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13137 | Affiliation for a student's internship project
Though related to this question on undegrad student affiliation, I am in a somewhat different situation…
I am an undergrad student at the Miskatonic University. For completion of their BSc, students at MU are required to perform a 6-week research project in a research lab, which I did with a professor at another institution: Unseen University. I loved it, extending my stay there for 3 more weeks into my summer break. Now, we will submit a paper with the results of that internship project, but I don't know what affiliation(s) to put.
The specifics are:
I am not paid by MU, and did not set foot there during my research project (not using the library, nothing)
I was not paid by the research institution (UU), either
Though I am keeping an eye on the research project, I did not do any significant work since my internship ended (vacations, then too busy with courses)
I think I should put UU as my affiliation, because I used their resources. But maybe UU being the affiliation of the main authors (grad student and professor on the project) is enough? And should I put MU as affiliation?
Huh? Ain't you a professor? haha
@CharlesMorisset Nice to know. Thanks for the info!
I wonder what are the disadvantages of writing both.
IMHO being paid or not doesn't matter at all (e.g. a PhD student payed by a scholarship doesn't list the scholarship as affilitation but the university, funding goes into the acknowledgements).
I'd list both adresses
What matters is that there is an official relationship. Official relationships the student has with both universities:
MU for the studies (not going there outside lecture time doesn't matter - you are allowed to study at home after all, and noone forces you to use their library). MU is also where you are now while writing up the paper.
UU for the internship. Presumably there is some kind of supervision agreement or something.
Possibly an explanation that you were at MU as an internship (summer) student would be good (e.g. acknowledgements: thanking your supervisors - particularly if your MU supervisor is not coauthor of the paper?).
Unlike the situation in the linked question, here it is clear that MU officially wanted you to do the internship (and for the internships I know you usually also have supervisor at MU), and UU officially had you over there to do the internship.
But looking up how we deal with this, I find that all three possibilities are used in practice:
giving only MU, as this is the "main" affiliation of the student (I think nowadays I'd give both affiliations - but my UU supervisor entered the affilations, so if he's OK with me being MU only, that's fine with me)
giving only UU (I'm at the UU side, but I know the project is also a consulting project for studies at MU. But AFAIK no supervisor from MU was actively involved in the student's work.)
giving both affiliations. Having multiple affiliations is increasing in my field as we have more and more interdisciplinary centers, and people give institute adresses rather than the university or the department. Working at a non-university research institute, students here usually have an affiliation with both our insitute and the university.
Update: policies
At my institute, the policy is "discuss with the director".
Hovewer, some universities have policies on the net, e.g.
University of Adelaide: Authorship Policy :
This Policy applies to all staff, students and titleholders
[...]
1.5 All individuals and organisations that contributed to the research outcome (e.g. research assistants, technical writers, funding bodies, the University), must be properly acknowledged within the publication.
[...]
2.5 As an acknowledgement of the institutional contribution to the delivery of research outcomes, authors must cite their institutional affiliation or affiliations in any publication.
Washington university in St. Louis: Policy for Authorship on Scientific and Scholarly Publications
Applicability: Faculty, Staff, Postdoctoral Scholars and Associates, Fellows, Trainees, and Students affiliated with Washington University
A paper that I have recently read may be a good reference (or example). As can be seen, one of the co-authors, Xuemei Liu is under Baidu, Inc. Shanghai. The research work was done when she (gender inferred from the name) was done during her internship at HP Lab.
She wrote the affiliation as Baidu, and used a star mark as the footnote indicating the work was carried out during her HP Lab internship period.
Update: Another more relevant example:
This paper here is exactly the case. The first author is a student under Shanghai Jiaotong University (student and thus, unpaid). The work of the paper was performed when he was an internship under Microsoft Research Asia. They adopted the same way: affiliation is still the university and a star footnote indicates the internship connection.
That's an interesting example… and yet it doesn't fit exactly my case: I assume that as her affiliation is listed as Baidu, Liu was employed (and thus paid) by Baidu. I am not paid by Miskatonic University, which I think changes things.
@F'x Oh, I get your point. I remember I have seen another example matching your case. Wait and see if I can find the paper any more.
@F'x Please see updated answer.
Yes, that's usually what I do. The affiliation is my base-organization, and a footnote with "this work was (partially) done while the author was at ..." In addition, I thank the internship organization for hosting (paying?) me while part of this work was done in the acknowledgment part.
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135301 | Commercial company wants me to list all prior "inventions", give up everything not listed
I'm a post-doctoral researcher in computer science, but my next position will be in industry. I've been negotiating a contract with this commercial company to do R&D work (not while I'm employed at a university). It's been a negative experience overall, because - like many companies - they did not write their draft contract themselves, nor gave it serious thought, but had some lawyer draw it up (without seriously reading it afterwards).
Not going into all the horrors of what the IP part looked like - here's a bit of it:
"Invention" shall include but not be limited to improvements, designs, discoveries, developments and works of authorship or artistry (including without limitation software, integrated circuit, printed circuit board or computer design, and documentation).
... (etc. etc.)
I have attached hereto, as Schedule 1, a complete list of all Inventions to which I claim ownership and desire to remove from the scope of this Agreement, and acknowledge that such list is complete ("Prior Inventions")
and basically they get to own everything else.
This may (?) be just fine for people who move from employment in one commercial company to another and never feel the need to publish anything or have rights to develop anything independently - each company makes you essentially say "you own everything" and then they can dish it out amongst themselves. But - it obviously won't fly if you're involved in continuing research - earlier, in an academic institute and now independently, outside the scope of your commercial employment, and/or if you're writing free software. I've had lots of ideas, notes, open ends of other work, talks with people, etc. which may be developed further - in addition to things you've actually published or registered in any way. I can't just recite all of them - nor do I want to tell the company all about them.
My question is about how to deal with this situation, or perhaps - how indignant I should be about it. Some options:
Just strike out that section of the contract and explain to them it's an unreasonable request.
Try to tweak the wording so that the list isn't wholly definitive ( <- A bad idea IMHO)
Write a list, but add items which are general and vague to represent half-baked (or unbaked) stuff, sort of catch-all "inventions" you could later claim cover actual things you pick up on.
Give in, write down some sort of a list and hope they don't go after you.
Suggestions with concrete examples are especially helpful.
Notes:
It isn't just this one company, I've seen similar contract drafts in several places already. It's not like this everywhere, but I don't want to have to rule out workplaces just because they are careless about their contracts (that is, assuming they don't actually want to suck you dry of your independent contributions).
I have no problems rewording this part of the contract whichever way I like, so I'm not asking for help with reading or writing "legalese" here.
I'm not in the US (and I don't want to make this question country-specific).
Choose a different company to work with... This might be better on the Workplace Stack or Legal...
@SolarMike: See note. Of course that's always an option.
You might want to try asking this on Law.SE, or even consult an IP lawyer. Similar corporate IP contracts that I have seen usually give them ownership of things that you invent during your employment and that relate to the business you are engaged in with the company. Although, it probably depends on the specific industrial area.
Just to clarify is this for R&D work to be done at a university or as an independent contractor? Our university has a team of lawyers and IP experts to deal with exactly these issues. Otherwise unless you can afford to have a lawyer protect your side it's probably better to avoid.
I think it might help if you could be a bit more specific about what these 'prior inventions' of yours are. Do you have patents for them? If so, I don't see why there would be much risk in declaring them up front.
@Time4Tea: I don't have problems interpreting this contract, nor changing the wording. I'm just not sure what I should do.
@mg4w: Not as a university employee, just as an R&D engineer. They don't care about my independent research (or perhaps - they do).
@Time4Tea: Patents? I'm against those on principle.
The one thing Cummins forgot to patent was the most important...
@einpoklum as I'm sure you know, patents are one of the main ways of protecting an invention against industrial competitors. I would expect this prospective company will be wanting you to generate them on their behalf. So, if you are opposed to patents in principle, are you sure you will enjoy working there?
@Time4Tea: Please don't be facetious. The question is not about the work I do for them, it's about protecting my previous and ongoing independent work. (Also, patents do not "protect" inventions just like private ownership of land doesn't "protect" that land; patents are merely guarantees from the state to artificially help their holder to monopolize use.)
@einpoklum I'm not trying to be facetious, but I'm struggling to understand exactly where your 'hang up' is. If you have no patents, then (at least from a legal standpoint, and assuming US) the only way you can protect your pre-existing ideas/inventions from commercial exploitation is to keep them secret. So, could you not carry on keeping them secret during your employment with this company? What is it you are concerned they are going to do?
Regarding your last sentence, that you are not looking for legal advice: with all respect, a legal professional that has expertise in commercial IP may well have relevant experience in this the area that you lack. For example, regarding practical legal areas such as enforceability of such contracts, and/or actual experience of litigating such cases in court.
@Time4Tea: The thing I want to avoid ("protect" against) is a company claiming an "Invention" of mine (to use the contract's terms) as its own, except for ones that I first put into some kind of expression while working for them and being paid for it. About your second-to-last comment - I meant I don't need help with the "legalese"; edited the question.
If your inventions are software-related (you mentioned free software in the question), then it's probably outside my area of expertise. I have more experience with physical electro/mechanical products, which may be different. Perhaps you could look into the issues surrounding writing/releasing free software whilst also being employed by a software company?
Look, you already know you don't want to work with this crew. Tell 'em "Thanks, no thanks, best wishes, and adios muchachos".
Even if OP doesn't want to work for the company over their bad attitude towards employees' creations done on their own time, it might be worth striking the language and making a counter-offer and seeing how they respond. It would be a useful experience to have gone through in developing strategy for handling future offers with such odious clauses.
Is the clause even legal? A company may claim ownership of all inventions made during your time with them. But I don't see how the company can claim ownership of an invention you made earlier, but forgot to list. Could this be an instance of the business model "Fuck-Up"?
@DavidRicherby: There are many questions on this site about the process of transitioning from a position in academia to one in industry - and so is this one. Will edit the questio to clarify. I ask that you consider rescinding your close vote.
@einpoklum Is my edit OK? (Or at least close enough to the truth? If, say, you've very recently finished your postdoc and haven't worked since then, I'd leave the claim that you're currently in academia.)
"I don't want to make this question country-specific": that's not really going to work with legal issues. E.g. in my country (Germany) those clauses would be void because the law on inventions by employees doesn't allow to deviate from its defaults to the disadvantage of the employee. Thus, the question would be whether to sign irrelevant text or whether to negotiate "Look, this clause is invalid. I'd like to have a working contract, please".
@J...: The country is Palestine, the state is Israel; few people will know the relevant legal details to give a specific answer.
@cbeleites: Luckily, this is not a legal question (otherwise I would have put it on Law.SE).
@DavidRicherby: Your edit is fine. Actually I've already worked for about a year after my post-doc, but that just complicates things without adding useful info. Also - how come you're still listed as having cast a close vote?
If your profile is accurate and you are in Israel, you may want to read this. Your contract seems to be dancing around the requirements of the 1967 Patent Law. When they are talking about inventions it sounds like they mean patents, specifically. There is much more detail in the link - was going to post as an answer but... closed. It may provide insight as to what your employer is trying to protect and, also, what tools you have at your disposal to likewise retain options for patentable work you invent on your own time while employed there.
@einpoklum: The obvious recommendation to move on and look for another company aside, I don't see how recommendations about contract clauses can be given without taking legislation into account: whether it is void or something you should fight nail and tooth to not get trapped or is just the legal default spelled out at least to me makes a whole lot of a difference.
@cbeleites: I asked for a recommendation regarding how to react, not regarding how to word the contract clause; and my hope was to draw upon other academics' experience in similar situations.
@J...: Actually, my contract as a US-style contract which was partially, and not always validly, adapted to Israeli law, but I really didn't want to get into those specifics. I (presume to) know what my employer wants to protect, but the laywers drafted something very expansive.
@einpoklum In any case, if your interest is to understand where the law provides you with latitude to restrict those clauses in your contract, and what requirements must be met for them (and upon whom the burden of proof rests in cases of dispute), then I should think it relevant to at least understand the content of those two Israeli laws.
@einpoklum I didn't want to retract my close vote until you confirmed that my edit was OK. Now that you've done so, I've deleted my original comment and voted to reopen.
I have voted to reopen because this is a very common sort of question for researchers in industry.
This is pretty standard among tech companies in CA and WA. What I have seen is, they have potential claim even if solely on your own time/with your own resources if it "demonstrably" relates to current or planned R&D (meaning there need to be some tangible documentation of their interest to pursue such a field). Also, contracts I have seen stipulate that you should disclose new "Inventions" (broad list as you describe) immediately, so they can make that determination at the appropriate time. However, it will alert them to your activities which may be perceived unfavorably ("not dedicated").
@abc: 1. You're commenting half a year later. 2. It can't be "pretty standard" - otherwise such companies would not be able to employ academics with ongoing research. 3. I've gotten an offer from a California company without this demand.
@einpoklum 1. And? It's living documentation for future readers. Don't look at it if you don't want. 2/3. Your theory and single anecdote, or multiple offers I've seen from FANG&co + plenty of online corroboration? 4. Learn some social skills.
I work at an R&D company that has a pretty similar clause in its contract, and in fact most R&D companies will.
The core reason is that things change quickly in R&D, so an area that the company has no interest in today may be a big part of their in business in 5-10 years. Moreover, employees like you are likely to be the ones who create new business areas like that, and if they don't put in a very broad clause, there's nothing to stop you from taking work you've done at the company to a competitor or spinning off your own company (see, for example the fights going on over self-driving tech).
So, what should you do? Well, it really depends on the reason for your objection.
If you've got moral objections to IP being controlled by companies, don't work in commercial R&D.
If you want to keep contributing to existing free and open software projects, put that down as a general reservation in the "prior inventions" section. Most reasonable R&D organizations will accept that in some form (though it may take a bit of back and forth on the wording), since for most companies that's never going to be their competition.
If you want to be able to pursue new side projects: embrace the clause! Don't think of it as "the company wants to steal my ideas" but instead as "the company might want to pay me to do my side projects". In a healthy R&D organization, what you do with a potentially commercially interesting side project is essentially give them "right of first refusal" -- and if they don't want to support it, then it's yours.
Now, unhealthy organizations are a whole different story, of course, but there's lots of better reasons you wouldn't want to work for one of them in any case.
Adding in a clarifying note based on the comments:
While we can't know for sure without seeing the full statement, what has been shared, however, doesn't actually say the company is claiming all prior works. Instead, it appears to follow the usual practice of clarifying which IP the company agrees cannot be claimed, due to their origins in prior works. Prior works not listed, if they come into dispute, just have to have their origin established in other ways (e.g., scientific publication, date-stamps in metadata).
"pretty similar" is often very different. At any rate, you're describing a false dichotomy, between this clause - which takes away everything I've done by default - and not having any IP rights transfer.
As for your suggestions: 1. Again, false dichotomy - either accept things as-is or don't participate at all. 2. It's not about existing FOSS projects - that's not so hard to list. It's about my ideas which are not current projects, and may become projects in the future. 3. No, the company doesn't want to pay me to do my side projects; where did you get that from? It already pays me without me surrendering ownership of my independent work. And frankly, I wouldn't sell that to them. -1.
@einpoklum Maybe I've misunderstood: are you considering becoming an employee, or becoming a consultant / independent contractor?
Why would this matter? But - if it helps your answer, suppose it's either part-time or full-time employment.
Not sure about the third bullet - plenty of companies aren't interested in you working on your own ideas on their time, but will still happily claim ownership of anything interesting you come up with. But otherwise, IMHO good advice.
"pretty similar" can mean every invention created during work time or relating to the employer's specific field, which is pretty reasonable IMO. Most R&D jobs will have a clause about IP, but the scope varies substantially between contracts.
@einpoklum For a consultant or independent contractor, the relationship is assumed limited, in which case the clause would be inappropriate and unusual and could be negotiated away. For a salaried employee, the relationship is open and indefinite in scope, which makes the clause both more reasonable and likely non-negotiable.
@immibis Often it doesn't have those limitations, however, because "during work time" isn't well-defined for companies with flexible hours (as is the case for most R&D companies) and "the employer's specific field" isn't readily limited for an R&D organization with broad interests.
@einpoklum At the end of the day, I would worry not about the IP clause, but about any potential non-compete clause. Enforceable R&D IP ends up becoming well-defined by copyright and patents, and in good ways as well (e.g., anything published is fair game). Non-compete clauses are what really tries to regulate how you use your thoughts after you depart a company.
I don't see how a clause (potentially) pulling IP dating outside the employment contract into the employer's IP can work in general. Most new employees had employers before, and those previous employers usually have rights about potential inventions the employee made when employed with them. Including the right to keep the invention secret...
@jakebeal: That's another annoying clause I often see, but I've had success limiting them, plus, in most countries they're essentially unenforceable (except if you start your own actually-competing business.)
@Jakebeal
I think the rub is that they claim everything he's ever made in the past, every "work of authorship" etc such that if he doesn't list this stackoverflow post in the list then they can claim ownership of it.
Companies do something try their luck with insane clauses. I was once offered a contract that included the company claiming my power of attorney in perpetuity.
@cbeleites Murphy We can't really analyze without seeing the full statement, which has not been shared. What has been shared, however, doesn't actually say the company is claiming all prior works. Instead, if it's the usual practice, it's attempting to clarify which things that may be discussed or disclosed in the future are non-claimable due to their origins in prior works. For example, if you contribute to free software projects, you can declare that you're going to keep doing so and that the company has no rights over that work. Similarly, if you have an invention that isn't yet patented
@jakebeal Work time is the same time that counts towards your contracted 40-ish hours a week, of course. They've already had to solve that problem in order to say that you will work 40 hours a week.
My question is about how to deal with this situation, or perhaps - how indignant I should be about it.
I suggest that you start by simply bringing it up for discussion with the hiring representative, and explain your point of view and what kind of leeway you are looking for in terms of freedom to work on side projects, whether academic or related to open source projects, that are unrelated to your regular company work. Good communication is your best bet in my opinion - if they have a good understanding of what you’re asking to change in the contract and why you’re asking to change it, I’d think they’ll be more inclined to make concessions. And if they still won’t, maybe the place is just not a good fit for you.
Some additional thoughts:
You ask how indignant you should be. IMO an emotion like indignation doesn’t belong in this situation. Somebody offered you a contract with certain terms, you are free to negotiate or ultimately refuse to accept the offer. It may be frustrating, but I don’t think these terms are unfair or immoral ones.
Another thing I think you shouldn’t do (certainly not in your discussions with the company, and perhaps not even on this forum which is after all public and easily associated with your name) is make dismissive claims about how the company didn’t give the contract serious thought, or are careless about their contracts, or that even the lawyer who wrote the thing “didn’t seriously read it afterwards”. At least the part that you quoted proves nothing of the sort. Based on the information you gave us, to me it seems possible that the contract says precisely what they want it to say, even if it is objectionable to you. So basically what I’m saying is, when you raise your objections with them I suggest doing it in a respectful, emotionally neutral way that doesn’t imply the people you’re dealing with are stupid, careless or incompetent.
Good luck!
There's going to be a bit of jurisdictional aspects of this, but in the United States these types of agreements are fairly common as part of work for hire agreements when intellectual property is being created (e.g., software development, engineering, artistic works, etc.). I'd have to see the full scope of it, but it seems like it is a fairly standard template that effectively says:
Any intellectual property created during your employment or inspired by your employment, and relevant to your job, is property of the company.
There's not much you can do to get around that intent.
Likewise, the scheduled list of prior inventions is to protect both of you in the case things go to court (i.e., you can point to the schedule as evidence that an invention existed prior to your employment and was not inspired by it). There's also not really much you can do about that either since not listing things puts you at legal risk (i.e., prove you came up with this before your employment).
So really the amount you can push back is going to depend on how much they want to hire you. Best case is if you are working on a narrowly defined problem you could modify the agreement to say something like, "Both parties agree that work after DATE related to PROBLEM SPACE is a result of employment by COMPANY and all inventions are the sole property of COMPANY." Obviously that would prevent you from starting a new company with a product in that product space, but might save you a lot of time enumerating a bunch of other work you've done.
If you've worked in the space before you are really just going to need to sit-down and write out the list. Or decline the job offer.
A person who has any presumption to do research could never sign a clause such as the one you listed. You are always inspired by your previous work; and what this means is that the company will essentially own anything you do that's related to what you did for them. 2. I would have been ok with the first part of the clause; but what I quoted effectively recognizes that anything related to the company's business, that you did not explicitly list, will have been be created during my employment - while this might not in fact be the case.
@einpoklum Not just research, but pretty much any work that falls into an IP space. However, that's also why these types of agreements tend to be really hard to enforce in the US at least. Basically, I seem to recall, that in the US that unless they can prove you explicitly stole something the company has very little grounds to go after you. Hence why a modification of the contract to just cover a problem space might be easier.
@einpoklum I think the issue of whether they will have a claim to your future inventions will depend on the specific wording of the contract you are being offered. Also, this is where a legal professional would be able to advise you regarding enforceability. It is one thing having something written in a contract, but quite another to enforce it in court. That aspect may depend to a great deal on the legal context of the jurisdiction you live in.
@anonymous: So, you're saying that (in the US), people sign these things, banking on their non-enforceability? Also, FYI - I'm not in the US.
@einpoklum That's pretty much the case.
@anonymous: This is interesting. Unfortunately, those people are probably those who never contribute to free software projects or other freely-distributable-and-usable endeavors. Because the taint of such an agreement is such, that contributions from a person who has signed it need to be rejected due to clashing with the project license; and the likelihood that rights-holders may not come after anybody may be good enough for a personal gamble, but not for a public project.
@einpoklum: Software companies typically have processes and policies in place for open-source contributions, creating exceptions to the intellectual property assignment or granting appropriate licenses. It's not typical for projects to blanket reject all contributions from anyone who might have signed one of these agreements; while it does create additional legal risk, it's not as bad as you seem to think.
@einpoklum Or, as is often the case, the company is happy to have its employees contribute to free software projects and formally gives permission to contribute under the appropriate license.
@jakebeal: 1. We're talking about former employyes. 2. A company may or many not oblige such a request by a former employee, but: 2.1. It's a complex request (the wording on the company's side is not trivial) and 2.2. I don't want them to decide.
I've been negotiating a contract with this commercial company [...]. It's been a negative experience overall [...]
I wouldn't expect things to get better once you're hired. I'd keep looking for other jobs instead.
PS. This should be in workspace.se since this is not a question related to academia per se.
In my experience, this is typical in industry. Most companies (especially large ones) are going to be very reluctant to negotiate/reword a standard employment contract.
@Time4Tea: I do have the same experience with large universities and research institutions, though. It may be more a matter of size and culture than of academia vs. industry.
I have my doubts that they will compromise much unless they really, really (did I say "really, really" enough?) want you. If they are paying you gigantic money for your mind, then you may want to accept. But I would probably want to look elsewhere.
I think that such clauses, while, perhaps, not quite so blatant, are pretty common. The company does, in fact, have an interest in keeping IP that you develop with their assistance, in any way, from being exploited by others if you leave.
So, I think your concerns are very justified. Among your bullet points you might be able to negotiate a bit over the wording of your third point, but you are likely to fail on the others.
If they employ such lawyers, then the WILL go after you and put a lot of resources behind it. And they will probably laugh if you try the first point.
Mostly, however, people in such companies are allowed to publish things. I know some folks who publish a lot and have such agreements in place. But patentable ideas are another matter altogether.
For a young researcher, who is involved in research and ideas that are potentially patentable, I suggest that you employ a strategy that can save you in such situations. I learned this from a researcher at IBM. Create a "Patent Book" for yourself. It needs to be a bound book, not a loose leaf collection. You should probably create a new one each year. In the book you write down the essence of any potentially patentable idea that you have. You date the entry and sign it. You get a trusted colleague to also sign the entry and date the signature. Don't let any significant time elapse between the signatures. write in pen on good paper. Do not ever erase anything in the book or you will invalidate it.
Now, if you need to establish priority on any idea, you have evidence, with dates and with witnesses.
And if you need to make a list of prior art for a future employer, you also have the basis for one that is very difficult to counter. But all of the above elements are necessary. The record needs to be immutable (ink, paper, no erasures) and witnessed (with dates).
Also note that while you are employed, anything you put in such a book can probably be claimed by the employer. And the dates in the book and the dates of employment are evidence they can use. You really do give up all rights to your IP. But after you leave, new ideas not represented in the book during employment are also, perhaps a bit protected from claims by the company.
Finally, for such a company, also look to see what the non-compete clause looks like and how long it extends past your leaving the company. Some will claim perpetual ownership of your IP. That can possibly be challenged in court in some places, but doing so is an expensive proposition. Beware and be forewarned.
Hmmm. Would anyone be kind enough to explain where I went wrong here? The votes surprise me.
I didn't vote on this answer, but your information about a poor man's patent might be outdated (a poor man's patent was traditionally putting a letter in a sealed dated envelope, but the lab note might be similar). The America Invents Act of 2013 changed the law (e.g., see an article by a law firm that will happily answer you patent questions, for a fee).
@RichardErickson, but I didn't suggest that it is in any way a substitute for patenting, just evidence of prior art. Let me ask my colleague about current practice at, say, IBM. But, I suspect that having such evidence would aid the OP in this case, specifically.
I'm curious about current practice. I've heard the same use of lab notebooks by chemistry and pharmaceutical labs, but that was over a decade ago. Thanks for asking about it.
Engineering Notebook is a more common term for what you are referring to, but in a lot of this advice is pretty dubious since they are usually used by organizations to defend patents under work for hire agreements. Basically, lawyers get involved and it gets really messy really fast.
@anonymous, Research notebooks are also useful for remembering ideas that you don't have time to follow up with now, even when patents aren't involved at all.
Right, but the issue is that one has legal standing and the other one doesn't. If you look at an Engineering Notebook from IBM (or a Laboratory Notebook from a pharmaceutical company) it's got a bunch of legal jargon and features that make it evidence in a legal sense, is technically property of the company, and users have specific training in the proper use of the Notebook. In contrast he notebook I keep in my desk for jotting down ideas and working through maths is only nominally useful in a court case.
@Buffy - this has been the case at IBM for yonks. They own your dreams, your photographs, your derivative works. You are compensated. But you must disclose prior work in case it taints anything later (especially in a FOSSy manner). Their CBC may also require divesting competitor stock.
Typically -- despite the "acknowledge that such list is complete" language -- failing to list something on the Exhibit does not mean that your prior inventions are assigned to the Company.
The actual language of the assignment clause governs what Inventions the company is claiming. Usually that clause will cover all Inventions which are conceived, discovered, reduced to practice "in the course of your employment" (or sometimes the broader "while I am employed by the company") and so would not cover prior inventions. The exhibit is provided as a way for you to very clearly exclude things you've done previously from the agreement and is particularly useful when you've created inventions in the past which are similar or in the same line of work as you'll be doing for the company. If you don't include it on the list, but you've invented it in the past, the invention probably does not belong to the company although you might end up in a situation where you have to prove that you invented it earlier (with, e.g., lab notebooks, emails, patent applications, other contemporaneous evidence dated before you started work). If an invention is on the list, then you can probably avoid that whole issue of proving you invented it earlier, so it's good to list things you think might be related to what you'll be doing for the company.
I often encounter boilerplate (template) contracts with clauses that are a problem. Usually you can work around them.
In this case they want a list of work that i claim for myself. So that's exactly what I'd do. I would aim to be reasonable and my goal would be to let them have the problem instead. Which is fair, its their contract after all. I answer it as best I can, and then shrug, I can't answer it any better.
So my own approach would be, to boldly add to the bottom of my own list, like this:
[Item of work]
[Item of work]
[Item of work]
Any works or ideas which I have conceived, worked on, undertaken preparatory work for, or been involved in, prior to commencing this employment, and to which I retain any ownership or rights at this time.
Any works or ideas undertaken outside this employment, or in other previous employments or capacities, or undertaken as a result of my own personal choice and not as part of my work duties, or arising after this employment ends, or to which I retain any ownership or rights at this time.
They will probably object, and I'd shrug and say, "You asked what I claim, I can't provide an absolute list. I'm a PhD in Computer Science with X years experience and a ton of hobbyist and other work. [Optional: I do coding and creative ideas 18 hours a day, 365 days a year, since I was a kid. That's what you're hiring me for.] I must have worked on tens of thousands of ideas in that time. If you need me to waive or sign over rights to certain specified agreed works, such as works in the course of my duties, I can do that. But I can't possibly list all I've already done, every last item, in my entire life, so if you ask for what I claim that's the honest best I can do."
They might not engage you. But most likely they'll scratch their heads and consult internally, and see the problem (which is a real one, and of their own making since its their own contract). Maybe they'll suggest a way around it if faced with an actual honest answer.
You actually have a quite serious second problem, that you might not know what you own rights to, or which ideas are yours, and should be claimed. That's because typically any previous employer will have broad terms about ideas you invented while there, or related to.work. Unless each of the possible wisps and creations of hours during your working life is tested in a courtroom, you have no idea for most of them, if they are indeed still yours to be claimed, or legally belong to some past employer. The scope to certify incorrectly is huge - and you may accidentally certify things you cant or shouldn't. To be honest, these kinds of clauses might be universal, but this particular variety that says to list anything claimed, and claims the rest, is unanswerable as written. You might well need to accept that.
They might decide not to engage you, or try and pressure you. But if they see the problem but insist on a list of specifics only, that you know you can't do, then its an impossible contract for you to sign anyway, so no loss.
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122253 | Choosing an email address/provider for academic work as you change positons
I'm an on-again-off-again academic, I guess you could say: I've switched positions in and out of academia several times over the past decade. When I write academic papers (or even Free Software in the context of academic work), I often face a dilemma regarding which email address to put down in my contact information. The dilemma is not always the same; I want to focus my question on two scenarios:
Research work you pursue "on your own time" which is not a (direct) part of what you work on at your current employer; and when you know your employment is likely to end soon.
Research work you pursue between periods of employment, or which your current employer is not interested in being associating with.
So, here are some options of what to use as your email in these scenarios, by no particular order:
An email account on the university you got your PhD from, which is guaranteed not to expire (as much as these things can be guaranteed), and does not indicate whether you are a student, or currently a faculty member etc. Example: your_name@alma_mater_uni.ac.xy
Your general-purpose personal email address at some large, free mail account provider. Example: [email protected]
A professional-affairs-only custom email address at one of the large, free email account providers. Example: [email protected], or [email protected] or something better-sounding.
A personal email address at a smaller, academia-oriented mail account provider. (I don't know any of these but perhaps they exist - with free or paid accounts.) Example: [email protected] or [email protected]
A professional-affairs-only email address at a smaller, for-pay mail account provider. Example: [email protected]
Which do you believe is the best choice, and why?
A related question: Which email address should a student use in a publication?
Why not to use gmail for anything you do? it is pretty common today to see gmail as a corresponding Email in the research papers.
@student: Gmail is terrible - they data-mine your personal correspondence, never delete it, and send a copy of everything to the US government. I would discourage you from using it altogether.
If you have a personal website, get an email domain and use that email!
@TheGuy: I wonder if you can get an MX record associated with a github.io site.
@einpoklum yes, I have one.
After some of my personal e-mail hopping (also as corresponding emails on papers), I'd recommend getting a domain name and linking it to one of your email accounts. That is, only if you do not get to retain your academic email indefinitely if you have one (the uni I used to be at has the regulation to delete the e-mail and do no forwarding...)
By having your own domain, you can move services but keep the actual email consistent over time. I.e., you can use [email protected] and where that points to just changes.
Any kind of service (and domain) that you cannot move around nor have any assurances for longevity on, are to be avoided IMO. I made that mistake with both my university and a corporate account so I learned the hard way...
I (largely) agree, I'll add: domains are cheap. (I disagree with using an academic email, since it is unclear which of the indefinite academic email addresses should be used. Also, it assumes that indefinite survives policy changes...)
My current policy is to maintain a professional webpage which provides my current professional email address. This webpage must be properly indexed by Google, so that anybody searching a reasonable combination of my name and domain would find it in the top results (in my experience it helps to host it under an academic institution website, since it's usually very well referenced).
Rationale: I tend to consider that using my employer-provided email address is a way to give them due credit for my academic production, this is why I use it even if I'm on a temporary position. As OP rightly suggests, somebody might try to contact me later with an obsolete email address. My assumption is that somebody with a relatively serious request would at least take the time to google me when their email bounces back, then they can find me and contact me easily. And to be completely honest, I don't mind missing the emails from those who wouldn't do this small effort.
You may use an alias such as one provided by IEEE ([email protected]). You can map it to any email-account and since the mapping can be changed to any other email account, you don't have to write different email accounts in your research paper when you change organizations. Plus, they look very professional.
That's an option, but you have to want to be associated with the IEEE in a very fundamental way, which is something not everyone wants.
You can get a domain name for less than 25 bucks per year maintenance. Google gmail will allow you to then create an email that looks like a corporate email. For example [email protected]. The cost of the gmail is ~50 USD per year. You can use the same domain for consulting work and even get an LLC if you need/want. This will serve you well in being more permanent, professional, and supporting you in moving around. If you publish at a university or company, I would try to stick with your "brand". But if they insist to have theirs, list yours as additional using a little footnote as "alternate email" or "permanent email".
P.s. Not advertising Google. They are just a default vendor. I'm sure there are alternates. But you get the concept.
I use fastmail, myself. So far, I'm happy with them.
You are actually advertizing Google. Also, they are the opposite of the "default vendor" - they're some place that is completely absolutely impossible to use if you want even a semblance of privacy rather than sharing all of your mail with the NSA and some of it with advertisers. So - please replace it with someplace else. Also $25/year for a domain name is rather expensive for an itinerant - i.e. non-tenured - academic.
Until recently I used my personal address as it should remain long term stable. However, due to spam, I decided to periodically rotate email addresses used for contact information. If the email address starts to get too much spam, I'll switch it to an autoresponder with a link to a web form someone can use to contact me.
The address format I'm using at the moment is:
[venue+year]@[researchdomainname]
As others have suggested, it can be useful to register your own domain name for long term stability. Right now these addresses just forward to my personal email address.
The use of the autoresponder hopefully will avoid the problem of old email addresses becoming invalid.
I've also considered not listing an email address and instead linking to a page in a paper, e.g., https://trettelresearch.com/contact.html (this page does not exist at present). The contact page will contain a web form to email me. I'm not sure how many journals will accept this arrangement, but it should be long term stable and avoid spam.
Personally, when I look to contact a researcher, I usually try to find the most recent contact information I can. I do not know how often people try to find more recent information vs. simply email the address in the paper, though if most people try to find the most recent contact information, it might not be worthwhile to worry about having stable contact information in papers.
My ideas on this are presently evolving, so I'd appreciate any feedback on this. If you think having a different email address for each venue is absurd, I'd like to hear from you.
Also see: How can corresponding authors protect themselves from academic spam?
I would recommend an alumni address at the institution you graduated from. That hadsa clear academic imprimatur. However, anything that is clearly a permanent address (including Gmail) should be fine. I had a graduate student who preferred to use his Gmail address even while he was in graduate school, and he has continue to use it since then, through post-doctoral positions and even a faculty position in a third-world country.
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124202 | see/cf. followed by e.g. / for example
Consider the following sentences:
foo is bar (see, for example, baz).
foo is bar (see, e.g., baz).
foo is bar (cf. for example baz).
foo is bar (cf. e.g., baz).
Which of these are valid to use, and which is better? Or - does it depend on what we actually instead of foo, bar and baz?
“cf.” means “compare”, not “see”. See, e.g., here. And as for your question, cf., e.g., this.
@DanRomik: In that case, I've seen it misused. But +1 on your comment.
I've also seen it misused, but its proper use is well-defined (see, e.g. cf.).
The recent trend in non-legal English formal writing is to just use the English equivalent of the Latin abbreviation, so compare rather than cf. and for example rather than e.g. This also obviates the confusion about what cf. means and the distinction between e.g. and i.e.
On the other hand, using Latin abbreviations like et al. and ibid. for citations makes more sense.
The term means compare. So you would normally just see "c.f. X" where X is what you want compared. Like:
Foo is bar (c.f. SNAFU).
P.s. You may have instances where you want to emphasize that there are many comparisons and thus use the e.g., but I would typically omit it and just give specific comparison(s). Tighter writing.
"Cf." abbreviates a single Latin word (some form of conferre), so it only gets one period.
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127008 | What's an appropriate phrasing of a caveat about self-citation?
I'm writing some report, and at a certain point I give an example by citation. The citation format is such that you don't see any names (e.g. "[123]") without visiting the bibliography; or maybe it's just initials. And I wasn't the only author. I would like to "warn" my readers to take the citation with a grain of salt, as I am relying on what is at least partly, if not mostly, my own perspective or my own arguments elsewhere. At the same time, I don't want it to sound like I'm boasting about being an author; nor that I'm making a stronger pitch of the cited paper; nor that I'm disparaging it somehow.
What's a good way to phrase this limited-caveat/weak-warning?
Note:
I'm currently writing alone, am not using the first-person voice at all, and have just a handful third-person "it is the author's opinion that" and similar expressions.
I can't presume to individually take the credit for the work in [123] which was a group effort.
@Guest: The "we" in [123] is myself and some others; but what I'm writing now is just me.
The citation format is such that you don't see any names — So don't do that. One simple fix (which I strongly recommend for other reasons) is to give people explicit credit in the text. "The previous best algorithm for factoring roosters, discovered independently by Knuth [42] and Turing [222], was recently surpassed by Rozenberg [123]."
Following from @Guest, alternatives include: In collaboration with X & Y, I ... [123] (you can drop "In collaboration" if you like) or Myself et al. [123] (particularly useful if you were the first author, but still works if you weren't).
@JeffE: The style of using people's names in the text or in citation keys is essentially unheard of in my discipline.
Seconding @JeffE’s comment — phrasing references so that no names are visible at the point of citation is always unfriendly to the reader, worries about self-citation aside! Except under exceptionally tight space constraints, there’s no reason ever to write just “as shown in [2]” — even when journal style specifies number-only references, you can write “as shown by Smith [2]”, or similar. (I like to believe that number-only reference formats were originally intended to be used this way, not the nameless way.)
@einpoklum So you have an opportunity to stick out by making your papers more readable!
"In previous work [1-3] the author showed that ..."
or
"We have recently shown that ... [1-3]"
With phrases like that I never had a complaint from a peer-reviewer.
The wording suggests that in [123], I did all the work and the other authors didn't really contribute much.
It is easy enough to use the variation:
"In previous work [1-3] the author, et. al., showed that ..."
I doubt that you need to do anything at all that you wouldn't do for any other paper or author. I think self-citation is really only an issue when it is overdone and/or no one else agrees with you.
But if they (hopefully) believe what you are writing at present, they don't need to be "warned" that you also wrote something similar or supporting in the past.
If you normally say "Smith in [3] says,..." and you are Jones, then you can say "Jones in [5] implies..." or similar. There are other answer/comments here that give other suggestions if you really think you need to be more specific.
One of the authors, together with others, has done something of note in [123].
A, B and C also claim this and that [123].
That said, you can probably leave the warning off the paper. Anyone interested in the claim will check the supporting source for credibility, or at least they ought to. If you do not believe in the claim, qualify the claim as is relevant for how credible you think it is: Call it a conjecture or guess, write that the claim has been suggested or is worth investigating, or whatever you feel is true. Then write that the other paper (also) supports the claim.
I would like to "warn" my readers to take the citation with a grain of salt, as I am relying on what is at least partly, if not mostly, my own perspective or my own arguments elsewhere.
Unless there’s something specific about the context that you’re not telling us that makes this a good idea, in general I see no need for such a warning. Your readers are capable of thinking for themselves. They will look at the citation, see what it says, think about it (taking various pieces of information into account, including the knowledge of who wrote it), and decide if they agree with it. The fact that it’s a self-citation is basically irrelevant from the point of view of the way you should be presenting things. Treat it as a citation to any other work by any other person.
At the same time, I don't want it to sound like I'm boasting about being an author; nor that I'm making a stronger pitch of the cited paper; nor that I'm disparaging it somehow.
Those are somewhat valid concerns, but at the end of the day again my recommendation is to write whatever you would write if the cited paper was written by anyone else: if it deserves to be praised, praise it, if it deserves to be disparaged, disparage it, and if you think it should be referred to using a neutral tone, then mention it in a neutral tone. If you are acting in good faith and aren’t saying something that’s obviously over the top and ego-driven, reasonable people will not find fault with what you wrote.
If you're saying that there is already some work on a subject, but it's just your (and your collaborators') work, it's different than saying that there's community interest, for example.
@einpoklum agreed.
A good way to phrase this caveat would be to subtly acknowledge your involvement without undermining the credibility of the citation or appearing boastful. Here's an example of how you might phrase it:
“It should be noted that this citation [123] includes perspectives and arguments that are also discussed in my own earlier work. While the conclusions drawn are based on the cited source, readers are encouraged to consider this context when evaluating the points raised.”
This phrasing keeps the tone neutral and professional, gently alerts readers to the potential overlap without overemphasizing your personal role, and leaves room for critical evaluation of the source.
My first thought would be to cite in the style "Smith et al. [123] discovered" or similar as mentioned in the comments above, so that it is clear who wrote the paper if the work is significant.
But realistically if the paper you are concerned about citing was published in a peer reviewed journal you don't need anyone to take it with a grain of salt because a group of your professional peers reviewed it and said it was acceptable.
If you really want to acknowledge that you are building off the reasoning in that paper say something along the lines of "as suggested by Smith et al. [123]" or "this is similar to what the author reasoned when working with Smith et al. [123]".
Bottom line is that if the source you are citing is peer reviewed, that means that it is accepted in the body of work for your field and you should be able to cite it without caveats, barring obviously the case where you blast a paper for some fallacy (in that case you should acknowledge your part, and why you changed your mind).
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96160 | Is it acceptable to setup a survey online (but not send to human subjects) before getting IRB approval?
I am doing a small survey-based research project, where I need to setup surveys online. I was wondering if I needed full IRB approval before I can setup the surveys online on Qualtrics/RedCap/Google forms? (I'll of course wait after approval before sharing the survey with any human subjects that would fill in the survey)
Addenum:
It's social science research, it's a few questions from a validated survey we will be using. I'm pretty sure the protocol will be accepted. There is a visiting student for the month here and to gain time I thought he could setup the questions on Qualtrics. Would this be acceptable?
Yes, this is quite standard. There is nothing special about setting up the survey in Qualtrics that requires IRB approval. Just be prepared to make any changes the IRB requires/recommends during the approval process.
Note that you should not SEND your survey to human subjects using Qualtircs. But taking it yourself or working through the bugs with an RA would be fine. Think about it this way - if this was a "paper survey" you would be allowed to type your survey before handing it into IRB. But you wouldn't be allowed to mail it to any subjects.
To necessitate IRB approval work must involve human subjects and be considered research according to the following definition:
[a] systematic investigation, including research development, testing and
evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.
(Department for Health and Human Services, obtained from irb.purue.edu)
Working on the design of your surveys and testing it yourself are acceptable (i.e., taking the survey to be sure the data is being recorded as you expect). However once you move into sharing with others for research, even a pilot or feasibility administration, you should already have secured IRB approval.
Note that at some institutions (including where I went to graduate school) all projects must go through an IRB determination as to whether or not a project was human subjects research, rather than that decision being left to the investigator.
You should have IRB approval as soon as possible. One of the aspects of IRB approval is approving your protocol - how can you set up the surveys if you don't know if the protocol has been approved?
It's social science research, it's a few questions from a validated survey we will be using. I'm pretty sure the protocol will be accepted. There is a visiting student for the month here and to gain time I thought he could setup the questions on Qualtrics. Would this be acceptable?
@TheFermat It depends entirely on the IRB - though given it's already a validated survey, the risk of having the IRB object to your protocol enough that that effort is wasted seems minimal.
What if this was the case: Protocol accepted, there is a visiting student for the month. It takes 2-3 days for a personal amendment on a protocol. Could the visiting student already go ahead and start setting up the questions online?
@TheFermat That is a question for your IRB.
This answer doesn't make sense. Setting up the survey in Qualtrics is not different than typing it in Word in the olden days. There is not a problem with doing that prior to IRB approval.
@Dawn The suggestion is that sans approval, staging it in qualetrics may be a waste of time if the IRB objects to questions or phrasing
In my experience, changing wording in Qualtrics is fast. The issue is setting up skips, randomization, special code to get random numbers generated etc.
@Dawn That's possible. Mostly the answer is informed by working with more than one IRB with a hair trigger
The question is not "might I waste some time?" The question is whether or not this is acceptable.
@Dawn Answering the more general case of "Is this a good idea" was a deliberate choice. It's been the policy of every IRB I've ever worked with that the only people who can actually say if something is acceptable to the IRB is...the IRB. So it was either that, or voting to close as unanswerable.
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12336 | Is it normal to spend a whole day reading and writing about a single paper for a literature review?
I'm not native speaker and I'm doing a lit review at the moment. My Question is it normal to spend a whole day reading and writing about one paper? So I read the paper deeply and then write about it. The process takes more than 6 hours. Is that normal or should I try to double that?
There is a nice paper entitled 'How to read a paper' by S. Keshav
@Rabbit care to add a link?
I read that paper before. @F'x google it!
For me, doing a paper in 6 hours is lightning speed (especially if both reading the paper and writing the review are squeezed into this interval), but I'm in math. and never tried to write a literature survey myself.
@F'x http://blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca/keshav/home/Papers/data/07/paper-reading.pdf
I disagree that academic papers are not meant to be read (although many are unfortunately written that way...). But usually not every part of every paper is equally relevant for your work.
So how long reading and digesting a paper does/should/can sensibly take depends on
how familiar you are with the field
how much/which parts of the paper are relevant for your research
the kind of relevant information: is it a bunch of facts that you need (prevalence of disease X was fount to be Y in population P - here a day would be very long) or do you need to understand a method including what the idea is behind, what assumptions are made, what caveats exist, how it behaves, and so on (a day would be very fast)?
(how familiar you are with the language).
As to the actual reading skills, I like to mark important parts, and that will later on also tell me what parts I read thoroughly and what parts I just skimmed. And, while I also go over abstract and conclusions first, I'm a bit wary of accepting statements from there only: often, the detailed discussion or the description of the experiments give (explicitly or implicitly) important limitations. So that may need double-checking.
Reading efficiently takes practise. I think it is reasonable to spend such time on a paper in the beginning. I am sure the speed will improve over time. that said, however, you probably need to check on how you read. It is normally not necessary to read every word in a paper. There are parts that you could skim to get an idea of what is going on and then focus on the stuff your really need to know. You should start making notes about the parts you skim so that you easily see if you have read it in detail later on, and if need be return to it at a later stage. In the end you will get more skilled in reading efficiently and the key lies in evaluating what is key and what is not.
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12391 | How to reference studies mentioned in a paper without having to read the original papers?
I'm review the literature at the moment. Now I'm reading a paper that mention other studies. How can I reference them without reading the original papers?
Don't. Just read the original papers.
I'm starting to notice a pattern in your questions ... they're all about seeking any shortcuts instead of doing a thorough literature review. This is a very bad strategy, that risks leaving you with patchy, incomplete, incoherent knowledge.
Possible duplicate: What's the correct way to cite a paper cited by another paper?; there is also a cross-style review of indirect reference at http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/7776/5920.
Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13305/64
Let us assume, for example, you read Doe (2011) and find Smith (1966) referenced therein. Technically, you can say something like "Smith (1966, cited in Doe, 2011)", or alternatively "(Smith 1966, cited in Doe, 2011)." The exact format depends on the format of the journal (it is also possible to phrase it "cited by" instead of "cited in").
That said, however, it is very dangerous to provide such quotes since you do not know if the person(s) citing the paper has understood it correctly. It is not unheard of that people cite for very odd reasons and not double-checking works cited may just propagate such errors.
So, it is possible but not recommended.
now it is clear. but in this case do I have to put Smith (1966) in Reference List?
Both should be in the reference list
If you are using the American Psychological Association (APA) style, the secondary source is listed in the reference list and the primary source is not. (See, for example, http://apa.org/support/publications/apa-style/secondary-sources.aspx). So if Doe (2011) cites Smith (1966), then Doe (2011) should be in the reference list while Smith (1966) should not. For more on the APA style, see also http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/05/secondary-sources-aka-how-to-cite-a-source-you-found-in-another-source.html
I'll just leave this here... http://xkcd.com/978/
If it is relevant to your work, why wouldn't you read them? If they are not relevant, why would you cite them?
The only case I can think where it might make sense is if you are reading a review paper, and want to actually cite them as a collection rather than individually. Because there are a large number or for other reasons. Then you would write
Doe et al. collected in their recent reviews a large number of earlier work in (Doe, 2012 and references therein)
or
Doe et al. collected in their recent reviews a large number of earlier work in (Doe, 2012 and references 15–73 therein)
"If it is relevant to your work, why wouldn't you read them?" One possibility is that a copy of the work is very hard to obtain, for example, it could have been published a hundred years ago in an obscure foreign journal.
It's also possible that the primary source is a personal correspondence. Or when the secondary source converts the technical language of the primary source into layman's terms. See http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/05/secondary-sources-aka-how-to-cite-a-source-you-found-in-another-source.html
I wrote a post on writing literature reviews in psychology.
Here's my advice:
Cited In: Good literature reviews do not use "Cited in". Literature
reviews which summarise Author B’s citation of Author A’s work write:
"as Author A (1999) says as cited in Author B (2002) …" . However,
good literature reviews, when they see that Author B cites Author A,
go and get Author A’s article, read it , and draw conclusions about it
directly.
So it is only in rare occasions that you need to indicate that an article was cited by another author. Just because you learnt about a study because it was cited somewhere is generally not relevant. Read the original so that you know enough about it to incorporate it into your literature review.
Of course, there are many less common exceptions where you may wish to indicate the relationship between two papers:
You want to discuss how Paper 1 uses Paper 2. For example, you might want to draw attention to how various papers have mis-used a citation in order to justify some misguided methodological practice.
You are performing a meta-analysis and you want to indicate that you used a previous study to find references.
There is also a potential plagiarism issue around over-reliance on a single paper to generate your literature review. If for example, you took 95% of your references from the one paper, this would be questionable in general, but at least by using "cited in" you are being honest. Of course, I think this strategy of reviewing the literature should be avoided in general.
More generally, finding literature by following the citation trail backwards (by looking at references) and forwards (using tools like Google Scholar) forms part of a general set of strategies for finding literature.
As JeffE above said, "Don't". When you make assertions in your published work, they should be based on either
Something that you have demonstrated yourself in the work
Something that another person has demonstrated (so you cite them)
Something that is sufficiently well known to the intended audience that no citation should be necessary (you don't need to cite Newton for his law of gravitation for example)
To consider the bigger picture for a moment, something that is published does not suddenly become a part of scientific dogma, even if it's published in a top tier journal. The motto of the Royal Society is "Nullius in verba", that is, "take nobody's word for it". If you are relying on established results for your work, then reading these results is the very minimum you should do. In an ideal world where you would then proceed to replicate the results that you are depending on.
Of course, this is usually not practical because of constraints on your time but at the early stages of your studies you should at least consider replicating some results since:
It will give you a far greater familiarity with the domain
There's a very high chance that you will expose some misconception that you had held about the work you are citing
There's a reasonable chance that you will expose a deficiency in the original work
In closing, you should consider that every time you publish something, you have added to mankinds knowledge. Every time you cite a paper without reading it, you dilute that knowledge.
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113725 | How have perceptions of ResearchGate changed from 2014 to 2018?
About 4 years ago, a question was asked about usefulness of ResearchGate for academics. Judging by the most upvoted answers, the portal had a rather negative opinion back then. However, social media trends tend to change on much shorter timescales, and my experience with RG has actually been slightly positive. This makes me curious as to how the perception has changed since then.
To quote the previous question, I would be very interested in knowing if, as of 2018, ResearchGate is a good way of increasing the visibility of your publications and finding fellows with common research interests, or is it just a "waste of time"?
Since the above is - as many have rightly pointed out - too opinion based, I would like to ask, more specifically: In what ways has ResearchGate changed over the last 4 years? How do these changes affect perception of ResearchGate in the academic community?
I would very much like to see an A.D. 2018 update on the linked question, since it is the only (but dated) resource I can refer to when asked, as I was just recently, about pointlessness (or pointlesslessness) of ResearchGate. Perhaps the OP could rephrase his question to "what exactly has changed" regarding the issues with RG raised in the answers to the old question (spam, fake profiles, indexing, available content, low and low-level participation) and regarding the advantages that some have seen (visibility, networking, stats, Q&A). This seems a less opinion-based angle.
@lemon314: Thank you, I've edited the question accordingly. Also - thanks for the input to those who pointed out that the question might be too opinion based.
What I am wondering if having a profile in RG increases your citation count.
Since I never use it, I won't write an answer; but I do have a profile (one that I think was made "for" me rather than by me) and I get occasional completely useless emails from them. Everything I hear from them suggests they are aggressively useless, ignorant of academia and unwilling to learn. For the fanboys who wish to disagree, explain why they think it's reasonable for an academic with publications dating back 30 years to constantly be showered with "We think you may be interested in this position!" for post-doc positions.
This is not an answer, but I just want to mention that I find it utterly disgusting that there are no links to the original sources of any of the papers on researchgate (neither to arxiv nor to the journal). They actually show the DOIs but don't make them clickable! That really makes their priorities clear.
I have a Researchgate profile, but I only see my activity decreasing in the near future. To me, the issue with RG is that it only appeals to junior or unknown scholars. While it is great that they now have a way of disseminating their research, RG doesn't help reaching the "big names" because most don't use the platform. Most fields are sufficiently small that people reasonably know each other or can ask someone else to be introduced. Hence, RG doesn't help narrowing the gaps between academic circles of "big names" and "unknown researchers", although this is something urgently necessary.
Additionally, many of the services that RG provides are subpar compared to competitors. I already have a number of ways to keep updated with the current literature in my field, and most of the recommendations that RG sends me are unsurprising or duplicate. The citation/read count is mostly useless, and many services such as Google Scholar and Scopus are much better at that. The platform for including current projects is also fairly inflexible and generally asks to share more than what the researcher is comfortable with---lab webpages are much better at that. I also don't see RG as a reasonable platform for uploading preprints, and like many uncurated venues, most people who do resemble cranks, and I don't use RG to look into someone's publications because it looks messy and incomplete. I use Google Scholar, Scopus or personal webpages for that.
I have never used the "Questions" section of RG, but the few times I glanced it, I expected to see some sort of a forum for academic discussion over some topic, but it seemed more like a watered-down version of SE minus the efficient curating. And most questions remain unanswered.
I do keep my RG updated, and every week or two I receive a request for a pdf of one of my papers. I suppose easing this request process is an advantage over other means of communication, but I don't think many people who use RG attend those requests anyway. I have also never received a request to collaborate through RG, but I have received such requests through e-mail.
I think the rationale behind RG is interesting (i.e., connecting researchers online), but it just doesn't work well, and doesn't appeal to most of the relevant people in (my) community. Collaborating in science is incredibly difficult and time-consuming. I don't see how an online platform that connects people who don't know each other and have no way of knowing how each other work can reasonably help at that.
I do think one aspect of RG is fine, which is post-publication peer-review. But while it does allow people to publicly comment in publications, the platform is also not built for long comments, only back-patting, and most people don't use it for that anyway.
In general, it seems that maintaining your own webpage, even if with much less functionality, appears to be better than having a ResearchGate profile. But two things that RG attempts to implement are worth pursuing: 1) post-publication peer-review, and 2) some way to connect people from the same field but who belong to different academic circles.
I tend to agree that I don't see the big names on RG, but those are not the people who cite you, not necessarily.
@HermanToothrot I don't really see why there would in general be any relation (in either direction) between how big a name someone is and how likely they are to cite you.
@Stefan my definition of collaboration is pretty standard, I suppose, i.e., working on a project and/or publication with someone else. I never said I find collaborations "dreadful", I said that I don't see how RG significantly helps collaboration.
@HermanToothrot in using RG, I am not particularly interested in getting more citations, but I would expect it to help me reach others in my community, get some sort of feedback, and narrow the gap between different academic circles. It doesn't help me in any of that. Moreover, given that there are many more efficient (cleaner, easier, more direct, more complete, etc) ways to get up to date with the current work in my field, I doubt it helps increase my citation count.
@Stefan you are misrepresenting my point. I never said I expected to use it to "fish" to the big names. What I am saying is that RG appeals to specific academic circles that are already isolated from the leading people, and that RG does not help their collaboration, and that other means (eg, email) are more effective at that. I also don't see how RG helps collaboration, and I have never seen anyone who benefited from it. But of course that's just anecdotal evidence. Arxiv, for instance, is MUCH better at fomenting all of the above even though it was built to be just a preprint server.
You correctly tagged this with social media, because RG does share one quality of social media - it's useful only if like-minded people are already on it. In certain fields you will find a lot of relevant people signed up already, so there's a good chance RG will be helpful. In others, you may end up with irrelevant answers/article suggestions that could put you off.
I always recommend first finding out if researchers connected to your field, or researchers you know are already on it. If they are, it could be a great platform to connect. I have personally been able to get very specific inputs from very senior researchers, who may have otherwise been difficult to reach. You can't generalise though; different people visit at different frequencies.
The same holds for the Q/A section. You shouldn't go expecting an efficient answering system like SE, especially if there aren't many active researchers from your field already signed up. Think of it more as a shot in the dark, there is a chance you end up with valuable inputs withon a reasonable time. My personal experience over 3 years indicates a roughly 60% satisfaction level with answers/discussions.
As for 'whats new', there is an option for users to indicate labs/groups they work in. This can help you reach out to non-corresponding authors of work you may be interested in (possibly corresponding authors are too senior/busy to expect a short turnaround time).
First paragraph seems like a comment and makes no mention of this question being a repeat, which would be greater grounds for it to be removed.
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12225 | How does ReadCube compare to Mendeley?
Currently I use Mendeley. I have heard some stuff about ReadCube, but they don't have a Mendeley quick import tool, so… before I go through the hassle of resetting up my library with them, I wondered how it compared to Mendeley. What are its extra features? What is missing? How smooth is it to use, how widely adopted is it, that sort of things…
Hi Keevs, and welcome to Academia Stack Exchange! “Is X better than Y questions” are frowned upon around here, as they are quite subjective (different people want different things in a reference manager). I've edited your question a bit in order to make it more objective, I hope you don't mind! (and if I lost any of the original meaning, please feel free to edit it back in)
I think this Q is a poor fit for SE, since program features change over time (ie the Q is localized in time and answers may quickly become obsolete) and answers are likley to be based on personal preferences.
@fileunderwater many questions are localized in time (policies change, application procedures evolve)… that doesn't necessarily make them bad fit for the site. Answers have a date on them, and can be edited (or new answers posted) if things change drastically.
@F'x true that the problem of "too localized" depends on the question. However, I dont see how this question differs from a shopping question, also program features can change very rapidly.
From a short comparison of the features listed on the website here is list of Mendeley features that ReadCube doesnt have:
In-text citation insertion and formation: Mendeley has Word and other plugins, ReadCube only exports to Endnote and "your favorite citation software"
Sharing and collaboration features
ReadCube is only a desktop app (no web app), and it doesn't work on Linux
Mendeley has an open API to query its huge database
On the other hand:
ReadCube is used as the online reader for a few publishers: Nature, Frontiers and Wiley.
ReadCube suggests personalized article recommendations (dont know if they're good, though)
Mendeley also suggests article recommendations based on my library via email. For me they are quite relevant, albeit a bit old.
Note that when getting articles via Readcube from the journals that support it, you don't actually get a copy of the article. It seems Readcube is one way big publishers are trying to "contain" their copyrighted articles and prevent readers from having a true copy. This article explains some of that:
http://rossmounce.co.uk/2015/03/19/how-to-block-readcube-and-why/
So I'm a ReadCube user who was a Mendeley user -
ReadCube does have a citation tool for Word and their apps make articles interactive - things like references, authors, figures are clickable - which is pretty neat. Their recommendations are pretty good too if you have enough in your library - otherwise the results can be pretty generic. I guess that makes sense.
I personally prefer it to Mendeley - though I do miss Mendeley's web access part of it. ReadCube has a much better interface. It's like what you'd expect for mainstream tools - intuitive, slick, streamlined. I find the other tools in comparison "science functional" - they work - but look cludgy.
As of now, one feature that has kept me in Mendeley is that, unlike ReadCube, Mendeley can can keep a bibtex file with all your library references. This file is updated automatically. Readcube requires manual export of selected references.
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62282 | Is it okay for a thesis to have sections of very different lengths?
I run into a situation where the logical division the material in the thesis I'm writing forces me to create sections of very different lengths. Matters are further complicated by the fact that the short section does not naturally divide into subsections.
Is this bad style to divide material like that? If so, what are some good techniques for correcting it?
Also, should the shorter section have exactly one subsection, or should it not have subsections at all?
The layout I have right now looks perhaps somewhat like this:
Section 1 (where I prove Theorem 1)
subsection 1 [10 pages]
subsection 2 [10 pages]
subsection 3 [10 pages]
Section 2 (where I prove Theorem 2)
subsection 1 [10 pages]
...
subsection 4 [10 pages]
Section 3 (where I prove Theorem 3) [8 pages total]
What is bad is if the formal structure doesn't match the logical structure of the material, or if one section is extremely short (like one paragraph).
There's typically a great deal of flexibility in your thesis presentation, and as long as the lengths don't disturb you or your committee, there is no reason to force your work into some Procrustean bed of perceived length balance.
In my own thesis, the number of pages per chapter were approximately: 12, 4, 8, 8, 36, 12, 44, 16, and 6 pages, respectively. While there may have been problems in the document, chapter length was not one that either I or anybody who encountered it ever had any complaint around.
In short: let the sections be the length that is best for them, and don't worry if they are different.
There is simply no problem here. You're writing an academic paper, not a poem. There is no expectation or need that different sections have the same length or the same number of subsections. If you're in doubt, just read some other theses and other academic papers, and you'll see this for yourself.
Most poems won't have a problem with different section length either.
@jakebeal: Perhaps I should have said "sonnet" or "villanelle" (although in the latter the sections must be mildly unequal). Anyway...
Yeah, I put on my pedantic hat, but still voted you up.
Maybe limerick or haiku.
In short, for your particular case,
It is OK
Each section of a thesis should bear a logical coherence connected to a single topic. Each subsection would relate to subtopics. There is no hard and fast rule stating the distribution of volume of pages for sections of a general thesis. But it would be advisable to consult your advisor for any other guidelines set by your University.
Just to ease mind and get a clarity for what and how to include sections,
you may envision your thesis like a tree structure with the root being your main title of research on which you write an abstract about. Then you diverge to branches of topics that your research is built upon. These might become your sections. Each topic is bound to have subtopics which might further divide amongst themselves giving rise to subsections and sub-subsections (if necessary).
So if you have a topic that is not much connected to the topics under the existing section, it ought be presented as a separate section per se -- even if the content is comparatively smaller to that of the other sections.
But if you still feel that your sections might look better when balanced, there is always something you could add to; algorithms could always be expanded and well explained, figures can be textually illustrated more and results can be thoroughly discussed. In such ways, you can extend the overly small section to a more pleasing volume (provided you do not exceed your page limit if set so by your University/advisor).
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159775 | Is jumping PhDs frowned upon?
Long story short, I am a PhD student at a University and I want to leave and start a PhD somewhere else. I am in the process of applying right now.
I do not think it is super relevant to this question as to why I want to leave my present PhD education, but let's just say that is has economic, political and scientific reasons
economic - I am not getting paid enough to make ends meet,
political - my country is going down a dark path and I want to get out asap,
scientific - in all honesty, I am not interested in my current research to the point I am getting significant burnout from it and I don't want to risk getting stuck in this specific area (I would imagine jumping ships for PhD is easier than for post-doc since before PhD most people don't do that much actual research) + my university is not super-prestigious and I hear that a lot of post-doc applications just get thrown out if you don't have a PhD from a top university
So anyways, anyone who does a search on my name will see that I am a PhD student at my present place and I don't even want to keep it a secret, I just want to know how likely it is for this to affect my impression negatively and whether I should mention this/go over the details as to why I want to leave in my motivation letter.
On the one hand, a PhD is basically a job and people leave jobs all the time, on the other hand, one can also view this as a kind of commitment to my group that I am breaking by leaving and thus I have no idea if this is frowned upon or even a common thing or not.
Your mental health is much more important than anyone views quitting a phd. And, to exploit a trope, if people don't accept your decision, you don't want to work with them anyway.
However, how people view this is really dependent on the country, the industry, the people itself (and, of course, if they really "know" what phd study is -- many non-academics don't).
There are plenty of questions already about changing advisor, schools, whatnot.
What will the answer tell you? Would it stop you from leaving?
@AzorAhai-him- No, but I have actually noted this in the question itself. If abandoning a PhD in the middle of it and starting anew somewhere else is a common occurrence then I wouldn't even need to mention it in my application. If this is highly unusual and raises questions about my reliability then this is something I should address heavily. On the other hand, if it is unnecessary to address it then elaborating on this in my application could be seen as weird or too personal. I am inquiring about the commonality of such a thing and how to address it to my potential future institute the best.
@BenceRacskó Maybe you should edit your title to match your question "Should I discuss it in my materials?"
Seeing that someone is already a PhD student during the application process, or later seeing that someone was a PhD student at two different institution always raises questions. But these questions are easy to answer in your statement of purpose or later application documents, and being in a country that "is going down a dark path and I want to get out asap" is a perfectly good reason anyone will understand.
In other words, I would not worry about it: Whatever questions anyone might have, you have a good answer for it and, moreover, your own personal happiness/mental health is more important than anything else anyway. So do it, if you can!
being in a country that "is going down a dark path and I want to get out asap" is a perfectly good reason anyone will understand Not everyone, apparently - https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/105451/are-political-ideological-reasons-for-career-moves-acceptable-in-academia
@Allure -- the top answers over there seem to be accepting. What specifically are you referring to in that question/those answers?
Well e.g. the answer I accepted says not wanting to work in the US because one disapproves of the Trump administration is "much more divisive", but your answer says it's a perfectly good reason that anyone will understand. Ben's answer also expresses skepticism about political objections on a country level, as opposed to on a university level.
@Allure I think there is a difference between agreeing with someone's opinion about the politics of a country, and being able to understand that people often feel strongly about it. Most US faculty probably felt rather bleak about the country over the past few years, but if you're a faculty in TX and you talk to a student who wants to get out of CA because "it is just too liberal", you might get that some people feel that way even if you might personally don't agree with it.
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160680 | Missed to add the name of co-author
I submitted a conference paper to an IEEE conference via edas system. I included the details of co-author in the uploaded document but missed to add in the system. I noticed it when I received the acceptance notification. When i read the Commsoc policies, it says "it is not possible to add further co-author to a an submitted document". Is this means, I cannot add the co-author name? What will be worst case?
Thank you
I would contact the organizers and explain the situation. The submission process is different from publishing process.
Contact with the IEEE conference mail and the edas system as soon as possible.
The edas mail is: [email protected]
The IEEE conference you should search in its website. At contact section probably.
If there's an incongruence between the document and the system they would detect it, but there's no guarantee. So, notify them there was an erratum before the publication is done.
Despite it could have author's incongruence, the document might be published with or without the forgotten author in the systems.
In the best case, it will be accepted, added the author at the systems and published the documennt including the author.
In the worst case your document will be rejected.
The worst case is that you are accused by someone of plagiarism. And that is pretty bad. But you don't ask for solutions, though user Younes provides one in a comment.
Contact the organizers, explaining the situation, apologizing and asking for a correction. The organizers, if they have any experience, will have dealt with submission problems in the past and so expect them to happen.
However, if I read it correctly, the paper itself contains the correct author information in its header. The effect, then, of not having entered the co-author into the system is just some confusion on the part of readers who notice it. Conference advertising and such may include less than complete information for example. So, it may be that the "worst case" is an inconsistency in what appears in conference documentation and in the paper itself.
If the paper is correct there will be less of an impact, except for people searching for papers by your co-author and not finding this one since the conference docs are incorrect. If the organizers understand this, they should have an incentive to make it right.
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162593 | How was plagiarism checked before the Internet?
In the days where many prominent researchers we know today started their journey in Academia, what was the likelihood that some of their publications were alternated versions of what was already published by other researchers from other countries beforehand? Since most research is already published on the internet, and the existence of advanced plagiarism checking tools, has there been a recheck of authenticity of difference in papers that were published pre-1980s?
This is likely a dumb question since I am still learning the ways of Academia so don't get offended.
@DanielHatton, how does that relate to plagiarism, which is not the same as parallel research.
Tom Lehrer had a bit to say about this... But how do you plagiarize with no access to somebody else’s work? Parallel development is a totally different thing.
Please ask only one question per post. There has never been a systematic method of plagiarism checking that actually worked.
There is not a real activity as a priori plagiarism checking. There is not a real activity for fraud checking. Given the right time, science adjust itself. Of course trouble of all sort can arise from misconduct, but this is just at our miserable scale. What is true that a simple software can now do things that weren't possible before. Like asking on this site.
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160730 | Is a low undergrad GPA a career killer?
I graduated with a 6.4/10 GPA from a Non-IIT University in India - BE in CS in 2019. I pretty much messed up during my early 2 years of UG while taking part in non-academics such as workshops and research. Only later I have realized that it was too late to improve and now I am facing the consequences of neglecting good grades. I wasn't a lazy student, I worked 16 hours a day learning something new for research, solving math and leetcoding because I couldn't stand the classroom environment.
I hate blaming the University but they were rather a scam ridden cash cow run by unprofessional people and did not encourage any sort of research activities or any funding for it. Luckily, my time in research did not require much funding yet I have managed to publish 12 papers during my 5 years (9 during undergrad) at well reputed domestic and international conferences - IEEE, Springer, etc, 3 winning awards. I frankly enjoyed the lab work and research part of my UG because it gave me complete freedom to explore my skills and work, yet it's frustrating how marks is always given the first preference. I have graduated with most publications compared to anyone who have studied in my University. I feel really cheated as I was told publications were preferred over GPA.
I was an aspiring MS and PhD candidate for Natural Language Processing. And now I'm seeing that I have been rejected by ASU and I'm pretty sure it was because of my GPA, which probably never made it to the AdCom. This is my first post on stack exchange and I really want to know whether my career has hit a dead end here. I'm feeling tired and frustrated, thinking about a career change since a second chance elsewhere to prove my worth would at least take me beyond a bachelors degree.
For context, what is ASU. Worldwide it probably has several meanings.
The publication obsession is certainly a lie, if your gpa isn't 3.2+ you might as well not bother. Frankly that it's from India makes it even worse from a US perspective.
The most important determining factor in graduate admissions is neither GPA nor the number of publications, but rather letters of recommendation from well-known established researchers in the field that attest to your research potential. Depending on where you are in India (you say you didn't go to IIT so this is a possibility), the professors you have access to through your research might not have enough name recognition for their letters to contain meaningful information. [cont.]
However, as FourierFlux mentioned, Americans generally seem to agree that grades from Indian universities carry some useful information, maybe because there is less grade inflation than in the USA. So in this sense, a high GPA was perhaps one of the best chances you had to get noticed. As for the publications, you haven't told us how many other authors they had, who those coauthors were, and whether you had letters of recommendation that talked about them.
The statement that research is the primary purpose of graduate school is wrong, all have a minimum course requirement with a certain GPA requirement. No research but high gpa will usually give admission but maybe unfunded. Poor gpa gets you nothing.
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25912 | Is it necessary to wear a white shirt inside the graduation gown for Masters degree graduation ceremony?
I have my graduation ceremony coming soon. The graduation dress usually consists of the gown, the hood and the mortar board. however the hand sleeves of the gown are a bit short and hence a full shirt is to be worn inside the gown (gown is black in color). In most pictures I see a white shirt within. Is it necessary to have white shirt or I can go for a blue or black one too?
I do not think it is necessary, and my memory suggests that many people wear other colors. I would probably wear a white shirt, but I doubt you would stand out very severely if you did not. Light blue would work pretty well I reckon.
I generally wear jeans and a Threadless T-shirt (aka my Teaching Uniform) under my robe, at least during summer graduations. A couple of friends of mine at college wore, um, considerably less; everyone (including the parents) pretended not to notice.
Most people have only one masters graduation ceremony unless they study a second masters. In my humble opinion, this is a good question although it sounds a minor issue.
This depends on the rules of your particular university and will vary from place to place. Consult your university's rules.
Faculty do not ask and students do not tell what they wearing under the robes.
Actually, I find that since graduations are in May, the robes are often swelteringly hot (especially PhD robes) in many parts of North America, so the lighter the clothes and the more sweat-resistant and breathable the better. Women can get away with wearing summer dresses. From what I can ascertain (remembering the Don't Ask/Don't Tell rule above), male students tend to wear khakis and comfortable dress shirts underneath. No need to wear long-sleeves if it's going to be hot.
Many students often change into other clothes for the receptions after graduation -- men into longer pants and a sport jacket, women don a light jacket or change into more formal attire. They often keep a change of clothes in their parent's car or in their advisor's office if the dorms are shut.
tl;dr: It's your graduation. No need to be uncomfortable.
But do remember that you'll be photographed, probably during hooding and again when you are handed your diploma. Whatever you wear for a shirt, think about dark trousers and leather shoes. I have a pair of black tropical wool trousers that are even cooler than khakis. (I attend six commencements a year, too, though. Gripe, grumble.)
I know of at least one person who graduated wearing nothing under their robes.
Those cheap polyester rental robes don't breathe well and can get sticky. I don't recommend wearing nothing...
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29441 | Does it matter from whom we receive a letter of recommendation?
I am wondering is it important who is writing our letter of recommendation? I mean, does it matter whether the faculty is assistant professor or distinguished professor?
@shane I think in all cases, the answer will be yes.
I think this question is close to a duplicate of this one: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12959/who-should-write-a-recommendation-letter?rq=1
If all of your choices wrote the same letter, then of course the letter from the distinguished professor would carry more weight than that of f the assistant professor.
However, often the letters from assistant professors are much more detailed and insightful than the letters from distinguished professors, because they have usually worked with the applicant much more closely. They can therefore offer more detailed insights than can more senior staff. This is not always true, but it is at least mostly the case in my experience.
I agree that a more insightful letter from a younger professor should often be balanced out against more standard letters from senior personnel (and I think this type of issue is exactly why we ask for more than one letter). However in my experience assistant professors do not work with undergraduate students any more closely than more senior personnel. By "work with", do you mean "do research with"? Because that is very rare for undergraduates in my discipline (mathematics), so I don't have much to compare with.
@PeteL.Clark: I meant "have direct contact with": an assistant professor is more likely to have directly observed the work of the undergraduate (through presentations, through meetings and emails, etc.).
Hmm. I don't doubt your experience; I would be interested to find out why it's different from mine. In the US, there is really no difference in the job description between assistant professors and tenured faculty that would lead the former to have more exposure to undergraduates. In fact, most assistant professors I know are so research-intensive and focused on that that they interact with undergraduate students less than certain tenured faculty who have decided to concentrate on teaching and undergraduate mentoring.
On the other hand, in many top US departments undergraduates can build closer relationships with postdocs: at such places postdocs teach a lot of the courses for undergraduate majors, some of them really enjoy doing so, and it is easier to build relationships with those who are 5-10 years older than with those who are 10-50 years older. That can be a problem, because while undergraduates may not even clearly perceive the distinction between postdocs and permanent faculty, admissions committees certainly will.
@PeteL.Clark: In my area—engineering—I believe it's probably because groups tend to get larger as professors progress in their careers. You simply can't get to know everybody working in your group well when there's dozens of them.
@PeteL.Clark It's the same in CS. Around here, good full profs. routinely have groups with 20+ members. As a master student, I literally did not meet with my formal thesis advisor during the entire process. I only met him in person when I mentioned that I was interested in doing a PhD.
That's interesting. As you may know, math departments in the US are not organized into "research groups" (other than as a heads up as to what individual faculty members are interested in: some will belong to several groups). I think there are no research groups in the humanities either, and not in all of the social sciences. For that matter, what makes a good PhD candidate is someone who has taken (and completely mastered) the right classes and perhaps done some independent reading...which full professors are just as happy to supervise as anyone else. It really is different.
(Lest anyone think I am knocking the STE (= STEM \setminus math) model: I have recently organized a "research team" of my own and am describing it prominently in my current NSF grant proposal. I now have four PhD students -- which may be the most in my department -- and one postdoc. I am seeing if I can work in an undergraduate to spend 3 hours a week working on my lecture notes and webpage. In the American math world, all this is rather unusual.)
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89879 | In what cases is Ethical Committee approval not necessary for a study?
We intend to perform a study with a device we developed (approved for medical research). The tests are non-invasive and only require a very low power laser to be exposed to the skin (complying with all the existing norms).
People will have to travel from their place to our facilities periodically to perform this test.
We want to publish the results of our study, but we are afraid that at the end the journal might require an ethical committee approval (which costs a lot of time and money).
In what cases shouldn't be necessary an ethical committee approval?
Are there dermatology journals where this is not an issue for publication?
If you have an ethical committee at your university, then it should not cost money. It may still take time. Other than that, if you do stuff to humans it is usually hard (and unethical) to avoid an ethical committee approval. We are usually very invested in our own research, which means that we are not the best judge of ethical issues arising from that research. Having a set of independent persons look at these potential ethical concerns is helpful.
I would think the best place to discover an answer regarding dermatology journal policies would be from the websites of such journals -- specifically the ones you want to publish with. (It doesn't matter what random strangers on the internet think if the actual journals disagree).
I am not in this field, but I'd be really surprised if any reputable journal would touch your study with a ten-foot pole if it didn't have ethics approval before it was begun. Not to mention potential legal consequences. I'm actually pretty startled that you would even consider proceeding without it.
Some years ago, a research project in my department involved having some people fill out a questionnaire. That was the only "human subjects" aspect of the research. Not only did this require IRB approval, but later, when some of the questions were modified, IRB approval was required again.
The exact regulations differ per country, but prospective studies with human subjects almost always need approval.
Since you tagged your question with "Netherlands", the relevant law is the WMO = "Wet medisch-wetenschappelijk onderzoek met mensen". Any research that falls under this law requires approval.
Research falls under the WMO if the following criteria are met:
It concerns medical/scientific research and
Participants are subject to procedures or are required to follow rules of behaviour
There is a lot of information on the website of the Central Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects (CCMO).
You can usually also apply for a waiver from the IRB (at least in the Netherlands). You submit a request with a description of your intended research and the IRB will review your plans to determine whether your research does fall under the WMO and needs approval, or whether this requirement can be waived.
From the description of your plans, it seems likely that you need approval. Not having approval would not only mean that journals won't accept your paper, it would also mean that you'd be doing something illegal.
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48587 | Where is the best places to find faculty job postings in physics?
I'm currently a postdoc interested in finding a tenure track faculty position. What are the best places to find job postings for such positions?
Seeing as this might be a very context/field dependent question, I am specifically looking for appointments in physics departments (preferably in the US).
If you're a member of the American Physical Society (APS), I would recommend looking there first (http://www.aps.org/careers/employment/index.cfm). Many universities will post here, as it's the official representative of physicists in the United States.
In addition, I recommend looking at university department webpages. If there is a certain region or state you'd like to work in, narrow your search to universities there.
There is no need to be a member to look for jobs. In my opinion, it is not worth joining, unless you have to go to one of their conferences.
Though not specific to physics, I think The Chronicle of Higher Education job search site seems to cover several fields fairly well, and I looked there often when I was searching. In fact, narrowing down the search at the Chronicle job site for physics faculty/research positions in the US yields several relevant hits.
For completeness, here are a few other job sites that I've used that you may find useful:
AcademicKeys, with a listing of current physics openings in the US here.
HigherEdJobs, with a listing of current physics openings in the US here.
One of the best sites for job seekers is the Academic Jobs Wiki. Not only does it have postings, but people also update whether they've gotten past the first round, second round, phone or physical interviews, and other status changes including searches being shut down by provosts, etc.. This lets you know whether to keep hoping or to give up.
http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/PhysicsPositions
There are academic job wikis for other fields, I've only posted the physics one above.
Update 2019.7: please note that in the four years since posting this, I’ve heard several reports of people gaming the wiki jobs system: reporting a position closed when it isn’t, reporting a different direction to the search to throw off competitors, etc. As with all crowdsourced systems, use with some caution and only as a supplement to other sources of information.
Brightrecruits is a UK based website, run by the Institute of Physics, which advertises jobs in physics worldwide, in both industry and academia. There's also jobs.ac.uk; also UK based, also has adverts for jobs in academia globally.
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97841 | ZbMATH and conflict of interest
ZbMATH sent an article for post-publication review. As of a little more than a month ago, I worked at the same department in the same university as one of the authors. We have not cooperated on a paper, but have otherwise interacted.
Should I decline to review the paper due to this conflict of interest (as I would do with a peer review for e.g. a journal article), or do zbMATH reviews have more lax standards for conflicts of interest? The reviews are post-publication, and for a review database and not a journal, and furthermore they are not anonymous, so they are quite different from journal peer reviews.
The review guidelines of zbMATH did not mention conflicts of interest.
Can you elaborate about the purpose and impact of the requested review? Is this like a book review?
Zentralblatt used to publish reviews written by the author of the paper. I don't know whether that's still the case.
ZbMath is like Math Reviews in concept. It publishes summaries of already published articles, to help those perusing the literature to find articles of interest. These summaries are, generally speaking, not evaluative, rather informative (in some cases the published reviews are simply quotations from the article's abstract) and they are signed. Since there is no evaluation, there is not much likelihood of conflict of interest. A reviewer could downplay an important paper by writing a short succinct review, or exaggerate the importance of a minor paper by writing a long review, and one perhaps occasionally encounters things like this, but neither really does much damage, except perhaps to deflate or inflate an ego.
I don't know about ZbMath, but some reviews on Math Reviews are, let's say, very "evaluative"...
(A few examples: http://www2.math.ou.edu/~kmartin/mr2006.html)
@FedericoPoloni: These examples are relatively rare, and I think at least the negative ones would not have been published were their evaluations not essentially correct. Said another way, they fit in the scheme of providing a guide to the literature. Pointing out demonstrable plagiarism is a service. The cited examples do not seem to me evidence of conflicts of interest.
Well, Mathematical Reviews review are sometimes quite inaccurate and and can negatively impact the way a paper is viewed (e.g., by making it sound like the main results are already known when they aren't). However, I agree this is quite rare and is more likely to happen when the reviewer inadvertently misunderstands the paper/literature, rather than by malicious design. And authors can contact the AMS if a review of their paper is really inaccurate. (As I recall, there was such a dispute for at least 1 example on my list that @FedericoPoloni linked to.)
I posed the question to the editorial staff at zbMATH and got the following response:
We think that being employed at the same institution as one of the authors is not per se an instance of conflict of interest for a reviewer. However, if you personally feel uncomfortable with reviewing the particular paper assigned to you, just let us know, and we'll ask another reviewer.
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15192 | Criteria to evaluate consulting opportunity
You're an academic researcher who has done some work in a particular topic. You receive an email from a stranger, working at a small company, interested in your work and wanting to discuss possible consulting. Sounds interesting, but you have research to perform, grant proposals to write, classes to teach...
What criteria should you use to evaluate whether or not this is worthwhile? What are things you look for in possible consulting work? And what are turn-offs and things you want to avoid?
Balance is always tricky but basically the guidelines that I follow are:
If the consulting will help me learning something new, +1
If the consulting will pay me a lot of money, +1
If the consulting will improve my reputation, +1
If the consulting will allow me access to something I want (new data), +1
On the other hand,
If it takes a lot time, -1
If it offers little or no pay, -1
If it could damage my reputation, -5
If it would be a bit boring, -1
In the end, I just do the math.
How would you preliminarily assess the expected value of those, before committing a lot of time to investigate?
I'd start with a simple telephone conversion where they get to tell me what they have to offer. It might take 15 minutes to get to the point where I could see if it is worth investigating more.
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14663 | Can both a grad. student & faculty member cosign a recommendation letter?
Can two people, a professor and a graduate student, sign a recommendation letter? The concern here is that the professor knows little about the student and the graduate student knows all about the student.
My concern here is that if the professor is contacted, he will not be able to provide further information, where as if I was listed as the primary contact: I could.
Incidentally, unless you have specific reason to think you will be contacted for follow-up, I don't think this is an enormous concern.
My concern here is that if the professor is contacted, he will not be able to provide further information — Then he can't sign the letter.
Like Noah, I had a situation where two advisors co-signed a letter of recommendation. I should mention that the people reviewing the letter found this an unusual situation—and had claimed that they had not seen that in twenty years of reading recommendation letters. So this is definitely not standard practice. I suspect it would be memorable, but I am not sure it would be actually useful.
However, the difference was that my two co-signers were equal in rank. Your situation has a professor with a graduate student providing most of the insights. I suspect you will need to have the professor adapt the graduate student's comments, and then sign the letter. In the case where feedback is needed, the professor would then need to get the relevant details from the graduate student.
Please see the slight change I made to the question, about being contacted post-recommendation letter.
You can have more than one person sign a recommendation letter. I had one letter signed by two people. But it is unusual. My understanding is that the usual approach in your situation would be for the graduate student to help write the letter, but only the professor to sign it.
(My situation was a teaching letter, and it was a somewhat odd situation where each writer outranked the other under different measures of rank.)
My concern here is that if the professor is contacted, he will not be able to provide further information, where as if I was listed as the primary contact. I could.
Um... Having anyone but the actual author of the letter sign the letter is totally unethical in my opinion. If a professor can't formulate a recommendation on their own, they shouldn't "write" one.
@JeffE I understand your point, though sometimes you do just have to write letters for other people to sign or they won't happen. That said, in this situation (which I have been in in the grad student role), I think it's better to say that the grad student can supply the professor with their assessment, and the professor can use that to fill in some details in their letter. If they happen to do some cutting and pasting, that's between them and God.
@JeffE Broadening from the specific context of recommendation letters, it's ubiquitous for letters to be signed by someone whose subordinates had input into it. The signer is taking responsibility for the content of the letter, not promising that no one else contributed.
@JeffE: This also ignores the reality of how things are done in other countries. In Germany, for instance, the head of the institute may have to sign lots of documents on behalf of underlings without full knowledge of the contents, because only the head's signature is "acceptable." (It's situations like this that also tend to leave "letters of reference" as statements of job duties, without critical analysis of the quality of the work.)
@BenWebster I think it's better to say that the grad student can supply the professor with their assessment, and the professor can use that to fill in some details in their letter — I agree that is better, although better still would be "The graduate student (or other subordinate) provides relevant raw data, which the professor uses to formulate the actual recommendation letter."
@aeismail Yes, I'm familiar with official administrative letters from department heads, expressing the Official View of the Department, that are actually written by subordinates; I've written a few of those letters myself. But even then, the department head is expected to have "full knowledge of its content"; that is, they always read and approve the letter before signing it. Also, reference letters for graduate admissions (and for faculty hiring) are not official institutional pronouncements, but statements of personal opinion; having anyone else write them is dishonest.
I certainly didn't mean to imply, and I'm sure Ben didn't either, that it would be ethical for the professor not to even read the letter! In my opinion that would be obviously unethical.
If a person's signature is on the letter, they obviously should be reading it. If they're not, they're putting themselves at liability. I would prefer to have both signatures, again for the exact reason that is being brought up. Even if only raw data is supplied, the 'Signer' cannot supply more than he/she wrote or has available. Whereas the Grad. student can.
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11715 | Hiring a faculty consultant
We need to hire a computer scientist with a very particular specialty as a consultant for a long term industrial research project. We've read the relevant papers and so know who does good work in it. But we don't know the first thing about hiring a professor as a consultant.
Do I just email them and say "Hi, Dr. So and so, I've read your paper about X and want to discuss hiring you as a consultant"? Or do I need some type of introduction? Specifically, if I'm coming from a small business (with the funds to hire them, mind you, but a small business nonetheless), will they take it seriously?
How can I evaluate their abilities to be a good consultant? I know they have the brains and the know-how, but I need more than that: I need someone who will work on the problems we have, giving us a reasonable assessment of their likelihood to solve them, keeping us up to date, and clearing communicating their results.
Once hired, how do we effectively manage them towards our goals?
Currently, we have funding to hire them only for the initial stages. With good results, we have investors to approach, and we'd like to say "We're working on this problem; we have Prof. X on it, who's done this so far; with another $1M, we could get here." Will academics be supportive of such an arrangement?
How do we protect our intellectual property? Our plan is to leverage existing research towards new technological applications. What's to stop our consultants from taking our ideas on their own? This is especially a concern in the initial evaluation stages, where we don't have a business relationship, but need to discuss our applications in some detail nonetheless.
Finally: Are there any resources on how to do this? Books, articles, services? We'd really like to benefit from someone's experience on this.
As an academic with a history of consulting, the proper way to approach the person in question is to contact him directly. Email might work but for initial contacts phone might be better. If he/she is geographically close, a face-to-face would be even better. The initial conversation is really about whether he/she is interested in consulting in his/her area of expertise. If yes, then you can start to dig a little deeper into the project.
Be clear and up front with what you have and what you hope to achieve. Make it clear what the limitations of the project are and that the project might or might not move past the initial phase.
It is unlikely that the size of your business would be an issue but that really depends on his/her personality. You'll know when you ask.
About evaluating if he/she can be a good consultant, explain very clearly what your concerns are. There is no reason for the Prof to be concerned since you do not know each other there is not an issue of personalities and you are not doubting him/her, you are simply saying what you are concerned about. If you have read this person's work you should have an idea of his/her ability to communicate clearly.
As far as managing this person toward the goal, handle him/her as you would any other employee. Normally consultants expect a little bit more freedom but, to repeat myself, be clear with what you want and that might include an update every 2-3 days (more or less depending on the nature of the project - you might want daily updates).
As for protecting your intellectual property, have the Prof sign an NDA/non-compete. This might be an issue if it will in any way limit the Prof from exploring his/her own work. For this, you will need to negotiate what kind of legal protections you feel you need. If you write the non-compete in a narrow enough way, the Prof might feel comfortable enough (he/she is getting something out of the deal).
Thank you - this is truly helpful. In short you are telling me: Treat it like any other employee, there's nothing to be afraid of. Even though Prof. Johnson is a world renowned scholar, if he's a consultant, it means he's happy to act as an employee.
This answer was very helpful. I posted a follow up in http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11737/very-large-consulting-projects since I thought it was an independent question - Would you be able to take a look at it?
One key question to keep in mind is why someone would want to work as a consultant, since that determines how you interact with them. You're hiring someone who already has a full-time job, and who has chosen to work in academia despite having skills that are valued by industry, so you need to convince them that this is worth their time. It's possible you can find someone short of money who is specifically looking for a part-time job on the side, but that will greatly limit your choices. (The best consultants are often already the best paid faculty to start with, and they generally have many consulting opportunities to choose from.)
In practice, I see three main reasons why someone might value a consulting job, in roughly decreasing order:
You offer something they just can't get in academia. For example, unique data or experiences, extensive resources, dramatic real-world impact, etc. A computer scientist might work with Facebook to get access to their social network data, or Google to be able to study search and indexing on a vast scale. This lets them advance their understanding of the field in ways they could not have done otherwise (and hopefully they can publish the results).
Even if you can't offer anything unique or unavailable in academia, you may still be working on cutting-edge problems that help inspire and shape their academic research program. The difficulty here is that the world is full of cutting-edge research problems waiting to be solved. To convince someone to work on your problems rather than their own ideas, you need some argument. Maybe your problems are especially exciting or important, maybe they are a perfect match for this researcher's background and interests, or maybe you are offering enough money to outweigh other considerations.
If what you want is really routine (with little or no academic research significance), then you may need to offer a lot of money.
This only deals with the first part of your question, on approaching faculty, but I see that as critical: once you establish mutual interest, you can work out the other details. Getting to that point is the hard part, and how you frame things can make a real difference. When you first approach someone, it's much better to say "Here's an opportunity in which we'll pay you to do exciting things that will advance the field and your own research" than "Here's what we need and how much we would like to pay. Would you be willing to do it for us?"
This is a really interesting point - What type of variation is there among consultant motivations? Is the first question always one of intellectual interest? Or does being able to apply their knowledge to practical industry, and get paid for it, suffice?
@SRobertJames: Hmm, it probably varies from person to person (as well as between fields). I don't have a good feeling for overall statistics.
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26253 | Applying for masters again, will the application be evaluated on the basis of undergraduate/Bachelors or the most recent postgraduate grades
Applying for masters but have a previous uncompleted masters on my profile. Will that grades from that masters be factored in when the admission committee evaluates my application. What if i have very good GPA is Bachelors, but got bad grades in Masters due to some circumstances.
Your entire record is usually considered.
The admission committee will see your entire record. It is up to them to decide how to consider and weigh the various parts of it - different people will feel differently about this, and there is no way to know what the sense of the committee as a whole will be.
If you had special circumstances that affected your grades, you should address them in your statement of purpose or cover letter.
See also:
How do you get a bad transcript past Ph.D. admissions?
Should I mention a "math depression" I went through in my letter of motivation?
Applying for PhD after a poor master's
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29457 | What is the industry equivalent of a post doc?
I've just finished my PhD in Genetics, and I am looking at moving into industry, as a scientist.
"Senior Scientist" seems to be the closest match, because the salary is slightly higher than a junior post-doc.
In some fields, it's called a "postdoc".
I am not sure how much sense this question makes, given that no position in a research lab is really comparable to a postdoc position.
That being said, I have seen the term "research staff member", or just "researcher" or "scientist" being used a lot as an entry-level, permanent position in a research lab which requires a PhD. "Senior scientist" or "senior researcher" is typically a bit more advanced ("researchers" become "senior researchers" through regular career progression). However, concrete names of course vary between companies, so you should never assume much of anything about a position purely based on its name.
"Senior Scientist" seems to be the closest match, because the salary is slightly higher than a junior post-doc.
That's a very bad heuristic. Too many other factors influence salary for it to be of any worth for judging the level of a position.
Some companies, including the one that I work at, actually do offer positions that are explicitly postdocs and fill the same type of role as postdocs in academia: a limited-term position connected to some specific set of projects/responsibilities, with the expectation that the person will move up or move elsewhere at the end of the period.
Beyond that, industry titles tell you nothing, because there is nothing even vaguely like a standard. Where I work, "senior scientist" is approximately equivalent to "associate professor" in academia. At a smaller company I know of, it means "has a master's degree." At yet another company, it might mean "has been here for 30 years." You just don't know.
Instead, look at the background required and responsibilities associated with the job, and see if they match what you have to offer. Beware that position postings are often the result of a mangled committee process, and if it calls for a long laundry list of skills, you're probably in good shape to apply if you have at least a couple of them.
Salary may also vary wildly, depending on the sector of industry and particular company, but as a rule of thumb it should be well above what you would be paid as a postdoc in academia. In computer science, for example, a Ph.D. entry-level position in industry gets somewhere between 1.5x and 4x a typical postdoc salary (it's one of the compensations of stepping off the traditional track). Sites like Glassdoor are a good way to tell whether you are being made a fair offer or not.
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89765 | Can too many credits force you to graduate early?
I'm about to enroll at a local university as a mathematics major, with a view to later transferring and studying engineering.
I can receive enough credits through AP, CLEP, and credit by exam to cover 1-2 years of study.
However, I'm unsure of how many years I would like to study at university. Likely 3-4. Could receiving enough credit for 2 years hurt my chances of being able to transfer and spend 4 years total at university?
I'm relying on federal grants and state and university scholarships to fund my study; could those be withdrawn if I have enough credits to graduate but choose not to?
At my university, as soon as a student satisfies the graduation requirements for their current degree program, they are done, thank you and goodbye. So students who enter with lots of AP credit (most undergraduate majors in my department) often put off an easy distribution requirement until their last semester.
One possibility to look into is going for a B.A. degree rather than a B.S. degree (assuming what I say next applies where you're at), which could require a larger number of non-major elective courses, and by putting off taking those non-major elective courses, you technically will not have enough credits to graduate. I actually did this (finishing with over 160 credit hours), but not for the reason you'd want to, but instead because I was not able to satisfy the more stringent foreign language requirements for the B.S. degree (the degree those planning graduate study nearly always got).
Yes, this is a potential concern, particularly with regard to financial aid.
US financial aid sources are commonly restricted to be used only for education that is leading toward a particular degree. You can't take random courses indefinitely and expect the government to keep paying for it.
My institution's financial policy has the following clause:
Only course work that is required for my degree will count towards my enrollment status. Once I complete the requirements for a single degree, even if I haven't applied for graduation, I am no longer eligible for aid for that program. The fact that I might be getting a dual degree and haven’t completed the requirements for the second degree doesn't change this.
Sometimes this can be "gamed" by completing the actual degree requirements very slowly while taking lots of other courses in the meantime; but there are likely to be limits in place.
You should discuss your plan of study carefully with both an academic advisor and a financial aid officer at the university you plan to attend. (The academic advisor might not be an expert on financial aid details, and vice versa, so it is important to consult both.)
You might want to add that, absent financial aide concerns, the norm is to apply for graduation (some students may be doing a double baccalaureate, so there's no reason to force someone to graduate upon initially receiving the requisite number of credits), so he could otherwise probably go as long as he wants
@guifa: Perhaps, but still, it needs to be checked. Another institution I know has a rule that nobody can enroll for more than 10 semesters, regardless of aid.
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2361 | Engineers/Scientists to break into management consulting
Engineers and Scientists are probably not the kind of people management consulting companies look for. But I think many of such would be highly qualified and a good fit for management consulting positions, especially where vision and strategy are needed.
What would you suggest for a scientist or an engineer to succeed in getting a job, considering that the hardest part is to even get a phone call?
I'm afraid I've got to say that many of the things that one might consider an asset, are in reality going to be a hindrance.
Rigour, consistency, reason, domain knowledge, ability to describe uncertainty, always prepared to put appropriate caveats on findings: these are all encumbrances in almost all management consulting.
What you need to cultivate is the ability to form strategy on the basis of a fairly superficial understanding of a business; and the ability to persuade people to pay you lots for you to borrow their watch and then tell them the time.
Oh, and do watch House of Lies through, end to end, a couple of times, to get a feel for it.
Having said that, there is a tiny niche in management consulting available for the skilled technician who's prepared to say no to clients who want "regular" management consulting, and only take on clients who want a thorough, rational, informed job done. There aren't many of those clients, whch is why it's a tiny niche. And it's more likely to be a boutique subject-specific consultancy. But if you find one (or found one, i.e. you are the founder), and it gets the right kind of clients, you'll be very happy (and completely exhausted much of the time), and financially very comfortable while the clients are there.
Your most likely bet is to sell yourself as an operations management specialist. There's an entire field called Industrial Engineering, which is essentially business optimization techniques. There are many aspects of this field that you've likely covered in your coursework, such as optimization methods and probability theory. Emphasizing this in your portfolio can help land you positions in a vast array of fields, ranging from broadly-defined operations management to process engineering to personnel management.
I guess the problem is to even get a call from them, since I have no background in business, and it won't be sufficient to say I believe I'm the right person for them. Do you think reading books about management consulting and mentioning them on the CV would help?
Looking at the current set of responses, they seem to be heavily biased. As someone having spoken to several PhDs in management consulting, let me try to clarify some of the nuances.
First, it is not true that you have to let go of rigor, but rather need to be time-sensitive. This is because the management consulting model works on an hourly-basis and therefore, while consulting on a project, your time determines your payment. Most companies, have several reasons to hire external consultants. At times for the expertise, sometimes for an external perspective, and at other times for helping them communicate capabilities and constraints to their superiors. Regardless, one thing is sure that the time-sensitive nature of the field leads to shorter project life-cycles and at times lack of implementation, which is a stark contrast from a PhD experience where the candidate is the sole worker and implementor.
Second, it is completely false that consulting firms consider PhDs as overqualified. In fact, in top-tier management consulting, advanced degree holders (PhDs) enter at the 'associate' level rather than the 'analyst' level, and generally speaking, move up faster.
Third, and logically following the last point, it is a misconception that consulting firms do not entertain advanced degree holders. In fact, the last I checked, ~10%+ of Mckinsey & Co's total employees were PhDs (as listed on their website). Further, most top management consulting firms have a special set of recruiters meant to be hiring advanced degree holders. You may find them on the company websites.
Finally, I admit that as a field, management consulting has its lows such as those mentioned in the answers thus far, but it would be naive to think that other fields (specially academia) do not have their own shortcomings. Overall, I think that the world needs more PhDs and the management consulting world needs more PhDs working to make corporations better, especially since corporations affect several aspects of our lives.
A management consulting company once tried to recruit me (I have a PhD in computer science). They said they wanted me for my brain and they didn't care so much about my background. That said, I didn't have a PhD at the time, so maybe my brain is now spoiled.
I have a PhD in ECE from an Ivy League school, and yet, noby ever called me for a phone interview...
Other than Sheth's answer, all the responses (including the green checkmarked one) are misleading. 25+ years out of date and written by people hypothesizing versus having experience. I recommend to any students looking into this avenue to talk to your college career center and to just read some recruiting websites (start with McKinsey).
In the late 90s, McKinsey was bringing in 1/3 (real number) of US associates as APDs (alternate professional degree, non MBA). And the global percent was higher. They had a well established recruiting and training process. Other firms were slower but starting to do the same (more the top firms than the lower tiers).
Even for top tier MBA students (HBS, etc.) the odds are hard to get consulting jobs, especially at premier firms. Same applies to Ph.D.s, perhaps made more difficult that they have less option to go to lower rung firms (that just bring in MBAs). Note, there's a 2012 comment about "I had a Ph.D. and no phone interview". So? Just having the union card itself is not distinctive. Most ballplayers don't get a combine invite either. It's just odds, just numbers. If you don't get it, you don't have the case interview solving analytical instinct they are looking for
They're just looking for willing, trainable brains and the ability to do the work. Figure something out from a blank slate. Problem-solve, etc. Specific technical or field training is irrelevant. They will put the English major into a fab or the material scientist into a film studio in a heartbeat. After all most of the MBAs are generalists without specific industry focus also.
Sameness: Job is the exact same gig as what an HBS MBA gets. Same salary and bonus. Same assignments. Same offices. Learning curve is fast so after a gig or two, there's no difference. Plus the case interview selection process has already screened for candidates with qualitative analytical ability within the Ph.D. pool.
Slight differences: They do/did have a 3-week training program to give the MBAs the basic toolkit (learn some micro, learn how to do DCF and what goes into the WACC). Good deal. There's maybe a slight disadvantage in not having the MBA for some post consulting interviewing (just dependent on HR departments), but still plenty of options where they just look at people post consulting, not worrying about the MBA. Also, maybe the MBA students sort of "want it more" as their dream job. That was Marvin Bower's observation. One other small difference is that most MBAs have pre-MBA working experience (often at the sort of client you serve) so at least they've had a "real job". Plus, you can consider the argument that it's a waste of a Ph.D. (the actual subject matter technical training). And that you ought to be "curing cancer", not analyzing merger synergies.
Note that consulting has its good/bad aspects, including for the MBAs. Sure, read House of Lies book. Author was a Booz associate so he'd seen the sausage get made. (He was also the popup video show producer for MTV, which explains the zany writing style.) It's an OK expose and anyone who has been there will read parts that ring true to them. But I also wouldn't assume you know what it's like from a book versus from doing it. Like all the 23 year olds who think they know what an I-bank is like because they read some Michael Lewis. If anything we need a trenchant expose of academia. It's not like it's all daisies there either...
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90175 | Should you revise a manuscript when only two of the three reviewers provide a positive review?
The title is a bit vague by design. What I was actually wondering is, what happens if 1 out of 3 reviewers decides that the paper should not be accepted, but the other 2 reviewers find it interesting and suggest for it to be accepted? Must all 3 reviewers suggest that it is accepted or is that up to the editor? What is the most common outcome in situation like this?
I'm stuck in this situation now - all 3 reviewers suggested some changes; while 2 were quite optimistic and also said that my work is interesting, the third one was really against it and suggested that we rewrite article anew, thus semi-rejected it; the reviewer really seems determined that our paper should not be accepted. Now, if I waste 2 months applying the changes and then wait another 3 for a review only to find out that the third reviewer still thinks it should be rejected, I've wasted almost half a year on nothing. The alternative is to resend the article to some other journal.
Any kind of feedback will be appreciated.
Do the suggested changes improve the paper? If they do, you should make them whether you're continuing with this journal or not. If they don't, you shouldn't make them and explain why you think the changes don't improve the paper to the editor.
Ask the editor. You can say that you will try to address not only R1 and R2's comments, but also R3's comments as much as possible, and they may be able to give you an indication whether they feel this being worthwhile.
Referees only make recommendations. The editor always makes the decision. In particular, the editor has the right to decide in opposition to the majority opinion or even the unanimous opinion of the referees.
Short answer: address all the comments. Many times, a reviewer is negative initially because the paper is not written properly or the reviewer missed some key information. On the second pass, things may change for the better or worst, assuming the paper has improved. Another aspect is that you don't know how much weight the editor places on the negative reviewer. If said reviewer is an established researcher, then his/her comments will weight more, especially if the paper is on topic. Otherwise, it bears little weight.
To add to the other answer that has been posted so far (from @mgbdog), I will add something from the perspective of a past editor in chief and frequent associate editor, in the field of computer science.
Generally (look at the various posts about journal workflows) the reviewers provide their feedback, an associate editor recommends, and then the editor in chief either accepts that recommendation or pushes back in some fashion. So the comment about the editor wanting to proceed is accurate in the aggregate but it really refers to multiple people as a rule.
But the key here is that when one reviewer recommends rejection, and other reviewers were more positive, I assume that the OP received a "major" revision that means it will be returned to the reviewers. Two already liked it so probably will be in favor of the revision. The one who didn't, if they were negative enough, may actually not be willing to review it again (after all, the editors didn't listen to them). I have encountered that several times as an associate editor. If they do review it again, hopefully they are professional about it and read it with an open mind, and you get your opportunity to improve the paper and respond to their criticism. So hopefully they are convinced to accept.
If they don't, there is indeed a chance the paper will be rejected after revision. Just because the editor said to give you a chance to fix it doesn't mean in the end it is fixable. I once did a journal article that got back extensive comments and a very specific warning from the associate editor that we should not assume that the major revision we were doing actually would result in acceptance. We must have worked on it for another year and with a second minor revision after that, but it got in.
But just because it may be rejected doesn't mean you shouldn't try. With 2/3 favorable, you seem well positioned, as long as you believe you can either fix what #3 complained about or make an argument in your response that they have it wrong.
The editor will make the final decision, not the reviewers. Often you will receive a message (either via email or on the journal's submission site) from the editor that summarizes the reviewer comments and either outright rejects the paper or asks for a revised manuscript. Sometimes, it will specify "minor revision" or "major revision". As long as that message does not outright reject your paper, the editor wants to continue considering your manuscript for publication, and you should submit a revised manuscript.
Even if you choose to submit to a different journal, you will need to disclose whether the paper has previously been submitted elsewhere. As such, the second journal can contact the first journal for reviewer comments. Thus, the negative reviewer's comments will sort of "follow you" regardless of where you try to publish this paper.
Best bet is to stick with the first journal -- most journals that do not outright reject a paper after the first round of reviews will eventually accept the paper after reviewer comments are properly addressed.
The comment that previous submissions must be disclosed has to be a domain-specific issue -- in computer science, if you submit to a new publication from scratch, you get a clean slate. Sometimes I wish that past reviews were available ... and if you get a reviewer (for a journal or conference) who has seen it before, you'll have that effect anyway. But there is nothing that says you have to tell them where else it was sent, or the reviews they received.
Disclosure of previous submissions is also unknown to me. Which field does this apply to?
@silvado check author guidelines for IEEE Signal Processing Letters
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85877 | Can you exclude issue numbers in references based on APA 6th edition?
I'm currently working on my thesis (communication science), and I'm wondering about the issue number in the reference list.
A teacher told me that I don't need to include the issue number. But I can't find anything about it, so I wondered if somebody here knows about it.
The current mark-up that I'm using now is as follows (I mainly cite scientific journals):
Lastname1, Initials., & Lastname2, Initials. (Year). Title. Journal name, volume number (issue number), page-page. DOI / Link
Can I exclude the issue number or is imperative to include it?
If there is an issue number, you should include it. That's how APA6 is defined.
The general rule in APA 6 is that if the journal is paginated by year, then you exclude issue number and just report volume number. From my experience, just about all journals in psychology are paginated by volume/year (and not issue number), so you can almost always exclude issue number.
There is a general discussion here on how to determine whether a periodical is paginated by issue.
However, I honestly can't see myself going through every reference and checking whether it is from one of the rare journals that is paginated by issue. And presumably if there was occasionally a journal that happened to paginate by issue, it would not be the end of the world if the issue information was excluded from the reference. You still have authors, year, title, and so on. So, that's enough to identify the reference.
Thanks! That makes sense. The blog post is really helpful!
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83784 | How to choose salary of principal investigator on NIH grant?
I am writing a grant for the NIH, and I need to put a salary down for the PI. I was wondering, do I choose how much to put down, or is there a specific pre-determined amount?
Your university's grants office will know.
Are you that PI? In general, for a proposal, you need to develop a budget (and a budget justification) that lists how many months someone will work on the project; the person's monthly salary equals what their employer pays them as part of their regular contract -- i.e., you cannot just "choose" a salary. (In the case of NIH, there is an additional complication in that NIH has a cap, but that is a separate issue.)
Thank you. No, I am not that PI. I am the poor fellow who does all the scut work. I am pretty sure my PI gets paid something like $200,000. 5% of that amount is a huge amount when the grant we are applying for is only $150,000....? I can't pay them less?
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9624 | Whether to publish one big paper or many smaller papers for a given research project?
Let's say I invented a system to solve a problem. To run this system, I made my own algorithm.I also created some other things for that system. The main contribution was supposed to be the system.So is it a good idea to have as many research papers out of the project as I can? Or to publish a single research paper?
I have seen a lot of researchers where they were targeting a single problem and they proposed a single solution. Now, what they would do is write a research paper for every component separately. Then they would write a single research paper showing how all the components would fit together.
So is it a good idea to try and increase the number of publications you can have out of a single research project?
My own personal opinion is that the quality of your research matters not the quantity. But I have also seen a number of institutions requiring a specific number of publications to even apply for their jobs.
For once it is obligatory SMBC not XKCD http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1624#comic
The way I see it, there are a number of factors at play:
Your goals: Do you want your paper to be published in a high-impact journal? If so they will most likely be interested in the whole story rather than a small piece of it.
Readability/General appeal: Can you make a coherent story with individual components? Will they all be interesting for wider audience on their own? In other words, if you opt for multiple papers out of one project; can you make sure these will be able to stand on their own? I personally think going for multiple papers is only valid when combining them into a single big paper would push aside some of your interesting results (or methods) to a metaphorical corner
Limitations imposed by the target journal: Can you actually put together all that in a single manuscript? In biomedical research you always get a limit on the number of words in the manuscript, and there is only so much you can put in supplementary.
With regards to quality-vs-quantity, I heard that early on in your career quantity is more important while as you become more and more senior, quality becomes the main concern. I am often told that as a PhD student I can, and should try to get involved in as many papers as I can. Around the time I do post-doc, however, it's time I pay a lot of attention to where I put my name and try to work on a good paper, preferably in a high-impact journal.
I think we all want fewer but high quality publications but many aspects of academia seems to favour quantity. We should also not forget that apart from numbers of publications, the impact of them through different index measures such as the "h" and number of citations play a vital role in evaluating your output. A paper with no citations is not "good" for your record. I think one has to consider when our publications count and I can think of two and a possible third case (in the following I am concentrating on numbers/quality not impact/h but one could (should?) argue that quality = high impact/h):
Publications count when you seek employment. The publications will be scrutinized by peers and in this case the quality definitely counts since the publication will be the key evaluation parameter of your scientific capacity, possibly in parallel to your ability to attract funding.
Publications count when you apply for funding. In this case it is not likely that your publications will be read and evaluated; your proposal will. And, your publication list will be looked at as a sign of productivity. So in this case I would argue that numbers count (not even first/leading authorship may be critical although must be present).
Publications may be important when it comes to promotions and particularly salary discussions. Here it is less clear if quality or quantity counts but I would argue that quantity is more important since your productivity can be shown as a statistic ( by the dept. and univ.) whereas quality is more difficult to quantify directly.
Since you are likely to seek funding more often than switch jobs, one might suspect that quantity is a must. In my funding system, a certain productivity is expected and in this case it is merely a number/year (on average; if you fall short it will be taken as a negative). At the same time you may lose opportunities when applying for jobs if quality does not enter the picture.
So there is need for a balance between quantity and quality. Very few can survive in the long term by writing few but high profile quality papers and it is also not likely you will survive only on quantity if that is at the expense of quality. We of course need to remember that all papers that count are peer reviewed and as such have formally passed quality control.
My personal reflection is that most of us do as much as we can to produce good quality science. If one were to try to constantly push low-quality manuscripts to gain quantity, ones reputation would probably soon suffer, so there may be additional equalizers at play.
So to answer the question: yes quantity counts but cannot be gained at the expense of quality. To "squeeze" as much as possible out of your research is good in the sense that your experience gets out to the public but negative if your research becomes fragmented across several publications that are lost in the background noise. Finding a good balance and seeing how many quality publications can be produced from a project idea is important.
The UK is rapidly moving to a low quantity high quality model. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is an exercise that is conducted every 4 years and is used to rate the research quality of "departments" (they are not truly departments, but the details are irrelevant). For the REF each researcher is expected to return 4 items (i.e., 1 per year on average) and these items are rated on a 4 star scale, with 4* being the best and encompassing about 10-20% of the submitted work. Given how REF computes value, an person who publishes a single 4* paper and nothing else over a 4 year window is more valuable than an individual who publishes 100 3* publications. For the REF quantity above 4 is completely valueless and quality trumps all.
Research councils in the UK are following suit saying that they are uninterested in funding 2* research.
Are there any similar trends in other countries? In Europe, say? Also, do you have a link or further information about how quality is evaluated?
@FaheemMitha Australia has ERA. I am not sure what other countries are doing, but I think other countries are adopting similar frameworks. As for the evaluation of quality it is purely up to the review panels and kept secret. We have been told that quality is evaluated on an individual basis such that not all papers from journal X will get the same ranking.
Hi, Daniel. Thanks for the information/clarifications.
Sadly, Italy is going in the opposite direction. Grossly simplifying, the first criterion to apply for promotion is achieving a certain number of publications (anything indexed in Scopus counts 1) and of citations over time (anything, including self-cites, counts 1).
Australia has a simultaneous Quantity system (HERDC) plus a Quality system (ERA); these are both conducted at the Institutional level. Individual researchers still need to match the appointment and promotion criteria that differ based on disciplinary expectation. So there's still a quantity push in Australia.
This is quite a complex issue. Because I feel both systems are not ideal. Encouraging people to only publish 4 extremely good paper could be worse than 10 very good paper. However this reduces the danger of predatory journals. Whereas what @FedericoPoloni mentioned is even more problematic, because this would actually encourage researchers to go the predatory journal route...
It depends on many factors. People may love to have a single "great" article, but there can be obstacles:
Many institutions or countries have objective measures such as the number of publications, being published in a journal which is indexed in Web of Science, and has a high rank among the competitors, etc. These limit the authors.
Journal limitations. I personally love to have perfect articles. But those will be very long, Journals would not love them very much because the reader gets bored. So a way is to split it. As a matter of fact in some instances, it was the reviewer or editor who asked me to remove many parts of my article. I could not stand seeing they are going to be flushed away forever, so I published them as another article.
And finally, note that it is difficult and sometimes impossible to "subjectively" judge the quality of a paper and say "well this paper is high-quality and is worth three average papers"... I have seen strange judgments from senior researchers. For example, I have seen the results of a nation-level contest, where a very poor paper was selected as #1 by 5 judges and another paper which was absolutely unique in its field and very high-quality, was chosen as #2, because the judges were not familiar with the content of the latter (or whatever other reasons they might have) [they later changed their minds when the researcher explained the research to those idiots! but the grant was already given to the poor research!]... So in such situations, objective scores are the only tool for qualification, and the notion "quality" is not even applicable! This is why some researchers would prefer split
two comments regarding the first and the second point respectively: 1) I could, and probably would, argue whether or not # of publications is an objective measure of the quality of research. But yes, it is used often. 2) Perfect articles != long articles, IMHO. What makes them "perfect" could be the fact that they express the same idea with much less but well chosen words. Or that it the paper is based on a well-formed question and well-executed series of experiments. So I do not think that length goes hand in hand with quality
I think they are "positively correlated" but the correlation is not 100%. At many instances, a perfect article needs a perfect discussion as well. With too many variables to be discussed, no matter the discussion is polished in an excellent way to be as concise as possible, it would become long. We are talking about the report, not necessarily the research. But again I agree that the correlation coefficient between paper length and its quality is not 100%, meaning that there are papers which are perfect but still short (such as the 1-page paper on the discovery of DNA, published in Nature).
But I can't agree that perfect article != long article. I have the chance to have both of them, bit sometimes you have no other choice rather than ignoring many worthy items or split your report.
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158084 | How to determine the number of citations an author had on a given date using Google Scholar?
Is there a way to learn the number of citations by author on a particular date in the past? For example, how many citations did Author X have on 1/10/18?
If you want to do it for a particular researcher in the future, you can start now by tracking their profile and recording their citation data every month/day. Doesn't work retroactively, though.
Assuming they have a public scholar profile, I imagine the closest thing you can get is the number of citations the person has at the end of a given year. You can float over a given year to determine citations per year and then subtract the required years from "all citations". This will provide a cumulative total for a given year.
For instance, the person below had 1215 - 248 = 967 at the end of 2019. And 1215 - 248 - 245 = 722 at the end of 2018.
You could probably also interpolate specific dates to get an estimate. Note however, that there is a difference between a 2019 citation and a citation received in 2019. For instance, a journal article that is first published online in 2019, but then gets a canonical publication year of 2020, will probably count as a 2020 citation. Google scholar can also vary in how long it takes to index a reference. For instance, by my guess, academics get about 20% of their citations for a given year in the year that follows (i.e., 20% of 2019 citations are added to Google Scholar in 2020).
As far as I can tell, Internet Archive doesn't index Google Scholar pages.
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18468 | Fastest way to browse journal papers (from Web of Science)?
The search engine which I typically use to browse journal papers is WebofScience. It allows me to sort by times cited, and check out who cited what.
The problem is that to get to the actual article once I have found one I am interested in takes many clicks and loading time: 1. Click FindIt button, 2. Click a link from my library access, 3. Click view full text. 4. Maybe save the article too, and import it into my reference manager.
i.e.
Step 1)
Step 2)
Step 3)
Other options...
Previously, my fastest process was to import the a list of selected references from WebofScience that I want to check out into EndNote by clicking the 'send to EndNote button', and then clicking find full text in EndNote to batch find the texts (works about 90% of the time, otherwise I had to manually click view PDF, save to my PC and then import).
Now I have discovered that Zotero can download a reference and the PDF with a single click from my browser, but only when I am searching on Elsevier or Scitation websites directly (but cannot select multiple articles for import at once, and means that I will usually have WebofScience open in a separate window to do the searching and then ctrl-c/v the article names across).
Is there an even faster way?
Do you use http://apps.webofknowledge.com/ ? When I use this, in the results list there is a button which takes me directly to the publisher and the article.
@Martin: yep that's what I use... maybe it is university dependent, but for me there is a number of intermediate steps before I can get to the article (updated above with screenshots)
Have you tried Google Scholar? It often has direct links to PDFs in the search results. But the fraction of papers for which it has the links varies a lot by field. It's very high in fields that use the arXiv, for example.
@DavidKetcheson: Google Scholar is a good suggestion, but the problem is that it doesn't have sort by citation count or filter journal title?
It seems in fact to be dependend on the subscriber, sorry to hear that. I would not recommend google scholar for any deep research. Filtering and refining is very uncomfortable to use.
@James I believe Google Scholar always sorts by citation count. It is the only tool I use to find research, because in my field Web of Science is completely missing a large portion of the literature, whereas GS is very complete.
@DavidKetcheson: Not quite. I am not sure how the "relevance" is calculated, but I often see higher cited articles further down on the list then they should be. However after using GS for a few days I think that it does deserve to be my primary research tool because of the speed and extra literature. Thanks again for the suggestion.
Use Google scholar instead
Advantages over Web of Science:
Less clicks to access full text, or to save a citation
More literature (including books) is available
Advanced search options (e.g. filter by Journal) can be accessed by clicking the arrow at the right hand side of the search box
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48057 | Type of non-university, research jobs suitable for a mathematician turned computational neuroscientist, with coding experience
I've asked the same question on Math Overflow
Background:
I'm a Ph.D. in pure mathematics (late '13, related to differential geometry, low dimensional topology) turned into computational neuroscientist as postdoc. I've been coding in matlab for the last 9 months, this being my only serious coding experience. I'm also doing some differential geometry and longitudinal statistics and have a minor in statistics. I'm neither an American nor EU citizen, but a research position in the European Union would be ideal (although I'm open to other options.)
My postdoc will not be extended beyond September. So, apart from searching other postdocs, which are the only university positions I can get at this moment, I am therefore also looking for non-university positions (it could be still academic, but the stress here is outside universities) in industry or research labs (e.g. MITRE), preferably permanent. I prefer a research position where I can do pure mathematics and continue coding.
Questions:
Which types of jobs are there?
Which role do the hired candidates play in them?
How can I find about their job advertisements?
Asking about non-academic jobs seems to make this a non-academia question...?
In this question, it'snot exactly non-academic that I'm after, rather non-university jobs. Could be still academic!
It might help people to answer if you explained why this needs to be non-university.
@Tobias: You're right. I did the corresponding modification of my question; indeed my best choice is postdoc, but the next best choice is non-university research in lab or industries or elsewhere, and then industrial jobs.
"Industrial research" barely exists these days... or ever did. Bell Labs, IBM'S T. J. Watson research center.... It takes a big company to be able to afford stuff that doesn't have short term product value, and the stugf that is short term tends to be development rather than research. Engineering, not science.
Your questions are rather broad, so let me just point you to some resources. For the first two questions (and possibly some info about the third) check out some info from the AMS:
http://www.ams.org/profession/career-info/math-work/math-work
http://www.ams.org/profession/career-info/new-phds/new-phds
For 3, some online academic resources to find jobs both in and out of academia are: mathjobs, the AMS's EIMS, the LMS site, the EMS site. Some universities also have Career Fairs and Career Service Departments which may be able to give you more help in your job search.
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16169 | Switch from pure mathematics to machine learning as postdocs?
I'm a first year postdoc in pure mathematics (geometry/topology with strong background in analysis) with undergraduate statistics and probability background (with also measure theoretic probability). I also have some programming knowledge in ForTran, C and Matlab, but I never used them in my pure mathematics career in my graduate school for the last 5 years.
In my next job, I'm considering doing a postdoc in machine learning (ML). The reason behind this switch is: I'm satisfied with my pure knowledge so far and have been wanting to see some real-life applications of mathematics, and also keep my options open in both industry and academia.
My questions are:
How hard is this switch going to be? I guess I've all the required mathematics background, but will it be hard to pick up the necessary computer science skills, even if I work in more theory-oriented problems?
What exactly are the programming knowledge I need to master to work in ML?
Is there a website/email-list where I can get notifications on jobs in machine learning? I'm looking for jobs in Europe mostly, but information on the US would also be welcome.
As a curiosity, where did you end up with currently? I am currently considering a transition from math to machine learning as well.
@JamesChung Thank for your comment, but I'll be brief. I did switch first to computational neuroimaging (because of its connection to differential geometry and statistics/statistical machine learning), from where I took an active interest in machine learning as well, and published in the intersection of differential geometry and statistical ML, with application to neuroimaging. Then I worked in industry for a few years, didn't like it and planning to go back to academia, and applying for postdocs/permanent positions in France.
Thanks for the reply back. Right now, I am neither familiar with DG nor ML/DL, so it is inappropriate for me to have such discussion at this moment. (I am merely in math master’s) However if anything interesting arises, then I would appreciate it if we can have a discussion (which is likely to be in the distant future).
1) How hard is this switch going to be? I guess I've all the required
mathematics background, but will it be hard to pick up the necessary
computer science skills, even if I work in more theory-oriented
problems?
Not a problem: picking up the math associated with ML. You've got the right background and you'll find it easy to understand the papers after an initial learning phase.
Potentially a problem: understanding why certain questions get asked and what's considered interesting. This is where mathematicians and computer scientists tend to diverge, and translating your intuition for questions might take some time. But a more mathematical mindset can also lead you to ask interesting questions that CS folks are NOT asking !
What exactly are the programming knowledge I need to master to work in
ML?
Depending on how theoretical the postdoc is, anywhere from none to R, python and matlab, and maybe even some distributed large-scale learning framework like GraphLab. But you should definitely get some familarity with the first three - ML is a good example of "no problem formulation surviving first contact with the data".
2) Is there a website/email-list where I can get notifications on jobs
in machine learning? I'm looking for jobs in Europe mostly, but
information on the US would also be welcome.
One good mailing list is ml-worldwide. Another is the Google group ml-news.
To add to Suresh's answer, some people are born programmers, and can pick it up with very little difficulty. Some people (including at least one great mathematician I have met) are utterly incapable of thinking algorithmically, and struggle with the simplest programming tasks. Most of us are somewhere in between. So the answer to the question "How hard is it to pick up the necessary computer skills" really depends somewhat on your natural ability.
"This is where mathematicians and computer scientists tend to diverge" and both tend diverge from what the scientist who works about the application at hand is intererested in...
Another skill that is necessary if you want to get your hands on real problems is translating between the different languages like biologist <-> CS <-> math and so on
If you are a pure mathematician with background in geometric analysis there are interesting problems in the sub area of machine learning called "Manifold Learning" which requires quite a lot of Riemannian Geometry and intuition. Machine Learning is a vast area and it is a question of what suits you the best.
Thanks for your valued comment, Mashbat. I've backgrounds in advanced Riemannian geometry, PDE, and Riemann surfaces, but not exactly geometric analysis, which deals with more analysis than Riemannian geometry. I've switched to computational neuroscience with applications of diff. geo., but I'd be definitely curious to know more about what kind of problems they handle in manifold learning that deal with Riemannian geometry.
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12697 | Should a postdoc apply for a tenured position?
I have two related questions, which are similar to my other question
Should I simultaneously apply for multiple jobs in different ranks at the same university?
The first one is say a school is opening a tenure position in the Associate Professor rank. I like to know how the job committee will view the application from a candidate who is currently a postdoc?
The second one is that say the school opens both a tenured-track Assistant Professor and a tenure Associate Professor. Should a candidate who is a postdoc apply to both or only to the tenured-track position? If he/she applies to both, whether that affects his/her application negatively?
Under most circumstances (not an exceptionally brilliant candidate or a field that is very difficult to recruit in), if a postdoc applies to what is advertised as a tenured associate professor position, then I would interpret the application as asking whether the university might consider hiring at the assistant professor level instead. That's not unreasonable, since job openings do not always get filled the way the department had in mind. The chances are lower if the department is hoping for something else, but it's not impossible.
I'd recommend being explicit about this. If you are actually trying for tenure straight out of a postdoc, you should say so, but it will be a waste of time unless there are unusual circumstances (and it may make you look arrogant or out of touch). If you would like to be considered for a tenure-track position should the department decide to hire at that level instead, then you should make that clear.
No. Unless you have proved the Riemann hypothesis or cured cancer, you won't be hired into a tenured position straight from a postdoc (in the USA). You should apply for tenure-track assistant professor positions.
I actually do know of examples of postdocs being hired with tenure. They were people with very strong records, though certainly not solving the Riemann hypothesis (or even necessarily future Fields Medal) caliber. However, I don't think applying for the tenured in addition to TT job will increase the probability of this happening. This something that a university will do if they really badly want you and are worried you will get a TT position somewhere "better," not because you asked politely.
I would think that in such cases, the candidate would have been actively (probably aggressively) recruited by the university. I can't imagine that the process started with the postdoc going "Hmm, here's a tenured job posting, I guess I'll send in an application".
I know such examples too but they all fall into two categories: a very strong candidate, or a very fashionable field (like biomathematics). In both cases Nate's description applies.
I agree with @NateEldredge and fedja; I just wanted to emphasize that people who are strong, but not RH level, do get hired into tenured positions. (In that sense I think David Ketcheson's answer was basically right, but stated a little too strongly). You're right that likely this is something where the candidate was being actively recruited, but internal politics are weirder than you might think. As I said, I think it's more significant that whatever happens, it probably won't have made much of a difference where you sent your app on Mathjobs.
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10902 | Talks vs. poster presentations: Which is better for advertising your research and building research networks?
I'm looking into applying to present at a conference for undergraduates in mathematics this summer. When I apply, I have to either apply to give a talk (~20 minutes) or present a poster.
From what I've read on this site, it seems posters are often looked down on relative to talks, especially in mathematics. However, one advantage of a poster session is that I can have a back-and-forth discussion which is impossible in a talk. I think this is especially important for my research, since the computations in the subject are notoriously tricky and will trip up even experts if they aren't paying close attention to the details.
What are the relative advantages/disadvantages of each format? Which is a better way to advertise my research and network with other researchers in my field?
I don't know if it's just me, but it's a bit strange that you can choose. From what I know, you submit a paper and it gets accepted as either a presentation or as a part of the poster session. That said, presentations are more prestigious and they reach a wider audience. While it's true that you can have a discussion while explaining your poster to somebody, it will only probably be a small portion of people in comparison to a presentation audience. And, if anybody is interested in your work after a presentation, he can always find you during a break to discuss in detail.
@penelope: I've seen several conferences where, in the call for papers, the conference organizers let appplicants choose from a menu of presentation formats, such as break-out session, panel discussion, and poster session.
@penelope: In most conferences I attend, you can choose a poster presentation if you want—and in most of those, you're pretty much guaranteed to get it, if you apply.
See also answers to How important are poster sessions in conferences?.
A slight aside that may be helpful if you opt for and are accepted for a Poster presentation at the conference. Zen Faulkes contributed a great post on Perfecting the Poster Presentation on our blog. His own blog - Better Posters - has lots of tips and advice for anyone considering poster presentations. Highly recommended and very entertaining!
It depends on what you want to do. If you feel like at this point in your research it would be more beneficial to converse than to present, then I'd say that a poster session is the right venue for you. It's true that talks are considered a bit more prestigious than poster sessions, but you really should go with what you think will be more valuable for you, and for the conference attendees.
It's worth noting that you could always do a poster presentation this year, get the feedback that you covet, and then return next year to do a talk, and let everyone know how your research went over the subsequent year. That kind of progression is not a bad thing.
Also, if you are in the early stages of your research, it might not be ready for a talk. When I attend a conference talk, I'm expecting there to be some significant findings. Sure, talks might be more "prestigious," but, if there are some holes in your research, you could end up discrediting yourself. People aren't expecting the same level of maturity in the research during a poster session. So, as I said before, forget the prestige aspect, and choose what is more fitting based on your goals, and on what you have to share at this point in your research.
From my experience impact of posters is way, way lower than of a talk. If you can get a single person listening to you for 20 min with a poster, it is much. Plus, usually, people are distracted (noise, people moving around). And before they can ask questions, they need time to learn what you are presenting anyway. So if you have a choice between talk and poster, the first is always a better option.
Some conferences leave the posters exhibited throughout the whole duration of the conference. Like this, rather than just during the 20 minutes of your presentation, conference attendees have several full days to look at the poster. Given that the audience of a presentation is further restricted by possible scheduling conflicts with parallel sessions, the poster may actually be seen by more people in total than the presentation. With that in mind, talking about the poster(-topic) for 20 minutes is not all that unlikely, as any 15 minute coffee break can lead to such a conversation.
Of course, but still all of my experiences (both as a poster presenter and participant) say that a 5-min talk is better than a 5-day poster exposition.
Leaving aside the prestige issue for a moment, I get a lot more out of poster sessions than talks, both as a presenter and viewer. For the viewer, they can take in the information presented at their own pace, and ask for clarification if needed. If your audience gets lost during a talk, there is little chance anyone will interrupt as the talks run to a strict schedule. Good luck trying to regain your train of thought from the question session at the end. Talks are far too linear in my opinion. The discussions you have with poster presenters lead to a much better level of understanding I find, and there is a lot less inhibition in discussing the results.
All research should always be at a point for discussion. There is no scientific theory or research that should not need further discussion, at the level you get in a poster session. I have seen posters that present quite mature and significant research.
I regret to say that I have to agree that most researchers will see talks as the 'prestige' option, with posters a poor second. But this does not mean talks are necessarily better for advertising your research or networking.
Space (time) for talks is often much more limited than space for posters. At the conferences where I've been (geophysics/atmospheric science), almost all on-topic posters were accepted (note that abstracts were not peer-reviewed) as is. For people applying for an oral presentation, either they were accepted as an oral presentation, or they were assigned to do a poster instead. It may be similar in your field; so try for an oral presentation, and if you don't get it, you may still be able to do a poster.
In the fore-seeable future, in mathematics the critical activity is giving talks, not posters. Thus, practicing giving talks, all the more if your subject has delicate technicalities, is critical. This is not at all any sort of argument against the communication aspects of posters versus talks, but a comment on professional expectations, for better or for worse.
E.g., gritty/volatile/delicate details need portrayal in more conceptual terms, ... or not at all. Even in talks, people often try to use overheads of some sort to zip through ghastly wastelands of unassimilable details... Don't do this. It just alienates and disenchants your audience.
In particular, I strongly think that the "in the moment" aspects of a talk are very, very good exercise for anyone thinking how to portray their work. The extreme case of a "chalk talk" is the best exercise of all, for mathematics, in my opinion, but it does tax performance and organizational, as well as conceptualizing, talents. But dodging the whole issue by the pseudo-resolution of "poster" only delays encounter with the genuine problem-to-be-solved, and doesn't add anything to a CV.
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138599 | Choosing the best fit sentence to mail prospective PhD supervisor
I am applying for a PhD scholarship which was posted on the university website and for that, I am writing mail to the professor. I have written about my background, academics, interests and experience. I want to ask him the procedure for applying for the scholarship. I am not a native English speaker so I am not sure that which of the following sentence would be best for that:
Plese let me know about the application procedure
Please let me know how can I apply for the position
Or if there is another way to ask, kindly suggest.
The wording probably doesn't matter too much. You can simply say "I am interested in applying for X scholarship. How does the application procedure work?".
However, before you send the email, make sure you check the details aren't already online somewhere. Also consider if your email would be better addressed to the department administrator rather than the professor, as an administrator is more likely to know all the necessary technical details.
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85906 | Sharing content from thesis online, before submitting thesis
I wrote some piece of code early on in my PhD. It is not genuine research as such but just implementation of already published paper (no public domain code for that paper exist). Because I spent considerable amount of time on it, my guide wants to include it in my thesis as an appendix.
I want to put it on github as well for which my guide has given his blessings! However I am confused about its documentation. I wrote complete introduction and implementation of the problem and code etc which will go in the appendix. Now i want to put that documentation on github as well. But I havent submitted my thesis yet.
Our departmental policy is that thesis go for plagiarism check before submission. I am afraid during that check my own github repo will show up matching word to word. Is this acceptable? Or shall I wait till I submit?
TLDR: Can portions of thesis be put up online before submission? will it count as plagiarism during plagiarism check?
When are you going to submit your thesis? Is there any reason you cannot wait until they plagiarism check your thesis?
Hopefully few months. I can hold. But I thought submitting code on github before submitting in thesis might help me figure out if any bugs or 'obvious' mistakes are there, which i night have skipped.
If you cite the Github, it's not plagiarism
I can site the work i agree but i can not include the whole user manual verbatim, which i am trying to do here, or can i? I am not really sure of legality here
Ethically, I think you would also be fine. Theses in many fields include content from published papers; GitHub doesn't even count as 'published'.
Practically, it depends on how much blind faith your department places in the plagiarism checker. Plagiarism detectors should only be used as a first-pass, and humans should evaluate the detected potential plagiarism. If the authorship of your GitHub documentation is clearly labeled, then they will hopefully see that it is your work.
Navigating the details of this in a department-specific setting is what your adviser is there to help you do. If they've given their blessing, and they are aware of the policy, and they are a good adviser, then I would also expect them to be willing to go to bat for you if it does come up in thesis review.
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67637 | How to ask for code from authors who have proposed algorithms in computer science?
I am developing an algorithm, and I want to compare its performance with various existing state-of-the art methods. I would like to contact the authors of these methods and ask if they can send me the code for their methods.
What should I tell them? Should I say that I am developing a method that is in some way an alternative to their method? Or is enough to ask to say that I want to do generic comparisons?
Is it correct to assume you are not talking about purely theoretical papers?
Tell them what you told us. You are working on a different algorithm and implementation for the same problem and you'd like to compare to the state of the art. You've read their papers (cite them), and you'd like to see if their code is available for cross-comparison.
If they don't make theirs available, you may have to reimplement their algorithm in your code as well. This latter case is pretty common. There's a chance you might not do this as well as them, so there's some incentive for them to give you their code to get a proper comparison done.
On the other side of the spectrum, some authors have incentive to not make their code available, as they are looking to market it.
You will want to show mathematically that your algorithm performs better than existing methods.
Before you contact anyone, learn a bit about Big-O notation. The real comparison won't be running benchmarks, it will be analysis of your algorithm and theirs. (The other authors have probably already done their part by publishing analyses of their algorithms, or someone else has.) So, you probably don't need the code.
Actually I am interested both in performance and accuracy. I already know theorethical complexity of my algorithm, and also the one of the other algorithms can be found in their papers, and they are similar. My point is not to proof that mine is better, but to understand in which conditions (if any) my algorithm improves and in which it is worse, so it is interesting to have an idea, on the same data, of the difference between methods.
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131209 | how to reply a professor is not available for research guidance
Thanks for your interest. But I am not available for guidance or mentorship.
This is my professor's reply.
I don't know how to reply back formally. I want to know if this professor can suggest my name to his colleagues. I don't how to formally ask him to do this.
Can anyone please help.
What concretely is your question? Are you asking for someone else to write an email for you? I think you know what you want to say, just say it!
Is this a professor at your institution? Do you have some existing relationship with him? Or is he a stranger that you contacted out of the blue? If the latter, this is a flat refusal and you should not reply.
You should not reply to this at all. He has made it abundantly clear that he is not interested in helping you in any capacity. This is actually nice of him: many professors would not reply at all, or would make promises and then not follow through.
I want to know if this professor can suggest my name to his colleagues.
Consider just approaching his colleagues yourself. Or, if you have the opportunity to speak to this professor in person (e.g., office hours), you could ask then if they could recommend someone to advise you. But replying to this e-mail is unlikely to have the desired effect.
OP should ask themselves why they think that going through this professor is preferable to talk to the colleagues directly. Do they know this professor, but not the colleagues?
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115768 | How to request a professor who has moved colleges to acknowledge project work?
At the end of last semester , I had taken up some research work under a professor of a different department.
Now , I had been updating him with my progress on a weekly basis until my final exams arrived , due to which I was forced to put a hold on the project work.
After my final exams got over, I came to know that the professor has moved colleges.
So, I was thinking of mailing him the progress I have made on the project. Now , the issue is there has been almost a month since he moved colleges but I have anyway been constantly working on the project.
If I manage to get him to acknowledge my work and get a recommendation from him, it would be pretty neat. So how do I go about framing the email?
Can you provide a draft of your email so that we can comment? Can you also search for similar questions?
@user2768 Draft of which email? I had been updating him with the progress in person.
You want to know how to "go about framing the email," write the email and show us, then we can guide you.
If he is personally available (different College, same place) then go see him with an update as usual. If not, then email him with the update as an attachment.
But, in either case, also ask him if he is willing to keep advising you on a less formal basis and tell him that you are continuing work and value his feedback. It may be possible for him to continue or not. If not, ask him if he will write you a letter of recommendation then or later.
Actually, it is pretty simple. "Just ask" is usually the right move in these situations. You don't learn unless you ask.
Welcome to Academia.
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14459 | Full length articles or multiple letters to publish in Journal?
Prior to submitting a Journal article, I had a conversation with my supervisor about whether it was suitable for a letter (max 4 pages) or a more detailed article (max 12 pages). My position was that the core contribution (a new method) could be concisely and completely be described in less than 4 pages, and should therefore be a letter. The complication was that some progress had been made on the application of the method to a particular problem.
I therefore wanted to publish the first letter straight away, and later publish a second letter later dealing with the application. My supervisor didn't like this idea. He said it was "playing the game" to increase one's own H-index, and it was more suited to a single article. I subsequently took his advice to submit a full length article. However, now (with the article submitted over 3 months ago, and still under editorial review) he has changed his mind and says it's "up to me" as to whether I would like to withdraw it and resubmit as 2 letters...
So my question is whether there is any disadvantage to publishing research as a series of short (more concise/readable, and faster reviewed) letters in the same Journal?
(In this journal the letters are also mandated as open access, which is an option rarely used for the full length articles, and may improve findability)
Open access or not is completely independent of letter vs. full article.
You did not provide a lot of information on the completeness, quality, urgency and degree of connection between each individual pieces. Still, it sounds like that your supposed second letter might not make it through the review process. Being new, complete and sound research along does not justify publishing as a letter, you have to also demonstrate importance and urgency. And if your adviser think it is "playing the game", it likely doesn't suit to be divided into papers.
@F'x: that is true, however for this particular journal ALL of the "express letters" are open access, so it may make it easier to find than an open access full length article (rare).
@XiaoleiZhu: I would agree that at the state it was when submitted as 1 article, the material belonging to the second letter would not have made it. However, in 3 months there has been some new progress - so it may be possible (although still not as strong as the first letter). I guess I'm unclear on how to distinguish importance and urgency. My feeling is that it may be useful research worth publishing, and there would be no need to draw it out into a full length article after the first letter was already published.
@James By urgency I mean the work will likely affect other on-going research and people should see it ASAP. Usually "application to a specific problem" for a previously reported method will be hard to be publishable as a letter unless the application itself presents significant value or breakthrough. Letters are subject to much higher standards than full papers. Once your first paper is out, that will be an application of an OLD method, that makes it quite hard for a letter.
I'm not sure if your referees would be happy if you said, "You know how I asked you to review my paper like 3 months ago. But now I think about it, I kinda wanna split it into 2 letters cause that way I can get the perks like open access, higher H-index, and whatnot. Can you start over?"
The fact that you made further progress after submitting the first paper strongly suggests that you submitted prematurely. Also, open access has absolutely no effect on the findability of a paper, unless you're submitting to a regressive (and self-destructive) publisher that doesn't let search engines index their metadata.
My advice would be to go through with the submission as is. If you were to withdraw the manuscript you would then have to write the two new papers and go through review for each of them. These steps take a lot of time and effort, both of which you could spend on original research (e.g. use this new method to solve various other problems).
The only case where the resubmittal might be interesting is if your results are so novel and significant that you are almost sure you can publish them in a high-profile journal (more prestigious than the current one). Then again, if they had this kind of potential I guess your advisor would have spotted it...
Generally speaking, having two papers (one of them as a letter in a prestigious journal) is of course more gratifying than one long publication and looks better on the CV. There are however two points to consider:
The results need to be important enough to warrant publication as a letter. In particular, the (uncertain) benefit of having it published must compensate the investment in time and effort (see above).
The "long paper" should contain enough new material to stand on its own. "Salami slicing", also known as the search for the "minimum publishable unit", is frowned upon. Although this behavior is not apparent from the publication list, it can be detected by careful examination (e.g. by the candidate's referee on a hiring committee).
See also this thread for more details.
Sure, I agree that I may as well leave it as is for the current submission. However, my question is in a more general sense (e.g. future submissions) about whether the style of splitting research into letters can be more appropriate. So I am looking for an answer that expands on @XiaoleiZhu's comments above
I updated the answer accordingly.
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93486 | How to justify motivations for a second master?
I have already graduate from a master degree in Europe (Software Engineering) , and applied for another master degree (Informatic) in Germany (TUM).
I have applied with my BSc. degree diploma and transcripts to the German university. My scores in bachelor is quit good, and convincing. The issue is they have invited me to an interview. I guess they want to know why i am still motivated for another master, while i have one?
Here are my motivations:
The focus of my first master was Software engineering, meanwhile now i am interested to learn about distributed systems, networks.
I am looking for a careers which needs both the programming and network, and i think this master programme would help me. I am already good as a developer but i need to improve my skills in network.
I have some raw idea over the Bitcoin, Blockchain , and Internet of Things, and i need to be in touch with some experienced teachers who have deep knowledge in this fields.
Germany is an awesome country. I love the language and culture, and i think there are lot's of job opportunities for IT people.I have some basic command in German, and i am going to advance them during the programe.
Do you think these motivations make sense for them?
I don't find your justification wise enough for a second master degree in distributed systems and networks. Moreover, I don't find a real target behind the second master degree other than getting associated with professors and the country.
If your prime purpose is to learn new stuff, you don't need a second academic degree which is very similar to the one that you already have. You can learn on your own. Moreover, you could directly apply for a research degree (say Ph.D.) in Germany instead. This would definitely make more sense. Unless you have some serious career goals to pursue on the specified courses, you should not do it. In my university, my colleagues who have Ph.D. in software engineering are now doing serious research in IoT, Distributed Systems, and Network security.
Ask yourself this question: If you get interested in computational economics after 2 years, would you again apply for a masters degree in the same field?
Do you mean i should change the primary purposes from 1 to 3?
if u want to justify it, what will you write?
@Salman The third point is even not okay. Consider you had a discussion that you have a raw idea on the problem, what if it does not work? What if it has already been explored? What if the university is not interested in that?
what is your solution for this interview? i cannot give up
@Salman Do you have a fully funded scholarship for the full course? If yes, then you speak with them about your possible career goal in the same field such as an extension to a research degree or a job in the equivalent area.
No. The university does not provide scholarship for any one in the first semester.
@Salman You could follow a related question here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2971/pursuing-a-second-masters-degreepart-time-pros-and-cons. Rest depends on you. We could only advise.
Absolutely. You're passionate about the country, you are focussed on a particular career goal, and you feel that this Masters programme is what you need to take you down that path.
If they didn't accept that then I would be surprised.
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1923 | What sources provide a list of all academic topics?
I'm an STS student, so bear with me; I'm happy to provide clarification but I want to leave the specific application unspecified:
What sources would you consult if you were trying to generate a huge "list of all academic topics"?
I'm thinking it would include all the 'ologies', the 'isms', the 'X studies', all the historical "movements", all the 'subjects' of journals and papers, all the 'big questions' of any given "field".
What other sources, whether vague (like above) or specific (like a URL with some good list items), would you suggest in compiling this list?
You need to define topic first. At the macro level, all topics fall under "knowledge", or some such nonsense, and at the micro level, every published paper and book is on a different topic.
You could use the different doctoral degrees as pretty broad topics. This would give you a list like philosophy (PhD), medicine (MD), science (ScD), etc. A less coarse division would be "schools/College". This would give you a list like School/College of Arts, School/College of Humanities, School/College of Medicine, School/College of Science, etc. A finer division would be departments and institutes within a School/College. A still finer would be research groups within departments. This of course leads to individuals within groups and finally publications by individuals.
University websites would provide all the information you need, although not in a format that is easy to search and retrieve.
A good starting place may be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_disciplines, with the links there, esp. restricting to specific disciplines (e.g. List of biology disciplines); for each field of science, usually there are a few different official classifications of sub-disciplines (e.g. Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS)).
However, bear in mind that:
there is no universal classification,
some are constructed for different purposes, with differently 'catching' subfields and their intersections,
there are many synonyms, e.g. 'biological chemistry = biochemistry',
for may there may be historical bias (i.e. divisions which were useful 10 year ago, but not are out-of-date),
some classifications use descriptive names (one sentence or more), some - 1-3 word tags,
many classifications are hierarchical.
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18233 | How to present the motivation for a book on mathematical research?
My book was rejected by a publisher saying that my research is "unmotivated". To motivate it, should I solve some long standing open problem? Or are there other ways to motivate publishers?
This is despite I have some short sections in my book which describes my idea of motivation: "1.4 Our topic and rationale" and "1.5 Earlier works".
What motivation (except of solving long standing open problems) are?
Any text online on the topic of motivation in math research?
http://www.math.ualberta.ca/mss/misc/A%20Mathematician%27s%20Apology.pdf was suggested by Terrence Tao in a chat
It would be nice to see more about how your approach fits within the larger context of standard mathematics. Or, to explain how what you do is indeed more general. This is of course not at all an easy request. You might as a motivation for the proposed streamlining of proofs, show an explicit example to compare and contrast your proof verses the standard proof.
I'll re-open temporarily to migrate to Academia. While this question is specific about publishing mathematics, I think there may be similar concerns in other fields making it potentially useful to have the exposure there.
You may be interested in Lowen's approach spaces. Here is a link to a wikipedia article. There is also a book on categorical closure operators by Castellini. Here is a link.
I see several reasons why this will not be published: The work introduces way too many objects that are unfamiliar, AND has not passed peer review. Looking at your book, it has lots of definitions, and one-line proofs, but lacks motivation and flow; this looks more like something that a computer would automatically generate. See page 44 example. It is completely unreadable, and there are no motivations for the proofs. I suggest that you familiarize yourself with mathematical WRITING, not just what symbols LaTeX manage to produce.
What the publisher is looking for is a book that will attract many readers. If crowds are already clamoring for a book, then the decision to publish it is easy, but that's uncommon. Instead, the publisher generally has to try to predict whether an audience for the book will materialize when nobody knows they want to read it yet.
The "motivation" the publisher refers to is anything that makes people want to read the book. You need to demonstrate to potential readers that the material is interesting and exciting, that reading the book will be useful, that it connects to a larger scholarly conversation, etc.
Right now, it's clear that you feel the book is valuable and would like many people to read it, but you aren't giving potential readers a lot of motivation. For example, in Section 1.4 of the current draft, you write
Somebody might ask, why to study it? My approach relates to traditional general topology like complex numbers to real numbers theory. Be sure this will find applications.
and
This book has a deficiency: It does not properly relate my theory with previous research in general topology and does not consider deeper category theory properties. It is however OK for now, as I am going to do this study in later volumes (continuation of this book).
Basically, this amounts to saying you don't yet know how it will be useful and you aren't connecting it to the literature. The lack of applications is a serious disadvantage, but not necessarily decisive by itself (some things can be published in mathematics just because they are beautiful or seem like they should be useful). However, not explaining the relationship with previous research is a major problem. It's nearly impossible to get an academic book published under these circumstances.
I don't mean to be overly discouraging, but my impression is that writing a book on your work is premature. Instead, I'd focus on connecting your work with the rest of the field, with the goal of getting a group of other researchers building on your papers. Once you start to get more citations, you can bring them to the attention of publishers as evidence for a community that values your work and would benefit from a systematic presentation in the form of a book.
A small technical note: "general topology" (even if we add "traditional") is not about complex and real numbers. That sentence alone is already a flag that may worry potential editors. It suggests that you are not aware of what the fields you are mentioning are really about, and suggests that your work is an isolated eccentricity. Not saying this is or is not the case, simply pointing out how your words may be perceived.
@AndresCaicedo: I think what porton meant by that sentence is that the relationship of his "approach" to general topology is analogous to the relationship of the complex numbers to the real numbers. I think the more serious red flag to editors is the following sentence, which very clearly suggests that the hoped-for applications have not been found yet.
Oh, I see. That's too vague, then. There are very specific relations between complex and real valued theory, and it is not clear other than in the vaguest of senses what plays the role of those relations in the new context.
Now that you have started the field of Algebraic General Topology you may want to convince other people that it is worth their while to learn about it.
Looking through the slides I see lots of words whose definitions I do not know. I have not read your paper and I am ignorant of the terminology in the fields you are generalizing. Perhaps there are theorems in two different fields that when generalized by your techniques turn out to be the same theorem. If you are lucky no one will have previously realized that they are the same theorem. If something like this is the case. I would pick such theorems, place them at the top of each of two columns on (digital) piece of paper and then use your general proof for each of the theorems but use the language of the field from which the particular theorem comes. This way people will be able to see what you have accomplished without learning lots of new language.
What about this theorem for both topological, proximity, and uniform spaces: The product space is the maximal space for which all projections are continuous (respectively, proximally continuous, uniformly continuous). Theorem(s): product of continuous (respectively, proximally continuous, uniformly continuous) is continuous. Also this theorem holds for (di)graphs and discrete continuity. Would this four-fold theorem proof be interesting?
Note that this theorem is not included in my book (it is scheduled for volume 2).
Dear Jay, how can I write my proof in the language of a particular field, when prior to me my "composition" operation was not defined in topology? Writing proofs without composition I would need to split the definition of composition into logical formulas with quantifiers which define it. The proof would become less than clear. This way reading the specialized proof people would not be able to catch my (more algebraic that before) proof idea.
Perhaps. I do not pretend to be an expert in any of these topics. I think you should look at Lowen's Approach Spaces. It may be that there is some overlap with what your work.
I've looked into Lowen's Approach Spaces. I am unable to find a common generalization of Lowen's and mine research. Thus (as it seems for me!) reading Lowen would be not useful for me as a researcher. (I may mistake on this however.)
My answer was an attempt to make it easy for people to get around all the new language. If it won't work it won't work. If Lowen's work is different from yours it's different. He was generalizing some of the same things.
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88592 | Online tool to convert plain text references into list of PubMed IDs or DOIs
A smart researcher is using a reference manager (zotero, endnote) for citing papers. To import papers into the reference manager is a tedious task.
Is there a web based tool that could automate some of it. Consider a block of text with references below (emailed as free text by a colleague) and the tool would convert it into a list of PubMed IDs or DOIs.
• Saxon AJ, Ling W, Hillhouse M, Thomas C, Hasson A, Ang A, Doraimani G, Tasissa G, Lokhnygina Y, Leimberger JD, Bruce RD, McCarthy J, Wiest K, McLaughlin P, Bilangi R, Cohen AJ, Woody GE, Jacobs P. Buprenorphine/Naloxone and Methadone Effects on Laboratory Indices of Liver Health: A Randomized Trial. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 2013;128(1-2):71-76.
• Woody GE, Poole SA, Subramaniam GA, Dugosh KL, Bogenschutz MP, Abbott P, Patkar AA, Publicker M, McCain K, Sharpe Potter J, Formar RF, Vetter V, McNicholas L, Blaine J, Lynch KG, Fudala P. Extended vs. Short-Term Buprenorphine-Naloxone for Treatment of Opioid-Addicted Youth: A Randomized Trial. JAMA 2008;300(17):2003-2011.
• Wu LT, Pan JJ, Blazer DG, et al. Using a latent variable approach to inform gender and racial/ethnic differences in cocaine dependence: A National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network study. J Subst Abuse Treat 2010; 38(Suppl. 1): S70–79.
• Wu LT, Blazer DG, Patkar AA, et al. Heterogeneity of stimulant dependence: A National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network study. Am J Addict 2009; 18(3): 206–18.
• Wu LT, Blazer DG, Stitzer ML, Patkar AA, Blaine JD. Infrequent illicit methadone use among stimulant-using patients in methadone maintenance treatment programs: A National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network study. Am J Addict 2008; 17(4): 304–11.
• Wu LT, Pan JJ, Blazer DG, et al. The construct and measurement equivalence of cocaine and opioid dependences: A National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) study. Drug Alcohol Depend 2009; 103(3): 114–23.
• Wu LT, Blazer DG, Woody GE, et al. Alcohol and drug dependence symptom items as brief screeners for substance use disorders: Results from the Clinical Trials Network. J Psychiatr Res 2012; 46(3): 360–69.
Output would be:
PMID:22921476
PMID:18984887
...
I don't know about a web tool but Pubmed Central offers a lookup file containing IDs and metadata (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/pmctopmid/#ftp). These could be used to retrieve PMIDs, assuming the format of free-text references is consistent.
You could use CrossRef
Go to this link:
Paste the references into the box
and supply an email:
If you want PubMed IDs then click the box:
You'll get results like this:
You could then do some text manipulation to extract the doi or PMID.
Note: the tool requires to register your email.
Enter the email address you registered for use of Crossref services. If you have >not registered your email address, request an account. [link to register]
Another option is to use the rcrossref package in R.
Here is a complete example that returns dois and PMIDs for the references you specify. It could readily be adapted to a different set of references. You probably just want to double check that it is returning accurate results.
# install.packages(rcrosref)
library(rcrossref)
# here is a simple example of extracting one ref
ref <- " Saxon AJ, Ling W, Hillhouse M, Thomas C, Hasson A, Ang A, Doraimani G, Tasissa G, Lokhnygina Y, Leimberger JD, Bruce RD, McCarthy J, Wiest K, McLaughlin P, Bilangi R, Cohen AJ, Woody GE, Jacobs P. Buprenorphine/Naloxone and Methadone Effects on Laboratory Indices of Liver Health: A Randomized Trial. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 2013;128(1-2):71-76."
results <- cr_works(query = ref, limit =1)
# Save the references to a variable
# I've used scan make sure you run the empty line after the last reference to
# let the scan function know that all references have been imported
refs <- scan(what = "character", sep = "\n")
Saxon AJ, Ling W, Hillhouse M, Thomas C, Hasson A, Ang A, Doraimani G, Tasissa G, Lokhnygina Y, Leimberger JD, Bruce RD, McCarthy J, Wiest K, McLaughlin P, Bilangi R, Cohen AJ, Woody GE, Jacobs P. Buprenorphine/Naloxone and Methadone Effects on Laboratory Indices of Liver Health: A Randomized Trial. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 2013;128(1-2):71-76.
Woody GE, Poole SA, Subramaniam GA, Dugosh KL, Bogenschutz MP, Abbott P, Patkar AA, Publicker M, McCain K, Sharpe Potter J, Formar RF, Vetter V, McNicholas L, Blaine J, Lynch KG, Fudala P. Extended vs. Short-Term Buprenorphine-Naloxone for Treatment of Opioid-Addicted Youth: A Randomized Trial. JAMA 2008;300(17):2003-2011.
Wu LT, Pan JJ, Blazer DG, et al. Using a latent variable approach to inform gender and racial/ethnic differences in cocaine dependence: A National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network study. J Subst Abuse Treat 2010; 38(Suppl. 1): S70–79.
Wu LT, Blazer DG, Patkar AA, et al. Heterogeneity of stimulant dependence: A National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network study. Am J Addict 2009; 18(3): 206–18.
Wu LT, Blazer DG, Stitzer ML, Patkar AA, Blaine JD. Infrequent illicit methadone use among stimulant-using patients in methadone maintenance treatment programs: A National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network study. Am J Addict 2008; 17(4): 304–11.
Wu LT, Pan JJ, Blazer DG, et al. The construct and measurement equivalence of cocaine and opioid dependences: A National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) study. Drug Alcohol Depend 2009; 103(3): 114–23.
Wu LT, Blazer DG, Woody GE, et al. Alcohol and drug dependence symptom items as brief screeners for substance use disorders: Results from the Clinical Trials Network. J Psychiatr Res 2012; 46(3): 360–69.
# import reference infomation from crossref
# cr_works uses the reference as the query
# limit = 1 limits returned references to 1
# I think that corresponds to the best match, but you would want to check
# this assumption
matches <- lapply(refs, function(X) try(rcrossref::cr_works(query = X, limit =1)))
# extract doi from returned object
dois <- sapply(matches, function(X) try(X$data$DOI))
dois
# Use the following function to convert doi to pubmed id
allids <- lapply(dois, function(X) try(rcrossref::id_converter(X)))
pmids <- sapply(allids, function(X) try(X$records[,"pmid"]))
pmids
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35027 | Referring to myself in my thesis
I am not an English native speaker and I wrote my thesis in English. If in the title page of my thesis I would like to write
Advisor: "The name of my advisor"
M: "My name",
then what should M most commonly be?
My choice for M is "student" but am not sure of that.
Note: The common culture of my country makes me write the title page as what I show in my question. I may very well be considered "improper" or even "rude" if I do not do that, and consequently would incur unnecessary judgements.
Perhaps you are looking for the word, "author".
Ah, the word had once been my choice. But I were not sure about if the word is suitable. So, assuming that you have noticed "most commonly" in my question, do you mean "author" is the right word?
Are there any theses in English that have previously been accepted by your institution? If so, look at some of them and follow the same conventions.
Usually, the format of your title page is dictated by your institution... does your institution not have a required format?
The three institutions (in the United States) with which I am familiar use "by:". However, the best answer is to follow your institution's format (jakebeal) if there is one. Otherwise, use a recently-accepted thesis as an example (Patricia Shanahan.) See my next comment for why this is a comment, not an answer.
I've suggested closing this as "unclear what you're asking." The definitive answer has to come from the program office of your own institution; none of us can really give you a "right" answer, even though we've tried.
@BobBrown: The question is about the most commonly used item, not about the correct one, so this is clearly answerable. (Also, at least where I come from, there are institutions that do not make all sorts of regulations on how your thesis should look like.)
@Wrzlprmft: You are correct. I apologize.
As others have said, the most important step toward answering your question is to check your university's rules. They may be amazingly specific about the format of the title page (as are the rules of my university), and they would override any common culture of your country, any advice we could give you here, and common sense.
Firstly, let me remark that, as other have suggested, it is better to check the preferred format of your university.
In case you can't find any, a possible alternative to Author (or nothing) can be Candidate, because, at the moment, you are a candidate to some kind of examination and the thesis is the work you have to present before a board of examiners to pass it.
For any specific thesis, you should check the regulations of the institution the thesis will be submitted to. There are often strict rules about the formatting of the title page.
I've not come across the advisor being listed first. The format I'm most familiar with would be something like the following:
Why there are no Frogs on the Moon
Neil Armstrong
Advisor: Dr Thomas O. Paine
There's no need to write a word before the author's name. It is understood that any title page will contain the title and the author so any name that is not explained as being something else (e.g., "Advisor:", "Editor:") must be the author. You see the same with academic papers: the authors are usually not explicitly described as authors; it's just implicit that the list of names below the title is the list of authors.
Note also that the name(s) of the author(s) usually come before any other people who have contributed to the document. Authorship is regarded as by far the most important contribution.
Appreciating your support! There is something that I have to say. The common culture of my country makes me write the title page as what I show in my question. I may very well be considered "improper" or even "rude" if I do not do that, and consequently would incur unnecessary judgements. But I still appreciate your help. I guess cultural difference takes place and I will ponder over this point much more.
That is a national complex, though I hate that.
@Chou OK. I wasn't aware that there were places that did it differently -- I guess you weren't either! You should edit your question to include this information, as it's rather important. Perhaps you could also include the form of words that is used in your native language.
Simply write (By:"Your name"), that's it.
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24005 | Discussing time limits in the limitations section?
Is it common to discuss the fact that one didn't have time to do more reading, or didn't have time to elaborate certain sections, in the "limitations" section of a thesis?
I'm not sure what you mean. I would expect your limitations section to discuss inherent limitations of your results or methods. So if by "time limits" you mean "we can only run this reaction for 2 hours and then it blows up", then yes. If you mean "I didn't have time to run more experiments" then no.
I mean our second possibility, something like I didn't have the time to do more readings, or elaborate certain sections.
something like I didn't have the time to do more readings, or elaborate certain sections. -- You'll want to avoid writing this into your thesis.
Time limitations do show up on papers occasionally, in fields where experiments or computations take too long to be reasonable. For example, something like "if we tried to calculate for two more particles then the code would take about six months to run" is usually written up like "calculations for larger systems take prohibitively long times". This does not apply, of course, to not reading enough or not writing carefully enough.
If you didn't investigate something (in work, not in readings), you could mention it in a future work section (if you're okay possibly racing other researchers to do the further investigation).
No. It not common, nor should you do it! As paul garrett pointed out, this type of excuse makes it seem as though you didn't care or couldn't be bothered to do a better job.
I would add also that no matter how much time and effort you have put into developing an idea and writing your paper, it is almost inevitable that there will be something that you missed or could have done better had you had/taken more time. Even the magnum opus on which you have spent your entire lifetime will be superseded by better or more complete thoughts; this is an inevitable reality of academic writing, and not one you should apologize for.
Perhaps especially as a student, one struggles to find the balance that represents maximum output for minimum time spent. Knowing when to 'let go' is a function of maturity and experience. When you've made that decision (or have had it made for you, due to time constraints outside your control), accept that this might be better, but don't apologize for the inevitable.
"No", for several reasons. First, even if literally true due to external constraints, it sounds too much like one really didn't care enough, or had other, more important things to do. Second, if it's a sort of excuse for not having a better paper, that's both unprofessional and will only make people mistrust you all the more. Third, although scientific and other scholarly literature has manifest limitations, to apparently concede huge limitations at the outset is pathetic.
Even if such remarks are a (misguided) attempt at some sort of modesty, don't do it. Your thesis is not "about you", but about its subject. Personal remarks should be limited to thank-yous and such in the acknowledgements.
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115350 | How to make clear tasks for students about resolving paradoxes?
Question
When creating questions for coursework, exams, and similar, I sometimes want to task students with explaining counter-intuitive results or dissolving paradoxes, as I consider this is a good opportunity for them to train or showcase their understanding of the bigger picture or their skills to make an argument.
Now, a problem with just asking “Why is our intuition wrong here?” or “Solve this paradox.” is that it requires that everybody agrees upon what is intuitive or paradoxical here. A student may (quite rightfully) consider the correct result intuitive or just be happy with calculating the correct result and noticing that it is different from what intuition assumes.
Therefore I loathed such questions as a student since they strongly depend on interpretation. Can I somehow avoid this problem without dropping the respective task altogether?
Example: The Birthday Paradox
The birthday paradox is that n = 23 is the smallest number such that for a group of n people, it is more likely that two birthdays coincide than not. The number n is much lower than what most people would expect intuitively. I am seeking to ask a question that has an answer along the lines of:
While the probability that a given member’s birthday coincides with another only grows slowly (linearly) when the group size is increased, birthdays can also coincide between newly added group members. The number of such pairings grows faster (quadratically).
Now if I ask the students: “Why is n so low?”, they could ask: “In relation to what?”. Also, they might ‘simply’ calculate n, and I could not rightfully complain that this is not what the question asked for. (Of course, correctly calculating n in this case requires including pairings between newly added nodes and hopefully grants the students the kind of insight I am aiming at. However, some may still apply some formulas blindly and this is not so obvious in more complicated examples.)
Since such paradoxes occur primarily in logic and math, isn't this better asked at mathematics.se or matheducators.se? There are other sorts of faulty intuition, of course.
@Buffy: Paradoxes or counter-intuitive results exist in many disciplines. They may be more likely to be called paradoxes in mathematics, while in other disciplines it’s just considered an counter-intuitive result. As a matter of fact, this problem arose when teaching physics.
I don't really understand the purpose of the question. The birthday problem is a classic in learning probability and teaches the lesson that computing the probability that something isn't true is equivalent to finding the probability that it is. But once that lesson is learned it is a powerful tool. I don't see how you intend to generalize that very specific insight to get to a general question here.
@Buffy: I fail to see how the first part of your comment implies that my question is not generalisable. In fact, the birthday problem is not amongst the actual problems I am dealing with; I just chose it as an example because it is comparably low-level, well known, and easy to grasp.
Let your students debunk a wrong argument
Present a specific faulty argument based on intuition. Then let your students find the flaw in it. This way you relieve your students from the burden to divine what you consider intuitive. They also have a more specific task that cannot be solved by just deriving the correct result.
For example a task for the birthday paradox could be:
Bob argues:
A random person has a different birthday from me with a probability of 364/365 (ignoring leap years, seasonal variations, etc.). Hence, if I am in a group with n−1 other people, the probability that all of them have a different birthday is (364/365)n−1. This probability is first smaller than 0.5 for n = 254.
Find the flaw in Bob’s argument.
I doubt that this helps them learn. In particular, by your framing of the problem you are leading them to think in an incorrect direction. That makes the problem harder. That is quite different from asking them to debug an already incorrect intuition. Moreover, if you do this sort of thing, you need to have some assurance that correctly finding the flaw will let them make the correct inference rather than just being lost. Of course, if is "just for fun" then there isn't any issue. Caution advised.
Depending on the case, finding the correct result may be another exercise, has already happened, or is very tedious and unenlightening. It’s not that I would put such a task in a vacuum.
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160814 | Can I supplement my unofficial transcripts with missing context?
So I have a 2 page unofficial transcripts I would like to send to Universities. One page describes marks, while the other provides the grading system. Now, since I have studied in an Indian University, I have secured 6.4/10 GPA. While this looks bad on paper, I graduated in the top 20% within my batch. My grading system has D as an average.Here
As you can see, due to stringent evaluation, its ridiculously impossible to score S+ in everything.
Now what do I mean by supplement? This image that you see above is from my semester marks card. However, if you have noticed the 'levels' column, this is crucial to providing context to my grading system. Problem here is that this is missing from my unofficial transcripts.
So, I am looking to attach the scale page from my marks card to my 2 page unofficial transcript because I don't think Adcom is going to extensively look up my University to understand the grading scale. Is this move recommended? Am I going to get into trouble for doping my transcripts with additional information? As far as I know, my official transcripts in a sealed envelope will only consist of the first 2 pages without the scale. How should I proceed with this?
I don't think there is any rule that would suggest it's bad practice to add the scorecard to your unofficial transcript. However, I would say that it is unlikely to change much. If you think it is important to address the grades, I'd rather find a way to weave this into the letter or any other free text that will accompany your application. This is likely a much better way to put your grades into context. Consider that even the percentages tells you next to nothing. In the US system see here a D generally ranges between 60-70%, so in comparison to your table it should be considered better than average? But nevertheless, if you apply will all Ds or even all Cs in the US system you will likely be dismissed out of hand. So in my eyes, a personalized note would be needed to convey the nuances about your grading system.
Of course, I am not sure if your applications offer up space for such a section.
Consider that even the percentages tells you next to nothing. --- I'm pretty sure the OP meant the percentages to be in the sense of class rank and not in the sense of exam/homework/classwork accuracy. Thus, "top 20%" is likely well above the average, since 50% would represent the median.
@DaveLRenfro, I was going by the table VolkoPat referred to here. It lists a D as 'Average' with a Score Range from 45-50%. Just putting up this table is not enough to put the 6.4 GPA into context. Since comparing your score to the 'median' of the scoring system would mean that in the US a D is well above the median?
... would mean that in the US a D is well above the median? --- In my 2nd sentence I was following-up on my 1st sentence by assuming the OP's use of "top 20% meant that 80% of those taking the test scored/ranked lower than the OP (note I began the 2nd sentence with "Thus, ..."). With rampant grade inflation in the U.S., I would imagine a D would be in the LOWER 15-20% (and for some fields, maybe even below 10%). The table you referred to is probably mostly useless for someone not familiar with the OP's situation, as "Out-standing", "Excellent", etc. could mean most anything.
(+1) Incidentally, I also think putting additional information in the applicant's letter (and letters of recommendation) is the way to handle this.
@DaveLRenfro I don't have any control over the Letters of Recommendation so I might have to adjust it somewhere in my statement. Regardless, I am trying to do whatever is within my control. Thanks for that.
@MarioNiepel Like Dave said, this isn't an accusation but US grades are widely known to be inflated. I really don't think a D in US is within the top 20% percentile of his class, as much as the range is higher than the D in my college.
It is not. But that's my point. You can't point to a scale that says a 'D is average/50%' if a similar scale in the use would say a 'D is above average/60%'. The table is meaningless without context. Possibly worse then meaningless in that it may mislead people to think a D in India is a lesser grade than a D in the US.
@VolkoPat: I was thinking that the letters of recommendation would give an idea of your ranking among other students the recommender has taught. This type of detail is often given in letters, and in those cases where an online form is to be filled out, this information is often requested.
Adding additional information to your transcripts is unlikely to help you. Follow the application instructions. You want to be remembered for the quality of your application, not your failure to follow instructions.
Looking at that 6.4, nothing is going to make my application look like quality without any explaining. The rank holder's GPA is 8.0, which is nothing compared to the inflated 9.9s and 10s in private universities.
Providing additional, relevant information is not a failure to follow instructions, unless the instructions said that it's not allowed to add more stuff.
Application instructions will say where to put explanations. It's not in the transcript.
Most applications don't say much about the transcripts apart from cutoff. Anyway, I have decided to explain this in my personal statement.
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201767 | At what point does research criticism become academic hazing?
I've been collaborating on a paper with a junior colleague and a senior colleague, among others. The junior colleague is the lead writer on the paper and has done about 85-90% of the research. Junior is an early-career researcher, senior is about in their 60s.
I've been noticing a very odd trend regarding the interactions between these individuals. The senior colleague seemingly has almost nothing positive to say to the junior colleague. They are hyper-critical of their work, constantly invalidates whatever the colleague has to say, and never provides constructive feedback or responds positively to the junior colleague's suggestions. They never try to be constructive and offer alternative suggestions for what the junior colleague's sees in their data, they just say "no, you are wrong". The closest thing to a positive statement they have made was a backhanded compliment.
The senior colleague has been increasingly trying to monopolize their contributions to the manuscript and force out the lead author's contributions. Notably, the two did not mutually agree to be collaborators but ended up as strange bedfellows due to the actions of a fourth party, the junior didn't like the idea but initially said nothing because they wanted to "be a team player".
Several times the senior colleague has actually pulled unpublished data out of their own lab just to be able to say the junior colleague is wrong. This is data that none of the other collaborators are able to cross-verify due to our labs being located in different countries. Notably, this unpublished data only ever invalidates the junior colleague conclusions, the colleague never says "oh yes, this resembles some of my data". Based on the pattern, I almost wonder if the senior colleague is cherry-picking data from their material to do this. The senior colleague does not have access to the specific material we are working on, they are using data from a closely related biological taxon. When the junior colleague pushed back and said (and showed) they had data to support their original assertion, the senior colleague snapped at them and said they had been in the field longer than the junior colleague has.
The junior colleague is getting pretty distraught about the intensity of the criticism and has actually confided in me they think the senior colleague does not like them because prior to this collaboration the junior colleague disagreed with the senior on one of their research theories and according to the junior colleague the senior took it poorly. Notably, that topic was unrelated to the one we are currently working on. The junior colleague is a fairly diligent worker and while they could be wrong with some of their conclusions the extent of the senior author's criticism would imply almost all of the junior author's conclusions are wrong. In a couple of cases the junior author seems to have been right, in some the senior, but I have been unable to evaluate all the criticisms back and forth due to volume.
I have been debating whether it is worth getting involved and saying something. I've been sitting on the fence about this because criticism is a key part of the scientific process and it's entirely possible the junior author could be wrong with their hypotheses. However, it's the broader consistency of these hyper-critical responses and the fact that the senior colleague only ever seems to criticize the junior makes me suspicious if these criticisms are coming from a place of good faith. For the most part, the senior colleague has technically never said anything wrong but the broader pattern is concerning.
At what point would behavior like this cross the line from legitimate scientific discourse and "the data says what the data says" to academic bullying or harrassment that someone needs to step in on?
Does the senior say "no, you are wrong" or do they say "no, your argument is wrong"? That is, are they criticizing the researcher or the research?
@shoover It's a little of both. The lines are blurred and in a couple of cases (as mentioned above) the senior author seems to invoke their seniority to say that they are right and the junior is wrong. It comes off as "your argument is wrong and you should have known better than to make it".
If the criticism is focused on the research itself, then it isn't harassment. It only becomes harassment when the criticism becomes that of the person ("you idiot" and such).
There are borderline things ("you should know better") of course, but some of that should be discounted as just emotional outbursts, not actual harassment. And if the person tries to sabotage the career of the junior, then it is pretty clearly out of bounds. Denigrating the person to others, for example is a form of harassment.
But you seem to be in a good position to intervene assuming you have tenure or its equivalent. You might be able to "have a quiet word" with the senior member, pointing out that it isn't constructive.
I can't judge, of course, whether the criticism is warranted or not. Pushing the junior out of the collaboration is a red flag, of course. But if the research is flawed, it needs to be fixed.
Yes, that's the thing. The research could be flawed, but the indications I'm getting is that the senior colleague might be looking for reasons to invalidate the junior and thus be biased to see error where there might be one. Criticism doesn't necessarily mean the senior colleague is right but a broken clock is right twice a day.
I clearly remember as a young grad student explaining my idea on some data and having a senior collaborator look at me and say “Jon, that’s just bullshit”. And they were absolutely correct, so we could have a good science discussion on what was actually going on. It was not personal at all. Focus on the data, the interpretation, what it means. Being too “nice” does no good to a student - the toughest person to convince should be yourself and they need to learn that.
@JonCuster One of the other issues, not mentioned in the question, is that the colleague does not seem to consider any information the junior author tries to present evidence to support their interpretation. Once the senior author has made up their mind, no evidence will sway them. It really doesn't feel like a debate over the best solution.
@user2352714 - if the particular interaction is going the way you indicated, then indeed things are off the rails. But having contentious scientific discussions without getting personal is possible and even desirable.
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137123 | Did mistake of doing PhD in a dead field. How to approach postdoc applications with hope of changing fields?
I am a final year PhD in a STEM field. My PhD research field is fairly stagnant with less scope of future growth. I had chosen this topic because I was interested in the field during my masters and did not investigate seriously about the future prospects in the field.
Now I totally regret it. I managed to publish just 1 publication during my 5 years of PhD, and am planning to submit 2 more. There was no scope getting an internship in my research area and while searching for industrial positions, I have found that such positions are also nonexistent. Lot of red flags for a research topic.
I wish I could have been more serious while investigating for PhD positions. I could have done many things differently. I want to be in academia. And I am looking to switching to a different field during my postdoc to make my profile better. How should I approach a prospective professor if I have nothing to show competency in the new field? Is it even possible, if there's an overlap of just a simulation technique between my work during PhD and the field I want to work in?
Are you sure your field is dead, or maybe it's a usual panic attack of an academic that is obsessed with always "being in the cutting edge of research"?
The title may be substantially misleading: it would/could most likely be read as you're thinking about resurrecting the field you're working in by changing the field's attitudes or directions. Reading your question, I think a better title would end "with hope of changing fields."
Hopefully you have fields that are related or close to your field that you can still get into a post doc. It seems unlikely that there is a field that is totally disconnected and totally isolated from every other field. If not then maybe look at doing some courses and networking with more fruitful areas.
To some extent, it's expected that you're not an expert in the field of the post-doc. One of the points of doing a post-doc in the first place is to broaden your research profile.
The thing you should be worried about is your track record - from the prospective advisor's side, one of the most important questions is whether you're able to effectively finish up a research project. If one finished publication is way beyond in the norm in your field, then you should indeed be worried; if it is the norm you may be fine.
The other aspect is to put up a convincing job letter that will explain why you are the right fit -- you may want to emphasize relevant skills and experiences and explain how they will help in the job you apply for.
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134604 | Justifying past dropping out in statement of purpose letter
I was a PhD student for 2-years. during this time, I did not get along with my adviser, who was psychologically abusive towards me. He left me no chance but to drop out because the situation was intolerable, and working with him was counter-productive.
I am thinking of going back to school as I have not given up on working towards my goal. In my Statement of Purpose (SOP) letter, Do I need to mention/elaborate on the reasons that made me drop out? If so, what is the best way to express them without hurting my chance of getting an admission?
Thanks!
Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/42217/reflecting-bad-experience-with-previous-graduate-program-in-statement-of-purpose https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/80202/how-should-one-address-negative-circumstances-with-past-advisor-in-a-statement-o https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/130605/phd-interview-how-to-explain-why-i-left-a-previous-phd
Of course this is a silly quibble, but (as in my correction in the title from "droping" to "dropping") it would be good to convince people of your focus by not mis-spelling things... I'm not at all meaning to be snarky! In some sense, obviously, spelling errors don't matter... but avoiding them is vastly better than not... And, in principle, it's easy to avoid spelling errors, by various devices.
I am not familiar with the statement of purpose letter, but is it completely necessary to mention that you have left a different degree program at all? I am not sure how ethical this is. However, I am just being curious. If you feel completely obligated to mention this, or if it’s compulsory, then I would strongly suggest you don’t point the finger without evidence of the unfair treatment from your previous advisor. This is definitely a very tricky situation and depending on how you address it, could quickly tilt the scales either way.
is it completely necessary to mention that you have left a different degree program at all? — Yes! PhD applications generally ask for records from all your previous academic programs, whether you successfully graduated or not. So even if your statement doesn't mention your previous program, your transcripts will, and then people will wonder what happened, and why you're not talking about it.
The overriding goal in this situation is to communicate in a way that causes the admissions committee to believe that you have the qualities to get through a PhD program, and that you will be someone who is easy and pleasurable to work with. It is therefore important to communicate in a way that gives cues as to your fortitude and drive to get through the program, and shows that you are calm and able to deal with conflict in a mature manner. Anything you say that detracts from this could be detrimental to your application.
Do I need to mention/elaborate on the reasons that made me drop out? If so, what is the best way to express them without hurting my chance of getting an admission?
This is certainly a thorny situation. You will certainly need to give some explanation of why you did not succeed in your previous attempt at a PhD program. However, unless there is some simple, clear, and objective evidence of misconduct by your previous supervisor (e.g., a disciplinary outcome against him by the university for his treatment of you), it is not a good idea to go into specifics, or make statements claiming psychological abuse. The problem with doing this is that the committee will have no simple way of confirming that your claim of abuse is accurate, and it will therefore naturally give rise to the alternative possibility that you are just extremely sensitive, and perceive psychological abuse in ordinary supervisory activity. I am not suggesting this is the case, but just bear in mind that the committee will not have any way of confirming your assertions, so they might consider this to raise a risk for them.
In this kind of situation, assuming there is no simple, clear, and objective evidence of misconduct by your previous supervisor that you can cite, I recommend that you include a short statement to the effect that your relationship with your previous supervisor was "not a good fit", and this hindered your progress. The committee is likely to "read between the lines" and understand that there was some problem between you and your previous supervisor, so by understating the problem (e.g., saying it was "not a good fit" without blaming anyone), you signal that you are a person who can roll with the punches.
If you get an interview for a prospective PhD candidature, be prepared to field follow-up questions about this issue. I would recommend preparing some verbal answers that take the same understated tone, but also be prepared to give full disclosure in a calm and measured way if pressed on the issue. If this comes up, you again want to communicate that there was a good reason for your previous failure to complete, but you have the fortitude to talk about it in a calm and non-accusatory manner.
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183302 | How should I respond to a prospective postdoc PI that postpones his decision about my application?
All of the items on my application for a postdoc position was completed around 2 weeks ago. The prospective PI told me he will take a look over everything and gets back to me in a day or two, he did not get back to me and I sent a follow up email, he replied very quickly with a nice message and said he could not take a look and I should remind him again on the weekend. I reminded him over the weekend and he got back to the Monday afterwards, he again sent a nice message and apologized and said he still could not take a look but he will do it today or tomorrow, but it did not happen. I again send a follow up email on Thursday and he replied to me quickly and said he is just left behind and he needs to take a look over everything just one more time and that he will do it the same day, however he did not get back to me. How should I navigate this situation? Is this good sign or a bad sign? Any tips on how to follow up? Thank you!
That sounds like a bad sign.
Repaired obvious and distracting typo in title...
It's a bad sign in the sense that it's not unreasonable to expect that if you do get the job, he'll behave in the same way for any paperwork you need him to do. That will quickly become very frustrating when writing papers, submitting the next job application etc...
My guess is that he is just incredibly busy. I'd suggest you be patient for a bit. Don't give up on other opportunities and he should respond in time.
However, also take a look at what this might mean for the long run. Being very busy can be good or bad. Sometimes it implies productivity which can benefit you.
But unless you have a reason to need to know quickly, let it go for a bit.
He is a famous researcher, 17K+ citations and I believe he is very busy! How long do you think I should wait before following up? Is it possible that I sabotage my application by doing that? thanks!
At some point the emails become a nuisance. It seems like a lot of email for a two week period. Give it a week at least. Try to relax.
and I should remind him again on the weekend.
Huge red flag, potential PI is a person that think he will do whatever unrealistic goal of the week by Friday noon, then understands they will not manage, so why not extend the working days to the weekend (just for this one time, of course ... which translates to "hey, sometimes I work on the weekend, but I care for my personal wellbeing and I do so only once per week!").
Potential PI is putting his/her own free-time below your anxiety for getting considered for a Postdoc position ... 3 months working with they and they would unconsciounsly expect the same from you.
Do not follow up, let the process go on its own, my reccomendation is to consider any submitted application to job/academic position/research grants as rejected unless proven contrary ... I know that statistically I am right, plus it will leave you constantly thinking for a realistic plan B/C/D/.../Z which is the only sane thing to do in an high-risk (in terms of opportunities and satisfaction) working environment as the academia.
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36762 | In PhD admission is research internship or a job in a research lab better?
If I hope to enroll in a Computer Science PhD program in a top tier university (Stanford/CMU) and I currently hold a master's degree (without publication). Is a year-long Research Software development job at a reputable R&D Lab (Microsoft research lab at my country for example) or a short-term research internship at a good lab that may get my name on a paper in a good journal?
Of course you may assume I cannot do both.
A year-long job at MSR would hopefully also give you at least one good paper, right?
I'm not sure about that, I haven't yet get the offer but I'm trying to compare alternatives to prepare for the path I will choose @xLeitix
I think you do not have certainty that a good paper comes out in either of the options, and I am not convinced that the probability is necessarily larger in either of them. The guys I know at MSR publish a lot of good stuff, more than many academic labs I know.
I edited your title, to make explicit that you are not talking just about any job here.
To expand a bit on my comments:
In PhD admission is research internship or a job [at a research lab] better?
Whatever you think gives you a better research profile at the end.
If you get a job at a strong research lab like Microsoft Research (MSR), you will typically also write strong papers, collaborate tightly with academics, and go to conferences. Hence, many of the advantages you would hope for from a research internship you would also get with a job at a good research lab. That being said, you may also get swamped with tasks more focused on "transfer" or productisation tasks, which are likely still valuable for PhD admissions, but arguably less so than actual research papers.
That being said, I am wondering whether you are (without a PhD) actually competitive for a job at a good research lab. As far as I know, these labs typically hire primarily at postdoc level and beyond.
Thanks a lot for the reply, In fact - as I stated above - The job is "Research Software developer" and they require bachelor's at least and (MSc or PhD preferred). I haven't known yet exactly if I will participate or not in writing papers.
@Magellanea Clear that up front, and decide based on this info. Also clear up front whether it makes sense to apply without PhD if it is preferred.
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21423 | Is it a good academic practice to tell the reader in the introduction what the essay is about directly?
Is it academic to tell the reader in the introduction what the essay is about directly?
For example, after some introductory ideas, you tell the the reader this essay or section discusses so and so.
Or should the writer end the introduction with the thesis statement that indirectly tells the reader what the essay is about?
Whats the point of writing if you need to want to make it cryptic :P.
What does "Is it academic" mean?
@JeffE: I think it means "Is it a good academic practice...". (And not, e.g. "having no practical or useful significance".)
I'm not sure what you mean by "essay", but for an academic paper in general, the reader should be told a minimum of four times what the paper is about and what your contribution is. This should be stated in (1) the title, (2) the abstract, (3) the introduction, and (4) the conclusion.
That is a typical North American style. In some academic cultures, such as Northern Europe where I'm sitting, it's common to not do any of that. In a typical paper here, you can read all of the four parts mentioned above and still have no idea what the author is bringing to the table. You're guaranteed to annoy many readers that way.
So my answer to your question is: Tell the reader as soon as possible what the point and punchline of your paper is. The reader doesn't want a mystery novel, he wants to know as soon as possible whether your paper is worth reading.
In some fields of academia it is very uncommon for papers to have a "conclusion" section: in my field -- mathematics -- it is much more common that the last line of your paper is the last line of the proof of the last theorem of your paper. When I was younger, I used to end many of my papers with a "further work" section, but (unfortunately, I suspect) even that kind of conclusion is not that well received by referees, since it is more speculative and less verifiably contentful than what a "serious math paper" should contain.
I certainly agree with "Tell the reader as soon as possible what the point and punchline of your paper is. The reader doesn't want a mystery novel, he wants to know as soon as possible whether your paper is worth reading." I think this is much of the virtue of having an abstract: it allows you to spill the beans right away, which frees you up to tell "the story of your paper" in a more extended way in the introduction. Nevertheless I often find myself (re)rewriting introductions so as to come to the point more quickly: it is not so easy to properly explain yourself!
@Sverre as a physicist working on biology in Sweden, I do have to say many times what I am doing. In multidisciplinary fields one has to go easy, as the culture is very varied.
@PeteL.Clark But again, it's pretty much the standard where I am to use the abstract to say things like "There is much to say about topic X. I will discuss it". So we still have no idea what the author's contribution is. So having an abstract does not in of itself guarantee that the author will tell you the essence of the paper.
@Sverre: "So having an abstract does not in of itself guarantee that the author will tell you the essence of the paper." Yes, that's true: sometimes you can't reveal the essence of the paper in one paragraph. In my view it's good that the abstract and the introduction both exist.
There are many ways to structure an introduction. However, in the context of psychology I am familiar with the two broad approaches you mention to writing an introduction.
In psychology, students are often taught to write lab reports using an hour glass structure where they start broad and then narrow in gradually into stating aims and hypotheses at the end of the introduction. This structure can really annoying to read, because the purpose of the paper is not immediately clear.
Personally, I prefer the opening-body-currentstudy structure for an introduction.
Specifically, the opening section of the introduction contains around three paragraphs that cover the importance of the work, a little context, a little bit of the gap, and importantly the aims of the paper. The introduction then reviews relevant literature, and culminates in a statement of a brief description of the current study (see here for a little more discussion). Thus, in the opening few paragraphs, you might have a paragraph that begins: "The purpose of this paper is..."
The general principle is: Make it easy for the reviewer/reader to see what is the novel contribution of the paper.
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20643 | Is it ethical for the postdoc to be listed as a co-author and the corresponding author on all group publications?
Is it the usual practice in your discipline for the postdoc in the group to be placed as co-author as well as a corresponding author on all publications that are written by the PhD students in the group?
For some publications, the postdoc provides input and advice, and for others none whatsoever. The reasoning behind this practice is that the postdoc needs publications for his academic career. However, the PhD students that do 95% of the work in some cases, are the only ones able to answer scientific questions. As a consequence, emails are prepared for the postdoc by the PhD students, and sent out under the name of the postdoc.
Is this a standard practice in your field of research?
This seems unethical bordering on the ridiculous.
If you are still the first author, I think there is no harm to have his name, providing there is not so many postdoc.
@bingung "no harm to you" is not the same as "ethical"
@bingung The longer an author list, the more diluted every single author's contribution becomes, so it does harm you. It's obviously unethical too.
Sometimes my colleague paper ended up with some authors we have never heard of…and I think sometimes whether include one's name in a paper is quite political. As students, they tend to avoid arguing with the supervisor 'why include this guy name' as long as they are the first author. I think this is not alright, but people just get used to it.
As someone not in academia, this question scares me a little. I always thought phdcomics was just exaggerating about these things.
Were you truly in doubt as to whether passing off others' academic expertise as your own is an ethical practice?
I come from a field that is rather (let's call it) pragmatic about co-authorship, and I have never heard of a postdoc automatically being a co-author of papers. Sure, sometimes the input of the postdoc is not extremely large, but having a postdoc as a default co-author of each paper irrespective of contribution seems very uncommon to me.
The reasoning behind this practice is that the postdoc needs publications for his academic career.
Who cares? The same is true for you. If he cannot write papers himself or actually advise students that write good papers (not the same as just being on a paper without contribution), he should not be able to progress his career.
As a consequence, emails are prepared for the postdoc by the PhD students, and sent out under the name of the postdoc.
That's ridiculous. Don't do that (either for a postdoc or a professor). If they are not able to answer questions about a paper, they need to at least be honest enough to defer to the person that can. Pretending like the postdoc is the real brain behind a paper is certainly not ethical.
Is this a standard practice in your field of research?
Nope. Never heard of that, and Applied CS is certainly not a field that is well-known for its die-hard adherence to ethical guidelines re: co-authorship.
+1 for Who cares? If he cannot write papers himself or actually advise students that write good papers, he should not be able to progress his career.
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21777 | What does archival contribution in journals mean?
When I submitted my manuscript for publication in a journal, the editor rejected it with the comment "not enough archival contribution".
Please help me by saying what he meant.
What field is this? If it is engineering or technology related, then the editor is concerned that your contribution will quickly be made obsolete because of the fast changes in these fields.
Presumably, he simply meant that your paper does not have enough long-lasting contribution to your field of study. That is, there either is too little contribution at all, or the editor assumed that your paper only has a very temporary contribution which will be outdated soon.
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103782 | Is it safe to use pirated software for Doctoral research?
I am using unlicensed simulation software (downloaded from torrents) for Doctoral Thesis (and Research papers) on my personal laptop without the knowledge of my institution as the university doesn't have the licensed software. 1) Is this safe?
2) Can I be questioned by the software vendor. 3) Can my paper be retracted from journals?
(I'm uninterested in answers relating to free student versions of software and freeware.)
Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/79603/lab-colleague-uses-cracked-software-should-i-report-it?rq=1
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
It’s not OK to use unlicensed software. I would suspect that advisors would be very concerned about one of their students using an expensive software package for which they didn’t have a license, since they might have liability for letting you use it.
If it’s so important, then you should talk to your advisor about getting a license.
While I am not personally familiar with people having degrees revoked for using unlicensed software, I could certainly sympathize with arguments calling for sanctions against people who do so.
I would strongly object to a degree being revoked for using unlicensed software. It's a civil justice matter; the software company may give them a fine, but knowledge acquired is knowledge acquired and this shouldn't matter at all.
@FedericoPoloni I lile your argument, but imagine someone doing unethical experiments on human participants. They may acquire knowledge; their methods are not ethical; their degree is likely to be revoked because of the latter. Knowledge itself is not sufficient.
@DmitrySavostyanov The underlying ethical questions are different, so it is hard to generalize like this. There is no direct personal harm involved in using unlicensed software, and so it is harder to apply the same sanctions as when humans are involved (which will usually also be criminal, not civil).
@YetAnotherGeek Using unlicensed software is often directly punished by the university. Eg using torrent itself can be enough to kick out a student in many countries.
@Greg wow, that is pretty serious, do you have any sources that support your claim? I observed in a number of european countries that the "torrenting community" is very much represented in student culture.
@user3209815 Just because something is illegal it doesn’t mean no one does it. Eg in Japan the IP of the whole lab is shut down and they start an investigation if anyone runs a software using torrent protocol (including Opera browser).
@YetAnotherGeek Actually, unethical experiments may be perfectly legal. Stanford experiments were legal. Today, misinforming participants about the goal of research is not illegal, but still unethical.
@DmitrySavostyanov Any decent university will have a policy explicitly demanding that you stick to ethical experiments. The same is not true for pirated software.
@sgf It took me 5 sec to google a counter-example: http://accc.uic.edu/policy/software-piracy Feel free to find out more.
@Greg I was writing in the context of revoking degrees, and not of active students, the latter which can be held to other standards than academic (e.g. housing regulations).
-1. OP was asking "is it safe", not "is it OK".
How does this answer the question?
There is no difference between using pirated software and using for instance scihub articles. By the logic of this "answer" we should fire all academics who use SciHub. Sounds like a good way to increase the chances for getting tenure track positions for some...
@DmitrySavostyanov That link is broken by now, but I don't think it really was a counterexample to a negated universal. (But maybe my comment was misleading. By "any", I meant "every".)
This is an interesting topic.
To your questions:
1) Is it safe? Probably not.
2) Can I be questioned by the software vendor? Probably not.
3) Can my paper be retracted from journals? Probably not.
You would have to be sure that you don't get caught. If you are doing your doctoral research at a bigger university you might slip through the cracks because somewhere in your univeristy is using a legit license of the software. In this case it is unlikely that the software company would actually investigate if you are using a license. If you are doing your doctoral research at a smaller university your work might be unnoticed and the software company won't investigate further. But Google Scholar will find everything in case they would want to investigate.
The software company could ask you if you have a license which would be their last step in the investigation. In most cases that happens when someone is using a company outside normal business hours or in a completely different IP range than normal. In your case the software company would only see you using a cracked license. I never heard about software companies who are creating simulation software actually asking reserachers regarding their licenses. But they are fully aware of some researchers using unlicensed software.
If your paper can be retracted from journals could depend on the journal guidelines. The software company would probably see it as some form of advertisement. I would be more worried about your doctoral thesis and your relationship with the university if $h!t hits the fan.
Side note: I know cases where researchers got licenses for simulation software from the software companies. If it's a good project they might support you and are interested to get the results published. They always want to see practical applications for their sotware published because that is the kind of advertisement.
Side note 2: What is wrong with your university? You are doing doctoral research with unlicensed software. Isn't your thesis advisor concerned with how you are obtaining results and the software you are using? And why did you get a research topic when your university doesn't have the actual tools for it?
@aeis. My university is having an older version of the software.
@NumeroUno Why not using that version?
Now I would do.
So you cracked a software instead of using the older version that exists within your university. I don't understand this mess...
I haven't used it yet. Iam just clarifying everything before using it.
I am thinking to work on that cracked software because it is installed in my laptop and I can work on it while I am in home as well.
@NumeroUno Why not just ask the university to provide you with a licensed copy of the software? Presumably the university/your advisor would have a budget for things like this, probably labelled as something like "research expenses".
Most expenisve software I use for research is available via my university for free (the university has a site wide license for Matlab for example) and pretty much all software I need that the university doesn't have a license for has an academic license which is a fraction of the price of a commercial license. They want you familiar with their software when you graduate so you recomend it to future employees I guess. So there's not really any excuse to used pirated software for research.
In many countries it is forbidden to use unlicensed software. Hence, using unlicensed software might result in litigation against your university,* which might lead to your dismissal. Thus, it is unsafe to use such software.
*There are cases when software vendors have litigated against universities. But, it is difficult to know how many, because universities and software vendors will likely want to settle in private.
Having edited the OP's question, I now note that unlicensed software is being used on the OP's personal laptop. Hence, litigation against the university might be difficult, but perhaps not impossible (since the research is most likely owned by the university).
Is there any documented case of a university being sued or prosecuted as a result of one of its members using pirated software on their personal computer?
Yes, my first search result is "Westchase Consultancy...has taken the Women’s University in Africa...to the High Court seeking to recover over $418 000." Of course, we should not expect too many results, because universities and software vendors will likely want to keep settlements private.
Guaranteed they want to settle out of court, newspapers, in fact all parties agree to keep quiet ... A colleague of mine wanted to leave his teaching post - talked to me saying "I have to wait 6 months..." I said go and talk to the dept head and see what they say : one month later he was back in industry, and they had another person to teach as well : the Uni and Industry work together (at least the Uni I was at had HUGE ties with several manufacturers) so no noise, no fuss and swapping people continues...
Here's the story you quoted but didn't link. Let me complete the sentence you partially quoted. "... to recover over $418 000 for allegedly illegally acquiring the firm’s source code from Microsoft without its consent." The consultancy "provided the institution with the enterprise wide university management software." This case does not appear to involve a university member using pirated software on their personal computer.
@Pont (I hadn't noted the OP was using a personal computer until I edited the OP's question.) We've established that universities are sued by vendors for unlicensed access to software. Moreover, I've noted that litigation might be difficult if unlicensed software is used on personal, rather than business, computer. We'd need a lawyer to establish whether the university has any liability for work conducted on the university's behalf using equipment not owned by the university. (Establishing that universities are typically reliant on staff using their own equipment would be a starting point.)
No, it's not okay. What's the ultimate point of a PhD? To train you in how to perform research.
What are the best practices for producing ethical research? Not using pirated software, for a start. If you use pirated software in the production of your PhD thesis, it's entirely possible that your university will take action against you for violating academic integrity standards.
For example, in the Australian Code of Responsible Conduct of Research, Rule 17 says:
Comply with the relevant laws, regulations, disciplinary standards, ethics guidelines and institutional policies related to responsible research conduct. Ensure that appropriate approvals are obtained prior to the commencement of research, and that conditions of any approvals are adhered to during the course of research.
Since software piracy is illegal, knowingly using pirated software in your research would constitute a breach of this rule. Indeed, in their document "Guide to Managing and Investigating Potential Breaches of the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research, 2018", available for download from the page previously linked to, the definition of a breach of the code includes:
Conducting research without the requisite approvals, permits or licences.
This bureaucratic answer does not answer the question, or incorporates moral or normative judgments that have no relevance to the question asked. It also makes bold statements that are subjective or illogical. For example: "What are the best practices for producing ethical software? Not using pirated software, for a start." -- But the OP didn't ask about practices for producing ethical software at all.
@Dilworth Corrected typo, thanks for pointing it out.
Not sure why this Answer is getting downvoted. It’s true, it’s about the ethical aspects of the Question, and it’s backing it up with citations from relevant regulatory documents that Australian universities base the relevant portions of their Manuals of Policies and Procedures on. It’s not quite a quote from a professional organisation’s Code of Ethics, but it’s pretty close.
I did not point out a typo, but a conceptual error in the answer: you assume by mistake that the OP is interested to perform "ethical research", but this is not part of the question.
@Dilworth Producing ethical research is literally what a PhD is intended to train you to do. If you're behaving unethically when you're doing your PhD, you're likely to get punished by your institution if they catch you, assuming you're going somewhere even remotely reputable.
no. PhD is a programme that trains you to become an independent researcher in a given field. It has nothing to do with doing ethical stuff. Indeed, the research itself should be ethical only so to prove that you have indeed become an independent researchers (for instance, not plagiarized your thesis). A murderer for example can do a PhD and become an independent researcher, even if the murder occurred while writing the dissertation.
@Dilworth Somehow I doubt that you’ll be getting the IRB to agree to letting you to murder someone for your PhD thesis. There’s a difference between unethical behaviour that might occur alongside your research, and unethical behaviour that occurs as part of your research.
I agree. Using a pirated software is not something that occurs as part of the research, in that it does not affect the integrity of the outcome of the research nor the independence of the researcher. Only the methods can be said to be "dubious".
@Dilworth If you're using the pirated software as part of the methodology (data collection, processing, simulation, or what have you), then you're tainting your research with the crime you've committed. It'd be like murdering someone to write a paper about their corpse, just a lot less severe.
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76129 | How portable are NSF grants between institutions and internationally?
I'm a fixed-term lecturer (2016-17 academic year) on the job market. I'm hoping to apply for an NSF grant this winter to fund new research. Very hypothetically, if I am awarded the grant, how portable are NSF grants between institutions and internationally? Or if I got both the grant and a job (particularly outside the US), would the protocol be to defer the start of the appointment? Are there obstacles I should know about that aren't listed on the NSF FAQ page?
Can you talk to the NSF PM in charge of the program?
Yes, you can talk to the NSF PM in charge of the program. Do that.
Thank you! Wanted to be sure it wasn't a dumb question with an easy answer before I reached out to someone at NSF...
You should also ask your university if they allow fixed term lecturers to apply for grants. I think it is technically the university which applies to the NSF on your behalf.
@AnonymousPhysicist You are correct: the US government awards NSF (and NASA) grants to institutions, not individuals. See my answer below.
I just participated in a NASA grant-writing workshop. This question came up there, too. The following rules apply for both NASA grants and for NSF grants. (I'm sure there are differences, but at least what I'm writing is the same for both.)
Can the grant be transferred from one institution to another?
Yes.
Check out AAG II.B.h which describes NSF's grant policy:
Contracting or Transferring the Project Effort (Subawards)
a. Excluding the procurement of items such as commercially available
supplies, materials, equipment or general support services allowable
under the grant, no significant part of the research or substantive
effort under an NSF grant may be contracted or otherwise transferred
to another organization without prior NSF authorization. The intent to
enter into such arrangements should be disclosed in the proposal
submission.
b. If it becomes necessary to contract or otherwise transfer a
significant part of the research or substantive effort after a grant
has been made, the grantee shall submit, at a minimum:
(i) a clear description of the work to be performed;
(ii) the basis for selection of the subawardee (except for
collaborative/joint arrangements5); and
(iii) a separate budget for each subaward.
The request must be submitted electronically, and NSF authorization
will be indicated by an amendment to the grant signed by the Grants
and Agreements Officer. The NSF grant conditions will identify which
articles flow-down to subawardees.
c. Procurements under NSF grants are also subject to AAG Chapter V.C
and OMB Circular A-110 Sections .41 through .48. (2 CFR §215.41-48)
The grant is awarded to your institution, not to you. Because of this, your institution would choose to do one of the following:
Nominate somebody (e.g. a Co-I) to take over when you leave
Terminate the grant outright
Initiate the grant transfer process (if certain criteria are met, and both institutions agree...)
According to the NASA VIP leading the workshop, transfers between US institutions happen, though they are rare. Either way, if you plan to do this, you should contact all involved parties: your current institution, the destination institution, and your program officer/manager (your designated NSF/NASA contact person) for the grant.
Can it be transferred to an international institution?
No.
As indicated in 3.c above, AAG Chapter V.C.1.i indicates that funds can be sent under the following condition (among others):
(i) grantee is not an individual or a foreign institution;
Since both NASA and the NSF are government organizations, they are prohibited from funding foreign institutions.
There are additional rules for certain countries, at least for NASA: if applying for a NASA grant, you can't have any affiliations with a Chinese institution via the Wolf Act.
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54342 | Should I report cheating to my professor? If so, how?
My professor reuses old tests. I have no idea why she told us this, but she did. In class today I noticed someone reviewing last years test, with the answers circled, on their computer in google drive, along with several other tests for this course that have not occurred yet. The test is in two days, and I know that this person will most likely have the answers memorized so it will be impossible to prove anything unethical is happening during the exam to a proctors perspective. Not only does this student have the exams, though, but many others. Apparently fraternities hold onto these and share them amongst each other.
When posting about this on Yik Yak, and my irritation with this, I received many yaks back threatening me should I turn people in, saying they would find me and hurt me. I have no reason to believe anyone knows what class I noticed the cheating in, or who I am, but this has me unsettled.
I have been studying and will continue to study for this test, and I find it infuriating that others don't need to bother with studying at all. I work hard for everything, and I do not want to get screwed over for this. The tests are curved so that the mean score for every test is a C+, and a large group of students who score well through cheating will undermine those who did not cheat on the curve.
What do I do?
I don't see how anyone could hurt you if you disclose this. However, I am unsure if what happens is against the professor's intentions. If she openly says that she re-uses old tests, without adding to please not look up old exams or to warn that she might slightly modify old questions, she might want to (and does) encourage going through old tests - maybe as that act still teaches you something, or as she hopes that it helps her course evaluation. As I read your question, I understand what your co-students do.
Note that reusing old exam doesn't mean using the same exams every year. By reusing old exams, some people mean reusing the same problems after x many years. Your instructor could simply use for the test in two days a problem from 5 years ago, another problem from 8 years ago and so on....Memorizing all these answers is almost impossible, and reviewing all her exams from the past 10 years in detail is actually a very good practice for the exams, irrelevant of what she tells you. If anyone just memorizes the results from last year exam, he/she/it will likely get a surprise.
The professor is free to decide to reuse questions from previous exams. It's a bit sloppy, but it's her business. She can't forbid students from learning the answers by heart, she would have no ways of enforcing this rule.
It would be unethical only if the previous tests were obtained by stealing them or any other dishonest way. If it's previous students making them available, it's just students investing efforts in a dubious way.
My answer is that you should suck up your furor, try to make the best learning out of the content (why not use these previous exams as an exercise?), and ace the exam your way. You will be much happier with yourself on the longer haul than those who will just have the quick thrill with the (false) impression of "gaming the system".
Also, don't take any more of her courses, and maybe mention in the teacher evaluation that you think the exam is not efficiently testing for understanding.
As a side note, people who succeed by learning answers by heart are only tricking themselves. They invest time and money in an education but don't take advantage of the learning. I think it's idiotic.
"The professor is free to decide to reuse questions from previous exams. It's a bit sloppy, but it's her business." I'm very sorry but this is simply not true. See the part of my answer where I refer to the Code of Academic Conduct at my institution, which says clearly the professor has a duty not to create opportunities for cheating. You have a valid point that memorizing past exams is a gray area and arguably isn't cheating, but repeating past exams, and certainly telling the class that you're going to do so, is more than "a bit sloppy" and IMHO crosses the line into unethical behavior.
Let me qualify what I said, since it came out a bit harsh. It is common practice for professors to reuse old exam material. There is no harm in this if done responsibly by mixing in new questions with the old, changing some data, and not telling students of your plans. But when exams are simply reused verbatim in whole or large parts, that's when it becomes wrong, as it enables the students to succeed easily without knowing the material. I'm not sure whether the OP's prof crossed that line, but it should be pretty easy to tell the difference between a proper and improper question recycling.
@DanRomik: even if you don't tell the students your plans, they probably know them already through student-lore...
"You will be much happier with yourself on the longer haul than those who will just have the quick thrill with the (false) impression of "gaming the system"."
Depends on the subject. If it's like a philosophy during a computer or biology class [yes, most courses have philosophy class just because], then it does not do any damage to our knowledge, because as a programmer/biologist/medic I will never use Kant's theories or same such.
Also - if all students were informed they have equal chances to use or not use previous exams. Seems this was the teacher's intention.
@Karolina I think that's a childish view. University level courses are not only about things "you will use" in the future. I agree with your last sentence though, that was implied in my answer.
@CapeCode University is about learning, yes. But it's a constant battle between understanding and memorizing. I really see no point in wikipedia-type exams, when we are expected to write encyclopaedic answer for a generic questions. We are not expected to think or understand, just write down what was in a textbook. I don't see any way to benefit from this. And it's a cultural thing, again. In Poland we have a special word for school cheating, it's so popular. Something like jaywalking.
@CapeCode I personally had a professor tell us "if I catch you cheating I will fail you - if you can't cheat on your second year, what kind of a student you are?". This were his exact words. How do you think, how many people didn't cheat? And yes, dean is aware of it and everyone is aware, they just don't care, like with jaywalking again. So I have a different attitude, because this was my reality my whole life.
@Karolina that is very bad publicity for your university. I think people should consider another institution if they envision an international academic career.
@CapeCode Not my university, but whole Poland. It's not that other universities are better. Things are slowly changing, but the post-communistic feel "authorities are opressing us, so cheating them is a good thing to do" is still strong in us. We were growing it this reality. We knew we couldn't repeat what our parents said at home, because they could get in trouble for that. We were taught to keep things to ourselves. People who would denounce others were seen as the worst kind of scumbags. And now we are being taught it's the other way around. We're learning, but it takes some time.
Yes, you should report it, although given the threats against you and other related concerns of retribution or ostracism, it may be understandable if you choose not to. Certainly reporting it would benefit you personally by allowing your work to be evaluated fairly compared to that of others, similarly benefit other honest and hardworking students in your class, benefit your institution's academic reputation, and benefit your own conscience. I feel there is a strong case for reporting.
As for how, there are various means, each with their own pros and cons depending on how involved you want to get in this story, how much certainty you want to have that you can remain anonymous, and how much time it would take for your complaint to be acted upon.
For the most rapid response (which seems important given that the exam is in two days' time), I would draft a polite email to the instructor, along the lines of:
Dear Professor ExamRecycler,
I am writing to express my concerns that some students in our
class have been memorizing solutions to your class exam from last
year after you indicated that you plan to give the same exam to our
class. I saw some students doing this and have suspicions that the
phenomenon could be a lot more widespread. As an honest student who
studies hard, I think I have a right to expect that my performance be
graded based on a comparison with the true performance of other
students, rather than a fake performance attained through dishonest
means. I would greatly appreciate it if on Wednesday you can give us an
original exam that does an honest job of testing our knowledge.
I also know that there are many other honest students like me in the class and
I'm sure they would all share my sentiments about this.
By the way, thanks for a great semester! I really enjoyed your course and
learned a lot.
Sincerely,
[your name]
You can make some small variations to the email depending on how much you trust the professor to follow up on your request (and how receptive she would be to the shameless flattery at the end...). For example, if you feel she is not likely to bother preparing an original exam despite your request, cc'ing the email to her department chair could greatly increase the chances that she would comply. Alternatively, you can indicate as diplomatically as possible that you are considering complaining to your university's Student Judicial Affairs office, etc.
Another possibility, if you really don't trust the professor to take kindly to the request, is to go directly to the department chair (or undergraduate program chair or advisor), or to Student Judicial Affairs. Note that this would likely mean a delay in getting the problem addressed, so in particular it's unlikely that anything would get done before your exam on Wednesday.
There is also the question of whether you want to expose the names of the students who you believe are cheating. I don't have good advice to offer about that. Note that they can reasonably claim that looking over old exams is not cheating but a form of studying. It is really your professor who is behaving somewhat unethically by reusing the same exam and openly declaring that fact. In my institution, the Code of Academic Conduct explicitly says that faculty have a responsibility to "Use examination formats that discourage academic misconduct". As a member of my institution's Campus Judicial Board, I attended hearings for students accused of misconduct, and on more than one occasion felt that the faculty had been negligent of that responsibility and therefore bore part of the blame for what happened. I have an impression that this may be the case in your situation as well.
Finally, although you didn't ask about this, I must say I am very strongly bothered and concerned by the fact that you received threats (of what sounds like physical violence or other serious harm) on Yik Yak. This behavior is much more disturbing and egregious than the cheating, and if I were you I would immediately report it to Student Judicial Affairs or another unit on campus that could provide you counseling about keeping yourself safe, protection if needed, and who would be strongly motivated to seek out the people who threatened you and take disciplinary action against them. Such behavior has no place on a university campus and must absolutely not be tolerated.
So it's dishonest even if the past exams are obtained legally?
This practice is, unfortunately, extremely common in my institution. I do not report it, nor I ever will, because I know the professors are extremely aware of the fact that the students often study by previous tests.
Since they have never taken any action against it, and do not bother with making new tests or even telling us not to read older exams, I then assume that they want us to study by old tests. I have talked to a few about this and they have confirmed it.
I study Law and one of the most effective ways of getting a good grade on the bar exams is studying older exams. The professors tell me that, in reusing a pool of questions, they are preparing us for our reality.
I know some are just lazy, but others have made me study hundreds of questions, because they reuse questions, but not whole tests.
Based on this, I do not report such occurrences.
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19244 | What is the highest post-doctoral salary one should ask for (immunology)
I know the average salary is generally 45K USD for science post-docs. However, I received an email from a team of researchers who I had an excellent interview with and basically asked, "How much do you want?"
I have no idea what is the maximum amount of money I should ask for without being insulting. I'll be honest, although I don't do science for the money, this would definitely help make a decision for this particular posting.
What country is the position in?
ahh sorry. NY - USA
NY city or NY state? Living expense is high in NY city.
Have you asked them what their budget is? (it's not always easy to ask, and can come across badly if you phrase it wrongly, but it's a number that's worth knowing, in such negotiations)
In my field (mathematics), one of our major professional societies conducts salary surveys, which are very helpful for getting an idea of a reasonable range. You might see if your field has something similar. As another possibility, public universities often publish all their salary figures.
Another question is whether this is a 9-month or 12-month salary, and if the former, what are the prospects for summer support.
12 month - NY upstate. Budget is huge.
pure pen and paper mathematics, or with a pinch of computer simulation and software development ? Do you have to sign off NDAs ? do you expect part of your research to remain unpublished ?
What field is this in? Do you have a family/children? Is medical insurance included?
Postdoc salaries as high as 60K are not unheard of, especially if the cost of living is high and/or you have children. I believe some very competitive "independent postdoc" positions can even reach as high as 70K. However, these salaries may not increase annually, while typically lower salaries do increase annually.
BTW I believe the average 1st year postdoc salary is under 40K (and so is the NIH postdoc salary guideline).
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17209 | Relevance of computer science degree to pursue a career in cognitive science
This forum looks like the perfect place to ask a question that is being bothering me for a long time.
I'm 22 and a college dropout for numerous reasons (economic and mostly because I didn't like the major that I was studying, which led to depression, etc.)
Anyway, I recently discovered MOOCs (coursera, edx, udacity, OCW-MIT, etc.) and khanAcademy and I immediately fell in love with science and more precisely computer science. I also fall in love with the brain and love to think about thinking, decision making, logic, critical thinking, neuroplasticity, etc...
I also appreciated cognitive psychology and the philosophy of the mind but I haven't gone any deeper to those two.
So, you can say MOOCs changed my life because I'm able to learn things that I never would have consider ever studying.
I'm thinking of pursuing a Cognitive Science degree which can expose me into computer science and some kind of neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology.
The only thing is that here in Greece, Cognitive Science is only a postgraduate degree so I have first to finish an undergraduate degree in Computer Science or in Philosophy and History of Technology (those are the only two majors from which students are accepted for the Cognitive Science degree).
My question is, should I spend the next year of my life into studying for a test that will get me to the University (in order to get to a University you need to give exams in May, I'm not ready to give it this May so I have to give it on the May of 2015)?
Is it worth it to study Computer Science for four years to pursue the Cognitive Science degree which is my primary goal ?
PS: The possibility of studying abroad is out of question given the economic situation of my family, unless a scholarship for studying abroad is available.
Think further ahead: what do you want to do after you finish the Cognitive Science degree?
Do want to go into academia and work as a professor (probably after some research postdocs) in the field? If that's your ultimate goal, then that's the most straightforward career path.
If it's something else, figure out what the prerequisites for that thing are. There are too many people who got into grad school pursuing a degree in something because they thought was cool only to discover that after they graduate, they have nowhere to apply their degree.
Whether it's worth it depends on you. Weigh the costs to you against the benefits to you.
For now , is for knowledge and learning things that I love learning about.
The world is unpredictable who knows what will happened in the following years.
Now, I'm curious and the lost appreciation of learning came back. I see going back to University as an option of gaining more in depth knowledge and find like minded people there.
Anyway thanks for the answer.
I think a computer science degree is useful because it opens up a lot of possibilities, but it's up to you. I like to write code and think about algorithms, so I have some personal bias towards it too.
What I like about Computer Science is the emphasis on problem solving and that programming is just a tool that allows you to solve problems. You separate them into pieces and try to implement what you already know and in the process you learn more.. It's an ongoing process that requires rigorous thinking and clarity. Also , the times that we're living with the rising of technologies there always will be demand for computer scientists.
If you like the problem-solving aspect, you might also like engineering fields.
What do you like about C.S ?
I like the problem solving aspect, and also the theoretical part of it: proofs and so on, the mathematical aspect. My majors were math and CS. Initially I knew I wanted to do math "and something," CS turned out to be the thing that came easiest to me, with physics being a close second.
As a EU citizen you have access to the education in the entire European Union, so you can look around for the Cognitive Science programs in the other EU countries too. It is quite possible that some of them would not require a previous graduate degree and would be taught in English.
It may happen that there would be tuition fees (if I recall correctly, this is the case e.g. in the UK), but as a EU citizen you also can work in any EU country without almost any extra formalities (pretty much under the same conditions as a citizen of the country you are in), so you can earn the money to support yourself through your studies.
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79882 | "Storytelling" in the introduction: Math papers
This question is about best practices of writing manuscripts in mathematics.
Q. How much "storytelling" in the introduction section of a math paper is "appropriate"?
To clarify what I mean by "storytelling" let me give an example but of course one can find numerous of such cases:
In the introduction of a math paper(which I'd rather to keep the names anonymous) almost half of the first page is dedicated to saying what happened in friends gathering and that the author bet on bottle of wines that certain problem has solutions and what not. It was really annoying to me. I wondered why readers need to know all that and how are these stories are even relevant?
Side note: It seems to me sometimes journal editors demonstrate double standards and approve/disapprove this "story telling" matter depending who you are and where you stand in the field.
It also depends on the venue. Often this kind of things is accepted in special and "Festschrift" issues (i.e., "for the 65th birthday of prof. Bigname"), but not in regular papers.
I am starting to feel that the word "ethics" is being drastically overused on this site. Is determining the maximal amount of allowable fluff in the introduction of a math paper really an ethical issue? At the moment I'm not seeing how. (As a picky side note, the phrase "scientific manuscripts in mathematics" is maybe a little strange. What is an "unscientific manuscript in mathematics"?)
@PeteL.Clark good points. Icorrected the second one. Regarding "ethics" being over used, in case of my post it is merely because of the fact that I could not find a better word. I definitely welcome suggestions slash edits.
I made an edit with some language / tag changes. Feel free to roll back if you don't approve.
I like the stories I've read in papers (and elsewhere).
I propose the following guideline as a basis for answering your question: what is "appropriate" is for the author(s) of the article to try to write the best paper they can write, and for the journal editor and reviewer to make helpful suggestions about small changes the authors can make to improve the paper even more. In my humble opinion, the editor should generally not require changes to the paper unless they feel that they are seriously necessary to keep the quality of the paper at the standards of the journal. Thus, there should be a bit of room for authors to impose their creative vision on the work, which also includes the freedom to make wrong judgment calls that annoy some readers.
If you accept the premise above, it follows that if the authors of the paper thought the story with the wine bottles makes the paper better, the editor should let them include it, even if he/she personally disagrees with the decision.
TL;DR: within reasonable limits (and half a page sounds reasonable to me), it is the authors who should decide what is appropriate. Some readers may be displeased, but that is true about almost anything that one writes.
Seconding @DanRomik's answer, I think that it is generally harmless to inject anecdotes, even if silly or frivolous, but vaguely connected to the issues at hand, if only to avoid the other (extreme) tradition of "austere formality". At its worst, the latter implicitly includes a pretense that we are trans-material entities without human failings, etc., which might in itself be off-putting.
The point is that people who don't want to read (small) frivolous bits can skip over them, while people who might be soothed by small frivolous bits may not be easily able to imagine them in the context of a cold, austere discussion. I certainly do not wish to pretend to mandate chattiness for those disinclined, but (if it does not compromise the precision of the mathematics) in small doses it's surely harmless.
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104151 | Is calling a staff member "selfish" harassment?
A faculty member wrote to a staff member that "you are selfish." The staff member wrote back to the faculty member asking for an explanation. The faculty member did not respond and wrote: "I would not respond to you any further." Is this harassment?
Please provide more details in order for us to understand the question. Who from the faculty? Who is the staff? What is the reason?
From the faculty. The faculty did not the reason.
Okay, but a faculty cannot write an email. There must be some person who actually typed the email, right?
Likely this was not an email out of the blue, with no prior communication. So, lacking that other communication, this is impossible to answer.
Whether it is harassment is a matter of opinion, I think. Whether it's something that's forbidden by your institution's rules or local law is an entirely different question that we can't answer, not knowing what those rules are.
It's brusque and ill-advised, but it's not harassment per se.
Harassment is the creation of a hostile work environment through pressure or intimidation. A one-off heated email and the use of a single adjective to describe someone in a negative light is certainly not sufficient of proving anything more than the person who wrote the email probably should have waited a while before hitting the "send" button. A sustained campaign of emails and a larger pattern of behavior would be needed to make a believable harassment argument.
There's no reason for this to be escalated into a larger situation that will ultimately accomplish very little except inflaming tensions further.
Then what will be requirements of "harassment"? What will be needed to prove that there is a harassment?
See my revision.
There are multiple that the faculty eventually banned a staff from any discussions and meetings.
That's not in your original question. And it's still not clear that it's harassment.
If this is the US, in order to qualify as harassment legally, the behavior in question also has to be based on a protected characteristic (i.e. sex, race, age, etc). Calling a staff member "selfish" because they are Jewish = harassment; calling a staff member "selfish" because you don't like their shoes = not harassment.
@nengel Could you please give a link to the list of protected characters in USA?
@nengel ehm... no. Just look up how many times the word harassment is used in the US Code. There's 170 sections that contain the word harass. "protected class" are just relevant for title VII discrimination
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104527 | Graduate Admissions: Teaching Emphasis
I’m on my 3rd/5 undergraduate years, so I’m just starting to think about grad admissions.
I’ve been planning on applying to MD/PhD programs. I enjoy/feel comfortable in hospitals and think I can make a contribution or two in medically-relevant bioinformatics/comp. genetics.
So, one of the big pulls for me into a grad program is teaching. I would probabaly enjoy being a high school teacher or a college lecturer but it seems like an insecure career path to me, and not doing any research would probabaly bum me out after a while.
And, in theory, MD/PhD programs support that—TAing, teaching classes, teaching workshops at conferences, simplifying complex ideas for patients, etc. MSTP guidelines even mention teaching interest as an important characteristic.
But, in practice, I feel weird about emphasizing my teaching interest. Most grad students I meet dislike being a TA, professors don’t like teaching, and often it seems like they feel like teaching gets in the way of their real work. And those are the people who will be reviewing my application. I’m kinda afraid that I’ll be seen as a not-serious-researcher for wanting to focus on teaching.
Should I de-emphasize my teaching interest? If not, do you have any suggestions about how to present it on personal statements/interviews/etc?
If you want to teach, I would suggest doing a postgraduate teaching course (for instance, in the UK we have the PGCE). A PhD is about learning how to do research-- TAing is just a way of making money to support yourself whilst doing so.
Thank you for the comment! If I want to teach graduate and medical students and do research, wouldn't a doctoral degree be most appropriate?
The primary quality that is typically sought after in PhD programs is the ability to become an independent researcher. Teaching is, for good or ill, secondary to that, and is in general something that is only a "second-order" effect on the selection of a person as a potential PhD candidate.
MD/PhD programs are a separate issue—perhaps they prefer future teachers as an additional quality but, if so, it's unique to them.
It's sort of a catch-22 situation here. On one hand, you do need a PhD to teach at the higher education level; on the other hand, the PhD doesn't teach (and doesn't even intend to teach) you how to teach!
But I guess wanting to teach (at university level) is a valid reason to get a PhD, as I've had friends and instructors who took PhDs because they want to teach college. Of course you'll still need to like doing research (and you'll probably still be held to the same admissions standards as those who just want to do research), but wanting to teach at the college+ level seems like a valid reason to take a PhD.
I'm not a faculty member, though, so you may want to talk to some teaching faculty with PhDs at your university to see what they think.
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95944 | Graduation Robes - What accolades does this guy have?
I am currently at my brother's graduation ceremony at Adelaide University, and in the Professor's/Post-grad seating area, sits a man fully in green. What does this special gown mean?
(Apologies for the awful picture)
It is difficult to tell from the picture. At graduation ceremonies I've been to the color of professors robes have referenced the universities they attended, not any special accolades.
I got another photo! He's the only one in an unusual colour so I don't think it's to do with that
Wait for the ceremony to get over. Either you will know it by then or probably, you could approach him and ask gently.
Most schools, at least in the US, have black robes. See this list https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_regalia_in_the_United_States and not everyone buys their schools robes since they cost 1000 USD so it is not surprising that he is the only one with unique colors.
I love the cap.
The type of cap may indicate the type of doctoral degree. IIRC that looks vaguely like a Divinity School cap.
Not all of the other robes are black. The robe of the person four behind him in the procession appears to be navy blue.
Wizard who can charm plants?
The kelly green typically represents some field of medicine.
I wonder if he is wearing CSU regalia https://www.gowningstreet.com.au/uni/csu/bachelor-of-education ?
Christmas dwarf?
I asked this question on the Facebook 'Academical Dress' group, where Patrick Cook was able to find out who the figure in green is:
It is Polish. The gentleman in question if Prof. Maciej Henneberg. His qualifications are listed as MSc, PhD and DSc (Dr habil), all from A Mickiewicz University, Poznan. So I'm guessing the gown is either the PhD or the DSc.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/.../03/content_5448095.htm
Great digging work!
Credit to Patrick Cook (who is not me)!
It is conventional in many places for faculty who participate in a graduation ceremony to wear the regalia from the university where they got their degree. Some universities have more... elaborate regalia than others.(See e.g. Etiquette of wearing the wrong academic robes at graduation as a lecturer in the UK, especially this comment. And this.)
Others sitting on stage in your photos appear to be wearing the Adelaide University regalia - maybe that's where they did their doctorate (or they did it at a university that uses the same regalia), or maybe they don't have the regalia from their alma mater and just wear this one.
+1 ... the university where that guy got his doctoral degree had green robes. Here in the US most doctoral robes are black. But not all. I would wear my crimson robes from Harvard, for example.
I think the first class at Harvard must be on how to work the fact that one has gone to Harvard into every conversation...
@BradWerth I also went to Harvard. It cost $5.00 on the red line. I did not study there, but it was worth it to be able to interject into every conversation "I went to Harvard." It was a valuable inflection point that led me to my 8 year residency (outside) the White House. I do not wear a Harvard robe. My Harvard tee-shirt does the job of informing people about my association with Harvard University.
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120719 | Same review for Math Reviews and Zentralblatt
I have been serving for several years as a reviewer for both Mathematical Reviews (MathSciNet) and ZbMath.
Earlier this year, I received an invitation for a paper for MR which I already reviewed for ZbMath. I dug up my old review and submitted it to MathSciNet without giving it much thought.
But there seems to be a pattern emerging. I received an invitation from MR for two more papers I already reviewed for ZbMath.
So here are my questions:
Do the editors of MR know/check who reviewed the paper for ZbMath in order
to find suitable reviewers?
What do I do about the double reviews?
My idea was to just refuse to write the reviews. But if the answer to the first question would be yes, then the editors know that I have a thorough review lying around. Just resubmitting this one would save a colleague from writing a new one.
@BryanKrause I think these are different topics: this is about reviews (after publication) and the other one about referee reports.
Many times I've seen ZbMath reviews (indeed, print versions from 1990s and earlier) that indicated, either at the beginning or at the end (I think it was at the end), that the review was from Math. Reviews, maybe something like "(MR 86c:30018)" (parentheses included; since this is almost certainly a true review number, I'm not claiming what I'm saying is the case for this review). However, I never knew whether such cases are as you describe or whether they just asked to use the MR review because they couldn't obtain a suitable review for some reason. And I've seen the reverse also.
@DaveLRenfro I wrote one of these (more recently). zbMath assigned me the same item (by chance I think) and they offered that I could submit the same review as to MR (see my answer below for more details)
The Math Reviews Guide for Reviewers addresses this explicitly:
Reviews in other publications. You may find yourself asked to write a review of the same item for another publication. In general, the community is best served by reviews written independently. If you have already been asked by another publication to review an item, please let us know and we will transfer it to another reviewer.
So, if you have already reviewed the article for Zbmath, you should decline to review it for MR. I didn't find a similar rule on the Zbmath side, but I would say the converse should also hold.
Also, per your agreement with Zbmath, when you submit a review to them, you grant them "exclusive exploitation rights". So if you submit the same review to MR, you're infringing Zbmath's copyright. I doubt they will sue you over it, but this shows it's actually illegal as well as unwanted.
In view of this, you may want to contact MR and ask them to withdraw your previously submitted review.
Evidently, one should not assume that the MR editors will check who reviewed the article for Zbmath in order to avoid inviting the same person, since they apparently failed to do so in your case. (Another possibility is that they did check, but your Zbmath review hadn't been posted yet.)
In my experience zbMath wants to know about when they ask the same person as MR but might not transfer the item and even offer to accept the same review.
Great answer! Do you know where one can access the corresponding agreement with Mathscinet, by the way?
I think we had another question about it. I don't think it's online; they send it to you directly when you first start to review.
@FedericoPoloni I think Nate is referring to this recent question; the accepted answer (by the Executive Editor of Mathematical Reviews) mentions copyright and what Mathscinet allows you to do (which seems to correspond to Christian's answer), and it also contains an extract of the reviewer letter, apparently.
I was in a similar situation but in the other order: I reviewed a paper for Mathematical Reviews and then was asked by zbMath to review the same paper. I told zbMath about this and they agreed that it is not ideal but they asked me to write a review nevertheless and told me that they are fine with getting the same review as Mathematical Reviews. I asked MR for permission to do this and was told that they always grant it provided they are the first one to publish it. They asked me to make sure to tell the editors of zbMath that MR published the review first and that they would know how to handle it. It seems that this situation happens from time to time.
Note that this situation is different since Mathematical Reviews‘ terms are more permissive than zbMath‘s.
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201606 | How do I cite personal observations of what people generally believe about a topic?
I am trying to figure out how to cite what the general "word on the street" is regarding a certain topic within a scientific paper. As a researcher, I have noticed there are a number of popularly-held misconceptions regarding the object of my research held by colleagues in the same field (but different specialties) and the general lay public. Indeed, part of the goal of my research is to debunk these ideas. I need to figure out how to bring up this is what people have actually thought regarding the topic and therefore it is necessary to discuss. However, there are two problems...
Many of the comments I have seen first-hand were made by the general lay public on social media. Citing random people's social media accounts to make a point in a scientific paper doesn't feel right and feels like punching down.
Many of the comments on this by fellow colleagues are negative and could be interpreted as insulting if tied to a particular individual. Additionally, these comments are again almost all from pers. comms. or on social media. Again, this is an issue that people rarely study, so you have a lot of researchers in adjacent fields speculating on this subject casually but because they specialize in other subjects these comments never make it into print.
I need to cite these observations to show that these are actual things people have said, but I don't want to tie it to specific people because it might be seen as offensive. How should I do this? I would say (pers. obs. by author), but would it then come off as though I am the one claiming this rather than these are observations of what others have said? I'm hesitant to treat this as "general knowledge" because it may not be general knowledge in the next 20 years or so.
You're asking the wrong question. I think you need to consider how to collect data to show that what you think the general population thinks is actually what they think. Then you can make whatever statement you want and you don't run into the issue of trying to cite the grapevine. Cherry-picked, anecdotal evidence is like the antithesis of the scientific method, it doesn't make sense to reference it...
You could state that the source is "Anonymous" which would not link the source statements directly to the individual who stated the original comment. You could also cite the platform the statement appeared on and use a randomly generated username to protect individual privacy.
I think I'm not clear enough on why you are concerned with the misconceptions of people who are (i) not academics or (ii) academics but not specialists in your research area. In my experience, the vast majority of academic papers are pitched at specialists in your research area. But academics often give general audience talks, write popular books, and so forth: these have very different goals. I wonder whether you are conflating these goals or whether what the general populace believes is actually relevant to your research.
@PeteL.Clark I describe the issue as kind of like the "Spartan Mirage". The vision of the subject in the broader conscious is largely based on exaggerated sensationalism and old debunked 19th-20th century zeitgeist. The problem is there are so few specialists in this field that even researchers in adjacent fields tend to buy into the unsupported sensationalism. It's like how the old perceptions of the Persians in academia were 90% memes because there were so few scholars on the Achaemenids and the people writing on them were Judaic, Greek, Egyptian, and Babylonian specialists.
As an analogy, your paper provides a scientific answer as to why the sky looks blue. You think this is important because lay people have a very wrong idea as to why it looks blue and you are trying to somehow cite the wrong lay idea to motivate your paper?
It doesn't sound like you merely need to cite this observation, it sounds like you don't actually know with any sort of certainty what the answer is. You have a hypothesis, but no data. You may need to actually do some research into this question if it's that important. I have colleagues who have done exactly this, using survey methods to provide some quantitative estimate of what "everyone thinks", rather than just what everyone thinks everyone thinks; you might be surprised at how valuable other people find these things, one of the studies I have in mind has been cited as much or more than the work it was intended to support.
If people believe the thing you think they believe enough to write it in their papers, etc, you can cite those like you would anything else. I would focus particularly on papers that are influential (citation count is probably a reasonable proxy), especially reviews in your field by people who you think you and others would see as leaders in your field, and give more than one example to not single anyone out. I don't think you should worry so much about offending these people, you don't need to call them idiots while doing so, you're just pointing out a belief that is expressed in the literature, and then offering your take on that belief, hopefully with evidence that is convincing to others. Every single useful academic paper is doing this to some degree.
In my case what the general public and researchers outside specialists on this topic think is clearly different from what the actual data says. "Common knowledge" on this subject is largely from the 1920s and is heavily influenced by biases of that era (teleological thinking). The problem is other researchers do not state these opinions in a citable format. They are mostly specialists on other groups of animals giving idle speculation on the group I work with, but they don't actually publish papers on them.
@user2352714 Doesn't really seem necessary to cite, then, why not just describe how things really are in your paper?
Because the issue then becomes "Why is this even being brought up? Why is it relevant?" Whereas if it is mentioned that the commonly held belief is incorrect providing the relevant information necessary to correct it is a useful contribution to the literature.
@user2352714 I think I'd focus on what's in the literature rather than outside rumors. If nothing has been written on the topic since the 1920s, that's motivation enough, no?
@user2352714 you're asking how to cite anonymous samples as proof of a certain believe. But they are not proof of that believe, hence the answer is: you cannot. You need to get actual proof.
(1) How central is this for your paper? (2) Are you writing for a readership that actually holds these misconceptions, or for experts that do not hold them? (If you say "both", which group you think would be the majority?)
If this is not so central, and the main point of your paper will stand without giving strong evidence for the "word on the street", you may get away with just saying something like "I have come across this view often". If it is really so ubiquitous, reviewers (and readers who agree with you) might just nod and let it go through.
A solution my co-authors and I used in a similar situation: when we wanted to attest examples of misstatements of the meaning of null-hypothesis tests in published papers (Table 1, Dushoff et al. *Methods in Ecology and Evolution 2019), we quoted relevant snippets of text from the articles but said only "citations available by request" so that we weren't calling individual authors out quite as explicitly. In our case, anyone who wanted to find the original sources could probably also find the original references by full-text search on Google Scholar ... that would be much harder for social media posts, I think.
If you want to know what "word on the street" is for scientific publication, you design an instrument to assess it, design a study around the instrument, take the study to an RSRB to approve it, do the study, then publish it. Other/alternative methods would include rigorous literature review to try to capture it.
My understanding from your question is that you just need to show that a wrong belief is common, as a starting point for debunking that belief. Since you don't need to quantify exactly how prevalent that belief is, a survey may be overkilling because nowadays you can just run a query on social media or the web and report that a reproducible search yielded a largish number of instances of the wrong belief versus a same order number of instances or less of the right belief. Twitter (now X) may be an easy way because, as far as I know, there are available databases of tweets. Even automatically search the web (with an script checking results from a Google search) can show that there are a number of results for that wrong belief.
I can actually find tweets of colleagues saying these ideas on Twitter and other places. The issue is if I do it comes off as taking potshots at a colleague for what they said on social media.
Right, but you don't have to cite the tweets individually - you can just make the point that the view is common without calling out any particular individuals.
My answer is not about finding a particular tweet with that wrong belief, but about finding hundreds or more of them. If there are just a few of them but they are relevant because of the author, you could just mention that those tweets exist and keep them just in case the reviewers ask for them.
Consider the possibility that you are being groomed by an echo chamber. Consult with your advisor to ensure the value of your research is not entirely predicated on popular misconception. Instead of diverting resources to half-baked sociological sampling, it may be better to focus resources toward demonstrating the utility of the research. If you feel that utility is a bad thing, then you may want to point your research in another direction.
For example, there are some open source programming languages built on academic research, such as Haskell, Agda, and Clean, if you want to have a look at communities where making tools/alternative perspectives directly available to the public is somewhat normalized.
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206296 | Is "ghosting" a reviewer's suggestions common behavior during revision of a manuscript?
This is an issue I have run into multiple times as a reviewer on a paper. During a manuscript review I pointed out several areas of concern. Some of these are methodological issues but in other cases these are grammar issues that are easy to fix. When the first round of revision comes back none of the suggested changes have been made to the manuscript. All of the grammar mistakes are still there.
Notably, the lack of change is not because the authors disagree with the suggestions and provide rebuttals in their 'responses to reviewers' document. Instead, the revised manuscript acts like the authors had never seen my review. They respond to the other two reviewers in their responses to reviewers section, but there are no comments addressing any of the concerns I raise, even the minor, easily addressable ones like the grammar issues.
Reaching out to the editors about this situation, I asked if it's possible that my annotated draft of the manuscript and/or reviewer report potentially did not reach the authors. However, the editors said the review report and documents had been sent to the authors.
Is this a common issue in academic review? I have had this happen while reviewing articles by two different research groups (both of which are relatively prominent in my field) for two different journals handled by two different publishers within the last five years. However, I have never heard of this being an issue before. The best solution I can think of is just send it back to the editor and say the authors did not address my concerns in the previous round of review. But it seems very strange to have happened more than once.
At the same journal?
Seems like something is wrong with the system…
@AzorAhai-him- Different journal, and different publishers
Related: Reviewing a revision, after the original review did not reach the authors
@user2352714 Well then, weird
@GeorgeSavva "Ignoring" can possibly be done with the other party knowing your intent - you could ignore a reviewer comment by explicitly stating you didn't have time to consider it. "Ghosting" additionally implies a total lack of acknowledgement - the ignoring party behaves as though the review doesn't even exist.
This isn't common, but it's not that rare either. You might see it like once every six months to a year as an editor (this is an estimate; I did not keep count). One way this can happen is if your review is late. The journal sends the author a decision first with the other reviewers' reviews, then you submit your review -> the authors aren't aware your review exist.
If it looks like the authors have not seen or forgot about your review, then I'd return a major revision recommendation and leave the rest to the editor(s) of the journal. Recommending rejection seems a bit harsh to me given it could be an honest mistake, although practically speaking there might be no difference since the editor is likely to send the manuscript for a second revision.
I think this is what it was. In both cases my reviews were not late, but they were submitted towards the end of the deadline. This is likely what happened.
Yes, if the authors have genuinely engaged with the other reviewers' points and not even mentioned yours it seems almost certain that they have missed your review entirely, whether because of their own carelessness or the editor's. They should be given another chance to respond.
Failure to respond to points raised -> Reject
Proper practice for responding to referee reviews of a paper is to go through point-by-point and respond to each item raised in a systematic manner (see related answer here). Ideally, the author should directly copy-and-paste the entire referee review and then respond to each point as it is raised. (When I do this, I usually give the referee remarks in one colour and then my response in another colour, so it is easy to see exactly what the referee said and then my response to this.) This method ensures that no points are missed and there is a clear response (agree, disagree, revised, no revision, etc.) to each point raised by the referee.
In my experience, no, it is not common for authors to fail to respond to points raised by referees. Academics usually proceed systematically through referee suggestions and train their research students to do the same. In some cases a single point might get accidentally missed (e.g., if it was raised by the editor outside of the referee reports) but it would be unusual to have multiple points where there has been no response/revision. The occurrence of this outcome reflects sloppy revision practice and it is unusual in professional settings.
If you are a referee and this has not been done, and there are significant points (or multiple small points) raised in your review that were not addressed, you should immediately give a one-line rejection of the revised paper: Author has failed to respond to previous points raised in review, so we recommend rejection of this paper. Give this back to the editor immediately and let them contact the author to reject/re-write. If referees were to do this en masse than it would lead to a rapid improvement in the quality of responses.
Yeah, this does happen. A funny variant is when they correct it or remove the material only where you pointed it out and left the other mistakes. E.g.: you say that there are many mistakes in this paper with the units, e.g. in section 5. You get the revision back with Section 5 removed, but in the remainder the authors still don't know how to make units tally.
I feel your pain - pointing out the same issues again and again makes you look like an obsessive sourpuss, the frequent complainer who is soon ignored. For that reason I think it is best to leave it at "the issues I pointed out previously have not been addressed."
But there is often something off about these things, where the editor seems prepared to give these authors endless second chances. I don't know about you, but there have been times when I felt implicitly bullied by the editor to accept the paper, as if to say: This zombie will keep darkening your inbox until you recommend we accept.
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204051 | Is it typical for one review to be made by multiple reviewers?
I recently got a review back from consideration. One review was a little odd in that the reviewer(s?) consistently referred to themselves using "We" and "Our". It seems highly unlikely this is the royal we. Notably, it is just this review, the other reviews all use singular pronouns.
Is it typical for a manuscript review request, which is typically only sent to one individual, be reviewed by multiple people? I am not sure how reasonable it is from an ethical perspective.
In academic writing, authorial 'we' is very common, where the authors always refer to themselves in the first-person plural even if the there is only a single author. Although this is less common in reviews, the reviewer likely just used this authorial 'we' to refer to him-/herself.
See also Choice of personal pronoun in single-author papers.
This. As an editor, I see this all the time.
The authorial "we" is the most likely explanation. Joint reports are also possible, at least in physics. My impression is that they are somewhat rare, however. Perhaps the most common scenario is a student writing a report together with their supervisor.
At least in my physics experience, joint reports (supervisor and student) are pretty common and since physics journals actually encourage these, they are also not hidden.
As a postdoc, I once was one of two referees that co-wrote a joint referee report in physics. It was a situation where the paper combined methods from two different, very technical areas; my colleague was the one officially asked to be the reviewer and was an expert on one of the areas. He asked me to help him write the part of the report focusing on the second area, which he was less familiar with but was in my wheelhouse. We then submitted a joint report (informing the editors beforehand, of course).
mathematics
I have authored at least one referee report that was jointly written with another person. In my experience it’s not common, but it does happen.
I just personally finished a co-review a few days ago. I am a postdoc and my PI asked me to join in because the paper covered multiple topics and it just so happened that I had additional experience that made me an ideal referee. We contacted the editor in charge and informed them that I would contribute, and the editor welcomed the additional input.
I would not say it is very common, but it can happen. I received just today a review invitation where the editor specifically told me that I am allowed to review the paper together with a colleague.
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64362 | If I believe a student lacks the preparation to pass, what should I say to them?
I'm an Advanced Level math teacher in my country. I teach two courses Pure and Applied. Its duration is 3 years. At the end of three years, there is one exam for the whole three years. Only 1200 students are selected for universities out of 50000.
I told (Privately) two of my students that they are going to fail the August AL exam if they are not going to work hard.
They have no knowledge of their syllabus. (They joined my class three weeks ago). I myself told them the truth and they stopped the class telling me that I'm a very discouraging teacher. I could have told them "Yes you can," but as a teacher I told them the reality.
Is it better to tell them that "You will get an A" or to tell them the truth?
This course contains 40 lessons and it is a 3 year course from which now only five months are left.
That is very hard to answer without having the full facts. Yes, I can often predict with a fair rate of success how each of my students will do in exams (and even later professional life), often with little hard evidence. But I would not base any decision on such a hunch. I consider it my duty to help them overcome any shortcomings, but also to assess them fairly, and in an objective manner.
Based on your comments and accepted answer, it appears you are not looking for an honest assessment of how you could communicate better with your students. You are just looking for validation.
@DavidHill I know that I took the correct decision . I asked what will be good ? Tell them a lie or the truth ? Simple as that. Because in my 8 years teaching experience , I know it for sure. They have Pure , Applied , physics an chemistry. I do Pure and Applied. I told them privately that they gonna fail if they are not going to work hard. It is the truth. I could have been dishonest and just take their tuition fee.
"I directly told two of my students that they are going to fail the August AL exam" and "I told them privately that they gonna fail if they are not going to work hard" are pretty different advices. Please just give a more objective and complete account of the exchange by revising the question.
@IlmariKaronen In our country Advanced level is a whole 3 year procedure. Not just a course unit
So you're saying that the students joined mid-course, with only about 15% of the course (5 months out of 3 years) left? How is that even possible?
@IlmariKaronen This course contains about 40 lessons. They have changed their class and came to mine. In our country there are so man private tutors like me.
Hold on a minute... you said "private tutors like me". Does this mean you're not their teacher, and you're not administering or grading the exam(s)? Are these students paying you for private help? [OT: what kind of place only has one test for 3 years of work??]
@Penguin_Knight: They're not inconsistent; perhaps they're not of the type to work hard, or it's just humanly impossible (I guess the speed of light, efficiency of one's brain, etc. are in principle the only ceiling =P but for practical purposes even giving '110 percent' probably wouldn't make it). Or maybe his first statement is an enthymeme, or maybe it's just that no one -- unless they're mute -- has the vigilance to speak every sentence precisely and technically correctly and to make the assumptions explicit at each step. I suppose the implications of the two are different though.
@Xen2050 I'm not administering or grading the exam(s). In our country people do private tutoring , as government schools lacks good education. And government schools are free of charge.
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it appears to be about high-school education, and undergraduate entrance exams, which are off-topic, here.
Focus on teaching the material rather than telling students they will fail. A teacher told me (in class!) that I wouldn't get into my university of choice. He was wrong.
Entrance exams for University / College and private tutoring starts to make sense now, at least the students should still get their high school diploam (or equivalent for Sri Lanka, I'm very unfamiliar, maybe Wikipedia's Education in Sri Lanka will be useful). As a private tutor I'd imagine your priorities are to teach the required material & get paid, customer (aka student) satisfaction is probably more important than a school-paid teacher.
With only three weeks you can already tell they are bound to fail in five months? Yes, that is too discouraging.
There is a middle ground between "you will get an A" and "you will most certainly fail", i.e.,
If you want to pass, you'll need to strengthen this and that and do a lot of exercises on the material of the class. I know August looks far away, but actually, it will come sooner than it seems, so I suggest you start working on this right away.
By assuring them they are going to fail you have discouraged them from even trying, and possibly planted a predisposition: they know they will fail, you know they will fail, so they will fail (or you will fail them, or they may think you graded them too strictly to fulfill your prophecy).
Your task as a teacher is to help them learn as much as possible, and at the end, assess if they have learnt enough and grade them. I was recently teaching some programming courses, and some of my students were really bad. I knew one of them wouldn't be able to finish the tasks on time, but he took a bunch of tutorials and painstakingly went through them, trying to understand every step of the way. At the end, he didn't know enough to pass, but certainly learned more than if he had just given up at the first try; and he knew that was a possible outcome.
Your task as a teacher is to help them learn as much as possible, and at the end, asses if they have learnt enough and grade them. But that is not all: his task as a teacher is also to provide his students with honest feedback, which is what he did. And you may think you helped your weak student, but the student might have wasted a couple of thousand dollars on a class he needs to repeat, and wasted a lot of time and energy that would be better spent working on material appropriate for his current level.
@Davidmh This is a 3 year course containing 40 lessons. And they have stopped two classes before mine. Differentiation was the easiest among them. Unfortunately they do not know how to differentiate $x^n$.
This is spot on. The teacher is not a financial adviser or scheduling assistant. They provide honest feedback in the context of supporting and encouraging learning. However, qualified and attentive the teacher is, they are not monitoring students 24/7 and are not soothsayers. Let the test determine failure or success - not your fallible pessimism.
@Dave If i'm going to be their last teacher. They will definitely blame me for their failure . Thank you. I have no interest in taking their money for nothing. They have not done anything for 2 and half years. So what ?
@AngeloMark It's very clear that you've been set up to fail. How were they permitted to join your class 2 years into the course?
@CaptainEmacs That is the educational system here. Parents come to the institute and ask for miracles. How can I deal with it ? Payments a based on daily. So anyone can join anytime.I'm not the owner. So I told them the truth.
@AngeloMark No, you definitely shouldn't lie and I do not think Dan Romik intended that. The information you give is quite disconcerting. Sounds like it's better to seek another institution. But, failing that, best you can do is telling them "Your chances are like winning the lottery, very slim. Hard work, 16 hours a day, will improve it from hitting 6 numbers right to hitting 4 numbers right." - or similar.
@CaptainEmacs Yes ! Very precisely. I'm little bit upset that I planned the whole the syllabus for them. At least they could just pass. Then that is what I got "You are a discouraging teacher "!
Don't expect gratitude. Not from good students, and certainly not from weak ones. You do a good job, because that's what you do. And sometimes, you will get the odd grateful student, and it does not even have to be the strongest one; and that's nice.
In the realm of computer science we can predict with very high reliability at week zero.
It's not that they have 5 months left, it's that they joined a 3 year program with only 5 remaining months... and in the 3 weeks they've been present, they've not demonstrated the capability to pass. I think the professor was being brutally honest - but it's likely the reality.
In general, it is not a good practice to make negative remarks about a student in front of others. Any such feedback should be provided in private. Also, since your course is only three weeks old, you may not have enough information to gauge a student's ability.
I would think knowing nothing from the required knowledge in the syllabus is quite a bit of information to gauge how well someone can handle a class. If I was taking an advanced algorithms course in CS and didn't understand the basic principles of logic, my chance of passing the course is slim at best.
@M D I said them in private. After the class. Told you have to do all the 40 lessons syllabus of 3 years in 5 months. For me it is the hardest truth.
Sorry I misunderstood your original post and thought that you gave the feedback during a class.
Looks like this response is not relevant as the assumptions about the OP do not match what this responds to.
You may use the same trick that support staff and sales representatives use: avoid using expressions like "no", "cannot", "sorry but...".
Instead you turn it around like so: "In order to achieve this goal, we need to do the following...", and then list all the things that are required for it to happen.
If you follow this pattern you have been honest and given full disclosure about what they need to do, without explicitly discouraging.
The response to such a case is almost always: "Yes, but...". You present a clear and present picture of what their problem will be, make clear that it is going to be more challenging for them than for anyone else at the course, as they started late, and they thus have to work much harder than anyone else to achieve the standard. You may be quite right that they are not the students that end up with an A, but it is not for you to decide at this stage whether they are, only to demonstrate to them what they need to do to achieve it.
Maybe they will surprise you, maybe not. But present to them their available choices, and there is always the chance of a "Kobayashi Maru" (unexpected solution of a seemingly impossible dilemma).
TL;DR: make them appreciate the difficulty of what they aim to do, but don't tell them that getting an A is impossible, because you do not know for sure this at this stage, as well-founded as your estimate may be.
+1 for the Kirk reference. And a possible example is that the students in question has a lot of time on their hands and the discipline to make use of it.
This is a 3 year course containing 40 lessons. And they have stopped two classes before mine. Differentiation was the easiest among them. Unfortunately they do not know how to differentiate $x^n$.
@AngeloMark Ah, yes, I know that type of student. I then slightly modify my statement. While I (privately) agree that they are not going to succeed, I still wouldn't say it. I found it much more effective to make clear what they need to achieve (even if I do not believe they will) to succeed. You made clear your problem was that they complain about you demotivating them. Well, what I say is that you can say - practically - the same thing as you did, but in a different form, and they cannot complain about you anymore by visualising to them through how many hoops they have to jump to succeed.
@CaptainEmacs They just come and go. I remember how our teachers scolded us when we got lower results . That is why we have BSc(maths Special) . Modern generation only know how to cuddle with teacher and do nonsense. Eventually they will complain both types of teachers. That is the ultimate truth. But they will eventually realize it.
@AngeloMark I am afraid these are the times. It's not the fault of the students, it's not the fault of the parents, and it's not even the fault of the institution. We have a fashion in our time that learning must always be fun and easy and entertaining and everyone should achieve an A. No, the statement should read "everyone can achieve", and in math, not even that is true. The best you can do now is to manage expectation. But once people expect you to make pigs fly, all you can do is to attach wings to the pigs and say that you are working on the flying part and prepare the catapult. ;-)
@CaptainEmacs Thank you ! This is what I am saying as you said precisely " But once people expect you to make pigs fly, all you can do is to attach wings to the pigs and say that you are working on the flying part and prepare the catapult."
When I was in college I had long hair, wore a bandanna and workout clothes to my classes, if I ever showed up. The fact is I learned faster on my own.
I was in an advanced Calculus class my freshman year due to me testing out Calc I-III. I showed up the first class and grabbed the syllabus and then a month later, the class before the first exam.
The professor asked me a question, I misheard, and he basically told me the same thing you told your students.
I came to the test two days later, turned it in a half hour later - he asked to talk to me in the hall. He said he rather not fail me and asked me to drop his class. I just told him to grade the test.
I got a 97% on the test (points taken off a problem for not showing work). I grabbed my test and left the class right after.
The next test, same deal, he asked to talk to me in the hall. This time asked me if I thought about switching my major to mathematics (I was taking his class for an elective).
My point is - you do not know who you are talking to. By making assumptions you will just make yourself look like an ass. If you want to get your point across make a really simple (very simple) pretest that anyone that has a chance passing should get a 100%.
Okay ! Yes I'm not talking about just a single course unit in university. Even I did my freshman semester test in two days an got A. I'm talking about 40 course units . Two 5 hours papers at the end. This is not a semester month single course. Calculus is one of the courses listed. Thank you. I know you are talking about university life which I have finished. So this is not 3 or 2 credits paper. This is an island wide contest paper.
I am just saying maybe they don't need prep and maybe they don't need to study. I would focus on showing them with proof (prep-test) or showing them where other students are at comparatively. You aren't giving them useful feedback.
Think that you are going to do all the courses in 1st year 2nd year 3rd year just in 5 months ? All of them in one paper containing big 20 essay questions !
Just looking at your course list... I would be fine with doing every one off the top of the head when I was 19. Now maybe not haha. But then yes. For the Calc class I studied an hour the night before each test. So take that times 3 tests per semester times 40 courses and that is just 120 hours of studying - not that big of a deal.
Ah for the model papers they got 4 out of 100 an 12 out of 100. Even there school term test marks are 13 and 17. I did not ask whether I would look like an ass , I asked if a teacher should lie or not!
You missed the applied syllabus ! Well I agree . University is something we all work night before the exam.
You want your students to trust you and be a role model. Assuming things like performance and how much studying one will do is pretty hard to communicate and you doing it in a crowd is worse. There is nothing wrong with someone failing and learning from the experience.
I told them privately. I know you have your view in this question in university level. Yes I agree for that case.
Instead of telling the student that he or she will fail, and thereby making a judgement of them at your own prerogative, you could delegate this difficult judgement to the student's own mind.
Doubtless you do not baselessly decide a student will fail or not on a whim, you have some sort of logic. Even in your question you have hinted at the logic: They have poor knowledge of even the syllabus and seem to be at such a low level that they are unlikely to cover all the material in the time that remains. Also, sometimes instructors who have seen dozens or hundreds of students develop an intuition for the sort of student who will do well or badly, just based on how the student is acting. This may not always be 100% correct, but in my experience is often quite informative. Rarely have I seen an instructor claim that student X will do badly, after which student X will perform well in spite of expectations (note, I say "rarely", which means exactly that - not never, but not often).
Take the logic, and the facts you are basing your thinking on, and explain these to the student. Do not conclude that they will fail or not, let them judge for themselves how likely they are to succeed, how much work it will take, and whether they are willing to do that work.
For instance:
"You were consistently in the bottom 10% of the class in the last 5 quizzes - in my experience, it is very uncommon for a student to suddenly improve in the exam after a run like this - I have never seen it happen having taught about 400 students."
"You have missed 60% of the lectures - in my experience, students who miss that many days have a lot of difficulty dealing with the exam, because class discussions are directly relevant to the exam questions."
"You don't seem to know the syllabus very well, but this is a very comprehensive exam. Students who don't know the syllabus would have a lot of trouble getting up to speed with the material in a timely manner."
"The exam is soon and there is a lot of material to cover - do you think you will be able to manage it all in time?"
After explaining your reasoning, make sure to finish with something like "If you want to succeed in this course, you would likely need to work very hard, based on what I've told you".
Advantages of this:
It is honest and treats the student like an adult, not a child, letting them make their own decisions about their life. The responsibility for the decision is likewise placed on the student, not you.
If the student is a genius who can succeed anyway, they are free to disregard your advice, and nothing you said is falsified even if they do since you only advised them of heuristics and probabilities.
If the student indeed fails as you suspect, you have not told them a comforting lie about how they will "get an A".
Limited self-fulfilling prophecy effect - you do not tell the student that they cannot succeed, thereby killing their motivation and thus ability to succeed, you are only giving them an idea of their odds.
If the student is enlightened by the information you provide, they have the opportunity to steer the discussion in a direction they are comfortable with: Those who feel they have the mental fortitude can say "I'm gonna fail, won't I?". Those willing to rise up to the challenge can say "This sounds like it will be a very tough exam, what do you think I can do to improve my odds?".
The disadvantage is that some people may feel that full, unconditional confidence in a student's potential (even in spite of the facts) is necessary for optimal learning outcome. If you subscribe to this notion, you are effectively doing a disservice to the student, by not giving them the most optimistic version (and instead giving a sober, realistic version). The decision here is whether you subscribe to it, which is for you to resolve.
Teachers should make every effort for students to learn, but in some professions, you also have to weed-out those who don't qualify.
In this case, you should have a conversation with these students and give them your honest assessment. If they really want to pass this course, you may want to set some intermediate goals. Could you prepare a sample test to cover a subset of the material? If they're able to do what it takes for them to learn it, they may have a chance.
This just seems like a very rigorous program that many students cannot handle. You owe them your professional opinion. It's up to them to heed the advice and either do what it takes to improve or drop out.
Many students lack the emotional maturity to understand you are telling them this for thier own benefit, but they will eventually realize it. A high schooler doesn't typically take a graduate level physics course, nor should someone who does not have the rudimentary math skills necessary to effectively complete an advanced class be taking it. Their time is simply better spent on progressing in area of math they have a base knowledge in. I wouldn't feel bad about telling them this, even if they get mad at you for saying so. It is, what it is. The field of mathematics is very linear as you know; you can't just jump from pre-algebra to econometrics without a hiccup, it will be a foreign language.
Yes of course ! This is a 3 year course containing 40 lessons. And they have stopped two classes before mine. If i'm going to be their last teacher. They will definitely blame me for their failure . Thank you
Kudos to you for wanting to honor the truth. Now:
I myself told them the truth and they stopped the class telling me
that I'm a very discouraging teacher.
Question: Are you happy with this interaction? If you continue with the same tactic in the future, do you think that you'll get a different result, or the same result? Some observations:
There's a difference between "telling a lie" and "being diplomatic" (it's not entirely a black-and-white relationship). You could say something like, "Yes, it's possible to pass. It's going to take a lot of work. In your case, we know that there are some gaps that are going to make it more challenging for you. In my experience, few students in your situation pass the final."
Due to the Dunning-Kruger effect, the worst students will also be the ones least capable of honestly assessing their situation, or interpreting your advice. Regarding the suggested line above, they may hear the first word and then zone out on everything after that. Being brutally honest with these students is more likely to cause more conflict. Maybe you're okay with that.
I've personally been wrong about predictions like this in the past. I actually had a disagreement with an administrator in which I said of a particular student "She obviously has no chance of passing the final" (had failed 2 of 3 tests to that point, skipped the 3rd). Then she did actually pass the final, and I had major egg on my face. So there's at least some margin of error in our predictions that you have to account for in your statements.
Depending on your situation, your employer may also possibly sanction you or say that it's not your place to encourage students to leave the institution (actually, there's a famous case today where the President of Mount St. Mary's College in the U.S. was forced to resign over similar comments). But this needs to be balanced with possible complaints on the other end regarding how much people "blame you" for their failing.
A great idea, as others have mentioned, is to use/highlight a first-day diagnostic and later in-class quizzes (or tests, or test previews, or whatever you call it). This gives documentation you can point to, that the student in question was deficient all along, even on the first day before you had any interaction with them. This at least gives a stronger trail of evidence if a student or administrator complains in this regard.
I would encourage you to broaden your skill set and find a way to be diplomatic in this regard.
It is not your responsibility to tell them if they are going to pass or not (in your view) unless they ask you explicitly.
Your responsibility is to teach, theirs is to learn. If they don't learn it is their responsibility, if they don't care to figure out how they are doing, it is their responsibility.
Your responsibility is to teach them, help them when they ask, be available, and be honest to them (when asked a question).
If they are disrupting the class it is your responsibility to tell them to stop, but you are not responsible to tell each and every student if they will pass or not, just to do your best so they can understand the material.
You could, if you have already given them partial grades, make a general statement such as "whoever has a grade so far of less than xxx better work harder or he/she may fail the exam", but make it general, not personal.
Never underestimate the power of motivation, goal setting, and breaking a task down into "bite sized" chunks.
The word "educate" comes from Latin "e" and "ducare" - "to draw out that which lies within". As a teacher, you may think it is your job just to cram knowledge into your students; but as an educator, it is your job to "find what lies within the students, and bring it out".
That means that you have to get to know your students and their innate motivations; shape those motivations towards the goal; and then leverage their talents and passion to help them prepare themselves to meet the challenges they will have to overcome along the way.
While giving an honest assessment is an essential element of this, it should be cast in the context of the bigger goal: "at the rate you are studying, you will only cover half the modules needed to pass the exam" is an objective statement, and the student who hears that feedback can decide "work harder", "plan to take the exam next year", or "drop out". On the other hand, "you will fail" is not objective, and does not permit the student to make adjustments that will get them closer to (your or their definition of) success.
I moved to a different country when I was 17; the school I attended had a special course to prepare for the very tough entrance exam of the most prestigious universities. I was told that, as a foreigner with little English, my chances were extremely slim - almost no pupil of that school had ever passed the exam, even after being "in the right syllabus all their life", and having English as a first language. But the way they phrased it, it became a positive challenge to try where others had failed. Nobody stopped me from studying harder than I had ever done - and I passed.
Realism is good - but focus on bringing out the best in your students. They will amaze you.
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64521 | Is it possible to do research in cell/molecular biology without doing experimental work myself?
I am currently a master’s student hoping to shift into a PhD. The thing is, I hate the lab work. I love all the literature review, designing experiments, troubleshooting problems and data interpretation.
Is there some sort of work around or is this just part of paying my dues?
The most likely answer that comes to mind is: “suck it up and pay your dues”, which I totally get, but is there an area somewhere that negates the benchwork, or is that just years of climbing until I get to be a PI (well, if I get to be a PI).
Is there a way to get all of the satisfying parts of research without being bogged down with endless hours at the bench? Or is this just part and parcel? I've spoken with my professors but they sort of hedged the question and pushed me back to the bench.
Is your field pure math? Or experimental science? Or engineering? Or Humanities?
Cell/molecular biology with some pharmaceutical chemistry tossed at me because I'm not afraid of the other chemists (weird department dynamics). So yeah, very experimental.
If you don't like lab work, you could switch into a field without lab work. Or are you saying you like designing experiments, but don't like to do them...?
@scaaahu that's a very fair point. I'm afraid I've let myself be spoiled by my time in industry, so I'm just going to have to suck it up and tie myself to the bench. Thanks, sometimes having your words turned around back at you can be very clarifying.
@earthlin, that's pretty much it. I love all of it except the actual experiment execution. Once the background is done and the experiment designed I'm happy as heck to pass it off and review the results later and see where we should go from there.
@scaaahu: Note that this question was very likely edited after the first close vote to contain an actual question. I disagree that this question is a rant. If “getting your hands dirty” is inevitable in these fields, that could very much be an answer.
Short answer: if you want to avoid the bench, switch to bioinformatics. I never step foot on a lab. It is not free from detailed, painstaking work, though.
You don't design experiments as a bioinformatician. Maybe you'll have a say in sequencing depth. Maybe you can say protocol X of the two protocols they have tried is better. But you won't be designing experiments in the traditional sense
@J.J there is more to bioinformatics than sequencing data analysis. :) I design my computational experiments, and machine learning algorithms are my beakers.
Hehe, ah, you make a very good point with ML. That's more hard-core than what I do. I wouldn't define the software I write to involve experimental design, because there's often 1 correct way to do it. Biological experiment design is more like "we have enough money for either option A, or option B. Which one is the best compromise?".
I don't think it is possible or constructive to avoid lab work in your field at PhD level.
The point of a PhD is to train you as an independent researcher, and therefore you need to be familiar with all stages of the research process, including data collection. There are plenty of fields for which data collection does not involve lab work, but unfortunately for you, cell and molecular biology are not among them.
Going through the process of lab work is not just important in terms of getting the data, it informs the rest of your work. I don't believe you will design an experiment as effectively if you are not familiar with exactly how long the different processes will take, where the challenges lie, where errors might creep in, and so on. Likewise, you are better able to interpret the data if you understand how it was collected. This stuff can be learnt to some extent by reading/talking to people/being given a demo, but by far the best way is to do it yourself.
"Paying your dues" may be a part of it - certainly, someone needs to do the legwork! - but I would encourage you not to look at it that way. At this stage in your career, it is highly valuable to you to gain an overview of the research process, even if later on (and you might not have to wait until you are a PI) you specialise in a particular phase of research.
EDIT: Others have pointed out fields, such as bioinformatics, in which it is possible to avoid lab work. Perhaps I was considering "cell and molecular biology" too narrowly. Nonetheless, bioinformatics still ultimately relies on data, and so I still believe that gaining experience of how that data is gathered is highly valuable.
Reason for downvote? I'll happily edit given constructive comments...
I down-voted because I think this has a very limited and lab-centric view of the biosciences, as indicated by some of the other answers as well.
I upvoted because jakebeal's explanation made no sense.
I am surprised that no-one mentioned kinetic modelling and the like? Of course, you do need to like mathematical modelling and/or simulation and statistics, but that's the price of staying away from the bench.
If you want to avoid laboratory work, you need to go into an area of the field where you develop a valuable expertise that is not laboratory work. That may then put you in a position to be a valuable collaborator for people who do engage in laboratory work, rather than a parasite upon them.
Fortunately for you, in this computational age there is quite a lot of such work. Examples include molecular modeling, *omics, bioinformatics, metabolic engineering, sequence optimization, and many others.
I am currently a master’s student hoping to shift into a PhD. The thing is, I hate the lab work. I love all the literature review, designing experiments, troubleshooting problems and data interpretation.
You've just described a couple potential directions you could go in, depending on your inclinations. Someone in the comments suggested bioinformatics, but I don't think that's quite right.
For me, the fundamental question here is "How strong is your math background, and do you like theory work?", neither one of which is really answered in your question. But there's some paths potentially open to you:
Biostatistics: Biostatisticians are (ideally) involved in the design of experiments stage, and in analyzing data, while someone else is responsible for actually collecting it. Their expertise is concentrated in analysis, and being able to work in the areas where the usual tools used in a field start not working any more.
Computational/theoretical biology. There's lots of modeling work to be done that's informed by experimental work, but isn't actually based on wet-lab experiments. You can fairly productively collaborate in this field, and having a little lab experience is a plus.
The latter is the path I took in my own field - I'm a computational epidemiologist. If all goes according to plan, I never see the inside of a lab, nor talk to a study subject.
You may have already seen this
And although it's meant to be a joke, there's a rather large element of truth to it. Science is built on a foundation of cheap labour. It's not about paying your dues - because that implies you already owe it, and it implies that once you've paid it, you're morally free to do it to many other people.
Rather, think of it this way - if you want to be in a situation in 10 years time where you can boss 10 people around and not do any labwork, you have to be bossed around, and then beat 9 other people for the bossing-around job (or hope they drop out of academia altogether).
This might sound a little negative, but it's important that you see the road ahead clearly before you walk toward it. Too many people enter academia expecting the PI position after paying their dues, but the reality is that most people who enter a PhD never make it to academic independence ever. I don't know anything about you, so I would say there's a 9/10 chance that will be you too. If you feel you're the 1/10, then go for it! But realise it's not something you can afford to simply endure. You have to excel!
(As a side note, if you can use Linux and program a bit, you could do a PhD with some Bioinformatic element to it - but this will be no less intensive. In many cases, it's more hours per day since you can work from home.)
Funny, my experience is the exact contrary to this. The profs I know would rather delegate the administrative hurdles and spend all their time in the lab.
Man, if I ever saw any prof in any of the labs where I work, I think i'd have a heart attack. Sometimes they walk through, but it's very rare. To actually pick up a pipette and do something? Man. No way. They are all way to busy for that. My institute may be a little unusual though. Everyone here is heads-of-their-field kind of thing. It's a pretty intense results-orientated atmosphere.
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55122 | Is it common for universities to have multiple boards (eg, a General Planning Board, a Finance Board, etc.) and what is the typical name for these?
I am wondering if it's common for universities to have multiple boards, each with a specific mandate to manage and carry out initiatives in a specific field, such as General Planning, Education, Finance, Global Initiatives, etc. I am particularly interested in universities in the US and the UK.
These boards would be hierarchically under the main governing board of the university and would be staffed with professors and led by trustees from the board. They would be at the administrative level.
Would it be more common to name these boards committees or subcommittees?
I know that you ask preferably for the US and UK, but as a side note, this model is standard for universities in Switzerland (and presumably other German-speaking countries). These are typically called Kommissionen (which translate to commissions or I think more appropriately committees). Contradictory to your example, these committees are not exclusively staffed with professors. They are composed of a president and representatives of all levels of the university employees and students: faculty, "intermediaries" (postdocs, lecturers), admin/technical staff, and students.
Here is the list of the different committees from the University of Zurich. It includes the research committee, the ethics committee, the disciplinary committee, etc. The other universities of the country are organized in a very similar manner.
Yes, they are generally known as committees and they are common. PhDs don't generally like to be led (or perhaps there's just no one that seems qualified), so they form committees to get consensus and allow participation.
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98557 | Should Professors and by extension their TA's, hold student athletes to the same standard?
As a former student athlete at the high school level who played football, the academic requirements asked of me were no different than that of my fellow classmates. I never asked for any special treatment and I rarely if ever discussed my athletic activities with my teachers. I would also suspect that if I had asked, no special consideration would have been given. I had to make decisions that affected my academics as well as limited my ability to pursue other extracurricular activities.
In college, I focused on research, work experience, and academics.
Now that I am in the process of applying to graduate schools where I presume I will be a TA.
How should I approach the situation?
Would I hold student athletes to the same standards in terms of deadlines and grading, or should I take into consideration the added-value and extraordinary circumstances that student athletes face at a university setting?
If I am asked to give special considerations, would I have the right to refuse such requests or would it be strictly the decision of the instructor?
If I am asked to overlook the actions of a student, whether suspected or flagrant, is 'rocking the boat' an action considered worth pursuing given the cost in terms of time and attention?
As an undergraduate, my professors had a 'catch-all' offering a case-by-case review of such requests but without explicit determinations, would this be the best course of action as a TA?
I approach the question namely to conceptualize different scenarios in case I find myself in similar waters, balancing the time and effort cost of pursuing such a case as a TA with the responsibilities as a graduate student completing my degree.
If your professor expects you to loosen criteria for athletes, you've found a bad professor. If your administration does, then you're at the wrong university. Almost no one on the teaching side of academia considers lower standards for athletes to be a good thing.
I agree with the ideal, but I my goal here is to plan for contingencies.
Taken to the extreme: the UNC scandal
In my experience, you aren't likely to find the athletes to whom special consideration is given in your courses. They have special ones. There are some athletes who take a normal course load, and they generally neither need nor want any special consideration, other than perhaps some scheduling flexibility.
Is this very likely to come up? Of course I’ve heard the clichés about US college football but, with the exception of a few rotten apples, is this actually practiced nowadays? (Honest question.)
I work, raise my kid and study. Should I have easier exams? NO, and neither should you. A rather different thing is: "Should we have extra materials/guidelines for being able to compensate the missed classes?" and up to now every professor I met was on the YES side.
Unless they are students with special needs (e.g. disability), there is no need for special treatment.
You should cross this bridge if you come to it, and not worry about this right now. If you become a TA, If you're not given appropriate training/instruction about student athletes as a TA, If you actually end up instructing student athletes, If those student athletes demand special treatment that goes against your future school's guidelines...
@Andrea Lazzarotto: But that's what the question is about, really. Some (not all, of course) student athletes are arguably disabled, at least when it comes to doing college-level coursework. Their "special needs" are for something they can pass in order to keep their academic eligibility.
At Stanford, student-athletes even have access to special classes that are easier than usual: https://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/03/09/1046687/
@jamesqf The question is conceptual. What should a TA do when confronted with requests to accommodate for extraordinary circumstances. The type of circumstance, the extent of accommodation, and subsequent reporting as needed.
@half-pass, very bad method (although I understand it's part of US culture). Students should be treated equally unless they have specific mental/health conditions that require proper support. Being a good football player does not exonerate you from studying for an exam.
@AndreaLazzarotto Should =/= will.
@AndreaLazzarotto, I fully agree! That was a descriptive comment, not a normative one.
@Andrea Lazzarotto: But studying for an exam could be rather difficult, when you're a college athlete who reads at a 5th grade level or less; http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/07/us/ncaa-athletes-reading-scores/index.html
@KonradRudolph yes. Except since I'm further north we actually have this happen with hockey where sometimes the athletes presume that they should have special treatment over other students.
I'm tempted to answer "not if you want to keep your job," as that may well be true for some Div1-A schools. However, at any school where there are aren't athletic scholarships, there's no excuse for treating athletes differently. So they have time commitments. So do musicians, artists, etc. It's part of college.
As a rule, ALWAYS treat every student the same no matter what the situation is.
The following is specific to my university, the University of Michigan, but I would guess that the situation is similar at many other universities.
As far as I know, I am not allowed to apply different grading standards to different students in the same class, except that, if a class has both graduate and undergraduate students, then the graduate students may be held to a higher standard. (I've never used different standards for grad and undergrad students, but I believe it is permitted.)
Despite the general rule, there are oft-repeated stories about a particular professor (not in my department but in my college) who allegedly applied easier grading standards to athletes, over a decades-long career, and apparently got away with it. I don't know whether a tenured faculty member could get away with it nowadays, but I certainly wouldn't advise a TA to try it.
Apart from grading, though, athletes in major sports have one advantage, which may compensate for the time demands of their sports. The athletic department provides tutoring for student-athletes and tries to keep an eye on their academic progress (partly so that they don't become academically ineligible to play, partly to keep up a respectable graduation rate, and partly for the genuine benefit of the students). I once had two varsity hockey players in my class, and an assistant coach phoned me (this was long before email) to check on their progress and to ask me to let him know if they had difficulties in my class.
Sounds like there will never be a definitive answer to the question. The defacto policy is "no", while in practice it always varies.
@FrankFYC: I have an impression that your "defacto" is a "de jure" ;)
@darijgrinberg I always got the two mixed up. De facto is in practice but not official right? De jure is in both practice and official?
“de jure” = “by law”, and “de facto” = “in practice”. Neither implies the other.
Alright, it would appear that I got it reversed. The de jure policy is "no". But there are cases where the de facto policy is "yes". Correct?
@FrankFYC: Correct. The situations I am aware of (not first hand, but from blogs like Margaret Soltan's) involve special courses created (de-facto) to funnel athletes through with little workload; you probably won't end up grading such courses unless they get the impression that you can be trusted with this discreet and difficult mission...
Understood. Based on what is said (in the answers thus far) the possibility is real, but remote.
I always wondered what language is de jure, since the Latin phrase never had that /dʒ/ sound and was spelled de iure (nowadays dē iūre). I've looked it up and it seems that the spelling alone is a French influence, although the phrase is Latin.
@kubanczyk Well, in the Middle Ages people started to write ‘two types of i’ (i and j). These were considered mere variants with no difference except in appearance for quite a while. In German blackletter, j would be used at the beginning of words and i inside for both /i/ and /j/ sounds. Only later, after the 16th century were the two distinguished depending on whether the symbol represented a vowel or a semivowel. Since jure would contain the semivowel, it only makes sense to write it with j. How you pronounce it depends on your flavour of Latin pronunciation.
You might also note the point made in Peter’s answer below: that athletes will often require special accommodations regarding attendance if they need to, e.g., travel for games. In my institution they usually provide you with a list of conflicts early in the semester so you know when your athletes students will be absent and can schedule alternate test times if needed.
Wouldn't it violate some kind of privacy law (FERPA?) to tell someone the student isn't doing well in the class?
@Mehrdad This might have been before FERPA, but even now certain university employees are apparently entitled to get such information. I regularly get requests from an assistant dean to provide information about students who are doing poorly, so that academic advisers can try to help. And of course, at the end of every term, the registrar's office gets all the students' grades. I would think the assistant coach and the athletic department's tutors are in the same category as the assistant dean and the college's academic advisers.
Regarding a class with a combination of undergraduate and graduate students, often times the graduate students are registered for a separate class than the undergraduate, so the separate grading standards just reflect that they are in different classes that simply share resources like class room, time slot, and instructor time.
Re: Different standards for graduate and undergraduate students: At the maths department of University of Oslo, they are (or were, at least) not allowed to clone courses (i.e. give exactly the same course to graduates and undergraduates). The result was that when I took General Topology, which on paper has both a (penultimate term) undergraduate and a (first term) graduate version running parallel, graduate students were required to hand in TeX-written assignments, while the undergraduates were free to choose. Apart from that, lectures, assignments, and the exam were shared between the courses
@Arthur If I wanted (or was forced) to make a small difference in requirements between grad and undergrad students, this TeX requirement would actually look rather reasonable to me. Anyone intending to get a Ph.D.in mathematics really should learn TeX, whereas that wouldn't necessarily be the case for undergraduates, who might be planning to go into an entirely different field even if they were very strong in math.
The main difference between my athlete students and my non-athlete students is that I have to provide more regular feedback for the athletes, and provide accommodations for them to make up work when they have to miss something because of a scheduled athletic event.
I have been fortunate that my athlete students have been very good, conscientious students who were eager to ensure that they stayed on top of things.
Personally, I agree with the posters above in holding athletes to the same standards as everyone else. In the long run, it's best for everyone involved.
Re "provide accommodations for them to make up work when they have to miss something because of a scheduled athletic event": If OP is worried that this is extending special treatment to athletes, they could broaden this to any student who misses class due to a university-sponsored event (e.g. debate team, field-trip for another class).
Or who misses any class for any reasonable cause. My wife gave birth to our 3rd child via scheduled c-section, which was during the exam window for a statistics class I was taking, prof was willing to let me take the exam the day before or a few days after. As a teacher, I've extended the same courtesy to my students who have had to travel for work, work weird hours to finish a special project, etc. Even had one student who couldn't make an exam because he is the nuclear safety officer for a reactor nearby and the NRC had scheduled their regular audit. Got some cool pictures to show too:)
@ivanivan I had a similar experience. My third child was due at the end of finals week, but the previous two were a week or more early, so it wouldn't have been a surprise for her to come at any time at the end of the semester. I let all my profs know of the potential conflict on the first day of class and all were willing to accommodate rescheduling if needed. Luckily she held off until the day following the last exam.
I think it is a mistake to make rules for yourself ahead of time. When/if such a situation comes up, ask your colleagues at that institution how to handle it. (If you are a TA, then of course ask your immediate supervisor in the course: in that case you are perhaps not even authorized to act on your own.)
I agree with this answer. Two general points: (i) trying to figure out how academic culture works at level X / institution Y before you get there is most often more trouble than it's worth. (ii) The whole point of being a TA is that you are assisting the instructor of record. So when in doubt, ask the instructor.
@PeteL.Clark The OP didn't mention his field. In some (many?) fields the GTAs are instructors of record. But granted, in that case, the statement only changes from "ask the instructor" to "ask the coordinator" :-)
This is useful only up to a point. Local academic culture isn't the only consideration here; you also want to have a sense of the "global" academic ethics on this question. That way, if your particular supervisor or institution turns out to be out of step with the rest of the world, you'll be able to recognize it and consider how to respond. So I think the other answers are useful as well.
I'm a former D1 athlete so I'll offer a bit of a different perspective here. During competition season I was often out for multiple days a week for travel and meets. I always got deadline extensions when I was going to be out but I don't think was ever graded on a different scale then other students. I think your ability to refuse to make accommodations depends on your university. I was always told that if a professor wasn't making reasonable accommodations; to let the support staff at the athletic department know. All of my professors were always reasonable so it never came up, but I got the sense there would be some pressure applied to the professor to be flexible on deadlines around school sponsored events.
I think the answers to a lot of your questions will depend partially on what department you're in. I was an engineering major in undergrad. A lot of the professors there didn't have a ton of athletes and therefore didn't have a ton of experience in dealing with the somewhat unique circumstances. I needed to spend more time with them communicating and negotiating reasonable deadline extensions than professors in some of my electives which had more athletes in them.
I played football in college (Full disclosure, Division III so not a money making system for the university and no one's going to the NFL, but still 20-30 hours a week in season between practice/film/travel, maybe more).
We never got nor expected any special treatment from our professors. At most, professors were willing to work out a schedule with us. I even recall coaches proctoring tests in hotels if we were traveling on exam day. Personally, I had to do Transport homework problems on the bus on more than one occasion. And there are support systems. We had study groups on the team. There's the study groups from the university. For those who really aren't there for the education, there's counselors who will help plot the path of least resistance with regard to course loads.
By and large, student athletes know what they're getting themselves into by committing to athletics. It's a huge time-commitment and you learn how to manage it. It's hard work and that's a big part of the appeal. Frankly, most of them know that they're in school for the education. Very few expect to make a living in their sport.
Do not do a disservice to the vast majority of athletes who want to earn their degree honestly and ethically and take great pride in doing so.
As a graduate student employee, you'll have a supervisor. If you're a grader, it will be the professor or instructor of the course. If you're an instructor, there will be an administrator who will oversee your work. When you're not sure about something like this, you should get in the habit of asking your supervisor. This is very important.
You can certainly read up on university policy, but checking with your supervisor is the most important thing.
Your title looks inside out. "Professors, and by extension their teaching assistants" would make a lot more sense.
Side note: as a graduate student instructor I had two members of the university tennis team in my class one semester. They were conscientious and well organized. They knew the dates they would miss and were proactive about requesting work ahead of their absences. I think the only type of student-athlete you might be pressured to ease up your expectations for would be in the money-making sports, in some universities where academic rigor is less important than bringing in the bucks for certain high profile men's sports such as football.
A faculty member's role as your supervisor is distinct and separate from his/her position as a teacher in charge of a course.
@einpoklum - I don't know what you mean. If you're using "supervisor" to mean "thesis advisor," then that's not relevant to my answer. I used "supervisor" to mean "someone who oversees your work." You could think of this person as your boss or manager, in some sense; however, you'll have more autonomy than one usually associates with a job where you have a "manager" or "boss."
There's one general rule that you'll find works well for all special cases, whether you're a TA or teaching:
If the student is making a legitimate effort to learn the material, you should be accommodating. If they aren't putting in the time, don't bother with yours.
For example, an athlete turns in homework late because of a game, but is otherwise to the standard of the rest of the class. Maybe they asked for permission in advance. I would tend to overlook the lateness and perhaps grade a little easier.
In contrast, if they submit junk but on time, I'd give them a poor grade.
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
As a TA, you don't have much power. Stick to the policies of the class.
As a professor, you have more power, although you might (or might not) be beholden to the department or university for some of your course policies.
However, there is usually a way to hold athletes to the same standard as everyone else while understanding their special needs. Just have a generous policy toward assignment extensions and make-up exams. Athletes shouldn't really be treated differently from people who are traveling for the school debate team, or who have special assignments for their work-study jobs, or who need to take care of sick family members. If you want to, you can also give assignments and grades so students with many other commitments can still do well in the course. That way, athletes would be at less of a disadvantage without being treated "unfairly" well.
And no, you shouldn't be more lenient on athletes when they're found to violate the honor code. But you can probably decide what does and doesn't constitute cheating, e.g. you should be able to let students bring a piece of paper with the formulas when they take an exam.
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98282 | Is there a (text)book on how academia works?
Is there a (text)book on how academia or science works? What I'm looking for is not anecdotes and tips, but actual insights presented systematically, like any textbooks in every disciplines. This book should provide connections between varieties in academia, and how the root of seeking new knowledge shaping the varieties as they are now. I think this can be categorized as an application of sociology.
Some questions I want to know:
How does a new theory spreads out and be accepted?
Can it answer everything?
How do governments fund researches?
[to be added]
Meta discussion: How to make the question asking for books on academia/science not a shopping list?
I'd find it difficult to write a book on something that varies more than you think it does ;-) When I was a 15-year old kid, I enjoyed P. B. Medawar, Advice to a young scientist, but nowadays I'd consider it a bit outdated.
BTW, most of the books I read so far about academia are books that complain on how badly the level of academia has fallen down, or about the eternal fight between hard sciences and the humanities.
Academia (and 'science') is a human organization, subject to all the advantages and frailties of humans.
@MassimoOrtolano yes, and while writing and reading them are good, I feel that are still circular. The mean of textbooks is to provide connections between varieties. Those varieties are exactly the reason I ask this question.
How science works, and how academia works, aren't exactly the same thing. I heard an interview on Fresh Air once about college campuses' race to build more and more campus buildings. That doesn't have anything to do with science, directly.
@aparente001 I would prefer to know both. But I admit my interest is more on the side of science
Science and academia are two distinct and very different things. Pick one for the question.
Sometimes I’m tempted to suggest Kafka’s The Trial.
@Greg regarding the two existed answers, how would you think how this questing should be edited?
one and only Jeff Schmidt ...and Disciplined Mind
For a bit of satire, try Moo by Jane Smiley
@JeffE I find the Laputa adventure from Gulliver's travels even more apt.
Alright, I feel we need to have a post about fictions in academia
Thanks @greenb for your link to Merton, I found a good pointer to everything about science itself: Science studies. One of the introductory books I found is David J. Hess, Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction. Here is its introduction:
Science Studies is the first comprehensive survey of the field, combining a concise overview of key concepts with an original and integrated framework. In the process of bringing disparate fields together under one tent, David J. Hess realizes the full promise of science studies, long uncomfortably squeezed into traditional disciplines. He provides a clear discussion of the issues and misunderstandings that have arisen in these interdisciplinary conversations. His survey is up-to-date and includes recent developments in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, and feminist studies.
By moving from the discipline-bound blinders of a sociology, history, philosophy, or anthropology of science to a transdisciplinary field, science studies, Hess argues, will be able to provide crucial conceptual tools for public discussions about the role of science and technology in a democratic society.
Glad you got unstuck. I haven't read it but Wikipedia has an article on "sociology of scientific knowledge."
So this is mainly about science, and not academia as a whole. I imagine academics in the department of English differ substantially from academics in the department of Chemistry.
For science you may also find the fields of "philosophy of science" and "history of science" interesting. Kuhn's classic book "The structure of scientific revolutions" is very readable and can tell you quite a bit about how new theories spread out.
The study of the higher education and academia is a huge area of research, and I must admit, I am no expert in it. While some publications are opinion-based, as Massimo Ortolano notes in his comment, there is a growing number of research-based works on academia developed within different disciplinary frameworks, which includes those developed within the framework of academic sociology, as you mention in your question.
Among the trailblazing works in the sociology of academia were the publications by R. K. Merton, and also
R. Whitley, The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences (1984), and P. Bourdieu, Homo Academicus (1984), focusing on French academia.
Among the recent notable books in this field, I can cite M. Lamont, How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (2010), based on a study of US grant peer review panels, and
J. R. Posselt, Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, and Faculty Gatekeeping (2016), based on participant observations about a number of graduate admission committees at US universities. Tracing the differences between the branches (varieties) of academia and explaining them is a major theme in both these books. But there are many more.
Thanks, I found a detail review for The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences. Do you know any other books along that theme?
Take a look at Tomorrow's Professor: Preparing for Academic Careers in Science and Engineering
The book is focused on STEM professors, but most of the research and advice is probably cross-discipline. It's probably the best book about what you're in for as a graduate student, postdoc, and tenure-track professor.
Not really a book, but as a start one can visit the Category:Academia in Wikipedia, trace through the links they are interested, and look at the references if necessary.
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117354 | How can an Error in Google Scholar be corrected?
The bibliographic data of an article of mine is confused with that of a book with the same title. Not so long ago the book was confused with another article of the same year, thereby cancelling the citations. How to correct and restore?
The solutions from How to split two papers that Google Scholar incorrectly thinks are the same paper? might work.
The general answer to "How to do x with Google Scholar" is "with great difficulty" - I don't think Google care much about Scholar, as it doesn't make them any money. There is a support form at https://support.google.com/scholar/contact/general. If you are lucky you might get a response.
I can attest to google scholar answering requests for help. But they were often not willing or able to fix problems I described.
First of all, make sure that the place where Google Scholar is getting the data from has it listed correctly. They scrape from other sources and there's a mistake in the source, then there will be a mistake in Google Scholar as well.
Then you should try to contact them and let them know of the mistake. Even though the chance to get it corrected might be low (Google Scholar isn't as highly prioritized for Google as some of their other services), it is still worth a try.
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49086 | How to deal with poor teaching evaluations on academic job market?
I will enter the academic job market after having received poor teaching evaluations for my first and only independently taught class. Some of the criticisms were well founded, and I am trying my best to improve the class in the future. The teaching evaluations for the next (and hopefully improved) installment of the class will not be available in time to include them in my job applications.
While I am still inexperienced as a teacher, I don't think the evaluations are entirely fair. My predecessor agrees with me that the class is one of the most challenging classes to teach (it's a mandatory statistics class for terminal masters students without a mathematical background).
How should I deal with these teaching evaluations in my job application? Is there any way to provide context for the hiring committee?
Are you applying mainly for positions which are teaching-focused or research-focused?
Mainly teaching-focused.
Everyone has a tough time the first several years of teaching. It takes several years for people to find their feet. We can't all be Richard Feynman right out of grad school.
Still, a search committee might note your poor scores. You can compensate in several ways:
By remarking on this in your Statement of Teaching. I would try not to dismiss or shift blame, but tackle it head on. "In my first year of teaching, I received poor scores in Nuclear Physics 101. These mainly centered around X and Y. I have revised my syllabus to handle X and will dedicate more time to discussion around points Y. I have also changed how I handle Z, which should alleviate both problems, etc. etc. I have also decided to be less of a jerk."
By delivering a stellar guest lecture when you're brought on campus for your interviews.
Note that #1 and #2 both involve practices (statement of teaching; guest lecture in a class) that not all universities and colleges follow. Generally the ones that care about teaching require them and the ones that don't don't.
For example, I teach at an R1 where undergraduate teaching is ... deprecated. We mainly care about your research and that's what we evaluate our candidates on.
P.S. Most everyone hates teaching and takes statistics. If this were a course which you should have excelled in (ie, your research area), it might be of more concern.
+1 for not dismissing or shifting blame. Take responsibility and explain how your going to do better.
Darn the inability to edit comments. It should be "hates teaching and taking statistics"
I would see if you can find someone willing to write you a positive teaching recommendation letter.
In mathematics, applicants are typically expected to provide one or more such letters. Sometimes these read "So-and-so had difficulties in his/her first year, but responded markedly well to feedback and constructive criticism. H/she is now teaching the course a second time and is doing an excellent job: [here the letter writer gives a lot of detail....]"
Depending on where you apply, it may not be required to provide the teaching evaluations. For example, in the past, I have applied for a few jobs in Canada and other countries and it was not required. However, when I was invited for job interview, they asked me to give a 10 minutes course demonstration, so they could evaluate my teaching skills. I was required to do this for at least three different job interviews for professor positions. So I would say to provide the evaluations if they ask for them. Otherwise, you don't need to. If they ask for the evaluations, then you could always explain that it is a difficult course to teach. As a professor, I am aware that some courses are more difficult and I think that most professors should be aware of that and understand that.
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105238 | It is possible to obtain two PhD degrees (various fields) on the basis of one interdisciplinary PhD dissertation?
It is possible to obtain two PhD degrees (various fields) on the basis of one interdisciplinary PhD dissertation? Is this something feasible (in Europe)?
Or maybe there must be two different 'physical' doctoral dissertations?
Usually not, because it's forbidden to defend the same thesis twice.
Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17232/is-doing-two-phds-a-good-path/17245
Why would you want to? It seems like a waste of energy to me. A research degree is a paper saying that a department at a university judges you able to do independent research on a scientific level. Why would you want two of those?
If you love to research then you should research instead of getting back into the situation in which you have heckloads of obligations other than research to do. If you don't love research but got the degree to get some job in industry which requires the degree then you should go for that job.
@mathreadler A PhD in a particular field is often taken to be a strong qualification of one's expertise in that field. It's not strictly necessary to have multiple PhD's to be have cross-disciplinary credibility, though it certainly could be helpful.
@Nat I don't think so. Most people would be puzzled why you'd even think of doing it. I think many people would be curious to ask "So why did you go for a second PhD? Could you not find any post doc spot or assistant professor spot, or job in industry..?".
I have seen this happen, with multiple cases of the same student earning PhDs from different departments (somewhat related topic areas) at the same top university. One department required a private defense and the other, a public defense, so I think there were two defenses. For privacy reasons, I can't name names.
I believe it is possible, as @WBT has mentioned. I think I have heard of such a case. I even understand the logical reasons behind it, and how it could positively benefit one's CV. But I do not think this is a good move you intend to stay in the academia because most people will see it as borderline unethical at best.
I'm intrigued by this question! Suppose someone researches two fields during their PhD and publishes manuscripts for both, then can they take manuscripts for one field and write a dissertation, and take the manuscripts from the other field and write a second dissertation? The dissertations are based on distinct manuscripts, hence, the objections below do not apply. Of course, producing enough research to fill two dissertations is probably beyond the vast majority!
No, at least the regulations that I am aware of require that the dissertation be a novel contribution to the respective field and that it has not been submitted before.
If you write a dissertation at the crossroads of different fields, you have to decide for a field in which you want to formally graduate and obtain a degree. It may be advisable to look for supervisors from different fields or with an interdisciplinary background.
Would this still hold if submitted in different countries? What do you think personally?
@SK19 yes, it does.
Or, alternately, find one of many interdisciplinary PhD programs.
@SK19: A (state of the art in a given) field does not end at national borders.
It's hard to imagine any legitimate university allowing a thesis that has already been submitted for some other degree, whether at that university or somewhere else.* If you lied and claimed it was a new thesis, your degree would be revoked if they ever found out. Furthermore, there are more requirements to earning a PhD than just presenting a dissertation. You're not going to be able to register as a student and submit a pre-prepared dissertation the next day.
And, anyway, what's the point? A PhD is generally treated as a level of achievement, rather than a quantity of achievement. Getting two PhDs is like getting two driving licenses. That doesn't show you're twice as good a driver – it's just saying "I can drive" twice. Why would you want to prove twice that you're at the same level, instead of using all that time to advance beyond the level of being a grad student?
Having two PhDs is so unusual that everybody is going to ask you about both of them. How impressed do you think they'll be when you admit that this second PhD you were bragging about was just the resubmission of the same dissertation to another university?
* And note that la femme cosmique's answer is a case of the same thesis being simultaneously submitted to two universities as part of a joint programme that both universities agree to when the student enrolled.
Getting two PhDs is like having two driving licenses. I have to remember that one.
Some universities allow this. I have a friend who did 2 years of his PhD in France and 1 year in China. He now holds, at completion, a PhD from the French institution and a PhD from the Chinese one, from one thesis (although separately in English and Chinese). But it's still the same field. Semi-related. OP could find a 'co-tutuelle'-ish arrangement between two institutions/groups in different fields in which this is theoretically possible, but that would be a pre-established relationship rather than something to do during the PhD.
@lafemmecosmique That's interesting to know. I think it would make a good answer.
I have two driving licenses -- one for the left and one for the right. :P
@DavidRicherby ok, I added it as a "super specific but theoretically possible" answer.
Well, I finished one PhD in chemistry, but thinking to take one in humanities/social science, I am stupid for dooing it?
"Getting two PhDs is like getting two driving licenses." - which can be very reasonable thing when wanting to drive in two different "contexts" (here: traffic legislations). The driving licenses indeed seem to be a pretty good analogy to why it can theoretically make sense to get two doctoral degrees in different fields.
@DavidRicherby You can read something about the double degrees achievable through agreements between universities in the answers to this question.
@O.R.Mapper Of course, the analogy isn't perfect. However, most countries accept other countries' licenses as evidence of competence to drive on short-term visits. If you want to drive long-term in a country, you typically need to get a license in that country but my understanding is that this is basically because it's impossible to impose penalty points on a foreign license. As for multiple PhDs, the asker of this question wants to use the same thesis to prove that they're good at two different subjects. But you don't need two PhDs to do that: you just need to say "Hey, look at my PhD in...
... widget-theoretic aspects of gizmo studies. That proves that I'm good at widget theory as well as gizmos." They don't need to say "I have a PhD in widget theory and a PhD in gizmo studies" to prove that.
@SSimon Well, to stretch the analogy a little, that sounds much more like getting, say, a car license and a truck license since you're proposing PhDs in two completely different subjects. The asker is proposing to use the same thesis to get PhDs in two different fields whose intersection includes that thesis.
@DavidRicherby: "most countries accept other countries' licenses as evidence of competence to drive on short-term visits" - yes, that's why I wrote "theoretically". Seeing on [travel.se] and other travel-related message boards how drivers cause dangerous situations simply because they are allowed to drive somewhere with a foreign license, but without any requirement of familiarizing with the local laws of the road (that can differ in basic things such as default right of way at junctions compared to their home country), it arguably isn't very reasonable other than for facilitating the ...
... whole process. Local rules and conventions differ. And the same can be said about different research fields. Note that my comment referred exclusively to the cited statement about two doctoral degrees being pointless, not to the OP's particular case of wanting to use the very same research work to obtain two degrees.
It is possible to do this, but usually the arrangements are pre-designated before you do the PhD. My answer is going to be very specific here; I have a friend who did this, and I know it's "a thing" at least in France. But as I said, the scope of the answer is therefore limited to a PhD done jointly between a French lab and one somewhere else.
A friend of mine has done a "co-tutelle internationale de these" which means that he spent 1 year of his PhD in his home country (China) and 2 years in a lab in France (paid by the Chinese government). At the end he wrote his thesis in Chinese and again in English (with a French abstract), defended in China, and he has two PhDs; one from the home institution and one from the French one. These agreements are somewhat common, at least in France, although I cannot really speak for other countries. However, that does mean that it is theoretically possible. As far as I'm aware, besides the language, the theses he submitted were the same.
It is not difficult to imagine a situation in which one of the labs is a different discipline to another (e.g. something like engineering vs. astrophysics) and so you could end up with 2 PhDs in such an arrangement. However these things are pre-arranged before the start of the PhD, and to form a new one would probably be a lot of administrative work.
However, it's possible, at least here.
Some stuff about it is written here:
https://ressources.campusfrance.org/catalogues_recherche/diplomes/fr/cotutelle_fr.pdf
Especially the paragraph that I'll poorly translate:
Which degree do we obtain?
Each cotutelle thesis is held within the framework of a convention
linking two institutions of which one is necessarily French. The
procedures and rules are those of the French doctorate and those of
the doctorate in the partner country. The two universities recognize
the validity of the cotutelle set up and that of the degree supported
(grade of Doctor for French university and equivalent diploma for
foreign university).
Concerning the issue of the diploma, there are 2 possibilities:
• The student receives a Doctor's degree conferred jointly by both
institutions. The diploma is mentioned under his two appellations (for
example: PhD in French literature and PhD in French literature).
• The student receives two doctoral degrees from each institution.
Each diploma then bears the mention of the diploma specific to each
institution, mentions the fact that the thesis was made in
co-supervision and specifies the name of the partner institution.
In both cases, the thesis is defended in only one of the two
institutions associated with the cotutelle, by decision of the two
research directors.
But this is a highly-specific answer which is France-centric. Is that possible elsewhere? Probably. But I don't know enough about it to answer.
Yes, it's possible elsewhere, see also this answer of mine. I know of different cases, e.g. Italy/France (a student of mine who graduated last year), Italy/Germany and Italy/Finland.
I wonder how much these dual degree programs are really just the result of (or vestiges of, in the case of a post-Bologna Europe) bureaucratic headaches that people have to have their degrees recognized in different countries. I'm not aware of any of these programs being within the same country (unless one is a professional degree, e.g., MD/PhD at Emory / Georgia Tech)
@guifa knowing French administration, this would not surprise me in the least ;)
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93626 | How to write an email to request a dataset to a professor
I'm interested in a dataset used in a scientific article, but I am not able to find this dataset on the Internet, I guess it is because the dataset was provided by NSTAR (an energy company) that no longer exists (it has merged with Eversource).
I have thought of requesting it to the corresponding author of the article, but I have never sent anything to a MIT visitant professor (female, just for the record) and I have never called a teacher of mine by its title. I think that there is not such a strict culture in Spain of calling everyone by its title. Can anyone help me in writing the letter? Will it bother her if I send such request? How should I start? What should I say about myself? How should I end the letter?
Professors are just normal humans, even at MIT. Be friendly and brief. How about this:
Subject:
Request for dataset used in [article name]
Body:
Dear Professor [last name],
on page [page number] of the article "[article name]" you are referring to a dataset consisting of [elements of dataset]. I am currently working on _____ and would like to ask if you could send me this dataset for further analysis as it would help me [benefit for you, e.g. "verify your results"].
Thank you,
[your first name] [your last name]
Nice answer. My only suggestion would be to use the correct title: either Dr. or Professor last name.
@RichardErickson Was about to make the same suggestion! Definitely use the correct title (I recommend Dr. if you're unsure of their professorship standing).
I assumed that most people in academia don't really care about their academic titles when it comes to day to day communication and that they are only used in very formal communication.
After reconsideration I agree with your suggestions. It is more safe and reduces the risk of offending her by not showing enough respect. I changed my proposal.
@problemofficer If you wish to be informal, avoid the use of any title and use the [first name]. However, using the wrong (i.e., "Ms" in this case) would be insulting. My personal rule of thumb for academic writing is to be formal unless indicated otherwise.
@problemofficer My bad... I have sent the email with my personal email account instead of my academic one... Do u think that it can be a problem?
@vicaba: It think, it will probably make a difference since a university domain gives you more prestige and trustworthiness, but I don't think that it is going to be a problem. It is just research data after all.
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9990 | Alphabetical Order for Authors in Computer Science
I was wondering, in the field of Computer Science, if there is a convention for acknowledging that author ordering for an academic paper is by alphabetical order, not contribution.
I know that in CS, alphabetical ordering, isn't all that common, however due to a lack of internal consensus, alphabetical ordering would be preferred in my situation.
Even in fields outside of CS, is there a convention for perhaps indicating in a footnote that the author list is alphabetical and NOT by contribution?
EDIT: To elaborate a bit more, after examining the question posted here, our field would likely be considered 'computer systems' (rather than theoretical computer science) where it is stated that the first author is usually the team lead. However in our situation, as I said, we are having internal disagreement over which person would be considered 'leader', and I was wondering what the best way to indicate equal contribution, or perhaps use alphabetical ordering to avoid the issue all together. We weren't really expecting to submit our work for publication (we're undergraduates), so this all has been rather unexpected.
Why would there be a footnote? A simple examination of the author list will indicate that it is alphabetical ordered. It is quite the convention in certain sub-fields in computer science.
I've seen tons of math/theoretical CS papers with authors listed in alphabetical order, and I don't remember a single instance of mentioning how they ordered authors. It'd be strange to see such a footnote.
@Shion I don't think simply looking at the author list is enough to tell how it's ordered. For example, how do you know it's not in oder of contribution (or whatever order) when the paper is written by "Fujiwara and Shion"? Technically, it's in alphabetical order. But just because it coincides with alphabetical order doesn't mean it's not in order of contribution. You don't know if the authors' intention was to list them in order of contribution or not, do you?
possible duplicate of What does first authorship really mean?
I have seen such a footnote, but never in a theoretical CS paper. I have also seen a couple of TCS papers where the authors were randomly ordered (with an explanatory footnote) but that idea never caught on.
@JeffE +1 Like the notion of the random order idea.
@JeffE - do you put the seed in the explanatory footnote?
In theoretical CS, alphabetical order is the norm - see the relevant wikipedia entry.
We ended up making a note with the author's list that names were in alphabetical order an not indicative of contribution.
It depends on the subfield. Andrew Appel has a nice paper working this out for different conferences. (Hat tip Dylan Thurston on MO.)
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118633 | If a thesis committe member asks for changes in my thesis does that mean I'm not getting a PhD "summa cum laude"?
I am a PhD student in Germany. I had a question regarding the summa cum laude mark for my thesis.
To open the examination procedure, I asked three reviewers to read my thesis (my main supervisor and two external reviewers). Now it seems my reviewers evaluated my thesis and they sent their mark to the university. I received a letter form the PhD committee that now the chair of my oral examination will fix a date. Together with this letter, I have received another letter from one of the reviewers. The reviewer asked for some changes in the introduction part of the thesis.
My question is:
If the reviewer requests for changes, does it mean that he did not give the best mark? I know that all three reviewers of the thesis, beside four members of the examination committee, should gave me the same (best) grade to receive the summa cum laude mention.
Huh, I didn't know that one could get grades for a PhD beyond "You have a PhD". Clearly one can in Germany. I learn something new every time I visit this site :)
@Flyto: Some universities give special awards for exceptional dissertations, but I too have not heard of the kind of "dissertation distinction" that Kathe asked about.
@Flyto I have seen several universities giving a mention to PhD degrees: cum laude (funding ran out), magna cum laude (good job, most people get this) and summa cum laude (f**kin A)
@Flyto My PhD even had a numerical score (70/70).
There is really no way to answer this. It is what it is. The person asking will make the judgement and we can't read minds here. Relax.
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72674 | How to encourage self-archiving of preprints in science?
As the background, I am a graduate student in high energy physics, mainly theoretical physics. Recently, I have sen that there are a few scholars who don't put the preprint versions of the paper in the preprint servers such as arxiv. I must add the fact that for many of the journals the self-archiving of the preprint is allowed, and I see no point for not putting the preprint version submitted to peer review on arxiv. I have seen that there are some old researchers and also some not so old ones who don't put the preprint versions of the paper on arxiv and sometimes make it difficult for some papers to be read. Hence, the question would be on how to promote open access and convince people to be opened within this direction.
How to encourage self-archiving of preprints in science? — Cite self-archived papers more often than papers that are not self-archived. Oh, wait, that already happens naturally.
From what I see, some organizations are solving this by making self-archiving mandatory. In the UK, research funding bodies are now starting to use only open-access publications to assess the quality of research. As a result, the universities are starting to require their academic staff to self-archive publications. Also, I've seen a conference organizers discussing whether they should require the authors to self-archive the accepted papers.
This is a very broad question that the open access (OA) community has been discussing for ages and, as you point out, is not solved yet.
Universities have tried adopting open access policies to encourage researchers to share their works. (See ROARMAP for an overview of these policies.) However, many of these OA policies require researchers to deposit papers in institutional repositories (such as DASH for Harvard) instead of topic repositories such as the arXiv, for various reasons.
Many research funders also encourage OA (for instance, the Wellcome Trust or the BMGF), but they often foster hybrid OA: paying publishers to make the article freely available even if it was published in a closed journal. These fees are called Article Processing Charges (APC). These policies do not focus on fostering self-archiving by authors.
Topic repositories are successful when they are adopted by scientific communities: this is the case for arXiv (originally in physics) but also for more confidential platforms such as IACR eprints (cryptography) or LingBuzz (linguistics). By definition, scientific communities span accross universities and funders, so these repositories are quite orthogonal to institutional efforts towards OA. I think the best way to foster them is to have some influence in your community and advertise the repository you like.
Note: I am involved in the dissemin project, which tries to help researchers upload missing papers to open repositories (not specifically topic repositories though). Feel free to join or to send us your comments.
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83685 | Overview of the mathematical (and computer science) world by countries
I am looking for statistics of research done in mathematics and computer science by country. I found reports for Thainland, Kyrgyzstan and Finland in mathematics. Where can I find similar statistics for other countries, and also the "bigger" ones like USA, Russia, UK, France, Germany etc.
Things that should be mentioned are: Major universities/institutes, what was achieved in the last decades, research output, people, topics and conferences held and a general overview. So how to find such information?
"conferences held" - Thailand is a pretty and interesting place, and thus quite suitable as a location for international conferences. Not sure how directly that attractiveness counts as "research done" ;)
At least in computer science conferences are mostly organized by a local research group in the field, so it has a link to the research done.
Let's just say ... there's a reason why the annual HICSS conference takes place on Hawaii, and it's not exclusively because the local research groups are particularly prolific in the topics covered by the conference, compared to research groups at other places. Of course, there need to be local research groups interested in (co-)organizing the conference, but they're certainly not the only reason (and not even necessarily the most important one) for the selection of a location.
Okay, I agree; then conferences might not reflect the research done or might not count as an evaluation thereof, anyway would be good to have an overview, as conferences in some sense show whats going on.
Sure. Even though I am generally suspicious of seemingly one-dimensional rankings for complex things such as "research", I agree this comparison can be interesting in some respects; my comment about conference locations was a bit tongue-in-cheek, anyway.
Never said they are meant for some kind of ranking. If in country A where published just 1 article in a year, and country B maybe 100 articles I never meant to imply that country B might be ranked higher, as the content of the one article might be highly interesting (btw is it not clear how to compress all these factors mentioned into a single ranking). Just to have an overview, where, how and what, and in what intensity, is done in the countries. Pure numbers and facts, what anyone might derive from them is up to them.
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79121 | Why mention town and country of equipment manufacturer?
For reproducibility I see the use of mentioning the equipment type, version number and manufacturer. But in the internet age it seems unnecessary to me to mention the town and country of an equipment manufacturer in the methods section of an academic paper.
In my opinion it was probably useful when you needed a phone book to look up the company details. Nowadays, I think these details make the papers less readable because they break the flow of the text.
However, my PI and some coworkers always want me to add this information without giving a reason why. (If they give reasons they are: "the journal wants it" [not true], or "everybody does it this way" [bad reason])
Is there any good reason to add the town/country that I did not think of?
Which field? I surely mention neither the town nor the country of an equipment manufacturer, just the manufacturer and the model number (not even the version number).
Could it not just be a historical thing? If you go back to a pre-WWW time, where perhaps there were many more small, local, manufacturers then it would make sense to specify the location of the manufacturer. Is this a reason to continue to do it? Perhaps not, but I can't imagine it's the only practice that we persist with despite the reason that necessitated it ceasing to be the case
As an alternative, baseless, speculation. Perhaps its for manufacturers who have factories in different locations? The (quite unrelated) example that springs to mind is Fender, who manufacture guitars in America, Japan and Mexico, with consensus suggesting that the quality of the product decreasing as you move across the locations. If I was buying a Stratocaster I may well want to know which factory it was made in.
The field is Biophysics. As for the (good) comment by Ian_Fin: I think that usually the company location listed refers to the headquarters. We do not usually know which factory equipment comes from. And then still, different parts may come from different locations.
Perhaps this is similar to including the town and country where books were published when you put them in your bibliography.
Great question - I've often seen this and thought that it seems somewhat archaic. It's even used for software such as 'Matlab, Mathworks Inc., Natick, MA' (random example) which seems even more unnecessary to me.
I think this is especially common in the medical literature. The objective, as you said, is to make sure readers can find the exact same product you used to get the full picture and for the purpose of evaluating or reproducing your work.
Even in the "Internet age", there are many reasons why one might need the physical location of a manufacturer in order to access their products. Here are a few that come to my mind:
Many companies are not easy to locate with a google search and I know several that don't have a public website or any sort of web presence at all. It might feel silly to write "we used Gmail (Google, Mountain View, California)" but there are many businesses that are not as publicly known. If you're looking in an online phone book you still need to know where to look for.
Companies might have many subsidiaries and divisions that could be developing products and prototypes without the other ones necessarily knowing about it, especially prototypes. Contacting the wrong one might lead to a dead end.
Due to different regulations (and that is especially true for drugs and medical equipment) it can be that the same company is selling different products depending on the location. The exact composition of a drug or the firmware might differ depending on where the products were sold.
It actually sometimes happens that two completely unrelated companies providing the same type of services or goods that are active in separate countries have the exact same name. Confusing, I know.
Companies disappear, get bought, change name, etc. Knowing the location at time t might help locate the new entity that could deliver the product.
This being said "the journal wants it" is a valid argument, if it's effectively the case and "everybody does it this way" is not that bad of a reason when it comes to article structure and writing practices. Be creative on the content, not on the form. I personally don't feel brackets with (Nvidia Corporation) "break the flow" less than (Nvidia Corporation, Santa Clara, California).
Plus it brings back good memories of time spent in California.
California is not a country!
I would elaborate the "everybody does it this way" point to note that if it's so ubiquitous, it becomes an expectation among reviewers that can count against a paper if omitted, even if it doesn't actually weaken the paper in a substantive way.
@LightnessRacesinOrbit yet.
@LightnessRacesinOrbit anymore.
+1 especially for "selling different products depending on location". This is something most people find surprising. Even things which are assumed to be "the same" such as branded food products (McDonalds chicken nuggets, Haribo gold bears) have different composition due to local tastes. But then there are differences nobody knows about - I once worked for a biologist whose PhD student's mice experiment failed at a stage which had worked with the same mouse strain in another country. Then they imported the pellets used in the original experiment and the problem disappeared.
I've always assumed that this is in case there are two different companies with the same name. The location of those companies will almost certainly remove any ambiguity.
For rather obvious company names this is definitely possible, though trademark rules would normally mean that a country is sufficient to disambiguate.
"trademark" are only within the same trade, so you can have two companies with the same name selling different items. It can take many phone calls to track down the correct company, so having the name of the town saves a lot of time.
@Ian yes, but the trade may be as broad as "medical devices" or even broader, thus probably obvious from the context
@ChrisH, not to google when you are looking for the current contact information for a company.
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108556 | How can I tactfully ask a professor to bring requests to me earlier?
I'm a PhD student. A professor that I collaborate with (not from my university) asked me on two separate occasions to help with grants that were due in a week. In both cases I managed to squeeze out 20 hours to help him, and he paid me out of his own pocket (not using grant funds).
How can I tactfully ask the professor to bring requests to me earlier in the future? I guess one way is to simply decline future requests that I cannot handle. But I want to preserve goodwill when possible - I could quote him an insane hourly rate if he again approaches me at the last minute, but some people might view that as me taking advantage of the situation, even though it's not my fault that he approached me so late. (The rumor mill can always turn white into black.) The best solution, in my opinion, is to successfully persuade him to approach me early.
Would it help if he alerted you a couple of weeks earlier, saying for example, "Can you help me during the week of April 23?"
Yes, that's precisely what I'm asking. Like if his grant is due on May 22, ask for help on April 22 (today).
Sorry, I don't understand your answer to my clarifying question. If I were in your shoes, I would want a heads-up. That is, I would want some advance notice, so that I wouldn't have my own deadlines and this collaborator's sudden deadline all raining down on me at the same time. I would want the collaborator to look at his calendar and notice that he will need me to do a rush job starting April 23 (as an example). I'd want him to tell me that by April 16 (or preferably earlier), so that I'd have this rush job on my radar screen. However, for some people, that wouldn't be enough of ...
... a solution. They would want to receive the draft by April 16, so they could spread the work out over two weeks (that's also an example). Or, so they could put in more time, so as to feel more confident that the writing and editing (etc.) they are doing is solid work. Because reading and writing frantically is very stressful. So I'm asking which of those two changes is what you need.
Wanting to preserve goodwill is commendable. However, if this has now happened not once, but twice, you may want to ask yourself how much this particular individual's goodwill is worth. You have reinforced this professor's lack of planning twice by saving his hide, and you get more of what you reward. Do not be surprised if he does not change. After all, it has worked for him twice now.
Just tell him. Its not NOT tactful to want more than a week heads up if something takes a lot of time. Just because he is an professor does not mean he must be treated with silk gloves.
@aparente001 Ideally, I would want to receive the draft by April 16, though at the minimum I would want advance notice of a rush job
Well, the basic approach to asserting oneself, and I think it applies here, is: Step one, invite the person to talk with you in a stress-free time, away from the normal environment; it could even be to step outside to look at the daffodils for five minutes. Step two, use an "I-message." Example: "I am glad to help you crank out a proposal. It's rewarding work for me and I'm glad to contribute to the team effort [collaborate with you]. But I need a heads-up at least a week in advance, so I can clear my schedule. Ideally, I'd like to have two full weeks to work with the manuscript."
Channeling JeffE, just ask him directly, as if he were human.
I was glad to be able to help with the grant proposal. But if something like this comes up again in the future, would it be possible for you to give me a few weeks of advance notice? That will help me arrange my schedule to make space for the work and avoid conflicts with my own teaching / research / dissertation / etc.
However, my guess is that prior to asking you, he thought that he could handle it all by himself and wouldn't need any help from you. He probably found at the last minute that he couldn't, and had to scramble to look for help from anyone who could give it. So if this is how he tends to operate, such a request may not help too much. But at least it will be a nudge in the right direction.
+1. Professors are human beings, treat accordingly.
Also: this is the kind of request that is probably better handled in person or on the phone, instead of by email.
@aeismail: I guess that's a matter of personal style, and maybe anything you already know about the recipient. Myself I wouldn't hesitate to do this over email.
"I like helping you, but I've got a very busy schedule. It is hard for me to meet the time demands of a grant proposal on such short notice. If I get these last minute requests, I might not be able to make time to help you in the future. If you give me more warning, say a month or so, scheduling shouldn't be an issue."
1) Doesn't blame the professor
2) Makes it clear that only the timing is an issue
3) Puts the problem on you so it doesn't seem like you're blaming him
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83767 | why should you tell on a cheater on a test?
how would you tell on a cheater?
Why? Because the cheater is going to get an unearned grade, which, ultimately, will devalue your diploma.
How? Visit the professor and tell what you saw. Be prepared to be asked to put it in writing, or to have a meeting with a department chair, dean, or academic conduct committee.
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90747 | Best way to cite collaborators that are unaffiliated with an academic institution or business?
I am the lead author on a journal paper to the IEEE, and I'm trying to figure out how to cite other contributors in a way that makes sense. Two of us are affiliated with a university, one contributor is a wonderful and knowledgable mathematician whose "real job" is in the service industry, and the other contributor is also a math nerd who is a barista in another country that did all of the proofs.
Would these non-conventional authors be "independent" or "unaffiliated" or some other term. The affiliation is required by the journal. Any suggestions (or a definitive source) of how to handle this issue would be appreciated.
In what sense is affiliation "required" by the journal? A formal rule, or just a web form that can't be left blank? In the former case, ask the journal what they want you to do. In the latter, enter "none".
By the way, the word "cite" is not applicable here; that would be about referring to other papers by those people. I would talk about how to "list" these collaborators.
@NateEldredge Two things, firstly, the affiliation is required, but mostly, I'd like a to be sure that protocol is followed, which leads me to the second part: I was hoping for an authoritative reference. As per that link, "Independent Scholar" is promising; however, I am still unsure if there's an official method. An aside, "independent scholar" as a literal phrase translates terribly into the other language one of the researchers (one doesn't speak english), so a official reference would dismiss doubt about nuance.
Ok. I don't know of any universally authoritative / official term or protocol for such situations. The journal might have standardized on some specific term, but you would have to ask them about that.
@NateEldredge After a few rounds with the editors, we did decide on "Independent Scholar".
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89400 | Purpose of meeting with the dean and provost during campus visit
I was invited to a campus visit for a faculty position at a university in the U.S.
The visit will include a job talk, a class presentation to students, meeting with faculty members, meeting with the dean of the school and meeting with the provost from the university’s president’s office. This is by no means not a small university.
I was wondering what is the goal of meeting with each one of these parties. I do realize that I am being tested as much as I am also doing the same, but I would like to know what the dean and the provost would want to talk about with me.
I would like to hear from people who does the dean and the provost would want to talk with me about?. = a job. In most US universities, departments don't hire on their own, they recommend for hiring, and final decisions technically come from above (deans etc).
Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/80558/40589
That's interesting, we don't have a "dean" tag.
Perhaps they don't want to scrutinize your inability to comprehend the double negative.
Typically we only run candidates through all of these meetings - hiring committee, teaching example, dept. chair, provost, various AVPs and VPs, etc. IF we are paying them to travel to the interview. For local candidates the provost, AVPs, etc. don't meet them until after most of the other process is complete
Meetings of this sort are pretty standard, but my experience is they're usually at a later stage of the process, like a second visit. Deans don't like to waste the time if the candidate doesn't pass muster of the faculty.
For better or worse, the Dean and the Provost carry a very big stick. Your recruitment can be halted in a split second if one of them decides that way. The way it goes is that search committees make recommendations to Chairs and Deans. At intermediate stages, they will advance a handful of applicants for consideration. If the Dean or higher up says to the Chair "I would prefer if you don't hire that candidate" that's usually a done deal.
In subtler cases, they can come up with "extra" resources to make your package a bit more exciting if they feel you're worth it, such as bumping the size of your startup package with discretionary funds.
If the Deans or other high level officers want to meet with you at an early stage, that's could be just due diligence, providing a reality check, but it could be almost anything. Could be a young department or chair, and the Dean feels the need to keep an eye on the process. It could also be an indication that the search has advanced to a fairly late stage, and they want to make a hire quickly. It could also mean that these officers take a very active role in the management of their faculty, which could be a good thing. It could mean that they take a very active interest in a campus with a family-like leadership style. It could also mean that you're being considered for a very strategic hire and that they have a key interest in making sure just the right person is brought in to advance their programs.
There's also the possibility that you're a desirable candidate, and they want to impress you by showing high-level interest in your recruitment right from the start.
It's very hard to know exactly why they're directly involved without asking them.
In any case, be responsive to their questions. Use earlier meetings with other faculty to try to get a feel for the slot you're being recruited for, and in your big meetings, be the person they're looking for.
Your experience is rather different from mine (US, math). I've never heard of a faculty interview process that involved more than one campus visit per candidate - organizing one is hard enough! And on that one visit, meeting with the dean is nearly universal and doesn't indicate anything special. One would meet with the provost at a school that is small enough that the provost has many dean-like duties, or if the job is more of a leadership role (e.g. department chair).
Thanks a lot. Youve touched upon few possibilities that actually crossed my mind. The department is making a late recruitment of faculty members for 4 new classes in a new program that they are launching this year. The search committee search told me over the phone that because they want to move quickly with the process, Ill have all these meetings in one day. I was also told that I will be teaching graduate classes that will open next year. I am also bringing funding with me to the school.
Also, whether you meet with the dean before or after the faculty is, in my experience, usually just a matter of scheduling - and they don't usually communicate with each other about the candidate until afterwards.
@NateEldredge -- our recruitments are almost always two visits. The first throws a wider net -- maybe four candidates or so, and the purpose of the visit leans more toward "do we want you?", although is is still certainly a two-way conversation. Second visits are usually for the strong favorite, or maybe the top two, and that visit takes on a "do you want us?" flavor, where we lay out physical space, go through the wish list, bring them to realtors.... The Dean's visit tends to take place more during the 2nd than the 1rst, but that doesn't mean the Dean isn't involved until then.
@Nate Eldredge: That's been my experience also -- I've never heard of more than one visit for a candidate in math. Also, for what it's worth, I've not only had provost interviews, but for several of the smaller colleges I've interviewed at I've even had an interview with the president of the college.
A lot depends on the size of the institution. Compare a flagship large state university with 40,000 students to a small liberal arts college with 1000 students. In the case of the small college, the dean is likely just a part-time administrator and the provost is probably the only full-time academic administrator. At the large university, there might be a full-time department chair, dean, and maybe a vice president below the provost.
In my experience of running search committees at a small college, the dean
and provost typically interview all of the faculty candidates that come to campus and provide feedback to the committee. They're mostly interested in making sure that candidates can communicate well and will fit into the campus culture. They also make a point of explaining their expectations of new faculty. At our institution, they're very interested in candidates who will be active in interdisciplinary research projects. I've come to respect the judgments of these folks when it comes to communications skills and personality because they've had a lot of experience in hiring people.
As an applicant, I'd suggest that you focus on communicating clearly about
your teaching and research interests and how you can contribute to the larger mission of the institution. Try to come across as someone who will work hard and not demand too much special attention. Do not use this interview to start making demands relating to salary, start-up package, etc.- that can be a huge turn-off.
You can also look for any signs of tension between the administration and the academic department. For example, are their expectations of your teaching and research activity in agreement? If you get inconsistent answers from the administration and the academic department then that is an indication of discord within the institution.
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90172 | Can a college or university withhold your degree for non payment and change your degree?
Just to explain my question a little bit. I know that if you owe the school money they are allowed to withhold your diploma and transcripts. My real question is if this is the situation and the college happens to change requirements for the degree before you fulfill your debt can they revoke the degree to make you take the classes needed?
Yes, as you say, it is common that a university will refuse to issue a diploma or transcripts until you have paid them what you owe.
However, I've never heard of them making you take more classes if requirements change in the meantime. Most universities have a policy that what you have to fulfill are the requirements as they were listed in the catalog of the year that you first entered the university / degree program. The university can't change them retroactively.
But you'd better read your university's policies to be sure. This should be explained in the course catalog.
Actually, it's pretty common where I've been at to have holds on student accounts for non-payment of, e.g., library fines. If you have a hold, they won't issue a transcript. Not sure about the diploma itself but sounds about right. You're correct that the requirements go by the catalog year so that won't by a problem.
@guifa: Right, it seemed like the OP already knew about holds on transcripts or diplomas, so I wasn't addressing that part at all. But I've clarified the answer now.
What you're suggesting could happen, but it probably pretty rare in practice. Your school's policies will typically spell out the exact graduation requirements, including what happens when degree requirements change.
For example, My undergraduate institution officially recorded the "catalog description" of each degree every year. When changes to the degree program occur, they only happen through changes to the official catalog description. The school's policy was that you were allowed to graduate under any catalog description for a year in which you were enrolled, for catalogs up to 7 years old.
Suppose I enroll in school in academic year 2015- I'm entitled to graduate under the 2015 requirements up through the 2021-2022 academic year. If I'm enrolled for four years, then I also have the option of graduating under the requirements for 2016, 2017, and 2018 if I so desire. The intent here is that your degree program cannot unexpectedly become more difficult to finish, as long as you finish in a timely manner.
This is pretty standard in the US as far as I know.
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15470 | Hourly rates for industry consulting?
I have a friend who is considering a part time (~10hr/week) consulting gig with a large, well-established software company, doing a mixture of research and coding. However, there appears to be little quantitative data on past consulting rates for academics, i.e., professors, postdocs, and PhD students whose primary career is not consulting.
Q: How does an academic determine a fair rate for consulting?
...Assuming that a consulting gig is actually compatible with their academic contract! I do of course realize that in many circumstances external employment is prohibited by a contract with the university. I also realize that consulting rates are largely a function of 1. perceived expertise and 2. negotiation skill. But a key component of successful negotiation is an objective view of the facts—in this case, some kind of upper and lower bound on reasonable wages.
"Fair"? Fair to who? The hourly rate is "whatever the market will bear", unless your university is one of those that sets the rates that academics may charge for external work.
Right—I am trying to establish what the market will bear!
Maybe the people at workplace.stackexchange.com have more experience about negotiating rates for freelance consulting. After all if you remove the words "...for academics", the question makes perfect sense and has little to do with academia, so it looks very close to a boat programming question.
As Fomite correctly stated, it is going to vary a lot by field and also individual circumstances.
In my experience, if the consulting work is roughly equivalent to what a non-academic in industry might be able to perform, then the rates will roughly be equivalent, too. This happens a lot in the engineering disciplines, and especially often in computer science (i.e., many computer science professors can moonlight as software engineers). In such disciplines, I have found that companies in industry often classify their engineers into five levels. These go by different names at different companies, but they usually are along the lines of: associate, full engineer, senior, lead, and principal. Associate is the level a freshly graduated undergrad would start at. Full engineer usually implies three to five years experience and/or a master's degree. That is likely the level equivalent to a Ph.D. student. A fresh Ph.D. just having defended would usually start at such a company at the senior level, so it is roughly equivalent to post-doc and junior faculty. The lead level is usually achieved 7+ years after that, so it is roughly equivalent to tenured faculty. Likewise, principal is equivalent to full professors.
Once you have an equivalent job title in mind, you can use websites like glassdoor to search for average salaries for that job title (e.g., "Senior Software Engineer", "Principal Electrical Engineer", etc.). I find that typical hourly rates are in the range of 0.1% to 0.2% of the yearly salary of an equivalent professional, but once again this may vary by profession; my experience is in the world of software.
I have found that some companies will allow a slightly higher-end consulting rate if you can demonstrate that your abilities are above and beyond those of a non-academic alternative. This is especially true if the nature of the consulting work is research-oriented and/or directly related to your research, or if you can reasonably argue that you could complete the task faster than a non-Ph.D or a full-time employee.
You can usually charge a slightly higher rate for short-term work.
Many academics I know often do consulting in the form of acting as expert witnesses at trial. Rates for that type of work seem to be more standard across disciplines, and is more of a function of how unique and qualified you are for the job. Prep work for trial is usually charged at a standard consulting rate, but then days at trial can be charged as much as two to four times that rate.
See my answer about how to compute consulting rates here. In my field (optical sciences) and related fields (software engineering and electrical engineering) the going rate for a newly minted Ph.D. is between $125/h and $150/h. Professors, having more experience, can get more than this, but usually not more than about $250/h unless they are a well known "superstar."
130-300 an hour is what I would expect. Its hard to base it off a % of salary since being a professor has several other benefits and people don't do it just for the money, while consulting is often just for the money. As a graduate student my salary at times was 30k a year but I was charging 120$ an hour for consulting.
My % of salary estimates were based off of commercial salaries, not academic salaries. So, for example, if one were a Computer Science professor, one would base one's consulting rate on the salary of a principal-level software engineer.
Ask around.
This is going to vary wildly by field, by sub-field, by school, by academic rank, etc. The best way to find out is to ask colleagues what they make, more senior colleagues what they'd expect and if they think a particular rate is reasonable, etc.
While people are occasionally hesitant about asking salary questions, I've not run into anyone whose adverse to discussing the mechanics of consulting with a colleague getting started.
Thanks. Actually, that's why I created the question on SE: he asked, and I didn't know! In the spirit of academia.se, I thought I'd try to distribute this "insider info" to the masses...
Mysterious downvoter - do you have a comment as to how my answer can be improved?
I would also add that it varies by geography. Some locations simply have higher rates than others.
In the legal arena, private practice rates for pure research start at about $40 per hour while the rates for research and writing are about $60 per hour, on average. In academics, these rates are much lower such that you typically see only law students working hourly in an academic setting.
On the "ask around, it varies" answer of mine, these are way low for private practice in my area.
That is obviously the problem with this question: it varies greatly between locations. I would charge between 80-100 euro for consultancy. But this is in Western Europe (the Netherlands).
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44855 | Why are most papers not dated?
Many of the research papers that I have read are not dated in terms of publication date. By dating I mean including at least the publication year. The papers I refer to are mostly free PDFs from the internet on various topics, usually affiliated with some academic institution (mostly universities).
One can then only guess the publication date from the dates of newest references. Does this weird trend have some reasoning? If I wrote a paper or even its draft and made it public I would clearly date it.
Edit:
It seems I have missed the option of checking the PDF document properties which show a creation date. But this still does not answer the question of not including the date within the body of the document itself.
What is your field? In my areas of interest (CFD, finite elements, etc), submission or acceptance dates and publication dates are very common. Also, there's almost always a copyright statement on the article that includes the year.
Well I am a computer science student. The papers I reffer to are mostly free PDFs from the internet on various topics... I can not really understand someone writing a 5+ page paper and not dating it...
@Kozuch Is is possible that you are asking why the PDF of the paper doesn't have the date printed on it? On the publishers' websites, you typically find these dates. The PDFs on authors' homepages are typically self-compiled using the standard style used for reviewing, which simply does not feature the dates. Authors are often required to use a self-compiled version. Also, only few people see this is as a problem, as for a citation, only the year is mandatory to be included, and the authors' homepages, which link to the PDFs, have the years on them in most cases.
Yeah, if you're not looking at the officially published version on the journal or conference page, then you're not looking at a "published" article but a preprint or a draft. You need to get to the original source which will be the publisher's page.
I am really not sure what you are talking about. Many journal styles have a submission / acceptance / publication date on the PDF. Even for the ones that don't (typically workshops and conferences), finding the year of the conference only is a trivial Google search. And if you can't find anything about the paper either in IEEEXplorer, ACM, DBLP, etc. - well, chances are it's not reliable anyway.
I don't have Acrobat Reader readily available, but on my pdf reader (evince, part of Gnome) I can access a creation date and a modification date in the menu entry file->properties. In case you are wondering, they are different from the file creation/modification date recorded by the filesystem.
Are you talking about the random "free tutorial" someone writes up (which rarely has a publication date), or are you actually reading research/peer-review-quality papers?
This sounds very odd. I can't recall ever seeing a paper that doesn't have at least a date of submission or publication somewhere in the text. Can you give some examples?
I don't think you should trust a computer science paper which in a DOC.
A PDF file normally contains the date of its creation in its Properties (which can be accessed, e.g., using Ctrl+D in SumatraPDF on Windows, or using "pdftk [name of PDF] dump_data" on Linux). This is at least an upper bound on when it was actually written (but so are publication dates).
PDF creation date is easily changed, and may be inaccurate in case of re-created PDFs.
Because the papers you are talking about are not papers / publications. A random PDF which is not per-reviewed, not even on a preprint server, is not full scale publication in the academic sense.
"The papers I refer to are mostly free PDFs from the internet on various topics" – then it's most likely one or both of:
It is not a peer-reviewed paper published by a reputable journal. Be careful what you read, there are plenty of quack theories out there
You are viewing a preprint, and by finding the article on the journal's website you will find the date. Also, the final version of the article will probably be better formatted, and may be better written and have mistakes corrected (this depends upon the stage of publication at which the preprint was circulated).
Many preprints are circulated prior to publication, so you may not find a better version yet. It's still really poor form for an author not to date a preprint. If a preprint is a few years old and has not yet been published, you have to wonder why.
I can not recall ever seeing a journal that does not put the journal name, date, and issue number on at least the first page. It would be very poor practice not to do this, because taken on its own it is impossible (without further research) to tell where the article came from. It's common even to date every page with the journal name, date, and issue number.
I suspect that if you're seeing this trend in most of the "papers" you read, that you really aren't reading research articles written by legitimate researchers. Ask your advisor or lecturer for the names of the most relevant journals in the field, and start from there.
In my area (pure maths), many preprints aren’t dated, and even for published papers, the preprint is often the easiest version to find. So while most of the papers I read have a date in principle, the specific pdf I read them from is very often undated.
@PLL, but when you cite them, you go find the publication date, right?
@BillBarth: of course, yes — one cites the journal version, not the preprint.
Since the OP is a computer science student, one of my CS professors told my class that most of the top tier journals in our field are published by the ACM and the IEEE organizations. Searching Google Scholar for the ACM and the IEEE brings up plenty of high-quality peer-reviewed papers.
Most PDFs you find are pre-prints, and the standard workflow of many journals and conferences does not include dates in preprints.
@PLL: In my experience, preprints are usually ciriculated using arXiv, and you can see the submission dates there and every paper (and every version of paper) is automatically stamped with submission date.
@jakebeal "Most PDFs you find are pre-prints" – the only preprints you read should be the ones that are not yet published or that you don't otherwise have access to. I still find it hard to believe that it is not possible to find the date of a journal or conference preprint – if not in the PDF, then obviously available on the website. What's next, omitting the author's names?
@Moriarty I highly disagree: when I search online and Google Scholar pops up with a PDF, it's probably a pre-print, not the paywalled final version. That's the one I'm going to read, even when I have journal access, because it's one click rather than a bunch of fiddling with library portals. And those preprints are almost always missing the final date. The date is then easy to find online, it's just not in the PDF.
@jakebeal A "bunch of fiddling" with library proxies can be reduced to a browser bookmark, if all you have to do is append a proxy address to the URL: javascript:void(location.hostname=location.hostname+'.yourproxyhere'). I don't know how it is in CS, but preprints are not always of the peer-reviewed version. So maybe I'm being rather conservative, but it's not a practice I'd actively encourage. Perhaps also I'm unusually lucky as an astronomer that the published article is always only 2 clicks away from the arXiv page...
Most (CS) papers that you find on the websites of the publishers have the bibliographical information in the PDF, typically on the first page of the paper. This typically includes the year. These papers are however also typically behind paywalls, meaning that you won't get access to these unless you (a) buy a copy of the article, or (b) have access through your institutional subscription.
Many research paper PDFs that you find freely on the internet are self-archived versions of the papers. These are PDFs provided by the authors on their personal or institutional web pages and not prepared by the publisher. While these do not constitute the official versions of the papers, authors normally do not modify the content of the PDF so that the official and unofficial versions of the papers get out of sync. Now it happens to be that most paper style files provided to the authors for writing their papers with for a specific venue do not feature a field for the bibliographical information. Rather, the information is later added by the publisher. Thus, the information is missing on the PDF made by the authors themselves.
It should also be noted that only few people see this as a problem. The bibliographical information is contained on the authors' webpages from which you often download the papers. Also, you mainly need the bibliographical information for citing the paper, and for that, you can pretty much always download the whole bibliographical information entry for a paper from the publisher's website. Just type the paper title into your favorite search machine and click onto the respective result. For computer science, most papers are in DBLP anyway, which also gives you a complete bibliography entry at the expense of a mouse click.
+1 for bib data from the publisher even if you get the paper direct from the researcher. You can also quickly compare the abstract in case your search engine took you to a similarly-named paper from the same authors (e.g. you forgot to put quotes round the title).
I agree that it is extremely frustrating to not have a date on a technical paper. It is often impossible to tell the currency and hence whether any conclusions represent the latest thinking. The only reason I can think of is that most technical papers are published by technical associations, who then generate revenue by selling access to papers. By not including a date, researchers are unable to identify currency and are thereby forced to purchase more papers than they need, hence generating more revenue for the publishing house or society.
unable to identify currency and are thereby forced to purchase more papers than they need --- I'm confused. Don't most published papers include a received date, a date that (in my experience) is nearly always provided to those (such as myself) who do not have access to papers behind a paywall? "randomly chosen" example 1 (gives received, accepted, published dates at bottom of the web page) and "randomly chosen" example 2 (also gives received, accepted, published dates)
@DaveLRenfro You’re right. However, the paper itself, e.g. the PDF, does not indicate the date it was published. It is part of the metadata that you see in a citation.
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158779 | First person plural or singular pronouns for thesis presentation
I am going to do an oral presentation for my thesis.
Normally, when presenting a paper, as the paper is a collaboration work, I always use the pronoun "we".
The thesis is written based on the papers. However, when presenting (for example, when talking about the contributions of the thesis), I feel using "we" a bit odd.
Should I use "we" or "I"?
Many thanks.
Do not use the Royal one! :-p
This is also worth checking out.
Use "we" when referring to something you did as a team, and use "I" when referring to something that you did by yourself. That is what these words are for.
Using "we" and "I" consistently in this way helps to make clear what your contributions were, and this is often exactly what the jury wants to find out during your presentation. If you choose to not go with the above option you should make it clear in some other way what you did and what others did.
Of course, if there is a clear preference in the culture where you are presenting it is best to follow that preference, but you would probably not be asking the question if that were the case.
+1 for calling out that it's very important in this context to differentiate your own personal contribution from collaborative (or others') work. I would be very careful to us "I", "we" and "they" very precisely.
That's also what I thought actually.
There is no rule you have to pick one exclusively. I would not bat an eye at someone using "we" for the collaborative sections and "I" at their sections.
Especially for a thesis presentation, everyone knows you and who your group is.
Indeed, something like "Here we were interested in XYZ, so I made samples and analyzed them with..." is perfectly acceptable. "We" for big picture stuff, "I" for stuff you personally did.
I agree with the options the other answers present, and that in the end it is up to you to decide what to do, keeping your audience in mind. However, the other answers do not say much about which of those options to choose, so I'd like to cover that in more detail.
Those words you're using, what do they mean?
First, let's take a step back and look at what the words mean. "we" refers to a group of more than person including the author/speaker* (unless you want to be patronizing or indicate that you're important than your audience, but I recommend against such arrogance). "I" refers to exactly one person, the author/speaker.
With these definitions of the meaning of "we", we(!) can rephrase your question as follows:
During an oral presentation for my thesis, should I attribute the contributions to myself only, or also to my coauthors?
Your options
And that is a good question! I see 3 workable options1 here:
Attribute all contributions to the group consisting of you and your coauthors, and use "we" exclusively when talking about contributions. Note that this is about contributions only, never say something like "we thank our wife for her support during the writing of this thesis"2. Additionally, when "the group of you and your coauthors" is only a single person (i.e. you3), you should use "I", of course. This is (usually) the case with your thesis, for example.
Attribute all results to yourself and use "I" exclusively when talking about contributions. If you do so, I recommend you at least briefly aknowledge the support of your coauthors at the start of your presentation. They would almost certainly feel ignored otherwise. (and they may still feel so if you only acknowledge them at the start! But that is a risk inherent to this option)
Decide in advance which contributions belong to you only, which contributions belong to all of you, and use both "I" and "we" accordingly.
As you can see, these options are distinguished in how you choose to assign the attribution of your work in cases where ownership is not obvious for the audience. This means that the difference between the options can be minor in practice, in particular when the ownership of most of your work is very clear.
I think there are pros and cons to all of these options. Which one to choose would mostly depend on what your audience expects of your presentation and what your goals are.
Pros and cons
The main advantage of options 1 and 2 is that you do not have to decide (or negotiate!) which contributions are really "yours"3. This makes it easier to prepare for your presentation, and harder to make mistakes. Whether you can afford option 1 or 2 would depend on the context. If, for example, your defense is mainly ceremonial (yes, this is possible. Academia varies more than you think), then it may not be nessecary to assert your personal contribution during your defense and option 1 would be fine. At the least, your co-authors or friends their should not have to feel they are being ignored this way. I personally would not be comfortable with option 2, but there may be communities or cultures where this is acceptable or even the norm.
If you cannot afford or do not like options 1 or 2, then you should go for 3. This is a bit more complicated, as now you will have to decide what your personal contribution is and need to be careful to use the right words during your talk. (while you will probably have to do this sooner or later, a serious defense is likely one of the more confrontational settings to make this assertion) You may need to be careful when your idea of ownership conflicts with the feelings of coauthors present during your defense. Most decent people will not make a big deal about this, but well, not everyone is a decent person. If you suspect that someone might make a big deal about it, it might be a good idea to talk to them about it before your defense.
1. A fourth option would be to avoid both "we" and "I", but the author does not consider this a workable option, as one would have to refer to themselves in the third person when talking about their own (joint) contributions. This would be even more awkward for a speaker than it is for an author. Or at least, this author would imagine so.
2. Paraphrased from How to write mathematics by Paul Halmos, Chapter 13 "The editorial we is not all bad"
3. I mean singular "you" here. This would have been clearer if the English words for 2nd person singular and plural were not homonyms in most forms. (yes, "y'all" exists, but that does not help to indicate the singular, and its possessive form does not appear to be the lesser evil)
"Y'all" IS the singular. The plural is "all y'all"! (Also: thee, thou, thy, thine.)
@JeffE I'm not an expert, but that seems to be a matter of debate. Which in itself implies the term does not decrease ambiguity as much as I'd hoped it would. Thanks for the other suggestions, good to know the English language used to have the words I wanted. I might actually use that when I prefer using stereotypical archaic words over making complaints about the English language.
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160973 | Considering leaving after three months
I am a PhD student sponsored by a company and considering leaving after three months.
This is an opportunity offered by my supervisor because he has a good relationship with the company and the company started a meaningful project. Right after I graduated my master degree, my supervisor suggested the company to offer my a three month pre-PhD summer job that I could start the project earlier while waiting the start date of my PhD.
To be honest, I found myself under pressure during the three months summer job because I was assigned heavy workload and something I’m not familiar with. This is a tiny size company (less than 10 people), I would say it is very not organised too. The development team has only one full time employee but he’s also working like a part time on this project. Even the project manager is a part time employee. Thus, everything relied on me. I did consider not starting the PhD and just let go the “golden” opportunity.
I thought that I would be protected by the uni once I officially started my PhD. But I am afraid this is not correct. After I started, things even got worse, the company lost 2 managers in a very short period. As I am a full time PhD student working on the research part of the company’s project, I don’t think I’m supposed to be assigned operational work. I was happy to accept this kind of workload as I think the company is paying real money for sponsoring my PhD. They requested 40% of my work time, which means 2 work days to focus on the company work. They kept adding workload, sudden meetings and very tight deadlines, I was under great pressure and that ruined my schedule.
I have been keeping weekly reports and have reported issues to my academic supervisors. I am very surprised that I have raised the same issue three times within the first three months of my PhD. We have a big meeting every after I “complain”. The CEO (my industrial supervisor) of the company agreed he would change the situation, and promised that I have the right to say no to the non research related work. From my experience, he forgets what’s been agreed after two weeks and just keeps asking for 40% of my work time.
I had the third meeting regarding the same issue with them this afternoon. From my point of view, what the CEO said today was pretty much the same as the last 2 times. What I remember the most from the chat today is the CEO mentioned even the tight deadline could be changed when needed, we have to keep both internal and external communication running. However, this is a little bit different comparing to his actions. Last month, he didn’t even consider pushing back the deadline but requested me to finish the limited demo in 2 days, which put me under great pressure and ruined my schedule, I had no time to prepare the conference presentation. He told my supervisor things are flexible and not seeing me as a developer. But what I’m feeling is he treats me like a full time product developer, leave me no time for research, and nothing can be changed after he decided.
For my academic supervisor, he is 50% helpful in this case to be fair. He guides me how to exploit the company’s project to finish my PhD. He also listens to me carefully when I need help. However, it seems that he doesn’t want to touch the internal issues of the company, I feel like he has no such power to change the situation I’m facing.
Let me know what you guys think.
Cheers
This isn't a general advice site. It is for specific questions. Your situation is too personal for good answers, I think. And, BTW, not everyone here is a "guy".
Thanks and sorry at the same time. Sorry for the word I chose. I understand this is not a general advice site but my uni office is still in stealth mode before the new semester starts, I just wanna share what I am feeling... thanks very much
It seems like they assign you (too much) work, you accept it and do it satisfactorily, and then you complain to your advisor and a meeting is scheduled. Is this accurate? Have you tried regulating your own workflow by refusing new tasks or not meeting deadlines?
It is possible that you would get better answers on the "workplace" stack exchange rather than here, only because this seems more of an issue of a company attempting to exploit a student, rather than a typical academia issue. (It is on topic here though, in my rather insignificant opinion.) It doesn't sound like a great situation to me though - it sounds like the company is in financial trouble and can't hire enough people for the work they need to do.
What is the problem? That the company is asking you to do too much operational work? If so, please clarify
Thanks for all you comments. Let me clarify, the company is treating me like a full time product develop but not a full time PhD student. They kept assigning operational workload (100% not research related) to me outside the agreed 40% of the my time. Clearly, they need a quick product for commercial purposes but not the research result. However, the CEO said in front of my academic supervisor that he understood my responsibility is to do research and apply innovative ideas into their product.
I don't mean I am not willing to work on what they assigned, all I mean is they are being unreasonable sometimes. They always asked me to join sudden meetings with no notice. For example, we agreed Thursday and Friday for working on the company's work, but they would force me to join other meetings between Monday and Wednesday. Workload was also crazy, as I have become the only person who knows everything of the product, I received internal and external enquiries everyday and could not reply later than a day. So they leave me no time to do the real research... Cheers
I'm still not clear what you mean by "force you" to join these meetings and reply to messages within a day. Are you certain they are intentionally trying to overschedule you? Or could this just be a matter of "creep" (i.e., they ask you and you say yes so they don't see a problem)?
They definitely overscheduled me, this is the reason I raised my hand a few times. in the very beginning, I was willing to do what they ask within the 40%, and tried saying no to the workload outside this 40%. Unfortunately, I still had to finish what they want me to do outside the 40%. After the first and second meeting, the CEO was cheeky, he asked the manager to assign work to me which could consume more than 40% of my time, and he was pretending all the workload was designed by the manager, not him. He is a new manager, when I say no to extra workload, he had to confirm with the CEO.
Have you considered asking to be changed from a PhD student to a full time product developer, with a very large pay increase?
I ask the exact same question to the CEO yesterday, he's not interested in it. its because he has to pay pension, insurance and etc. for switching me to a full time product developer.
I can't figure out what the formal relationship between you and this company is. Do you still have some contract with them, as well as with the University?
It seems to me that asking your advisor about the situation regarding say IPR or liability insurance may give you a lever you can use to get out of doing the company's work. E.g. "... requested me to finish the limited demo ..." so if that was done as part of a full-time PhD then is it you or the University that owns the code, and not the company at all?
thanks for you reply, the summer job contract expired and I only signed an agreement with the uni before I started the PhD. For now, the company funds the uni, and then the uni transfers part of it as stipend to my account every month. From what I know is the company will own the research result and all the code when I graduate. Before I graduate the PhD, the company is kind of borrowing the code and resources from the uni. The reality is if I quit the company's project, they won't fund the uni anymore and my PhD ends. Cheers
Which country you are in? That will give us some idea of what the various agreements typically involve.
"Before I graduate the PhD, the company is kind of borrowing the code and resources from the uni." but only if your agreement with the uni explicitly transfers the IP from you to the the uni... does it? (Frankly, to me this all looks like a nasty mess that you are caught in the middle of.) What does the uni. contract say about the stipend? I would expect a generic one to require that you do actually study full-time to receive it, yet the uni are trying to exploit you as an unpaid consultant for 50% of the time. Or is the 40% written into there?
I am in the UK at the moment. I only signed the uni phd agreement before started, and that is a very simple agreement telling me that what the stipend amount is and how long the funding last. I am not sure what the agreement between the company and the uni is. What I only know is the company own the IP once I successfully graduate. I didn't sign any document related the work time ratio. The CEO wants 40% of my time, and he doesn't consider anything less than 40%, this makes me like doing a part-time PhD. One of my supervisors suggested 20% but he disagreed. In fact, he uses like 60% of my time
I don't know how things are with Covid, but I would have expected you to have signed an agreement with the uni during matriculation where you formally became their (full-/part-time)student, got a swipe card, etc. That agreement references a thick document probably on their intranet that contains the legalistic terms and conditions; there should also be a Postgraduate Student Handbook. UK PhDs are 3 years (if full-time) with an increasing number of formal hoops to jump through especially in the first year: if you're not getting enough time to meet those requirements things will go really sour.
I am in the UK at the moment... UK national or is there a visa issue lurking? how long the funding last So, how long does it last? If it's 3 years then that implies you're supposed to be studying full-time, and losing 20% is already on the high side in my opinion.
yes, i am a full-time phd student and the funding only last 3 years.
Sorry, missed this earlier: "The CEO (my industrial supervisor)..." is this one of those new-fangled Engineering Doctorates or whatever they're called? (Sorry, I've no experience around those.)
The CEO is my industrial supervisor because his company sponsor my PhD and he has the right to supervise my academic work, making sure my academic result fits his real world project. I don't directly call him "boss" because he's not directly paying me and we have never had an agreement with his company.
This is a little hard to follow, but I would break it into two pieces:
Working more than 40%
You need to turn the tables. Right now, the company is "playing by its own rules," and you are stuck impotently chasing after them with the useless contract. You seem to think this is deliberate on the company's part, while I suspect that it might be unintentional -- but either way, it will be fixed when you become the one who "plays by your own rules." For example, perhaps you are willing to work one hour per day M/T/W and all day Thursday and Friday. Anything that cannot get done during that time simply does not get done. You don't check e-mail outside of that time window, and you are unconcerned about missing deadlines.
This will have two possible outcomes.
One is that they try to complain, but your advisor supports you, and after all, you are working 40% as agreed. So, this complaint goes nowhere, and they eventually do a better job of managing your tasking (or they just learn to accept that work assigned to you will move slowly). They might even respect you more.
The other is that they complain very angrily, your advisor does not (or cannot) successfully support you, and you are eventually forced to return to your current workflow. In this case, you will probably end up leaving both the company and the PhD (which seems to be what you are considering now in any case).
Doing operational work rather than R&D
So far you are only 3 months in, so getting familiarity with the company's operational work may not be a bad thing. Especially if you want to stay in industry, this sort of knowledge may be quite valuable to you. So I am less concerned about this, especially since you are working 60% time at the university.
Sure, this is still a problem and it will need to be addressed -- but I would focus on the 40% issue for now and then after that converges, you can start to slowly shift your responsibilities.
Thanks for your reply. I did try to "play by my own rules" after the second meeting. They are good at assigning "urgent" work to me or asking "quick" questions outside the 40%. It's because they thought it's really "urgent" and "quick", so even I had to right to say NO, they did not accept it. I do hope my supervisors could fully support me, but who knows. I am just a bit disappointed where I have to raise the same issue 3 times. I am not sure if I should give them the one last chance. I lost appetite and suffered from insomnia because of the great pressure.
There is no "outside the 40%" in what I suggested. There is also no "raising the issue". There is only your 16-19 hrs per week, and your schedule -- if they want to give you an urgent task, fine, you can move it to the front of the queue, but it comes out of your allocated time budget.
Thanks for your suggestion again, and I will give it a try. Many thanks.
Your meetings haven't served their purpose, follow-up with an email clarifying some specifics, e.g.,
Dear CEO,
Thank you for listening to my concerns during our meetings X XXX XXXX, Y YYY YYYY, and Z ZZZ ZZZZ. I appreciate the company's needs for ABC and, as discussed, I can commit 17% of my time to this. I suggest that my contributions be conducted on Fridays, between the hours of X and Y. My university employment makes further commitment infeasible.
One day a week (20%) may be too high, 17% too low, adapt accordingly. My personal preference would be to commit Friday, your preference may vary.
You could offer the CEO a solution:
Nonetheless, I foresee a scaling opportunity: I am willing to supervise one or more interns/researchers/developers to help us achieve ABC.
Other details can of course be added.
Conclude with something along the lines of:
I trust we are in agreement, please do not hesitate to offer clarification if we are not.
Yours sincerely,
researchxyz
Such a conclusion forces the CEO to stick to their word, or break a written agreement.
Thanks for your reply, I did send a follow-up email and my academic supervisor thinks the problem has been solved after the meeting. The CEO doesn't accept less than 40% of my time I am afraid. And I have already suggested him to employ a proper developer to reduce the pressure on my shoulder like 2 months ago, it seems like COVID is his good excuse for not hiring a new employee. Cheers
@researchxyz You can revise to forty percent, I'd suggest conducting such work on Thursday and Friday. Doing so earlier will allow for discussion during your research time. (The weekend follows Friday, you needn't work.)
You need to be disciplined: Don't work for the company outside of your commitments. You're essentially working part-time on your PhD, you'll surely need additional time to complete on time. Having written documented evidence will be useful. I've forgotten one aspect, let me edit to add now.
+1 I think it's important to do the 40% in two full days. If you allow company related interruptions any work day you will be unable to limit the total to that percentage, and the context switches will be expensive. Of course two full days rather than "on call" won't suit the company, but hold to it if you possibly can.
@EthanBolker The OP should do whatever they originally negotiated / contractually agreed to. That's a little unclear from the question: The OP remarks, after starting, they requested 40% of my work time and notes [the CEO] forgets what’s been agreed...and just keeps asking for 40% of my work time. Ultimately, the OP should do the hours contractually agreed to.
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161028 | How can I create a google scholar profile without publicaitons?
I'm currently doing my master's in physics. I have written a few articles which are yet to be communicated. But I'm graduating within 3 months due to which I will lose my institute email ID. And since the creation of a profile on google scholar mandates an institution ID as well as articles, Im at a loss. I have done a minor project due to which I have a minor thesis document at hand and I have seen scholar profiles where the first publication kept on it is not published in any journal but instead was a thesis report. Is there anyway I could use my minor thesis to open a google scholar profile? It would be nice if I could know where to upload my thesis so that it would be searchable on google scholar.
Thanks in advance!
The google scholar help page says that you can change your institutional id. So set it up now and change it later. I think google scholar searches arXiv; if so posting your thesis there will work.
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6087 | What should I do if I find two suspiciously similar conference publications by different authors?
In my research, I've found two articles that are completely identical, except the abstract and authors names. They are published on different conferences, with one year between.
What should (must) I do in this case?
The programme committees for the conferences would be the appropriate authorities to contact (it is their responsibility to deal with plagiarism within their conference). This is of course complicated by the fact the conferences are in the past; the current programme committee may have little or nothing to do with the earlier committee, the steering committee may be more appropriate in this case.
If neither are responsive, contacting the publication venue may be required. If the proceedings are published by a journal or reputable publisher, they should be able to resolve the issue (they have copyright laws to deal with!).
Wouldn't the conference proceedings list the programme committee members of that particular edition of the conference?
@WillieWong, it definitely should (or at least the information would be available somehow), the problem being that the programme committee is typically tied to that instance of the conference and thus is dissolved (along with its powers) at the conclusion of the conference, so the committee as a body may not as such exist. Of course the individual academics still do (hopefully!), but while I hope they'd be interested in stopping plagiarism, they may not have the appropriate powers or influence any more.
Ah, I see what you meant now.
If the author sets on the two papers are disjoint, then it looks like a case of real plagiarism. If you are not an author on any of these papers, I'd suggest notifying the authors of the earlier publication of the other paper, and leave further steps to them. Alternatively, if the conference of the earlier publication has been sponsored by a reputable organization, you could try to inform this organization.
If the author sets are not disjoint, we have what is typically called "self-plagiarism". I don't like this term, because this is by far not as severe as real plagiarism. Still, in case the earlier publication has a copyright mark by some publishing company or scientific organization, you may consider informing them.
Note that you are not really obliged to take any action. Just if you want to cite the work, you should make sure to cite the original, not the plagiated work. This would normally be the earlier publication.
I'd argue that if a citation to one of the papers is appropriate, then it's important to report the plagiarism, because otherwise it's hard to be sure which is the original. (Maybe it was copied from a preprint or rejected conference submission, and the plagiarizers managed to get their paper published first.) You're right that it will generally be the first one, but might as well have the publisher start an investigation to make sure.
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11058 | In the United States, is associate professor a subset of professor, or a distinct category?
In the USA, if someone writes that they are "professor" with no other specification, does this mean full professor, or can it also mean associate professor? In other words, is associated professor a subset of professor, or is it a fully distinct category?
I guess they mean full prof otherwise it will be misleading information
"Professor" is both a job and a title, hence the ambiguity. Other titles given to people with that job include "Assistant Professor" and "Associate Professor."
It should be pointed out that, at least in the US, "associate professors" are a partially overlapping set with the class of "tenured professor," as many associate professors have tenure, but have not yet been promoted to a full professorship. So, there really is "associate without tenure" and "associate with tenure."
However, in the US, as user7691 points out, the correct form of address for any professor, regardless of type, is "Professor X." I would even include adjunct and emeritus professors in this group. If you're looking at a faculty listing and see just "Professor" after a name (or in a separate field), however, it's likely that the individual in question holds a full professorship.
Your answer suggests that "full professor" is a synonym for "tenured professor". It is not. At least in the US, the set of associate professors and the set of full professors are disjoint. Moreover, there are associate professors and full professors who do not have tenure.
Clearly the Venn diagram in my head didn't make it into the written answer. However, my original answer clearly indicated that there were associates without tenure. (Full professors without tenure is a phenomenon I hadn't heard of—at least not at any of the schools I'm familiar with. However, I suspect their cardinality is much smaller than the set of associates with tenure.)
I thought about making this a comment as it only refers to Australia, and your question is about the United States, but it got a bit long.
The Australian Context:
Professor is typically the top of the academic ranking hierarchy in the order: associate lecturer, lecturer, senior lecturer, associate professor, professor. Thus, professor means that someone is of the academic rank "Professor".
Common general titles that cover all ranks include "lecturer", "academic", "researcher".
In terms of titles, the basic rules are as follows (e.g., for Smith):
If of professor rank, "Prof Smith"
If of associate professor rank, "A/Prof Smith"
If of associate lecturer, lecturer, or senior lecturer rank and the person has a doctoral qualification, "Dr Smith"
If of associate lecturer, lecturer, or senior lecturer rank, and the peson does not have a doctoral qualification, "Mr Smith" or "Ms Smith"
Heh. My alma mater (Oxford) is finally catching up with the world. "The grade of associate professor comes into effect from 1 January 2014". Prior to that you were a full professor or you were not a professor. Easy for everyone, except those comparing job titles with other universities/countries ;-)
Short answer: if somebody from the US writes about themselves as a Professor, then it means a tenured full professor.
Longer answer: If you see the title "Professor" in the official university publication (e.g., department website), or in somebody's bio, self-description, or email signature, then it means a tenured full professor (the third, and the top, step in the US academic hierarchy... Instructors and lecturers can hardly be considered academics as they are treated as staff for hire and dismissal).
If you see "Professor" in somebody else's email, especially students' emails, or in the university newsletter, or in some other source that was originated from a person that is not so familiar with the academic ranks, and the hoops one needs to jump through to get there, then it may mean a broader use of the term to indicate an instructor in a university. Essentially, all the adjectives (e.g., an Adjunct Assistant Professor... essentially nobody) are getting thrown out, with only the affiliation with academia remaining in this use of "professor" word. Such a liberty may qualify as an insult to a British/ANZ Professor where the meaning is way more specific. American academics are used to the confusions, though, and let the vague understanding of the title slip when used by un-initiated.
I was getting emails addressed "Professor" when I was in grad school... I would roll my eyes -- can't the source figure out a difference between a Ph.D. student and a regular faculty? They come on very different pages on the department website...
This is incorrect. Someone in the US calling themselves "Professor Charles Xavier", even in official email or on an official university website, is not necessarily a full professor. Even the sentence "I am a professor of Mutant Studies" doesn't necessarily mean that the author is a full professor. "Charles Xavier, Professor of Mutant Studies" does imply that Dr. Xavier is a full professor, but it does not imply that Dr. Xavier has tenure.
Incorrect! I am an Assistant Professor at a top-tier US university. I am often referred to as "Professor." I go to conferences and university events where my name tag has me listed as "Professor." It's shorthand. User7691 has the correct answer.
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65234 | Reference management tool with ability to add custom fields
I am currently trying to manage around 100 references from ISI Web of Knowledge. To manage them in a useful way, I need to manage a table, one row for each reference, with 4-5 user defined structured columns (like: which climate variable they correlated with which demographic variable etc.).
So for this purpose I need to add custom fields to each reference; then display the table of selected references, and be able to sort and filter using these fields. Is there any reference manager that supports this? Unfortunately Zotero doesn't and is not going to.
PS: Of course I don't like the idea of having separate excel table besides. I would then miss the comfortable link between the table rows and the PDF and personal notes and other things which I manage through the reference manager (currently Zotero).
Jabref does. But this is probably a better fit at softwarerecs.se
I don't know the answer, but you should probably look into reference managers that are based on bibtex. Since it is possible to make custom fields in a bibtex bibliography, it is possible that a reference manager based on bibtex has added this as a feature.
After reading Strongbad's comment, I'd like to upvote the part "Jabref does" and downvote the part "this is probably a better fit at softwarerecs.se".
I'm not sure if this would be enough for you, but in Mendeley you can add multiple tags to every reference and then you can filter them using those tags (just type it in a search bar).
You can also add a note to every reference, and use those to filter your references.
In both cases, it should be something unique, so you don't get unwanted search results.
Bibdesk allows for arbitrary and custom fields, and makes a bibtex file to boot. This is, of course, only available for Mac OS X. There is also Papers.app, though I don't, subjectively, like the direction they've taken the UI in Papers 3.
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46010 | How many free copies of a textbook is a publisher typically willing to provide?
Normally I teach a single section with 10-15 students, and a single copy is sufficient. This class will have 3 sections of about 20 students each. FWIW, I am in the United States.
I am considering changing textbooks for an introductory class. A problem is that none of the TAs and tutors already have this textbook, and our department funds are limited.
How many free desk copies is a publisher usually willing to provide?
Perhaps you could get electronic access, which I think has to exist, to accommodate certain special needs.
It is really publisher-dependent and book-dependent. Some books are for free! Some cost 2-3 bucks per piece. Some go well beyond $100.
Former Pearson rep here. This is how it works:
Pearson (and likely others) clamped down hard on reps over-sampling desk copies a couple years ago so any faculty paying attention will have noticed a dramatic shift from 2010-now. Specifically, when I was a rep I had a "budget" for physical books that was merely theoretical, and set at about 4,000 copies for my territory. The year after I left it got cut in half to 2000. If reps go over, they pay out of commissions for the overage. So Pearson finally (wisely) incentivized reps not to send these out willy nilly.
If you're getting lots of service from a publisher rep, it's not always because the class in question is large. It might be because you're married to the woman who makes the big decision for the intro Chem course across campus, or because you do teach that large intro bio course every 18 months. The opposite holds-- getting poor service != your class must be small. If you have a bookstore that never orders in high quantities, you're not actually a customer of that rep as much as you think you are. The used market will take the whole cake. So in the case spelled out in a comment above (no copies till the store orders), the rep is likely trying to put the hurt on the bookstore by getting faculty set against them. It's a risky strategy imo because the rep's relationship with the bookstore is so crucial. But I'd have done it at one school where the relationship with the bookstore was beyond salvageable the day I first came in. But all in all, your best bet for getting a desk copy is really quite simple. for those having Trouble:
Half the time when I didn't send a desk copy it was on accident. I have a post grad degree and have done a little in the world of academia. Was on my grad program's "big" fellowship and also taught some courses etc. I was insanely busy. I was busier as a Pearson rep. Just ask again and again. The software is crap and it's a nightmare for reps to handle this logistically, but the sales teams don't want it automated as they want to intercept the BIG requests as a local rep so they have knowledge of where the large adoptions in their territory are happening. I dropped the ball all the time for small clients (who truly do not matter from a sales goal perspective, but toward whom I didn't have any intention of being a poor rep--they just come in below the line). An email a week later would really seal the deal, or a text message or phone call for sure. There is a 100% chance a rep doesn't get all the things done every day they need to get done. In my territory anything under 50 books never really got done but I had three huge-course schools (and two small schools I never Even visited). My calculation tells me to spend 88% of my time at 2 campuses, 12% at a third, and 0% at four and five. Which also means I have a Bad relationship with the bookstores at 4 and 5. If you teach at four and five, you have to have a class with like 400 kids in it for me to really wake up biting my nails over forgetting to follow up with you (agh the pain I recall from biting my nails all the time during these years at Pearson! But not from schools four and five)
If they want you to take a digital copy and you want physical, same policy applies. Just keep asking.
If you get blacklisted for suspicion of selling copies on to the used industry it will be tough to get copies. There is a way to see this in the reps system but it's going to still be at their discretion to send or not (you have a flag on you called "bookgrabber" at Pearson if you're suspected of this). But this is pretty rare.
If you can't get what you need, you could have your chair request by phone. That would work for me with a small course.
Last resort, email the editor. Don't talk shit on the rep; the editor will surely know what's up--they won't tell you but they will know immediately whether it's a case of "agh that terrible new rep in Oklahoma is killing my adoptions!" Or "yeah that's totally reasonable that the rep skipped this one" but all editors are basically nice people, young, but smart, more academic in their pursuasion, and they care more about small courses because the individuals they need to Court are the influentials in any field, which means that while no rep gives a shit about Vassar or Swarthmore or your R-1 upper division physics course, the editor is genuinely incentivized to care. They also maintain solid relationships with reps and will manage the politics of you going behind the reps back pretty well. Edit to add: to find editors, check the copyright page of your old edition. Or used linked in. Or find the authors email online and ask who they worked with. Authors are quite accessible and friendly (most make zilch and really do believe their book can help you and your students -- many, even top names, include their email in an intro and literally invite students and faculty to send questions to them.) current editor is always incentivized to get X $ in business in the fiscal year and also to cultivate long term relationships with future contributors, authors, reviewers. Tell them you like to review in their field and you'll get your desk copies -- even if they just mail them personally off their desks.
Maybe this is helpful.
You have to understand that in the undergraduate textbook market, the publishers are competing intensely for textbook adoptions and will do what it takes to make the sale. (This is not so much the case for e.g. the monographs that might be used in graduate courses). The marginal cost of production of an additional book is very low, people who get desk copies were quite unlikely to purchase for their own use, and so it costs the publisher very little to give out desk copies ad libitum.
At my large R1 school we have different TAs for our intro classes every quarter; sometimes ten or more of them. We have no problem getting desk copies for each TA.
Of course the promotional cost of getting people to adopt textbooks (including freely giving away desk copies) is partly responsible for why the cost of books I was able to buy for about $50 twenty years ago is now $250 (or three times what inflation would have done to the price).
@aeismail Those prices are not in any way tightly coupled to the costs undertaken by the publishing companies; note that they have successfully made it illegal to import the "international editions" of textbooks, which are usually the exact same textbook but at a fraction of the price.
@KyleStrand: Do you have a link on the illegality note? I thought it was legal.
@Mehrdad Actually, it looks like the Supreme Court has ruled that it's not illegal, but the stickers I've seen on International Editions tend to strongly imply, at least, that sale in the US is illegal.
@KyleStrand: Well that's entirely their goal, to make you think that this is illegal. But it isn't.
@Mehrdad Right. And in my case they succeeded, but I continued to buy international editions anyway because that's such scummy business practice.
(Too clarify, I only just now found that link, because it was listed as a related question in the sidebar. Until five minutes ago I genuinely did think it was illegal to buy international editions.)
@KyleStrand: Yeah. They love to say that "selling this book in [whatever] markets is prohibited", but if you spend a few minutes thinking about it, you realize it's B.S.: prohibited by.. whom? The publisher? If it was illegal then why didn't they just say it's illegal? That would be a much more powerful statement if it was true, and they would have strong incentive for it (and none against). It's not like they forget to mention legality when they say "this book is protected by copyright law" or whatever. Given that they didn't, one can conclude that it's legal, and that they're misleading you.
@Mehrdad Fair enough! I guess I didn't consider textbook publishers and their scare-tactic warnings worth those few minutes of thought.
I personally consider textbook publishers to be somewhere between an unethical business and organized crime.
They rip off your students, so don't feel bad about getting as many copies as you can squeeze out of them, and then some more to give to your students.
Most books are printed overseas anyway, at a cost of ~$5 each.
You can imagine how much they make on a single book.
Elsevier has roughly 7 billion EUR revenue and a profit margin close to 40%
If there is any alternative, I try to go for books that are cheaply available to the students, and for books that don't randomly change the enumeration of homework assignments to make older editions useless.
I think it is time for us to push back in the interest of our students. Our department decided not to go with books that needs to be 'registered' online to be usable. That was a good first step.
I wish university libraries would provide textbooks. They have a much larger buying power, and would end the textbook scam very quickly.
I must say that I absolutely agree with you. As a current college student, I find the textbook market to be flat-out a racket, along with "university" bookstores.
What is a book that needs to be registered online?
This worked pretty well at my German university. You could easily do the course using just the lecture notes, homework consisted of standalone pdfs with no reference to books. You'd only need a book if you wanted another explanation or if you wanted to go beyond the scope of the course in some topic. The library had 100+ exemplars of typical undergraduate books available.
I got a lot of my textbooks from India where they were 20$ vs, 200€ on the German Amazon...
Are those Elsevier numbers overall, or just for book sales? They also make a lot of money on journals (as has been discussed many places...)
@Taladris Some books come with a registration code. You go online, enter the code and sign up for an account, and then you have access to additional online materials. The registration code can only be used once, so a book with such a code can't be resold. Which means students always have to buy brand-new books.
@Ryan: thank you for the answer. I had never found that the online material were dispensable. So I wasn't considering a book without the online material to be "unusable". Is it common for professors to require a textbook with its additional material (which, as the name implies, is a kind of bonus)?
@Taladris In fact it's even worse than that. When a publisher has such a book, they usually require professors to have their students access the online materials at some point in time, and that access has to affect the grades of the students(ie. answer Question 1.12 of the online materials, read the "XYZ" page and answer the prompt at the bottom, etc). Otherwise word-of-mouth would get around that the online materials aren't really required.
How can they require this? In exchange to free textbooks for the teachers?
I have never pushed to see how many desk copies of a book I could get, but I've gotten three with no problem whatsoever. I suspect that you could get more, although it might be best to space out the requests over the course of a few months.
In the mid-2000's ago I was responsible for requesting the desk copies for a course similar in size and scope as the one you were teaching, and was able to secure two copies for the new TA's (that is, for myself and one other grad student). Given how the publishing market has "evolved" in the last few years, I'm not sure if it would still be possible to push for multiple desk copies.
However, if you're planning on acquiring a number of copies, you may want to ask the publisher if they're willing to provide a discount on a direct "bulk" sale. Given that many publishers offer substantial discounts in the case of trade fairs and scientific meetings, they may be willing to work with you in such cases.
I'm the OP and want to give an update/answer, several months later.
The publisher (Pearson) rep was happy to give 3 electronic copies of the book to my TAs and expressed a willingness to provide them for additional TAs. On the other hand, I have yet to get my desk copy, since they only give those out if our college bookstore orders 25 or more new copies of the book, and our bookstore hasn't placed orders yet. (This is the first class of more than 25 students that I've taught in 15 years of teaching.)
I am extremely surprised by this. I wonder if you got snared in some kind of distinction between desk copies and evaluation copies. I am teaching a new undergraduate class in the fall to <100 students; I have a stack of evaluation copies of the relevant textbooks on my desk, from publishers including Pearson. I also received limited duration electronic copies of two relevant monographs (though these both turned out to be too technical for my students).
@Corvus Agreed. I've never had trouble getting evaluation copies, although I mostly just ask for e-copies nowadays.
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