessed.
Since this the end of my time at the Lebanese University-Faculty of Engineering, I’m glad to thank the math teacher who motivated by telling me: "you will never pass the entrance exam of the Lebanese University-Faculty of engineering, my nephew failed surely you will fail."
At least, repeating "my nephew failed" still seems petty since it paints that teacher as an idiot (even if maybe correctly).
PhD students can certainly be professional or not. For graduate students (as the OP) this seems borderline—but they'll be judged as adults by anybody reading (especially if they stay in academia). So maybe professionalism is a category error, but in practice you best behave professionally even as a student, especially in your thesis.
That's the sort of paragraph that people who already like you will find funny. Some people who don't know you are going to find this negative. They might wonder why this teacher would say this to you.
I would use the space to thank the people who helped you. And if by some chance the teacher who said that to you reads your acknowledgements, he should have some idea why he's not mentioned. I think that when positive people have nothing to say about someone it has almost the same effect as when negative people have bad things to say about someone. (I'm not saying you're either.)
"They might wonder why this teacher would say this to you." +1. Sadly, some will think he was correct and you barely managed—including other professors with an elitist attitude.
How about:
For all the wonderful time I have spent in the Lebanese University-Faculty of Engineering, I am glad to thank all those who have supported me or made me very motivated to do my best against all odds, including the university entrance exam.
Very accurate, and if you send your paper to your former math teacher, he/she would certainly know what you're referring to, yet nothing in it is accusatory.
Answer this: Do you think this would be a sign or moral superiority or do you think a comment like this would come from exactly that kind of people who told you you're not going to make it in the first place?
I think it depends on the person you want to be here - besides the fact that such a statement in a formal report is kind of inappropriate. Do you want to stay above this? You showed them anyway. Don't you think not letting them know what you think is a much bigger punishment? If you write something like this, all they're going to do is say: "Yeah, he made it. But come on. Look at this poor comment he wrote into this document here."
Think about it.
There is nothing wrong to tell the truth.
What is the purpose of an acknowledgement? To show others how you make it in the end after so much hardship. An acknowledgement is also the integral part of your paper, so when you become a Nobel prize winner in future, it will be very interesting for us to read this part. As to the teacher who is not friendly or who should not be called an educator at all, why do you bother to consider how to keep his or her face because he never did so for you.
Go ahead with your writing.
"so when you become a Nobel prize winner in future, it will be very interesting for us to read this part" -- do you really think this is helpful advice?
To help a young person to have his own confidence, is there anything wrong? Isn't it helpful enough?
Giving people unrealistic encouragement, and encouraging them to be confrontational or arrogant, is not helpful
@YemonChoi -- "confrontational" is just a bad word for a person who resists mistreatment; "arrogant" is just a bad word for "confident" or "assertive".
@bubba I disagree. Just because those words can be misused, this does not mean they are always non-applicable. My comments are based on experience of actually being a student and now being a teacher. I believe in giving constructive advice, not just the advice people want to hear.
When the student writes down everything on his mind, he also wants to help others to see the world in reality, and it is also very objective because he is simply a recorder of the fact and others will benefit from such writing. If the readers are teachers, they will know they should not give ill-treatment to students because it is very hurtful; if the readers are students, they will know the world is what they think it is like and that they have to make a lot of efforts, even without the help from a teacher.@Yemon Choi
"and it is also very objective because he is simply a recorder of the fact" -- in my experience, as a student and teacher and author and referee, this is very often not the case.
Aiming for a Nobel prize (rather than research) will harm, for instance, people with impostor syndrome (endemic among grad students). "Confrontational" is a good word for those who fight when it doesn't further their overall interest (say, writing inflammatory acknowledgments rather than using a punching bag). And "arrogant" is a good word for those who show overconfidence: "humility is generally good" is now IMHO supported by studies on overconfidence bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect).
Personally, I would include the comment, or something like it. I think it needs some re-wording (the word "dude"seems inappropriate, to me, for example), but the basic sentiment is OK, in my opinion. Clearly these thoughts are important to you, and they deserve to be expressed.
But note that I said "personally". In other words, this is just my own approach to things, and it may or may not work for you. I'm often considered direct (abrupt?), outspoken (harsh?), innovative (undisciplined?), and undiplomatic. I'm sometimes accused of being "unprofessional", and I actually regard that as a compliment, because, to me, "professional" typically implies stuffy, formal, and humorless.
So, short answer ... some people certainly will regard your comments as "unprofessional". That label doesn't bother me at all, but the key question is whether or not it bothers you.
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87241 | Is it okay to refuse a laptop from a new university if you already have your own personal laptop?
I got a postdoc position and I am moving to a new university. I was contacted by my new professor about choosing a laptop that the department would buy for me.
The option they have is roughly the same model I have currently as my private machine, and the one that I have used to finish my grad school. Thus I find another laptop unnecessary, but also a hassle (having two computers means installing the same stuff twice, etc.).
My question: is it a bad idea to refuse their offer?
Additional information:
I don't have problems using my private computer for work, nor mixing personal and work stuff on the same machine. I did that during my graduate school.
But also I understand the pros of getting a work computer (e.g. if the laptop is broken or stolen it will get taken care of) and that my response of refusing their offer may be strange.
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
It surely matters where you are.
In the U.S., at many universities, "privileged information" of various sorts is supposedly not ever to be kept on "personal", as opposed to "institution-owned and maintained" machines. Or, as in some comments, as soon as you do have work-related data on your personal machine, that machine becomes liable to Freedom-of-Information warrants, and you yourself can get into various sorts of trouble for insufficiently guaranteeing security.
A similar issue exists (depending on jurisdiction, etc) with regard to email accounts. My (U.S. R1) university account is subject to search without too much probable cause. Some of my colleagues hesitate to have any substantive-sensitive discussion by email because the University's policy is that we are not to delete any such email, but preserve it indefinitely. That kind of thing. (No, it's not clear how this would be enforced, nor what the impact of "pleading ignorance/technical-incompetence" would result in. Maybe it's just CYA policy on the part of the institution.)
Wow, I had no idea that the law (in the US I presume?) worked like that. That seems a little unfortunate. I think it healthy for universities to have a strong sense of freedom to communicate ideas without fear of official reprisal, yet from what you describe the system is not really set up that way.
@TheoreticalPerson, fortunately, operationally, you'd never guess that those were the official policies. They are the announced policies, and even though no one comes around "checking on you", if by mischance something unfortunate happens, the Uni has "covered its @$$" legally by having told you that you couldn't do anything at all... and you are all by yourself out there in violation of privacy and other data laws. With good luck, all this is irrelevant, of course. As with many things, the question is about how catastrophic the failure modes might be, as opposed to not-good-but-not-so-bad.
We had a person die on the job. The university had 2 disks one for work stuff and one for personal stuff as a student/worker. Now this person had saved everything under personal network disk... as a result we had to plan and enumerate what files we needed from the disk for 1 week and then with the supervision of 1) Our manager 2) Universitys Lawyer 3) Executor of estate we could under 1 hour dig for files we deemed nessesery to use. After that it all got sealed for 50 years. Admittedly I am not in US but legal reasons across the globe exist.
@TheoreticalPerson In academia the law is applied not so much to prevent exchange of information and more for two purposes: (1) to protect the IT infrastructure of an institute from harm via infected devices. This usually means only centrally administered computers gain access. Computer users generally hate it but there are some benefits to it. (2) Data protection issues. If you’re working with human patient data, there are all sorts of (good and important) restrictions and regulations of how the data must be handled so no private information gets leaked accidentally.
@TheoreticalPerson The goal is not to restrict your freedom but to be able to control the IT infrastructure and prosecute its misuse. Imagine someone using a legitimately-looking university e-mail in scams for example.
@DmitryGrigoryev I appreciate that the goal might not be malicious, but it never is. What if a country like Turkey had similar laws regarding indefinitely preserving communications, and little protection from searches? Things said in a more naive, stable, time might land one in a bad place.
@TheoreticalPerson The problem of Turkey is that those laws and restrictions are applied to personal communications.
@DmitryGrigoryev I agree that it is a problem if surveillance is applied to personal communication, but I think it is also a problem if it is applied to academic communication.
If you are at a public university many of the things on your machine may also be subject to FOIA requests.
@TheoreticalPerson I used to work at a university research department. We collected and studied people's medical data. It would not have been OK to share this data.
@emory, I agree absolutely. But this is doesn't prevent people sharing data that they shouldn't. If the user is malicious, this is not going to help, and it could have quite extensive side effects.
"No, it's not clear how this would be enforced" — Many email hosts (e.g. Office365) offer long-term archiving of emails such that even if a user 'deletes' them they'll still be available in the archive. Probably for precisely this reason.
@TheoreticalPerson Simply said, are you fine with every single file on your computer becoming potentially public information? The IT department of your university unilaterally to decide to remotely reformat your machine with a basic image (e.g. if it got infected somehow)? With someone else having the ability to stealthily look at every single file on your computer without you noticing and being able to install arbitrary programs (including keyloggers)? I somehow doubt it, but that's exactly what you're agreeing too if you join your private laptop to the work domain and use it for work.
In this case in particular the rules are not just here to protect the university (although it makes their life a great deal easier as well; and depending what you're working on it might very well be a requirement) but also to protect you. I fail to see how this limits freedom of communication in any way - you can still share information you want easily, but without all the downsides.
The University could log all of the emails, both you send and receive through its systems. A "no delete" policy is technically unneeded for that. It could be needed from a psychological view: to let understand with all of its users that they have your mails and they can any time check it.
+1 for the legal aspects. I absolutely wouldn't accept a student keeping sensitive health information on their personal computer in my lab.
First, I would strongly suggest that you have a work computer and a personal computer, and then keep those two separate for legal reasons. Although this is not the place for legal advice, and there are many other factors to consider, you should know that in general:
Your employer owns your work computer, and can legally confiscate it at any time and for any reason. Thus, you should consider any personal information you have on your work computer to be accessible by your employer. This includes personal information like tax forms and private correspondence. It also includes information you might not want your employer to have, like criticisms of the administration or job offers from other institutions.
Academics tend to have many varied endeavors inside and outside of their academic profession. Your employer probably has a very strong claim to the intellectual property rights of anything you create on their computer, even if the IP does not relate to your university job and even if you're only using generic software such as Microsoft Word.
Your position at a university may expose you to FERPA or HIPAA protected information, and your university may have specific expectations about how you access that data. My university insists that all laptops use whole-disk encryption because the loss or theft of unencrypted student records is a major FERPA event that must be disclosed to the government and/or public.
Second, there are some practical and legal problems with retaining your own computer from a software licensing point of view.
There's a high probability that a lot of the software on your current computer should no longer be used according to common academic licensing agreements. This is definitely true for certain specific software such as MATLAB, which are generally licensed to the university for use by university students and employees (this is called a "site license"). Since you are no longer a student of that university the license demands that you stop using that software.
This all depends on the specific licenses that your university has negotiated, but the situation above is very common. It almost certainly applies to any proprietary technical software you've got, and there's a very good chance that it also applies to any proprietary productivity software you've got (e.g. the Microsoft Office suite, VPN software, etc.). It may in some cases apply to the operating system itself, though this is less common today than it used to be.
The reverse of the above situation is also a problem. Many university licenses stipulate that software may only be installed on university owned computers or on student computers. As a postdoc you're no longer a student, so their IT department might balk at installing any work-related software on your personal computer.
The IT department might, by policy, decline to assist you with your personal computer in any way. Depends on the institution.
@200_success In my experience the IT department may also, in practice, decline to assist with a university owned computer…
I've always taken this approach (+!) though the work machine is a desktop and I do use my personal laptop for limited work-related stuff (e.g. presentations which aren't confidential). A laptop that would suit me for portability wouldn't be up to everyday use so it works well and sidesteps any licensing/compatibility issues. Our helpful local IT people will advise at least when it comes to work-related tasks on personal hardware -- I don't just say that because one of them knows who I am here!
@200_success the large part of reason why I like to use my own laptop is that I can work without the IT department assistance (which usually boils down to intervention).
It's not at all necessarily the case that: 1. the employer owns the laptop (in some places they just buy you one, and don't provide tech support); 2. if the employer owns the laptop, that it can confiscate it at all; 3. That if the employer can confiscate the laptop at all, it can do so without prior notice and proper procedure. In fact, 2. and 3. are rather unlikely - although I suppose it depends on the legal regime under which you live. I think that even in "employer is all-powerful" states the US this is probably not the case. Having said that - this is not a bad recommendation.
I know someone who wrote an app using his work laptop. Completely different market segment, but once it was commercially successful, his employer tried to get a piece of it. They did drop the claim before it got to court, but only because the company decided the cost of going after it (including a severance package) was more than they'd win. He dodged a bullet!
@einpoklum I've never seen an employer that didn't issue their own hardware, and make you sign an agreement that says 1) they own it and everything on it, 2) you agree to constant monitoring (whether they do it or not is another story, but they CAN) and 3) you agree to surrender with any or no notice. Literally every single one, even the tiny ones.
@corsiKa: So, you've never seen my two academic employers. Also, that is very sad... are we talking about the US?
@einpoklum The two universities I attended in the US both issued their own laptops, including post-grad positions. And the employers I was referring to were in the US and Canada.
Canada too? I mean, the US I would believe, I thought things were not that bad in Canada.
@einpoklum IANAL, and in the US the question of whether an employer owns all data on an employer-owned computer varies state-by-state. I would not be surprised if it was a similar situation in Canada, because it's not really a privacy issue at hand here it's a property law issue. Your employer owns their laptop and they can do anything they want with it including looking at anything and everything on it's hard drive. E.g. if you own a laptop and loan it to a friend you still retain ownership rights- your friend cannot claim that you are no longer allowed to access portions of your hard drive.
@David: Well, IANAL also, but the phone company owns the phone line and the ISP owns its routers, and still they don't (?) have a right to fully inspect your traffic/phone calls. Of course, the US government copies everything anyway but ignoring that "minor point" there's some expection of privacy, isn't there?
@einpoklum You have a fundamentally different relationship to your employer than a telecom company. Your employer can generally monitor anything you do on employer-owned computers (even real-time screen watching), intercept any communications you send over employer-owned networks, listen to any calls you make using their phones, read any emails sent through their email, see anything you send and recieve on their work cellphone, etc. Most of this is because they own all of the equipment involved. https://www.privacyrights.org/consumer-guides/workplace-privacy-and-employee-monitoring
"Your employer can generally monitor anything you do etc." - not so. That is, it depends on which state you live in. In many states in the world, employees have a legally-established expectations of privacy in certain situations, and the employers is not allowed to monitor those aspects of their activities. (Example: Reading personal webmail on a company computer.) In fact, what you describe sounds - to people from many places in the world - like a totalitarian distopia. Again, I assume you're talking about the US, right? :-(
@einpoklum Yes, I'm talking about the US, which I thought was clear from previous comments. Canada, FYI, also allows employers to monitor their employees technology usage in the same ways as above. There might be some stronger disclosure requirements though. I don't know what Canadian law says about the development of original IP on employer-owned technology.
@einpoklum Even in Europe which has much stricter privacy regulations than Canada or the US generally, the employer still owns the hardware they themselves bought and gave to the employee to work on. I have a hard time seeing why that'd be surprising or somehow morally dubious. I mean you wouldn't try to take your desktop home with you either if you quit, right? There are good reasons for these things as well, without being malicious or anything. E.g. if an employee gets sick, the employer might want to let some other employee handle business mail.
And in Europe at least, if the employer informs you that you're only supposed to use the work computer for work, they have all the right in the world to "spy" on your communication, since after all the only thing you could be doing with the machine would be work related and therefore not secret. I'd be rather surprised if Canadian law differed much in that regard. Which yes is why every sane person won't use facebook or private email on a work machine - you've got a private phone, use that.
@Voo: Sorry, but I can't understand how you fail to see the problem. A laptop on which employees typically conduct private business and private conversations which their employer has a right to spy on and read/listen/watch all of that?
@einpoklum It's a laptop provided by employer to do work that you're getting paid for. There's a very simple solution to your problem: Use your private devices for private conversations and work devices to do work on. Otherwise you'll always have to live with compromises and in the end business has a large vested interest at having devices with their data on it under strict control, which clashes with your interest in privacy.
It's probably best to write to them saying you would prefer to us your own computer and ask whether that's an option.
If they do require you to use their machine, you could order one with very similar or compatible hardware to yours, image the disk of your old laptop to an external hard drive, and restore on the lab computer. No installation or configuration necessary.
About using personal computers for work - ignoring any possible legal arguments, I would advise taking a work computer if you have got the option.
First it can save you the hassle of lugging it around as you can transfer data and emails between them using cloud/web services (be it private or public cloud); it also saves both of them from wear and tear.
Talking about wear and tear, your personal computer may also benefit from:
Not being used so much;
Not being carried around.
Talking from experience, when I entered my last job they did not have the option to have a Mac / MacBook Pro, and I used my own during two years. It ended having a LCD problem ensuing a small fall and the laptop being moved around every day.
I also lived nearby, and I wanted to walk. Often it was a hassle or depending on the time of the day, even insecure to carry a computer with me.
Nowadays, I have a MacBook Pro at home, and other at work, one has 5 years, the other has 4.
A top-of-line work notebook can be costly, and accepting a work notebook, depending on the part of the world, can signify saving between at least 2000 to 5000 dollars at the end of a few years.
As for the question of reinstalling everything twice, one notebook used to be a clone of the other for years. Lately I do prefer to have two distinct devices, at home I have more software installed that I paid from my own pocket, than at work.
Try asking them for something else, instead. Perhaps they don't provide you with a desktop computer? You might exchange one for the other, and have IT manage your desktop in case you'd rather avoid the hassle.
Alternatively, ask for some other research budget allowance to be made available.
There's no certainty you'll be obliged but it's worth trying.
There are two main benefits of using your personal laptop for work:
You have administrative access to the system. This can be really helpful, if you frequently install new software. IT departments often have good reasons for not giving administrative rights to the users.
Depending on your field, you may find that research projects last longer than postdoctoral affiliations. Hence it can be unwise to rely too much on employer-provided resources to do work.
On the other hand, extra laptops are rarely harmful, especially if they are similar to the ones you already use. Make your working environment easy to synchronize across multiple systems, and life becomes easier when you lose a laptop or move to the next university.
The above only applies to research that you do more for yourself than for your employer. You should use employer-provided resources for teaching, administration, and other duties, which you do directly for your employer, as well as for handling sensitive data. This remains true regardless of whether you are formally required to do so or not.
Certainly there is no harm in accepting the laptop/computer from your office/ university. Keeping seperate things for office and personal use is good practice. For any software issue or defects etc you can look towards university people. And moreover u need not carry it daily if there is safe place in office where you can keep daily after leaving the office
The question mentions explicitly the hassle of having to install/update everything twice.
You seem to see two choices: Accept their computer, or refuse to accept it. The obvious third way is to tell the professor that you already have a laptop that is practically identical to what they want to buy for you, and ask whether the expense is really necessary.
Often it is: If their laptop is locked down for security reasons. If they want the right to get it back at any second with no research material stored on your private computers, and some other reasons. By asking you either save them money, or you will be told the reasons why you can't use your own laptop.
So "refusing" to take the laptop is a bad idea. Making a suggestion is much better.
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114908 | When applying for grants, does the NSF care that I'm "poor"?
When applying for US NSF grants as a PI, does it help my case to discuss how little funding I've had?
To give some background: I am a new-ish faculty member; so far in my career I've received 1/2 of a rather small NSF grant (shared with a co-PI), which didn't even come close to covering the actual cost of a PhD student. On this shoestring budget I've been able to produce a bunch of good work, but in ways that are not sustainable as a long-term funding strategy (getting financial help from senior colleagues, begging my department to let me use startup funds past the original deadline, sending students away for internships so that I don't have to pay for them some semesters, etc.).
Question 1: When applying for new grants, will the NSF panelists consider my productivity relative to my budget? Or do they only care about productivity full stop? If the former, how do I effectively convey this lack of funds in my proposal?
Confounding the situation is that I am at a very highly ranked place in my field. In past talks with programme managers at the NSF, I have heard the message, "we try to spread the funds around and not give it all to people at rich institutions like yours." The problem is that I'm not rich, and if my university has money, I'm certainly not seeing it. Ergo, my impetus to ask this question: how do I convey to the NSF panel that I'm actually pretty "poor"?
Another confounding factor is that students at my institution far more expensive than the national (US) average: I have to ask the NSF for about USD $92k/year for each PhD student I want to fund, whereas I have colleagues at other places who pay about half as much. So even the small amount of money I do get from the NSF doesn't stretch very far. I don't get the sense everyone on the NSF panels realises how big this discrepancy can be: for instance, after receiving the grant above (which covered <1 student) I asked my PM about submitting another proposal; the response was along the lines of, "Why don't you just have fun and enjoy doing research on your current grant?" Which leads to my second question:
Question 2: In my proposals, should I address the fact that PhD students are particularly expensive at my institution? Or will this just turn off panelists who think I am "too expensive?"
To put all of this another way: I once had a vagabond friend who told me, "if you want to beg for money in the rain, you should hide your umbrella." Should I be making it clear that I don't even have an umbrella?
I don't have any relevant first-hand knowledge to support an answer, but I suggest this is usually done by finding ways to spin it 'positively', e.g. 'despite a lack of financial support I have achieved these amazing results:'
I would actually worry that it might work against you. "No one thinks enough of my research to fund me" would be a terrible message to project. The easiest grant to approve is from someone with a long history of successful funded research. No risk seen. This is probably less of an issue for a new academic.
I would speculate that the NSF thinks that the extra cost of having a student at your particular institution is not their problem. To give you an example, ERC grants the same amount of money whether you're in Switzerland or Romania. You can probably fund at least 4 PhD students in Romania with the money it costs to employ one in Switzerland (this is a conservative guesstimate). But then again, you may be able to attract much better students at ETH Zurich than at Bucarest (I suppose you see what I'm hinting at, from the perspective of the funding agency).
Interesting challenge. I haven't served on any of the panels. From word of mouth, my assumption would be any proposal will be evaluated mostly on scientific merit. It might help your case that you've been productive without much funding, but then the lack of funding might also be a perverse signal of less previous success. We can all hope they evaluate the proposal on merit, but the history of decision making even among experts suggests other heuristics are likely to matter. In your case, I would hesitate to explicitly signal the lack of funding.
Having served on ~10 NSF panels, I don't think any panel will care that you're "poor," both because that is difficult to evaluate and because what the panel cares about are the scientific merits of what you're proposing and the likelihood that you can do it. About evaluating "poverty:" resources available vary a lot between and even within universities, and this is impossible to assess. Suppose you can't support a graduate student and the student works as a teaching assistant -- does that, in actuality, take 20% or 80% of their time? Also, how would one fairly evaluate resources shared by colleagues (as in your case)?
More importantly, the panel cares about your proposed work and the likelihood that you can get it done. The quality of past work definitely matters, and what you've done with the resources you have available is important. The quantity matters, but I've been happy to see that quality counts more than quantity.
Aside from all this: Will anyone feel sorry for you given that you've had financial help from senior colleagues and are at a top-tier institution?! I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader...
About Question 2: You want to tell the panelists that the NSF's (and therefore taxpayers') money would go farther if they gave it to someone at a different institution?
Thanks for the feedback; useful to get information from an inside perspective.
"Will anyone feel sorry for you given that you've had financial help from senior colleagues and are at a top-tier institution?!" There are certainly some things that make life easier at a 'top-tier' place, and also some things that make life harder. Just like anyone else, I have good reason to worry about my career ending, losing my job, having to move my family, etc.
The issue raised by question 2 is a very good one. I'm constantly amazed that the NSF and NIH agree to pay the ridiculous tuition amounts charged by private universities in the US, rather than simply refusing.
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7486 | What are the main factors driving popularity of US higher education among international students?
Observation: According to OECD stats, the number of international students at US higher education institutions is the highest in the world and still rising (see also Wikipedia here and a report here).
Question: What are the main factors underpinning the observation above?
I am interested in (partial) answers pointing to studies, or sources of statistical information on the topic, not solely opinions.
This is a reformulation of this question
Some info, including a flow map, from UNESCO: http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Pages/international-student-flow-viz.aspx
@charlesmorisset interesting point.
Indeed, the rates are not that good, also, it would be interesting to know how many higher education institutions exist in other countries.
“the number of international students at US higher education institutions is the highest in the world” — it's much larger than most of the other Western countries! Charles' argument is good, although it is only an estimation: if you aggregate Europe to compare it with the US (a good idea), you also need to remove intra-European fluxes, which you cannot do from the above-linked statistics. Otherwise, you overestimate Europe's “foreign” students…
@CharlesMorisset: indeed an interesting observation, however I suspect the number is hugely inflated by intra-EU mobility. From the OECD stats, it should be possible to clean up the numbers, as they state how many students from which countries are where. If I'll get some time, I'll try to process the numbers.
I personally appreciate walkmanyi's great efforts to make this question much better than the original one. Also, I like his and other answers below. When I review the question for close, I had to think very hard. I still believe it's too broad and too arguementative. Please see my comment below walkmanyi's answer. Thus, I voted to close.
Ever heard of experiment design? We have a factorial table here: {US vs. EU | US vs. an individual country like UK or Germany} X {absolute terms | per capita terms} X {international student defined as "born outside of the country in which a student studies" (which will encompass intra-EU transfer students) | "had to obtain a long-term visa to go to another country to study" (excludes these intra-EU students)}. Define your freaking terms, academicians, before going on to state that the OP is based on wrong assumptions: in absolute # of visa-bearing students, US is undoubtedly leading the pack.
Abstract
Firstly, the answer will tackle the question's false assumption that the US is the most attractive destination for international students. Secondly, I will cite some of the factors making a country/region's education system attractive to international students. Finally, to tackle some of the comments, I will present a chart showing number of international students per capita in selected countries.
USA is not the most attractive destination for international students
According to the OECD Factbook 2011-2012: Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics, the number one destination of foreign students among OECD countries is Europe followed by Northern American region:
European countries in the OECD were the destination for 38% of foreign students in 2009 followed by North American countries (23%). Despite the strong increase in absolute numbers, these proportions have remained stable during the last decade.
To put the numbers above to global perspective, observe also that
Foreign students enrolled in G20 countries account for 83% of total foreign students, and students in the OECD area represent 77% of the total foreign students enrolled worldwide.
Factors driving attractiveness of higher education in OECD countries
Again, according to the same source (emphasis added):
Language as well as cultural considerations, quality of programmes, geographic proximity and similarity of education systems are determining factors driving student mobility. The destinations of international students highlight the attractiveness of specific education systems, whether because of their academic reputation or because of subsequent immigration opportunities.
Commenters to the question cite the ratio of international students per capita as an indicator of attractiveness of education system for foreign students. While I do not see any direct correlation between attractiveness of an educational system and the ratio of foreign students per capita (countries can be arbitrarily protective, or non-protective w.r.t. their own citizens), I prepared the following chart from the OECD data (relevant to year 2009):
The chart was constructed by merging data from the OECD.Stat with OECD countries population data from OECD population 2009 as published in the corresponding section of the OECD Factbook 2001-2012. The computation is done on non-citizen students column for the year 2009, except for United States it is the number of non-resident students (due to lack of a non-citizen students datapoint).
Hi walmanyi, I appreciate your effort to rework the original question into a more amenable form. I still have doubts about the usefulness of the question: the first part of your answer means that the question is based on incorrect facts, and the second part answers that the main factors driving “popularity” are “academic reputation” and “immigration opportunities”. I'm not sure what we've learnt by saying that! And this comment doesn't mean to disparage your answer, but rather that I still don't think this question is a good fit for the Q&A format. It's just too broad.
@F'x: incorrectness of the assumption: so what should we do with questions which are based on incorrect assumptions which are however not easy to see through? Should we delete them, or keep them with an answer which debunks a myth? As for the second part of the answer, consider that as a partial answer only, a cite from a somewhat(?) authoritative source. It should at least give a hint that there exists some body of research on the topic.
the “incorrect assumption” part is not the problem (at least not for me), I'd be happy to let such questions live… but the question itself should be answerable. But the document you linked to and user4231’s quotes all end up saying the same trivial thing: situations depend all, but people who move do it because they think they will be better of.
I do agree with F'x, people do it because they think they will be better off. The issue itself is subjective, I just don't know how anybody can have an objective answer.
Not a full-fledged answer, but there was a post (by Marginal Revolution) pointing to a paper [1] that reports alumni control of the Board of Trustees as a key factor:
All this is made possible by a model that transfers control to those
who value it most, that is the alumni, who then drive competition for
students, faculty, facilities, research, programs, global ties, sports
coaches and rankings. Conversely, they also provide funds and guidance
to maintain uniform excellence in all these pursuits. This maximizes
the value of the degree or the “sheepskin” that the alumni are
figuratively cloaked in for the rest of their lives.
[1] “Why is Harvard #1? Governance and the Dominance of US Universities” – Working Paper 2012, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Your question is interesting me so I did an hour or so of internet search for academic studies of the reasons behind brain drain in recent years. I will give here some results which I found. It is not a total answer to your question and I do not think anybody can completely answer your question because it is a very complex and highly studied issue. Reasons (driving factors) depend on each individual. Paper 2 makes useful distinction between PULL and PUSH factors and gives a list of useful examples of the two.
-- Brain Circulation Replacing Brain Drain at Science CareersBlog:
"Brain circulation," meeting attendees noted in a consensus statement issued 6 September, is the "mutli-directional flow of talents, education and research that benefit multiple countries and regions and the advancement of global knowledge." In an era when many scientists and scholars move between several countries to pursue training and research, the statement suggests, "brain circulation" often more accurately describes international mobility than "brain drain," which implies a unidirectional flow that only benefits certain countries.
This is in agreement with Charles comment. Maybe the situation is not so disymmetric than it used to be.
-- Analysis and Assessment of the “Brain Drain” Phenomenon and its Effects on Caribbean Countries at FLORIDA ATLANTIC COMPARATIVE STUDIES JOURNAL:
In order to understand how the “Brain Drain” happens, we must spend some time discussing migration and the reasons people leave their home countries in the first place. The reasons many Caribbean natives go abroad and fail to return home fall within two categories often referred to as pull and push factors. Push factors are circumstances or events in the home countries that result in persons leaving. Examples of push factors are the structural adjustment programs enforced by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on developing countries that increased unemployment and reduced government funding on social programs in these countries which then led to increased migration. Pull factors are the incentives in the receiving countries that encourage persons to seek employment opportunities there. Examples of pull factors are the immigration incentive policies of the receiving countries that tend to attract higher educated, skilled and trained personnel. For example, the H-1B visa system in the U.S. is often used as a stepping stone by immigrants who want to acquire employment-based permanent residence there. The current immigration policy in the U.S. enables those applying for the H-1B visa to have the dual intent of attaining temporary work status but intending to apply for permanent residency (Kapur and McHale 2005). Other developed countries have similar immigration policies that continue to attract highly skilled workers from developing countries. Currently in Australia, employers of immigrants are not required to prove that domestic workers will be adversely affected by the employment of foreign employees, in fact, all they need to show is that employing the immigrant will be, in some manner, beneficial to Australia (Kapur and McHale 2005).
-- China's brain drain is a report on a Gallup survey:
This article argues that education, employment and family are the main reasons behind China’s brain drain. The article also provides useful statistics concerning the issue.
-- Thai Diasporas and Livelihood Strategies in Thai Society here:
This article uses traditional definitions of Diaspora to examine the phenomenon of the brain drain in Thailand. It also considers the reasons for emigrating to another country in terms of personal livelihood
(last few examples are taken from here: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/BrainDrain/)
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87255 | How should I reference a repository of data and resources created to accompany my publication?
I'm writing a research paper and there's a large amount of code and data related to the study which may be of use to those who would read the study. They can confirm the correctness of the techniques, modify it for their own purposes, perform new analysis on the data, etc.
All these relevant files exist in a public repo, but I'm uncertain what's the best way to reference these. Would it be a citation? Just drop the URL directly into the paper? Other ideas?
Short Recommendation: Include the URL in-text followed by a full citation and end of text reference. If using someone else's repository, do the same, and probably also include a citation to the accompanying paper, unless the authors request otherwise. Place this citation in a prominent position in the method. If the open repository is a big part of the contribution of the paper, consider also including the URL in the abstract.
Longer Answer
Researchers in my field of psychology are starting to use the Open Science Framework as a repository for archiving data, code, and other materials. These repositories include a short URL that is meant to be stable (e.g., https://osf.io/5krfq/ ).
When referencing these repositories, I have read papers that just include the URL, and others that include a full citation. For example, the full citation for the above using APA style might be:
Wynton, S. K. A., & Anglim, J. (2017). Abrupt Strategy
Change Underlies Gradual Performance Change: Bayesian Hierarchical
Models of Component and Aggregate Strategy Use. Retrieved from
https://osf.io/5krfq
So in summary, I don't think the standards for data and repository citation have been formalised sufficiently yet.
I think there are a few considerations:
If there are any questions about the stability of the repository URL, then you need to provide more information. For example, if the repository is hosted on a standard university website, then it is quite likely that the URL might change over time. Even in the case of something like the OSF, it might still be safer to include additional information. References work well because there is redundancy.
In general, providing a URL in the main text makes it easier for the reader to see that the repository is readily accessible.
In many performance evaluation systems, citations of papers are counted, whereas citations of other resources may not be. This may be changing, but it is worth thinking about.
Referencing existing repositories by other authors
If you are referencing an existing repository that other authors created, then you should look to see what requests these authors made. For example, they may want you to cite a particular paper that is linked to the repository. More generally, there is a arguably an ethical and professional obligation to acknowledge those providing the repository by using a full citation.
Referencing your own repository that accompanies a paper
If you are creating your own repository that is linked to the paper you are writing, I quite like the idea of including the URL in text as well as the end of text reference. E.g.,
Data and code is available at https://osf.io/5krfq (Wynton & Anglim, 2017).
And then you include the end of text reference as above.
This has the benefit of making the URL very clear to the reader (e.g., encourages the reader to click the link) but it also has the benefits of full citations (e.g., the reference is more robust, creates a practice of citing data and code as equal to citing papers).
Note about blind review: If you are submitting your manuscript to a place that does blind review, you need to do another step during the review process to prevent disclosure of author identities. One approach is to put a black mark over the author names in the in-text citation and end-of-text reference. OSF also has the benefit that you can create a custom-URL that provides a read-only view of the repository with author names removed. When such a feature is not provided by your repository service, you might need to instead attach anonymised versions of the materials and black out the link.
Where to put this citation/reference? There is another issue of where to put this reference. E.g., Abstract, author note, first sentence of the method, some other section of the method, etc. There are several considerations:
More people will see it if you put it in the abstract. The author note is another relatively prominent location. Thus, if you see the repository as fundamental to the contribution of your paper, then you may want to include the url in your abstract, and then include the full citation somewhere in the method.
Some journals have conventions regarding this. e.g., some journals have badges for open data or open materials, some journals ask for a section in the method with a label like "Open Practices". If so, then it makes sense to follow these conventions.
If you want to draw some attention to your open data and materials (but putting the url in the abstract feels excessive), then I think the first sentence of the method possibly under a section heading like "Open Practices" is a good option. Thus, it will be clear to any reader that gets to the method that these materials are available.
If you think the repository is not that important, then it could be placed in whatever section seems most content relevant (e.g., end of the participants/data description section or somewhere in the section discussing the data analytic approach).
Personally, I like the idea of "Open Practices" (or something similar) becoming a standardized section in manuscripts where the authors explain what materials have been made open or are made to justify why they are not open.
What name to give to repository reference: Another issue, which I have not yet resolved, is what is the best title for repositories that accompany a paper. Possible titles:
Identical title as accompanying paper
Related title to accompanying paper: e.g., "Data and code for [insert paper title here]" or "Supplementary materials for [insert paper here]"
Something very descriptive: e.g., "Data and code examining ..."
If you use the identical title as the accompanying paper, this creates the potential for ambiguity when people cite the paper or the repository. However, it might make it easier for people to find. And if getting citations to your original paper rather than the repository is particularly important, then it may be the case that citations to the repository will get counted towards the paper depending on how the citation engine (e.g., Google Scholar, Scopus, etc.) matches articles. Such repositories can also often host a pre-print of the article. In that sense the repository becomes almost a landing page for the actual publication that is not behind a publisher's paywall.
From a descriptive perspective, I think that something like "Data and code for [insert title]" seems better. It makes the link with the accompanying paper very clear, but also makes it clear that it is a distinct academic artefact.
I typically have a subsection at the end of my methods section that is like this:
Reproducibility and open source materials
To enable re-use of our materials and improve reproducibility and
transparency according to the principles outlined in Marwick (2016),
we include the entire R code used for all the analysis and
visualizations contained in this paper in our SOM at
http://dx.doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/RTZTH. Also in this
version-controlled compendium are the raw data for all the tests
reported here, as well as additional regression diagnostics and power
tests. All of the figures, tables and statistical test results
presented here can be independently reproduced with the code and data
in this repository. In our SOM our code is released under the MIT
licence, our data as CC-0, and our figures as CC-BY, to enable maximum
re-use (for more details, see Marwick 2016).
That specific paragraph can be found in this published paper
Marwick, B., et al. 2017. Movement of lithics by trampling: An experiment in the Madjedbebe sediments, northern Australia. Journal of Archaeological Science 79:73-85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2017.01.008 preprint: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/7a6h6/
And minor variants of that paragraph can be found in most of my recent papers. By including this kind of paragraph in my publications, I am trying to fulfill the recommendations in this paper, which echoes ideas found in many other similar manifesto-like papers on reproducibility:
Stodden, Victoria, et al. 2016 Enhancing reproducibility for computational methods. Science 354(6317):1240 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6317/1240
The Marwick 2016 citation in the paragraph above is my in-depth discussion of computational reproducibility for archaeology:
Marwick, B. (2016). Computational reproducibility in archaeological
research: Basic principles and a case study of their implementation.
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, doi:
10.1007/s10816-015-9272-9, preprint: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/q4v73
Just to clarify, the paper you are quoting is Marwick et al (2017). Presumably the earlier Marwick (2016) paper is a side point. Most people would not have such a paper where they have published on reproducible methods. They would just be writing a standard paper with a repository that accompanies it.
That's right, I'm doing something like option 3 from your list of 'Where to put this citation/reference?' I've edited my answer to clarify where the paragraph comes from, and what the citation is. Probably every research discipline should have at least one paper like my Marwick (2016) to show members of the community some of the open science options that are relevant to their ways of working.
If the rest of your paper is using MLA/APA/Chicago/etc. citation, then these sources should be treated no different. You should maintain consistency throughout your paper.
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89141 | How to know whether a journal accepts concurrent submission to the journal and arXiv?
I am considering submitting my paper to both a computer science journal and arXiv. No version of the paper has been published in any conference or anything at this point.
Is this going to be an issue with the journal?
Should I hold off submitting to arXiv?
If this is journal dependent, how do I find out about the journal policy?
a good resource is this: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php
You cannot get a good answer to this if you don't specify your field. In math, it would be shocking at this point if you didn't submit to the arXiv, but for many other fields it's different.
It mainly depends on the specific journal.
The field is computer science
What kind of computer science? Theory tends to follow the same practices as math; other subfields tend behave more like engineers.
@JeffE System performance - Queueing Theory
What's the name of the journal? In the end, the answer depends on the concrete journal.
It's an IEEE journal
So, judging from the answers here...It "could" be an issue. Interesting.
My understanding of arXiv was that a publication there was tantamount to a "technical report" at a university.
@BenWebster "in math it would be shocking if you didn't submit to the arxiv" seems a bit excessive - there are some mathematicians who don't use it.
@FedericoPoloni Which I consider shocking. How is anyone supposed to read their papers? Dead trees 5 years after they were written?
@BenWebster Quite some journals also publish online before printing. Furthermore, they might put a preprint on their own homepage and link to it. So just because they don't use arXiv should not mean that they don't publish online. I also heard of situations where a paper was hold back by the author until the journal publication (and hence not put on the arXiv), to allow for more study on the topic, preparation for a conference, etc.
@Bemte That does not eliminate the potentially very long waiting time from submission to acceptance. I have no idea why anyone would delay putting a completed paper on the arXiv to allow for further study when it has already been submitted. It is not like that further study could make it into the paper anyway.
@Bemte The online journal publishing is better than nothing, I suppose, but what is the point of writing a paper if you don't want people to read it?
The answer is field dependent, in particular some fields in the humanities tend to consider "already published" what appeared even on a web page. Also, Glam magazines such as Nature and Science want to be able to keep the papers secret until they release them, possibly with communication toward the press. In mathematics, the most theoretical parts of computer science, and some of physics you can definitely put a preprint on the arXiv before submitting to a journal (there might be journals who don't enable this, but they would be a small minority). There is an excellent resource to determine the policy of a journal or publisher.
All of this could be gathered from previous comments. Now, the reason why I write this answer is to stress that for Elsevier, the default policy is that you can put your preprint on the arXiv and later update it according to referee's comment ("postprint" version), but you do not have the right to put the postprint on the arXiv between acceptance and 12 months after publication if the preprint was not there before. To avoid trouble you should thus put your preprint on the arXiv before acceptance (before submission being the easiest way).
Well, some Elsevier journals are pretty "glam" (per ¶1 of this answer). OP, or OP's university, may end up having to pay for Open Access with the journal. It doesn't hurt to ask the editorial staff! A quick email or phone call could save OP considerable trouble in the end.
My understanding is that it won't be an issue. The latter is mostly dependent on the aspects relative to the legal nature of the copyright (the contract between you - the author - and the publisher - the journal) and the pair-review process. My understanding is that what you publish in ArXiv is a raw manuscript which is the "raw-material" that goes into the pair-review process. The pair reviewed article (pre-print) has suffered many "transformations" based on the the reviewing-editors' requests. The copyright you're required to sign, regulates the pre-print and not the raw-manuscript. Therefore, putting your raw-manuscript on ArXiv shouldn't be an issue as long as the raw-material and the pre-print are not identical. If the latter is false, the reviewers would have not suggested any changes (not even cosmetic changes - rephrasing some fragment, for example) to the article, which, in my experience, is quite rare.
That's not the main point here. The main issue is that the journal's editors could refuse the manuscript because the result has already appeared online, so it's no longer "unpublished". It's well within their rights to do so, since publishing a paper or not is their own decision and they are free to set criteria and conditions. In some fields journals routinely do that, in some they don't (and doing it would be considered outrageous).
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89476 | How to remove a co-author from an article published on arXiv?
I have published an article on arXiv. I associated person X as co-author whereas he didn't contribute at any step of the paper. Note that he is not registered as owner of the article on arXiv and I didn't give him the password to access as author.
When I wanted to submit the paper to a journal, X began to do some harassment. After that, I decided to remove his name from the article on arXiv.
Questions: How can I remove a co-author from an article published on arXiv? Can he claim that he is the co-author on arXiv or for a journal submission?
Why the downvote ?
Besides the disturbing story, what is your actual question? Do you wanna know how to (technically) remove an incorrectly associated Co-Author from an article on arXiv?
@FuzzyLeapfrog, Exactly, If I remove her name from my article an upload an new version on arXiv, and submit my paper to a journal. Can he claim that he is an co-author ?
Okay, @Silldo. I suggested some major edits to your question.
@FuzzyLeapfrog, Thanks, can I get an answer to my question.
I associated person X as co-author whereas he didn't contribute at any step of the paper. — Note to readers: Don't do that.
Dear @JeffE Could you tell me if I remove X from my article, can he claim his authorship for a journal submission (by sending the previous version to the editor).
@Silldo Of course he can claim authorship, because you gave it to him. Will his claim actually stick? Maybe. Depends on the editor.
Several aspects spring to mind here: X didn't contribute, but was added as author. Now, X is going to be removed because of harassment? X was added for the wrong reason and now is being removed for the wrong reason. What if, later, Y were a deserving co-author and then falls out with OP, will they also be removed from authorship? Even if OP happens to be right about authorship, one would better be careful to work with them, as the conditions of collaboration acknowledgement are moving goalposts. TL;DR: Authorships are best decided for the right reasons. And, to add, before work is being done.
Yes, technically one can modify the authors of an arXiv article. See the replace instructions on arXiv. See also this answer on Quora. But, as far as I understand these instructions, the previous version with the initial co-authors will remain on the server.
Note that it was no good scientific practice to initially associate a co-author to the paper that didn't contribute to it. Regaring the claiming of the authorship by X after removing his name from the paper, I have no answer.
It is not possible to change the authors of the version you already submitted to the arXiv. You can update the arXiv paper, and in the process make changes to the author list. The original author list remains accessible however.
If you do this, submit the article to some journal without X as coauthor, and X complains to the journal claiming authorship, the situation looks as follows: The journal can verify that you at some point claimed that X were a coauthor of the paper, and that you are now claiming that he is not. Thus, it is obvious that you lied at some point, serverly damaging your credibility and demonstrating that you committed academic misconduct (they just don't know whether the misconduct happened back then or now).
The best course of action still available to you would be to resolve the authorship dispute with X prior to any further submissions of the paper. If you cannot come to an agreement with X directly, you may have to involve others, eg your department head. In this, be aware that you will need to own up to your previous mistake.
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89629 | Should you recuse yourself from the hiring committee if you have had a past romantic relationship with an applicant?
If you are on a hiring committee and find out that one of the applicants is someone you have had a past romantic relationship with, should you recuse yourself?
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
If you're worried that some people may perceive an action as unethical, chances are some people are going to perceive it as unethical. It's usually better to play it safe in those cases. ;) If you are worried that you yourself might perceive it as unethical, definitely play it safe; no need to lay that burden on yourself.
This is one of those rare questions where a one-word answer would certainly suffice...
I will almost guarantee that your university has a Compliance office. Here's the one for my university; you'll notice that it has both a number of links to written guidelines, as well as phone numbers for an Ethics hotline. Your university may not have the exact same thing, but there are people there whose job is to answer these types of questions. Make use of them.
That said, from my completely uninformed standpoint, your situation sounds like a conflict of interest. If I was in a similar situation I would definitely recuse myself.
I slightly disagree. (Although it does not say so explicitly) the answer gives the impression that OP should stick to the ethics guidelines of his institution and nothing else. What if OPs specific university does not have this conflict of interest covered under its guidelines but then he moves to another university and, in the new institution, the guidelines consider it unethical. OP would then have been unethical in the past. I'd argue that using your own (personal) sense of ethics and sticking to the union of it with possible guidelines is better.
@grochmal Even if the university asked about something like that (which they probably wouldn't unless something scandalous happened), the easy answer is "I followed the university guidelines and spoke to the ethics committee about it. They determined it was not a conflict of interest." and move on.
@Anoplexian - I admit that I'm being philosophical here but as far as I understand ethics is something that must be decided by the ethical individual. i.e. that is part of the definition of ethics. Therefore arguing that "I deferred the responsibility of being ethical to my ethical guidelines and ethical committee" can still be argued to be a culpability of being unethical, because being ethical includes performing ethical decisions as an individual. Following a bad ethical code is still unethical.
@grochmal I disagree with ethical rules applying retroactively. Some universities code of conduct forbid people from drinking coffee, should I throw away my PhD if I ever go to work there?
@Davidmh - Ethics is a special case. The origin of ethics definition came from Socrates, as coming from the definition of an individual, from the fact that every human can discern good from evil. Of course that definition went a long way since then (and still evolves) but, in general, ethics is not something that can be canned as a group of rules. If it could then we would have a perfect law system a long time ago. Therefore you cannot escape ethics by saying that you simply followed rules. Spartans were ethical in killing malformed children by their rules.
I would also suggest documenting that you consulted your ethics hotline in some way so that you have a paper trail in case someone tries to say that you should have checked before taking an action.
@grochmal I don't think this answer says anything of the sort. Rather, it simply says, "If you're not sure, ask. And don't just ask random people on the Internet; ask the people whose job it is to answer those questions on behalf of your institution."
@grochmal they're ethical standards. As long as the ethical code isn't super bad, things work best if everyone uses the same code (this is similar to the reason that laws apply the same to everyone).
From my own experiences on faculty search committees, administrators would be very unhappy if we went through the hiring process and I later provided such information, since it could be viewed as a conflict of interest or nepotism, even if you do not see it that way. What do you have to lose by making this information known to others and at least see if the administrators in your department believe that you should or should not continue on the committee.
Also, who doesn't search for a good reason to get out of committee work? LOL.
Or, more specified, your nephew. If we can stretch to other family members, then why not to "one's inner circle" of friends?
@David Richerby - Some definitions of nepotism include family and friends. This person could be viewed as someone who is a friend. I don't know their current relationship. I was being inclusive by using the word "or."
@NicoleRuggiano Ah, good point. In fact, the OED says it's been used to refer to non-relatives such as friends since at least 1859. Comment deleted.
@Mawg Well, it turns out that I was wrong about friends but your comment makes little sense. The original meaning isn't really relevant, since we're discussing what the word means today (see etymological fallacy). And, sure, the word could have evolved in any number of ways but the question is whether it actually did. In this case, it turns out that it did, so I deleted my incorrect comment.
Not quite sure what you are driving at. As today's meaning, I would say that nepotism is favo(u) ring someone known over someone unknown. Would that be about right? If so, it does seem to apply he
Note that the conflict isn't necessarily 'positive'. The obvious potential conflict could lead to perceived favoritism (former flame wins competition and there is the perception of favoritism), but the converse is also possible: former flame doesn't win the competition and claims bias due to the previous relationship. Either one could leave the school vulnerable to lawsuit.
@KeithDavies This is very true and the same issues apply. The a former partner could be highly qualified (or most qualified), but overlooked because of the conflict. This could cause future problems with the candidate. It also could be frowned upon by the administration, but I think that most faculty would pass over a highly qualified candidate who may cause inter-personal problems at work.
You almost certainly need to remove yourself from any decision about that candidate, especially if your interactions were recent, and you may need to remove yourself from the whole process. It has nothing to do with whether you can live with it, but if your university wants to risk litigation if the shit hits the fan.
You can simply say "I have a conflict with one of the applicants, and wish to be removed from this committee", and then the nature of the conflict is your business alone, or you can find the appropriate person to discuss the exact nature of the conflict with. I suggest a compliance officer or ombudsman, who will be able to understand the sensitive nature.
Good suggestion. I recommend using the gender-neutral "compliance officer or ombudsperson".
I have a conflict with respect to one of the applicants. // Otherwise, great answer.
The second paragraph of this answer is wrong. As I explain in my answer, at least at some universities the search committee member would be required by university policy to disclose the nature of the conflict, and cannot "simply say" that they wish to be recused or claim that the nature of the conflict is "their business alone".
To clarify Dan's comment: You may need to disclose your conflict to someone, typically the committee chair or the department head. You almost certainly do not have to disclose the nature of your conflict to the entire committee in an open meeting. (At least, this is the case at my university, which has similar formal policies to Dan's.)
@JeffE thanks, but even your clarified version of my comment is at odds with what Scott writes in his answer.
@DanRomik, In the UK, pressing the issue could make you run afoul of the UK Human Rights Act of 1998. And in the US, pressing the issue could make you run you afoul of Federal anti-discrimination laws. If one of your committee members ever tells you "I am recusing myself from the selection process because I've had a very close relationship with one of the candidates.", "No, I'm not telling you which candidate, nor am I going to tell you what was the nature of the relationship. This is personal information. You'll have to trust that I'm telling you the truth." Then legally, you better let it go
@StephanBranczyk well, ok. I don't feel too strongly about it, and it's quite possible that a university policy might inadvertently conflict with some law or other. So yes, if someone feels so strongly that they must protect some dark secret from their past, the course of action you are suggesting sounds like a reasonable one.
@DanRomik, Thanks. But It doesn't have to be a dark secret. It could just be that I had a fling with someone, I shared bodily fluids with that other person, that is now over, and I simply do not know how that other person would feel about being the topic of gossip when they're just starting out somewhere. Furthermore, some workplaces do frown upon (present or past) relationships at work. And for good reasons, they can be a constant source of conflict of interests. But at the same time, if I recused myself from the selection process, I don't want the candidate to be penalized over it either.
And if I did volunteer to recuse myself from the selection process, you should also trust that I will continue to recuse myself should another potential conflict of interests arise. But I do know my rights, so do not count on me volunteering more information than what I deem is necessary for the function of my job. And sure, you may not trust my lay judgement, and that's fine. This is my default setting, dark secret or not. And the only alternative after that is to talk to my lawyer and I can guarantee you that my own lawyer will be even less inclined at sharing private information than I am.
My university requires members of search committees to disclose any potential conflict of interest in connection with their evaluation of job candidates. The disclosure form is accompanied by an explanatory text titled "Aspirational Principles and Guidelines Regarding Conflict of Interest on Recruitment Committees", which states in particular (emphasis added by me):
Examples of situations that might create either a real or perceived conflict of interest for a member of a recruitment committee include, but are not limited to, the review of candidates who are current or former students, postdocs, mentees, co-authors, close collaborators or partners in a business or professional practice. Other situations may involve review of a candidate who has or has had in the past, a significant personal relationship with the faculty member, either positive or negative, that might impact the ability of the faculty member to participate objectively in the comparison of the qualifications of that candidate with those of other candidates.
The document goes on to list options for dealing with a potential conflict:
Depending on the nature of the relationship, and based on discussion with the recruitment committee chair, the faculty member may:
Voluntarily recuse him or herself from participation on the recruitment committee or in the review and selection process;
Voluntarily recuse him or herself from discussion and/or voting on the particular candidate with whom there is a potential real or perceived conflict of interest;
Continue to serve on the committee and in the review/selection process, but with full disclosure of the relationship to the committee and, if the candidate is on the short list, to the department;
Thus, at the very least, in the scenario you describe you are certainly required to report the fact of the past relationship to your department chair and other members of the committee. Given the nature of the relationship, I would expect that you would also be asked to recuse yourself from any discussion of the specific candidate, and possibly to recuse yourself entirely from membership in the committee.
All of this is according to my university's specific policy, but this policy is based on currently accepted legal and ethical norms in the United States that I would expect to also apply in any major US university. I also doubt that these norms will be materially different in any western country.
Sorry, stupid question: if the faculty member recuses him or herself, then why does (s)he also need to "report the fact of the past relationship"? I would have thought that the recusal should render the rest of it irrelevant.
I assume that the faculty member could choose to try to recuse themselves initially, without disclosing the specifics of the reason (as per Scott Seidman's answer); or they could choose to disclose and see what the recommended course of action is, which might turn out to be recusal. Maybe it depends on what they hope the decision will be.
@ruakh I didn't write the policy so I can't give an authoritative answer, but I do think the reporting requirement makes sense, since we don't want faculty recusing themselves from search committees for arbitrary or trivial reasons (say, because they once had dinner with the candidate). If you are on the committee your service is presumed to be valuable and we want you to stay on it and not recuse yourself unless there was a very good reason.But faculty are not trained in assessing the potential for a conflict of interest, so it's best to inform and consult the dept. chair on such a matter ...
A second reason I can think of is that if a member of the committee recuses him/herself without providing a reason, it can potentially create suspicions among the other committee members about the undisclosed secret reason for the recusal, which may cloud their judgment and prevent an objective assessment of the candidate. So again, in the name of transparency and ensuring that nothing untoward is going on, disclosure is the best solution. By the way I think your question is a very intelligent question to which the answer is far from obvious, and certainly not a stupid one.
@GregMartin as the document I linked to states, my university's policy requires disclosing the potential conflict of interest, so your assumption that "the faculty member could choose to try to recuse themselves initially, without disclosing the specifics of the reason" is simply incorrect, at least at UC Davis and probably at the vast majority of similar US institutions.
Actually, it looks like you must disclose a PCOI, but it doesn't look like you're required to document what it is.
Your form is for committee chairs, and doesn't say the reason for conflict by a member be disclosed, just the fact that there is a potential conflict. In fact, if I were asked the reason, I might well decline to answer, unless a careful read of my faculty handbook suggested I must. Note that a form is not your employment contract, but your handbook describes the conditions and regs associated with your employment.
I would, without question. The benefits of being seen to act in a way that leaves no doubt as to integrity will far outweigh the probably-zero benefits of sitting on a committee that's making a career decision on behalf of your employer and for a past romantic flame of yours. I can't see any good whatsoever coming out of putting yourself in that situation, and plenty of respect from being seen to avoid the conflict. Recuse without question, citing "non work previous social friendship with the candidate" or similar (you don't need to give the detailed reason)
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89692 | How much does a student's ranking in their cohort matter for PhD applications?
I am from one of the top UK institutions studying mathematics. I am under the impression that UK universities tend to have a larger cohort (~150 per year) than US but perhaps I am wrong.
I would like to know is there any difference ranking 1st, ranking in top 5 or ranking in top 10 when it comes to PhD applications especially in the US, or is the personal ranking only serves the purpose as a benchmark (say top 5% is enough).
I have heard different theories about this as some would say it's extremely important to get top first or second to get into top graduate programs, and some say that having one or two marks higher than your course mates makes no difference and tells nothing more about your ability.
Thanks for advance.
In many countries/universities there is no class ranking. And if there is, it is not necessarily meaningful, as you would need a ranking of the university or that specific year amongst others and such as well. (I personally think when I hear someone say they are "top of their class", "Well, as long as I don't know anyone else from your class, I really don't care.")
Not really an answer, just my personal experience, but I'll offer it because it contradicts the consensus that seems to be building. Approximate ranking (top 5%/10%, etc.) in the cohort is one of things that we (a UK physics department) specifically ask for when people write references, and it's one of the first things I look at (accounting, obviously, for the quality of the u/g institution). References are otherwise not so informative at this stage, because no-one has much research experience.
@StephenPowell: Just out of interest: How do you evaluate people from places where there is no class ranking?
@O.R.Mapper: It's just one out of several things to take into account, so it's not a big problem if it's not available. But in most cases the referees are able to provide a sense of where the student ranks in the cohort, at least at UK universities.
@StephenPowell: Well, in the wider sense, my question aimed at the case that "the cohort" is not defined in a meaningful way. Of course, that case is also covered by your answer.
@StephenPowell just as anecdotal evidence, I did my BSc in the UK, my PhD in Spain and a post-doc in France (my field is biology/bioinformatics) and this is the first time I've even heard of "cohort rankings". Nobody ever asked me for this, nobody has even ever discussed the existence of such a ranking with me or anyone I know. Since your institute uses them, they obviously exist, but I find it hard to believe their use is very widespread.
@terdon I have not seen it, therefore it does not exist.
Your letters of recommendation will be much, much more important than your class ranking. Spend your time on getting the strongest letters you can (and learning how to do this, if necessary).
Source: I have served on grad admissions for a top math department.
Trying not to be just an "I agree!" comment but I want to second this from the perspective of biological sciences...I don't recall ever being asked about class rank in grad admissions, and research experience is much more important than class rank in my field. References are sometimes asked annoying questions like "what percentile would you place this student in?" though, but that is based on their opinion, not grades.
My experience (admittedly not in Maths) of (top level) UK institutions was that the first and often only question was 'can you pay?'. As long as you had a 2:1 or a 1st, you were in.
The reputation home university is obviously also important. Being ranked 10th at Princeton is naturally much more impressive than 1st at Noname University of the Second-Rate Sciences.
Class rank is not inter-comparable, and also not universally available, so (in my experience) we ignore it entirely. "It's nice" to be highly ranked, but it's also hard to know exactly what that means. Big fish in small pond? Grade grubber? Etc.
"Grad grubber"? I am unfamiliar with that term. Definition?
@O.M.Y.: Check out this question: What to do about “grade grubbers?”.
Good point at the end. Yet another possible explanation is students who become so preoccupied with finishing in the Top 5 that they refuse to take challenging courses or go to great lengths to avoid professors known for being hard-nosed in their grading. Personally, I'd rather work with someone who pushed themselves and faced challenges than someone who avoided them so as to look good on paper.
In my institution, the absolute ranking of the candidate is one piece of information that is considered, but often is nowhere near as important as the candidate frankly thinks it is. There are so many other factors that determine whether or not an individual is well suited to a particular area of research that aren't examined by an undergraduate degree. I am sure I could easily find instances of students who came in the top 20% of their degree cohort having many more successful outcomes from their PhD years than those in the top 1%, not least because there are a lot more good students to choose from in the top 20% of the distribution!
Most universities set quality thresholds -- e.g. "you must usually have a 2:i [UK applicant] to be considered for a PhD place" -- which are important to meet. For each candidate meeting these thresholds, we will typically read their application and assign points based on some quasi-arbitrary list of good things (doing well academically gets a point; doing a summer research placement gets a point; publishing papers as an undergraduate and demonstrating that you actually did the work and understood it gets a lot of points, etc) which then form the basis of subsequent discussions.
In my field at least, students who come high up in the year rankings are very good at passing exams; typically they're able to min/max the exam system, do algebra very, very quickly and have a repertoire of "tricks" that have come up in the past. It isn't necessarily the case that any of these skills translate into a successful research career.
Additionally, the type of reference form often sent to your referees have a statement along the lines of "Of all the people I have taught, this person is in the top [50, 25, 15, 5]%" and require the referee to tick the right box. Nobody I know, if they like the person they're writing in support of, ticks anything other than the 5% box (even if they frankly should). The people who read these forms are aware of this.
Finally, as mentioned by all the other posters, year rankings are not comparable across universities, or necessarily within universities. A close friend studied biomedical and electrical engineering at a good university in Belgium and due to an odd set of circumstances involving changing course requirements finished simultaneously first and last in his graduating year!
Although i am not from the UK, i would like to share my impression, on this matter for Universities in Germany. Together with some factors that change the perspectives on rankings probably internationally.
For my Master Studies in Germany I was admitted in a quite competitive program, where that year only 18% of the applicants were admitted, and where being in the top 20% of your Bachelor was a prerequisite. It was an international Program in English, so there where students from all over the world. The impression of me and my fellow students were that the grading of our courses, were much stricter than for the usual programs, our averages were much lower. There where exams that were only passed by 3 out of 25 people. So in this case the combination of program reputation and ranking told much more about relative performance than the grades. My impression was however that at least in germany, grades are more important than ranking, so it was difficult for many to find a Phd position. Therefore I think that at the graduation ceremony there should also be handed out a list with the matriculation numbers, and all grades of the cohort, to give some relative context to the grades. This also helps to make sub rankings for particular subjects or directions.
But Of course such rankings are also very limited, because the situation of all students was fairly different, a few of the German students, still lived with their parents, and had no financial worries, some others had scholarships, others had to do student jobs, some had rich parents, others took a big loan, some where married, others were ill. There is a story behind each grade, and thus ranking.
If those who will asses your application only look at rankings and grades, it means that they probably did not have any significant challenges on the side, besides their studies. So they will probably select those with high grades coming from a similar situation. Those who understand the limitations of grades and Rankings, will probably focus more on recommendation letters, or even read through your Thesis, or a publication. Some how such people seem rarer at top universities, but they are there!
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118111 | How to quantify potential supervisor's reputation at a non-top university?
I ended up in a decent but below 50 ranked PhD program for math, and I'm going to try my best to get an academic job after my PhD. I want to work with someone who is well-respected and well-known, and who allows me to do a great thesis, in order to even put my foot in the door for a career in academia.
How can I quantify a potential supervisor's reputation?
Should I look for number of citations, number of publications total, number of publications in recent few years, or number of students/where they end up?
Is there a threshold I should be looking for (e.g. at least 20 citations total, at least a few good journals, etc)?
The reason I ask:
This may be field-specific, but I'd like to know what risk I am taking with working with a new professor who has only one student and maybe 8-10 publications, the most popular of which having been cited about 13 times by other mathematicians, vs. an older professor with not many students total but with many publications and many citations per publication.
Would you be happy in an academic job that is 75% teaching, 20% service, and 5% research? (I'm trying to figure out what you mean by 'academic job'.)
I suppose nowadays it is very hard to land a teaching job in any university due to supply and demand.
@AlexanderWoo Yes. It's not ideal, but I realize that that is the likely outcome.
Related to your second question: How to judge the reputation of a potential advisor or research group for good quality research for PhD?. Related to your reason for asking: Choosing between an older, prominent supervisor and a younger, junior supervisor for PhD.
@Anyon Thank you for the references! I may have seen these at some point in time (amidst my anxious-ridden premonitions of the future). But I am looking for a more quantitative way to judge an academic, if possible.
"Quantifying a reputation" is rather a contradiction in terms; you're asking for an objective measure of that which is inherently subjective. Also, you're likely talking to a lot of people who have been on the receiving end of "quantitative" evaluations and are keenly aware of their shortcomings.
Exactly the same way you judge the reputation of a potential supervisor at a top university.
Assuming both of them are still research active, in the sense that they are publishing and going to conferences, you're looking at a lot of noise and very little signal.
Both advisors got a job at a university with a PhD program. That already means they are pretty good and have significant research networks. If you end up doing exceptionally good research for a PhD graduate from your department, they will both have the networks to recommend you for a postdoc.
For positions that are not research-focused, it really doesn't matter what their reputation is, because the people hiring for non-research positions are generally out of the network anyway (and even if they are not, they won't be hiring based on whether they know your advisor or not).
Work with the person you like working with better and whose projects interest you more.
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74835 | The drop/switch major rate for people "intended" major in engineering in US?
The drop/switch major rate of engineering bachlors programs for people "intended" major in engineering except software engineering in US?
Please notice that the attrition rate from most source are for student who already declare major typically in their junior year/very end of their sophmore year, but what is the average drop/switch major rate in the US for the "intended" freshman student who go to college of engineering? In another word, what is the rate of these intended engineers did not get a eningineering bachlors?
Related question: What is the dropout/switch major rate for engineering bachelor?
It's quite high at my place (upwards of 50% because many students enter without enough math background and never get up to speed), but I've no idea where you would find comprehensive data.
There was an article in the Sunday LA Times (Aug 7 2016) that touched on this, but related to minority retention in STEM from 2004 and didn't break the numbers down to individual fields. At best, the rate for "finished in under 5 years with same degree" was under 50%, and for blacks and Hispanics it was under 25%.
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148142 | Is it okay for a potential post doc to send an email to professor on the weekend?
I am talking with a professor to apply to a postdoc program. I sent a cold email earlier this week and we have exchanged a few emails.
In his last email he sent me some papers to read.
The thing is, I might end up sending my answer on Saturday, after I read the papers. Is this a problem? Should I just send it and wait until Monday for his answer? Maybe send it but include an apology for writing during the weekend? Or should I just wait until Monday to send it?
I usually text everyone during the weekend including my advisor, but I'm not sure if it might be considered rude, and as I do not know the person yet I want to be as careful as possible with etiquette.
Thank you.
Students send me emails at 2, 3 or 4 in the morning - they get a reply later that day , I’m not waking up for an email... I will wake up if my sons or daughter ring me though...
In general, I would advise not emailing between Friday afternoon and Monday morning, lest you get lost in the Monday morning backlog.
Do you send emails or text messages? You say you "usually text everyone during the weekend including my advisor", which sounds like a horribly intrusive thing to do. If by text you mean "send emails" then fine, but text or chat messages have a different etiquette and are much harder to mark as unread to deal with later.
Also, one of the benefits (or sometimes curses) of being in academia is that you're not stuck on a fixed 9-5 M-F schedule.
You actually get email replies back from your professors? wow! You should consider yourself lucky. Let me know which school you go to, I want to apply there :)
You should not worry about this. What your professor cares about is how good of a candidate you are. Besides that, as long as you don’t actively offend him, everything is ok.
Email is a form of asynchronous communication: it doesn't matter when mail is sent, it can be read whenever pleases the recipient.
High-ranking professionals should not sacrifice their operational efficiency to avoid the possibility of lower-ranking professionals feeling stressed, overwhelmed, etc. by out-of-hours emails. High-ranking professionals should make lower-ranking professionals aware of work-life balance. Managers and subordinates should discuss expectations.
Technology can help. Email should never raise notifications. (They're too numerous and interfere with flows.) Messaging apps can be segregated: Some for work, others for home. (Signal at work, WhatsApp at home, for instance.) Work apps should only raise notifications during set hours.
Only individuals can establish their own, "best" work-life balance.
(Email software can be scheduled to send email at a predefined time, there's no need to wait until a particular time.)
I partially agree, but only in the student->professor (or low->high rank) direction. The other way around can put a lot of stress on the students, leading them to think that they should be ready for extra work 24/7 in order to succeed.
@DarioP I disagree. For a high-ranking professional to delay emails to avoid the possibility of a lower ranking professional being stressed is wasteful of the high-ranking professional's time. (Albeit, they could use scheduled emails.) The lower ranking professional should not be stressed by such emails and, if they are, then they should be discussing expectations with their superiors.
I agree witb @DarioP. Sending emails from bosses at unusual times gives the impression that it is normal or expected to work at those times. Especially for young phd students who did most of the time not have most experience in .) working out a good work-life-balance and .) are in the extremly hierarchical world of Academia, where your advisor has a ridiculous amount of power over them.
I agree with this answer and all the comments. However: It's been pointed out that there's a generational and technical difference in opinion about this. Many people have email tied to their phone text messaging alerts, and actually aren't aware of a difference in the channels. These (younger) people do in fact sometimes get very upset about emails sent after hours.
@DanielR.Collins: I see your point, but the solution to this would be to educate the (younger) people about the difference in the channels, not take extra precautions to keep them in (non-blissful) ignorance.
@DarioP I hope my edit helps
@DanielR.Collins I hope my edit helps you too
And yours too @Heinzi
The high ranking rockstar professional can easily schedule email to be delivered after the end of the weekend and thus show his people skills and consideration for his work partners while still having the same "efficiency".
@Heinzi the solution to this would be to educate the (younger) people — That sounds an awful lot like "Do as I say, not as I do."
@JeffE I can't speak for Heinzi, but I send e-mails during the night or the weekend occasionally, I do not necessarily read e-mails during the night or the weekend, and if I read them, I do not necessarily react to them immediately. And it's completely fine with me if other people do it likewise. What I do and what I say is fairly consistent.
@Mavrik And how would they do that?
@user2768 Pretty much every email client supports that functionality and any "highly ranked professional" should be able to figure out how to use something as simple as email client to effectively lead. Otherwise they're perhaps not as "highly-rankeked" or "professional" as they think and their time perhaps isn't all that important.
@Mavrik I've already remarked on scheduled email. It cannot be used without an efficiency hit: Some people work at the weekend. (Also, using scheduled email isn't without a cost.)
Yes, working on the weekend is the actual core of the problem that should be eliminated.
@Mavrik working on the weekend is the actual core of the problem that should be eliminated, that's your opinion: Only individuals can establish their own, "best" work-life balance.
@Mavrik: pressure to work at weekends is bad and should be avoided. But working at the weekends isn’t itself bad — good work-life balance means having whatever work habits suit an individual best, and people’s tastes and situations vary.
It's definitely not rude to email on the weekend.
When you are emailing someone with more authority than yourself (as is the case here), I don't see any problem with doing it outside business hours, provided that you don't ask for an urgent reply and don't blame them for not replying during that time. Of course, sending these emails might communicate some side information about yourself (e.g., that you work during week-ends), but this could be interpreted either way ("passionate about your work" vs "poor/unconventional organization") so I wouldn't overthink it. But don't worry about the effect on the recipient -- if they can't answer during the week-end or don't want to be bombarded with emails at that time, they won't have trouble disconnecting.
By contrast, when you are emailing someone and you are the one who has authority, you should consider the risk that emailing outside business hours could be interpreted as an implicit request to read work email outside of business hours, e.g., "I'm working off-hours so you should do it too". If this is a risk, then it can be a good idea to explicitly say in your email or email signature something like "This message does not require a reply outside of working hours" or otherwise clarifying with your subordinates what your expectations are. But that's clearly not the situation here.
Well, applying to a program is something you would normally do in personal time. If you send an application e-mail during core working hours, they might wonder if you're going to be doing that on their time, too...
@user3067860 In this context, for a grad student or postdoc, you are in a position that is explicitly a temporary career-developing one, and taking the steps to find your next position is part of your job. And you are free to use your university email for applications. It is completely different from being in a professional, potentially permanent position where you should not use work time/resources to job hunt without clear permission.
There is an option to "schedule send" an email.
If you are afraid you might forget it or miss some information if you wait till the next weekday, write an email at that moment and "schedule send" at first hours of next weekday.
If you want to add some information, you can also do that before the scheduled time. This helped me a lot.
Neither of the two e-mail programs that I use regularly has such an option. (And I can't say that I ever missed it.)
which email do you use? @Uwe
Either mutt or my institute's web mail system.
@Uwe could https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/310451/how-do-i-send-mutt-postponed-mail-at-a-later-time be of some help?
As I said: It's a feature that I don't miss. Quoting user2768's answer, "Email is a form of asynchronous communication: it doesn't matter when mail is sent, it can be read whenever pleases the recipient." I don't expect instant answers on Sunday morning 2 AM.
In my experience, the time of sending/receiving an email can have an impact on the likelihood of getting a response.
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68650 | Chance of getting into engineering PhD if I have good references and research experience but don't satisfy 3.0 GPA requirement?
I graduated with 2.7 undergrad, and currently pursuing a masters degree and will graduate with 3.3. I plan to apply for PhD programs in engineering for 2017 Fall.
Here is my question: Many schools state that they require 3.0 GPA or so, but how do I know that whether they intend undergrad GPA?
Do you think should I apply to such school that states that
Minimum GPA: The MS and PhD program has a minimum GPA requirement of
3.0 on a 4.0 scale.
?
Is it waste of my time if I have stellar letters of references and cool research experiences?
My undergraduate GPA was much lower than yours. My MSc GPA was also lower than yours. I got admitted to a top 40 US school (engineering and fully funded). I had good recommendation letters and few journal publications. This was five years ago. I know there are few guys here who have similar GPA, etc as your. So, It's very possible!
Thanks a lot. With your answer and several answers scattered through the website, i feel like i have a chance after all!
Of course you do! The is to stay motivated and never give up!
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44300 | What qualifications are required to teach undergrads at college level in the United States?
I have a Masters Degree in Computer Science from India.
I have been working in IT sector from last 10 years
From last 5 years I am working in US
I am very much interested in Teaching Undergrads(Bachelors Degree) at College.
I am not aware of Education /Degree/Credentials needed to teach at College Level in US. Can someone kindly let me know how to go about this.
With very few exceptions, you need a PhD in a relevant field. The exceptions are usually community colleges.
@Potato That is highly course-dependent. Especially for non-tenure-track teaching-oriented positions, it's not uncommon to have people who have relevant experience outside academia (e.g. an author teaching a writing course, or a practicing lawyer teaching a law-related course [by which I don't mean law school courses, but rather undergrad courses]).
@cpast Considered as a percentage of the undergraduate courses being taught, those do seem quite rare to me. Besides, the question seems to be about computer science.
@cpast but those are usually adjunct/part time positions.
You will also need to work on the finer points of writing in English. At college level, it is not enough to be understood, you will be expected to use correct grammar, capitalization, and punctuation.
I am not aware of any officially required qualifications for teaching higher education. While often universities "require" supervisors, committee members, and examiners of PhD students to have a PhD, these can often be waived if the person in question holds another comparable degree (e.g., ScD or MFA) or has sufficient experience.
From a practical standpoint, to be competitive for a full time teaching positions in the US, you will likely need a PhD, or the equivalent terminal degree in your field. Individuals without a terminal degree and lots of work experience can sometimes teach individual classes in their area of speciality. Even at community colleges, a PhD is a desirable qualification that improves your chances of getting a job.
Even "comparable degree" and "sufficient experience" can be waived. At the end of the day, the only must-have requirement is that you have sufficient mastery of the material you are going to be teaching. For illustration, Saul Kripke's wikipedia page says that "during his sophomore year at Harvard, he taught a graduate-level logic course at nearby MIT".
It seems like with your qualifications you could get a job teaching an adjunct class, and possibly get a full time job at a community college. I personally have seen many professors without PHD's at my college, but they are generally in charge of teaching courses like Microsoft office or beginner level Networking and Hardware repair. It depends on what you want to teach, if you're looking for a career as a professor at a 4 year university in Computer Science / Computer Engineering you will probably need a PHD to be competitive.
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44809 | Should you include press interviews and articles about your work in your CV?
Is it appropriate to include interviews (published online or in print magazines) in an academic CV?
What about articles/news published about your works? I mean brief (one paragraph) news that professional magazines publish about significant research articles.
If yes, how do you do this to avoid exaggeration?
I think it is ok to include a line about the interview if it highlights the value of your work. May be add a line in "Honors and Achievements" section.
I wouldn't put this under "Honors and Achievements"... rather under "Appearances in Popular Media", or "Popularization", or "Outreach" or some such.
It depends, but yes, I would include media exposure in a long form CV. This could be advantageous for grant applications, because it might be an evidence that you can generate a higher impact.
For each media exposure, just put one line as a citation format. If you have more than 10 such items, select only the higher impact ones, and merge ones with similar content.
Alternatively, you can put it is a footnote to your relevant publication.
For the footnote to your relevant publication, I think this might be more appropriate for something like a press release about a specific work than an interview, but even there, I think a different section might be better.
Officially no need to include newspaper or magazine article containing an interview about the results of your achievement in science and technology in an academic CV, but it can be a plus factor when you're applying for a grant or scholarship where other applicants quite competitive. It will gives the reviewer impression of your commitment to areas of interest and the society impact of your researches.
Remember that with CV, you don't aim at "officially", rather you aim at "put whatever there that's true and makes me get the money".
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45216 | Should PhD students mention small grants on their CV?
I'm wondering if as a phd student, typically people should mention the grants in their CV. For example, even some small grants that you get when you attend a conference.
I would definitely mention grant, awards and any competitive achievements.
Not to be rude, but they are so fundamental, that it makes me wonder if you know what should go on a CV. You may want to look at a bunch of CVs and ask you advisor for advice.
Just to be clear, it depends on what you are calling grants. If you apply to an (internal or external) program that has some sort of name (e.g., University Student Travel Grant), then yes, this counts as something you can put under the "Awards" section of your CV. (Incidentally, related question: List dollar amount of small grants on C.V.?)
If, however, you mean you got money from your advisor's grant, or the conference had a grant that provided you travel money (even if you had to request it), or the university automatically funds you, that does not count as an award.
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86071 | Should I send follow-up email one week after post-doc interview if interviewer said they will make decision in "week or two"?
I had an interview with an UK Institute for my postdoc application last week. At the end of the interview, the PI told me that they will make the decision in a week or two. However, I googled online and I found articles which state that UK Institutes usually make their decisions in two or three days. If you don't hear anything beyond a couple of days, it basically means you are rejected.
I am nervous now. I understand the PI said they will make the decision in a week or two and until today, a week's only past. However, would it hurt my application if I send an email to follow up the decision process? For example, could I send an email to the secretary to ask about the decision process?
Don't believe everything you read online. Take into account that the people involved in the decision have a lot of other duties that may make it difficult to schedule a discussion of the candidates. // Waiting is hard. You need to plan a strategy for the waiting. Some people find it helpful to do some spring cleaning. Some find it helpful to dive into a new project, or restart something that was on a back shelf. Regardless, make sure whatever you choose is fun and helps you get your mind off your waiting.
No. Do not do that. You will receive an e-mail one way or another when the PI makes the decision.
understood... just want to know the decision... If it indeed a rejection, I may start to apply for other industry jobs...
1-2 weeks is virtually nothing. Usually could take 1-2 months or more. Be patient. You will get answer soon one way or another.
@JumpJump what prevent you from starting to apply elsewhere?
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38777 | How to prevent too many students from making appointments to meet with you when you put "Office Hours: ..., or by appointment" on the syllabus?
In the past I have included the following statement on my syllabus:
Office Hours: Mon 1-2pm, Weds 3-5pm, or by appointment
However, I am beginning to get too many requests for appointments. Appointments are really inefficient. They waste both of our time trying to schedule them, and with multiple appointments per week in addition to office hours, even holding them takes a lot of time away from research. How do you accommodate students who can't make your office hours without devoting too much time to this task?
I thought about setting up a class message board where they can ask each other and answer each other's questions - anonymously if they wish - (I can also answer questions on the message board) and put on the syllabus "All content related questions should be posed in class, on the message board or in office hours. I do not reply to questions about content via email. Please schedule an appointment to meet with me if you are having difficulty getting a question answered after trying the above options"
Some Background: I'm a graduate student lecturer. I teach 2 sections of calculus, so about 60 students. Since classes are small (~30), there are about 10 lecturers (some are faculty and some are grad students with masters degrees) and we all have office hours. Mine tend to be very crowded, about 5-10 students showing up (some from other sections). I tell my students to go to other instructor's office hours, but they say they aren't as helpful.
Don't you have teaching assistants?
Along the lines of Patricia's answer, if there's a tendency for OH requests around a given time, or by a select group of students, possibly another well-placed OH will improve efficiency.
Don't say "or by appointment". Students who really need your help will still try to schedule extra time, and students who don't won't.
@BenBitdiddle I've added some background. My university has grad students actually teach their classes to reduce class sizes. So I am effectively both the TA and the lecturer.
When your schedule is full, say no.
Maybe http://doodle.com and try to group students? While I haven't use it for that purpose, I am using it a lot for scheduling other e-mails: totally no back-and-forth e-mails.
What an interesting problem to have. When I saw the title, I thought, "This must be hypothetical, because this problem never, ever occurs." But I was wrong.
Anyway, I don't know how to deal with having too many students try to schedule office hours, because I have never had that problem, even when teaching 60 students.
I do, however, employ the message board tactic that you mentioned, which probably helps cut down on office hours (and dramatically reduces the number of emails I get). I suggest the free (and extremely slick) service Piazza. Students can collaboratively (wiki-style) answer each others' questions, and instructors can edit everything in sight, as well as create their own answers. When posting questions, students can also appear anonymous to their classmates, but not to the instructor, which eliminates any embarrassment they might feel.
tl;dr: Try Piazza.
+1 for recommending Piazza. This has definitely helped me, in part because it minimizes duplicate questions.
+1 for Piazza, too. I installed the iPhone app and turned on badge alerts, so I get notified when there is discussion; makes it super-easy to stay on top of things.
I poll students at the beginning of the term. I pick 3-4 possible slots for office hours and then post a poll on Piazza (or your favorite course management system or by show of hands in class) for the preferred times.
This gives students a sense of input into the schedule, but also maximizes overlap of office hours and student availability.
Before I did this, I found many students might have conflicting classes (e.g., they take my class in chemistry, but take another class in the major or a math or physics class) at the same time as my arbitrarily-chosen hours.
Update:
Also, for setting up ad-hoc meetings, I use doodle.com which connects to my calendars and lets students suggest times that work for them and me. It will anonymize your schedule and just indicate "busy" blocks. Highly recommended.
The website http://doodle.com provides a useful resource for attempting this.
Yes, good point. I use a "Meet Me" page to let students find appropriate times.
I think adding more office hours based on student feedback is obvious.
However that does not seem to cut into the real issue that you are having, which is - Why do your students need so much help outside of class?
I am not sure what kind of system is available to you but you need to find a message board clone that students can ask their initial questions. It is highly likely that you may not have been explaining either the "homework" or the topic clearly and the students are confused a bit. With a message board something is asked once, answered, commented/viewed by many.
And I didn't mean the above to be a knock on your teaching style. We have all not explained something clearly and I have dealt with a barrage of phone calls from students when I did. When I switched to an online format (I have even used twitter) it was much easier to deal with.
The only other time I have had the issue of too many appointments was when the female students believed that I was on the market. I then started dressing shabby and talked about my wife more. If this is your real problem, good luck.
-1: this answer seems to assume a lot of information not provided in the question ... women hitting on a professor? (women being nice can often be interpreted as flirting by males when it actually isn't, assuming they want you is presumptuous at best). Also at my school, bad teaching leads to the opposite problem as students will simply go to someone else for help. When you go to conferences is it the great talks that generate more questions or the incomprehensible ones. I'm not so sure why you think undergrads are any different. Good lectures stimulate interest in the students.
@WetLabStudent re: your parenthetical. See
Abbey, A. (1982) Sex differences in attributions for friendly behavior: Do males misperceive females' friendliness? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 42(5), May 1982, 830-838
tl;dr: The answer is "yes".
@WetLabStudent - I just mentioned that as a possibility. I didn't infer anything at all. I could be wrong but you never know if they are wanting help or social interaction.
I agree with the message board idea. This is in addition.
If you have a lot of students not able to make your office hours, there might be an issue such as conflicts with other courses they are taking.
Maybe begin any appointment scheduling with "Why can't you get to my Monday or Wednesday hours?". That encourages thinking of the appointment approach as an exception, and also collects potentially useful data. It may be possible that rescheduling the office hours to a popular time for appointments would improve the situation.
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7430 | Reading material on working conditions of women in academia
Like many professions, academia is a challenging environment for women. In some disciplines (e.g. computer science), the number of women remains low despite efforts to increase it. Have there been any academic studies on the ways of improving the working conditions for women, specifically focussing on women in academia? As an academic working in hard sciences (i.e. not gender studies), what book or review could I read on the topic, to help me get a better understanding of these issues (and possibly improve my own behavior)?
I'm not interested in “advice” (in part because I am not a woman), but in studies of how effective are various possible ways of improving the working conditions for women (in academia). Like “we study universities implementing policies X and Y, and show that they do increase gender diversity bu xx%”
The question “Women in academia” is related, but I'm asking for material with a totally different perspective.
A simple google of "women in academia study" pops tons of studies. That said, I cannot from personal experience agree with women having it any harder in academia than men - on the contrary.
@gnometorule I tried that Google search (and variations thereof), but I find that it contains also many results on “(academic studies) of women …” (i.e. the studies are academic, but not restricted to academic life per se.
are you more interested in questions along the lines "how to academically succeed as a woman in an environment largely consisting of men (1)", or "as a woman, how to balance academia with a 'regular' life (2)", or "... (3)"? I am not the right person to help here really, have just seen plenty of counterexamples to (1) (a woman 3 or so years ahead in my field, from me school, recently got the John Bates Clark Medal), but maybes LNG your particular interest more clear in your Wheaton could help others here to give you better advice?
I'm not interested in “advice” (in part because I am not a woman), but in studies of how effective are various possible ways of improving the working conditions for women (in academia). Like “we study universities implementing policies X and Y, and show that they do increase gender diversity bu xx%”.
@F'x good last comment (Jan 24 at 19:02) - that's very helpful in clarifying what you're after - please could you edit that comment into the question?
Tangential to the literal question, but very informative to me, was the following collection of interviews with women in mathematics from past decades: "Women Becoming Mathematicians" Margaret Murray MIT Press, 2000, 2001 HC ISBN 0-262-13369-5 PB ISBN 0-262-63246-2
Doing research is nice (and pleasantly academic), but I also suggest actually talking with the women in your department and getting their perspective.
@gnometorule I deleted my snarky comment, but care to give an example of how men have it harder than women in academia? I am very curious.
@Amy: my older comment is horribly spell-adjusted by my beautiful iPhone, and I can barely read it myself. But care to point out where I said that? All I said is that I know plenty of women who do great in academia, and pointed out the most successful one. My program consisted of 7 sub programs of 1-5 maybe students each. In 2 of these, two women were among the most successful in all of NA at the end, finding themselves at MIT and Northwestern after. And my gf is doing great in her field. It doesn't end there.
Please note that what I said didn't imply that in 5/7 fields men were top of their class and highly successful on the job market. There is one man in one of the seven subfields who was similarly successful (also going to MIT). The other 4 fields didn't produce job market stars.
@gnometorule I was referring to your first comment. The fact that you know a few successful women in the sciences (so do I!) doesn't mean there isn't bias inherent in the system.
The most recent paper to make a big splash on this subject was "Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students", by Moss-Racusin et al. You can start there, and dig backwards through the references - you'll hit most of the major reports on this topic.
A few notes on the topic of this paper itself:
It is the same gender biases that academics have towards their students that they also demonstrate against their peers, so don't narrow your research too much. And if your question is "why are there so few academic women in the sciences?" you need to look at the problem from top to bottom. Women aren't going to want to become professors if they are already noticing the bias in undergrad.
Thanks, nice reference. The question is not so much about teaching and students, than about working conditions for women in the staff (i.e. not students).
Look through the references - many of the papers they cite are about the workplace and various initiatives.
Indeed, sorry, I had only given it a quick look. Thanks, it's a very nice starting point!
You may want to check out the Association for Women in Science (AWIS) website. There's a resources area on the right side of the page which includes publications and factsheets. Elsewhere, there's a link to relevant committee or groups for different STEM fields.
I think that you read French, so there is this book: Parcours de femmes à l'université : Perspectives internationales and also this study: Les femmes à l'université:
Rapports de pouvoir et discriminations.
In the UK there is Athena SWAN Charter which
recognises commitment to advancing women's
careers in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine
(STEMM) employment in higher education.
They have a number of reports that could be of interest including Measuring Sucess and a whole section devoted to good practice.
A Google Scholar search of "academia women" seems to reveal a number of potentially-relevant studies.
Below are primarily retrospective/introspective qualitative articles, but some quantitative articles exist.
‘We make the road by walking’: a collaborative inquiry into the experiences of women in academia
Elizabeth Drame, Jennifer Mueller, Raquel Oxford, Sandra Toro, Debora Wisneski, Yaoying Xu
Reflective Practice
Vol. 13, Iss. 6, 2012
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080%2F14623943.2012.732939
Inspiration From Role Models and Advice for Moving Forward
Michelle G. Newman, Lata K. McGinn
Behavior Therapy, Volume 43, Issue 4, December 2012, Pages 721–723
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2012.03.001
Kleihauer, Sarah, Carrie Ann Stephens, and William E. Hart. "Insights from Six Women on Their Personal Journeys to Becoming Deans of Agriculture: A Qualitative Study." Volume 11, Number 1–Winter 2012 (2012): 64.
Silander, C., Haake, U. & Lindberg, L. (2012). The different worlds of academia: a horizontal analysis of gender equality in Swedish higher education. Higher Education (18 december), 1-16.
O’Brien, K. R. and Hapgood, K. P. (2012), The academic jungle: ecosystem modelling reveals why women are driven out of research. Oikos, 121: 999–1004. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0706.2012.20601.x
Multi-Institutional Study of Women and Underrepresented Minority Faculty Members in Academic Pharmacy
Marie A. Chisholm-Burns, et al.
Am J Pharm Educ. 2012 February 10; 76(1): 7.
doi: 10.5688/ajpe7617
You may also wish to check out well-known blogs and sites that discuss the academic environment, including http://theprofessorisin.com and http://chronicle.com/section/Home/5 and http://www.phinished.org.
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110194 | How do I cite RFCs?
What's the right way to cite RFC's of the IETF (Internet Engineering Taskforce)? like this one? That is, what kind of document should this be considered as? Is the IETF the author, the organization, or the publisher? etc.
There's a draft of IETF recommendations for citing RFCs in BibTeX. Using these recommendations, RFCs are considered as a technical report. The authors would be the people who wrote the RFC, and the publisher and organization would be "RFC Editor".
In your example, the BibTeX entry following the recommendations would look something like this:
@techreport{rfc4180,
author = {Y. Shafranovich},
title = {Common Format and MIME Type for Comma-Separated Values (CSV) Files},
howpublished = {Internet Requests for Comments},
type = {RFC},
number = 4180,
year = {2005},
month = {10},
issn = {2070-1721},
publisher = {RFC Editor},
institution = {RFC Editor},
url = {https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4180.txt}
}
See also: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/59284/citing-rfcs-with-biblatex
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61925 | If you no longer have your university email address does your Google Scholar Profile become invalid?
Google Scholar requires a university email address for verification. I have not signed up for the service yet. If I leave the university, does my Google Scholar profile become invalid? Or can I still use/update my Google Scholar profile? Can someone post their personal experience about this?
Apparently a .org address works too, even if you died >65 years ago. http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/61689/an-academic-who-died-over-50-years-ago-still-has-google-scholar-profile-with-ver
I have a google scholar profile for more than 5 years now and was never asked again to verify my account after the initial verification was completed. I can still edit and update my profile as usual.
Are you still in academia? Or have you moved to industry, etc?
I just finished with academia
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63979 | Should I choose a journal for submission from the journals I have cited and should I cite papers from the journal I intend to submit to?
Manuscripts should provide new contribution in the particular field which is listed as the scope of the journal. But is it necessary to cite papers from the particular journal for which I am going to submit my paper?
The two questions have different implications, because journals benefit from self-citation. The first question implies the journal will try to manipulate the self-citation rate.
"Should I decide the suitable journal for submission based on the papers in references?" In my experience there is usually not enough of a pattern for this to be attempted.
You have two different questions here.
Should I decide the “suitable journal” for submission based on the papers in references?
"Yes you should" seems overly strong, but "yes, this is a decent strategy" as a starting point to figuring out where you might want to send the paper. You should look at other factors like how well that journal is rated/cited and respected by people in your field (as a starting point to understanding this, ask your advisor).
Is it necessary to cite papers from the particular journal for which I am going to submit my paper?
Not strictly "necessary" but a very good idea. What's important is that you show how your paper fits in to the work that already exists in the specific field you're contributing to. Probably, some of that work is in the same venue, so you should cite that work and show how yours is related to it. Some reviewers may feel more at ease if they see citations to the same venue and are convinced you've described how your paper is related to the cited works. You should at least be checking your target venue for papers related to yours, so that you aren't seen to be missing on-topic work in that field in that venue, which reviewers may be more likely to be aware of and thinking of as they read your work.
Be aware that when you're describing those prior papers in the field and the gap that leaves, which your paper fills, that you do so respectfully; the authors of those papers (even if the papers are not in the same venue) may be your reviewers.
You should also look at papers in that journal and see how they are structured (in addition to looking at how they are formatted). Is there a particular set of section headings that most or all papers in that journal have? Are they typically in the same order? Is there a common series of points that are made, especially in introduction sections? If so, give your paper the same sections and sequencing, so that you overcome the antibodies that might reject it thinking "this just doesn't look/feel/read like something that gets published here." For formatting, follow the journal's style guide/templates.
is it necessary to cite papers from the particular journal for which I am going to submit my paper?
No.
Somebody actually answered a yes/no question with a yes/no answer... stop the internet.
But in order to reach the minimum number of characters for an answer he had to repeat the question.
@Mindwin we don't answer yes/no because they are not helpful answers. What we want to know is why is the answer no.
@StrongBad I know, I know.
The two questions you have asked are actually not the same, so I'll answer them separately. To answer your first question, it is not necessary to cite papers from the journal where you plan to submit. You should cite only whatever sources you have used or are relevant to your work, irrespective of where they have been published. If, during your literature search, you happen to come across relevant articles published in your target journal, you can cite them. If not, it is still fine.
Deciding on a suitable journal based on the papers in your reference list is a good idea. This is not because you will have more citations from the same journal, but because the chances of your work matching the scope of the journal is higher. Since the works on your reference list will mostly be closely related to the topic and subject area of your paper, the journals which have published these works will probably have an interest in publishing works on a similar topic. This is a good way to select target journals which will be interested in your work.
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141391 | Whether to add co-author who helped in modifying a journal paper based on a peer-review feedback?
Should I include as co-author someone who helped me in modifying a journal paper based on a peer-review I have received?
What was the nature of the modification?
Depending on the nature of it, you could simply add an acknowledgement of their help. This is common practice when you get external contributions.
By "nature of the modification" folks probably mean: If he helped you with spelling, grammar, and adjectives, then probably not a co-author. If he helped you with understanding the concepts, explaining the concepts, or correcting conceptual errors, then almost certainly a co-author. If he corrected mathematical errors, then it's in the middle.
@puppetsockreinstateMonica Yes he helped to address one important point of concern of the reviewer.
You should consider it, I think, but there is too little information here to give a positive recommendation. It would depend on whether the other person contributed to the ideas at the heart of the paper. If they only gave advice on wording or presentation, then probably not.
Note that editors and even reviewers making suggestions don't become co-authors. You have to judge their contribution. But note that they may have an opinion about it that you should take into account as well.
But let me suggest something beyond pure accounting and ethical obligation. While this may not be true in some fields that depend on rigorous bean counting to rate people, I'd suggest a general view that you are generous rather than stingy can serve you well in the long run. If I were the commenter on your paper, I'd suggest that an acknowledgement is enough (or more than enough). If I were the author, I'd be more inclined to include the commentator than not, though the first part of this answer still applies. Over the course of your career it may matter little whether you are the sole or joint author of any given paper. But, having a wide circle of people willing to collaborate with you is a big plus in the long term.
But, if you are at the very beginning of your career and looking for a job, you might need a sole author publication at this moment. That depends on the field, I think. But I'd suggest short term thinking only if truly necessary.
Thanks. I have already started my carrier as researcher almost 10 years ago and the article counts already 11 authors, so one more would not change much. He supported addressing a whole review point from a review and he is also a good colleague, so I believe I will include him.
Heh heh. I'm glad I'm not the only person who cannot spell "career." I have to look it up nearly every time. :^)
@puppetsockreinstateMonica, or maybe the spell "corrector" just struck again. I get dinged pretty regularly.
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139921 | How acceptable is it to submit a paper where most of the references are written by the same group of authors?
I am preparing a conference paper. I have been looking for references for a specific topic related to my research. I have not found any that were not written by current/former members or my research lab.
How common is it and how acceptable is it to submit a paper where most or all of the references were written by the same group of authors?
In other words, my adviser is an author for most/all of them with a subset of his students.
Are you sure that you are working on something really scientific? I mean I'm somewhat pessimistic but it's not a really good sign to find out the only one that does research on your topic is your adviser or his/her former students. Also, in my opinion a paper that only has self-citations (I count a citation as self-citation even if the alleged paper has just one common author with the current article) is probably bogus...
@AloneProgrammer While I find your response intuitive, I also find it close-minded. Are conventional solutions to a problem always the best ones? I would say not always. I am more concerned with solving the problem than gaining approval from the academic community.
I understand, but I already said that I'm really pessimistic about problems, so my opinion might not be true generally and that's the reason why I put the comment instead of writing an answer.
@AloneProgrammer What if the research was published in leading journals whose peer reviewers care about novelty and significance?
@Laakeri I don't care if it is published in Nature or Science or whatever elite journal. A paper published in a leading journal doesn't mean necessarily everything in it is a god given fact. There are lots of excellent papers published in leading journals and there are lots of garbage papers also published in leading journals. So, you should check yourself to see if paper makes sense or not instead of relying on reviewers or reputation of the leading journal.
If your work is either very new or very esoteric, then I don't see that this would be unusual. However, for a more general topic there might be some issues. When I finished my dissertation the topic wasn't new, but it was very esoteric. I knew of only two universities in the world where there was interest in the problem and only about a half dozen people interested. All were either professors or students at those two institutions.
Research is very specialized and often balkanized. So, if there are, in fact, few or no other papers then the situation is determined by the facts and is therefore acceptable. Publishing may spread interest and the "problem", if any, will disappear in time.
Make sure your search was thorough, of course. It wouldn't do to be informed of a wide body of work that you missed.
This answered my question perfectly. Thanks!
In my field, computer science, this can be fine depending on circumstances.
E.g. it can be fine if you're in a new area.
Do your citations cite anyone outside the group? They may be a good place to find more citations.
Also make sure you've tried the 'related articles' feature on Google Scholar.
Have you tried looking for references in other languages? Finding one even if loosely related can cover for diversity. Other than that, if you dont find any then there is no problem.
Actually it is a good strategy because you are both honoring the original researchers on the field... and they can't exactly disagree with their own papers (this is not a joke, its an actual tip given around. To try and include a paper in your references from the teacher/teachers on your PHD that may be your supervisors/exam comitee ).
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