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10049 | Should an Editor in Chief publish in their own journal?
An Editor in Chief of a journal ought to be proud of their journal and consider it a good place to publish their own work, so not publishing in the journal that they edit suggests a lack of confidence in the journal. On the other hand, is publishing regularly in your own journal ethical? Can we reasonably expect the Editor in Chief's papers to be handled with the same rigour as for anybody else? Wouldn't there be implicit pressure on the handling editor to accept a paper that might be rejected had it come from an external author? It seems to me that it would be better to be seen to be fair by publishing elsewhere (or at least only publishing occasionally in one's own journal), but I was wondering what the balance of opinion was on this.
Why the votes to close? This sounds like a perfectly good question to me.
I'd be interested to know as well, I asked the question to find out whether my intuition was reasonable. It is difficult to find that sort of thing out without asking other people!
There are of course no laws against it but as Editor-in-Chief (EiC) myself I would never do it, or would at least think twice about doing it, particularly as first author. My reasoning behind this is that it could reflect badly on me, but particularly on the journal, and send signals that all is not necessarily well. I have to point out that in my case we are two and we have an agreement that we do not touch manuscripts from our own spheres of influence (basically departments). Nevertheless, what actually happens within a journal and how people perceive it are two different things and it is my opinion that as EiC one must safeguard the journal's reputation as objective. So if the community expresses some form of trust in the editor for publishing in their own journal, this could be perfectly fine.
So when an EiC publishes in "their" journal it is not wrong but potentially "dangerous" and can be perceived as poor judgement. They would jeopardize the journals reputation. So even if there are no legal problems, there are ethical problems. I doubt anyone would have second thoughts about the quality of a journal if the editor does not publish there: after all, if the editor has a solid reputation, associating with a bad journal would jeopardize that.
Can I see any exceptions? Well, co-authorship may be less serious but in the end even that should be avoided. I also think that if an editor publishes a single paper in a thematic issue of the journal (where someone else has suggested a theme) and this is the only paper by that editor in the journal for years, I would not think much about it. Obviously frequency of publications is also a factor.
So, in conclusion, I consider it unwise under most circumstances.
+1, that is pretty much my intuition. Even if one was confident of the fairness of the action editors it seems to be putting undue pressure on them, when the question could be easily avoided by publishing elsewhere.
I heard of an example where the editor knew they had a truly great result and wanted to make their journal benefit from it by publishing it there. Would you consider this an exception?
I think it would depend on the field. If the current editor in chief is chosen by a previous editor in chief or by someone else, (s)he is most likely an authority in the field and a regular author in the journal. If, next to this, the field also is limited in important journals, it would be hard for the editor in chief to find another good outlet.
There have been only a few times in my career when I've run across an EIC who regularly published in his/her own journal, and in each case it looked like something was seriously wrong.
As a first constraint, it's absolutely unethical for editors to play any role whatsoever in evaluating their own papers. I.e., they should not suggest referees, solicit or have access to referee reports, participate in the decision making, or even discuss the decision with other editors. Furthermore, this lack of involvement should be made clear to the referees when the reports are solicited and to the public (for example, by including a paragraph in the journal's web site about how editorial submissions are handled).
Ideally, there should be strong safeguards. For example, one journal I'm associated with takes the following approach. If the editor in chief submits a paper, the journal's sponsoring organization appoints a few associate editors to evaluate the submission anonymously and make individual decisions. If any one of them recommends rejection, then the paper is rejected and the rest of the editorial board never finds out who rejected it. This avoids the danger of feeling pressure from the EIC, but it leaves open the possibility of favoritism or bias, perhaps even subconsciously.
Because it's difficult to avoid bias and impossible to avoid the appearance of bias, editors should rarely submit papers to their own journals, and EICs almost never. Aside from special cases such as issues in honor of someone, the only time I think it really looks good for an EIC to submit a paper is if the paper is amazing, far above the usual level of the journal, and it's clear that the EIC is trying to raise the journal's profile by sending a paper there that could easily have been published somewhere more prestigious. This is risky: it can come across as condescending or self-aggrandizing, it looks strange if done more than very rarely, and others may disagree on how amazing the paper is. However, if the paper is indeed great then it at least avoids controversy over whether acceptance was appropriate. The really dangerous scenario is borderline-appropriate papers, where reasonable people could disagree about acceptance and it's natural to wonder whether favoritism might have tipped the balance.
Thanks for the thoughtful answer, the last paragraph raises another issue, which is what would happen if the paper were flawed? Could a comment paper be rejected without it reflecting badly on the journal, even if the comment itself were questionable?
I'm going to chime in with a slightly dissenting answer - I think it's perfectly acceptable for an EiC to publish in their own journal, given some caveats.
I think they should be very careful in doing so, and the journal should have a mechanism for handling their submissions that doesn't involve their input in any way - one of the other answers mentions a panel of reviewers to evaluate whether or not the paper gets over the "editorial interest" hurdle, or possibly purely anonymous review. The reasons I think that being the EiC alone is not cause to not submit to your own journals are as follows:
"Publish elsewhere" doesn't necessarily work - first, you've cut the number of journals by one, and for some specialty fields, that's a rather big deal. Additionally, the EiC of a journal is likely working in a field that is particular suited to that journal - "publish elsewhere" forces scholarship into potentially awkward fitting publications for the sake of avoiding the appearance of impropriety. I'd much rather any such risk be addressed head on.
What about collaborators? For fields where papers often have one or two authors, perhaps this is more clear, but my field routinely has papers with a great many more authors than that. Is any study that recruits one of the finest minds in their field (presumably) then inevitably doomed not to be able to publish in the journal that might fit their work best? What about their graduate students?
Many journals are society journals - you are effectively denying a scholarly society the easiest access to the work of one of their most prominent members (again, presumably). Yes, it could get published elsewhere. But there's no promise I read elsewhere.
In essence, drawing a hard line and saying "No" is counterproductive - I'd rather have a journal come out with a clear and open policy that says "This is how we handle submissions from our editors" - all of them, than to issue blanket bans.
What about their graduate students? -- I directly heard from the EiC of a very prestigious specialized math journal that he forbids his graduate students to submit to his journal. I know many of his former students, and indeed they didn't publish their papers there. I don't know how common this practice is in other subfields of mathematics or in non-math fields though.
+1 for your helpful answer. Yes, in relatively obscure fields, there may not be a realistic option to publish elsewhere, but it seems to me that isn't such a health state of affairs either, as it is largely the competition for reputation that is the driver for quality in journals. I don't think I am in favour of a blanket ban, but currently I still think it is a practice best avoided where possible.
@DikranMarsupial It's not even relatively obscure fields that have a small number of journals. There are, for example, three major "methods-heavy" journals in Epidemiology. Eliminating one is a 33% reduction in the available places you can submit. Even good papers may get rejected from one for one reason or another and find themselves up against the wall. This is also true for fields with clear "quality breakpoints" between journals.
I would have thought that if someone is sufficiently eminent to be an EiC their work ought to be of sufficient quality not to have to resubmit a paper to a different journal more than once! While luck is an element, to a large extent the author makes their own luck in writing the paper so that it is difficult for the reviewer not to appreciate it. For fields with "quality breakpoints", it seems to me if you can't convince the reviewers of two top quality journals, the paper probably belongs in the next rank down.
@DikranMarsupial And what if it's their grad student? See the first comment to my answer. And my actual thought for the quality breakpoint example was a field where there is a very clear 1st, 2nd, 3rd type of ranking, instead of ranking categories. Basically, I think a blanket ban is more trouble than it's worth.
According to page 5 of A Short Guide to Ethical Editing by New Editors by the Committee on Publication Ethics,
Can editors publish in their own journal?
Editors should not be denied the ability to publish in their own journal, but they must not exploit their position. The journal must have a procedure for handling submissions from the editor or members of the editorial board that ensures that peer review is handled independently of the author/editor. This process should be detailed once the paper is published (see: http://www.wame.org/wame-listserve-discussions/should-editors-publish-in-their-own-journal)
That said, in my experience, people tend to look down on editors who publish in their own journals. The implication is that they published their papers in their journals because other journals wouldn't publish them.
The conflict of interest between editor in chief and intelectual ( author ) in publish papers in self journals is evident. But, it is aggravated with share of the members of editorial board and editor in chief participate as authors in the same journals because it may be to establish an enormous bias in the choice of the papers with impairment of the others authors. Surely, the peer review of the papers of these authors might have be difficulties in withhold the paper.Though, this behaviour isn`t considered illegal, it is ethically abominable, and detrimental for the concept of the journal.
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12938 | More than one corresponding author for a paper?
Is it possible to have more than one corresponding author for a conference or journal paper?
Useful question about corresponding authors:
who should be the corresponding author
corresponding author implied meaning
Being corresponding author does not primarily concern the journal publishing process. The role of the corresponding author is to handle communications with other researchers once the paper has been published, to respond to questions concerning the research as a whole, methods, results. It is typically the most involved person who takes on this task and in many cases it is implicitly understood it is the first author. So for you to take on the corresponding author task means much more than the communication during the publishing process.
I can see reasons for there to be more than one corresponding author, although I have never encountered it. This would be if the paper contains material where two (or more) authors are experts on separate parts and it is necessary to contact each for specifics on their specialty. As I said, I have never seen it and am not sure it has ever been done. Perhaps we might find out through comments to the answer...
You're right. It's no need for me to be correspondent. But I want to know different opinion on multiple corresponding authors. Is it possible? How? and Under what circumstances? I googled it and found no helpful answer so I thought it maybe a good question to have in this site. One less answer in mind. I love that.
I think one of the linked questions came to the conclusion that there is no single definition across all fields, and "Being corresponding author does not primarily concern the journal publishing process" may be true for some fields and false for others.
It is possible, and at least in my field (chemical engineering) it is quite common. One example: in this paper there are two authors, and both are corresponding authors! There are even papers with more than two corresponding authors (3 and probably more)
Probably the most typical case is when you have two (or more) teams collaborating. If you have an experimental and a theoretical team, you can imagine that questions/discussion concerning each aspect of their joint paper might be better directed at the respective team’s expert. Same thing if you have a paper including very different techniques/methods, or multidisciplinary paper with teams from different fields.
The same is true in chemistry. Also note that in chemistry the corresponding author is usually the primary investigator (but rarely the first author, who did most of the experiments). Check out this paper in which I am the first author, and there are two corresponding authors.
Having two (or more) corresponding authors is also common, if the paper is submitted by a student (or post-doc) who is expected to leave the research group soon and may not be able to attend to correspondence, reviewer queries etc, particularly in case the review gets delayed. In these cases, it is customary for the adviser to add his/her name as the corresponding author
It is possible, as far as the journal allows it. In the journal I copy edit, only one corresponding author is allowed. Full stop, no discussion.
Different journals have different policies, some, for instance, do not have the notion of a corresponding author at all, and only mention that "at least one e-mail address shall be provided".
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162275 | What constitutes as stealing of an idea?
I have recently been accused by someone of stealing their idea and doing the work required. In fact they had come to me to do, let's say, a literature review because they didn't have the expertise to do one themselves. They gave me an umbrella topic and told me to figure the rest out. I ran with it and narrowed down the topic to a specific research question. Step by step I made sure to keep the person looped in and updated on my progress, as well as answered their questions (such as: what is the research question? What does this mean? What is the point of doing this review?). When it came time to move it forward, the person bailed and said they were too busy to continue.
A year later, I nudged them again as I wanted to finish it off and said I have other resources now (ask a student to do some data validation) to help complete the next step so we could start writing. The person agreed and we finally started to talk about authorship. They asked what I wanted, I said first as I had done a major part of the work. They also needed a first so I counter suggested we do first co authors as it had requires/requires both of our efforts. They were extremely reluctant, saying that I had stolen their idea and that it was wrong for me to do the work when they didn't have the time, and suddenly say that I deserved first because I had done the work but they also needed me to teach them step by step on how to do the lit review.
I feel that I have not been deceitful by hiding information or falsely claiming authorship away from this person. I believe it was a joint effort although I'm not sure what the norm is. What does actually constitute as idea stealing? Did I overstep by asking to be recognised as an equal contributor?
Too personal. Work it out between yourselves.
Which of you is the senior scholar here? It matters somewhat both politically and from a “advise vs action” standpoint.
I did upvoted both the answer by Bryan Krause and by Dmitry. Although they are rather different and somehow antithetical, they are both good answers. That force me to agree with the comment by Buffy just here above.
This answer assumed that OP was in some way senior to their counterpart, either in position or experience. Since this assumption is not true (OP is a masters student, the other person is a PhD student), it seems there is some fault for both parties in how they communicated expectations at the beginning of the project.
It's going to be difficult if not impossible for anyone here to judge this because none of us are in the situation and have the daily exposure required to do so.
However, with the limited information you give here, it sounds to me like someone came to you with an idea, and rather than help them with their idea you judged yourself more capable to do the work and took off with it.
It's like instead of helping a student understand their confusion on part of their homework, you've done most of the assignment for them, while keeping them informed of your progress. In doing so, yes you've helped them complete their homework, but you've stolen from them the opportunity to learn while doing it. Or imagine a 5 year old assembling a train set. They've run into a problem and can't get a loop connected because they've installed too tight of a bend, and ask for help. Do you provide some suggestions on how they might fix the problem? do you rearrange a piece or two to help demonstrate this? Or do you wait for them to go to sleep and show them when they wake up how you've completed it all for them and solved all their problems? Clearly you get the credit for completing the train set, but was it fair?
It sounds a bit like you've stolen an idea to me. The conversation about the project and authorship should have occurred at the beginning before you decided to "run with it", or at least in one of the intervening times when this person indicated they didn't have the time right now, not when you'd like to finish off the project and already did all the work. Arguably the other person should have brought this up on their own then and not now, but there are various reasons (such as social hierarchies, cultural norms, and their own personality) that may have prevented them from doing so, and if you are the more experienced person in the situation the onus is on you.
You very much may deserve the majority of credit on the final work. The infraction is not in deceit about what you were working on, but on taking on so much of the project that it became yours without getting permission or an understanding up front. Especially if all you were asked was if you would help with a literature review.
That's a great point. It was not communicated to me that they wanted to also do the process. I did make things easy for them to actually participate in the whole process and actively encouraged them. They didn't really indicate any remarks such as "hey slow down, I'd like to independently do this. Can you be an advisor instead?". Rather it was also time dependent at the time and they wanted me to finish it ASAP so I did. If they didn't interject in the 5 month period we were exchanging emails, I assumed i was doing what they wanted me to do. (I am ranked lower than them)
Oh and the time they bailed was actually at the point everything was pretty much done but needed another set of hands/eyes to do it. We did actually have a conversation about authorship, albeit briefly and never concrete, where I suggested co-first as the whole process requires at least two people and it seemed fairer to me, and what is usually done for these kinds of papers. (It's not a lit review but systematic)
@Lowlyresearchassistant By ranked higher do you mean that they are a peer but ahead of you (like a graduate student who started sooner), or are you a graduate student whereas they are a post doc or professor?
They are a PhD student while I am a masters. They came to me for a project that they were working on and asked for a quick systematic review (within 5 months) as I had done one previously so that they could get out some deliverables out to satisfy the funding body. They also wanted to invite their friends to coauthor to get more collaborators on board. I was silly to not discuss authorship beforehand but i think the fault/responsibility falls on us both.
"i think the fault/responsibility falls on us both" - Agreed. I'd go with Buffy's comment: you'll have to work it out between each other. Your advisor may also be able to help sort some things out.
Some researchers have a habit of casually run their vague ideas by others in their team, particularly those on whom they have some kind of power or influence. If you refuse to work with them, you may be labelled "not a team player", which no-one wants. People are generally excited to collaborate, and happy to put down some work to start what they think is a promising collaborative project. Several months later, when almost all the work is done, the person who "generated" an idea would come back and claim the first authorship (leaving it to you to do experiments and write the paper). If you try to negotiate, they will gaslite you claiming you stole their brilliant idea. And if nothing comes out of the idea, you wasted your time and the person will simply move on, probably telling others how useless you are.
Ideas en masse are cheap. Excellent ideas are rare and worth much. But telling which is which requires hard work, which is actually the main resource required. Having an idea is like having a mollusk on a seabed. It may have a pearl inside, or it may be empty. It takes time and effort to get the mollusk out of the sea and open it.
Some people have a skill of analysing their many ideas and discarding the least promising ones without bothering others with them. They often end up leading large and successful research groups, because their ideas are typically specific, well-elaborated and have a better than average success rate. These leaders do not chase others to work with them, quite the contrary, people will queue up to work in their lab. If you happen to work with such people, you can quickly tell that they know their stuff and can explain the proposal really well, as well as which role they ask you to take and how this collaboration can benefit you.
It seems that on this occasion you have met a person with a different skill set. It is unfortunate, and it may be better to accept that there may be no good solutions. You already did most of the work, and the choices you have are to either complete it and publish together (which is exactly what this person wanted), or walk away from an unfair deal and risk to be badmouthed by them.
If you have someone willing to listen (your supervisor, head of lab/department), you may try to involve them, but chances are they will not want to investigate deeply, and will stick to a usual "collaboration is good" matra. Well, unfortunately, it takes two to tango, and in a good collaboration everyone has to pull their weight, which is not always exactly what happens in academia. This is not your fault or failure, just a sad manifestation of a very competitive and sometimes toxic landscape of a field of academic collaborations. Hopefully your next collaborator will be much better than the first one. Good luck.
I will first try to answer the specific question: What constitutes as stealing of an idea? (Not specific to the OP situation)
In theory: Ideas are not subject to property, and therefore they cannot be stolen (nor protected by copyright or patents, although I am not a lawyer). This is commonly expressed as: "Ideas are free as the air". In other words, ideas are free and do not have an owner. You cannot steal something that is free and does not have an owner.
Also, ideas are cheap, and people frequently have ideas that are not followed through. If you decide to share your ideas, you should be proud if someone follows them through.
In practice (as experienced by the OP): People feel they do own their ideas, and these sentiments can be strong. Usually, people feel their ideas have been stolen when they communicate them to others, and these others follow them through. If an agreement was made to develop an idea jointly (or even to give away an idea), these sentiments would not be expected, but they could still arise (people forget, change their minds, make untold assumptions, etc.). The best way to avoid these situations is to have clear, written agreements before starting to do the actual work, including authorship of possible publications, as explained by Bryan Krause.
As for the situation described in the question, I would say:
Getting a reputation for "stealing" ideas can hurt your chances of collaborating with others in the future. Try to avoid leaving your colleague with that impression.
I would try to negotiate with them, always being polite and sustaining your position with facts. Decide beforehand what would be an acceptable outcome for you, so you know what are your limits. Maybe they can be "corresponding author" if that applies in your field, and you could be first author. Maybe a joint first coauthorship with their name first could be acceptable to both of you.
Who "needs a first authorship" should be irrelevant in these negotiations. Take into account the authorship policy of the journal that you plan to submit if they have one.
Never mention your impression that they did not have the knowledge to do the work themselves. That would only hurt their ego, and you cannot be sure your impression is correct, let alone prove it. From their point of view, they were probably guiding you to do the work, even if you feel differently. I would ignore any accusations of "stealing" the idea, as dwelling into that is not productive. Just continue to seek common ground if they insist on that.
Consider having someone else present while you talk to them, although this is delicate, and they might refuse. If you reach an agreement, you could send them an e-mail afterward with the conclusion reached.
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161550 | Postdoc in Paris with foreign funding
I am moving to Paris for a postdoc in spring 2021 and I have received funding from Denmark for two years. I am considering whether administering the grant myself or having it administered by INSERM. I would like to have detailed information on how the salary will be calculated in each case and how to get a work contract and social security, as well how to pay taxes in case I administer the grant myself. I know in other places this kind of contract would be a visiting researcher contract. I am an EU citizen (IT). I do not speak French at the moment but I am starting language classes. Any useful link for where to gather information for this situation would be highly appreciated.
Contact your supervisor, and ask them to direct you to the person(s) in the French university who can answer your questions.
I have already done this, but it is really difficult to communicate with the administration. I wonder whether there is a source of information online for foreign researchers in my situation.
It is my experience in France that most things are arranged in person. I doubt that there are resources online that can give you all the information you need, and I think your best bet is to talk to administration, possibly with help from a future group member. Also, it is (almost) always hard to do administration in a foreign country. In any case I cannot help you further, but I can wish you the best of luck!
We don't really do requests for "useful links," so closing this for now. If you like, you could rephrase the post to ask your question directly and then flag for reopening.
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161601 | Is it possible to get into graduate school for math with a non-math UG degree?
I'm an undergraduate biology and chemical engineering dual major student. I recently got into pure math while I was researching patterns in biology which lead me down the rabbit hole of fractals and non-Euclidean geometry and eventually, lead me to number theory. I really enjoy the subjects. Is it possible for me to pursue my graduate studies in pure math? If so, what would be the necessary steps I should take to do the same? I am in my second year of studies and I do intend to take the GRE Math Subject test but I would really appreciate any other advice you could give me. Also, switching majors is not an option because my uni doesn't have a good math program. If you are reading this, I hope you have a nice day ahead.
Is this in the US or elsewhere?
I'm from India... I've looked into local options and most of them have an examination that I have to clear and it's quite a clear cut option. But I'm also looking into options abroad. Mostly Scandinavian countries, Japan or the US.
Regarding graduate programs in the US: It is possible to get into graduate school for pure math with a non-math undergraduate, but it might not be the best idea if you have the option to change your undergraduate course of study.
In the US, graduate programs in pure math will typically expect you to have taken coursework in differential equations, linear algebra, real analysis, and abstract algebra. They may also expect you to have taken at least some coursework in other upper-division (third and fourth year) topics. Once you've taken all this coursework, you're well on your way to graduating with an undergraduate degree in math!
When reviewing applications, a program wants to make sure that their incoming graduate students have the potential to complete their studies in a timely manner and produce good work. (Graduating in a timely manner ensures that the program's budget stays balanced, and producing good work can help you get a job that reflects positively on your graduate program.)
Your coursework and GPA (and maybe your GRE scores to a lesser extent) reflect on your potential to graduate in a timely manner and produce good work. However, as many answers on this site will tell you, letters of recommendation are one of the most critical ways for graduate programs to get a sense of your preparation and potential. The people who are best suited to discuss your potential as a future mathematician are other mathematicians, so you want your letters of recommendation written by mathematicians if at all possible. This means you should be meeting with math professors and discussing math with them, which will be much easier to do if you are focusing your undergraduate studies on math.
I didn't become a math major until my third year of undergrad, although I did take a few math courses beyond calculus before then. However, the math professors that I spent time interacting with as a math major made all the difference in helping me get into graduate school. They gave me advice, worked with me on reading projects, and encouraged me to apply to schools that were a good fit for my interests and abilities.
I wouldn't worry too much about your university not having a good math program -- a top-ranked biology or engineering degree isn't going to be as helpful as expert advice and support from mathematicians, even if they work in a department that doesn't "rank highly." Even if you can't change your official course of study, I would encourage you to take more math classes before setting yourself on graduate school in math. You might find out that you don't like math enough to spend 5 years on it, or you may find out that you like applied math more than pure math.
Note that this is a US centric answer. I'm in agreement with it, but it may be very different elsewhere.
@Buffy I definitely agree with you, and thank you for pointing that out. As you know, in many places it is standard to get a masters first, and admissions criteria for such degrees are likely different. I have no personal experience with the non-US route, but I expect that some principles may still carry over (like taking more coursework before deciding on graduate school).
Turns out the Math Subject Test is definitely not a good indicator for successful PhD completion, and not a very good indicator of even initial success in grad school. But the points about interaction and so on are good.
I personally agree that the subject test is a poor indicator of future success, but I don't have anything beyond anecdotes to back up my opinion (hence the "maybe" in my answer). For what it's worth, my subject test score was middling at best. I'm sure this contributed to some of the rejections I received, even if I felt my score mostly said "it's been several years since I took calculus and linear algebra."
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17135 | How to write a math abstract for a conference in an experimentalist dominated field without "specific numerical results"
Note that in experimental fields it is not uncommon that an abstract is required to have "specific" unpublished results 9 months or so before the conference. The problem is if you are a theoretical/mathematical researcher in these lab based fields often your mathematical model and derivations are the crux of your research and a numerical exploration comes later. How do you write an abstract for these fields highlighting that you derived the model, proved a bunch of existence and uniqueness properties (that they likely don't care about) and have just started your exploration of numerical examples (likely the only thing they care about) without having anything definitive to say yet about your numerical examples.
The most definitive thing I could say about the numerical examples is, "We show that for a given set of parameter space we observe X and for another set of parameter space we observe Y. This is the consequence of X being true in contrast to Y being true in our field of application". To be clear I don't know anything about the structure of the parameter space that yield the two distinct X and Y scenarios yet, but I do know that both X and Y are possible given some preliminary simulations, and that the difference between X and Y is interesting.
One thing to note is this is not a conference that includes a proceedings. You have an abstract and a talk, but no paper comes out of it. Papers are strictly for peer reviewed journals in this field. The answers to this question How to write abstract for conference when you have no results yet? seem to be more geared towards fields where papers come out of the conference.
From experience: you just cannot simply publish without (numerical) results. Why? Applied people rely on those to qualitatively assess the value of your work. They have to compare it and the interested readers in those fields almost always judge a method by figures and numbers. They need to decide if that method is worth implementing, regardless of the approach's novelty constituents. Your one and only chance is to deliver a narrative (in the abstract) that clearly emphasizes why this method would surely beat state of the art alternatives. Otherwise, go for another conference..
publish? There is no paper associated with this conference.
Both publishing and disseminating of a method require you convince the auditorium of the method's validity and quality. If it's an applied field crowd you'll be addressing, they'll cough asking for some sort of benchmarks. Sorry, but this is how these guys "roll". Pure mathematicians do not understand/do not care of how a method performs if it's novel enough (if you just show that one thing implies another thing or generalizes it, it's fine with them), whereas applied maths people will often care only about concrete gains and applicability. Alas, it also depends on the conference's reputation.
As a clear answer: present a proof or a narrative explaining clearly why your method improves upon a specific subject. That proof is valuable for both experimentalists and theorists, as it definitely decides upon the qualities of your method. Doing so, I see no point in why you won't be accepted to speak there :). You may also find some people keen on verifying your findings and thus producing the so-called results..
Have you already been invited to speak at the conference? If so, the point of the abstract seems to be mainly for people to decide whether to attend your talk. How long are such abstracts usually? In my experience (in mathematics), abstracts for talks are usually at most a paragraph and sometimes just a couple of sentences. Speaking in general terms seems unavoidable.
Also, enunciating the obvious a bit: it sounds like you come from a more theoretical background (you might consider providing some professional information about yourself on your profile page; it can only help you get more appropriate answers, but from your other questions and answers I guess you are in a rather math-heavy branch of statistics) and you are finding the norms of speaking in this conference to be a bit awkward and outside of your comfort zone. Maybe then you can just attend the conference without giving a talk in it?
It sounds like you should be submitting your abstract to a different conference.
@JeffE Some of my most productive collaborations have come from conferences that generated exactly this kind of problem.
I just want to say that this question could stand in for many interdisciplinary "social expectation" issues, and I hope more people ask questions about these problems of differing expectations across fields. It is definitely a disincentive for people to start working a bit outside the field of their PhD.
Writing as a mathematical modeler in Epidemiology, and a regular submitter to conferences with these types of requirements, which are dominated by empirical research findings, this is something that's hard, if you approach it from the direction you have - with the numerical results coming at the "end" of your research.
It would be good to have a numerical result, because as has been mentioned, while you might not view these as the crux of your research, it may very well be the crux of why someone is interested in your research. Even as someone who does appreciate the theory side of things, I'm often rather more interested in the numerical results.
That being said, these conferences are mostly looking to avoid "Will be discussed" results, where there's no means to evaluate if you've done anything, or if it will be interesting. The latter is especially hard for deciding whether a presentation becomes an oral or poster presentation, because giving one of the precious oral slots to someone whose going to largely be discussing a slew of null results is (often) irksome.
You do however have results, and that should be enough to make it past the bar. If X and Y are both possible within the parameter space, and that means something for the field, then that is a specific result, and you should expand on why that's interesting.
It does depend on the type and reputation of the conference, but in my experience most conferences that are not publishing their proceedings will accept all abstracts that are clearly written and have no overt language, logic, factual, or similar critical problems. Looking at the question you linked to, I think exactly the same advice that is posted there is relevant to conferences with no published proceedings. I say this because the goal of your abstract here is primarily to attract attention and get people to attend your talk. (But, does this conference publish its abstracts? Some do.)
Following the advice given in the answers to the linked question will achieve this goal without putting you in an ethical challenge or leading you to claim things that turn out to be untrue or, worse, so misguided or ambitious that it's embarrassing.
It's up to you to convince the reader of your abstract that you will have compelling numerical results by that time. This comes from explaining your methodology and approach in a way that will seem reasonable and so can be reasonably expected to lead to exciting, specific results. If you don't expect to, then maybe your project isn't well designed or well suited to this audience.
It never hurts to have a short abstract regardless of the conference rules on length. KISS! (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is appropriate here. If you are severely lacking anything interesting to say right now, it could be as straightforward as a paragraph version of: "We will present numerical results from a novel form of mathematical analysis of problem X, which will impact Y." If the audience is interested in topics X or Y then they might well show up regardless of their confidence in what new results you'll have.
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11004 | How aware are grad school application readers of differing standards internationally?
Recently two friends of mine have come back to Australia after having done 2 semesters of 3rd and 4th year subjects (about half mathematics) at different branches of the University of California.
They said that the tests would only ask questions directly from or similar to material covered in lectures and example sheets. If questions deviated from the lectures or example sheets very much students would complain to the lecturer. Thus, if one studied the example sheets enough they got an A relatively easily. They returned with A or A+ in all of their maths subjects, but they average about 75-80 for their maths subjects here.
In Australia, about 70% of the exam is usually like that. The rest are questions that we learned enough theory to feasibly do, but we hadn't seen that type of question before so it requires some level of cleverness to get it within the time limits of the exam.
My questions are
Can anyone corroborate that the maths tests at american universities are actually like this?
If so, is this well known and accounted for by the people who look at grad school applications from international students?
How do they fairly evaluate the performance of international applications? How are Australian applicants generally viewed by them?
Edit: Chris's answer below seems to answer the first question by "not quite", which is what I expected I suppose. The other questions still stand.
For the first question: there's no general answer. Instructors design their own classes, including the exams; some may decide to have exams like you describe, and others may be just the opposite.
I don't think you can make such a broad generalization about American universities. In my first year math course, for example, we had exams in which none of the material was directly from the homework/readings, and the first page consisted entirely of definitions we had not seen which we would need for the questions on the exams. The average was on the order of 30-40% for some of these.
@AlexBecker I did not mean to overly generalize or insult people in any way. I indeed expected that at the best universities the tests would be harder. I think people evaluating your transcript will know that this is the case because of the prestige of your university. I am wondering how one might judge this for an applicant from an unfamiliar university.
@Craig I took no offense. I'm just trying to point out that a couple of universities in the UC system doing things one way does not necessarily mean that this is even the norm at American universities.
Repeating a bit other remarks: in the U.S., exams in upper-division courses are usually designed by the individual instructor, and vary widely.
There is a tradition in top-tier places in the U.S. to "challenge" students on exams, and students seem to expect this, while, yes, in some local cultures students expect/demand exams that contain no surprises.
For that matter, it is not clear to me that "testing cleverness" is necessarily an important goal for timed exams. I am well aware that there is a huge tradition in which quickness and cleverness are construed as fundamental skills/talents. Certainly these are important for math contests, and occasionally useful in the practice of mathematics, but I don't think our classes teach these things, in any case. Thus, testing for quickness and cleverness is testing for something outside the course content. Thus, in many regards it is an irrelevant challenge to the students.
That is, substantial mathematics often has genuine complications and difficulties that exist despite examples and forthrightness, and it is sometimes (often?) counterproductive to create "challenging (surprise) problems" from material that should be straightforward.
But, yes, people on admissions committees are well aware of such traditions and their variations, don't worry.
For me, the letters of recommendation from math faculty are far more important than grades on the transcript, in any case. Similarly, the statement of purpose of the applicant tells much more than the transcript. And, one more time, the skill set relevant to surprise questions on timed exams becomes ever less relevant throughout grad school.
Thank you for your informative answer. I've spent the last few hours reading through your other answers on this website. In particular, point 5 and onward of your answer here addresses some of my questions. As for this answer, the last paragraph is certainly eye opening and raises new issues for me. I picked my honors essay (the largest part of my final year) to be in an algebraic area that I am relatively weak in.
I did this because I wanted to branch out and fill in the gaps in my foundation after having focused on analysis and (elementary/analytic) number theory excessively for most of my undergrad degree. As a result, I have struggled more than I would in other topics and my thesis adviser is probably less than impressed with me as he has only seen me understand things slowly. The letter of the person supervising my activities in the final year of my degree probably vastly outweighs the letters from lecturers that I have only done a course with recently.
Do you have any advice on what I can do in such a situation? If I were to write this in my personal statement, would it seem like I am trying to sweep my inability under the rug?
It's better to engage with more serious things and have to think about them, rather than be glib about easy, elementary things. Faculty with any sense don't expect serious projects to be dispatched as blithely as standard coursework. It's a completely different thing. Perhaps we too often think that that "easy" feeling is supposed to persist forever, but it cannot. In any case, you can put a positive spin on "having to work harder" by noting that you deliberately chose a more challenging project. And, again, no one cares so very much about "speed" at some point.
Your replies have been invaluable to me. I have a better idea on how to write my application and realize I must place more emphasis on doing well on my thesis to collect a strong recommendation than getting high marks on coursework. Thank you for your help Professor Garrett.
You're welcome. Good luck!
Can anyone corroborate that the maths tests at american universities are actually like this?
Some are, some aren't. Grading standards are heavily influenced by national and departmental culture, but ultimately they're entirely up to the instructor, just as they are in Australia.
But I expect that most upper-division exams in strong departments require enough mastery of the material (as opposed to memorization of examples) to answer a completely novel question that requires the same techniques. The key word here is mastery, not cleverness.
(I go further than Paul Garrett. Cleverness is not only inappropriate to test on exams; it's actually a dangerous habit to cultivate. My most frequent advice to students in my classes is "You're trying to be clever. Stop it. Just solve the problem, one step at a time.")
If so, is this well known and accounted for by the people who look at grad school applications from international students?
Yes, admissions committees are well aware of significant differences between universities, both within the US and internationally.
How do they fairly evaluate the performance of international applications?
Generally, by comparing them with other international applicants, preferably from the same country, if not the same university. In other words, exactly the same way we judge American applicants.
In my department, if we get an otherwise strong application from a university we've never heard of, we try to judge by the recommendation letters. But sometimes we just have to gamble, so we admit one or two of the very best students from an unknown university just to find out how good it is. If they do well, we admit more from that university later; if they do badly, we don't.
How are Australian applicants generally viewed by them?
Well, that depends on the individual applicant, doesn't it?
Thank you for your answer, I was not aware of this technique of comparing to other students from the same university/country. By my last question, I was asking if perhaps some reputation has been formed by e.g. previous Australian applicants with high marks having excelled in the program once accepted or on the other end of the scale, cases of students struggling in the program indicating that perhaps Australian undergrad degrees often do not adequately prepare students well enough for a phd at a top US uni.
The rest are questions that we learned enough theory to feasibly do, but we hadn't seen that type of question before so it requires some level of cleverness to get it within the time limits of the exam.
The math and science classes I have taken at top tier universities in the U.S. have had these types of problems as a significant part of exams. As a caveat, those were also classes designed for math and science students. I have tutored students in non-math fields who have taken math and science classes that were less rigorous in that regard (e.g., "Calculus for Business majors").
Suffice it to say that as undergraduates progress deeper into their respective field, they will generally experience more challenging material on the exams.
You have two very different questions here:
how the international applicants are being treated, and
how are math courses being evaluated.
The site would have been better off if you split them, as they are conceptually unrelated to one another. Ah well.
JeffE gave a good answer regarding the former question. His answer seems generalizable, as I've heard of other departments doing similar things. The admissions committees usually try to identify the countrymate among the faculty of their university and ask them whether the school the applicant is coming from is a worthy one. It is more difficult to do with applicants from Kenya or Morocco than those from Australia -- most academics will know about the top AU schools (and if they don't, I just gave them the link :) ).
For your latter question, there is no good answer as there are 4000 colleges * 5-50 math instructors in each. Oversimplified hand-holding you described is typical of the intro classes where the students will bitch about the letter $\theta$ and the sign $\forall$ as they have never seen it before. This creates huge impediments to instructors in trying to challenge the more inspiring and better prepared students who have to be held back at the level of the rest of the crowd.
I had a British prof in my Stat program, and he said that the British exams are usually written so that 70% completion gives you an A. I.e., the instructor reasonably expects that the top students will get 70 out of 100 on this exam. His exams were like that. As the system down under is built after the British system, you probably have the same approach.
The silly American "grading curve" system is 90-100% for "A", the top grade; 80-90% for "B", the second best grade; 70-80% for "C", which few students want to get; 60-70% for "D", which is a very low pass, and often requires retaking the course. Students want higher grades, and do not hesitate to give lower evaluations to instructors who grade less generously, so the professors, especially whose main responsibility is teaching (vs. research on the tenure track), have the incentives to make the exams simple so that the students are happy. The system produces a lot of students with nominal "A"s who know little to nothing. Only the top 20 or so universities (arguably stronger than the Australian G8 schools) have stronger incentives to maintain the university reputation, and tell their profs to make the exams real. I would expect that the stronger campuses of the Univ of California system (Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD) would know better than just hand everybody an "A".
As an artifact of the grading curve, the instructors have to populate their exams with 70% of very simple problems to let the bottom students accumulate enough credit for their "C"s, and can basically afford only one or two problems on a typical 90-120 minutes test to distinguish between the top "A" students and solid but not the top "B" students. This all is a matter of habit and tradition. Some instructors try to override it by making the total sum of scores in the course to be 431 or some prime number like that, so that there will be an extra step for the students to convert their 301 score to the familiar 100% range -- and most will fail without a calculator, and won't be able to tell whether getting three extra points they can squeeze for a homework would change their grade to pass from 69.93% to 70.05% into the next letter category. Professors coming from other countries may sometimes bring their own evaluation ideas (as my British prof did), and those interested in teaching and learning devise their own systems -- I described mine here.
Best luck with your applications, rest assured that you won't have any issues with the US schools just because you say it "todie" instead of "today" :).
The silly American "grading curve" system is 90-100% for "A", — To repeat myself and others: There is no single American grading system; every instructor decides their own.
Oh come on, Jeff. Most instructors write and grade their own tests (unless that's a centrally administered bubble sheet). But how many instructors in your department do deviate from the 70/80/90 grading scheme? Please count, you are getting me VERY curious at this point, now that you downvoted my answer.
Most of them. In fact, none of the theoretical CS faculty In my department use those cutoffs.
(Also, I didn't down vote your answer.)
Wow. Double wow. (I thought you were a mathematician though; CS classes may be more project based, and you probably teach few if any Programming 101 classes that benefit from the standardized approach.) My apologies.
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40786 | How do I give credit to some image I included in my paper?
I recreated an image from a paper I liked (didn't use the same image to get out of the asking permission which could take a while). Now the reviewer asked us to give credit to the original paper. How do I do that? Is it okay to write that my image was 'inspired' from this other paper, as I didn't copy the image but used the image as a reference to create my own?
Its a drawing of blood vessels (with appropriate details related to our work).
First of all,
permission which could take a while
Is not entirely correct. Most major publishers have an automated "permission request" system that in many cases automatically grants you permission to reuse a figure from a published paper. It takes about 5 minutes and usually you can find it in the journal's home page.
Now the reviewer asked us to give credit to the original paper. How do I do that?
This isn't too hard. One way, for instance, would be to add to the figure caption: "Redrawn after Smith et al. (2005)". I think it also depends on what the figure is about. Is it a graph with data points that you used? Is it some schematic drawing? If you edit your question to better describe the figure we can give you a better answer.
Its a biological drawing. I edited the question.
In addition, modifying an image does not overcome copyright protection and the need to get permission. Making a modification to someone else's image requires copying it, and the copyright owner is the one who has the right to allow copying.
This answer is not relevant because the image was not copied. The author states very clearly "...I didn't copy the image but used the image as a reference to create my own..."
I disagree: "copy" is not limited to exact reproduction under copyright law.
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122213 | Format for student "résumé" for capstone projects?
This coming semester, I am "managing" (teaching?) the capstone projects for eight undergraduate students. We are going to start from scratch in terms of ideas for projects, but one aspect I want to include is the students' backgrounds and interests.
I am thinking that these should be presented in a short-form résumé.
Because the projects will eventually consist of teams of 2 to 4 students, having this background information will help make compatible groups.
Does anyone have experience doing this?
I'm thinking that it should just be a functional résumé:
A functional résumé lists work experience and skills sorted by skill area or job function.
The functional résumé is used to focus on skills that are specific to the type of position being sought. This format directly emphasizes specific professional capabilities and utilizes experience summaries as its primary means of communicating professional competency.
Is this a good idea?
Does anyone have any pointers to templates used specifically for assessable work?
In the end, I decided to go with a functional résumé.
The benefits were:
The students could tailor the academic course list to those relevant to their projects.
The students could emphasize some of their background interests that were also relevant.
The downsides were:
Some students didn't "get" the idea of a functional résumé and needed several iterations to achieve one.
Some students had much more relevant experience and more relevant courses than others, which reflected badly on the students with little relevant experience or coursework.
Though both of these downsides led to teachable things, which is part of the aim of the capstone project.
Because I wanted to show all of the résumés on a projection screen, I chose the following non-standard format to show them in one page.
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103831 | Please ensure that you refer to Figure 3 in your text as, if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the figure
I have submitted revisions to a journal. The editor asked that:
Please ensure that you refer to Figure 3 in your text as, if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the figure.
Please ensure that you refer to Table 9 in your text as, if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the Table.
What does the editor mean? The article contains 17 table and three figures, but he only raised issue with figure 3 and table 9.
Figure 3 and table 9 have been mentioned in the text already.
I'm voting to close because this question does not concern academia, but rather it is a problem that you have to deal with by yourself.
I don't understand why the editor refers to production. Surely "the reader will need this reference to link between the text and the figure/table" is more relevant?
@user2768 I assume they want to produce hyperlinks for each table / figure.
@user2768 "production" means a person, also known as a copyeditor. The editor is saying they are making this request because they know the copyeditor will want it.
@padawan Why is this a problem that the OP has to deal with themselves? Why can't we help?
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it can't be generalized to other situations. You should ask the editor, not the internet.
Disagree with close votes, this can be useful to others.
Is it perhaps a technical thing, such as using LaTeX and not having a "\ref" reference to the figure, and instead writing "figure 3" as text?
Did you mention the other figures and tables in your text? Usually, you should have a sentence like "as shown in fig. 3" or "in table 9, we see..." for each and every table and figure.
Maybe the editor just gave examples - you should do it for all of them.
Edit to incorporate the comment into the answer:
It might be a misunderstanding. Since you should address all reviewer's / editor's comments, you should write something like "fig. 3 and table 9 are mentioned on p.x line y. If this is not sufficient, I did not understand your remark, please elaborate on this issue"
yes i have explicitly mentioned all the tables and figures
Then it might be a misunderstanding. Since you should address all reviewer's / editor's comments, you should write something like "fig. 3 and table 9 are mentioned on p.x line y. If this is not sufficient, I did not understand your remark, please elaborate on this issue"
thanks for your valuable comments, i am considering to contact the editor for clarification
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122029 | Same problem solved in a totally different way
If I solved a already solved recent problem with a totally different method, can I communicate my solution in a journal? How likely is the acceptance of my paper?
Yes, you can (and you should!).
And you should compare the performance of your method with the existing one.
Even if your method performs worse, this is still a valid result.
Just to add to the above answer, make sure that you draw an explicit comparison between your method and the existing method in the paper and what are the advantages of your methods. You can write this as a separate section in the paper "Key Contributions". I am not sure that the paper will be accepted unless the new method has some distinct and sufficient advantage (because you have to answer the question of "why should anyone be bothered to use the new method").
Also, consider what are the shortcomings of the new approach and any approaches to mitigate them because reviewers will be interested in that too. If you don't have time to cover these shortcomings, you can justify how to mitigate them and write them as future works.
My advice is based on the fact that I recently submitted a paper (that got accepted) that proposed a new method to do something which had already been done by an existing method. But the advantage of my method was that it was more generic (the new method also works in scenarios where the old method doesn't). I basically showed this by referencing three prior works that had been unsuccessful in using the existing method in a new scenario that I was interested in and how the new method overcame the limitations of the old method. Some of the questions from reviewers focused on the applicability of the new method on future (yet unseen) scenarios.
Note: Take my answer with a grain of salt because my experience is only in engineering papers (specifically computer engineering/science). My advice may/may not be applicable to your area of research.
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117409 | Should we do literature search in Incognito mode?
I found a claim that literature search (in Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Web of Science, etc) should be performed in Incognito/Private Browsing mode.
According to the claim, search results may be influenced by browser cookies (presumably those about previous literature searches), and if a user account is used, they may be influenced by the scholar's information (interests, etc.) as recorded by the search engine.
If that is correct, authors of systematic reviews may need to report how they access literature databases and search engines.
Is there any evidence to support that claim?
And where did you hear this claim? Did you ask them for evidence? Who knows what Google is doing with their info, but, e.g., Web of Science is paid by my institution for use by the company - it is not in their (WoS) best interest to be messing with searches from our IP addresses since they would no longer be trusted (or paid).
I added a source but it doesn't present evidence.
@JonCuster: Some people might consider a benefit if the search engine can learn from your past searches and direct you to content that is more likely to be of interest to you personally. In most cases, this would likely be more helpful than reproducibility of search results. I'm not sure why that should make the engine "not trusted". But it would mean that you'd need to take special steps to get a reproducible search when you specifically need one.
All I saw was references to Google Scholar. If you have used even plain Google search, you would notice that, indeed, Google tries to tailor results for you based on past searches, figuring that they should indicate something about what you might be looking for. They are scary good in that way, so applying it to Google Scholar seems like a no-brainer. But, frankly, relying on Google Scholar to do serious literature searches just seems like a bad idea. Go talk to a real research librarian and do what they suggest...
Google Scholar isn’t like Google at all. By default it just ranks by citations. It doesn’t tailor the ranking to your profile at all. I’d say the bias you’d get from Scholar is less than what you’d get from working at a specific library with physical journals, at least in the hard sciences.
@knzhou Google scholar definitely does not rank only by citations, it has some 'relevance' and timeliness criteria as well. If you know for a fact it does not tailor rankings to profiles (which may indeed be the case), though, that would be really helpful information and I'd love to have a reference to that fact.
@BryanKrause Well, I have a profile and I’ve literally never seen a less cited article listed above a more cited one...
@knzhou Maybe that's a preference to set? https://imgur.com/a/YUgYv0E 116, 1373, 17532, 161, 963, 98. (I will note I get exactly the same results for that search incognito and not, however I haven't tested any terms closer to ones I would normally use)
@BryanKrause Weird. Maybe I did and forgot! In any case Scholar at least must have the option, as I would expect any reasonable academic search engine to.
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57099 | Two abstracts accepted for oral and poster presentation, but I prefer they are swapped
A conference has accepted my two abstracts in the same track, the first for an oral presentation and the second as a poster.
However, I expected the second one would be accepted for oral presentation, as I believe it is more important and relevant to the area and probably to the track and the conference in general. It is also about my primary work, which is more sophisticated and robust than the first one, and I think it would be better for me to present it orally.
But I understand the conference committee have their evaluation and criteria for deciding the way of presentation for each abstract.
Shall I just accept this allocation, which is good anyway? Or is it common and accepted to request, with justification, that they swap the two abstracts - provided they didn't print and disseminate the program yet?
It does not hurt to ask. You can send a polite email explaining your reasons and ask if it is still possible to swap the talk with the poster. It is possible that the decision of the conference committee was based only on the number of slots available, and they will not hesitate to swap talks at all. It may be also that their decision, as you described, is based on some evaluation of strengths of the abstract and potential interest to it among the participants. In this case they will simply refuse to do as you ask, but you lose nothing but a bit of time.
The request to swap talks is not quite common, I guess, but also not unaccepted or weird. I would say, it is worth to try.
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24390 | How do I communicate my research with a general audience more effectively?
I really enjoyed my research but it happens that whenever I tell somebody about it, I have the impression I'm making it sound boring, unimportant and not exciting.
Americans have a way of telling a story, I know this kind of "performance" does not suit my habit. I'm more the continental European, a bit reserved, a bit technical. Not everything I did immediately is about curing cancer, I admit it.
I started by adapting a kind of top-down approach, first I say "Simulations", usually people feel they can relate to that. And if they wish to know more, then I can start going into some details.
I think this approach makes sense, but still, I find others can induce interest by the other person immediately from the start of their explanations.
Question: How can I communicate my research to a general audience in a way that is more exciting and interesting?
Make your research sound interesting to whom? People in your immediate field (say, quantum physics)? People in the same broad field (say, other physicists)? Other academics in general? Members of the public?
I think that you're missing the point if you're trying to make your research sound exciting. If your research is exciting, you should be able to convey what it is that excites you to the people who matter.
@AriTrachtenberg: Maybe I am misinterpreting "people who matter", but I think it would be quite sad if only people mattered to me who were equally excited about, as hypothetical example, new algorithms for formal grammar-based syntax transformations as myself.
People who matter are the people you'd want to read and understand the work (as opposed to, say, your dentist:-) )
I always get compliments on my explanations when I assume that my audience is mentally challenged.
Try lots of different things. You've tried one thing, and it hasn't worked.
Treat it like any other kind of experimental research. Try new things, monitor the results, adjust your approach accordingly.
Some things that can work:
use specific examples: identify a very specific problem that they can understand, and show how you're trying to address that problem
use analogy and metaphor: find out something about what interests them, and draw parallels between that and what you're doing
be passionate: talk about the aspects of your work that you really care about, and why you are passionate about them; even if they don't understand the words, they'll understand your emotions.
"draw parallels between that and what you're doing", or speak about the intersection. Possibly your research could (at least remotely) be applied to some problem they may have now or in a plausible future. I mean, put an example from the start and choose an example that worries them (I'm not saying it is easy).
Perhaps the real problem is that you're not describing your research clearly, and at the appropriate level for the person you're talking to. This is a skill that definitely takes practice to get good at. You'll know you're doing it right when the other person asks good questions; that's proof that they are engaged. So I suspect if you focus on being clear and getting the level of explanation right, you'll end up making the research sound more interesting without even trying!
I take advantage of every opportunity I can to explain it to adults and children, academics and non-academics, and so on. I've definitely improved with this practice. The number one mistake I (and probably most people) tend to make is to explain at too high a level. I always have this fear that I'm going to insult the other person's intelligence by explaining things too simply. But that doesn't happen. If the other person does want more detail, they'll ask.
Another possibility is that you're trying to sound professional when you explain your research, and that's inhibiting your natural style. But it's perfectly OK to sound like an excited kid in this situation, if that's how you feel. A lot of well-respected academics sound like kids when they start talking about something they're interested in, because they do feel passionate about it, and that makes the audience more interested too.
Switch focus from the hows and whats to the whys and do a top-down break-down from there. Your peers will be able to follow your break-down for longer than laymen, but all will be more interested in what you do.
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56027 | What does "ADM" stand for on an article submission information page?
On the information page of my article submission, there's a column titled "ADM", listing the name of two persons that I can email.
What does this stand for?
In this context, ADM probably means "administrator." In other words, those are likely the people you are expected to contact in case of questions and problems with the submission site.
There are two thing in Manuscript Information
1.Editor-In-Chief called EIC or the
2. Administrator Called ADM about a particular manuscript
Are EIC and ADM synonyms or they have different tasks? In my case there is no information about EIC but only ADM and the paper is "under review".
You don't indicate which submission system you are speaking of, but the ScholarOne Manuscripts system, there are generally 3 levels of roles that deal with a submission. There is the administrator, who would preform some of the more routine tasks (checklists, adding notes, etc), this is commonly abbreviated as "admin" or "adm". The next level is an Editor. They can perform any number of tasks depending on the journals specific workflow, including finding and managing the review process, making recommendations and/or decisions. Journals refer to this role as many things depending on their business model. Editors (Ed.), Assistant Editor (AE), Section Editors (SE) are a few of the more common ones. Then there is an Editor In Chief role (EIC). They typically do the final decision, however, different journals will have various and widely differing workflows. Some journals have an EIC assign an Editor, who then manages the process from that point forward, with the EIC only approving the final outcome.
Some journals don't have editors, only EIC's, some have no EIC's and only Editors. Some have 2 or 3 different flavors of Editors. Some smaller journals only have a very small staff, and they perform "all of the above".
Disclaimer: I am an employee at ScholarOne, but the opinions and posts here are my own.
ADM, most probably stands for Article Dedicated Manager, not sure though.
ADM is a person in-charge of handling any communication about a specific article. His role is to answer general questions and to give advice to authors. In some cases to communicate with editors if questions require that. However, decisions of accepting or rejecting articles are usually made by EIC or other Editors in the editor board.
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63566 | how to ask help from an area expert and getting feedback?
Actually I am doing my PhD in Computer Science, and it is advancing a little bit slow. I am convinced that I can use a technique to solve a problem in my research, but my supervisor is not very keen with the idea. Searching on an online course I found an expert in the area that uses this technique, and I would like to ask for his opinion and maybe advice.
The questions I have are:
How to write an email to this expert? I mean should it be a formal one asking beforehand if he would have some time to read the doubts I have, or should I just send an email with the question I want to ask directly?
What to do in order to increase the likelihood of receiving a reply from this expert? I know they usually are very busy people and that they receive tons of emails, so what can I do to make the difference so that he will answer it?
Before, I have sent some emails to other experts and I did not get any reply, except for one special case from a renowned expert in the field of Evolutionary Programming that was incredible kind and eager to answer in a very detailed way the questions that I gave to him. Any advice?
Probably not "eager", but "willing"... to answer.
Better send one email with your problem and detailed questions. Oh, wait. You could ask here at SE! More or less the same etiquette applies. Both ways, your question might get an immediate, enthusiastic response, or go thumbleweed (6 months without answer).
Try to pick up some of that expert's work or paper and let him know in your first sentence that you enjoyed reading it or that it was very inspirational etc. (but be honest in this part). Than try to make some connections to your problem and ask him directly.
Start with a summary. Write a couple of sentences to explain the reason for your email and a rough statement of what it is you'd like help with. If your message is long and takes a while to get to the point then the expert is likely to get bored and lose interest.
Explain how you know of their work, and how it relates to yours. As @user3624251 suggests in their comment, a bit of massaging their ego will not go amiss, as long as it is not excessively fawning.
Be polite, but to the point. If you are too apologetic then you'll just come across as underconfident and unimportant.
State your problem as succinctly as possible. As you would on SE, try to make it as self-contained and well-defined as you can.
If you can't describe the problem in a couple of paragraphs or less, and/or the reply would require more than a few paragraphs, then it might not be well suited to an email enquiry and you might be better off trying to arrange a meeting. You could try finding out if there are any conferences coming up that you could meet up at. Or, if you can sell your problem as being really interesting, maybe the expert would be interested in collaboration.
Accept that, as you have already discovered, you will not have 100% success rate. However well you write the message, you may not even receive a reply, and that is not necessarily a poor reflection on you. But there is very little harm in trying, and some people turn out to be very generous with their time and advice.
Always follow up with an appreciative email if they reply in any way whatsoever!
When reaching out an expert for help, it's good to learn as much as you can about him before hand. I always dip into LinkedIn to check out background, and to see if there are any interesting clues, common experiences, and the like.
Usually, the very best way to get connected is with an introduction. Do you know anyone who knows this expert, who can make an introduction? That's where LinkedIn is quite helpful.
If email doesn't work, consider using @name in Twitter and see if you can get an answer that way.
Also, when I'm asking for help, I don't usually fire off the question. Instead, I'll shoot a request off saying "I'm XYZ at ZYX and I'm working on ABC. Do you mind if I ask a question on CBA?" I know it's a second step, but I've found that people tend to be more open once asked if a dialog is acceptable.
Speaking personally, I get a LOT of questions via email and have an auto-responder to answer them. I sometimes check those questions, but rarely individually answer them. But if someone I know reaches out to me, or I see a quick, easy-to-answer question on Twitter, I often reply.
Good luck. Don't limit your outreach to one person in a field. If you don't get an answer, move on. You never know how busy any one person is or whether it's just a busy week.
--David
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58157 | Include article in bibliography I didn't cite
Say I gained knowledge from a review article. However, I don't cite that review article. I do cite articles cited by that review article, but not the review itself.
Should I still include that review in my bibliography?
You should cite all sources you use. You obviously use the review article, so you should cite it properly. It has been asked before, I'll try to find the original question.
@yo': I'd have to partially disagree: if the only thing you learned from a review article is a reference to another article that contains the specifics of what you need to cite, then I don't think you need to cite the review article. Otherwise, you might have to cite a lot of papers if you found an article through reference chasing!
@JaapEldering The OP clearly acknowledges that he "gained knowledge from a review article", so he should cite it.
You can add as "uncited reference" in your paper.
What subject are you writing on? I think the answer varies by discipline.
@JessicaB biology/behavioral neuroscience
I have handled similar situations by adding a sentence citing the article, such as
Smith (2003) provides a useful summary of this topic.
My reasoning is that since I found the review article very helpful, people reading my article may be interested as well. I know I appreciate references like this.
I see this question is tagged with the "ethics" tag, and there is also an ethics subtext to the question, although it is not stated explicitly. Well, I don't see it as an ethics question at all. The purpose of citations is not to serve as acknowledgements to an author whose paper taught us something useful, and citing a paper is not something you should do as a courtesy because you want to be nice to someone or feel that they deserve a pat on the back. Rather, citations have two goals:
We cite a paper if we feel that this would help the reader. Will your readers be interested in seeing this review article as background material for the topic you are discussing? If yes, then definitely cite it.
We cite a paper to properly acknowledge the research contributions of other authors, on which our work relies and builds on, so that the reader is informed about the context of the new work we are discussing in our paper. If by citing the papers referenced in the review article you have already provided such a context, then citing the review article in addiiton is not necessary.
The point is that there are good reasons to cite a review article. But an ethical consideration involving some moral debt that you feel you owe to the writer of the review article, which seems to be what you are asking about, is not one of them.
I don't know what the expectations are in your field. However, one way this sort of thing might be dealt with in mathematics is to write something along the lines of
[1] gives a helpful review of this subject.
or
We direct the reader to [1] for onoverview of related work.
I think that is a valid way of including the reference if you feel you want to do so, without actually needing to decide whether it is necessary or not.
It may depend on the type or purpose of the document. If it's a journal article, check the requirements in the Instructions for Authors. Some state that the reference list / bibliography should only list sources that are cited in the paper. Similarly, if it's a thesis chapter, check the requirements for your school or university regarding citations and reference lists / bibliographies.
Only the cited articles are listed in bibliography. Therefore, if you don't cite the review article, you do not include it in the bibliography.
If you think that the review article is useful and you want to include it in the bibliography, you can just cite it in the paper.
This is usually true, but not always.
It is good to obey the usual convention, if you are not certain for a special rule. If you are sure that you can list uncited publication in the journal you are submitting, you can do it.
You have to motivate authors of review articles. The simplest way to do so is to cite them. If we do not motivate people, then no one will eventually perform this sort of not very thanked and quite time consuming job and you will have no opportunity to retrieve knowledge quickly as you did now.
I have a feeling like this answer doesn't quite respond to the question. It does not discuss whether or not to list the review article in the bibliography without mentioning it in the text. Moreover, the statement "this sort of not very thanked and quite time consuming job" makes me wonder whether the answer is mixing up reviews (as in surveys for overview/survey articles) and reviews (as in refereeing for peer review of submitted manuscripts).
I disagree. Citations are not a motivational tool and shouldn't be used with such a purpose in mind.
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293 | What rules guide whether to put qualifications on an academic business card?
I'm just wondering what rules of etiquette guide whether an academic puts qualifications on a business card. I'm assuming that either "Dr" at the start or "PhD" at the end is important to include where applicable, perhaps with the exception that higher titles such as "Prof" would take precedence over "Dr".
However, what about beyond that?
The accepted conventions also depend strongly on country. As a general rule, though, I'd avoid anything "cute" unless you happen to be your own boss.
For instance, in the US, I'd expect to see doctoral-level degrees listed. I'd also expect to see high-level professional qualifications, such as "PE" for "Professional Engineers." Similarly, if a master's degree carries sufficient professional weight in one's discipline, I'd list that, too. You are also correct in assuming that Prof. "overwrites" Dr.
In Germany, by contrast, one is expected to list all degrees of equivalent standing, including honorary degrees. This can lead to rather unwieldy titles such as
Univ.-Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr.-Ing. h.c. Dr. rer. nat. E.h. Johannes Schmidt
(Note: I've seen substantially longer, too!)
However, two additional points are worth mentioning.
First, any degree at the master's or diploma level is considered significant enough to list as part of one's title:
Dipl.-Ing. Michael Mustermann
would be expected for someone with a "Diplom" in engineering.
Secondly, until recently, non-German degrees were not considered the equivalent of German degrees. An American doctorate holder was
Joanna Doe, Ph.D.
and was legally not allowed to call herself
Dr. Joanna Doe
However, this has been somewhat relaxed recently, although only for degree holders from certain countries.
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16027 | Is an Additional degree required to qualify myself for post doc/industry position outside my area of expertise?
Can someone with a Ph.D in field X get a job in academia or industry in field Y, even if the job posting says "PhD in field Y required?". If not how will going back to get a second post graduate degree be looked upon by academic and industry employers in field Y?
Background:
I am finishing my PhD in Mathematics and am currently on the job market. Ideally, I would land a math post-doc position, however, I have also been looking at industry jobs (as some of these would be more satisfactory than say a 4/4 teaching load or 3/3 or whatever it would be), but most of these seem to indicate that I would need a M.S. or PhD in Computer Science.I have a background in math as well as in C.S. (B.S. in C.S., B.A. in Math).
If I don't get a post doc offer, I am considering attending a school for a master's in C.S. in machine learning or a related field. Considering I have all the math background, I believe I would be a good candidate for a M.S. or PhD in C.S. And there are a lot of interesting problems where the two areas overlap.
Is it reasonable to return for a second degree if I don't get my dream post-doc offers, especially to make myself more marketable to industry? I am seriously considering this option.
Going back is always a choice, and you'd almost certainly be able to thrive in it. Reasonability on the other hand is a hugely personal question. Voting to close unless this can be edited to be more general.
Oh, and one more thing, don't put so much stock in the indicators of requirements: If you're seriously considering these kinds of positions, put your resume in. With your background, you probably could find your way into some of these positions without the CS graduate degree.
Is it reasonable (your original question), yes. Is it necessary to get the job you want, probably not!
"Requirements" for a job are often just loose guidelines, and in some cases are used to scare unqualified, untalented, or under-confident people away from applying. Good employers will usually loosen these requirements (or sometimes even outright ignore all of them) for the right candidate. Someone with a B.S. in computer science and a Ph.D. in math is exactly the type of person who could potentially qualify for a position that asks for a Ph.D. in CS. Requiring a Ph.D. in CS might be used to scare away all the coding ninjas who might otherwise apply. It is all about the story you are able to tell in your resume and interviews. Make the skills you have learned while completing your math Ph.D. appear as transferable as possible. Talk to math grads who are now in industry and peck their brains. Your degree is lucrative if you know how to sell it. I wouldn't recommend getting a second Ph.D just to go out into industry. At the very least apply to a bunch of jobs and see if you get some interviews before you go off and spend 4-6 more years in school.
I know of several people who have Ph.Ds in math and applied math without a B.S. in CS who went into industry. Many of the jobs they took said Ph.D. in CS required. Some companies just want really smart mathy people in these positions.
Thanks! Let's say that I want to be involved in other areas of research that overlap in computer science but that have deep underpinnings in theoretical math (i.e. using tensor algebras in quantum theory, etc.). What's the best route to become abreast in other areas beyond my main discipline (and be accepted by the academic community)? I am trying to think ahead years (not too many!) down the road after the postdoc so that I have projects to offer graduate students.
I'd say get active in the CS community at your school (while you are still in math). Go to the relevant CS seminars. Make friends with CS grad students, postdocs, and faculty. Chit Chat with CS professors after the seminars. Tell them your research interests and how you want to go the C.S. route. Ask them about the journals/conferences you should be reading/going to. You can still go to a C.S. conference as a math student/postdoc!
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16106 | Careless uninterested potential advisor
A professor, call X, who is with strong probability about to be my future MS Thesis supervisor/advisor, seems very interested to work with me. Mostly on lectures, X seems interested in my ideas and is very encouraging.
However, out of the class, X is totally unreachable, uninterested in my problems. e.g. very slow to respond questions, once I needed an important paperwork to be done and X totally slacked it, although a ceratin mouthful "sure I will do it" promise. I had really hardtime to fix related issue with much frustations, because of X's attitude. And X did not give me any apologies for this situation.
I understand that profs are busy beings, managing tons of stuff at the same time, but I expect not to break a given promise or not to give promise at all to do something. I am really fed up and tired of this repeating behavior.
I have started to think that, it is not a good idea to work with X. I seriously doubt that professor would be reachable in my thesis study, not to mention to be helpful in my future academic pursuits, such as a strong letter for a Ph.D. application.
Am I expecting a lot ? Also, I want to kindly inform X that, I do not want to involve any future studies with X. What kind of wording should I use ?
I'd suggest you narrow this down as much as you can. There's at least two questions in here: 1) Are you expecting too much interaction from a thesis supervisor (potential or current really). 2) How do you decline previous acceptance of supervision.
Professors are busy and are always juggling multiple commitments.
This does not mean that you are unimportant to them but maybe some judicious memory jogging is required for them to remember what X has promised you.
Another excellent strategy which I have adopted is to show up to my committee members' open office hours with issues when I need them solved instead of bothering them over email. Usually I need 5-10 minutes of their time to explain my issue and solicit future directions. That works really well. I am not a big fan of long meetings.
In response to your specific question, if you want to not work with X just tell X that you do not feel that you can work with them in the future. It might be helpful to have someone else lined up before you do so though.
What are "open office hours"? I know office hours for courses.
Contrary to popular belief, office hours are office hours. Anyone can show up to them irrespective of whether you are in that course or not. Some faculty go above and beyond and make that explicit. Usually, that is referred to as "open office hours"
+1 for judicious memory jogging, overextended is not uninterested.
Also, I want to kindly inform X that, I do not want to involve any
future studies with X. What kind of wording should I use?
No wording should be used. Don't send anything.
Now you may be very angry or upset, but there is no point to send a message to imply you will never work with this person. If the professor does try to contact you for possible projects or studies, just simply say thanks, and proceed with saying that you have thought about this and have decided to pursue other options.
If you send a no-involvement-in-future message, you'd just end up looking obnoxious. This is not grade school, we don't tell everyone that "I am not going to play with you, and don't you dare inch your elbow over the side of my desk, or I am going to tell the Dean."
In addition to Shion's answer: Sometimes, I could be X... And the reason is described in Shions excellent answer. It does not mean X is uninterested, but there are important and pressing tasks which easily cover 60h/week in my position, and then there are still the not-so-urgent-but-still-important tasks left.
I usually tell the students to remind me again if I did not do what I promised until xyz, and if they don't do that, I assume it was unimportant (well, usually I try to do what I promised, but still, things are slipping through).
I would suggest talking to your potential supervisor and (politely) talk about your concerns. If they don't get your point, it is totally ok to look for an other one and they can not be surprised. If they get your point, you should try to find some arrangement which would help you in similar situation (e.g. you are allowed to be a pain in the ass of your supervisor). For good students whose work I value, I really want them to push me. On the other hand, I definitely don't want to micro-manage someone. So it's a matter of balance and communication about it helps a lot.
Talk to students. Always talk to students of the Prof. If you start finding out lots of previous students dropped out, don't go that route. If they look at you and say "run" follow their advice. If it's clear that they are trying to not say something bad about their supervisor but clearly aren't willing to say anything good: stay away.
But don't burn bridges. Just go for other options. No need to say, "I'm sorry you're too busy". Just you've gotten interested in another problem.
It is not obvious how this professor will look into your PhD. You also say he can be good and devote enough attention when he thinks this is appropriate (during the lecture).
The most obvious way to decide is to look around. Does the professor have other PhD students? Not very good if you would be the only one over many years. Which percent of these PhD students been successful? Maybe you can talk with them?
Also, that are most serious works of the professor laboratory? Recent Science or ten years without publications? Of course, asking such things directly is very tricky but try to visit the laboratory website.
Understanding the professors overall attitude to exactly PhD work may help to decide. Heavy involvement into ongoing research projects and other relevant activities (so no time for general talking, etc) may actually represent the professor positively.
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16585 | When citing a journal paper, should I use the online publication year or the print publication year?
I want to cite a paper which was published online (Open Access) in 2012 and later published in a printed journal issue in 2013. Which publication year should be used in the citation?
Many journals will tell you how to cite an article on their websites.
"Wen citing a journal paper" - check and re-check your paper so you don't make mistakes like this! :) The original publish date is usually used, but this can be field dependent.
Cite both, if you really want to be helpful to the readers.
As StrongBad said, the general rule is to follow the guidelines outlines by the publication venue.
If there is none, then as a rule of thumb, cite the journal version. The reason depends on the type of online publication:
When the paper was an early access version of the later journal paper and
thus identical, the journal paper in some sense replace the online access
version.
When the 2012 paper was posted at arXiv.org or the like, then the later
journal version went through peer reviewing, whereas the earlier version did
not. So the journal version can easily be more mature.
Note that one role of citations is to assign academic credit. Credit towards a paper that appeared in a reputable journal counts a bit more, so citing the journal version is also a courtesy to the author(s).
If for some reason, for your paper, it is of importance who had an idea first (e.g., when you give a chronological overview of related work), you can just add a note like "An earlier version of the paper appeared in XYZ in 2012" to the bibliography entry of the journal version to make that clear.
Also, in order for a reader to find the paper, the year of the journal version is needed - this is what belongs to the volume/issue/pages. Also, in my field it is quite common that the online-first version doesn't yet have issue and pages assigned (it is the accepted manuscript immediately after acceptance) - use that with a note "in print" until the final citation record is available. For establishing precedence, you may even consider using the submission date (of the finally accepted version).
Each article, to be properly indexed, is assigned some minimum information:
Journal name given in a correct way. However, this can be 3 of more different things for one journal, e.g. "JAir" = "J Aircraft" = "Journal Aircraft" (randomly chosen journal that has 3 proper names); you can choose any, but usually the middle form is prefered (i.e., basic abbreviations, but not the shortest ones, those are known as "astro. abbrv.")
Journal volume. Starts at one when the journal is introduced, and counts one by one in a way that is basically decided by the publisher, with some rules.
(a) Article's first page, or (b) in cases of per-article page numbering, article code, or (c) in cases of per-issue/number page numbering, number of the issue in the volume (usually called just "number") and the article's firts page.
There are two more bits of information that are usually required:
At least one author's name
Publication year
And there is one more thing that is more then welcome, but not necessary:
Article's title.
Every volume is published throughout only one calendar year (but multiple volumes can be published in the same year). The year of the publication of the article is the year of the volume in which it appeared. No matter if it appeared as "e-first" one year before, or if it appeared on arXiv 2 years before, or whatever.
However, if you cite a paper that has appeared as an e-first on the journal's webpage, but has no volume assigned yet, you cite it as "To appear in Journal of Beer Drinking, 2013", even if it's obvious now that it won't be in a volume in year 2013 (since it's already 2014 and the previous volumes are closed). In this case, it's necessary to provide more information to make the citation unique: advised is to provide the article title, which is usually unique in a reasonable time scope.
You should cite the final article where possible. If the article is online but not yet in print, you should cite the DOI which is a permanent resource and will be updated by the publisher when the print volume is announced, so anyone linking to the online version will get the published version. I have noticed some journals taking up to 9 months to assign a print volume to an epub so the DOI is the only sure way to ensure that epub and print citations match up in the end.
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98427 | Post-doc and family considerations
I’m doing my PhD in Europe but I’m researching my opportunities for doing a postdoc in the US. There is a reasonable amount of job postings in my field, so I hope I’d have a decent chance of obtaining one. My concern, however, is purely financial. I have a wife and two children and am wondering whether such an endeavor is realistic or if it would put us on the brink of economic collapse.
I am for this reason interested in the experiences of others who pursued postdoc positions by relocating with a family.
Despite the position being temporary, is it more common that partners find jobs, too? I imagine that because of hiring processes, it wouldn’t be strange if the partner started working mid-way through, at which point one may already know that another relocation is coming up in 1-2 years. For what it’s worth, my wife has a MSc in the same field as I’m in and there’s typically a large demand for people like us, so securing a job shouldn’t be too hard (barring the paperwork, which would probably be a major issue in itself).
How do people do this, like really? At times I feel this is insurmountable, because AFAIK the typical postdoc salary is not enough to support an entire family. Yet, I’m far from the first PhD student with a family.
In the US, it can be quite difficult for a spouse to find a job with an employer who is willing to sponsor the spouse for an employment-based visa, particularly if that employment is outside of academia where there is a yearly quota on the number of H-1B visas. I wouldn't discount the difficulty of this.
To expand on Brian Borchers comment: Under US immigration law, which hasn't been significantly updated since the 1960s, your spouse will not automatically have permission to work in the US. If they wish to work, they need separate permission, which may be hard to obtain.
It sounds like you're aware of this, but please keep in mind that cost of living varies enormously in different parts of the United States. It's certainly possible to support a family on a postdoc salary in Eugene, Oregon, for example (the beautiful town I live in); in Berkeley, CA, as a contrasting example the median apartment price is 4x higher (!).
Per this page, your wife would need to fill a I-765, it costs $485 (cf. p. 15), and it takes (if I read correctly) 90 days. But day care for your kids will likely be your biggest problem anyway.
@hejseb you are right. I was on the US with a J1 visa, my wife could work, if she requested a work permit (mostly rubberstamp), but it would take about 3 months and cost about 400$.
If your children go to school, day care costs will not be astronomical. There are affordable programs to cover the gap from 3 pm to 5 pm; or you or your spouse might be able to cover that gap. If your children are too young for school, then try to find a position with good child care benefits.
Your spouse can start the paperwork for the work permit, in advance of the move, I think.
I moved from France to the US to do a 1 year-post-doc in Computer Science, with my wife and our two children (3mo and 2yo at the time), so I guess my situation is very close to yours.
I was paid ~$50.000 / year, didn't pay taxes the first year (because of the tax treaty between France and the US), didn't have a car, and lived in a reasonably cheap community (cost of living index ~ 105, for instance, the rent was $800 / month for a very small flat, furnished and including internet, water, some other utilities. It didn't had a washing machine, for instance, so it was a bit rough with two children).
We were not rich, but it was completely doable. It was a bit risky, but we managed to live entirely on my salary, something we couldn't have done in France, so I would think that our situation was rather correct.
Here's what we learned:
Don't expect your partner to bring an income. Day care is rare and costly (it really varies, but $500 / child / month seems to be a minimum for a "full day" care), and your partner probably won't have the right to work before a couple of months anyway. Getting a work permit while on a J2 requires to fill a I-765, pay ~$500, be patient (up to 3 months), and it comes with restrictions (you can't leave the country while your record is examined, if I remember correctly).
Moving is super expensive. Plane ticket + buying basic housewares + rent deposit, etc. is really costly, especially if the dollar is high when you move. The exchange rate can vary greatly, so that's difficult to assess. Of course, you'll be paid at the end of your first month of employment, so you'll have to have some provisions on top of that. Also, you won't be able to bring everything in three suitcase, so there will be some buying to do, and clothes, if the weather isn't the same as where you currently live.
People can be really supportive. We were moving as a family, and everyone, from the PI to my future colleagues (that I never met) to our landlords and even neighbours, brought something, gave us basic silverware, etc. You have to be lucky, but Americans often are willing to help, and have a couple of extra stuff that they'd be willing to share with you.
Check your health care. Your children might be sick due to the travel, the time change, etc. In fact, you should plan that they will be sick, and check how well you're covered before being employed / during the first month of employment. Our health care took a month to kick in, we had to pay for a basic care for our son, bim, $1.000 (yes, health is expensive here).
Papers everywhere. Be organized, a new start requires a lot of papers. Moving in an another country is pretty much starting from scratch: you'll have to open a bank account, get a Social Security Number, get a phone, subscribe to Internet, fill in tons of paperwork for the embassy, your new employer, etc. It is doable, but can be really complex (since your situation will be more complex that the average American), so you have to be super organized.
Of course, it makes more sense to start such an adventure for a 2 years (or more) post-doc.
But moving with kids (in young age) is fun: they'll grasp the new culture super easily, they'll make friends, they'll help you to make friends, they'll make people chatty, and they will break any sense of isolation you could have by moving to a foreign country.
Actual experience may vary: the USA is a vast country, and the salary range, as well as the cost of living, vary greatly. I'm not a super hero, but with the support of your family, you can make it. Tons of people did it in the past ;-)
One thing to check on: some universities offer day care. It is usually very high quality and has a wait list. Sometimes you can get a discount based on your income. We don't get a discount and pay $900 per child per month at a non-university day care now. Previously we paid $1200 per child.
Try to negotiate a relocation allowance, that will reduce the burden of "moving is super expensive." (Universities do offer relocation allowances. Albeit, they might not advertise. Maybe ask HR.)
I moved from the UK to the US to do a 4-year-post-doc in Computer Science. After 2 years, I quitted. I just started a new job in industry a few months ago.
I was paid $80.000 at the first year, a bit more in the second year, but not too much. Roughly, I received $5000 month after tax (federal and state), and health insurance etc.
I chose the cheapest insurance option. It was practically useless for me, because its in-network clinics were all in a different state, where the main campus of the university is located.
I paid $2000 per month, excluded the bills, for an old one-bedroom flat, built in the 50s. There were risk of lead poisoning when staying in the flat. The agent asked me to sign an agreement that I would not sue them if this would occurred to me. One often can only rent a studio with this price (sky-rocket every year), but I wanted a flat since I had a kid at that time (2 now).
I paid $1800 per month for the daycare of my toddler. In the second year, my son got bigger, so I only paid $1500 per month now.
I spent the rest on food, car insurance, bills etc. We do not eat out. I bring food from home for lunch. We never go to cinema, never travel etc. We just maintain a basic life.
I don't know how much I saved per month (if at all), but my balance
hasn't changed in 2 years.
I really loved my research. My postdoc advisor was kind and wonderful, driving me to find an apartment when I first came to the US, giving me advices about kid, daycare etc etc. My advisor were the most talented person I had chance to work with (ACM distinguished scientist); thank to their guidances, I was very productive, and published several good papers. I had 2 more years on my contract, but funding was never a problem in my old group, so I could stay as long as I wanted. However, I had to quit.
The reason was simple: I have a second child this year. The daycare cost for an infant starts from $2000. That meant I needed an addition $24000 after tax each year. Only a (boring) engineering job in industry can help me to cover this cost.
You history is definitely interesting. How old was your child when you moved ? You write "Only a (boring) engineering job in industry can help me to cover this cost": well, the cost of living in the US can really vary greatly. With $80.000 / year, there are parts of the US where you can support an entire family without too much trouble.
Very interesting to hear about your experience (although of course I’m sorry it didn’t work out in the end for you). Would you mind revealing what part of the US this was so I can get a sense for the cost of living compared to other places?
@Clément My first child was 18 months when I moved to the US. I tried to have him potty trained as soon as possible, thanks to that the cost reduced a lot in the second year. hejseb: I'm in the Silicon Valley.
@hejseb Americans love cost of living comparators. I have no idea how accurate they are, but you can find tons of them. As an example
What's missing from your vignette is -- why were your children in day care? Was your spouse bringing in any money? Was your spouse going to school? // I think the take-home message of this post is, don't go to Silicon Valley where housing costs an arm and a leg.
I've moved to Denmark (capital region) from Finland with family (one spouse, one child). A bit shorter distance and probably less of a cultural gap. I'm a postdoc.
Housing and everything else here is expensive, but we don't eat out or buy many things, so we are doing fine. Starting out would not have been possible without sufficient savings, since apartments typically require one to six months of rent as a deposit and pre-paid rent. Only I am earning money. Note that this depends heavily on the area to which you are locating, and on how careful your family is with spending their money.
My spouse is not currently employed, but she also does not have a high education. Your university is likely to offer some sort of help - around here the university offers some free courses for finding employment, for example.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:50.364677 | 2017-11-05T06:32:02 | {
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64200 | Can you obtain detailed date information on publications when using Google Scholar?
My question is related to Google Scholar. I know that I can search articles by specified year or year range, but is it possible to obtain detailed dates of publication/indexing in Google Scholar? If so, how could I do it?
Sometimes.
There is no way to search by more specific date ranges but an exact date might be available for a particular paper. For example, this paper shows a publication date of 2014/4/26 but this paper only shows the year, 2015, but no month or day.
Otherwise, if Google Scholar doesn't show the date, you can follow the link to the publisher's website which might have it. For example, IEEE lists that second paper as having a conference date of "Sept. 29 2015-Oct. 1 2015."
Yes, I've found this differentiation and tried also "step by step" digging method but it's very time consuming and works occasionally. But what about indexing date in scholar database?
@MichalSzulc I'm not quite sure what you mean. My typical workflow is to collect all the bibtex snippets (from the publisher, not Google Scholar, since it is often missing info) for any paper that I might find useful in the future. Then I can use my bibtex manager to search on dates or anything else.
What do you mean by "from the publisher, not Google Scholar"? Do you always contact publisher by email/phone and ask for a copy?
I'm curious of a date when google scholar indexed searched document in its database. Something like this: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/02/google-shows-when-it-first-indexed-page.html (however this engine descibes in fact last date of indexing/crawling, not the first one )
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:50.365496 | 2016-02-28T22:43:51 | {
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54719 | How to export Google Scholar keyword search results to Excel?
I am looking for a reputable free tool to export results of a keyword search on Google Scholar to Microsoft Word or Excel.
I am in the process of assembling a reading list for systematic literature review. In Google Scholar, I get 276 results for my keyword search. I need to perform and record two culls firstly on title, then on abstract reading, leaving myself with a potential reading list.
I would like to do this in Excel or Word, if possible. I found an article in the Search Engine Journal, recommending "SEO PowerSuite", but the article is from 2009 and my antivirus software is recommending not running the downloaded executable.
I am very new to research, so could you point me in the right direction of discovering and using reputable free tools that would allow me to export my Google Scholar keyword search results?
Some antiviruses enter in paranoid mode and would recommend not running almost anything, unless it comes signed by Microsoft or one other big company. If you think you got the program from a reputable web, it is likely to be safe, but you can run it in a virtual machine to be safer.
Ok thanks David, I did wonder about that. I would have expected the Search Engine Journal to be fairly reputable!
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it belongs to softwarerecs.stackexchange.com
Thanks for the steer @adipro, I was still reasonably new to stack exchange and mainly using stack overflow when I asked the question.
@Hilary, yes, actually the response rate here might be better.
I think this question is a reasonably good fit for this site, and I don't really get the "shopping" close reason. Voting to reopen.
Check out Publish or Perish. You can run keyword queries on Google Scholar from there, and export the results to .csv, which you can later open from Excel
do you know for web of science?
The Web of Science lets you export data as a tabulated text file. After you make any query in Web of Science Core Collection, you click on the dropdown menu located before the first result, select Save to Other File Formats, then you select the fields you want (the easiest way is to select full record), then the format (tab-delimited). You can export up to 500 records in one go, so if you need more you can do 1-500, 501-1000... then you can import those files to Excel, and merge all results in a single file.
I saw at some conferences, and demonstration, that researchers make histograms of topic published per year. For example, pervoskite, or hiv vaccine or Dl mutation etc, and then you see brake of keywords, or topic, published per year. number of articles in one period of time. Is this possible?
I do not know a tool for that, but I suggest the following, having Excel in Windows:
1. Write your queries (keywords) in the A column in a sheet of the document
2. Hit Alt+F11 to open Vba editor, then click with the mouse right button on the left panel in VBAProject, then, insert module.
3. Copy and paste the code (see below) in the module blank space.
4. Go to the "Tools" menu, "references", and select: Microsoft Internet controls, Microsoft HTML object library AND Microsoft VBscripts Regular Expressions 5.5. Use Ctrl+G to open progress window.
5. Put the cursor in the code after Sub..., click on the play button up in the module (code) window or hit F5 to run it.
6. It is recommendend to open Internet Explorer before running (can be closed again) or use Browser.Visible = True the first time you use it.
An option to get doi numbers was added, look for the button after searching.
'Go to the Tools menu, references, and select Microsoft Internet controls,
'Microsoft HTML object library AND Microsoft VBscripts Regular Expressions 5.5.
Public t As Range ' variables used in several subs
Public btn As Button
Public myproxy As Variant
Public Function Ceiling(ByVal X As Double, Optional ByVal Factor As Double = 1) As Double
Ceiling = (Int(X / Factor) - (X / Factor - Int(X / Factor) > 0)) * Factor
End Function
Sub scholargooglegetresults() '
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Call main
' IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT
' CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON HAVING CURSOR here AND YOUR QUERIES ON COLUMN A
Application.SendKeys "%{F11}"
ActiveWindow.Zoom = 60
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
Range("D4").Select
End Sub
Sub main()
Dim Browser As InternetExplorer
Dim Document As IHTMLDocument
Dim DElements As IHTMLElementCollection
Dim DElement As IHTMLElement
Dim DElements2 As IHTMLElementCollection
Dim DElement2 As IHTMLElement
Dim DElements3 As IHTMLElementCollection
Dim DElement3 As IHTMLElement
Dim strIn As String
Dim objRegex2 As Object
Dim myValue As Variant
Dim crange As Range
Dim arr
Dim arraya(), a As Long
Set Browser = New InternetExplorer
Browser.Visible = False ' <- Browser visibility
ActiveSheet.Buttons.Delete
lastRow = Range("A" & Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row
myValue = InputBox("Consider it takes approx 2 sec per result (cite), 100 cites = 200 secs", "How many results per query ?", 1)
If StrPtr(myValue) = False Then
MsgBox ("Alt F11 to show vba editor!")
Exit Sub
End If
If IsNumeric(myValue) = False Then
MsgBox ("Please fill a number!")
Exit Sub
Else
myNumber = Ceiling(myValue / 10) * 10
Application.SendKeys "%{F11}"
timeest = (myNumber * lastRow * 2.2) '
MsgBox ("Click ok and wait approx. " & timeest & " seconds!, you will see this sheet again filled"), 0, ("Click ok and be patient")
End If
ActiveSheet.Columns(3).ClearContents
Range("C10") = 0
Range("C10").Select
Selection.DataSeries Rowcol:=xlColumns, Type:=xlLinear, Date:=xlDay, _
Step:=10, Stop:=myValue - 1, Trend:=False
lastrow2 = ActiveSheet.Cells(Rows.Count, "C").End(xlUp).Row
ActiveSheet.Range("C10:C" & lastrow2).Select
If Selection.Cells.Count > 1 Then
arr = Join(Application.Transpose(Selection.Value), ",")
Range("C9") = arr
For a = 0 To UBound(Split(arr, ","))
ReDim Preserve arraya(a)
arraya(a) = CInt(Split(arr, ",")(a))
Next a
Else
arr = 0
ReDim Preserve arraya(a)
arraya(a) = arr
End If
c = 1
k = 6
Cells(1, k - 2).EntireColumn.ColumnWidth = 20
Cells(1, k - 1).EntireColumn.ColumnWidth = 20
Cells(1, k + 1).EntireColumn.ColumnWidth = 20
Cells(1, k).EntireColumn.ColumnWidth = 25
Cells(1, k + 2).EntireColumn.ColumnWidth = 20
Cells(1, k + 3).EntireColumn.ColumnWidth = 20
Cells(1, k + 4).EntireColumn.ColumnWidth = 75
Cells(1, k + 5).EntireColumn.ColumnWidth = 75
Cells(1, k + 6).EntireColumn.ColumnWidth = 25
Cells(1, k + 7).EntireColumn.ColumnWidth = 25
Cells(1, 1).EntireColumn.ColumnWidth = 21 ' changing width of columns to visualize better
Cells(1, 2).EntireColumn.ColumnWidth = 25
For i = 1 To lastRow ' for every of your queries in column A
j = 0
Url = "https://scholar.google.com"
Browser.navigate Url
Do While Browser.Busy And Not Browser.readyState = READYSTATE_COMPLETE
DoEvents
Loop
Set Document = Browser.Document
'Application.Wait (Now + TimeValue("0:00:07")) 'was 7
Application.Wait (Now + TimeSerial(0, 0, WorksheetFunction.RandBetween(15, 25)))
Document.all.q.Value = Cells(i, 1)
Do While Browser.Busy And Not Browser.readyState = READYSTATE_COMPLETE
DoEvents
Loop
Set Elements = Document.getElementsByTagName("button")
For Each Element In Elements
If Element.Type = "submit" Then
Element.Click
Exit For
End If
Next Element
Do While Browser.Busy And Not Browser.readyState = READYSTATE_COMPLETE
DoEvents
Loop
For a = LBound(arraya) To UBound(arraya)
Debug.Print arraya(a) + 10 & " Results obtained for: "" " & Cells(i, 1) & " "" Wait please "
Set Elements = Document.getElementsByClassName("gs_btnPR gs_in_ib gs_btn_half")
For Each Element In Elements
If Element.Type = "button" Then
Element.Click
Exit For
End If
Application.Wait (Now + TimeSerial(0, 0, WorksheetFunction.RandBetween(15, 25)))
Next Element
Do While Browser.Busy And Not Browser.readyState = READYSTATE_COMPLETE
DoEvents
Loop
Application.Wait (Now + TimeSerial(0, 0, WorksheetFunction.RandBetween(15, 25)))
Set DElements = Document.getElementById("gs_res_ccl_mid").getElementsByClassName("gs_r gs_or gs_scl") ' gsri
If DElements.Length = 0 Then
Exit For
End If
For Each DElement In DElements
c = c + 1 '+ '((myNumber) * (i - 1)) ' number of row with author and year
j = j + 1 '+ (myNumber * i - 1) ' result number
On Error Resume Next
Set DElements2 = DElement.getElementsByTagName("div")
For Each DElement2 In DElements2
If DElement2.className = "gs_a" Then
Cells(c, k + 1) = DElement2.innerText 'author year
Cells(c, k + 2).FormulaR1C1 = "=IF(ISNUMBER(VALUE(IFERROR(MID(RC[-1], FIND(""19"",RC[-1]), 4),"""")))=TRUE,IF(VALUE(IFERROR(MID(RC[-1], FIND(""19"",RC[-1]), 4),""""))>=1900,IFERROR(MID(RC[-1], FIND(""19"",RC[-1]), 4),""""),IF(ISNUMBER(VALUE(IFERROR(MID(RC[-1], FIND(""20"",RC[-1]), 4),"""")))=TRUE,IF(VALUE(IFERROR(MID(RC[-1], FIND(""20"",RC[-1]), 4),""""))>=2000,IFERROR(MID(RC[-1], FIND(""20"",RC[-1]), 4),""""),""year not detected""),""year not detected"")),IF(ISNUMBER(VALUE(IFERROR(MID(RC[-1], FIND(""20"",RC[-1]), 4),"""")))=TRUE,IF(VALUE(IFERROR(MID(RC[-1], FIND(""20"",RC[-1]), 4),""""))>=2000,IFERROR(MID(RC[-1], FIND(""20"",RC[-1]), 4),""""),""year not detected""),""year not detected""))" ' formula to get year from string
Cells(c, k + 2).Value = Cells(c, k + 2).Value ' eliminate formula, leave year as number
Cells(c, k - 2) = Cells(i, 1).Value ' search
Cells(c, k - 1) = j ' result number
Cells(c, k + 3).FormulaR1C1 = "=RIGHT(LEFT(RC[-2],FIND("" "",RC[-2],(FIND("" "",RC[-2],1))+1)-1),(FIND("" "",RC[-2],(FIND("" "",RC[-2],1))+1)-FIND("" "",RC[-2],1))-1)" ' "=RIGHT(RC[-2],SEARCH("" "",RC[-2])-1)" 'concatenate(RC[+1],R[+1]C[+1],R[+2]C[+1],R[+3]C[+1],R[+4]C[+1])"
' ElseIf DElement2.className = "gs_md_wp gs_ttss" Then
ElseIf DElement2.className = "gs_ggs gs_fl" Then ' gs_ggs gs_fl
Set link = DElement2.getElementsByTagName("a")(0)
Cells(c, k + 6) = link.href ' link to pdf
Set link = Null
ElseIf DElement2.className = "gs_rs" Then ' text big
Cells(c, k + 5) = DElement2.innerText
End If
Next
Set DElements3 = DElement.getElementsByTagName("h3")
For Each DElement3 In DElements3
If DElement3.className = "gs_rt" Then
Cells(c, k + 4) = DElement3.innerText
strIn = Cells(c, k + 4).Text
Set objRegex2 = CreateObject("vbscript.regexp")
With objRegex2
.Global = True
.Pattern = "\[\w*\]\s?"
If .test(strIn) Then
Cells(c, k + 4).Value = .Replace(strIn, vbNullString) ' eliminate [HTML] [PDF] strings
End If
End With
Set link = DElement3.getElementsByTagName("a")(0)
Cells(c, k + 7) = link.href
Set link = Null
End If
Next ' DElement3
Next 'DElement
Next ' for url
Next
Set Document = Nothing
Set Browser = Nothing
Cells(1, 2) = "Each time each type of sort button is clicked, changes from Ascending to Descending" ' additional help
Cells(2, 2) = "PDF and IExplorer Issues:"
Cells(3, 2) = "https://www.itsupportguides.com/windows-7/adobe-pdfs-wont-open-in-internet-explorer/"
Cells(4, 2) = "https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/epm-support-acrobat-products.html"
Cells(8, 2) = "https://gen.lib.rus.ec"
Cells(9, 2) = "Search dois in crossref (wait 1.5 seconds per ref)"
Cells(10, 2) = "Use dois to get .bib refs,"
Cells(11, 2) = "as in:"
Cells(12, 2) = "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1781672/convert-bibliographic-references-from-a-document-into-bibtex-or-endnote/39820830#39820830"
Cells(13, 2) = "Beggining in step 4."
Range("A1").Resize(Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlRows, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Row, _
Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlByColumns, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Column).Select ' selecting all to wrap text
With Selection
.WrapText = True
End With
With ActiveSheet
Range("B1").Select
lastrow3 = ActiveSheet.Cells(Rows.Count, "B").End(xlUp).Row
ActiveSheet.Range("B1:B" & lastrow3).Select
For Each xCell In Selection
If InStr(1, xCell.Value, "http") > 0 Then
ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Add anchor:=xCell, Address:=xCell.Value
End If
Next xCell
End With
Call research
Call header
End Sub
Sub header() ' create headers in first row
lastRow = Range("A" & Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row
k = 6 '7 * i - 2 ' k refers to column corresponding to i - your query
Cells(1, k) = "Order by your notes" ' main column title (button text)
Cells(1, k - 2) = "your search" ' year column title (button text)
Cells(1, k - 1) = "Button to Reset to original ordering" ' main column title (button text)
Cells(1, k + 1) = "Authors, year, editor" ' year column title (button text)
Cells(1, k + 2) = " Button - use to order by YEAR" ' year column title (button text)
Cells(1, k + 3) = "First author" ' year column title (button text)
Cells(1, k + 4) = "Title" ' year column title (button text)
Cells(1, k + 5) = "text" ' year column title (button text)
Cells(1, k + 6) = " Link 1" ' year column title (button text)
Cells(1, k + 7) = " Link 2" ' year column title (button text)
Cells(1, k + 9) = " dois, after using crossref button" ' year column title (button text)
Range(Cells(1, 3), Cells(1, 3)).EntireColumn.Hidden = True 'cells in "C" used for ordering purposes hidden
Range("A1").Resize(Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlRows, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Row, _
Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlByColumns, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Column).Select ' selecting all to wrap text
With Selection
.WrapText = True
End With
Rows("2:2").Select ' to freeze top row
ActiveWindow.FreezePanes = True
' to Reset to original ordering" CREATING BUTTON
Set t = ActiveSheet.Cells(1, k - 1)
Set btn = ActiveSheet.Buttons.Add(t.Left + 5, t.Top + 5, t.Width - 7, t.Height - 7)
With btn
.OnAction = "sortbyscholarorder"
.Caption = Cells(1, k - 1).Value
.Name = "sortbyscholarorder" & 1 & k - 1
End With
' to dois " CREATING BUTTON
Set t = ActiveSheet.Cells(9, 2)
Set btn = ActiveSheet.Buttons.Add(t.Left + 5, t.Top + 5, t.Width - 7, t.Height - 7)
With btn
.OnAction = "cross"
.Caption = Cells(9, 2).Value
.Name = "cross" & 9 & 2
End With
' use to order by YEAR" CREATING BUTTON
Set t = ActiveSheet.Cells(1, k + 2)
Set btn = ActiveSheet.Buttons.Add(t.Left + 5, t.Top + 5, t.Width - 7, t.Height - 7)
With btn
.OnAction = "sortbyyear"
.Caption = Cells(1, k + 2).Value
.Name = "sortbyyear" & 1 & k + 2
End With
' order BY your notes
Set t = ActiveSheet.Cells(1, k)
Set btn = ActiveSheet.Buttons.Add(t.Left + 5, t.Top + 5, t.Width - 7, t.Height - 7)
With btn
.OnAction = "orderbynotes"
.Caption = Cells(1, k).Value
.Name = "orderbynotes" & 1 & k
End With
Set t = Cells(5, 2)
Set btn = ActiveSheet.Buttons.Add(t.Left + 2, t.Top + 2, t.Width - 2, t.Height - 2)
With btn
.OnAction = "modifylinks"
.Caption = "Add proxy, e.g. sci-hub"
.Name = "addproxy"
End With
Set t = Cells(6, 2)
Set btn = ActiveSheet.Buttons.Add(t.Left + 2, t.Top + 2, t.Width - 2, t.Height - 2)
With btn
.OnAction = "removeproxy"
.Caption = "remove proxy in links"
.Name = "removeproxybutton"
End With
With ActiveSheet
Range("L1").Resize(Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlRows, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Row, _
Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlByColumns, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Column).Select
For Each xCell In Selection ' transforming cell content with link info to working hyperlinks
If InStr(1, xCell.Text, "researchgate.net/profile") > 0 Then
ElseIf InStr(1, xCell.Value, "http") > 0 Then
ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Add anchor:=xCell, Address:=xCell.Value
ElseIf InStr(1, xCell.Value, "ftp://") > 0 Then
ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Add anchor:=xCell, Address:=xCell.Value
End If
Next xCell
End With
Range("A1").Select
End Sub
Sub ResetFilters()
On Error Resume Next
ActiveSheet.ShowAllData
End Sub
Sub sortbyyear() 'action taken by the sort by year button
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Call ResetFilters
Dim buttonrow As Long, buttonrange As Range, buttonrangeresized As Range
buttonrow = ActiveSheet.Buttons(Application.Caller).TopLeftCell.Row
buttoncolumn = ActiveSheet.Buttons(Application.Caller).TopLeftCell.Column
Set buttonrange = ActiveSheet.Range(Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn), Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn)) ' range with coordinates of clicked button
buttonrange.Select
Selection.Resize(1, 12).Select ' expand range to be sorted
Selection.Offset(0, -4).Select
Selection.EntireColumn.Select
Set buttonrangeresized = Selection
ActiveSheet.Buttons.Delete
If Cells(2, 3).Value Mod 2 = 0 Then
With buttonrangeresized
.Sort _
Key1:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn + 0), Order1:=xlAscending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption1:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers, _
Key2:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn - 3), Order2:=xlAscending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption2:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers, _
Key3:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn - 2), Order3:=xlAscending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption3:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers
Cells(2, 3) = Cells(2, 3) + 1 ' cell C2 stores the number of clicks done
End With
Else ' if button is clicked odd number of times order is Descending
With buttonrangeresized
.Sort Key1:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn + 0), Order1:=xlDescending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption1:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers, _
Key2:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn - 3), Order2:=xlAscending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption2:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers, _
Key3:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn - 2), Order3:=xlAscending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption3:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers
Cells(2, 3) = Cells(2, 3) + 1 ' cell C2 stores the number of clicks done
End With
End If
Call research '
Call header '
Exit Sub '
End Sub
Sub sortbyscholarorder()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Call ResetFilters
Dim buttonrow As Long, buttonrange As Range, buttonrangeresized As Range
buttonrow = ActiveSheet.Buttons(Application.Caller).TopLeftCell.Row
buttoncolumn = ActiveSheet.Buttons(Application.Caller).TopLeftCell.Column
Set buttonrange = ActiveSheet.Range(Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn), Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn))
buttonrange.Select
k = 6
Selection.Resize(1, 12).Select
Selection.Offset(0, -1).Select
Selection.EntireColumn.Select
Set buttonrangeresized = Selection
ActiveSheet.Buttons.Delete
If Cells(5, 3).Value Mod 2 = 0 Then ' if button is clicked even number of times order is ascending
With buttonrangeresized
.Sort Key1:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn - 1), Order1:=xlAscending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption1:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers, Key2:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn + 0), Order2:=xlAscending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption2:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers, header:=xlYes
Cells(5, 3) = Cells(5, 3) + 1 ' number of clicks done
End With
Else ' if button is clicked odd number of times order is Descending
With buttonrangeresized
.Sort _
Key1:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn - 1), Order1:=xlDescending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption1:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers, _
Key2:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn + 0), Order2:=xlAscending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption2:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers, header:=xlYes '
Cells(5, 3) = Cells(5, 3) + 1 ' ' cell C1 stores the number of clicks done
End With
End If
Call research ' remake the researchgate buttons after sorting
Call header ' remake the header buttons
Exit Sub ' this is here to avoid getting the clicked button address when nothing is clicked
End Sub
Sub orderbynotes() 'action taken by the sort by your notes button
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Call ResetFilters
Dim buttonrow As Long, buttonrange As Range, buttonrangeresized As Range
buttonrow = ActiveSheet.Buttons(Application.Caller).TopLeftCell.Row
buttoncolumn = ActiveSheet.Buttons(Application.Caller).TopLeftCell.Column
Set buttonrange = ActiveSheet.Range(Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn), Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn))
buttonrange.Select
Selection.Resize(1, 12).Select
Selection.Offset(0, -2).Select
Selection.EntireColumn.Select
Set buttonrangeresized = Selection
ActiveSheet.Buttons.Delete
If Cells(6, 3).Value Mod 2 = 0 Then
With buttonrangeresized
.Sort _
Key1:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn - 0), Order1:=xlAscending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption1:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers, _
Key2:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn - 1), Order2:=xlAscending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption2:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers, _
Key3:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn + 2), Order3:=xlAscending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption3:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers
Cells(6, 3) = Cells(6, 3) + 1 ' number of clicks done
End With
Else ' if button is clicked odd number of times order is Descending
With buttonrangeresized
.Sort Key1:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn - 0), Order1:=xlDescending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption1:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers, _
Key2:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn - 1), Order2:=xlAscending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption2:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers, _
Key3:=Cells(buttonrow, buttoncolumn + 2), Order3:=xlAscending, header:= _
xlYes, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, DataOption3:= _
xlSortTextAsNumbers
Cells(6, 3) = Cells(6, 3) + 1 ' cell C2 stores the number of clicks done
End With
End If
Call research '
Call header ' necessary to remake the header buttons
Exit Sub ' this is here to avoid getting the clicked button address when nothing is clicked
End Sub
Sub research() '
With ActiveSheet
Range("D1").Resize(Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlRows, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Row, _
Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlByColumns, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Column).Select
For Each xCell In Selection
If InStr(1, xCell.Text, "researchgate.net/profile") > 0 Then
Set btna = ActiveSheet.Buttons.Add(xCell.Left, xCell.Top, xCell.Width, xCell.Height)
With btna
.OnAction = "researchgatebutton"
.Caption = " OPEN RESEARCH GATE PDF LINK "
End With
End If
Next
End With
Range("A1").Select
End Sub
Sub researchgatebutton() '
Dim R As Range
Set R = ActiveSheet.Buttons(Application.Caller).TopLeftCell 'detect range (cell) of clicked button
R.Select
Set IE = CreateObject("Internetexplorer.Application")
IE.Visible = True
IE.navigate ActiveCell.Value
Exit Sub '
End Sub
Sub scihub() '
With ActiveSheet
Range("L1").Resize(Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlRows, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Row, _
Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlByColumns, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Column).Select
For Each xCell In Selection
If InStr(1, xCell.Text, ".sci-hub.") > 0 Then
Set btna = ActiveSheet.Buttons.Add(xCell.Left, xCell.Top, xCell.Width, xCell.Height)
With btna
.OnAction = "scihubbutton"
.Caption = " OPEN sci-hub PDF LINK " & Left(xCell.Text, 80) & " [truncated?]"
End With
End If
Next
End With
Range("A1").Select
End Sub
Sub scihubbutton() '
Dim R As Range
Set R = ActiveSheet.Buttons(Application.Caller).TopLeftCell '
R.Select
Set IE = CreateObject("Internetexplorer.Application")
IE.Visible = True
IE.navigate ActiveCell.Value
Exit Sub '
End Sub
Sub modifylinks()
If Cells(999, 3) = "" Then
myproxy = InputBox("Modify original URLs adding a proxy string? (If no, click Cancel)", _
"Which proxy do you use?", "sci-hub.tw")
If StrPtr(myproxy) = False Then
MsgBox ("Alt F11 to show vba editor!")
Application.SendKeys "%{F11}"
Exit Sub
End If
If myproxy = "" Then
MsgBox ("Alt F11 to show vba editor!")
Application.SendKeys "%{F11}"
Exit Sub
Else
Cells(999, 3) = myproxy
Call proxy
End If
Else
Call removeproxy
Call modifylinks
End If
End Sub
Sub proxy()
With ActiveSheet
Range("L1").Resize(Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlRows, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Row, _
Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlByColumns, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Column).Select
Dim lnk As Hyperlink, lnks As Hyperlinks
Set lnks = Selection.Hyperlinks
For i = 1 To lnks.Count
Set lnk = lnks(i)
If InStr(1, lnk.Range.Text, "researchgate") = 0 And _
InStr(1, lnk.Range.Text, "//") > 0 Then
strIn = lnk.Range.Text
Set objRegex3 = CreateObject("vbscript.regexp")
With objRegex3
.Global = False
.Pattern = "(https?:\/\/[A-Za-z0-9\.\-]+)(\/.*)"
If .test(strIn) Then
replacement = "$1." & myproxy & "$2"
lnk.Range.Value = .Replace(strIn, replacement)
ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Add anchor:=lnk.Range, Address:=lnk.Range.Value
End If
End With
End If
Next
End With
Call scihub
Range("D4").Select
End Sub
Sub removeproxy()
If Cells(999, 3) = "" Then
Exit Sub
Else
With ActiveSheet
Range("L1").Resize(Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlRows, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Row, _
Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlByColumns, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Column).Select
Dim lnk As Hyperlink, lnks As Hyperlinks
Set lnks = Selection.Hyperlinks
For i = 1 To lnks.Count
Set lnk = lnks(i)
theproxy = Cells(999, 3).Value
If InStr(1, lnk.Range.Text, "researchgate") = 0 And _
InStr(1, lnk.Range.Text, theproxy) > 0 Then
correct = Replace(lnk.Range.Text, "." & theproxy, "", , 1)
lnk.Range.Value = correct
ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Add anchor:=lnk.Range, Address:=lnk.Range.Value
End If
Next
End With
End If
Cells(999, 3) = ""
Range("D4").Select
Call DelButtons
Call research
Call header
End Sub
Sub DelButtons()
Dim btn As Shape
For Each btn In ActiveSheet.Shapes
If btn.AutoShapeType = msoShapeStyleMixed Then btn.Delete
Next
End Sub
Sub cross()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Dim IE As SHDocVw.InternetExplorer
Dim Doc As MSHTML.HTMLDocument
Dim Elements As MSHTML.IHTMLElementCollection
Dim TDelements As MSHTML.IHTMLElementCollection
Dim elements2 As MSHTML.IHTMLElementCollection
Dim htmlInput As MSHTML.HTMLInputElement
Dim Element As IHTMLElement
Dim TDelement As IHTMLElement
Dim objButton As MSHTML.IHTMLFormElement
Dim R As Integer
Dim c As Integer
Dim sentence As Variant
Dim sentence2 As Variant
Dim cSearch
Dim cSearch2
Dim snumber As Integer
snumber = 1
R = 0
Application.SendKeys "%{F11}"
For Each sentence In ActiveSheet.Range("I2", Range("I2").End(xlDown))
snumber = snumber + 1
R = R + 1
cSearch = sentence
Debug.Print cSearch
cSearch2 = ActiveSheet.Range("J:J").Cells(0 + snumber)
Debug.Print cSearch2
cSearch3 = ActiveSheet.Range("H:H").Cells(0 + snumber) ' use for year
Debug.Print cSearch3
ActiveSheet.Range("N:N").Cells(0 + snumber).Value = "=BR" & snumber
ActiveSheet.Range("O:O").Cells(0 + snumber).Value = "=IF(ISERROR(REPLACE(RC[-1],1,FIND(""^^"",SUBSTITUTE(RC[-1],""/"",""^^"",3),1),""""))=TRUE,"""",REPLACE(RC[-1],1,FIND(""^^"",SUBSTITUTE(RC[-1],""/"",""^^"",3),1),""""))"
On Error Resume Next
Set IE = New SHDocVw.InternetExplorer
With IE
.Visible = False ' False
.navigate "http://www.crossref.org/guestquery"
Do Until Not .Busy And .readyState = 4
DoEvents
Loop
Set Elements = IE.Document.getElementsByTagName("Input")
For Each Element In Elements
If Element.Name = "auth" Then
Element.Value = cSearch
Exit For
End If
Next Element
Set elements2 = IE.Document.getElementsByTagName("Input")
For Each Element In Elements
If Element.Name = "atitle" Then
Element.Value = cSearch2
Exit For
End If
Next Element
'eliminate to not to use year
Set elements3 = IE.Document.getElementsByTagName("Input")
For Each Element In Elements
If Element.Name = "year" Then
Element.Value = cSearch3
Exit For
End If
Next Element
Do Until Not .Busy And .readyState = 4
DoEvents
Loop
Set Elements = IE.Document.getElementsByTagName("Input")
For Each Element In Elements
' If Element.Name = "article_title_search" Then ' use if not using year
If Element.Name = "view_records" Then ' use when using year
Element.Click
Exit For
End If
Next Element
Do Until Not .Busy And .readyState = 4
DoEvents
Loop
Set TDelements = IE.Document.getElementsByTagName("td")
c = 1
For Each TDelement In TDelements
ActiveSheet.Range("O1").Offset(R, c).Value = TDelement.innerText
c = c + 1
Next
ActiveSheet.Range("N:N").Cells(0 + snumber) = ActiveSheet.Range("N:N").Cells(0 + snumber).Value
ActiveSheet.Range("O:O").Cells(0 + snumber) = ActiveSheet.Range("O:O").Cells(0 + snumber).Value
End With
Next sentence
Range("P1").Resize(Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlRows, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Row, _
Cells.Find(what:="*", SearchOrder:=xlByColumns, _
SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Column).Select '
With Selection
.Clear
End With
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
Call header
Call ddd
Exit Sub
Application.SendKeys "%{F11}"
End Sub
Function Contains(objCollection As Object, strName As String) As Boolean
Dim o As Object
On Error Resume Next
Set o = objCollection(strName)
Contains = (Err.Number = 0)
Err.Clear
End Function
Sub ddd()
Cells.Select
ActiveSheet.Range("O:O").Select
Selection.Copy
If Contains(Sheets, "dois") = False Then
Sheets.Add.Name = "dois"
End If
Sheets("dois").Select
Range("A1").Select
Selection.PasteSpecial Paste:=xlPasteValues, Operation:=xlNone, SkipBlanks _
:=False, Transpose:=False
Application.CutCopyMode = False
ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs Filename:= _
"dois.csv", FileFormat:=xlCSV, _
CreateBackup:=False ' IMPORTANT
' GO TO BEGINNING, CLICK ON CODE AND CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON
End Sub
I am trying this code but it is not working., It is opening internet explorer, then edge and later fails. Only result I see in Excel is 10,20,30... and so on. Probably need modification. Microsoft is forcing Edge when Internet explorer opens.
Sorry, I don't really use windows commonly.
But this solution was posted by you and it is implemented in Microsoft excel.
Perhaps, some SEO tools can perform that task, but I am not too familiar with them. What I can suggest, though, is to use Web scraping for your purposes. However, note that going this route requires solid programming skills as well as decent amount time for testing and debugging.
Since you asked on Academia.SE, I assume that there is a relatively high probability that you are comfortable with computer programming. If you can work with Python, there is a scraping library BeautifulSoup. If you can work with R, there is a variety of approaches that can be used. For example, rvest package by Hadley Wickham. See this blog post for details and examples.
Yes, this is how it can be done. But note that if you hit scholar too frequently with something like this it will block you temporarily (for an hour or so).
@DavidKetcheson: Good point, thank you for mentioning. The easiest way to tackle this issue is to introduce artificial delays in the code. Considering the small amount of elements to parse in results, it will not be critical time-wise, but will allow to honor Google Scholar traffic limits.
I think scraping violates the TOS: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/3068/17331
@Luigi: Perhaps. But maybe not, considering the very recent precedent of Google winning against Oracle, based on playing the fair use card. It can be argued that scraping public information from Web pages is the case of the fair use.
@AleksandrBlekh Interesting. I could be wrong, but isn't fair use a way around IP/copyright restrictions? A website can put whatever it wants into its TOS and throttle/block users on that basis. Whether it would hold up in court is another matter but I'm not sure how many academics are willing to take Google to trial
@Luigi: Throttling is not a problem, at least, from technical perspective - as I said above, simple delay scheme could honor the site's limitations, while still being able to download the information (unless its volume is too big to practically use this approach). As for academics not willing to fight with Google in court, you're right. However, on the other hand, I'm not sure whether Google would be interested in suing academics for such a minor offense, which very well might be considered and ruled as a valid case of fair use. Google's lawyers likely have more important things to work on.
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84969 | Are picture-perfect acknowledgement sections the norm in Academia?
When I read other theses, I am often astonished by the sheer number of people whose help the writer is acknowledging in a multitude of ways. Here's an example to demonstrate what I am talking about, but I am sure you get the point: http://www.mit.edu/~alvarso/thesis-phd/Acknowledgements.pdf
In comparison, in the thesis that I am currently writing, I am getting close to the end, and the draft for my own acknowledgment section is currently
I would like to thank my advisor **********, as well as my close colleagues at the department of ********** at *****************.
I might spice it up with some adjectives, but that's pretty much it.
Are acknowledgement sections, like the one I linked to, the norm? If so, would a paper with a lackluster acknowledgement section be considered potentially subpar?
What you linked is definitely not the norm. But there is a whole spectrum starting with one-paragraph acknowledgments not much longer than yours, and ending at, well, probably what you linked. That said, if I were to mention "my close colleagues", I'd at least name them.
The acknowledgment section of my Ph.D. thesis is 5 lines long, and 2 of those lines are thanking the two typists who typed it up (this was long before the type-it-yourself TeX era) and the NSF. I've never worried that this was too short.
I didn't look at your example, sorry, but I can say that when I'm looking at articles quickly to learn about something or find a useful reference, long flowery acknowledgments slow me down, and I end up wishing that section were at the end. If your natural inclination is to be succinct in this section, go for it! // The department and the institution will already be indicated somewhere in the front matter, won't it? So you could maybe pare it down a tiny bit more, if you wanted to!
I'm sorry to say it but IMO it's the acknowledgements section you linked to that is "lackluster" and "subpar". It is longer than some entire papers - unbelievable! Forget about adjectives and "spicing it up". Honestly no one cares, just make sure the contents of your paper are not lackluster and you'll be golden.
I don't think there is any misunderstanding here, but just to be sure: the norms for thesis acknowledgements and for paper (i.e. journal publication) acknowledgements are very different. The latter tend to be 4-5 lines at most, whereas the former are often (but not always) considerably longer.
I think it is impossible to give an answer without cultural context (country, but also institute). In my field (a quantitative social science, Netherlands), the linked example would definitly not be considered extreme. My own acknowledgement was one page, and probably the shortest of all colleagues I knew.
You seem be concerned that people may judge the quality of your thesis in part based on the length of the acknowledgments section. I don't think that anyone will do that.
You may be missing a required acknowledgment of one or more grants from a funding agency.
A separate question is whether you have overlooked people who could to be acknowledged in your thesis, or whether it would be appropriate to include a more specific and detailed acknowledgment of the individuals you are acknowledging. As the Ph.D. is the culmination not only of years of research but of years of your life, it's not unusual to think more broadly regarding acknowledgments than you would for a paper. You may want to include, for instance:
Faculty outside of your committee or university who also mentored you or gave helpful comments and suggestions;
Anyone who developed code that you used in your thesis;
People who helped you do a better job with the writing itself, e.g. through teaching you better grammar, better Latex skills, etc.;
Family members (particularly a spouse) who have supported you during your doctoral work or inspired you to be a scholar;
Fellow students who have given you encouragement or proofread or otherwise commented on your work.
I suppose you can go too far in being inclusive, and perhaps the example you linked does, though I doubt anyone will get very upset about that either.
In my own acknowledgments I tried to be rather specific about what each of these individuals did, or how I benefitted from their help. For instance, I acknowledged my advisor
...not only for providing continual support and guidance, but especially for allowing (and even enthusiastically encouraging) me to pursue research that I found fascinating but that is only indirectly related to his own research program.
Some of these kinds of acknowledgments would be considered out of place in a journal article, so the thesis gives you an opportunity that you may never get again (unless you publish a book) to express gratitude to these individuals in a somewhat official way. You have nothing to lose by being more inclusive in expressing your gratitude, and you may make someone who reads it very happy by including them.
"You almost certainly are missing a required acknowledgment of one or more grants from a funding agency." I found that statement surprising, so I looked through about 30 online theses in my field of number theory collected here: http://www.numbertheory.org/ntw/N5.html. Roughly 1/3 thanked funding agencies (a larger percentage than I would have predicted), the most common by far being EPSRC. Also interesting: more than 10% didn't have any acknowledgments at all. May I ask for the support of your probability measure?
@PeteL.Clark Interesting. This is based on 2 assumptions: 1. Most Ph.D. theses result from work supported in some part by at least one grant. 2. Most funding agencies require that grantees acknowledge support in any publication. Indeed, I don't personally know of any exceptions to either of those! You must know something I don't, so please share.
My PhD thesis was not supported by any grant. In my current department, the same holds for more than half of all PhD theses. Moreover, just because a student got some support from an advisor's grant at some point does not mean they acknowledge this in their thesis: among other things, the connection between the funding and the student's work may be tenuous.
For instance, I supported a student of mine for one summer from a grant. The support was not for him to work on any project of mine -- it was just support. I think the honest truth is that nothing he did that summer made it into his thesis. I also honestly don't think the funding agency cares either way about this. By the way, I had zero conversations with my advisor about his grant support, though I know now that he must have had some the entire time.
@PeteL.Clark Interesting! I think there is a lot to be said, but perhaps this should be posted as a separate question rather than an extended chain of comments.
@PeteL.Clark There is also the difference that acknowledging grants will often be done outside the section where one acknowledges others (for example there might be a footnote for each author with a statement of such grants), precisely because this acknowledgement is in some sense more "formal" and might be required to take a certain form.
@TobiasKildetoft I think you are discussing papers. In a thesis there is only one author.
Right, but that would not necessarily exclude one from having grants acknowledged via a footnote (at least I have had such footnotes in solo papers). On the other hand, I am not sure I have seen it used in theses, so it might well be something restricted to papers.
I want to discuss one point in David Ketcheson's answer.
You seem be concerned that people may judge the quality of your thesis in part based on the length of the acknowledgments section. I don't think that anyone will do that.
There are many things to judge from the acknowledgement. It tells a lot about the relationship between the author and his/her PhD advisor, and the working environment in the group.
When I was applying for a PhD, I read a lot of PhD theses' acknowledgements to understand more about the PIs. Here are some sentences that I still remember, not exactly word by word though.
No acknowledgement at all? a big red flag here.
"I thank my advisor for introduce the problem A to me" -> What? that's it? I will not apply to be a student of this guy.
"I thank him for give me the freedom to explore blah blah" -> Oh, you are great, but I'm not independent enough to work with this guy.
"I thank him for countless discussions and encouragements" -> This guy is good.
"He supports me when PhD is not my first priority" -> This guy is awesome, who cares a lot about his students.
...
An acknowledgment is an individual, highly personal piece of writing that is probably not vetted by anyone else: it would be a mistake to read too much into the tea leaves here. To take your examples: (i) I know at least one instance of a very satisfied student who had no acknowledgments whatsoever. See also my comment to Dave Ketcheson's answer. (ii) Possibly this is an expression of deep gratitude for receiving the perfect problem. (iii) Because an advisor gave one student what they needed makes them more likely to give you what you would need, not to treat you in exactly the same way....
(iv) The student was well satisfied with the advisor, anyway. (It is actually possible to give a student too much help...but I agree it's a favorable sign.) (v) To me that looks like a potential red flag about the student, but again it could just be strangely written, and one shouldn't read too much into it.
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30285 | How should I approach a Tokyo University professor to join their lab?
What are the guidelines that I should follow when contacting a foreign University professor to ask for joining their lab?
I need to find a professor for my already accepted semester abroad as an exchange student. I will be doing my Final Year Project as an undergraduate student and I am having a hard time getting a response from the professors at the Tokyo University. I have contacted with the current student abroad and he told me that it also took him a while to find a professor.
So now I'm wondering about my methods. Is this letter okay?
Hello _____,
I'm an exchange student from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. I am contacting you to see if you might be interested in accepting me for doing my Final Year Project.
The project I would like to do is an artificial skin capable of registering different pressure points on a soft material layer. It would consist mainly on a foam that has resistivity variable with the pressure and an Arduino circuit to read and process these values. In this way we can read many points of pressure in a precise way.
The main challenge is joining several fields of Engineering, which is also one of the strongest motivations for me. I have broad experience in programming, I am confident of my capabilities in electronics and I have already verified that this material is the right one.
There are mainly two fields where this technology could be very useful:
Medicine: For the people who are missing a limb, this could bring back a part of the sensibility, even if it's in a different format.
Robotics: relying on precise pressure sensors could improve greatly the accuracy of many of their functions.
Would you accept me as a student to develop this project? Seeing your background I think that you might be interested.
Thank you so much for your time,
Francisco Presencia Fandos
The main feedback I've already gotten is that if I write the letter open to suggestions but not proposing a project it would be easier for the professors to accept me. Also, I'm thinking of writing my achievements so far, but I think they could look like bragging.
Is this letter okay? Is this the right method for finding a professor in an university abroad?
"I have already verified that this material is the right one." Then what do you want the professor to do? Put a stamp on the final research paper?
@cscaaahu no, I think I have the right foam material. I need help to combine it with the circuit, add protection (the material comes with some setbacks) and test it. I only wanted to emphasize that the project is almost ready to be started and that it is feasible.
For professors in Japan, taking on students is a tremendous responsibility and burden. Unlike in the United States or Europe, professors are responsible for even the extracurricular activities of students (i.e., getting arrested; showing up drunk and groping someone; having an apartment so messy that the landlord complains, etc.). They are also responsible for the student's career after they graduate.
So faculty are noticeably reticent to take anyone on that they do not know or that do not have anyone to vouch for them. It's in this context that letters of introduction from known faculty are extremely important.
This is very hard for outsiders to break into. Your best hope is that one of your professors knows somebody at U-Tokyo, or knows somebody who knows somebody at UTokyo. It's their letter of introduction that will open doors for you.
Cold-calling will not yield many good results.
Without a good letter of introduction, your next best strategy is to enroll in either a study-abroad program / exchange program with U-Tokyo that has open enrollment or to apply to one of their English-speaking graduate programs. Going through their international programs office tends to be much better as the staff are used to international norms for student applications. Unfortunately, most of these programs aren't in engineering, but at least it gets you a foot in the door.
Edit: From the discussion, it became clear that the OP has already enrolled into an engineering program at U-Tokyo that caters to foreigners. In this case, it's the program's responsibility to find him his advisor, as it is clear from their FAQ:
"As an applicant for all courses, it is not necessary for you to
contact a prospective supervisor in advance. Instead, after evaluating
your application documents, we will allocate you to a field of
study/faculty member which will be most appropriate for your research
and research interests. "
I am currently enrolled in an exchange program with U-Tokyo, however we still have to find a professor since it's the final year project (1-to-1). I have a recommendation letter from the Rector at my university, I'll try to use that too to find a professor and find someone I know within the University. The first paragraphs put things in perspective and give me a better idea of how things work there. Do you think writing also my achievements so far would help?
The international students office should be able to make the introductions and liasing on your behalf. Also, weren't you assigned a program supervisor/advisor?
"Cold-calling will not yield many good results." Maybe I just got lucky, then, but I made three cold callw to professors in Japan (at Tokyo, Kyushu and Tohoku), and got a positive answer each time. (By "positive", I mean that the professor agreed to take me, at least in principle).
Could you provide a reference that the advisor is responsible if the student is getting arrested? This sounds very interesting!
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73092 | Is it acceptable to use personal equipment for research?
I'm a new graduate student in a computational lab, and the workstations provided by the lab I'm in right now are...slightly subpar. Long story short, a lot of it is nearing a decade old, and there doesn't seem to be a push to replace it with new hardware anytime soon. Since our lab tends to work with pretty demanding programs, this creates a major issue.
Over at Workplace SE, the standard advice seems to be to point out the economics of the situation (devs = expensive, time lost = money lost), but I'm not convinced that the same reasoning holds in academia. In addition, from talking to labmates and various administrative staff, it seems that the lab won't have the funding to replace all (or even most) of the machines anytime soon.
Which brings me to a potential solution: I have a decently powerful computer sitting at home. Would it be a good idea for me to spend some of my own money to upgrade it and bring it in to the lab? My advisor is okay with this plan, but I don't know if there's other things I should worry about (e.g. unclear line between personal/lab equipment, or people coming to rely on the machine).
This is somewhat related to this question, but it seemed to be asking specifically about money and a grant application, while I'm more concerned about potential consequences of bringing personal property to the lab and using it for an extended period of time.
Do follow the standard advice. Even the most underpaid graduate students are far more expensive than a $1K-$2K computer. Also, ask them today how they will pay for your academic travel in a year or two if they cannot afford a computer now.
@BorisBukh: you're making a lot of assumptions about how their budgeting works and, if travel and workstations can be paid from the same budget, how close that budget is to running out. Maybe not paying for workstations is what allows them to pay for your travel. Maybe the relevant funding for the two different things isn't fungible. But of course you're right that it's worth asking, because if you know the reasons (however stupid they might be) then the situation may become less frustrating.
@BorisBukh In a First World country, sure. But in Second/Third World countries, where the monthly "salary" for a PhD student may be around $200, buying even a single $2000 (or even $1000) computer may be nearly impossible. Academic travelling? Ha!
@101010111100 but then you are less likely to own a powerful computer.
@Davidmh Not necessary true. My understanding is that in such countries, academia (along with many other professional areas) simply doesn't pay well. So you can make something like 2-5 times your PhD salary if you work outside of academia, say for one of those fancy technological companies which are popping everywhere, and you should be able to afford a reasonably priced computer, which in all likelihood is much better spec'd than anything your university can offer you.
@SteveJessop's example is particularly true in the UK. For each PhD student (funded by EPSRC) There is an equipment budget, which would be used up on a fairly rubbish PC, and a travel budget. For a good PC the supervisor would have to find top-up money
As an alternative to bringing in your own machine you could spin up a VM through a cloud service and SSH into it. The monthly cost might be more palatable to your adviser than buying a new machine plus it gives you a lot of flexibility and no worries over IP ownership
Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/62589/is-offering-to-use-personal-funds-for-research-a-good-idea
So you can make something like 2-5 times your PhD salary if you work outside of academia — This is also true in the US.
Don't bring your PC to the lab. Instead, consider doing your work from home. Also, some Universities have HPC systems available to researchers. You could try to get access to that if it exists and suits you.
Do you intend to plug your computer into the university's network? If so, your network administrator may have an opinion about this.
Sadly its often such an administrative burden to get a computer quickly that using a BYO computer is often the most expedient solution to getting started on your actual work. But I suggest that approach as an interim solution while waiting for something to be supplied by work.
Another PhD student in my floor asked how to fix a slow system. Here is my supervisor's reply:
If you need to have a fast desktop, the best is to convince your boss to spend 3 days of your salary to buy a top of the line Linux machine (or a week of salary to buy a Mac).
Anything else is stupid on their part. Note that your cost is not only salary, but is also taxes, work insurance, university fees (where applicable), rent of the office...
Addition: Also, they got a grant to pay you, they need you to publish. The longer time you spend waiting for code to run, the less you will publish, and the less competitive they will be for future grants.
*Note: he was being moderately flippant, don't take the two days and top of the line too literally, but the point still stands.
The problem with bringing your own equipment is that:
It is yours, and if you wanted to do something else with it, you wouldn't.
If it breaks, and a lab is a moderately risky environment, it is your loss and no one else will pay for it. Also, you may not get support from the IT department to fix it.
It sets a precedent for other students to do the same. The stipend you get as a PhD student is quite meagre, and buying a computer out of it is a significant investment.
In some institutions research data is considered confidential, and they forbid for it to live in non-institution owned devices.
This said, I often bring my laptop to work when I need the extra mobility, or my own workstation (a top of the line Linux machine) is overworked, but I don't rely on it.
The economics of this are very different for postgrads than for employees. Postgrad time does not have a high economic cost and sometimes does not have a high value placed upon it.
@gerrit it is not only salary, it is also taxes, work insurance, university fees (where applicable)... It does amount to a lot of money. It is in Sweden, by the way, I think you are familiar with it.
Even if the machine only costs 1000 USD (which is nice machine but certainly not top-of-the-line), to earn that much in three days you'd need to make 6.5k/month (assuming 19 work days a month), which seems unlikely unless you're a full professor. But of course even 1-2 weeks of salary wouldn't be too expensive for something we use all the time.
@Davidmh True. I was thinking of the money I get in my pocket rather than the money my employer spends. Deleting my comment (although top of the line to me means something else, as I running code on a 48-core Xeon machine with 2 TB RAM, admittedly shared with a lot of other people, but certainly more than 3 days my salary costs).
@jwg it was a PhD student, so still cheap labour.
@gerrit well, top of the line for a desktop computer.
@CodesInChaos You're missing a subtle difference (which is also explained in the answer): he's not asking to spend 3 days of his pay himself, he's asking his boss to spend the money it would cost to hire him for 3 days. This is a substantially larger amount since it includes the taxes, insurances, fees, office space rent, etc.
@Cronax on fairness to CodesInChaos, I edited the clarification after he had written the comment.
@Cronax I think the rule of thumb is 20% on top of gross wage for insurances&co in Germany, so it shouldn't make that big a difference. And 6 m^2 of office space can't be that expensive either.
@CodesInChaos I could be mistaken, but as far as I know, every euro a Dutch or Belgian employee receives in their bank account has cost his/her employer two euros. You'd be surprised how expensive office space can get as well, although that cost is divided across all of the employees when factoring into this particular calculation.
@Cronax I treated those 6.5k/month as "gross" wage from which the employee still has to pay income tax and part of the insurance. I'd expect a PhD to be below 4k/month.
Even if we generously assume that I cost $3 for ever $1 of stipend that I see, it'd still be a little more than 3 days of my cost...;) Your 3rd and 4th points are great though. I never even considered that.
@chipbuster even if we are talking about two weeks of salary, in three or four years pays off several times.
@Codes 20% is way too low. For 3000€ salary the employer already pays 3728€ which is 25% of the salary. But that ignores all the additional costs, particularly rental space and so on (vacation money!). When factoring all that in you'll be likely at 30-35% (the less you earn, the worse it is).
They really ought to provide adequate hardware, but realistically it may not happen. I have no problem with using my own computers for academic purposes (and had no problem during my PhD). However I wouldn't bring a personal desktop PC in to work. Or at least I wouldn't until I knew the security and IT support staff well, and then I'd be reluctant.
It's yours and you should have the first and main say on what happens on it, while they will rightly try to run policies to protect their network (which may conflict with your gaming/bittorrent-for-perfectly-legal-purposes). Software licences may also be an issue; they may imply or explicitly state that the software is to be installed on systems owned by the institution purchasing the license.
If you're confident to set it up securely (and there aren't any licensing issues), how about remoting in to it at home? You can do your development work on the machines provided (whether that's code, simulations or whatever), and then run them on your own fast machine.
Background:
An issue that your supervisor may face is that bog-standard desktops are a reasonable price but as soon as you want anything better the (only approved IT) supplier who got the deal on the basis of volume sales will charge a small fortune, meaning that there just isn't enough money in the budget (ability, not willingness, to pay for it). Combined with this, university IT departments can make it very difficult for staff/students to build a decent machine and get it on the network. These restrictions can often be circumvented if you have good local IT support and are on friendly terms with them (which is essential if you're doing anything remotely computational).
+1 Exactly this. If you have a faster PC at home, run the experiments there. There is no need to bring it to work, because it will be a hassle for IT administrators (security) or in terms of logistics (the PC does nor belong to the university).
Not to mention who pays if it gets stolen/damaged on uni presmises
Regarding remote computing at home: 10 years old PC is still fast enough to perform daily computing. I use my laptop for CAD, typesetting etc. and it was "medium class" 10 years ago. And with high computing power the elevated power consumption comes - are you wiling to pay for your gear and it's consumption? A friend of mine rapidly downgraded his PC when he moved from dormitory to his own flat.
Power consumption is a good point, especially for the sort of thing I'm assuming (computationally heavy). I'm ignoring the purchase price as the OP seems to be refrring to minor upgrades of existing kit. I'm only on my third desktop in 20 years (and second laptop in ~12) so for daily use up to casual games I'm with you.
Power consumption is not necessarily that much of issue. Modern i7 processors (e.g. i7 4770) are very low on power consumption and support 32Gb - 128Gb of Ram. Most power consumption then depends on the graphics card.
"software is to be installed"?
@Crowley A 10 year old computer for typesetting and CAD? What? Replacing the desktop I had at university with my Ultrabook/Desktop at home I had a huge speedup compiling LaTeX (i.e. typeseting). I think you are severely underestimating the benefits of newer hardware. And as was pointed out correctly by Alexandros, power consumption of hardware has reduced dramatically. (My 2008 laptop has a 35W TDP processor, my more powerful Ultrabook - in terms of processing power - has a 15W TDP CPU.)
@DetlevCM I've observed same speedup when I changed the newer "office" machine with my older laptop. My point was, that when computing power really matters and differences are significant (waiting seconds or waiting minutes to get results) then power consumption is not negligible. Yes, newer processors have low TDP, but as mentioned above, GPU eats a lot. OP is in computational lab, whatever it means, therefore I suppose that they will push the gear to its limits.
@Crowley and even GPUs have become a lot more efficient. Nvidia GT 630 -> GTX 750 Ti, similar power draw, maybe 15W more on the 750 but 5 times the processing power and that's just a low/midrange card. So even if they do GPU computing, newer models will offer more computational capacity at lower power draw. What we have mainly seen in recent years is a slowdown in the processing capability growth while at the same time power consumption is continuosuly decreased. Another plus of newer hardware is new instruction sets that can give speedup as well as faster RAM.
@ I agree that newer gear is faster and cheaper to run. Even though theeconomy increased significantly the power draw still cannot be neglected. I've just looked around and mobile processors have TDP from 2 W (Atom) to 60 W (i7 49x0 MX), desktop processors have TDP 35 W (i5 6x00 T) - 130 W (i7, Xeon). Doing computations 10 hours a day will cost you at least 0.3-1.3 kWh a day. You will save your time in the lab, but you will pay it by yourself. I do not say "Do not upgrade"; I say "Do not run your work at your home".
@Crowley Here 1kWh is ~10-15p. Lets round up and say it costs £1/week or twice that if it's running 24/7. You can almost certainly save that elsewhere (if you're not working through the night because you model took a week to give nonsense data, you need less coffee). Plenty of people leave their machines fully on anyway, in which case you'd be comparing working vs. idle, reducing the cost some more.
@ChrisH Fair enough. I don't know the exact prices, but if one sacrifise one beer in the pub he can pay himself a two weeks of computing!
At least here in Germany there is this thing that (at least in public institutions) electrically powered machines (even phone chargers) need to be checked for safety by a specified person and then labelled that they are safe to use. This is because of liability. What happens when your PC causes a fire that burns down the building (obviously the worst case)? If the lab didn't officially approve, you might be in trouble.
In case this is handled differently in your workplace and you get the OK from your boss, you'll be fine I think. But as the first commenter said, you should not be forced to bring your own hardware. Keep bringing up the topic. Tell them how much time you're wasting with old hardware and maybe they'll budge.
That practice is not very widespread. I have seen it in the UK, but not in Spain nor in Sweden. Usually, the check is just looking at it, seeing that it doesn't have visible damage, and put a sticker on it.
Use of personal laptops is common here in the UK (e.g. the uni provides/you opted for a desktop, but you want to take your presentation on the road). The charger can be PAT tested when you first bring it in (I keep a spare in work). This aspect is (or should be) a non-issue)
It should be a non-issue, I agree. Yet at the same time I am forbidden to buy a monitor from my private money and use it at my desk for the reason I described above.
Note that at least in Germany, these rules do not prevent anyone from plugging in all kinds of "unauthorized" devices nonetheless (and even if employees might go through the hassle of officially getting an authorization, all the students who bring their laptops to uni certainly do not). Might not be happening so much with stationary devices (such as desktop computers), though, which cannot be "hidden" as easily in the rare case of someone actually checking.
Yeah, it's slightly odd, you can plug in your own phone charger but you can't plug in your own monitor. OK, the phone charger draws less current and is fused lower. But if you're allowed to just assume that the device draws the current it's supposed to and is fused correctly then there's no point certifying equipment, you've already assumed it's OK. I once had my own device certified for electrical safety at work by accident: I unthinkingly left in on my desk the night they were doing it, next morning it had a label on. No fuss, no problem ;-)
@SteveJessop: The way it's described in this answer, you cannot officially plug in your own phone charger. (Although, as I said, such rules are commonly disobeyed in my experience.)
@O.R.Mapper: that's what I meant, I agree with you and was talking about places where it's done nonetheless. Doing it undermines the electrical testing, so there's no safety reason to be officious about monitors once you turn a blind eye to phone chargers. Well, there's a safety-from-getting-caught reason as you say, but not a good safety-from-fire reason. I wasn't clear that where I said "can" and "allowed", I meant in practice by your nearby colleagues, rather than by the rules.
If you take a monitor (or a coffee maker) to the office it will have the sticker that shows that it has been tested a year from now.
Do you not have national organizations [like in North America we have UL and CSA] to do this kind of certification?
@Random832 part of the issue is preventing problems arising from the users, and not necessarily from the equipment. Imagine people using an extension cord and plugging in 6 or 7 heavy-current-draw equipment into one outlet, or people using old/second hand equipment with faulty electrical wiring due to old age or normal wear-and-tear. // Even in the United States frequently when outfitting a lab you will need to double check with facilities to make sure the equipment you intend to install in the lab will not overtax the electrical supply.
@WillieWong A sticker on each piece of equipment doesn't seem like an attempt to address that either though.
@Random832: I quote from Davidmh's comment "... seeing that it doesn't have visible damange ...". Also, extension cords are equipment too.
@Random832 devices have to be CE marked, which is not quite the same but a similar idea. This is a type test though, and isn't performed on every unit, so the manufacturer is essentially slef-certifying. I believe this is the same in the US given the cost of testing a single item. Hardware gets damaged, or may even be built wrong, and detection of dangerous states resulting from this is up to the employer/premises owner. That said, the only hardware I've come across causing real problems had current tests - and caught fire due to poor design which couldn't be detected.electrically
They recently checked the electrical devices im my office. I now have a checked sticker on my old power supply whose wiring I re-soldered myself years ago (to match another laptop, and to eliminate a galvanic-coupling problem). Much to my surprise it turns out I did that in a VDE-conformant manner...
@Davidmh There is actually a full recommended procedure for PAT testing in the UK, though it's not compulsory. Most academic institutions and a majority of commercial enterprises with an in house IT department use it. It involves checking for damage, yes, but also the condition of the wiring and its resistivity (a change since the last test can indicate an electrical issue that has dangerous potential).
This is possibly more of a comment, but a bit of personal experience/observations from Europe:
What is the ideal situation: You are provided with the equipment you need.
What is the reality? You generally find you lack equipment - be it a good PC or a second monitor, etc.
When I did my PhD, I got an old computer - a Dell desktop that at the time was about 4 years old and technically weaker than my old laptop at the time... well, I used it - got a desktop at home a year later which was a lot more powerful (which I specced considering my PhD work) and then another 1.3 years later got so fed up with the old Dell that I replaced the entire thing with my own Ultrabook (which despite weighing 1.4kg is or was more powerful).
Incidentally, I did bring up the idea of buying my own computer (small desktop) when they PAT tested the Dell (weird British habit these "PAT tests"...) and the suggestion was that it would not be allowed. Hence my solution was to get the Ultrabook instead (which cost 3 times as much but which I still have - and from which I write this post actually)
The chance that I would have gotten a new PC towards the end of my PhD was also pretty much zero - why should they pay for it? (EPSRC only funded my tuition fee and maintenance... - heck, I had to be happy that the university paid for some experimental work...)
I could also still use the Linux boxes and the Cluster just fine vie the University wifi using SSH so it wasn't a problem in any way.
Incidentally, other students were better off - the "CFD lot" got new computers at the start and one guy funded by industry even got a laptop to use (not sure if he got to keep it, it was an option, not sure what the end result was though).
Now as PostDoc at a different institution I would love a second monitor - and instead have a Dell workstation that is weirdly specced...
It has an E5 Xenon in there which I don't need and an NVidia Quadro (not a low one) but I only get a single monitor... I'm not the only one who'd like another monitor but effectively everybody in the institute has to make do with a single monitor. Why? I don't know. IT decided what we get to use.
A PhD student in the UK started and the mood was "he has a powerful laptop he does not need a PC". (I hope they did get him one eventually...)
Incidentally, the same VM setup that took 1 hour to run on my desktop took 2 hours on his laptop - despite it having about 70% of the processing power of my desktop in benchmarks...
So what is the reality? Invariably in academic research you generally end up using your own equipment - because the equipment supplied is lacking in some respect or you want to work at home, etc. etc.
However, there are a some points to consider:
If you do commercially or otherwise sensitive work for industry, using your own equipment may be very much frowned upon.
Different institutions have different policies - some object to you taking your work home. Obviously, if you start writing a literature review at home there is little they can do, however you would be better off following company policy and leaving work in the office. (Unless they furnish you with a work laptop that you can take home.)
Then there is the topic of licenses:
If you can use free software or can afford the licenses for the software you use, great, no problem.
However I have noticed that it appears not to be unusual for some students to obtain software from illicit sources, this may have consequences if any questions are asked, for both the student and potentially the university (if they condoned such practices).
Is there really no source of spare monitors in the department? I've got a 1920x1080 that came with my PC (advantages of being in a well-funded, growing group) and a 1280x1024 with almost exactly the same vertical height. Even some of our PhD students have similar setups. It's a matter of knowing who to ask nicely. As for mystery software sources - if you're into that, it's a good reason to run personal hardware.
No, it's institute policy. Some people found a low res second monitor but it isn't officially approved just accepted... Also it is only a 1 year PostDoc, so I don't have any leverage, if it were a permanent position I would insist including offering to buy the thing myself and leave it to the institute when I leave if it must be. But not for another 6 months. Back during my PhD I managed to get a second monitor before moving to my Ultrabook. When I was using a desktop at home I also had a dual monitor setup for about 8 months (and then had to leave that as I couldn't move with my desktop...)
It looks the policies are often made by people with absolutely no idea of what they are deciding about and no will to get even slight insight.
I personally use my own laptop in lab, though mostly because it's convenient to have my data on hand whether I'm at work, at home or wherever, not because they couldn't afford a computer for me. As I understand it, there is no need for it to pass any sort of certification or be put on the institute's balance (at least here in Russia). Although it may be important to note that neither me nor my computer get in the same room with actual laboratory work too often.
The only possible issue is that some inspection may get wondering how exactly this particular bioinformatician is supposed to work without any device to his name. It sounds contrived, but I've heard that FASO inspectors sometimes are, let's say, overly meticulous. And, if you are planning to ever bring your machine out, better avoid getting it anywhere near the institute's bureaucracy. If it has a label on it, you are always at risk of being accused of theft and having to spend lots of time proving that you aren't a camel.
So much depends on the specifics of your situation. I used my personal laptop throughout grad school [in the US] and it was totally fine; in fact, most of my department did the same. I was the only one who used the machine, but no one cared that it wasn't university property.
In contrast, one of my jobs since graduation had very strict departmental guidelines on what computers could be used when and where. We had a few very old project laptops that were struggling to meet our data collection demands. Our IT department came back with a quote for a laptop that was insanely overpowered for our current and any future needs and about twice what we would pay for a comparable laptop on the open market. When we went ahead and bought one on our own anyway, it turned into a Big Incident that (really unnecessarily, IMO) went all the way up to the dean, because our IT department had a fit. For the same reason, I wasn't allowed to donate an old unused machine of mine for project use.
TL;DR: You already know your adviser is okay with it. Check that your department (admin, or IT person/department if you have one) doesn't have an issue with it either. If it's all good, agree on ground rules with your adviser before actually going ahead with it - who can use it, what happens if someone other than you breaks it, what happens when you graduate, etc.
I'm going to try to not answer this whole question,
"Would it be a good idea for me to spend some of my own money to upgrade it and bring it in to the lab?"
Rather I'll answer this part of the question,
"Would it be a good idea for me to spend some of my own money to upgrade it and bring it in to the lab?"
Since you already have approval to bring in your own, you likely can get approval for something which might be lower cost or be faster - public cloud computing.
If you are looking for long-term, then buying is cheaper, but for short-term, using cloud is great. AWS has a lot of compute and even GPGPU compute. They are a bit pricey, but there are plenty of other cloud providers out there. At a university I worked at last year, they often would use cloud computing for projects, especially those lasting less than a year.
In addition, you will eliminate any possible issues of:
- others using it, or turning it off while running
- power consumption
- risk of fire or other hazard
- storage
- location
- damage by others
- and more.
+1 for the optimism of expecting OP might get budget approval for that :-)
I discuss about this problem for years now in my university (did my B.Sc. and M.Sc. here and now starting my PhD).
We also got a room with computers for students where lab sessions are held and some do their homework. However, several problems arise:
Software is hardly up to date, often more than one year behind the current stable release
Hardware was bought from the cheapest deal the university could get (of course, no money in academia) - resulting in a crappy keyboard, mouse and display and (most important!) most of the time equipped with a HDD instead of a SSD (should be getting the defa
Users do not have the rights to install or even update any software. Often important software is missing to do proper data analysis (e.g. notepad++ instead of the default windows editor)
If you come to the lab, somebody else might sit on your PC and you might have to switch to another PC at which you may not have set all your personal settings yet
Students pretend that they were not able to do certain analyses because the software was not installed/too old/crashing on one particular PC in the lab. Seriously?
I started early buying myself a good working machine which serves as my personal laptop at home and at work. I have everything installed I need and do not have to worry about others taking it. I can take an external display and work efficiently. Downside: Carrying the laptop with me every day or leave it in the lab (but miss it at home then).
I understand the point that universities have to offer capacities of what they want to teach. However, a lot of money is invested which could be used more efficiently:
Get the students a proper chair
Get the students a proper monitor, mouse and keyboard
Buy only 1/5 as many pcs as monitors and other stuff (for those who really have no PC) and let them bring their own laptop
Teach them using open-source software and avoid paying for licenses!
Nearly everybody nowaydays has their own laptop (even the most social sciene students) which is able to do the same as the (old) desktops PCs standing around in university labs.
However, as mentioned above, certain problems arise regarding softwares for which the university has only a certain number of licenses for specific PCs, sharing data in internal networks etc. (but this may all go beyond the question here).
In short: Get yourself your personal work setup and work efficiently! Do not wait for others to do something good to you. Your result counts in the end and nobody asks why you took so long or were not able to get XY running.
I am also a grad student in a computational group and would agree with many of the answers above saying that you should be hesitant to buy/bring your own computer if that is going to be the only machine doing all of the calculations. In that case your PI should supply you with appropriate tools to do your research.
However, if (as is true of my group) you are using your computer as a portal to set up calculations to be run on a super computer cluster, the age and speed of the desktops in your lab is not going to affect your research in any meaningful way. In that case, bringing in a laptop to access articles and for music (my own guilty pleasure denied to those poor saps in wet labs) would be appropriate to supplement the slower desktop machines that you use to set up your calculations.
Ahh, I had left this detail out of the question for fear of complicating it, but about half our work is done on supercomputers as well. The issue is that the other half isn't related to the grants we have on the supercomputers, so we're stuck running it on our antiquated hardware. That probably reduces the incentive to upgrade (since we're not bottlenecked by our lab hardware for many projects)
@chipbuster How is your other work paid? It is contracted research?
Unfortunately, I'm not 100% sure on what contracted research means :( Most often, an external organization (hospital, private company) will approach us with an interesting problem and we end up forming a collaboration. This sometimes comes with money from that organization (is that what contracted research means?)
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56397 | Is Lecture Notes by Springer a journal?
Sorry for asking maybe a too-specific question. I've searched the internet and in this site but I still want a specific answer.
Is the Lecture Notes in (enter the name of field here) by Springer a journal?
Some universities require the PhD students to publish in journals in order to graduate, so I want to know. I am in Computer Science field.
The real question here seems to be, "Will my university count a paper in a Springer Lecture Notes series towards my graduation requirements?" We have no idea, because we don't even know what university you're at. You should check your university's policy and ask your advisor.
Yes only they know the answer..thank you for making me realize my own question and for the advice.
If LNCS is your only publication, I doubt you've done enough for a PhD...
The point is probably that they require you to publish with in-depth peer review, which conference (in CS) rarely (never?) provide. Some issues of LNCS may have that, other don't (if they are just publications of conference papers without additional review); check with your advisor.
Thanks Jeff for the grim reminder, and thanks Raphael always for your advice. I'll check with my advisor.
I think the technical answer is no. Rather it is a series of research monographs.
Clearly there is a continuum here, and actually the SLN[X] series seems to have become more journal-like since the last time I checked. (The SLNM webpage lists an inmpact factor, for instance.) I think you can do no better than to consult the series homepages:
Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
Springer Lecture Notes in Mathematics.
Springer Lecture Notes in Physics.
In CS the series seems to be organized into many subseries, however each volume gets a "global number".
However in all three cases you can check the language used and see that they talk about "monographs", "titles" and "texts", never "journals". If my memory is accurate, librarians view them this way as well: sometimes journals can be checked out for a much shorter time than books, and in my experience the SLNM have always been treated like books.
For the math series, from the linked page you can click to get a four page pdf file detailing the editorial policy for the productions of the LNM monographs. The following passage seems rather enlightening:
Monograph manuscripts should be reasonably self-contained and rounded off. Thus they
may, and often will, present not only results of the author but also related work by other
people. They may be based on specialised lecture courses. Furthermore, the manuscripts
should provide sufficient motivation, examples and applications. This clearly
distinguishes Lecture Notes from journal articles or technical reports which normally are
very concise. Articles intended for a journal but too long to be accepted by most journals,
usually do not have this "lecture notes" character. For similar reasons it is unusual for
doctoral theses to be accepted for the Lecture Notes series, though habilitation theses may
be appropriate.
I could not find the analogous file for either the SLNCS or SLNP.
In terms of the specific question:
Some universities require the PhD students to publish in journals in order to graduate, so I want to know. I am in Computer Science field.
This is a question about academic culture, both general CS culture and the culture of your specific department and university. You certainly need to ask people in your own local culture. As you can see above, in mathematics graduate students rarely publish in SLNM: PhD theses are generally not appropriate, and it is hard to see what other book-length partially expository high level research document it would be worth the time of a graduate student to write and publish. But it looks like CS does things a bit differently...
I see.. It's better safe than sorry, so better clarify with the university and aim for a proper journal. Thank you Pete and schester.
"In CS there are many subseries and they don't seem to be numbered." - LNCS is numbered, if you are referring to volume numbers there. I have stumbled upon a few subseries, but those subseries seemed to be more like selected subsets of LNCS (and thus had just their global LNCS number) rather than individual series disjoint from LNCS with a separate numbering scheme (LNAI comes to mind).
@O.R. Mapper: I checked again and you're right. Thanks very much.
There are (still) some proceedings (especially of seminars) that are published as LN in Mathematics; a famous old example would be part of SGA, IIRC, but it still happens. It seems quite possible that a graduate student has such a paper.
@quid: Yes, that's true. I thought of that when writing my answer but chose not to include it. It seems like a bit of an edge case...
The Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series (and its related sub-series) are rather odd publications. The DBLP bibliography server marks them as a journal in one way, but categorizes them as a series in another way, and they are structured and reviewed more like conference proceedings or collections of book chapters.
I personally would not think of them as being the equivalent of a journal publication. Whether they count as a journal publication for a particular organization's set of regulations, however, is something that only that organization can determine.
So I'll have to ask the university admin.. Thank you very much for your answer.
They really should not be considered journals. Many papers published there are later polished and journal versions are published elsewhere. Some even describe themselves as extended abstracts. Many of these proceedings impose page restrictions that essentially force this to happen: Many proofs have to be left out, for the "archival" version.
Actually, dblp does not exactly classify LNCS as journal. In fact, if you query the venue search API for "lncs" (eg: http://dblp.dagstuhl.de/search/venue/api?q=lncs) you will find it explicitly tagged as "Series". However, the LNCS dblp pages are placed in the "db/journals/..." URL space, which is due to historical reasons and one of the many inconsistencies found in dblp's URL and key structure (as opposed to, say, the detailed and error-corrected data in the XML files). Such inconsistencies essentially never leave the system since dblp has not revoked any URLs or dblp keys in over 20 years.
@MRA That's really useful and interesting information; I will update my answer accordingly.
Status of LNCS is rather strange, but it is surely not a journal. Each book is a proceeding (I'm not aware of any exceptions to this rule), and altogether it's simply a series. I'll try to explain why:
Note that while it has an ISSN, each of its volumes gets an ISBN. This makes it a "serial" publication, but each of the books is ... well, a "book". (Journal issues do not get ISBN.)
Springer itself lists most (if not all) of the books as proceedings, including the dates of the conference etc. The conference dates are usually not listed for special issues for instance, it's most often only mentioned in the preamble. (Jounal issues don't get "names".)
You get invited talks listed there which are not peer-reviewed. (In journals, only announcements are -- in general -- not peer-reviewed.)
It has no periodicity. (Journals have to be periodical; this periodicity can change over time, and supplements can appear that break the periodicity, but if LNCS were a journal, it would be a journal with no regular issues published periodically.)
It does not have, and cannot have by current standards, impact factor assigned. (Journals can have IF, obviously.)
To conclude: Each book is a proceeding, and the papers are "inproceedings" by BibTeX standard. Note that according to many bibliography styles, you should list the name of the proceeding together with its editors, and the volume number in the series. I speak about LNCS, but it's the same for all Springers series, and not only them, the same applies for instance to EPTCS as well.
Specifically for Lecture Notes in Computer Science: No. As can be found from http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-1068921-0
Not being a journal, but a book series publishing primarily proceedings, LNCS is not included in ISI's Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) and hence does not have an impact factor. However, references to ISI-listed journals that are cited in LNCS papers do contribute to the respective journal’s impact factor.
As of 2018, it is included in ISI Conference Proceedings Citation Index. I'm not sure whether the conference papers published in LNCS before 2018 will be included as well.
https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/information-on-abstracting-and-indexing/799288
Volumes published as part of the LNCS, LNAI, LNBI, CCIS, IFIP AICT, LNICST or LNBIP series are made available to the following indexing services:
ISI Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science (CPCI-S), included in ISI Web of Science
...
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41759 | How to cite papers where the names are sorted?
I have a paper with autors A, B, C and D. Their names appear sorted by last name, so the order of the authors does not really say anything about their role in the paper.
When I cite this with the style that I currently use, I obtain “A et al, 2014”. This is logically, but B was the speaker and D is the professor of the workgroup.
Should I now cite this as “A et al”, or change the order of the names and make it “D et al” or “B et al”? The second version only works since I know the roles in the workgroup. With other papers, I would not know how to do this.
I could also just cite it as “[1]” and not worry about that at all …
What would be a good way to deal with this in general?
Follow whatever the citation style says (you are using one citation style, don't you?) . Nothing more nothing less.
I do not use a particular citation style at the moment. It looks like that most papers of the field just use “[1]” style references within the text. That is probably the thing to do, then.
@queueoverflow No matter what most people in your field do, if you've seen the [ABC07] style of citations, go for it. As a reader, I can tell you that it saves lots of going back and forth, since most of the readers of your paper are familiar with the most common citations and know which paper is [ABC07].
@yo' I do like that style as well, since I sometimes will know what paper is referenced without looking up the number.
If there are only four authors, it is not so hard to mention them all in the text of the article: "A, B, C, and D [3] show that ..."
@queueoverflow No matter what most people in your field do, if you've seen the [ABC07] style of citations, avoid it like the plague. As a reader, I can tell you that it makes reading the paper horrible, especially since everyone uses slightly different styles and there are lots of overlapping papers with the same initials. Just listing the authors by name in the text saves flipping back and forth.
@JeffE But when reading a paper, it is much easier to remember that [ABC07] refers to the paper by those authors than the fact that [3] does, even if you have previously looked up which paper it is. And mentioning the names of the authors every single time the paper is cited could make for an unnecessarily long paper.
@TobiasKildetoft But it's even easier to remember that "Arora, Borak, and Chazelle" refers to a result by those three authors. So what if it uses more text? Ink is cheap!
@JeffE Right, but what when I am citing specific results of several papers by those authors? I guess it is still possible to use full names, but at least in those contexts I am used to, it would not be nearly as readable.
Elaborating slightly on David Richerby's answer: cite the paper with the authors in the same order that they appear in the original. Never reorder them for any reason.
The simplest reason for this is that people will expect that your citation matches the original author ordering. If the original paper has authors in the order A,B,C,D, and you cite it with authors B,D,C,A, a reader is going to think you are talking about a different paper by the same people, in which B was listed as the first author. They will probably figure it out eventually, but confusion will occur in the meantime.
For a deeper reason, there are two possible reasons why the authors wrote their names in the order A,B,C,D:
They made a decision that A should be considered the "first author", perhaps because A had the original idea or did most of the work.
They made a decision to list their names alphabetically, so that nobody would be "first author". This implies that they believe that all of them contributed (approximately) equally to the paper.
In either case, you should respect their decision. If you change the author ordering, it makes it seem like you are second-guessing their decision, as if you know better than the authors who did what on the paper. This will come across as arrogant and disrespectful.
You can't assume that the person who presented a paper at a conference is the one who did the most work on it. Maybe A did the most work but couldn't attend the conference for some reason. Maybe they all did the same amount of work, but B really wanted to give the talk and so they agreed to let him.
You also shouldn't assume that the professor of a workgroup is the one who deserves the most credit for a paper. In many cases, the most senior person on a paper is the one who is least involved in its details (because they are dividing their time between many different projects).
So if the paper lists the authors as A,B,C,D, cite it as ABCD. Some people think the use of et al is problematic, especially for alphabetically ordered papers, but if you must use it, cite as "A et al."
"et al" is largely unavoidable with multi-authored papers. I'd much rather people referred to my seven-author paper as "Chen et al" than just "[4]", even though I'm seventh alphabetically. That way, at least one of us gets credit as a human being rather than a paper.
If the authors are listed as Adams, Brown, Clinton, Dylan, you cannot cite it as Brown et al. The standard thing is to simply cite Adams et al.
If you are one of the authors and you cite it.
Let's say that you are Brown and you now have an article with Eldridge. Then you can write the following:
... as was shown by the first author in collaboration with Adams et al. [ABCD14].
This way you cite the paper properly and at the same time, you make it clear that you are one of its authors.
Are you saying all the author names are spelt out in-line, rather than in the bibliography?
@gerrit Well, they'll be in the bibliography, but you mention them inline as well.
@gerrit If you're talking about the [ABCD14], that's the initials of A, B, C, and D (it's clearer when their names have more than one letter; if the authors were Adams, Bengston, Charles, and Donn, you'd say "with Adams et al. [ABCD14]" instead of "[Adams-Bengston-Charles-Donn 14]")
@cpast Hm, then I hope that your field does not frequently have papers with more than a handful of authors.
@gerrit Don't worry, we've invented [ABC+14] as well ;)
I've never seen a citation style that allows reordering the authors. If you're mentioning them by name, either list them all or write "First et al.", regardless of whether First is first author because of some estimation of merit or because of an accident of birth.
Alphabetical ordering of authors is the prevalent style in mathematics (there may be other fields where this is used, e.g. theoretical CS, but I'm not aware of any others).
In mathematics it is considered good style to cite the author list in full, i.e. A,B,C,D instead of A et al. The reason is that all authors are considered to have contributed (approximately) equally to the paper, so they deserver equal credit and exposure. Citing as A et al. would underexpose people with lastnames further down the alphabet. Also note that in mathematics, papers rarely have more than 3-4 authors, so this is not too unreasonable to do.
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34685 | Is it poor grammar to replace normal phrases with mathematical symbols in sentences in a mathematical paper?
English is not my native language and when I read mathematical papers, sometimes I saw sentences such as
The matrix A has rank ≥ n.
I am wondering if this sentence should be considered as grammatically wrong. I think the correct expression should be
The rank of the matrix A is greater than or equal to n.
Are expressions such as "The matrix A has rank ≥ n" considered as acceptable in mathematical papers/theses/textbooks?
I've never seen an argument against it, @Zuriel. On the other hand, I don't read mathematical papers. My main disagreement with your both of your examples is the phrase the matrix A. I would say either the matrix or matrix A. (The A is used to specify the matrix in question; the the is used to indicate that you are talking about a previously specified matrix. Combining the two seems clumsy.)
@TRiG, I see! Many thanks for the clarification! It is now very clear to me.
@TRiG I disagree. Your example without "the" would be grammatically incorrect. In the example at hand I would write "at least" rather than either suggestion.
This question appears to be off-topic because it is about [english.se], not academia
I don't think this is a good fit for English Language & Usage (it's more about academic writing conventions than the English language). One could debate whether it fits better here or on math.stackexchange.com, but I think it's fine here (and indeed this issue comes up in more fields than just mathematics).
@TRiG I would say 'the matrix A' is correct (and frequently used). I wouldn't say 'Matrix A' is incorrect, but I think it's less common. On the otherhand, there definitely is an argument against using the ≥ sign, namely that it is not formal English, rather a form of short-hand.
The first of your two sentences looks fine to me. The second seems long-winded; I'd replace "greater than or equal to n" with "at least n" or with "n or more".
What makes you consider the first sentence ungrammatical? It seems fine to me.
This question seems off-topic for Academia, because it is about the content of a particular field, rather than the process. This question belongs on Math.SE (if it belongs anywhere), where those who are expert on Mathematics can judge the stylistic issue. 2. The question does not show any evidence of prior research. We expect people to do a significant amount of research before asking, and to show us in the question where they've looked. There are plenty of math style guides that provide guidance on this; the author should have searched for them before asking.
@D.W.: This question is about mathematical equations in academic writing: the scope of that is beyond one academic field. "We expect people to do a significant amount of research before asking, and to show us in the question where they've looked." I don't think that the majority of questions asked here meet that standard. You are right though that the issue is covered in math style guides; an answer which includes a reference to one would be helpful.
@PeteL.Clark, doing research before asking is a StackExchange expectation: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/261592/781723.
I agree that doing some research makes a question better, and the site FAQ includes this information. What you wrote is significantly stronger than this. Well over half of all questions asked here do not show "evidence of prior research", so that is evidently not the community standard for closing a question. We also clearly do not close questions because an answer has been written down somewhere. If you feel that an obvious internet search should answer the question, could you include a link which demonstrates this?
@D.W. Mathematics is far from being the only science where you can choose between written and symbolic form of something, physics, chemistry, biology and probably others can face the problem as well. And for "not showing research effort" -- IMHO, this is applicable only in cases where it's simple to show research effort, e.g., when the answer is plain in the corresponding wikipedia page. I'm not keen on seeing in every question a proof of research effort, or do you want everywhere something like: "I have tried the following 178 Google search terms and I didn't fin anything?"
Are expressions such as "The matrix A has rank ≥ n" considered as acceptable in mathematical papers/theses/textbooks?
No, it's often considered poor style to incorporate fragments of equations like this into text. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's ungrammatical, but many people consider it bad writing. Some others don't care about this issue, which is why you sometimes see it done, but this is more common in informal or unedited writing.
The issue is that "rank ≥ n" is mixing together English and mathematics within the same construction. If this doesn't bother you, imagine a more dramatic case like "n + five". (By contrast, when someone writes "if x ≥ y", the inequality "x ≥ y" is a self-contained unit within the sentence.) There's no logical reason why mathematical writing conventions couldn't allow this sort of mixing, but they don't.
Saying "The matrix A has rank at least n" is shorter and cleaner than "The rank of the matrix A is greater than or equal to n", but they are both acceptable. I'd recommend avoiding "The matrix A has rank ≥ n" (I can't think of a good reason to prefer it, and avoiding looking bad is a reason not to use it).
At least here, you could write "For matrix A, rank(A) > n," and avoid the issue altogether.
@aeismail: not the best choice: you have then two equations seperated only by a comma. It would be better to write e.g. "For matrix A, the inequality rank(A)>n holds." or something like that.
@aeismail Eeeew. That's just awful. I vote for "Matrix A has rank at least n."
@mbork: What is the other equation?
@aeismail Having only a comma separating the two mathematical expressions $A$ and $rank(A)>n$ is at issue. I agree with mbork.
@aeismail: "expression" or "formula" would probably a better word, sorry.
I would say that "matrix" needs an article: "for the/a matrix $A$...". That said, my suggestion is "We have $\operatorname{rank} A \geq n$.", or "It holds that $\operatorname{rank} A \geq n$.". The formula alone would be enough, but another common style rule is 'never start a sentence with a symbol'.
@FedericoPoloni Not necessarily. I'm not an expert, but when the name is given (A in this case), you don't need the article. At least that's what one Language Editor told me.
@yo': It's more of a style issue than a language issue. Starting a sentence with a mathematical expression is discouraged. Starting with "The matrix $A$" instead of just "$A$" fixes that.
@MatthewLeingang However, it doesn't say you can start the sentence with: "Matrix $A$".
@yo': I agree..
@yo': To my ear, "Matrix $A$ has rank..." sounds like it was written by a non-native English speaker (despite the fact that at least one native speaker supports it). It's a subtle issue: the name of the matrix is not "Matrix $A$", it's "$A$". The word "matrix" has been added so as not to begin a sentence, clause or phrase with a mathematical symbol. Saying "Matrix $A$" instead of "The matrix $A$" carries a whiff of anthropomorphism. I guess I am also a little annoyed at the amount of "article dropping" that takes place in math papers, so I would not want to sound like an article-dropper.
@Pete To me the phrase "Matrix A..." sounds a bit like "Door 2..." (or at least that is the closest I can get to making it not sound like something is missing). But then again, I am not a native speaker.
@TobiasKildetoft I'd like it if all the native speakers specified US or UK (which may or may not be different; I don't know). For example, I'm a native speaker from the US and "Matrix A" sounds more natural to me than "The matrix A"
If I read a sentence starting "For matrix A..." instead of "For the matrix A" I would definitely assume the speaker was not a native American English speaker. Sesame Street doesn't say "This episode was brought to you by letter A and number 5."
I definitely wouldn't say "matrix A" with no article. Typically the article is dropped for titles but not descriptions. You say "Professor Smith" (not "the Professor Smith") or "Theorem 1.2", but "the mathematician Smith" or "the matrix A". Here A is the full and complete name of the matrix, and adding "the matrix" is just to clarify (in particular, it doesn't have the title "Matrix A"). I'd bet this is why "Matrix A" comes across as anthropomorphism to Pete Clark, although there are non-anthropomorphic examples like "Chapter 2" or, in a Monty Hall-style game show, "Door 2".
I think the distinction is that titles function as part of names, and names don't get articles. So from this perspective, the article is either mandatory or not allowed, depending on how you interpret the role of "matrix". At least in my experience in pure mathematics, labels for parts of the paper (sections, equations, etc.) have the relevant noun as part of their name, but mathematical objects such as matrices do not.
@NoahSnyder That's not a good comparison though, because there is only one "letter A" and one "number 5". To borrow AnonymousMathematician's words, "matrix A" is a description, not a title, because "matrix A" is different in different equations - that's why dropping the article makes sense.
If it's a description, that's exactly when you can't drop the article. In the alphabet, "A" is the name of the letter, not "Letter A" (and if you want to clarify that you're talking about a letter, you need to say "the letter A"). Similarly, in the mathematical example A is the name of the matrix, not "Matrix A".
@Pete L. Clark (and others stumbling upon these comments): This question was recently bumped to the front page of Academia (why I'm commenting nearly 7 years later), and to me a much more crucial issue with "The matrix A has rank ≥ n" is that 'A' is the name of a matrix but '≥ n' is not the name of a rank. When I first read this sentence in the question I was confused for a moment because I was expecting a number ("numeral", if we're going to nitpick) and had to go back and begin reading again before I realized that ≥ wasn't a stray symbol. It only took 2-3 seconds, but I found it irritating.
(Copy Editor and mathematician speaking)
I, for one, allow these mixed constructions when editing the articles. I do know that it is not the best grammatical style, but not everything in math is easy to put down in proper English grammar. The two rules of thumb I use for these boundary cases is: Is the text clear to the reader? Can you easily make it grammatically correct?
For instance, the sentence "For matrix A, the equation rank(A) ≥ 5 holds." is cryptic and long. A better option might be "For matrix A, we have rank(A) ≥ 5." or "Matrix A satisfies rank(A) ≥ 5." I would be fine with "Matrix A has rank at least 5." However, this gets complicated if you have more such expressions in a row, like in:
... which is defined as a non-real algebraic integer in modulus >1 whose Galois conjugates except its complex conjugate are in modulus <1.
vs.
... which is defined as a non-real algebraic integer in modulus greater than 1 whose Galois conjugates except its complex conjugate are in modulus less than 1.
I prefer the first option. This went through the AMS language editorial, as far as I remember, without any problem.
I let it pass if the sentence is unambiguous and can be pronounced normally when reading without any special effort like in "If $A$ is $\ge B+C$ and $f:[0,A]\to\mathbb Z$, then... (If the quantity/parameter/number $A$ is larger than the sum $B+C$ and the function $f$ maps the interval $[0,A]$ to the set $\mathbb Z$, then...) because in this case the extra words just slow the reader down. However, when seeing any ambiguity like "If A, B, C." (which comma is "and", and which is "then" here?) or something that, if attempted to be read as a sentence, violates not only the rules of the grammar, but also those of common sense as far as structuring sentences is concerned and which, if one needs it to be said at the board in a classroom, will have to be split into separate sentences and totally restructured to be comprehended by ear, I usually object.
Side note: what's the point of not enabling mathjax on Academia?
I love your side note!
upvoting the side note, but I can guess the limited audience (within academia.SX) needing it works against it.
The nice thing about mathjax, however, is that if there is no LaTeX code in the post, it is not even invoked, so what is there to lose? Anyway, that should rather be discussed on Meta from this point on :-)
If you support adding mathjax to the site, please weigh in at http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/740/mathjax-on-academia. Apparently the point of not having it is that it one has to petition the SE administration to get it and there is concern that it will happen more often that people who don't know about mathjax will want to include two dollar signs on the same line more often than people will want to include mathematical equations. This is basically an argument from ignorance...
In principle, it is generally acceptable to mix together mathematical and prose statements, as in your example: either construction would be technically be grammatically correct.
In practice, which to choose depends on how you want your reader to think about the statement that you have written. Prose emphasizes the relationship, in your example focusing the reader on "greater than." A mathematical statement tends to instead be thought of as a unit, in your example focusing the reader on "rank." You should thus choose accordingly.
One exception: small integers referring to counting within a small range should always be written as prose. Some examples of this distinction:
We selected eight conditions to test.
We found that 8 of the 73 samples were positive.
The boundary of "small" is a bit hazy: certainly less than 10, usually less than 20.
it is generally acceptable — [citation needed]
@JeffE My reviewers don't seem to complain when I do it in good taste.
@jakebeal Reviewers rarely, in my experience, comment on writing style, except for egregious errors. All the advice I've seen on mathematican writing recommends not mixing words and symbols as in "the rank is >2".
@DavidRicherby Perhaps we have different experiences in our different communities - with some conference and journals, I often receive detailed remarks on wording and grammar.
small integers referring to counting within a small range should always be written as prose. J.E. Littlewood (A mathematician's Miscellany, p. 39) humbly disagrees. I don't know the official position of his long time co-author who left us one of the most exquisite samples of English prose among other works, but I suspect it would not be very different either. The only real rule is that you try to do what does make sense, try not to do what does not, and don't insist that your way to distinguish between the two is the only correct one. Everything else is allowed :).
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64430 | What are possible legal ways to obtain a textbook for free?
I'm not sure whether this is such a great question, and I'm not looking at illegal ways, but is there any way to obtain textbooks for free (legally)?
Answers very much appreciated.
You really shouldn't be creating 3+ accounts to ask the same question.
Are down-voters just reacting to the need for a textbook for free in academia? Anyway, the question could be probably improved with a context and motivation.
@Orion I believe the down-voters were responding to the behavior of the poster, who had created 5+ accounts and was posting nonsense answers to duplicates of this question, all now deleted.
@jakebeal I also understand how frustrating this is. But I assume the votes in this community should only reflect the value/importance/significance of questions, and should not be biased by the PO's identity or behaviour outside the question thread. This is not Faebook ;)
@Orion That's an interesting question for meta, i think: I have opened a question on this there.
Please [edit] this to show some evidence of how you have tried to answer this question yourself.
Here are a few ways that you should look into:
Check your university library
If your library doesn't have it, ask them about doing a interlibrary loan
Talk to your professor. They can be insightful and understanding about these things so they might be able to lend you a copy.
Search online for ebook/PDF versions. I found that an old edition of a statistics book was available on the author's website for free.
If you are out of options with obtaining it for free then you can usually find a used copy at your book store or online for cheaper.
Books certainly can be pricey, so in the future it helps if you factor these costs in when you apply for student loans/scholarships.
From the point of view of teaching staff: sure there are, I get them all the time.
If you are the person in charge of a university course, you can often ask the publishers for an instructor's (or evaluation) copy.
Some of them will only give you (time-limited) online access, some will ask you to send the book back if you don't adopt the book officially in your syllabus, but most of the times it's a free copy for good. Sometimes I even had sales reps come to my office, or send new editions to me unsolicited.
Move to Switzerland. It is legal up there in the middle of the Alps to download copyrighted material for private use. The definition of "private use" includes (according to the linked article) "any personal use of a work or use within a circle of persons closely connected to each other, such as relatives or friends" and "any use of a work by a teacher and his class for educational purposes".
It is still illegal to share copyrighted material using Bittorrent, because it works in a peculiar way: it does not simply download the files, but also uploads parts of it for other users of the network.
Is this a "joke answer"? The cost of living in Switzerland is higher than most other countries.
You can also move to Poland, that's way cheaper.
@varun that's not usually a problem if you're earning a Swiss income...
@varun In case it wasn't clear, I don't recommend moving to Switzerland only to get textbooks. I just want to point out that in some countries downloading textbooks for study reasons is legal. (tomasz: I didn't know about Poland, thanks for the information).
@FedericoPoloni, if I understand correctly, your emphasis is on the fact that the practice is legal in some places and not actually on moving. Since your answer had Moving to Switzerland (in bold and at the very beginning of your answer), I misunderstood that the key emphasis was on actually moving, which struck me as strange.
@varun A better joke answer would be "Write the textbook!"
@FedericoPoloni "in some countries downloading textbooks for study reasons is legal" I'm actually very interested in which countries this is allowed in. Do you know where I can find this out from? If that's too general, then what's the UK law on it?
@IrregularUser Not an expert, but the first place I'd check is Wikipedia.
@IrregularUser Spain is another example. The legal term there is "right to private copy".
Search around. There are initiatives distributing free (even open source) textbooks, like Free Tech Books, there are many others. Ask friendly Google.
Some people arranged with their publisher to be able to distribute their books for free, like Anderson's "Security Engineering", I know of several others. (Yes, I own that book in paper too. Two editions, even. Worth every penny.) Sometimes you'll find that the book went out of print, and the author now distributes the last edition in electronic form.
Other than that, looking around you'll find (more or less) complete lecture notes. I'm partial to William Chen's notes on undergraduate mathematics, but there are many others. Quality (and completeness) obviously varies enormously, and sometimes you'll only find incomplete, short documents. Best of all is that rummaging around in the webpages for classes you'll often find homework and exams, likely with solutions.
If there is a (at least vaguely related) SE site, chances are that somebody already asked for free texts, search (or ask) there too.
For any more focused answers, you'll have to ask about precise contents.
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64870 | Can you do an AND on Google Scholar alerts?
In Google Scholar, you can create an alert, such as "neural networks", which will inform you any time there is an article related to "neural networks". However, suppose I am interested in neural networks applied to robot navigation. Is there a way to create an alert that will only inform you when both "neural networks" and "robot navigation" appear in the paper? Essentially, I want to do a logical AND on the search terms.
Yes, all of the typical operators apply.
AND is implicit so your alert query could be "neural networks" "robot navigation"
You could create an alert for neural networks + robotics this way google will search all the results that have both words, and again if you are more interested in the robotics part you use a quotation mark like neural networks + "robotics" which brings all the results that absolutely have robotics in them.
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79281 | What do "AE", "EO", and "PROD" stand for in a journal submission system?
What do "AE", "EO", "PROD" stand for in the manuscript status in journal submission systems like ScholarOne?
What do you mean with "in a research journal"? Where did you read these abbreviations? On a journal website? Or inside an article? Do you have a link? Is there some more context?
AE means Associate Editor: Responsible for communication with reviewers of a research manuscript.
EO means Editorial Office: The formal group/office comprising of Editor-in-Chief (EIC), and Editorial Assistants/Admin Assistants.
PROD means Production Department: Responsible for printing of articles post acceptance.
thank you coder, that is exactly what I was looking for. :)
@Pretty_Girl Welcome. Academia always has answer to such questions. It just depends on how people interpret your question, as the world is diverse with regard to languages, looks, presentations. So, never take any comments personal.(I am writing this w.r.t. your comment on closing this question.) All the best!
Thank you very much. Could you please add the meaning of "ED"? I recently came across this abbreviation.
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16350 | Undergraduate in Computer science and now graduate in Bioinformatics
I am a computer engineering undergrad (from Asia) and now trying to pursue my graduate studies in bioinformatics (in US). I have quite a strong programming skills and now more than one year of experience too. Since I do not have a strong background of biology, is it good to choose that field? Also, I have been doing some research to get any assistantship (have applied to few colleges) but could not start a communication with the professors. How should I approach?
Any help would be great to me.
Care to explain why the down vote?
If you read my question properly, it is not about what is the procedure to apply. I have certainly taken TOEFL and GRE which are mandatory for the application in most of the universities.
You need to read the info about the schools/programs you're interested. Random example: Boston University. On their FAQ. Q: What if I don’t have experience in both computational and experimental fields? A: Applicants are not required to be well versed in both fields. Even if you do not have the academic background in both the computational and experimental fields, we are looking for highly motivated students. Disclaimer: I am NOT associated with that school. Choose the schools you like and follow the application procedure. Professors do not have time to reply every e-mail.
Thank you for your downvotes. Just needed some help here.
What's the reason you want to communicate with the professors? Inquire about their program? You'll need to be specific about your subject when communicating. You want to know if you're qualified? They won't know it until they see your application. The bottom line: follow the procedure. If they encourage you to write e-mails to their faculty, please do so. How to communicate with them is a broad question.
There are a number of bioinformatics programs that do not require you to have experience in both programming and biology. For example, the program at BU
What if I don’t have experience in both computational and experimental fields?
Applicants are not required to be well versed in both fields. Even if you do not have the academic background in both the computational and experimental fields, we are looking for highly motivated students
So only having a programming background should not be too much of a problem. You will probably want to have picked up and had a look at some undergraduate biology texts so that you are not completely clueless about the field.
As for approaching professors, it really is no different from other fields. Applicants to graduate school, whether for a PhD or a Masters, don't have all the skills to carry our independent research in the field. To get a research assistantship you need to find professors who are doing research that is interesting to you and send them your CV along with a well written email expressing why you want to work with them, what skills you bring with you, and what you want to learn. There are a number of related question on AC.SE that can help you in this regard.
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58190 | What is the difference between letter, communication and journal paper?
Scientific literature has items called letters, communications and journal papers. They all seem quite similar in terms of format and content. What are the differences between them?
This may depend heavily on the specific journal (eg in some 'letters' are a short paper, in others, just an editorial leyter...)
In physics, each category has a different length limit. Often "paper" has no limit. Typically the shorter the length limit, the more prestigious it is and the tougher the acceptance criteria. The subject matter covered by the journal is the same for all categories. Some journals also have a "review" category which includes papers which are not original research. Often a review is by invitation only.
short publications such as "letters" are also peer reviewed?
Yes, they are: see for example http://link.springer.com/journal/11005.
This will depend wildly on the field and journal in question. In my experience, the main differentiators are the allowable length and the amount of peer review. For example, in my field (Epidemiology):
Journal Article (of which there are several categories): Word limit in the several thousands of words, full on peer review.
Communication (often also called 'Brief Report'): A smaller <2000 word word limit with further restrictions on the number of tables and figures. Goes out for full peer review. This is intended to report a single, small finding that may not warrant a full publication.
Letters: This is a very ambiguous category, primarily defined by being short, often <1000 words. They may be used to report a single piece of information, often from part of a larger study, or may be used to respond to another paper. These may or may not go out for peer review - for example, I recently had a paper accepted where the decision was made entirely by the editor.
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188628 | Are Norwegian advertised salaries net or gross?
Different countries have different ways of giving a salary range, in some countries I have noticed that the job posting explicitly says "estimated net salary". Now I am wondering about academic jobs in Norway, it is never specified in job postings so there must be a social norm I guess.
For example
https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/231207/coordinator-of-community-sampling-for-the-biodiversity-genomics-europe-bge-project
According to some online tax calculator website, a gross salary of 650k NOK per year is about 475k net/year. All the post-docs I have seen are around 500k-600k per year but none of them specify if net or gross. The tax rate seems to be around 30%, are these calculation in a good estimate?
Just guessing here, but if "net" that would probably be stated.
How much taxes you pay usually depends on individual factors (that you do not have to share), therefore the advertised salary is in general gross.
Gross salary depends as well on individual factors, but with respect to individual factors that you do have to share at the interview.
I don't know about Norway in general, but all the adds I have seen from UiO give the gross salary. In addition to online tax calculators (they're usually accurate, you would expect to pay ~25-30% tax with a PhD/postdoc salary), depending on your situation you might also be able to enroll in the PAYE scheme for your first year in Norway (25% flat rate): https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/person/foreign/are-you-intending-to-work-in-norway/tax-deduction-cards/paye/
This most likely depends on specific department and funding source, but from what I've seen at UiO a postdoc typically earns 32-35.000 NOK a month, net. This seems to be in agreement with the add you linked.
Thank you this is useful.
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162629 | Is the rise of pre-prints lowering the quality and credibility of researcher and increasing the pressure to publish?
From what I understand pre-prints have been common in some fields for many years because of some practical obvious reasons, for example very long lag time from submission to publication.
However, it is clear that publishing in pre-prints is becoming more and more popular across many fields with the main reason of calling yourself first to a particular research/method/idea/etc. The only problem is that these pre-prints are not peer-reviewed, and even though they require a certain standard, which is quite low, nobody is really checking the credibility and soundness of any of it. People might rush through the scientific process to publish a pre-print because the scrutiny level is almost non-existent. Some of this has been already observed with pre-prints about COVID https://science.slashdot.org/story/21/02/13/1558235/misleading-viral-claims-show-dangers-of-preprint-servers-researchers-warn, I think there's even no verification on affiliations.
The more pre-print papers are being published, the more these papers are being cited in peer-reviewed papers. They might be correct but nobody might check in detail as a reviewer or could even content since it's not "published". In addition, usually citations such as "in preparation" or "submitted" are not accepted by many journals. It just seems that this could trigger a vicious cycle in which more non-peer reviewed papers are being cited in permanent publications which then remains in print for years to come.
Does the rise of pre-prints make science and publishing less credible?
Does it increase the pressure to publish because it adds an additional tier to the publishing process?
@Buffy thank you, that's a good example I should have added to substantiate my question.
I think the logical mistake in this post is that you think preprints are replacing peer review, which they are not.
@AnonymousPhysicist I take the point, but the credibility of research is evaluated not just within academia but at broader scales.
Frankly, I do not buy this. I posit that one of the most damaging studies in recent years is this infamous retracted study that linked measles vaccines (more precisely MMR) and autism. It was published in a very high-tier peer-reviewed journal. It may have created enormous but difficult-to-quantify damage to the cause of vaccines. Peer review is not a magic bullet. It has the job of keeping obvious nonsense or shoddy craftsmanship out of journals. But it is more often than not reduced to gatekeeping and typically works best for solid work not far from the mainstream with moderate originality.
@CaptainEmacs "works best for solid work not far from the mainstream with moderate originality", that's a really nice way of describing it.
I'm not going to make any judgement but I have had annoyances with pre-prints considered at the same level as published papers.
For example, several times reviewers have asked me to acknowledge pre-prints and their claimed results as if they were published research.
And typically results that are partly overlapping with results from some cited pre-print are considered non original by the reviewers.
In my experiences I feel those pre-prints were correct in their claims, but they did not go through peer review.
A preprint is a publication. You put it somewhere where people can read it: that's literally the definition of publication. Preprints have not been rigorously peer-reviewed, but that's another issue.
@Pronte that's the kind of issues and doubts I have about this emerging trend, the almost equality between peer-reviewed work and unfiltered publications which are nothing more than a blog post.
"I think there's even no verification on affiliations" > as discussed here, most publishers do not generally ask for verification of affiliations, so this isn't really a preprint-specific issue.
@Andrew that's a good point, although you don't have reviewers or editors who would read your affiliation. Again, there's just less quality control.
When I'm reading papers, the key part of peer review IMHO isn't veriification of quality or correctness (which it does poorly) but filtering for relevance and impact - in essence, if some source has already motivated me to find a paper, I don't care if it's peer reviewed, I won't trust the review but take care myself anyway; but I absolutely need peer review when I'm looking at papers from some topical journal/conference so that someone else has already thrown out all the many papers that aren't even worth the time to skim their abstracts.
One issue with pre-prints is that people who publish in them can purport to be published to people who may not understand academic publishing, like students, non-academics, or newer scholars. Today I saw someone refer to their own pre-published article with the circumlocution "considerable informal peer review." The phrasing was a roundabout way of saying they had consulted colleagues (good) but hadn't undergone an actual peer review. The phrasing raised an immediate red flag for anyone familiar with peer review, but might strike other readers as sufficient or similar to peer review.
Does the rise of pre-prints make science and publishing less credible?
No. Peer reviewed publications are still peer reviewed. People who do not know the difference between a preprint and a peer reviewed publication are not in a position to judge the credibility of science.
Does it increase the pressure to publish because it adds an additional
tier to the publishing process?
No. "Pressure to publish" is about competition for jobs and funding. The number of publication options is not relevant.
@DanielHatton It should be included in any competent science general education. Also, it is widely mentioned in the more competent news media.
" People who do not know the difference between a preprint and a peer reviewed publication are not in a position to judge the credibility of science." So? Plenty of people will judge the credibility of science, with significant, material consequences to scientific activity, whether you (or even, all scientists) deem them worthy to do so.
@Hasse1987 True, but preprints have no effect on those people.
@AnonymousPhysicist: Maybe I'm missing something, but if I understood Hasse1987 correctly, they were referring to people who'd take their knowledge about scientific discoveries from general news media - which, incidentally, regularly present "new discoveries" described in recently published ... not-yet-peer-reviewed preprints.
@O.R.Mapper That's more an issue of news media credibility than preprints. The news media works off press releases, or if they are better funded, then interviews. They do not read preprints or journal articles.
@AnonymousPhysicist: Maybe, but my feeling is that coverage like this is common at least on German media (the linked article is a random example, basically the first hit when looking for something mentioning preprints): After a general introduction of the topic, the article states that researchers A, B, and C have examined XYZ. The paragraph ends with one sentence saying "The results have been published as a preprint, i.e. they have ...
... not yet been checked by other researchers." The entire remainder of the news article explains the findings and their implications in detail. I am pretty sure the one brief remark about this being a preprint is pretty much lost on the vast majority of readers.
@O.R.Mapper I don't see what your complaint is. That's exactly how a preprint should be explained. But the reality is most media has no coverage of science at all.
@AnonymousPhysicist: "That's exactly how a preprint should be explained." - well, if you say so. I'm not saying I have a complaint. However, I do think that there is a large overlap between the "plenty of people [who cause] significant, material consequences to scientific activity", as described by Hasse1987, and the people who fail to notice or adequately interpret the brief preprint remark. Thus, I strongly disagree with your claim that "preprints have no effect on those people".
The news media regularly report scientific articles and preprints. IIRC, the whole hydroxychloroquine brouhaha early in the pandemic was kicked-off by bad, often contradictory, science and poor reporting (see e.g. this, or this reported by CNN ) Although that's not a preprint issue, per se, as both preprints and peer-reviewed studies contributed to that mess.
I agree with the gist of the other answers, which by and large refute the major concerns postulated in the question (though I can see where those concerns are coming from).
I would add a major benefit coming from the increased prevalence of preprints, that of accelerating the open speedy dissemination of important research results.
I'm old enough to remember when arXiv (the former LANL archive) became more broadly used than in physics. In particular, over my very limited time as a research mathematician, it went from used rarely in (pure) mathematics, by next-generation scholars in physics-adjacent fields, to much broader but not universal applicability. As it hopped from one subfield to the next, it much expanded the speed at which new results were disseminated.
Prior, if you were well-connected in a field, you might hear gossip that so-and-so had achieved such-and-such, and very exceptionally you might receive a pre-publication fragment, which might be anything from a completed draft paper submitted, to a 3rd party's cryptic notes from a talk somewhere. There was generally a caution about over-sharing, to avoid being scooped as well as just for arcane cultural reasons. That also meant there was little incentive, in fact disincentive, to rush the word out about one's own achievements, other than to frankly claim turf. What was shared flowed really only to those well-connected (friend of a friend stuff), and there was no version control: "unpublished results" might float around in various contradictory incomplete versions and it was very hard to know what was accurate and complete.
While in that environment, preprints did technically exist, they were not as prominent part of academic discourse. arXiv and other centralized servers, clearinghouses, etc. played a huge role in encouraging early sharing of results. Rather than scooping, they provided a way to "postmark" your achievements earlier in a long publishing timeline. They allowed a much wider range of scholars to be aware, read, learn, and build on recent research. And via centralized repositories, they provided version control.
Of course, a "preprint infrastructure" like this did not and does not have all the elements of a full peer-reviewed publication pipeline, and is not a substitute. But it is an important, positive complement. Any effect in the direction of "decreasing quality" or "increasing pressure to publish" (as mentioned in the question) must also be complemented with considering the increase in quality (from more eyes, sooner, on important results), decreased pressure to rush out a poorly written paper (the preprint already announces it, so can take time to write "the paper" propertly), and faster and broader research collaboration.
Peer review has never been a 100% reliable gatekeeper and plenty of incorrect results get published anyway. I am sure every scientist is aware of X result that was later shown to be incorrect. Example from The Lancet on Covid.
Science gets bad PR when it turns out to be incorrect. Since peer reviewed articles can also be incorrect, I doubt that the rise of preprints is having much impact. If someone is going to disbelieve science as a whole based on incorrect results, they are probably not going to distinguish between whether the science has been peer reviewed or not.
No, some kind of concept of preprint has existed for a long time and has never devalued the concept of publishing research findings in research journals. Preprints are what they are. Perelman published his proof of the Poincaré conjecture in a set of three preprints. OK, exceptional example, but obviously this is not clear-cut.
It would be like asking ''Are journal articles causing X?' or something like that.
For example, Gödel originally wrote up his incompleteness theorems which we are all now familiar with and sent them to John von Neumann in the form of a preprint prior to publication of his findings in a journal. It's not a big deal, I think people are just overthinking it. I read preprints all the time and find a lot of them very useful and interesting. Some of them are bad, but some journal articles are bad as well.
As another example from pure mathematics, Bhatt and Scholze uploaded a preprint in 2019 which has not yet been accepted for publication due to the length and complexity of the document, but which has received 64 citations.
Preprints serve a very important issue of science, fast dissemination of results.
Peer reviews never guaranteed the correctness of the results. Preprints also never say anything about the correctness. But traditional peer review is slow and sometimes have preconceptions about the research.
First of all, slowness of peer review. Sometimes, your research is good if you are one the first in that area. For example, you applied an algorithm to a domain first time. preprint helps a lot in this case.
This preconceptions about the research is also very important. I put a lot of effort to a review article in my PhD thesis. It was rejected 3 times from different journals. After 3 rejections, I talked with my advisor and put my review article as preprint. After this preprint, it was again reject 3 more times and I decided to not submit it anymore. Well, it is cited 107 times in google scholar as of 2021 February. Most of the citing articles are from journals with impact factor.
A review of KDD99 dataset usage in intrusion detection and machine
learning between 2010 and 2015 Authors Atilla Özgür, Hamit Erdem
Publication date 2016/4/14 Journal PeerJ PrePrints
This means that:
You should never accept that article results are fully true even it is published in a very good journal.
Also, you should never accept that preprint results are fully true too.
My conclusion: preprints are not lowering the quality and credibility of the researchers. It is actually increasing it.
Actually it needs to be emphasised just how slow peer review can be. Depending on the journal, the peer review process can be excruciatingly slow.
Absolutely! It definitely creates an incentive to rush out papers.
I worked in between applied math and engineering and I have noticed a trend in applied engineering journals in recent decade that these research papers will assume some abstract framework and do a bunch of math derivations and prove some type of convergence results in said abstract framework.
At the end, everyone is left just wondering if there exists a single scenario in the universe that can fall into their framework. Eventually one will be found, in a couple of years, usually not by these authors, but then they get to claim priority because they worked out the theory first, and then they say "oh your example just happens to fall into our abstract framework!"
It used to be, at least in my field, that demonstrating the applicability/usefulness was a priority. And it is usually very hard to show how math can be applied. Now it is about who can churn out proofs more in more and more esoteric setup. While this can be hard, I have noticed that they tend to be excruciatingly incremental.
Of course, you wouldn't expect these papers to go through the review process, so here is what they do: team up with a big name. I suspect these "big names" have never even read the paper they purport to have wrote (given I personally know that many are not even an expert in the subject they are writing in), but as long as their name is on there, no matter how marginal the work is, it will be heavily cited.
This seems to have nothing to do with preprints.
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163417 | What happens if the grant requirement for open access publications is not respected? [small & short-duration grants]
EDIT: I am referring to short duration (1-2 years) small grants (10k-30k $/euros) usually given to PhD or post-docs. The amount needs to cover material, conferences, publications, etc. Publishers now charge up to 10k for open access, so towards the end of the funding period when most work is being published the grantee might be short of 10k for a publication.
It is becoming increasingly common for research funded with public money to be published as open access with gold (expensive but immediately open access) or green standard ( free self archiving after 6 months). This is part of the grant agreement which is a binding legal contract.
What happens if a researcher publishes not in open access because cannot afford to pay the open access fee? Some publishers are increasing the open access fees and I have discussed with colleagues, particularly junior scientists and postdocs with limited funding, about this dilemma. Careers depend also on publications appearing in certain journals, so choosing a target journal for financial reasons seem to be a great disadvantage for younger scientists.
Will there be any legal or other potential consequences such as being banned from applying for grants from the same institution?
Will there be any non-written consequences such as being flagged as a
noncomplying grantee?**
PS: I'm not looking for advice on how to find money for paying the open access fees, there are already questions covering that topic.
In what country?
I guess I don't understand why the publishing fee can't be charged to the grant.
Note that some publishers allow delayed open archiving precisely to allow for compliance with funder requirements while maintaining a traditional paid access model for the first N months.
@Buffy, money in US federal grants can have different categories or "colors" and you can't legally use salary money to pay publishing fees. So, you'd need sign off from your Program Officer to move money from one budget category to another to then use grant money to pay publishing fees. Some money can be rebudgeted, and some cannot. This is where a good administrative person in your Sponsored Research Office comes into play to help with such questions between you and your funding agency if you didn't put pub. fees in your original budget.
@Buffy I should have frame the question better, see my edit.
@BasileStarynkevitch mostly curious about EU & North America
@DanielHatton do you more information about this such as a list of publishers with country-specific agreements, I have never heard of that.
In France, you can rent a Linux VPS for about 10€/month. See https://www.ovh.com https://www.kimsufi.com/ etc.... uploading a PDF file with scp(1) is then easy, if you are allowed to install Debian on your laptop
I'm most familiar with the US NIH.
They write:
Non-compliance will be addressed administratively, and may delay or prevent awarding of funds.
For the most part, NIH seems focused on awareness and trying to encourage compliance, rather than strict enforcement. It seems many are not fully aware of the guidelines, which are quite new for some researchers who have published a different way for decades.
More generally, big funding agencies like to act through the institutions researchers belong to in encouraging compliance, whether for policies like this or for ethical policies like those for human/animal subjects research.
They can threaten to withhold their funds and even government funding more broadly from entire institutions, not just individuals. While cases of this threat actually being carried out are rare, it may mean that researchers find themselves more directly responsible to their institution rather than the funder. The institution has a large incentive to ensure local compliance and likely has more resources than the funding agency to follow up, as well as a broader range of sanctions.
For your particular situation, I have a hard time imagining a funding agency feeling too bad for your circumstance. If they're funding your work and demanding open access, they're implying that they expect you to use their funds towards those costs in addition to all the others (either directly or through the fungibility of money). "I spent my money on other things and now can't afford to comply with your publishing requirements" doesn't seem like a very good argument, since everyone they fund is in the same boat and since you've accepted their terms by accepting their funding.
@Libor Perhaps, though as far as I know funders tend to be punitive in a prospective rather than retrospective way. Even a modest threat to future funding is a scary thing for an institution that relies on it.
In the UK, it depends on the Funder. The biggest non-governmental funder in the UK is the Wellcome Trust, and they will count non-open access publication against you when applying for grants in the future.
Government funding comes primarily from UKRI. It is against the rules to spend UKRI grant money on open-access publication, but all publications arising from UKRI funded work must be at least green open-access. How is this circle squared? Institutions are given block grants proportional to the average amount of UKRI funds they hold to pay for open-access publication. But it is entirely possible for this money to run out in a year before a particular grant holder has had chance to use it.
Protection against this comes via the Research Excellence Framework (REF). The REF happens every 5 years and the UKRI assess all scholarly output from an institution in the period covered, ranking papers. Top ranking papers win institutions funding that is not tied any particular project (Quality Related or QR money). This is often a univeresity's biggest income stream after undergraduate tuition. In order for a paper to be considered in the REF it must be publish open-access. Thus, paper that might be awarded 4* might cost a uni $5000 to publish, but would get them $140,000 in funding in return via QR, if it is not open access, it gets them nothing. .
I have to admit, this is somewhat of a "folkloric" number. I did a little digging and came up with: 1) The amount money awarded varies from field to field - more expensive fields are awarded more. 2) In e.g. Biological Sciences there £40.3M a year is given in QR due to REF outputs. 3) In submissions form 2373 FTE equivalent staff, 30% of submissions were rated 4* and 49% 3*. 4) 4* papers receive 4 times as much as 3* ones. Its clearly a lot of money, but in e.g. biology, a 4* paper might require £500k in research costs. So you still need the grant to get the paper.
This paper discusses the various issues with trying to figure out properly how QR money is decided: https://bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/berj.3229
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51269 | What exactly happens in your arXiv account if you no longer have institutional affiliation?
The question is similar to this one but in addition I would like to ask the following:
Don't I need to change my email address if I am no longer affiliated to an institution?
Won't a new mail of the form [email protected] make me lose ownership of all my papers and then need endorsement from another arXiv user?
Thanks in advance!
I'm not prepared to develop this into a proper answer, but the question would seem to turn on convincing arXiv that you're the same person you used to be a [email protected]. Keeping your hepname and/or ORCID up-to-date should go a long way in that direction. Failing that you may need to email the arXiv staff directly. Be prepared to wait for a response in the latter case, as they're fairly heavily loaded.
Log into you arXiv account and change your e-mail address. You don't need access to your old e-mail to do this, nor will you lose your arXiv account if you don't have an academic e-mail address. (Having an academic address is not a requirement for arXiv participation, after all.) Once you have an account, there is nothing (short of administrative action) that would cause you to lose ownership of your papers or your existing endorsements. It should be no different from changing your e-mail in any other account you have online.
This does not answer the part about the endorsement system. Normally, you never need to deal with the endorsement system if you sign up with a university e-mail, but signing up with a hotmail will often mean that you need others to endorse your submissions. It is not clear to me what happens if you sign up with a university mail and then later change it to e.g. a hotmail.
I added a note about that.
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14440 | How to get access to university resources after graduation?
I'll get a B.S. in math this December and (hopefully) go to graduate school next fall. In the coming spring semester, I will stay around my undergraduate institution (in the U.S.), auditing classes, attending seminars, talking with faculty and so on. But since I will not be enrolled during the spring, I will lose my access to a lot of University resources. Specifically (not limited to),
I will lose access to the secure University Wifi network on campus.
I will not be able to borrow books for free from the University library unless I pay some money to become a member of the alumni association. But more importantly, even if I become a member of the alumni association, I will not have access to any math database (e.g. MathSciNet).
I will not have access to computer labs in my college where I can print 600 pages of papers for free every semester when enrolled.
I can understand University is also a business and I hope I could get used to my situation soon after graduation. But I wonder if there are some ways to improve such an embarrassing situation. What is the best way for me to get access to math databases for instance?
Have you considered doing an internship at a research group? You would get access through them.
I agree with marc classen. Getting involved in research will definitely help.
@MarcClaesen Thanks for this suggestion. But I'm interested in pure math, and I don't want to spend energy on applied things...
@ZhouFang Sometimes you need to do something you're less interested in for a while :)
Talk to a faculty member about this. The possibilities and procedures differ between universities, so there's no universal answer, but most universities have some mechanism for providing access to electronic resources for visitors. With a faculty sponsor you might be able to get the same sort of access.
@AnonymousMathematician Thanks, I have done so. But it turns out a faculty can only sponsor an Internet account but not library access in our University.
Another possibility is working as a TA, if you'd rather teach than take a research internship.
One potential solution: I may register for a one-credit course at the University. It (hopefully) may not cost much and help me get access to standard University resources.
Update: the University library just told me I could get access to math databases through computers on campus libraries by applying for a guest account for free, though I can't get remote access.
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95510 | Why is personal information (DOB, marital status) listed on CVs in Europe and can it be omitted?
I find it irrelevant to specify personal information on my CV, and frankly I do not see why they should be listed in academic applications. What is the advantage for the hiring committing to know if I am 18 or I have 17 children, aside from creating a chance to bias the hiring process with personal beliefs. Is it because they want to know that I am a prodigy child who got his/her PhD at 18 years old, or because if I am a 28 years old female married without children I will want children soon and so I will have to take maternity leave? Is this just an influence of the age/status discrimination in Europe where I see at times that job offers are only open to certain categories of people (i.e.,younger than 30 years old) ?
If I omit this information will my CV be frowned upon? Or will they think I am hiding something? I do not know what I would be hiding because age can probably be guessed from the CV anyway.
I believe that this has to with how one defines the word "personal".
In Asia it's worst. You have to include all this info and your picture.
@linuxick information that are irrelevant to your professional profile and skills and that could bias the hiring process, it affords discrimination.
@user4050: Please have a look at my answer. The information retrieved from including certain items is that the candidate knows about the general convention of including those items, and being aware of general conventions is relevant to the candidate's professional profile and skills. Please do note that I am not in favour of divulging so much personal information to prospective employers. On the other hand, in my place, where providing all this personal information is customary, the paranoia about getting discriminated against based ...
... upon these personal details is not widespread. Being shocked at the idea of sending a photo along with an application and fearing to be discriminated against because of it is something I only know from international forums (and I do not classify myself as particularly handsome, so it's not like I could draw a benefit from my photo). It seems what people are (not) used to strongly distorts the perceived risk when it comes to local conventions in job applications.
@user4050 Please note that many hiring processes require an interview, so things like age, gender and appearance would become evident anyway at some point, and if the selection committee really wants to discriminate, they can do it after the interview. Note also that many people who are used to putting these bits of information in their CV, because of local tradition, usually find this natural. For instance, when I tell to students of mine that if they want to apply in the US they shouldn't put a photograph (something I've learnt here), they look astonished.
@MassimoOrtolano I was not necessarily referring to hiring someone, could also be a grant application with no interview, and clearly a lot let changes to guess age, ethnicity, etc. I always found ridiculous the fact that these information are in a CV, I completely disagree with the "is part of the tradition part", many things are part of local customs but are not necessarily good practice.
I've never seen grant applications that require such details. Do you have any example?
@MassimoOrtolano any EU funding application require to fill DOB and you have to include your CV European-style
@user4050: Note that date of birth is often used as a means to legally establish identity. In formal procedures, you usually have to confirm both your name and your date of birth. Of course, there is still a certain likeliness two persons of the same name were born on the same day, but it serves as a certain obstacle against the attempt to e.g. draw back retroactively by claiming "someone else with the same name made that declaration". This brings us back to linuxick's initial comment, in that in such places, the date of birth is not very "personal", but almost as public as one's name.
@MassimoOrtolano my lab often receive unsolicited CV from European (France) candidates that contain their age, marital status and picture...this is so unconfortable. I'm glad that you are telling your students!
Despite differences in the different EU member states, there were attempts to create a kind of EU standard for CVs. This is called "Europass" and was created together with social partners and national training authorities. According to their website the main scope is:
Ηelp citizens communicate their skills and qualifications effectively when looking for a job or training.
Ηelp employers understand the skills and qualifications of the workforce.
Ηelp education and training authorities define and communicate the content of curricula.
While there might be differences in different industries, in my experience it serves well as a guideline in academia (since you ask on academia SE, I assume this might be your main interest). According to their examples (1, 2) it is perfectly fine to keep personal information like date of birth and sex (and/or gender) out of your CV. Discrimination by age, race and sex/gender is not allowed in the application process. Especially public institutions, such as universities and research institutes have strict rules against discrimination. You shouldn't face any disadvantages by not stating personal information, such as DOB, number of children (...). Besides in most cases it's clearly irrelevant.
Both a friend of mine and I applied in academia in a EU country which wasn't our homecountry relying on the Europass guidelines and both of us got hired. So those guidelines don't appear to be frowned upon.
However: Some years ago it was at least in Germany considered as a standard to include personal information (as already mentioned in another answer*). I think especially people working as a professor for a couple of years simply haven't adapted their CVs to today's standards.
Good luck!
*) On a side note: In school I was thaught, that information, which can give hints on your personality must be included in every case. Especially profession of parents, siblings, age, hobbies. Apparently this was supposed to help HR to find the most fitting person for the job and the company. This was outdated at the time I was at school (and sometimes even considered unprofessional, as I was told during an internship to which I applied using those guidelines), but the curriculum hadn't been updated.
Marital status is completely irrelevant: leave it out. Discrimination based on "Oh, I think you're about to have kids and take a bunch of maternity leave" is illegal.
In practice, date of birth can be inferred from the dates at which you got your degrees and what jobs you've had. OK, you might be a prodigy who got their BA at 14 and their PhD at 17, but the overwhelming majority of people aren't. Or you might be a total bum who was unemployed until the age of 40 and then got a BA at 43 and a PhD at 48 but, again, the overwhelming majority of people aren't that, either. So including your date of birth doesn't really say anything that the recruiter couldn't guess.
Age discrimination is illegal in the UK, and I'd assumed it would be EU-wide. The usual form would be to require somebody to be within so many years of their PhD, though even that's not-really-so-indirect age discrimination.
Note that sadly, there is a difference in some places between "illegal" and "not done (not even in a hidden way)".
It's illegal only on paper, because it's almost impossible to enforce.
@user4050 Sure but large employers, such as universities, tend to follow this kind of law. There's a much higher chance of an organization with thousands of employees being sued over something like this than some small company who can argue "We rejected that one person for legitimate reason X and, look, we've only hired three people in the last five years so there's no pattern."
@DavidRicherby: Not to mention that large employers are more likely to have procedures to educate staff about these rules and review hiring decisions to rule out any such bias in the first place. (I'm not saying that this is 100% effective at preventing any abuse, but it creates some obstacles for certain kind of abuse that are simply not there with small employers - where hiring decisions may even be totally in the hand of just one person.)
I dont agree, there was a presentation of Erasmus Mundus, and married student were told that they cannot apply.
@SSimon I can see nothing in the Erasmus Mundus Programme Guide saying that married people are ineligible. Various ineligibilities are listed in Section 3.2 (e.g., bankruptcy, "grave professional misconduct", etc.) but searching the PDF for words such as "married", "wed" or "dependant" gave nothing.
@SSimon: I cannot find any documentation that married students are not eligible for Erasmus Mundus. Here is one that mentions special services for married students: http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/erasmus_mundus/results_compendia/documents/projects/action_1_master_courses/phoenixem_mc.pdf. And here is one saying married students need to bring their marriage certificate to register: https://www.cs.nuim.ie/courses/desem/erasmus/students.
@DavidRicherby Action 2
@PeteL.Clark EU students are not eligible for all options and full scholarship, out of EU student, or non-EU student was told so, program that I refer is under Action 2
this caused an uproar, among the audience, why they discriminate. I was shock. It was 2010, now all programs are replaced with Erasmus Plus,
I suppose items such as marital status, children, professions of parents, place of birth, etc., are not so much there for providing any information as such, but rather form a part of what "belongs" to a complete CV.
You can leave some of them away, but skipping too many of them (without filling your CV in another way) may send a signal like "This person has never bothered to learn what a 'properly done' CV should look like. They are uneducated and/or not diligent about what they do."
Now, this is based upon what I learned back in school, may be country-dependent (I'm in Germany), and - at least here - should probably rather apply to small companies (whose HR people might rather expect adherence to traditional form than the most modern trends in recruitment processes when evaluating CVs) than to academic departments.
Professions of parents?!?!!!
@DavidRicherby: Yes. I still learned at school (around 2000) that among the personal information, it is customary to list the names and professions of your parents. I never did, and it never seemed to be a problem that I skipped that bit of information. On the other hand, I never found anything strange about it; I always felt it is reminscent of descriptions of historical/public persons - for instance, look at the articles of a couple of actors/actresses on Wikipedia, and you'll find that most of them will briefly mention who their parents are, even if the parents themselves are not actors.
@DavidRicherby that seems another good way of "recommend" someone with influential parents.
@DavidRicherby: Germany is bizarrely conservative with respect to the hiring process. On top, some people are almost hysterically afraid of breaking some unwritten rule and schools are very slow at updating what they are teaching, which slows down progress in this area. Nonetheless progress is happening and all modern advice I found recommends against listing such information on your CV – even though it was the norm some decades ago.
This is bizarre. How does a bunch of information which is (1) no one else's business and (2) completely irrelevant to your ability to do a job, "belong" on a CV? A CV is not a Wikipedia biography, it's supposed to be a summary of your academic qualifications.
@ElizabethHenning: For better or worse, there are certain conventions as to how a CV should be written. These can be arbitrary (as in, based upon developments and fashions in the course of many decades or even centuries) and will vary between countries (cf. e.g. customs about including photos and certificates in applications). Whatever the conventions are, as an applicant, you are expected to know and adhere to them. If you don't, that's a first red flag that you could be unaware of other norms, or a troublemaker who breaks them on purpose.
@ElizabethHenning For instance, in my country, it's not uncommon to require a copy of an ID, which, of course, would reveal at least gender, age and sometimes marital status. Failing to send the required documents would cause the exclusion from the selection. But notice also that selections in my country sometimes involve a written exam and an interview, which would reveal anyway many pieces of information.
Since a month, I have been applying to jobs in multiple European countries. In Germany, I had to have a professional help from a German to create "lebenslauf" for private industry and academic jobs. As personal datawise, it includes my birthplace, birthdate, nationality (as I require work permit/job sponsorship) plus I had to have a photo, where you can identify my race, and my gender. As a person living in the US, and keeping the US as a priority, I find this many information, irrelevant to the position and my qualifications, kind of unnecessary and makes me prone to be discriminated, but it is what it is. Moreover, I have also been applying to jobs in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden, and I had friends living/working there and so they know the work ethic and the expectations from a CV or resume. In those countries, I straight out use my "American" CV, which does not include any personal info. Clearly, there is no standard in European countries, I concluded based on four countries I have had experience with.
Also, I have friends who used "just the qualifications - no personal info" regular CV in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Denmark academic jobs and got hired. So I assume you should check each country if you know someone who is acquainted with the work environment and ethic.
If you don't know anyone, I suggest you couple things before you decide to include certain personal info. If you require work permit, and not a citizen or permanent residency in the country you're applying, including your nationality may be useful. Yet no more than that, because gender, age, marital status are irrelevant; and they make you prone to be discriminated. To further make sure, you may skim the available CVs of professors, postdocs etc. which are available on the university or research lab pages. I think most people have them available in university pages as attachment (at least I have seen most put them), and you can decide whether to include certain personal info or not.
All in all, I don't think in the end it really affects the decision on you being hired as where I was born or whenever I was born or whether I am married with kids or not does not imply how good I am in machine learning, or comparative literature or whatever.
Maybe it should be noted that, at least in Germany, gender is almost never a secret once the name is known. That may not be true for some foreign names. Yet, it may explain why the vast majority of people subject to the convention wouldn't see an issue with it, and may rather consider it professional to tidily list "gender: ..." explicitly in a brief list of personal information, rather than leave HR people guessing whether to start the response letter with "Sehr geehrter Herr ..." or "Sehr geehrte Frau ..." (Mr./Ms. at the beginning of the letter) and thereby call attention to the omission.
@O.R.Mapper Not to mention that certain names which are masculine in my country (e.g. Andrea) are feminine in Germany and in other countries, and viceversa. I can imagine that many people could prefer to explicitly declare their gender instead of being accidentally addressed the wrong way.
@O.R.Mapper For further need of declarations in response letters to clarify unisex name such as Andrea as pointed out, almost all universities, companies, research labs in private sector do it automatically with their own database that you have to fill out. At least for mass emails. Moreover, by the time you get individual email related to the job itself, it means you've met whomever the contact point is whether s/he is a HR employee, or the department chair. Therefore, they already know whether you are identified with Mr or Miss/Mrs. So, it really does not make sense to put gender, imho.
@kukushkin: "almost all universities, companies, research labs in private sector do it automatically with their own database that" - you mean all kinds of organizations have huge databases with names and gender of everyone who might possibly contact them at some point (like ... the entire population of Earth, or at least of the organization's country)? I find that rather unlikely. "you have to fill out" - the point of the question is why certain pieces of information should be provided at all. If you're only concerned about including them in the CV document rather than directly putting ...
... them into a database, I think that is beside the OP's point. "whether s/he is a HR employee, or the department chair. Therefore, they already know whether you are identified with Mr or Miss/Mrs." - from the aforementioned database that, even if it exists, probably has no data about you at least upon your first attempt to establish contact?
At my university in Spain, it is required by the regulations that applicants to positions send a copy of their ID card or passport. This implies revealing DOB, gender and photo. I think it would be better not to require that, to avoid bias, but it's how it currently works and I think most if not all Spanish public universities do the same.
On the other hand, CVs here typically don't feature marital status or number of children. Requiring that would be frowned upon, and probably illegal. And the same applies to other European countries as far as I know.
The question seems to be stating that current affairs oblige candidates to specify their marital status and age. However this statement is factually false. For the UK for example, there is no need for a candidate to specify marital status, date of birth or even nationality. It is many times illegal to even request this information. It is also usual, from my experience, that committees do not address this information. For other continental countries the rules may be different.
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34957 | Should scholarship/fellowship monetary amount be listed in CV?
I know there are similar questions but here I would like to focus on scholarships and fellowships that pay tuition and/or a stipend. This is for a CV for PhD or scholarship/fellowship applications, so early career stage and whatever that my imply on the length of the CV.
Given a candidate with 3-5 of these ranging from $1000 to $15,000. Should the amount and what the amount covers be listed? Or just list the institution and award name?
In general, I would leave out the financial amounts of scholarships and fellowships from CV's. If it's a small dollar amount, putting it on diminishes the amount of the award. If it's a well-known award (such as an NSF fellowship), or at least well-known in your field (for example, a fellowship or scholarship by your field's professional society), the details are already sufficiently well-known that they don't need to be mentioned.
I might only list them if they were (a) rather substantial in value and (b) not well-known enough to be on most people's radar screens (at least in your field). At the same time, listing just a few sort of calls attention to the fact that the other awards might not be so large. So again, I'd lean towards not including them at all.
i don't like the inconsistency of listing some and not others. Would it be a better options to list what they paid for? Dean scholarship, tuvalu university. 2000, tuition and stipend.
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5594 | Offer for a pre-PhD visit, how to handle the situation with other PhD applications in the queue?
I have received an offer to visit a lab for 4/5 months that could lead into a fully funded PhD. In the meantime I have other applications in the pipeline from which I will hear back in either a few weeks or a couple of months (just different educational systems).
I am excited about going to this lab but I want to wait to have all my offers on the table before commiting to a program. Also I am not sure yet if I will be able to develop in this lab the project I have in mind. However the PI of the lab is highly regarded in the field.
If I were to leave the lab I would want to leave in the best note possible not to burn my bridges with this person and institution.
I am sure the PI knows I might have applied elsewhere and also although it is likely that this visit will turn into a PhD there is also a small chance it will not.
What would be the best way to handle this situation in an ethical and correct way, and not disappointed anybody?
PS: I will get paid in this period but not as much as PhD student. Let me know if more information is needed.
EDIT: So apparently by the end of the visit I will present a PhD proposal, so I hope that at that point it will not be too late to answer other offers.
Is this the same as an open-house? If so, I doubt there would be any conditions imposed on you to accept their offer.
I am not sure what an open-house is. Myself and the PI applied for a "visiting student grant" and got it.
This will depend on all of the institutions involved, but I expect it should work out for you. I am sure the laboratory making the offer must be familiar with this situation, so the first thing I would do is talk to them about the various contingencies. Then for the other offers, as they come in, you will have to explain you are getting experience in this laboratory and give them the date you expect to know whether or not you can accept their offer. If they insist on knowing sooner, then you can take it up with your PI.
It may not be easy emotionally (decisions between good offers can feel very hard even though really neither choice would be "wrong"), but I think it is very unlikely that you will be disadvantaged by taking the opportunity to work in a prestigious lab. Some of the other offers may be willing to wait, and for the ones that can't, they may allow you to reapply if you don't receive the offer you want.
There is a slight chance that the PI is taking advantage of you this way, but if so I'm sure they will have a reputation for that, and the first person to make you another offer would let you know you are better off leaving even if it does "burn a bridge". Then you may need to ask around a little more to be sure who to believe. But it is more likely you are in a win/win situation – you get experience either way, and if a really nice offer comes along from another lab, probably your PI will be OK with you taking it, and you can finish their work up before going and taking up the new offer.
In general, I think so long as you and the PI in question are forthright about your mutual expectations, there should be very few problems.
If the PI who is offering you the position is planning on having you become a PhD student, then that should be made clear. Similarly, if you'd like to consider other options, then you should let your potential advisor know that a "competition" will be taking place.
However, since you said you'd be writing a PhD proposal, it's not clear that you'd automatically have a guaranteed offer for a position at the end of this position if successful. This should also be cleared up before you make a final decision.
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49457 | Are publications in IEEE and ACM journals and conference proceedings considered decent quality by prospective employers in academia?
Both the ACM and IEEE have their name attached to a host of conferences and journals. Some are known to be better than others, but I feel generally that any conference or journal with the ACM or IEEE brands attached are considered decent quality. (Questions like this indicate I'm not the only one to think so.)
Question: Are publications in IEEE and ACM journals and conference proceedings automatically considered decent quality by prospective employers in academia? (When applying for postdocs, assistant professor positions, and so on.) Or is it more nuanced than that?
Essentially, I'm asking what weight do these brands have.
The ARC ERA2010 rank these journals and conferences from A* (the best possible ranking) to C (the lowest possible ranking). But it's possible that these rankings are not an accurate gauge of the community's attitude towards a particular journal or conference.
What kind of employers are you considering? The majority of IT companies will not care about your publications. If anything, the publications show that you can do a bit of work, but they don't show that you can do "real work"(tm). The "good venues for publications" game is so academic that only very few HR representives or interviewer will ever some up with the idea to check whether a publication is in a good venue or not. Of course, this comment is a bit subjective (I don't know all of the employers), and does not apply to applications to research labs.
I mean in academic positions (where publications matter [I presume!]); I edited my question to reflect this.
what weight do these brands have — The correct answer ought to be NONE. ACM and IEEE sponsor several top-tier conferences, but not every sponsored conference is top-tier, and not every top-tier conference is sponsored. If you want to find out how good a conference is, there is no alternative but to read the papers. But I have admit to some personal bias on this point.
Within many sub-disciplines of Computer Science, conference proceedings, rather than journals, are the main publishing venues for new research. In contrast to journals, which have an impact factor, there is no unified metric to quantify the quality of a conference proceeding. Although there are indeed a number of categorizations, I haven't seen them actively being used to decide which venue to submit to. I found that within these sub-disciplines of Computer Science, academics are very aware of which conferences and journals are competitive and what the impact is of publishing a paper there. These are indeed mostly ACM/IEEE, thus, giving them a certain status by name. Nevertheless, just because the conference is supported by ACM or IEEE, does not imply that it is a high quality conference.
However, when you apply for post-doc or faculty position, there might be people on the hiring committee that are not fully aware of this. To mitigate this issue and emphasize this difference to other fields, I have seen several resumes that explicitly explain how the publishing model in their respective subfield differs from the "classic" journal based system. You can achieve this with a simple note in your resume before listing your publications. An example:
Note: Within the field of (subdiscipline of computer science), selective peer-reviewed conference proceedings are the main
dissemination of novel research contributions. Conferences such as
(conf x) and (conf y) are highly competitive publication venues with 2
review rounds that include reviews from 3 external reviewers as well
as at least 2 associate chairs. These conferences have an acceptance rate between 10 and 15 % and papers that are accepted and published are refereed as full length papers.
Ok a couple of things for me;
Firstly just because it's published doesn't mean it holds academic calibre. To quote an old lecturer of mine - "Some of the most popular papers are popular because they're wrong".
If anything its a point of conversation if in your CV you've declared your papers and also offers them a location to go and find, read then evaluate your work. I think that's a big thing too, you're dealing with seasoned 'paper-readers' they most certainly won't think - "Hey this guys published, they must be awesome". They'll want to read your papers and develop their own opinion.
I'd say it depends partially on the type of personality of your employer (if going for non academic roles). My current employer likes that I went to a good university and often tells some of our clients. So I assume if I had published papers he would also love to tell people that. To my last employer I could easily see that as a nice bonus (during the interview) but nothing more passed that, he preferred to know that I've had real world experience but after the interview we never discussed it again.
In terms of the 'brands' of ACM and IEEE they were always the locations I was sent to for getting research papers from both my undergrad and postgrad university so if there had been 'better' brands - we would have been directed there
I hope this offers a bit of help for you
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162470 | How does 'accepted' but not published paper look on my CV?
I am an undergraduate who recently worked on a 1-page abstract (as a team of 3) and got it accepted to the conference.
However, neither our advisors nor the university agreed to aid us on the registration fee, which means that our paper will not be presented (I am not saying published here, because 1-page abstracts are not published in the journal).
Now I am wondering if I included this in my CV, how this paper would appear to whoever's reading my CV.
To be more specific, I will probably be applying for a Master's degree, and I was intending to use this to simply showcase my various experience and that I worked hard.
The paper I wrote is not related to the major I will be applying in.
I am basically asking this question whether it will be worth it to pay for all the fee ourselves to get it published(presented), or would it serve its role as it is.
Thank you in advance.
Why did you submit a paper to a conference you had no funds to attend? Did your advisor ask you to submit to the conference, or did you and your team independently submit your work hoping that, if you got it accepted, that someone would bail you out? Or did the money just dry up between submission and acceptance?
Could you submit it to arXiv or to similar services? Looks like better than nothing.
I think your field is extremely important here, and possibly even subfields. E.g., in theoretical CS, conference submissions are worth a lot, while in physics, depending on the field it can be super-important or completely irrelevant.
There might be the possibility (check with the conference!) that somebody else (who is not a co-author) presents the paper. So if you know anybody from your department presenting there it might (only might!) be an option. Also do you only lack funding for the registration fee (or plane tickets)? Usually students registration fee can be quite low, did you ask them?
Lalala gives a good suggestion. This can be done even underground if the paper is a poster (if the presentation is scheduled) or just the going researcher tell the organisers, with you/your supervisor CC.
Submitting work to a conference, having that work accepted, and presenting that work at the conference has value, such accomplishments should appear on CVs.
Withdrawing an accepted work from a conference due to no funding shows lack of foresight, perhaps even disrespect (by wasting time), and likely shouldn't appear on CVs.
Seek other funding sources, e.g., the conference itself or a national funding body, perhaps ask your advisors for suggestions.
Whether you and co-authors pay yourselves depends on personal factors, e.g., can you afford to?
Thanks! I didn't think about the 'lack of foresight' and 'disrespect' aspect, and I believe you are absolutely right. I had to ask this as the submission deadline is approaching, but I will try as you suggested.
Also, try local administrators. I got at least airplane tickets few times. Contact all offices at both town and area levels explaining the situation (youth bureau, culture, even sport...). This is obviously country depending. In my one, perhaps all letters would have gone to the paper basket. But in another one it worked. Ps: to the OP
"Withdrawing an accepted work from a conference due to no funding shows lack of foresight" - I do not doubt some might interpret it that way, but this stance sounds slightly out of touch with reality to me. Typically, the formal process for getting money is that you first need to justify why you really need that money (by showing that your work has been accepted), and based upon that, you can solicit the money. I worked in well-funded places where this was a mere formality, but I know from various contacts of mine that actually getting the solicited money is not always a given.
@O.R.Mapper Any such formal process is usually preceded by an informal process, in which the funding should be sorted out before submission, so there is a lack of foresight involved. That being said accidents happen and no-one expects undergraduate students to already know how things work. Personally though, if there is any blame I'd put it on the advisors. If you are not willing to offer some of your own funding after everything external falls through, then maybe you shouldn't tell your students to submit to a conference.
@mlk: “…an informal process, in which the funding should have been sorted out before submission” Ideally, yes, and at well-functioning and well-funded institutions this is the case. But I’ve known/worked with several people from institutions where the funding process just wasn’t this predictable; the gamble of “submit, then hope that one of their potential funding sources will come through” was the only option. And suggesting students in such department shouldn’t be encouraged to submit to conferences at all — that’s yet another barrier for students from less-advantaged backgrounds.
@mlk I think you are making some very strong assumptions, through a geographically biased lens, in the comments on formal an informal processes, and the availability of funds. Funding for research and travel grants vary dramatically between countries (and organisations within countries). So, to me, the “lack of foresight” comment is off base
@PLL,fileunderwater You are both right, and I am fully aware of the bias I have in that regard. That is why I put the "if there is any blame" in there, as there need not be any, but it is kind of hard to cover all the specifics in the character-limit of a comment.
As the answer of user2768 has stated, doing research which leads to an accepted abstract at a conference is a good accomplishment for an undergraduate. Congratulations. Doubly so since -- for whatever combination of reasons -- you don't seem to have extensive support from your more senior advisor(s).
If you find the funds to attend the conference and present the paper, you will turn this into an accomplishment that will be meaningful on your CV for years to come, not only to be admitted to a Masters' degree but afterwards. You will also hopefully learn a lot at the conference and begin to make contacts, which is valuable in its own right.
However, I deviate from the other answer's perspective that if you need to withdraw instead, it shouldn't appear on your CV, and would indicate lack of foresight or disrespect. This may be true for an established academic, who has or may be expected to have a stable portfolio of funding, but is not true of an undergraduate or other emerging scholar. (I hope this is true in all fields.)
If you are unable to secure funding for at least one of your team to attend to present and do need to withdraw, I think you should definitely mention your accomplishment (marked as "accepted abstract at ___" and leave it at that) on your CV at this stage in your career, especially for the purposes of Graduate School admission. It will help document, as you said, that you do have research experience of some sort already. Were I on an admissions committee, I would look at it favorably in this context.
The difference comes afterwards. I suspect that when you are job hunting after your graduate degree, you will censor out such an "incomplete accomplishment" because you will have more recent, more standard, and "completed" conference presentations and/or publications. While if you do find the means to attend the conference and present, the presentation will remain a line item on your CV documenting your sucessful research activity is of longer duration. This will quite likely have incremental value at that time.
There will, of course, be purists who will argue that nothing should ever make it onto your CV that will later be censored out (i.e., that your CV is a universal and evergreen list of all your accomplishments, as opposed to a résumé, less used in academia, which presents a subset of accomplishments chosen as most relevant at that moment for a specific purpose.) That is, perhaps, a good overall aspiration. But there are many junior academics who have at various points listed "submitted" or "manuscript in progress" items on their then-current CVs, since those were meaningful accomplishments at the time. But where for various reasons those items did not progress further, and were silently removed from the CV later.
Admissions committees get it! And they want to see whatever evidence you've got of academic and research experience and potential. So congratulations and good luck!
I deviate from the other answer's perspective that if you need to withdraw instead, it...would indicate lack of foresight or disrespect. This may be true for an established academic...but is not true of an undergraduate or other emerging scholar: An emerging scholar and, to a lesser extent, an undergraduate should understand what they are doing. Conference websites regularly explain that at least one author must attend the event and present accepted work. In submitting, authors are taking on that responsibility. They shouldn't shirk their obligation.
(I appreciate exception circumstances do exist, e.g., https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/162470/how-does-accepted-but-not-published-paper-look-on-my-cv#comment437146_162475)
@user2768, submitting with no intention of attending would indeed be inappropriate. However, where we differ is what you call "exceptional circumstances" I fear is quite commonplace. In the one major conference I cochaired (well-respected, though in a different field), ~20% of the accepted abstracts were no-shows, for a variety of reasons.
In any case, I don't completely disagree with you, but I wrote a different answer since I felt a) it's important to emphasize the accomplishment not the criticism, and b) I think the author should for now list in CV even if he cannot present.
Having an abstract accepted by a conference comitee doesn't prove that any actual work has been done. This might not apply generally, but my observation is, that especially with tight deadlines, the abstract that is submitted may be only a plan of what you are about to do, not a summary of what you actually have done. There's also the full spectrum in between. Hence, the abstract alone, even if accepted, does not necessarily prove/represent anything.
@DohnJoe. Agreed (though depends on the field). So -- if I were on the hypothetical admissions committee -- ideally I'd love to see that a paper/preprint has been written or other evidence work was completed. Of course, it needs to be said as well that a poster or presentation made also doesn't necessarily prove much, in the absence of a peer-reviewed endproduct....
@Houska yes, most probably field dependent. The conferences I have attended so far, mostly decide on the submitted abstracts whether to accept a contribution. However, even when not peer-reviewed; if you have attended the conference, you are listed in the proceedings. Without attending you have nothing to show for.
@Houska Just to clarify: I don't believe I criticised the OP.
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189464 | Which is more common in Europe - applying for a 'PHD Program' or coming up with a research Q? I still don't fully understand the application process
Do I keep visiting website like 'find a PHD' which have advertisements of PHD programs and their respective application deadlines?
And would these be considered 'pre-designed' programs with a broader/general curriciulum? as opposed to developing my own research proposal and writing to random professors to see if they will take me on? What is the exact difference here?
I have a general topic in mind but I'm struggling to understand how 'general' and how 'specific' to be when applying. Part of the reason is due to the fact that I am also struggling to define my research question/topic.
Yes I know these are very general questions but I'm a bit lost here. I am well aware that a PHD is not the road to Damascus as some people may idealise it, but it is something I wish to try and which I believe could be a good fit for me - I'm nearly 31 and time is running out.
Thank you for your help.
Europe is, (unfortunately in your case), quite heterogeneous in how that works. Can you narrow it by country perhaps? For instance, for the case of Germany, you would not look for "PhD programs" but rather for open positions as scientific employees that are suitable for writing a PhD thesis while holding the position.
In addition to DCTLib's suggestion, it would also be good to specify your field - in my university PhD projects can range from almost entirely pre-defined (typically lab sciences) to almost entirely designed by the candidate (typically Humanities). There are exceptions to the general rules, but it's helpful to know a rough discipline at least.
@StephenMcMahon thank you for your reply.
My desired and planned discipline is conflict resolution/counter-terrorism/the broader international security and conflict field.
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162753 | Generally speaking, when are the deadlines applying for PHD's in Europe?
29 year old male, considering applying for PHD programs that begin 2021 or else 2022.
Have I left it too late to apply for a PHD that begins in 2021? I know this question is fairly general, but it seems that in the U.S, deadlines for most PHD programs have passed. I'm curious if it's the same in Europe.
The answer to this general question has to take too many variables into account. You should be much more specific (country, field) if you want to increase your chances for a fitting answer. I voted to close.
Europe being a continent rather than a country, the rules and customs are varying from one country to the next, including the duration of the PhD support. For instance, in France, PhD grants often cover the first two years and the third year has to be supported by another grant or a teaching assistantship (ATER). Concerning the date of administrative registration, it is possible to register as a new PhD till early December. Concerning the PhD grants, some are already closed, others will close in July, and a few more remain open the whole year.
No idea where lighthouse_keeper gets the idea that this is uniform. It is not! The only thing that might be sort of universal is that there is not much predictability in when PhD applications open up and what their deadlines are across Europe. Quite often the deadlines are throughout the whole preceding year. For some specific fields in specific countries things are more organized and there is a real PhD window. PhD's usually start either around September/October or around January/Feburary however even this is definitely not set in stone across Europe.
To answer "Have I left it too late to apply for a PHD that begins in 2021?" That probably depends on the field. There are definitely still many country and field combinations where it is not yet too late! (You should really at the very least add the field you want to do a PhD in to get a useful answer.)
I have voted to reopen this question because I think the argument for closing "strongly depends on individual factors" is unfounded. Yes, academia in Europe is diverse, but for this particular question, one can give a general answer that applies to most cases.
Unlike in the US, there are no "application seasons" in Europe. PhD positions are announced throughout the year, and every vacancy has its own deadline.
Any explanations for the downvote?
I did not downvote, but your answer may be a little too general. In my opinion, also a definition is needed when talking about "Europe". The whole continent? Seriously, there is probably no general answer covering the whole of Europe, no matter what the question is.
@Snijderfrey Fair enough. I interpret the OP's words "generally speaking" as "in most cases". For that I believe that my answer is correct.
@lighthousekeeper My apologies, I seemed to have accidentally clicked the downvote button without noticing. I cannot change it anymore since too much time has passed. Your answer is true for many countries in Europe, with the caveat that more structured programmes do often have deadlines (see DCTLib's answer and the comment of Ian under there).
Academia in Europe is very diverse. This answer is for the case of Germany.
There are two ways of doing a PhD in Germany. You can either join a coordinated program, or you find a PhD advisor under which supervision you will work outside of such a program.
Coordinated programs all have their own deadlines. For joining them in October (fall), deadlines between March and July appear to be common.
However, doing a PhD outside of a coordinated program is the norm in Germany. There are no seasons for the deadlines for them, and the application you will write is for the funding - getting into the PhD program is then normally the easy part. Scholarships may have deadlines, but more common is the case that you are employed by your future university in the research group of your PhD supervisor while doing a PhD at the same time, and each suitable position has a different deadline.
I would say that the UK is similar to this with a couple of exceptions: 1) Programs are becoming more and more common. 2) PhD students are hardly ever employed by the uni, but rather the supervisor will have secured a scholarship before advertising. 2) Because programs want to recruit the best students, they try to recruit early before students have accepted a different position. Often the more prestigious the program, the earlier it tries to recruit. However, in reaction many supervisors with studentships to advertise are trying to do it earlier and earlier each year.
Answer valid for France only. PhD programs in France require to already have a master's degree (or equivalent); filling the position is controlled by the PhD advisor(s); funding is usually secured by the advisor before advertising the position (*). This means you have more time to apply because your clock starts after funding was obtained.
There is no official PhD season, but in practice most PhD start between September and ~February, based on the previous year graduation of master's students. In my case I applied to the position in early October and started the PhD work and getting paid in December. However, I was officially enrolled in the "doctoral school" only in late February. You should probably assume a 4-month delay in case your advisor is less versed at playing the bureaucracy than mine were.
Hence, February is not late for France gor a start in autumn. I would even guess most open positions are not published yet.
(*) funding sources that I know of officially grant PhD positions based on the strength of the research project that the advisor submits (alternatively, more general project funds allow for PhDs/postdocs). However, I do know unofficially of one case where funding went to a project based on the CV of the candidate that would fill the position. I do not know is that is common or not.
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44485 | Should PhD students pay out of pocket for their PhD expenses?
Say a PhD student has a salary paid through a RA/TA or a fellowships but said student has no money for conferences, lab experiments, or to visit another lab for a few months to develop an important part of the thesis.
Should the student pay for these expenses out of his personal money? Is this acceptable, or should the student cut down on the project or change project to accommodate with the budget restrictions?
EDIT: Think of students from small departments and from countries where research money is little to non existent
Are you talking about CS? Because in CS conferences are the main publishing venue. On the other hand, where I was (Europe) there was no money for attending conferences unless you had a paper accepted there (or the conference was in your city and you had to either volunteer or you only had to pay the registration - which they may cover since it was relatively cheap). So, if money for conferences you mean that someone pays your trip to a conference without you having an accepted paper, then perhaps this setting is not that common.
"Should" is a deeply subjective question, and subjective questions often aren't a great fit for this site's format. You don't give us much in the way of criteria. Please see http://academia.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask and the pages linked there, and think about how to use the guidelines there to improve your question so it is a better fit for the Stack Exchange format.
Does the student want to pay for the expenses out of his own funds?
It is a fact of life that resources are tight, but dissemination of research and networking are important components of a PhD program, and any supervisor worth his/her salt will build some travel into the budget. (I would expect that there should be at least two regional conferences and one major international conference over the course of the project.) Beyond that, you'd have to be pretty sure that the expense will be worth it, before you incur it. There usually is money to be found, internally, externally, even through a visiting position at the off-site lab you mentioned. Be creative, negotiate, but be selective also.
"Should" is a hard word here. I certainly never paid for these things, but my supervisor was well funded, and so I didn't have to worry about it. At the other end, I think a student certainly "can" pay for these things out of their own pocket. My recommendation for travel would be to avoid this by pursuing departmental, university, and conference-specific travel funds.
I can't imagine it being reasonable for a student to purchase lab equipment. It's often expected that you'll have your own laptop, but workstations, servers, and compute clusters should be provided by someone else. Same for microscopes, reagents, glassware, and everything in between.
Remember that some people fund their entire PhD out of their own pocket so there is no 'should' answer. If someone is in this situation, they should first discuss this with their supervisor who will have the best advice on whether there is any available money.
There are no rules against students funding this themselves but many simply wouldn't apply for programs without that kind of support or would not be able to afford that.
There are plenty of grants available to grad students, especially for conference travel. Have a look at the societies in your field. If they offer grants for travel or research expenses then join them. I'd say my ROI for the money I've paid to join societies as a grad student is > 2000%. These are rarely competitive from my experience. Often the society running the conference will offer funding for students to attend the conference. Sometimes funding is only available to those from low GDP countries, so being from a low GDP country can actually help.
Then there are plenty of other organisations that offer grants without having to join or pay to join. Some offer money for research expenses and short trips to visit other institutions. You should be able to find most of these by searching online.
It also looks good on your CV when you have a long list of (small) grants as a grad student.
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104818 | Stay in academia or become professor without overworking, is it possible?
I am referring more to young scientists after the PhD than professors, although I am also wondering about people with a stable position.
I see many people overworking themselves, burning-out, being overworked and with pressure to work well, fast, and produce a lot (publications). I am discussing an average person who has completed a PhD that has all the skills for the job. Let's leave the top professors 5-10% of the field that are super-productive for whatever reason, those are exceptions. I also assume that there is passion for research, but that work balance is also important.
Is it possible to survive/remain in academia by working normal hours (8-9 hours per day) without working evenings, weekends, holidays, without feeling guilty about taking a 2-3 weeks vacation? I imagine to become professor would include many of the above sacrifices. Some professors (tenured) have told me they work 50-60-70 hours per week.
Is overworking basically the rule/working culture in academia?
Is it unusual to reach/maintain a stable position in academia without regularly overworking?
Consider mentioning the cultural, country, institution type of your answer, as there are variations in different contexts.
Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/86769/19607 (my answer to that question is more on the yes side to your question than dan's answer below)
Somewhat related: Is a PhD right for you if you hate doing research in your free time but love doing it as a job?
Sure - stay out of research institutions/universities. Plenty of community/junior/libarts colleges need instructors. Of course, the availability of work depends on what fields your degrees are in.... where I am a full time instructor is expected to be on-campus and either teaching or doing office hours for only 25 hours per week (5 3credit classes+2 hours office hours per class), and then serving on committees etc for 5-10 hours per week (hiring groups, college senage, etc - and this only sometimes), and only during fall and spring terms.
I think this is the real misconception. In the most research institution that I know academic work less.
Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8542/1033
It is possible to do a job share.
@SSimon could you provide some examples?
@ivanivan maybe that's true in the US, in Europe the concept of community/Junior college does not exist, although there are vo-tech schools and some kind of university preparation schools.
@HermanToothrot - indeed. But with no location info in the OP.... :)
@HermanToothrot well, one you got on email. another one is colleagues, technical school, higher education specialist diplomas... than there are institutes, I don't think people in academia work more!!! I am referring to science, but I heard that in humanities, you only need 7 references to become full time professor.
This is a bit opinion-based, but I'll offer my own personal take on an answer in the hopes that it might be useful; at least parts of what I wrote below seem pretty generally applicable to me.
Is it possible to survive/remain in academia by working normal hours (8-9 hours per day) without working evenings, weekends, holidays, without feeling guilty about taking a 2-3 weeks vacation?
Short answer: no (except for the part about feeling guilty for taking a vacation, which is something I never had a problem with).
Medium-length answer: this question is based on a false premise, and simply doesn't make sense to most professors. "No" is an approximate answer, but a full answer requires a longer discussion to explain why neither "no" nor "yes" really make sense as answers, and why even though "no" is an approximate answer, it doesn't really have the negative meaning that you think it has.
Long answer: people in academia do work hard, sometimes very hard, but in my experience, the thing that many people looking into academia from the outside often fail to see is that what you call "working", we call "living" (and what you call "overworking" we might call "living a bit more intensely than usual, but still generally having a good time"). What you call "making sacrifices" we call "finding our work so fulfilling that we pay less attention to some other aspects of life than most other people do".
In other words, for a professor the "work/life" dichotomy is a lot more blurry than it is for people in (some) other professions, to the extent that it is often a completely nonexistent or nonsensical distinction. If I'm at the beach on a weekend and I'm reading a math paper or thinking about a research problem, am I doing "work"? If I'm traveling to a conference in an exotic city and using some of the time to explore the local sights and culture, am I "working", or am I on "vacation"? I don't know, and honestly after doing this for a while you start to realize that these questions simply make no sense. Most professors simply don't make the distinction between "life" and "work" that much of our culture obsesses about. They don't ask themselves these questions about how to "survive in academia" while only "working normal hours", since most of the time they are just too busy doing something they enjoy. Yes, they probably do end up doing what other people would regard as "work" for more than the usual 8-9 hours a day, five days a week and during times (holidays and weekends) when other people might regard it as abhorrent to do "work". But by and large, they don't perceive this as a negative thing (or at least, not as negatively as your question makes it out to be; I'll admit it can be a mild annoyance at times).
Coming back to my short, approximate answer of "no": basically it seems to me that you're asking the wrong question. If you are the kind of person who really wants to punch in at 9 a.m., punch out at 5 p.m. every weekday and go home to do other things and not even think about work until the next day, I'm pretty confident that academia is not for you. But most people who are smart enough to make it in academia are not wired that way.* The real question you should be asking is "can I be in academia and have a fulfilled life in which I'm happy to get out of bed each morning, get to do really exciting stuff a large chunk of the time, and in which I work hard (sometimes very hard) but still have a reasonable amount of time left over for other things that matter to me?"
The answer to that question is, quite definitely, Yes.
* (Added on edit:) to clarify, with this comment I am not expressing an opinion that a decision to leave academia says anything about how smart (or how anything else) someone is. I most certainly do not hold such an opinion. See the discussion in the comments.
———
Second edit: The comments, along with a few negative votes on my answer, are making me strongly suspect that I’ve given offense to some people who are perceiving my “smart enough ... not wired that way” comment as an elitist sentiment to the effect that if you are a person who is “wired that way” — that is, cares about having free time, work-life balance, raising a family etc — then you are “not smart enough”. Let me emphasize again that that’s not what I believe and not what I meant to imply. I actually care about all of those things myself, and don’t think caring about them is inconsistent with working hard (even sometimes very hard) or with being very passionate about your work. Nor do I think academia is the only place where one can have a fulfilled career; there are in fact many workplaces and professions with quite similar characteristics, and obviously there are many extremely smart people pursuing careers in such places and professions.
Finally, as I said at the beginning of my answer, it represents my own opinion and my own personal take on OP’s question. I make no claims that this represents anything near a universal truth.
Two minor quibbles: I don't think "smart enough" is the phrase you want - maybe ambitious instead? Also, my impression is that there are some very successful people who work regular 9 to 5-type schedules in academia. It's not the norm, but they do exist.
@ZachH thanks for quibbling :-). I stand by my claim that “most people who are smart enough to make it in academia are not wired that way.” And that’s not inconsistent with your second quibble, although I’m not at all convinced your claim about successful 9-5 academia people is true.
@DanRomik I know a few of them: maybe it's not really 9-5, but rather 8-5 or 9-6, but, yes, they do exist. And, actually, I could be one of them, if only could I resist temptations :-)
@DanRomik I think you're assuming a lot of the people who've left academia weren't smart enough, rather than weren't "XXX" enough where XXX could be one of {ambitious, well-positioned, lucky, supported, selfish} or many other things. A lot of ex-academics on the outside do keep roughly 9-to-5 hours and seem very content with that.
I think you're mostly right. But I have worked at 4 different schools and at each one I've had colleagues who didn't do a damn thing. They taught the same classes every semester and used the same notes and the same exams. They slid into tenure and never lifted an unnecessary finger after that. I had one who was running his AmWay business out of his office. I know this is not what the OP means, but it IS possible to work very little in academia, if you're a sleazy scumbag.
@ZachH to clarify, I don’t think someone leaving academia says anything at all about how smart they are, nor do I think that working 9-5 necessarily says much about how ambitious one is. What I meant was that I think most sufficiently smart people look for much more in their choice of career than maximizing their leisure time. In other words, they are optimizing a different function that gives a high weight to personal fulfillment and cares less about hours. Some do it by staying in academia, some by leaving, but almost all of them look for much more than “work-life balance”.
I used to think similarly. Now I have kids. I am glad I am not in academia - where I would apparently be forced to short change my kids.
I would like to remark that the above answer applies equally well to any job "outside" Academia too, and that one should stop the temptation to always subdivide people in two classes: the ones who stay versus the ones who leave. I have done research in Academia and I have done research outside: I always hear people claiming Academia is X, real jobs are Y. Truth is, you may work hard or slack off equally well in either: eventually it all comes down to your work ethic and what goals you want to achieve (in either).
I think you really can't over-emphasize the difference between the "punch in/punch out" mentality and academia (or FTM self-employment). As a grad student, I might work until midnight or later on a project, but I could also take afternoons off for hiking or skiing (and come up with some of my best ideas while doing so...) Same with the professors I worked with: they had to show up for classes & office hours, but otherwise their time was their own, and they could choose whether to e.g. spend their evenings watching TV or reading papers...
@emory, academia does not necessarily entail short-changing kids. It may be arrangeable so that one's time is flexible enough so that one can spend more time with kids than 9-to-5 job people could. By shuffling my teaching schedule years ago (and of course doing more research-oriented work on weekends) I could spend week-day mornings with my young daughter, for example.
Got any evidence for these blatant personal anecdotes?
@curiousdannii: What sort of evidence would you like? And what sort of evidence do you think there could be, that wasn't essentially a bunch of personal anecdotes?
I'm a (retired) math professor. When my daughter was young (about 10) she said that when she grew up she wanted to be a professor - she didn't know what she wanted to be a professor of but it looked like a good life to her. I worked hard, but doing something I loved. Flexible hours meant I could go on class trips. Both my daughter and my son are (hard working) professors with full lives.
@EthanBolker yes, “I worked hard, but doing something I loved” pretty much sums up the sentiment I was trying to express in my answer. Thank you!
What about people who are "smart enough" to make it into academia, but have never done so nor attempted? Are you making the claim that smart people in other fields aren't inclined towards the "punch-in/punch-out" lifestyle? Interestingly, I don't necessarily disagree, but that is certainly a bold statement.
@Clay07g yes, that’s approximately a correct reading of my statement, except note that I said it applies to most smart people, which makes it less bold of a statement than it might be otherwise.
You really need to modify the wording of your "smart enough" sentence, because the message that sentence conveys does not match at all what you've spent two edits trying to detail as a clarification.
@Joshua thanks, I did consider modifying the wording, but decided against it. The edits represent my best attempt to make my meaning clear. Hopefully that will be good enough for most readers.
I think your answer is quite reasonable but applies to people whose first interest and passion is research and the other interests are far below. I do not see how to pursue other interests if my time outside research is reduced to a few hours per week.
Superb answer, as always!
While Dan Romik's answer applies to lots of people in academia, there are also the "others". I do know concrete examples of successful scientists that regularly work 9-5 (or similar). This is possible, with a few caveats:
works only for extremely disciplined people
may not apply to the Ph.D./postdoc stage, where there is time-sensitive pressure to build a cv and get a job
assumes that during the Ph.D./postdoc stage enough knowledge and contacts were built.
As I said, I know people who does this and is very successful on all fronts (at the same time!): as teachers, as researchers, and as administrators.
As with anything in academia, it is not easy to distinguish raw talent from concerted effort. Some of the people I'm thinking that pull the above off, are definitely not geniuses (although they are obviously competent).
+1 for an interesting take on the question that complements mine. Btw I’m curious to learn more about these successful scientists you’re referring to. Specifically, can you share which countries they’re working in, and what are their disciplines?
Yes, the people I was talking about are physicists and mathematicians in Argentina and USA, and mathematicians in Canada.
I agree with this, and would like to add that if you really work (does not include coffee breaks, lunch breaks, gossiping, procrastinating, waiting for computer to boot etc) 8 hours a day that's certainly enough. What should be stressed though that normal people (myself included) need to spend 10 hours at the uni to really do 8 hours of hard work.
Maybe a bit on the anecdotal side, but last year, at a conference, I heard an nice talk from Dr. Bastian Epp from the DTU in Denmark. Amidst his talk about whether to consider a PhD a good idea, he told about his own experience. He was super enthusiastic, always the first at the institute, always the last to leave. But there was a colleague, some years older, who came in not exceedingly early, quietly worked his 8-hour shift, and left early in the afternoon. And even by not "living" at the university, he finished his PhD in time. After a bit of tinkering, Bastian came behind his colleagues secret: Efficiency. By not getting carried away, not procrastinating, not doing hour-long coffee breaks, and just doing what has to be done, you can get very far. But this needs some discipline and self-optimization.
The talk was very nice to follow, and, of course, was a bit on the moral story side, but it's a nice thing to have heard.
By no means I want to express that an overworked professor should just stop procrastinating and everything is fine. There is a lot of pressure on academic staff and personally I know two research groups which recently had a bad year with canceled or not-received fundings. Being a professor with four PhD candidates and no further money for them is not fun.
The thing I want to point out is that there indeed is such a thing as a "non-overworked academic", and with some self-discipline you may improve your academic experience.
Interesting. When I lived in Denmark I certainly noticed that everyone there had their head screwed on right, when it came to work-life balance. So if anyone were to be the poster child for an 8 to 5, get 'er done style PhD, it would be a Dane!
@aparente001 Hm, that fits. Dr. Epp is german, but I believe the guy he was talking about is danish :-)
Yes, it is quite possible but this is highly dependent on a number of factors. Mainly local culture, nature of pursued line of study, and quality of personal efficiency.
First of all let me make a main point clear: there is a big gap between what is officially declared about numbers of hours worked and reality. Particularly in (i) modern times of 24h-long-internet-connected-smartphones and when overworking is considered "hype"; (ii) in the academia where there are so many facades and overworking attracts respect. Probably the amount of hours worked you mention come from polls like the one below:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/09/research-shows-professors-work-long-hours-and-spend-much-day-meetings
From my experience since decades dealing with the academia (I am no professor, but have met many) a lot of what is declared is questionable, and almost everyone is evasive over duties exposure. So a 60h official journey is too often way less intermingled with a lot of posing, minions, undeclared absences, ghost meetings.
Now, for the final points.
There are so many small campuses where work life is incredibly dull & slow;
There are fields of study which are more automated, less competitive or pressed for speed, and with a high "impact factor" ration over hours invested, typically returning more funding in less time;
There are many places which do not count working hours by the clock on physical presence, and cultures where one does not feel pressured to pose all day as busy and important in front of some empty paper or screen;
If you happen to be highly efficient and connected with smart-minded collaborators and student, you are able produce higher quality output in less hours than the majority;
Living close to work is a major asset here.
I agree hours are difficult to report accurately when one does not have to for billing or wages, and that there are status incentives to reporting overwork. In addition to time in the office, though, many academics take work home, and pervasive stress where home time does not feel like it is off-the-clock. (For many people, this then means in-the-office time may be interspersed with personal errands. It seems like that path is best avoided to increase efficiency.)
Totally agreed on this, and this is a big challenge in the academia, in internet times.
No
I did my PhD in a Max Planck Institute (summa cum laude) and was on a good track to become a professor. After spending an amount of time thinking about my future, I now work in a consultancy firm. Here are my findings:
F1: If I overwork in science, I get the opportunity to have a position in science
F2: If I overwork in industry, I get the opportunity to choose the position I want for my future
In my field (Physics), there are two causes for F1:
C1: The supply of researchers strongly outnumbers the number of available positions.
C2: The quality of scientific work is extremely difficult to quantify (**)
C2 leads to performance be often quantified by another metric, quantity (even if not the fairest or most useful). This metric promotes, by definition, overworking. Another important metric of performance is the scientific impact (think the number of citations, impact of scientific journals, etc.). This metric depends strongly on your PI, institution, hotness of the field, luck (on your results, peer reviewers, etc) and therefore should not be relevant to your decision to overwork or not.
The above conclusion combined with C1 makes any person that overwork have an advantage, and therefore the best strategy for each individual is to overwork the most they can. In other words, regardless of the individual motives, the downsides of not overworking are far greater than the advantages of not overworking.
The above is applicable to the subject I was in and may not apply to your subject. Do your own research and plan your career!
(**) See e.g. this paper and respective rebutal, and note that this was only done for citations, which is a measure of impact, not quality. Quality is even more difficult to quantify.
I think this might apply for people who either need long hours or cannot be efficient, assuming that hours of work correlate with output (number of papers). But yes, it's somewhat a race to the bottom. F2 I am not sure what you mean with that statement, that you can stay in industry without overworking?
@HermanToothrot, I think that this applies not only to those people because, on this race, you will be competing even with the efficient people that overwork. F2, yes, good point: I edited the answer to clarify the statement :)
I'm still not sure what F2 means. What is the position you want for your future?
@henning I think the point of F2 is that while in academia you would completely lose your job, in industry you would still have a pretty good job, just not your first choice.
it's more clear to have "overwork vs overwork" or not overwork vs not overwork.
I agree that it is more clear, but that is not the conclusion I reached. In particular, I haven't reached any conclusion regarding "If I overwork in industry, ..." because overworking is not a sufficient condition get an ideal position. The statement F2 is that overworking is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition to get your ideal position. Would this phrasing help?
In my experience, the need to work more than 40-50 hours a week often comes from a poor balance of day-to-day duties (e.g. teaching, service, taking classes) and long-term commitments (e.g. research, writing a book/thesis, applying for funding).
The day-to-day duties obviously take priority. If you have too many of them, you may not have enough time for the long-term commitments, or your calendar may be too fragmented to use the remaining time efficiently. If you then decide to increase your working hours, you enter the realm of diminishing (and ultimately negative) returns. You work more, but your productivity per hour decreases.
I am not particularly disciplined myself. In order to get research done, I need to feel relaxed and have enough time without interruptions. If I have a meeting, it destroys my productivity for the entire morning/afternoon. The only way to avoid this is having the meeting as the first thing in the morning or the last thing in the afternoon, or combining it with the lunch break. Yet because I have a research position (first as a postdoc and now as a research scientist) with little other duties, I have not felt overworked since finishing my PhD. On a typical week, I spend maybe 30 hours on campus and work another 10-20 hours from home.
You make it sound like the 'day-to-day duties' are ones you might have control over, rather than (as in practice) imposed on you by the institution.
@JessicaB There is always some degree of control. Don't volunteer too much. Consider who is really entitled to a response within 48 hours. Don't let yourself be interrupted when you are working on something. Prioritize. If your employer consistently demands too much, let them tell you what to prioritize. Be open to changing jobs if necessary.
Hahahahahahahaha
Yes it's possible, with some caveats
I have known people, from graduate students to tenured faculty, who manage an 8 to 5 schedule, don't work on weekends, etc.
There are a couple things about them I've noticed:
No job is always this. There are times when you will have to work more. This is true for retail positions, IT positions, academic positions, etc. So if you consider "Going to a conference" to be working on the weekends for example, this becomes a much bigger problem.
They are fanatically disciplined. When they are at work, they are working. There is no checking Facebook, or Academia StackExchange. They plan grant deadlines well in advance to avoid long overnight marathons near deadlines, etc.
They have to defend it. The desire and need to work more will encroach if they let it.
It has consequences. Sometimes, you will have to say no to things, and those things might impact your career, though not always in a bad way.
I am referring more to young scientists after the PhD than professors, although I am also wondering about people with a stable position.
Some professors (tenured) have told me they work 50-60-70 hours per
week.
One should also note that self-reported working hours are notoriously unreliable.
The second point is very important. When I was a PhD student, around twenty years ago, the group culture was that of submitting across the deadlines (and sometimes post-deadline), with scant planning. I had to frequently work overnight. Now, my group and I tend to carefully plan submissions, and we usually submit even 2-3 months in advance, and everything is much more relaxed (and with less risk of rejections).
However, I'm not so disciplined for what concerns distractions. Instead, when I visited some labs in other European countries they had a very tight schedule from 8 am to 5-6 pm, with no distractions apart a short break in the morning and one in the afternoon.
@MassimoOrtolano Yeah - personally, I know in myself that I'm not disciplined enough.
This answer explores cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional factors, and so it is a community wiki. Please add links or details as you can. It would be especially helpful to flesh out discussion of other academic roles or of "field" considerations beyond theory vs. lab. The original answer is based on U.S. experience; for cross-national differences, you might consider adding another numbered section.
What type of institution would you be employed at or eventually aiming for?
In the U.S., the Carnegie Classification system describes colleges and universities by highest degree offered and level of research activity. This taxonomy is where terms like "R1" come from.
Top-ranked research institutions will place more emphasis on the publication process than liberal arts colleges and community colleges (some of which offer tenure).
That said, I have heard that even some lower-ranked research universities that largely focus on teaching (e.g. California State Universities) still require a very high research standard for receiving tenure, because of the competition in the academic job market.
I have experienced that professors I trained with at a highly ranked research university (in an empirical field) seemed to make extreme time sacrifices for their work, and one confided his extreme stress about whether it would be enough to get tenure.
In contrast, as a postdoc at a good state research university (not at the top of the ranks in many fields), I see that professors are still working a lot of time but seem to be less stressed.
In a comment below: "I work at an R2, where tenure and teaching obligations are both relatively reasonable. There is an institutional sweet spot where are enough resources to support your work and the amount of work required is reasonable."
Especially at liberal arts colleges, you may be able to focus on teaching (which has its commitments required to excel) and spend less time trying to push through immediate results. Some colleges and universities may have teaching-centered positions: Can I be a lecturer without doing research?
What field are you in?
Theoretical fields may require people to limit their productive time. If the key output is coherent thought, that cannot sustainably be done at all hours of the day and night. (This seems to be reflected in Dan Romick's answer.)
Research involving lab work is notorious for often requiring extreme hours. Executing and supervising the work requires (at least somewhat) skilled time put in, and results presumably correlate with the amount of time.
What role within academia are you considering?
The role of a tenure-track professor seems to be the natural thing to discuss.
Research-only roles, especially working at research labs or centers led by a star faculty member, exist in many places.
Again, teaching-focused roles sometimes exist.
At some campuses, librarians are also tenured and may be considered part of the faculty.
Student support roles, administrative roles, etc., are part of academia (and often require/reward serious research credentials, so that professors are more likely to respect you).
+1 for the "Type of institution" comment. I work at an R2, where tenure and teaching obligations are both relatively reasonable. There is an institutional sweet spot where are enough resources to support your work and the amount of work required is reasonable.
I'm curious to know why you posted this as a community wiki.
@MassimoOrtolano bcs this is cross disciplinary and crooss culture answer.
@MassimoOrtolano yes, I encourage anyone to add additional links or details. For instance, I lumped together the very different areas of "student support roles" and "administrative roles," and anyone with direct knowledge of these, or of other roles not listed, should feel free to add details. Similarly, the "field" division between theory and lab leaves out a lot and would be great for others to flesh out or add to.
@cactus_pardner Nice, I think it would be useful to add your last remark to the beginning of your answer, to make it clear your encouragement to anyone.
@Dawn Could you please edit your comment into the main answer? That comment is exactly the kind of evidence this answer would benefit from as a wiki.
What does this answer mean "As a postdoc at a good state research university (not at the top of the ranks in many fields), professors are still working a lot of time but seem to be less stressed." not sure if it's about postdocs or professors or both.
@HermanToothrot I am referring to my perception of professors, but thanks for pointing out that it's grammatically unclear, not to mention that the implied comparison is unclear. I'll edit.
I think it's possible but needs extreme self discipline. An example that I know of is Professor Calvin Newport, a TCS professor at Georgetown university. He wrote about his working schedule as a phd student at MIT some years ago.
http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/02/15/fixed-schedule-productivity-how-i-accomplish-a-large-amount-of-work-in-a-small-number-of-work-hours/
In my experience, in Irish and French Academia, it’s definitely possible to be successful without “overworking” (depends what we call overworking but let’s say it’s working out of general office hours) and not working much at home (except reading stuffs and writing down some notes and todo lists but, if you are passionate about your research—and I would advice you to choose a topic that you are genuinely fond of—we cannot really call that “work”).
It’s possible if you are not the over-procrastinating kind of person, if you are well organized and self disciplined, if you can control your various Internet wandering, if you fix yourself some reasonable goals and are not too much perfectionist.
You don’t even have to be a genius (but must have good culture in your domain, sure).
Many people in various domain I’ve met (both sciences and humanities), who are not specifically geniuses have a pretty good work-life balance compare to some engineers, managers or even workers I know, plus sometimes enjoy the pluses of academia lifestyle (travels, in some countries extended holidays and benefits, decent working environment and smart people all around etc).
I don’t say it’s not stressing or it’s easy, I say it’s totally possible.
Personally I didn’t succeed at that because I lack a few of those characteristics.
Of course it depends on many other factors like your department leader expectations, competition in your field, and so forth.
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103366 | Why do universities/research agencies allow their employees to do free peer reviewing which financially benefits a third party?
Following up with this question Has there ever been a strike of peer reviewers? and this Why don't researchers request payment for refereeing?
I understand that peer reviewing probably started when there were relatively fewer article submissions than today and when the academic system was going at a slower pace and was less cluttered with people.
But given how the system has evolved, I am wondering why do employers let their employee work for free for the monetary benefit of a third party?
As far I as know no employer pays its employees to make someone else rich. It seems against any economics principle. Wouldn't it be more efficient to pay reviewers so they would be more motivated, quicker to review, and universities/grants/governments would not pay someone to work for free for the economic benefit of someone else? This might also offset the cost of salary of professors. Any economic return to the employer seems very low considering the working hours devoted to reviewing.
Who should pay for it? The publishers are poor (well, that's what they said), and the authors would basically pay themselves, or each other - not changing anything.
These are two separate questions. One is about individual incentives in a given institutional setting (paragraph 3). The other is about whether the institutional setting produces collectively efficient outcomes and should be changed (paragraph 4). I thinks they're better asked separately to avoid confusion.
The first question's been asked before: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/68191/why-dont-researchers-request-payment-for-refereeing/. The other was briefly touched on here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/100923/how-are-junior-professors-evaluated-for-promotion (last part).
@Mark The publishers are poor — citation needed
@Mark Publishers make tons of money - German universities even started a boycott of some because of this.
This is a very legit and interesting question: one reason why many journals have poor papers is exactly because they don't pay reviewers (namely, most reviewers in those case are PhD/PostDocs who have little to no understanding of what they're doing). Science would benefit a lot by introducing a more professional way of quality measures.
This is the answer. Academics are generally OK with doing it for free, its a peer process, and you expect others to do it too. Its a quid pro quo. The bad part is that someone else is gaining a lot of money from this, not that researchers are not getting paid.
It could be quite simple: to submit an article to a journal you pay $600 so that each of the three reviewers gets $200. But, $200 is perhaps 1 hour of fully-loaded salary for a professor, so it really comes off as being, well, cheap. The benefit of reviewing for the peer review process is that your articles get reviewed too. And, not all publishers are out for the money.
Do you all suggest that I should change my question so that I just focus on the question on paragraph 4?
@AnderBiguri I have changed the question and I think it's not a duplicate anymore.
@HermanToothrot The answer doesn't change though. Its a peer process that is fundamental to the way science works, and you do it for the other person, not because someone is making money. The problem is that someone is making money. Ideally journals would be non-profit organizations , in my opinion.
@AnderBiguri there are many non-profit organizations, people who are employed somewhere else might work for them in their free time, unless their employer agrees to give free time to the employee. As I have mentioned, it's against any economic principle. I don't see why universities would give away all this time/money for free to publishers.
@AnderBiguri: "The answer doesn't change though." - I disagree, because "Its a peer process that is fundamental to the way science works, and you do it for the other person" is in direct contradiction to the (basically true, although it does IMHO not necessarily apply to universities in particular) OP's statement: "As far I as know no employer pays its employees to make someone else rich."
Publishers charge for the publishing not for content. Peer review is something academics do to try to increase the quality of their output, it benefits them primarily.
@O.R.Mapper as you say, it does not apply to universities. Perhaps in the USA where universities can be considered for profit organizations, but not in the rest of the world.
"As far I as know no employer pays its employees to make someone else rich. It seems against any economics principle." Employers pay their employees to do things which benefit the employer. In this case, reviewing does benefit the employer - it helps their mission of improving academic knowledge, and is also valuable experience for the employee. Whether some third party also benefits, as a side effect, is irrelevant.
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61591 | Block-quoting a list: where to put the citation?
Suppose I write something like this
Jones categorises things as follows:
little things
big things
medium-size things
... where the entire list is a verbatim quotation from Jones. The list is block-quoted (i.e., it is indented, but there are no quotation marks). How can I make it clear that the entire list comes from Jones's paper? If I put the citation on the last item of the list, it might look like the citation is only for the last item.
The best solution I can think of is to clarify the situation in the surrounding text, something like the example below. Is this reasonable?
Jones categorises things as shown below. (Entire list is from Jones, 2015.)
little things
big things
medium-size things
Is the list a verbatim quote or just repeating Jones’ categories with your own words?
@Wrzlprmft In this case t's a verbatim quote. But I've also encountered this problem with lists that I have paraphrased, so it would be good to have answers for each scenario.
btw, if you decide to keep the sentence, add the article the, as in: The entire list...
No matter whether you quote the list verbatim or paraphrase it, I'm quite sure you don't need to make it a big deal. Quoting a list of bullets isn't really quoting long pieces of text that would need a note about being a verbatim quote; I would say it's more like quoting a theorem in maths. I would therefore go for one of the following:
Jones [Jon15] categorizes things as follows: LIST
Jones categorizes things as follows [Jon15]: LIST
(Jones, 2015) categorizes things as follows: LIST
etc.
Use the one that is consistent with your citation habits.
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42229 | How can I approach my professor when he is sending me indirect messages with another person?
After achieving my masters degree, i applied for a phd program at the same university i was graduated from. In Germany, a person has to find 2 advisors to be registered as a phd student and thats it for the begining.
I approached a professor whose area is related to my research.I told my intention and research idea to him and he said he would like to be my advisor but he officially cannot be the first advisor due to the number of students he already has. Instead, he suggested that he can be my second advisor and i should find another professor as my first advisor, in this way we can continue working anyway.
I decided to approach another professor (who is also a colleague of 2.advisor) and I asked him if he could be my first advisor and he accepted. We have exchanged more than 10 e-mails, talking about my proposal. When he came to my city, we met and everything looked fine. I continued to work on my proposal and sent him after a while. I needed to get a reference letter from him, as I am applying for potential scholarships. Some of these scholarships demand the reference letter to be sent directly by the professors. He has written the reference letter and wrote me an e-mail saying that he has sent the letter to the grant givers i asked him to send. I have asked him to send the letter also to me as a pdf, since i need to upload it personally as well. He has not send it to me and since weeks he is not replying my e-mails.
Instead, he has sent me an indirect message with a friend of mine (also a student of his), saying that I should work more on my proposal and it would be difficult to get a scholarship with such inaccurate proposal. He told her that I have been rushing to finish it and I should stop and reconsider my steps. He also added that, due to the inner conflicts he has with the faculty, he will be resigning in two years so maybe i should consider to find another first advisor as well.
I found this indirect communication unusual, disturbing and i must say, unprofessional. I decided to send him another e-mail, asking him if he can approve what I heard from my friend so that I can begin to search for another first advisor. Because if he officialy does not write it, i'm still registered as his student and it would be awkward to search for another one while I still have one. He is not replying to this e-mail as well. I have been applying for another scholarship meanwhile (only with one reference letter which is from my second advisor) and today i recieved a note from this scholarship, saying that my file has been taken under consideration but i should send the other reference letter as soon as possible.
My professor is literally blocking me from applying further. I have understood what he meant by taking more time to focus on my proposal but for now I need this reference letter from him. It just doesn't make sense that I cannot have the letter when it is already written for me. My question would be, shall I contact and ask my second advisor about his opinion on this situation or shall I take a step back and wait for my first advisor's conflicts to be cleared and hopefully he writes back to me?
Find a new advisor who is seriously interested and who is able to communicate better with you. You will have a hard time otherwise...
Question to other Europeans--is it common that a scholarship application would want the person applying to upload reference letters or would they normally be sent straight from the references? I mean, could the OP have upset the advisor by asking for the letter directly.
@mkennedy I've thought about it as well, and I haven't personally seen recommendation letters for PhD scholarships required to be sent by the applicant. However, I've seen this for smaller projects (short-time personal grants, industry stages and similar).
@mkennedy it is common that applicants upload their recommendation letters online. not only short time grants but also full time phd grants. at least thats the case i experienced in germany.
Have you contacted the second supervisor about this problem? If yes what does he think about this problem? Is he able to contact the first supervisor?
If you haven't contacted the second supervisor about this problem I would do so ASAP
I haven't. My concern is to create a chaos by talking about this with my second advisor, before the first one officially states that his decision is certain. I'm afraid to put myself (and my first advisor) in a bad situation by spreading a second hand information.
I understand. How long has your first supervisor been ignoring you? Could it be he is at a conference, vacationing, ill or otherwise out of reach?
@Marteen van Wesel I know for a fact that he is very busy due to his responsibilities in two different countries. He was/is quite famous with being successful in disappearing. Still, in this situation, i would have preferred to be directly informed with a short e-mail, i cannot understand how/why he chose such unusual way of communication.
Are you sure the message the other student has given you is a message coming from the supervisor?
yes, do you mean if she has misunderstood?
That could be the case. But maybe, but this is pure speculation, she has a reason to 'scare' you away...
i literally never thought of this... she is a close friend, so i can't imagine she would make this up... even if she would, the result is that he is not answering me, so all signs point to the same direction.
If she is a close friend then lets not assume this.
Maybe you can try to phone the supervisor. Or make an appointment to visit, preferably via his/her (departments)secretary, this way you do not have to wait for an answer
arranging an appointmnt would be an option but he is currently in another country he lives. which is why it is getting kind of impossible to reach him.
Unfortunately this limits your possibilities beyond my 'consulting skills'
You seem to be 'closer' to your second supervisor. Whilst your first supervisor is both electronically and geographically out of reach you could work on making your proposal even better with your second supervisor. Maybe also start working on the first paper/chapter by doing all literature research, thinging about data collection etc etc.
yes. it is sort of a complicated situation. thanks a lot for your input!!
If it's weeks passing and the Advisor One is not communicating, I would consider the case with him as closed. I would contact Advisor Two, explain him the situation, and after seeing that he is interested in advising you, send an e-mail to Advisor One clearly stating that you decided to reject to cooperate with him. You don't need to make it long, but you have to make it precise.
Unless you can reach the people in person, there's hardly anything else you can do. Well, one thing still: Do you know anybody well who knows Advisor One well? Can you reach such person directly and confirm that this could have happened? Can you consult someone else who's close to the situation like your master advisor?
I'm not sure whether i should talk about this with people before he gives me a confirmation. I'm hesitating because as i mentioned above in the comments, my concern is to create a chaos by talking about this with my second advisor, before the first one officially states that his decision is certain. I'm afraid to put myself (and my first advisor) in a bad situation by spreading a second hand information
@stuck We can't see so deep inside. From what I see, it's finished with your Advisor One. That's why you have to make it clear to him. I would only contact the second advisor before to make sure that at least something is sure.
the thing is, i'm not sure that it is finished with the advisor one. He did not state such thing to me directly. Can one take a second hand information for real and act on it? Especially if it will effect my future largely? Moreover, I want him to remain as my first advisor because he is very successful and well known in my area.
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27964 | How long to wait for an optimal/good PhD thesis/program, should settle for less exciting topics?
When I started applying for Phd programs I had big dreams and goals on working on certain topics and spending lots of time in the field. I also had in mind some location and universities but I was flexible to some degrees on the university/location. It took me about 1 year to find a program I was (am) excited about and got accepted (top 10 US institution). Along the way I turned down possibilities with good funding because it was not my focus topic of interested.
Now after a year at my current program there are no funds in place and I am considering moving to programs that have already funding in place but in topics that are not my main interest because there is generally more money in these other topics. I am wondering at this point if I should settle for any topic that fits my skills and falls somewhat in my interests or stay in this roulette situation not knowing when I can really start the research I am interested in. I want to get started on a project and work on my thesis but I also am concerned of doing something that might set me on the wrong track or compromise too much (less interesting research field, worse PhD program, less known university, no fieldwork).
Given the current funding situation especially for certain fields, do PhD students these days have to lower their expectations on pursuing their topic of main interest? . I mean these days people struggle to find a regular job. I would like to add that I am also flexible on the questions I want to pursue within my field, I have flexibility but the funded projects are rare.
I find it rather surprising that you can have entered a PhD program and only be told after 1 year that they don't have funding for you. At US institutions you can often get paid through research assistantships or teaching assistantships, so are you referring to lack of specific funding for the research that you want to do? If you are open to changing research directions, why must you change programs? Can you not find another research group from the same department?
I currently have funding only through a teaching assistantship. This is a very limiting situation because I have no money for fieldwork or lab experiments, and I cannot take time off to go to the field during the semester nor I can visit any other lab in another place. It also takes a lot of time off doing research. Even if I might find funding for the research itself I would also find funding for my salary so there are 2 layers of funding to be achieved.
Personally, I decided that I would only do a PhD if the topic itself really interested me. It is really hard to motivate yourself to continue if you aren't that interested in what you are doing. I know for a fact that I would have left my PhD program in UK a couple of years ago had I not found the topic really interesting (mainly due to my relationship with my supervisor).
..."it also takes a lot of time off doing research". But in most universities, when doing a PHD you will required to do some work that is partially unrelated to your research (supervising undergraduate theses, preparing deliverables for the grant that funds you, working on a project).
@emmalgale but if you don't find a topic of interest what would you do? Find any job and keep applying to programs until you get the topic you want? How many years could that take?
I actually had a job for 6 months before I started my PhD. If nothing of interest came along, I would have just continued working where I was/looking for other jobs of interest. I have never dreamed of working in academia my whole life, and I probably won't work in academia when I finish my PhD. I don't know what I will be doing instead though, and I am due to finish in less than a year's time. I guess I was just lucky that the right PhD came along at the right time.
If you know precisely what you want to do, I am impressed---but not as impressed as the person who will want to hire you! Instead of applying for programmes near what you are want, why don't you write to people in the appropriate discipline and sound them out. Funding can often be found for a bright, enthusiastic student. That isn't to say you are likely to get a big grant, a corner office and be left to your own devices. But with the right supervisor you might be able to get support to design your project.
However you should not really expect things to pan out as you plan them. otherwise it wouldn't be research.
Finally it is not unusual to have a period of "meh" or "second year blues" as we used to call it. So think very carefully before jumping ship.
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86727 | Where can I find free drawings or artwork to use for an article?
These days I see more and more nice pictures in articles, particularly in reviews or articles covering global patterns.
I want to insert a nice drawing of a forest for example, to show ecological processes between different parts of the ecosystem. I don't have money to pay for an artist. Are there some websites with free drawings or clip art, etc., that might fit scientific publishing?
I have looked on deviantart for a while and google but couldn't find anything that fits and that is copyright free.
EDIT: specifically I am not looking for photos but more cartoon kind of art
For lecture notes and presentations I use Pixabay and openclipart. See also this question on Graphics Design SE.
I've found https://www.iconfinder.com/ to be invaluable for simple on the-fly icons/graphics in my professional/academic works. For generic (but professional looking) stock photos I've also gone with Pixabay!
Did you try searching via google images and choosing "labeled for reuse" option?
@MassimoOrtolano Wow! Thanks for the pointer to Pixabay.
@MassimoOrtolano thank you that was really useful.
I want to insert a nice drawing of a forest for example, to show
ecological processes between different parts of the ecosystem.
If this is the level of complexity you're looking at, I'd say it is best handled by an illustrator. First, it'd be hard to find a set of cliparts that feature ecological processes; and if you put a bunch of cliparts with different styles together it's going to look like an 8th grade science poster project. (Which is fine if that's the level you are happy with.)
I know that you said you don't have money, but have you checked out some alternative way to hire artists? There are artists that draw a logo for a couple hundred thousands dollars, and there are many more artists who charge much, must less than that. One possible place to look is the Hungry Artist sub-Reddit. And here what the local community consider a "good and clear" posting. You can also mention to the artist that it's likely to be featured in a publication, which can help them strengthen their portfolio.
I have looked on deviantart for a while and google but couldn't find
anything that fits and that is copyright free.
I'd suggest by all means e-mail the owners of the work you like and see what would be the process of using their work.
And lastly, have you considered drawing them yourself? Free software like Inkscape can do a lot of amazing things. Ecological drawings are also very suitable for a particular style known as isometric projection. They can be drawn using modules and you can paste a single module to form a landscape... the process is quite fun.
Even you're not planning to become a self-trained illustrator, It'd still be good to get familiar with a graphical software. Let's say if you have a background and a set of cliparts from different sources, sometimes little tricks can make them more artistically coherent. For example, unify the hue of the cliparts (e.g. turn them to sepia), passing through the same filter (e.g. through pen sketch filter), or frame them uniformly before placing them on the big forest (e.g. frame them all in circles) may help improve the quality of the art work.
Sorry, I know this is not what you're asking for. I feel that it may be nice to think outside the frame of the constraints once a while.
thanks for the feedback, not exactly what I was looking for so I can't vote for an answer.
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21211 | Is the arXiv a good way to get feedback on one's work?
I have developed a method to process images I use for my research. It's nothing revolutionary but I think it might be useful to others than me, and why not, be worthy of being published somewhere (at least for me to cite when I use it).
As it is outside my primary field of research, nobody in my direct lab vicinity can help evaluating its scientific value or novelty (I did a bit of literature research and didn't find any obvious precedent). Normally I would just put it as an appendix in the first article where I use it, but this one is quite long to describe and completely out of my field. It would thus be off-topic in the journals in which I usually publish.
I though of seeking collaboration from someone in my university who works in signal/image processing, I don't know anyone personally and I foresee possible political issues, authorship quarrels, etc. I would nonetheless like to get some sort of evaluation before submitting to a journal. As an outsider, I wouldn't like to waste an editor's time and make a fool of myself.
I have zero experience submitting to the arXiv, by looking at the website it's not clear how/if there is an active system of feedback, even informal.
Is it advisable to submit my methods paper there and expect a feedback?
I have seen a few papers on the arXiv that explicitly stated "Comments are welcome" or the like in the "Comments" section, but I have no idea whether this actually attracts feedback from people you don't usually work with; I would be very interested to know.
I've no idea and I'm very interested as well in the answers, solutions and outcomes. I'd personally put the paper on arxiv and ask for feedback in stackexchange. Maybe here: http://dsp.stackexchange.com/
@Trylks my experience with the dsp site is that it does not yet have a particularly active users community, and a post do discuss a paper isn't the appropriate format. I could ask specific questions though.
FYI Why doesn't arXiv have a comment section?
I, for one, have given people unsolicited feedback on their arXiv articles.
There is not much of a "formal feedback" system associated with the arxiv. I say "not much" instead of "none" because the arxiv apparently does do some degree of automatic tracking of citations to its papers. For instance this arxiv submission contains a link to a MO post in which my paper is (briefly) mentioned. I had not seen that post before, so that was somewhat interesting. However, I don't know how this system works and it seems to be much less systematic than, say, what google scholar does. In particular, I have 25 arxiv preprints and the arxiv itself lists this kind of citation for very few of them, whereas google scholar lists much more.
In terms of an informal feedback system: yes, the arxiv works very well for that, in the following organic way: for many academic fields and subfields it is by far the one place to put your preprint in order to get the most (and the most interested) people to read it. This includes publication in most journals and the implications this has had on some academic fields are immense. E.g. I hear that in theoretical physics -- a fast-moving field in which it is apparently rare to look up a paper written much more than ten years ago -- pretty much everyone who is anyone uploads their preprints to the arxiv, and as a result theoretical physicists almost never go to the library anymore or look through actual journal papers: they don't need to. My field -- mathematics -- seems to be converging to this kind of phenomenon rather more slowly.
On the other hand, to expect feedback may be putting it a bit strongly. The volume of papers uploaded to the arxiv is fast and rapidly increasing. I just looked at the math.NT arxiv submissions, and last night 15 papers were uploaded. I am a number theorist with broad interests, and if these papers came at a rate of one a day or less, I would probably peruse about half of them. But the current volume forces me to be much more selective. The arxiv is great advertising, but all the advertising in the world doesn't guarantee that people will engage with your product rather than the sea of competing products (competing for their attention, anyway; they need not be competing with you in the academic sense).
In my experience, I most definitely get enough feedback from my arxiv submissions in order to justify uploading them (although there are arguments to be made for doing so even if you never hear directly from anyone about them). It happens that in the last three weeks or so I have uploaded four arxiv submissions. (Since I have 25 altogether, this is obviously a spike in the upload rate. Some other people do this too. Now that I think about it, from an advertising perspective it would probably be better not to do this.) Since then I have received comments on two of the four papers. The two papers that I haven't heard from yet are I think perfectly solid and interesting -- in fact, one of the two concerns the Combinatorial Nullstellensatz so probably has broader appeal than most papers I have written, and the other is a really substantial project that I did jointly with my PhD student -- so the fact that I've gotten no feedback about them seems to be mostly random.
In summary: yes, posting your papers on the arxiv is a great way to get feedback. Will it guarantee feedback? No, guaranteed feedback is exactly what you're buying (so to speak) when you submit to a journal. Other than that it seems impossible to guarantee. I would definitely submit to the arxiv and see what happens. If you hear nothing, then you might try sending a few emails to suspected experts which just point to your arxiv preprint. Having an arxiv preprint versus just enclosing a file adds a certain veneer of legitimacy.
When you did get feedback on your articles, was it from people you had already had contact with? Do you think someone who still has to make a name in the field (this seems to be the OP's case) will get as much attention?
@Ri49: Both of the emails I received recently about my arxiv preprints were "first contacts". In one case, I was somewhat familiar with the person who contacted me. In the other, I had not heard of him before. Both people were, I believe, unfamiliar with me and my work until they saw these arxiv preprints. (Just because you've "made a name in the field" doesn't mean that everyone in the field will know that name: the world is a big place.)
I would guess that truly famous people (say Terry Tao) get more feedback on their arxiv preprints. On the other hand, the arxiv preprints of Terry Tao are more worthy of feedback than average. At the other extreme, when I see a work that makes me think that someone is just getting started -- e.g., it is rough around the edges or has some other inessential flaws -- I am often more inspired to drop them a line, because I think they could benefit from some pointers. Some random veteran researcher does not want or need my help so probably gets less feedback.
Part of whether to "expect" feedback depends on the field. Long papers in pure mathematics: sometimes even if you send copies to people personally by e-mail they don't give you feedback. Short papers in high energy physics: boy oh boy can you expect feedback.
The arXiv is a tool for establishing a presence, but it does not market or disseminate your results. It merely places them in a certain category and presents title, author, and sometimes abstract in a summary fashion, depending on how one uses it. Some researchers get RSS and email updates in their favorite areas about new arXiv submissions, but that should be considered small in number, and not likely to generate interest in your paper.
If you want feedback, you need to advertise your own work, on your webpage, at conferences, at society meetings, and other appropriate venues. You can prepare a short version (abstract or highlight only) and include the URL of the arXiv abstract. Use of arXiv does not indicate peer review, but as there is some endorsement system involved in arXiv submissions, there is also some cachet associated with having the URL.
When you have gotten some people interested in your work, they too can refer to the URL, and this can lead to more publicizing and hopefully direct feedback on your work. It can also lead to others posting their opinions on their blogs or elsewhere, which can be harder to track.
You need to find a way to advertise your work so that people find it on arXiv, use it, then eventually cite it and criticize it.
The main advantages of arXiv are:
the publication timing. When you submit to some closed review journal or conference, you are months before an official decision. During this time (that can get long), you need a way to disclose properly your work;
getting a larger audience. Everybody is not on her university's network, or some universities won't have access to all the journals. If your work is on the editor's site only, then more people than you might think will be blocked by the paywall. Furthermore, some people (I know some in Image Processing) will make monthly explorations of arXiv and publish some reading lists on-line, tghus giving you a larger audience.
There are some more direct ways that are more effective than waiting for a passenger feedback and they help you gain more confidence in general in the outside field.
find the journals in the field of this paper, contact one of their editors
in chief with the same question and disclaimer you have here to seek their
opinion about submitting or otherwise. You get the best feedback from the journal reviewers. They know most people, they are quick in reading and they love reviewing a wide range of work rather than a single topic. generally more open-minded than an average researcher.
Look at review board members of those journals who are in
your university and contact them, you can pick up the phone and ask them for this quick favor to direct you to the right direction(area of literature) to look for precedence of the work. Talking over the phone brings them less liability and they can be more frank, open and less political about the work. It also takes less time than drafting a careful email to a stranger.
Look up the name of professors who teach this topic in your school or any school nearby and send them the paper for opinion, you can even use their office hours to sit and discuss the relevancy of this "outside" work. Office hours are boring and wasted anyway, it will be a refreshing task if it is not close to exam time(busy time).
You can also ask it as a favor (or even paid consulting) from a PhD students of these journal editors/reviewers. PhD students in their later years can be of huge help as they know a lot and they are less committed to non-scientific duties than their professors.
Other questions are more on topic, but let me add that social media and open access, used wisely, are good tools for increase your audience and get more downloads, and (hopefully) more feedback.
Think about:
creating a blog, maybe dedicated to your research
upload your papers in arxiv: this will give us a timestamp, a permalink, and will preserve your paper digitally
use social media to spread the links
Use the blog (or the arXiv itself) as a place to discuss your research (maybe, in more laymen terms), receive comments and discuss with interested people.
Social media (used wisely) do have an impact, and also Altmetrics are developing. Also, please read this question and related answers.
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1206 | How many people read an individual journal article?
General background
Some time ago, I was reading a blog post, where there was some discussion about how many people read journal articles.
I think that such an estimate is important when trying to assess the impact of research on society.
However, whereas internet sites readily track usage. Such information seems a little more difficult to come by when it comes to readership for a particular journal article.
Initial Ideas
Articles vary: Obviously journal articles vary in many ways and just as with citation counts, readership is likely to be highly skewed, perhaps something like a power function. In addition to academic impact, presumably articles that are available for free on the internet are read more.
Time since publication: The number of reads increases over time, but the rate of readership presumably varies over time (perhaps a spike on initial release, and then gradual decline as relevance dissipates).
Definitions of reading vary: Read counts would also increase or decrease based on how reading is defined. At the low end is a glance at an abstract. At the high end is carefully reading the entire article. I'd be happy with a working definition that involved reading at least two pages.
Initial Data
PlosOne article statistics: As a very rough guide, it suggests that mean views per article is around 800 per year.
Journal of Vision: this article reports some download statistics: "In the most recent accounting in July, 2008, the top five articles were each downloaded between 1,993 and 3,478 times."
Some journals list subscription counts
Initial Guess
I find it useful to have a ball park estimate of these things.
My own initial guess, based on minimal data, is that readership is between 50 and 1000 times the citation count for the article. Linking the estimate to citation count makes it easier to estimate for a given article and should incorporate effects like time and journal prestige.
Question
What is a good estimate of how many people read a given journal article?
What data and sources of information justify this estimate?
Is there any established literature that can inform such an estimate?
I'd love to know a good answer to this (with variations based on different definitions of reading, etc.). I think the estimate of 50 to 1000 times the citation count is way off, certainly at least once you get more than a few citations. For example, there are plenty of 200-citation papers in fields that just don't have 10,000 plausible readers. For PLoS journals it seems to be a decent approximation if you count each page view as a separate reader, but that overcounts readers and is an exceptionally permissive way of counting reading.
One argument for my rough estimate: say the mean reads for a 6 year old plos one article is 5000 and mean citation counts is 10, this leads to an estimate of 500 reads per citation. I know it's just a back of the envelope estimate, but it seems plausible to me. I agree that PlosOne is permissive, but it also presumably leaves out many counts (e.g., informal sharing of journal articles, accessing from academic's webpage, syndication, sharing in student reading packs, etc.)
I know some springer published journals publish article downloads for past few weeks/months, see JQC for an example. A potentially more up to date measure but difficult to incorporate into other metrics you mentioned. The top article download in the past 3 months (as of righting this comment) has 885 downloads, and has been cited 30 times (the article is over 3 years old though).
Page views should overestimate readership: many people bring up a page without doing more than glancing at it while web searching, and each actual reader probably views it several times. The PLoS data may be the best we have, and it's certainly interesting, but I'm having trouble reconciling it with my own papers. At 500 readers per citation, there just wouldn't be enough possible readers in the world to account for the citations. For example, the total number of research-active mathematicians worldwide is probably in the low tens of thousands, and only a small fraction have read my papers.
One key question is what the ratio is between the number of papers you read and the number you cite. It's clearly not 500 (unless you read constantly and hardly cite at all), and even 50 seems implausibly high: if you cite just 20 papers total per year, which is not very many, you would be reading 1000 papers per year. So the only realistic way to achieve average ratios of 50+ is if they include huge numbers of readers who aren't doing any citing, and those don't seem likely to be legitimate readers who understand the article.
@AnonymousMathematician I can think of many undergraduates, graduates, and people outside academia who have read 50, 100, 500, or more articles but who have never published anything, except maybe a thesis. As you go up the chain of academic expertise, the population gets smaller and the number of articles read gets larger, but I imagine those lower in academic expertise would still add a lot to readership counts. I agree that it would be useful to have different counts based on type of reader.
The standard joke is that most journal papers are read at most twice: at most once by the author, and at most once by the three referees.
@JeffE, then the paper would have been read four times? :)
No, just twice. (That's part of the joke.)
Re "Time since publication": There must be a course using one of my papers, since every year around the same time, the number of full-text downloads goes up around 10-fold.
Sounds like a Fermi Problem :)
A question I asked myself recently, based on the many cases of plagiarism by top-politicians in Germany in humanities, was, are in humanities more articles/texts published than scholars can actually read completly. The amount of copied text in single phd thesis showed by plagiarism-detection communities in Germany like Vroniplag or Guttenplag is shocking to me. Often 50% of text is not marked correctly as citation. Even the supervisors at the local universities look like they never read some of these thesis completly. I really hope this is not representative, but fear it might be the tip of the iceberg in humanities (in Germany).
Personally, coming and working in a STEM field, I did a very specialized thesis, there are often less than a dozen groups worldwide working on such a narrow-specialized topic (matter of scientific competition/finding a niche, time, expertise and lab hardware in such fields). So there will be articles in peer-reviewed journals that are not really interesting to more than 20-50 researcher and probably a similar number of industry-researchers worldwide in STEM (competition between companies and research groups being not that different due to economic contraints). Without modern search engines, most non-scholars/private men would have a hard time to find such articles. This is another point in your estimation. The reader count for nature/sciene vs. very specialized journals varies a lot, I don't think any average number really helps you a lot or is that interesting. If you know your specialized field, you should notice pretty fast studying some journals, how many scholars have really a interest in that field.
Your PlosOne link is interesting. I can back this up a bit to give you at least a rough magnitude of order, what the reader count of top, specialized, ... journals is. I think it's quite normal, to read articles not completely (even if you cite them), but I take a close look on articles I downloaded, often due to the fact that I use many keywords and google operators to really filter out the stuff I'm looking for. This is something that varies also a lot between different scholars/students. I'm often shocked how students make use of search engines, if it is laziness or ignorance of search operators. This can save you so much reading time. Therefore, I think the extrapolated reader count based on citation factor might be more representative and reliable than using site views/downloads due to scholars, private people, laymen often downloading articles with information they didn't look for because of bad search engine use. Growing redundancy/plagiarism is a further factor here.
Some possible heuristics:
comparison of published aricles per month and web site/interface visitors per month on download platforms like PlosOne, arxiv, nature.
arxiv has around 6000 published articels per month, unique visits 100000, 12,4 million downloads by academic institutions, 50 million overall vs. 12x6000 articles 2011 means downloads/view of abstract of around 170 (I used 12,4 million here), of course, that doesnt count articles not published in that year, so the average read count of a single arxiv article is probably lower than 170 and more touching the 20-50 mark I explained above. But here you have IMO a reasonable and quite objective minimum and maximum limit for a scientific article other scholars are really interested in, 50-170
nature has 900000 unique visits per month, around 200 articles per month, so you see why having an article published in nature is probably more worth than 10 articles on arxiv, PlosOne or many other specialized journals in a distinct branch, even if they are peer reviewed ;)
looking up bibliographies of a some phd thesis in your field at your local university, the number of cited articles is in STEM often in the range of 50-200 (You see even here it varies a lot what a single phd student will/has to read). Of course you do not cite all articles you read, but the factor shouldn't be higher than 2 between (or your search engine use is imho suboptimal) cited and read articles. Considering the phd student will publish 3-5 (in STEM reasonable number or 1 nature article :) ) articles during his phd work and multiplying 3-5*20-50 (average read count by institutional scholars) you also get the number of articles in a phd thesis bibliography of 50-200. Pure Chance?! Looks like a strange calculation, but there is a link between how much article input a average scholar needs and how much output he creates (thats why I multiply both values) and it strengthens my experience/analysis above that 10-100 readers is a reasonable magnitude of order for people being really interested in an single average article. To me it doesn't look like pure chance, but that's the main problem with Fermi questions and answers :)
PS: notice this analysis is focused on STEM, I believe the average read count is much lower in humanities and side-effects like different languages and plagiarism seem to play a bigger role to make a really objective guesstimate
Smithsonian.com recently noted that there are about 1.8 million scholarly articles and scientific papers published each year in 28,000 journals. About half of these are not read by anyone other than the author, a journal editor, and a couple of reviewers. They report that 90 percent are never cited by other papers.
@RGardner Is there a reference to this article. I'd be curious to know what methods were employed to estimate readership. I also think that citations is mostly a "zero-sum-game". Finally, I imagine that readership is related to the reputability of the journal. For example, in general, when estimating average readership, I'd be more interested in filtering, for example, by journals above a certain threshold (e.g., impact factor above 0.5 or 1.0).
@JeromyAnglim I added the link. Please let me know if you have problem reading that page.
Thanks for the link.The claim seems to come from Meho "the rise and rise of citation analysis" which states "Indeed, as many as 50% of papers are never read by anyone other than their authors, referees and journal editors. We know this thanks to citation analysis, a branch of information science in which researchers study the way articles in a scholarly field are accessed and referenced by others." However, I fail to see how the lack of citations shows that an article has not been read by others.
As mentioned by @JeromyAnglim, the claim was made in an article by Lokman Meho, although Meho himself did not really write this; it was added by an editor without, so it seems, a lot of evidence: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/23/academic-papers-citation-rates-remler/
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96647 | Is experience teaching college statistics sufficient to apply for a non-research stats professor jobs?
I am a mathematics professor with a PhD and 12 years of math teaching experience, including 6 years post-PhD.
For the last two years, I have taught statistics every semester. It was a big change from math at first, but now I feel much more confident.
I know several people on this site have served on hiring committees. At a university with low research expectations hiring for a stats position, would an application such as mine be competitive with newly-graduated statistics PhDs?
To generalize, when applying for teaching positions in areas adjacent to your PhD, what evidence can you provide that you are able to competently teach in this area?
Define "university with low research expectations." At a CC, teaching experience only would be fine, but that's probably not what you mean.
A large number of schools don't require yearly research publications. That's what I'm talking about here. I've published 6 research papers in mid-level journals, and I could continue that pace, but not in statistics directly. I guess I'd be looking at schools that ask you to only do some research, but not be a leader in your field. As far as I can tell, that is what most schools not in the top 200 look for, as well as many liberal arts colleges (including 2 I've taught at).
It sounds like what you're actually asking is: If you have a PhD and some research output in A and teaching experience in B, is it possible to be hired as a tenure-track professor of B where you teach B but continue to only do research in A? I'm guessing the answer is no. If they wanted PhDs in A, they would have said so.
Welll, that answers that. If you post that as an answer, I could accept it!
@BrianRushton: Post it yourself and accept your answer. That's fine.
Reach out to your friends and ask them. Also, I would apply because statistics professors can be harder to fill because of the strong demand from industry.
As long as you are still at the assistant professor level, I think your application should be competitive at many schools, provided you have evidence of good teaching. Many mathematicians have gone over to statistics, and at a school that is primarily teaching oriented, what they typically look for is someone who teach well, provide good service and be a good colleague. They probably won't care much about your actual area of research, just that you can cover well the courses they have in mind for that position. If you've taught several similar courses, and have good letters about them, then this is sufficient evidence of teaching capability to me.
In fact, your position would be viewed as advantageous by many, as you should have more experience in both teaching---in fact, possibly more experience teaching statistics---and service than a fresh statistics PhD. Also, presumably you've shown that you can sustain your research on your own.
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28039 | Should I list on my CV research assistantship positions under grants&awards?
Background of person is: first year Phd student, no publications, no research grants, but I have received a fellowship for my first semester that paid my stipend and tuition, so should I list the total amount with stipend and tuition?
Also during my MS I was hired as an RA and received stipend+tuition? Can I list that as a total amount per year, or total amount for the two years, or should I separate the different amounts (tuition/stipend). Isn't this a fellowship/scholarship/grant of some sort since rarely do master students get this kind of RAship?
edit: while RA's are common in the US and the fact that they pay stipend/tuition is well known, in other countries people might think that if I list it only as a job they might not realize it also paid my tuition, which for foreign students in the US can be quite high. I want to convey the importance of this achievement and monetary importance to a crowd outside the USA.
No. Standard assistantships are not "awards." (If it's a "merit award" assistantship of some kind, that's a different matter!)
list your fellowships under honors and awards and your research assistantship under work/job experience or positions.
Although merit is certainly a factor in the hiring of research assistants, most people don't consider assistantships as "grants or awards". They are jobs. List them under "Positions Held" or "Academic Appointments" or the equivalent heading on your CV. Do not list your salary or the amount of your stipend - that's not anybody's business except you and your department.
Some fellowships might be considered awards. They would usually be explicitly competitive in nature, and given by outside agencies. "Named" fellowships from endowed funds might also count, even if awarded by your department. But a research assistantship is not a fellowship.
I understand the argument about the stipend, but a regular job doesn't pay your $20,000 tuition bill, and considering RA's are competitive I want to list this somewhere.
@user4050: Regular jobs don't, but research assistantships pretty much always do. Academics know this, and you can be confident that for academic purposes, someone who sees it under "Positions" will understand that it says something about your accomplishments. (For industry, the situation may be different, and in that case Workplace.se may be a better place to ask.)
should I list the total amount with stipend and tuition?
No, don't list this because it's irrelevant and sooner or later you'll remove it as your CV grows. You can just add it in the Honors and Awards section of your CV, but don't put numbers.
Also during my MS I was hired as an RA and received stipend+tuition? Can I list that as a total amount per year, or total amount for the two years, or should I separate the different amounts (tuition/stipend).
Same as before.
Isn't this a fellowship/scholarship/grant of some sort since rarely do master students get this kind of RAship?
In this case I would just put it under Research Experience.
In general, one can include anything in a CV as long as the "target" of the CV would be interested in it. This raises the question why exactly you are now compiling a CV in the first place.
Are you looking to change programs? Apply for a grant? Just wanting to show off on your web page?
Whatever the answer to this is, ask yourself the question whether whoever is supposed to read the CV would really care about your funding sources. In most cases, I would assume that the answer to this is no, unless the funding sources are particularly competitive and known outside your university.
Finally:
Isn't this a fellowship/scholarship/grant of some sort since rarely do master students get this kind of RAship?
Nope. If it's a RAship it's a RAship. That you got it earlier than others does not "upgrade" the prize in any way. Generally, resist the temptation to upsell your various prizes / grants / fellowships.
One should probably compile one's CV continuously so that one doesn't forget to put stuff on it. I wish I'd gotten in the habit when I was a student.
I disagree with the other answers. At least in fields where a substantial number of students self fund their PhD, having any funding is a big deal. I think you should put the fellowships and their amounts, under "grants and awards", although it might be reasonable to change the title to something like "funding" or "fellowships, grants, and awards".
While a departmental fellowship (or funding from someone else's grant) is not particularly prestigious, it is important. For example, a student with guaranteed money from his/her department or advisor has little incentive to apply for external money (and in many cases might even be ineligible). In evaluating students as potential post docs, I look at students who have had to self fund their studies very differently from those who have had funding. That said, it is important that you do not make too much of a departmental fellowship as it is generally the least prestigious type of funding you can get.
I look at students who have had to self fund their studies very differently from those who have had funding. - Interesting, do you usually even know, given that many (most?) people don't put departmental fellowships in their CV?
@ff524 If I don't see any source of external funding on a CV, I ask potential post docs if they applied for any funding. If they haven't, I ask why and the answer is often "I already had funding".
I was not referring to a fellowship but to a research assistantship, in this case a professor received a grant and then hired someone as an RA. I agree that fellowships should go under grants/awards.
@user4050 the first sentence of your question says "fellowship". It doesn't matter what it is called, it is the funding that matters.
@StrongBad sorry you are right, I am asking two separate questions.
@StrongBad I look at students who have had to self fund their studies very differently [...] How do you evaluate self-funding researchers' profile?
@EnthusiasticStudent I get very excited about potential post docs who have gone out and secured their own funding in the past. I get a lot less excited about potential post docs who have needed funding and either are unable to get it or have not tried.
@StrongBad I always think that professors are pessimistic about self-funding scholars; because it may come to mind that because these people have money, they can hide their low research potential and ease their way to an academic position.
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102780 | Should I inform the people that I acknowledged in PhD thesis?
You write a PhD thesis, in the acknowledgments you thank a series of people from collaborators, to friends, to peers, to professors. Many of these people will never read the thesis so what is the point to acknowledge them? It seems more an exercise for myself. This is different than the acknowledgments in a paper because PhD acknowledgments tend to be more personal and might include friends or people with a non-working relationship that helped in a way that it is not strictly related to the thesis.
Should I send them a copy of the thesis AND mention that I have acknowledged them, or simply let them know in some informal way that I acknowledged them, maybe next time I meet them or sending them a quick email?
It seems a pointless message if they don't know they have been thanked.
@NajibIdrissi the search on stack websites is really underwhelming.
I only sent one copy, to my ex-daughter (she divorced me.) The last acknowledgement said, "Finally, to Gina, who may not remember saying, 'I will when you do!' You've got a lot of catching up to do, Child." All the others were people like committee members, who had read the wretched thing until they were sick of it, or groups like friends and colleagues, and so didn't need/want a copy.
While paper acknowledgements may be different than thesis acknowledgements, the answer in both cases is the same: "Yes, why not?"
Ask yourself, which message do you want to send them?
You do not want to simply inform them about the acknowledgment, you want to THANK them! It's not about your thesis, it's about their help!
How you approach them depends on several factors; do whatever you feel is right.
If it is possible to meet people in person, I prefer this, especially if they have contributed much. If they are further away, perhaps do at least a phone call. You should offer to them send your thesis via email or maybe even give them a printed copy.
In my personal experience, people are always very happy about a "thank you" and it also gives you the chance to stay in contact afterwards.
Can you motivate why you need to contact those being acknowledged? (I didn't do that, and I wasn't even remotely motivated to do so.)
@MadJack I read this answer as "you don't have to contact them, but If you do, just say 'thank you' rather than telling them that you formally acknowledged them. After all, that's what acknowledgement means."
@henning Yes, that is exactly what I meant with my answer. Feel free to edit my answer to add this!
I’ve been acknowledged in a few dissertations, and didn’t see until I read their dissertations while looking at format for my own! I wasn’t mad they didn’t tell me, but I wish I could've been able to express my happiness to collaborate with them in person and not a text, since they already have left the institution. I vote you let them know! Maybe email them the page where they’re mentioned.
I had the same experience! Agree with this answer
I handed over a copy of my printed thesis to every friend I mentioned in the acknowledgments. In addition, I wrote a kind of thanking latter or dedication to the recipient thanking for their support or whatever. When handing over the thesis copy, I verbally thanked them and told they were mentioned in the acknowledgments.
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117476 | What is the consenus of IntechOpen, open access books, are they predatory?
I have received an unsolicited request to write a chapter for a book relevant to my research. I have searched the current editors and they are actual people but not very well known in the field. On their website they show various logos, including web of science.
They do not seem to ask any money, but I see that sometimes go Intechopen was listed in the predatory editors. Is it still the case? Or is it because it is an open access editor that big publishers are trying to work against it?
From what I heard, Intechopen charge authors for publication. I also receive invitations from they every week.
"I have received an unsolicited request to write a chapter" You have your answer right there.
@NikeyMike That is standard for all gold open access publications and nothing specific to IntechOpen. IEEE, frontiers, PLOS, pick whichever you want, they all charge you to pay for their operations.
I have noticed the " IntechOpen " is in the list of predatory publishers (https://predatory-publishing.com). This publisher has a questionable reputation in the academic world . Therefore, do not waste your time sending them your works or paying them money for publication.
Can a request be solicited? How could I ask someone to ask me for something?
Yes, IntechOpen is a disreputable publisher. Do not send them your work or pay them money.
Which evidence is this answer based on? I have read quite a few reports of very thorough review and editing processes and rejections. People who actually authored for them generally seem to be happy with the process. I actually have not read a single report of someone who actually worked with them being unhappy with the process, except for people who were surprised that they had to pay something. The fact that they charge money does not make them disreputable or anything, it's a necessary part of open access publishing.
@jhin Extensive experience with colleagues who publish. I do not have any competent colleagues who are willing to submit work to this publisher.
... but is it because they have had actual bad experiences or because they have heard from yet other colleagues that they consider IntechOpen disreputable? :-) From what I understand, there's also quite a difference between a publisher being predatory and being disreputable, or am I mistaken? I certainly have the impression that Intech has a bad reputation in the community (your answer being a point in case), but I have yet to find out why exactly that is and whether it has anything to do with them being predatory.
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84547 | What are the ethical considerations when publishing a cheating technique?
Suppose I have devised a way to cheat at cards, exams or any other situation in which secret communication with other people or machines provides unfair advantage. The method is novel and uses original technology and algorithms such that I think they might be worthy of a scientific publication.
The method is not a mathematical trick to solve a game while sticking to the rules, in which case I would see no ethical issue with publishing it. Think more of a method to remotely stream answers of a test directly into the retina without anyone else noticing.
I wonder if it would be unethical to publish this method in an academic journal. I personally feel strongly against cheating at exams, a little less strongly about cheating at cards but still, I wouldn't like to be making cheaters' life easier.
In their book "Beat the Market" Thorp and Kassouf write about why they published their method to edge their stock market investments. While the situation is different since using maths to make money is neither illegal nor unethical, some of their arguments might hold in my case.
In short, they say that they chose to publish their trick because other people will figure it out eventually, so:
They might as well get credit for it.
If everyone knows the technique, it becomes easier to replicate, detect and prevent.
As Syndrome from The Incredibles would say: "When everyone's super, no one will be."
Any other things I should be considering?
Let's ignore the legal aspects of that process since they are boring and off topic.
I think you'll need to make your question more specific. Cheating at cards and cheating at exams are hugely different: arguably "cheating" at cards (at least certain advantage-gaining techniques that are banned by casinos) is not cheating at all but is simply claimed to be cheating by casinos who want to ensure their games make money for them rather than lose it, and personally I would not consider the use of such techniques to be unethical, nor the advantage that they confer to be unfair - that situation is similar to your stock market example. So, as I said, I think more context is needed.
@DanRomik I wrote that the method allows secret communication with people and computers, that's not akin to counting cards at blackjack.
Okay, got it (sort of). Well, not sure it will help, but here's an example that comes to mind of someone who published techniques that may fit your description. Interesting question btw - +1.
Vaguely related question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/79358/40589
Also closely related/near-duplicate: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/52/how-to-disclose-a-security-vulnerability-in-an-ethical-fashion. This subject seems to have been thought about quite a lot by the information security community.
They say: do not show magic card tricks to the people you play poker with :-) Apart from that, the usual thing applies: the fact that you make knowledge public doesn't mean that all people will know it. Some people will learn about it, and other's won't. Unless the method becomes universal knowledge, people will get an advantage by it. Though I see the point, I am not entirely convinced by the usual argument that revealing vulnerabilities to a general public makes it general knowledge.
As this is an ethical question I wouldn't expect a single answer to be right. I think maybe reading the physicists by Durrenmatt may help make up your mind on your own point of view. IMO i strongly stand by other people will figure it out eventually.
@DanRomik there is no cross-site duplicate. If it is in another stack, it cannot be a duplicate. You could (if that's the case) apply the cross-posting ban and delete it, but the criteria for cross-posting is very strict.
This this is actually very similar to a software vulnerability. Giving and taking exams is a process. As such they can have holes which can be expoitable.
If everyone knows these holes, they're much harder to execute, and much easier to "patch" than if only a few people knew these holes.
Why is this an ethical consideration exactly? You may call it a cheating technique, your local friendly intelligence bureau/police/military may call it their new MO. The fact you can stab someone with a kitchen knife doesn't necessitate ethical considerations in knife manufacturing.
How about some context reframing? I'll elaborate on what you wrote in the second comment and on the comment of @user25972 above me. The technique is about secret unidirectional visual communication, not about explicit cheating per se. As long as you don't suggest the use case of cheating, you free from its moral implications. And I'm not sure if the inversion holds.
I can’t really tell you what to do with that vague level of detail, but I can give you an example.
There seems to be a team at the Ben-Gurion University in Israel that regularly comes up with obscure ways to transmit data to devices not connected via any network connection.
Stuff like:
DiskFiltration: Data Exfiltration from Speakerless Air-Gapped Computers via Covert Hard Drive Noise,
SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit,
and many many more.
The only uses I see for that stuff is to either help malware authors and intelligence agencies or make people aware of this communication channels to increase security.
If your findings are anything like this, I don’t see a problem.
Update
After you clarified it's about a method to remotely stream answers of a test directly into the retina without anyone else noticing:
There are a lot of uses for such a technique which are not related to cheating. Pick some of them as motivation, and then later in your paper describe how this could also be used for cheating. Maybe give hints what some mitigation measures could be.
There are also groups working on things like cutting keys from long-lens photos and publishing in the literature. And many other fields with security applications. You (the OP) may want to look at http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/disclosure as well
OP, do you mean "connection" rather than "collection"?
@Josef Regarding your update: as I read the question, it's not necessarily about a method to remotely stream answers of a test directly to the retina, the OP was only offering that as an example of the sort of thing they're talking about. So I don't think we should assume that is actually what they're asking about. (Though I think the point you edited in still makes sense)
I'd go by precedents set by large companies such as Google. If you know of specific companies/organisations who would be affected by it, give them a notice period before you publish. After that, publish as you normally would.
Problems don't get resolved unless people are aware of them. If your cheat comes from the actual process, then the process needs to be changed. If it's not, then you've invented a valuable new technique.
In your example, Google are following "responsible disclosure" protocol which is expected behaviour from all those working in information security.
Every research that contains some information can both help and be abused. It's not the research author, but rather the research user who can misuse the research.
I would just say that you shall try to present the findings in an unbiased way. I mean, what you find seems to be about secret communication between a computer and human, and not a priori about cheating. So just write the paper in this way.
Are there any less ethically dubious applications of your algorithm? I take it this is an incidental finding if you find cheating so unethical. If your main intention is to publish the method, perhaps it world be better to emphasise these other applications?
Either way, I'd recommend publishing anyway. Aside from prescedence and contributing to the literature being good for your career, it may also benefit those working to detect and reduce such unethical conduct. As you say, it's very possible someone less hesitant to use it will discover it so people who could prevent it being misused may as well be aware of it too.
You have created a novel method is that uses original technology and algorithms for secret communication with other people or machines.
The uses are not limited to cheating.
Someone that may use it to cheat has chosen to cheat.
If there are legitimate uses then focus on them and publish or sell it.
If the only use is to cheat then follow your ethics. And check with a lawyer. You may have created a method that is against some law - but I doubt it.
As far as poker pretty much any information sharing would be cheating. No coaching when the player is in a hand (one player to a hand) and no collusion. In most (if not all jurisdictions) even use of a computer or calculator is not allowed. Even compiling of advanced statistics can be against the rules. For even online play the analytics are limited. It is typically limited to raw data with very limited statistics and cannot recommend a play or give outcome of a line of play. If a good player had access to analytics available in tools today it would be a big difference. The tools alone are not illegal - using them during play is.
Say you have found an undocumented hole in https protocol. Are you sure that you are the only one ever before and ever after who found that hole? No, you aren't!
Now you have three options.
Exploit it for your personal benefit.
Leave it as is and wait for someone else to decide on their own.
Describe the hole and make it public.
Option one is unethical. Option two is alibism.
In optin three anyone, who read the documentation, can exploit the hole you have found. But https devs can read it as well and have the chance to fix that hole.
The ones that do not use fixed protocol can be exploited and it is their problem, they were warned. And exploits will be succesfull only when obsolete version is used.
Back to your actual question: Describe the method you have found. Describe many uses of it including the cheating. I can assure you that there is someone (including you) that will find ways how to prevent such method for cheating or making it useless.
When grading, the examiner can allow this method and expect students to use it. Then accomodate the test to this new options.
"Cheating" does not warrant a scientific publication, because cheating only works in the dark. Once people know, they disqualify you if you try it, and what's good in a publication that makes itself obsolete the second it is online? Other (non-scientific) magazines might of course like to tell their readers.
(I'm not talking about a cheat that is not really about a specific game, but includes the discovery of a more general human trait or similar.)
If your trick is NOT against the current rules, but you just have understood something about the game that noone else has, then of course it's worth publishing. If the game does have some reputation among academics, that is. Chess, checkers, roulette are fine, some esoteric role-play game from last year probably not. ;-) But if your trick is sufficiently new and scientific, you should be able to transfer the principle.
That's of course generally necessary: You have to show how the principle of your trick is something new and undiscovered, or how it is a transfer from an unrelated subject. If it is bound to the special (faulty) rules of "Monopoly", it's not going to get a lot of scientific interest, and should go to a journal for professional gamblers or similar.
(Ethics is totally irrelavant. Someone else will have the same idea, and use it. It might be ethical to give some people advance notice, but that's hard to decide, as they could also make illegitimate profit with it. Same problem as with security leaks in software.)
(After reading the update to the question: Write the paper about the general technique, and put a notice in it how it could be abused.)
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101586 | Nature Communications and Nature subject journal differences from Nature
The recent branching of Nature in Nature Communications and all the Nature subject journals is confusing.
What is the difference between Nature, Nature Communications, etc. The only clear difference I see is that the subject journals are specific while the other two are not and they all have their specific IF and metrics.
Does submission to one of them preclude the submission to the others? And is Nature still seen as the most prestigious of this group or has it lost some of its appeal/importance after the creation of all these new journals. It seems that this branching would lead to 'watering down' what Nature was like.
"And is Nature still seen as the most prestigious..." Nature was never the most prestigious publication venue for many fields. That being said, I am aware of a couple of fields where Nature was (ca. 1990) and still is considered top publication venue, together with Nature Communications, Nature Methods, etc.
@101010111100 I have corrected the wording, that's not what I meant.
It's weird to me that this question has no answers even though it is a bit old now. I have a friend in STEM who talks about these journals in a way that seems fairly straightforward to me.
A publication in Nature itself is obviously the most prestigious and is roughly equivalent with publishing in the most respected journal in your field.
Nature subject journals are a tier below Nature, but are also extremely prestigious and can allow young PhD students and postdocs to break into permanent research positions.
Nature Communications is a respectable "megajournal" a tier below the subject journals. It accepts a larger number of publications.
Scientific Reports accepts a very large number of publications and most any good science can be published there. Its impact factor is half of Nature Communications.
Generally you only submit to one of these tiers, and if you are a student your advisor would be able to tell you which is the correct one to aim for.
Again, I don't do STEM research and this is based purely on the way my friend talks about these journals. If this is wrong or too judgmental please post a comment.
I think that's a good description of the different tiers. Although you can submit to any of them the same paper, often is up to the editor to send it in review.
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47274 | Letters in high-end interdisciplinary journals – how much do they weigh in a CV? Are they only for experts?
Some journals, especially some prestigious ones like Science and Nature, have these types of articles called letters which are usually an opinion/argument on a certain topic, e.g., to point out something that has not been discussed or some new research direction to take in a particular field.
How much do these publications matter in a young scientist’s CV? Because they are not really based on a specific study. Or are these mainly for researchers who are considered an expert in their discipline?
Also, I am wondering if PhD students or postdocs are taken into consideration if they submit such letter to a prestigious journal, or if a senior scientist needs to be among the authors.
Example: Bushmeat Hunting As Climate Threat
Jedediah F. Brodie and Holly K. Gibbs
Science 16 October 2009: 364-365. [DOI:10.1126/science.326_364b]
I know publishers that issue Letters in blablabla or something similar, which is then basically a journal with a very low page limit (~4 in my field). Because of the page limit articles are more likely of the form 'we got these preliminary results on this model, a more thorough analysis will appear later'. But not 'we developed this model which we haven't analysed but we think more research will yield this and this result'. I'm curious, is it really that subjective an article you are referring to? Do you have an example?
@ThomasBosman I just added an example
Pretty much anything in a very high-end journal is difficult to get there and reflects a judgement on the part of the editors that your contribution will be of broad interest within the field. Thus, it is likely to have a significant positive effect on your CV.
Moreover, depending on the journal the difference between "Letter" and "Article" is often of little significance. For example, in Nature, the difference is that a Letter is 1500 words and an Article is 3000 words. Since most Nature papers are really just the tip of a much larger iceberg of Supplementary Information in any case, this distinction doesn't really matter all that much, and probably few of your readers will even notice which of the formats your article is in.
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95055 | Where can I find a list of Marie Curie fellowship-funded projects?
If such a list does exist, it should since the funding comes from public money. I would like to see as much information as possible. I am interested in the Individual Fellowship but I guess any Marie Curie as this might be useful for people applying for other fellowship types.
I do not know particularly about Marie-Curie (did you check the web-site?) but, unfortunately, there are fellowships in public institutions funded from public money that they provide no info whatsoever (no info about projects, selection criteria, evaluation, statistics, etc)
It's more a question about searching on the Web rather than about academia.
You can find EU funded projects in CORDIS. For example, a list of all Marie Curie individual fellowships funded under the Horizon 2020 programme can be found here.
when I follow that link it takes me to a generic search, and I have no idea how to filter to find fellowships. Maybe somebody can help
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149381 | Web of Science advanced search returns papers not matching the search criteria
I am running an advanced search in WoS but the results don't correspond to my search query, I am getting way too many unrelated the results.
I'm searching in the "Topic" field which includes abstract, title, keywords, and keywords plus. My search is similar to this, the following is just an example but I have multiple AND blocks and then multiple OR within each block:
(apple OR orange OR "banana split") AND ( calories OR protein* ) AND
(adult OR baby)
But some of the results only contain keywords from one or two of the AND blocks, instead they should contain at least one keyboard for each block. I have tried both the advanced search and the regular search using the "add row" option.
I have also tried the same same on Scopus and it leads to 10x less results.
Am I missing something? Why the results are not what is expected?
EDIT: these are my search words
(Digestibility OR “energy content” OR “Nutritive value” OR “forage quality” OR “nutritional value“ OR “energy intake”)
AND
(flower* OR leaf OR leaves OR litter OR branch OR branches OR twigs OR stem OR stems OR seeds OR seed OR fruit OR fruits)
AND
(“herbivor*” OR “ungulate*” OR “mammals” OR “grazer*” OR “browser*” OR "mix-feeder*” OR “livestock” OR “domestic animals” OR “captive animals”)
Does it take all keywords literally? Or is it more sophisticated, taking synonyms and ideas rather than the literal (unquoted) words? If this is the case, I can propose a possible reason. But it is biased toward false positives, which is good, rather than omitting things that might be relevant. But I don't know the internals of the algorithm.
For help debugging search results, you should probably give the resulting search string that WoS generates (something that looks like "TS=(Mono* OR Species) AND TS= (Digest* OR OMD OR Carboh* OR Fibre* OR Fiber*)". That information might help people identify possible causes of your difficulty.
I would agree with @Tripartio that if you're happy sharing your actual search, it might be easier to work out what's going on. I can't immediately see a reason it's doing this from your example, but it's possible something weird is happening with eg one of your real search terms being something WoS thinks is an operator
@Buffy I have read the documentation and at times it can take synonyms but I don't know which of my keywords might have synonyms attached to them.
@Tripartio added my exact search terms.
@Andrew thanks, see above.
Again, I don't know the algorithm, but your second part (after AND) may be so broad if synonyms are used that it is useless for exclusion and so is ignored. If the union of all the papers satisfying the OR conditions is the entire universe it isn't exclusionary. For example, the others there are subsets of "mammal", more or less.
@Buffy I don't think that WoS is aware of the taxonomy of animals, so this could apply to many other fields. It seems to specific of a meta-keyword. But you are right that mammals might pull in all sorts of other stuff, but then why Scopus gives a more focused list of articles? EDIT: mammals only add about 100 papers.
Ok more testing, I was using before the "all databases" then I tried to switch to "WoS core collections" and I am now getting more reasonable results similar to scopus. maybe these other databases are searched in a slightly different way?
As an experiment, you could try your first OR grouping and AND that with a single one of your second and see what happens.
@HermanToothrot I think "All Databases" is definitely the key here. I'll write up an answer below explaining why.
Right, so there are three elements here (let's call them #1, energy, #2, plants, #3, animals)
TS=(Digestibility OR “energy content” OR “Nutritive value” OR “forage quality” OR “nutritional value“ OR “energy intake”)
AND
TS=(flower* OR leaf OR leaves OR litter OR branch OR branches OR twigs OR stem OR stems OR seeds OR seed OR fruit OR fruits)
AND
TS=(“herbivor*” OR “ungulate*” OR “mammals” OR “grazer*” OR “browser*” OR "mix-feeder*” OR “livestock” OR “domestic animals” OR “captive animals”)
With no filters, in WoS Core Collection, I get 107k results for #1, 3023k results for #2, 270k results for #3. (Yours may differ depending on exactly which bits of the Core Collection your institution subscribes to).
Combined - #1 AND #2 AND #3 - I only get 1245, which is much more reasonable. But not the same as you were getting - why? You mentioned in the comments that you were searching All Databases rather than Core Collection.
Trying again in All Databases, I get 265k results for #1, 8490k for #2, 19019k(!!) for #3. And combined, 22532 results. So, we can see the problem here is driven by using All Databases. But why?
Normally, when you search a single database like Core Collection, you are only searching the Core Collection metadata for each article. This is not always as useful as you will find in other databases - eg MEDLINE might have really rich and detailed subject headings, but Core Collection will just have a few keywords.
An "all databases" search will search the metadata in all of them - MEDLINE, BIOSIS, Core Collection, and so on. It thus leverages metadata that only exists in one database even if the paper is found in several different ones - which can be really powerful, or can be really treacherous.
In this case, it's treacherous. You'll note that we get 2.5x as many for "energy", 2.5x as many for "plants", but 70x as many for "animals". So what's up with "animals"?
Web of Science "all databases" includes BIOSIS (if you have a subscription to it). If you open up a paper's record in BIOSIS, you'll see that it includes extensive keyword/subject heading data. This is from the first paper I picked out which matches the "animal" part of your query - it's about congestion charging in China.
Because BIOSIS is structured in a very logical taxonomic way, this paper - and millions like it - will be returned by any search for animals, primates, vertebrates, mammals, etc. And your search includes the keyword "mammals". Bingo. That keyword is massively inflating the results for your third section, and as a result a lot of papers that match parts #1 and #2 but you would not expect to match #3 are showing up as valid matches for all sections.
Drop out "mammals" and we go down to 473k results for that part in all databases, final results 3395 - much more reasonable and in line with the other results. The Core Collection search gives us 145k results for the animals search without "mammals", 1139 overall.
Thanks Andrew! Fantastic answer and very good detective work! Now I see why I got that many results with "all databases".
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10960 | Is it a good idea to continue a PhD with an advisor who doesn't really know your field?
Some background:
I started my PhD in Machine Learning in April this year.
My PhD is fully funded for 3 years, I earn around 2000€/month after tax, working only on research and not doing any teaching.
I'm paid by the grant that my advisor got for his project. This grant his paid by the state.
My current advisor is a world expert in Machine Learning
I already submitted 2 papers with him and most likely submit a third one in a couple of months.
The problem: My advisor just got an offer from one of the biggest company you can think of, to do a machine learning project with lots of different world experts newly hired by the said company. It means that he is going to leave his current position at my university in 4 months.
I can't blame him to take this position because I would have done the same. It's an offer that nobody can refuse.
So in 4 months, I'll have to make a choice.
leave my position and look for a position elsewhere but I doubt I'll find something as interesting and well paid. (My advisor can write recommendation letter for me.)
to stay at the university and choose a new advisor -> the problem is that my current research is highly technical and nobody except my current advisor (and I) have knowledge about it (he was a new junior professor and the university wanted to expand the CS department). The rest of my group is working on a totally different subject and I know nobody will be able to help me for the rest of my PhD.
My advisor told me that the university will find me a new advisor if I choose to stay but warned me that my topic will most likely shift to adapt to the domain knowledge of this new advisor. It means that I'll have to give up my current topic and to tell you the truth, I prefer to quit my PhD than to continue on something that I don't like.
For info, I read this post how-to-cope-when-phd-advisor-quits-midway but I think my problem is slightly different.
tldr: Is it possible to do a PhD with an advisor that can't help you? Or is it better to just go somewhere else?
my current research is highly technical and nobody except my current advisor have knowledge about it — Nobody except your current advisor and you, right?
Yes of course, I quitted my last job and relocated to this university for this specific PhD because of him and the topic. I edited, thx
Is there any way your current advisor might consent to staying on your committee until you are done? He could still review your work at his new job.
He told me that he will stay as an extern in my committee and I could still send him email if I have any problem. My concerns are more in knowing if I'll be able to conduct research on my topic with a new 'random' advisor that will only help me for administrative concerns. If it's a bad idea because I'll have to argue with him to adapt my research. I'm looking for experience/advice from other people.
Are you sure you won't lose the grant money anyway once your advisor leaves? Is another professor going to take over the project and grant?
@mkennedy yeah there is no problem here. I have a 3 years contract. I think the problem will be after the 3 years because I'll not have any possible extension.
judging nobody knows the area except you and your advisor seems
a strong statement to me specially if you just started doing research
(this April ).
I am quite sure there are other folks working on the same topic or
something really close to it. Those are your potential advisors.
Taking into account that you just started and he's a world class
expert, I believe the best thing is to approach your advisor asking
for help. Ask him to suggest some names to you. He certainly
knows other academics and can even approach them asking for a PhD
position for you (have you looked to his co-authors list in DBLP for
example? ). I have heard several cases where advisors help their
students secure PhD positions in other institutions.
Take a breadth view over other's research. Attend their seminars. You
might see their work interesting as well.
DO NOT LOSE YOUR ADVISOR. keep in touch with him and try to be his student even outside academia!
Well I began my PhD in April but I was already following my advisor research for the past year. Like I said he was hired to expand the CS department in a specific domain of Machine Learning. Let's say that the rest of the CS department are in HCI and graph so he was the only one doing research in ML. I'm not saying that other professors are not good, it's just that nobody really do Machine Learning. Second thing, my grant is dependent of the uni. I know that my advisor can recommend me to other labs but then I'll be without any grant if I leave my current uni.
@Kalmos - If you've published papers, you know exactly who (and where) the other experts in your field are. If you are set on continuing your research in this specific sub-field, you may want to consider investigating whether you could switch universities and join their labs.
So the consensus is to start looking at the other labs (even if it means losing my grant) and to not stay with a 'random' advisor. I insist on the money part because I have loan to pay back and I don't want to be crush by debt. I guess I'll stay with my current situation until I find a good lab/grant somewhere else to transfer and continue my research after my advisor leave.
@Kalmos If you are enthusiastic about this particular topic only then stick with it no matter what the price is. But before that make sure you are really interested only in it.
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11097 | Ethics of publishing received peer reviews
What are the ethics of publishing (on the web, etc.) peer reviews received for a paper? Does your answer change if the paper was accepted or rejected?
I am specifically interested in the "one-shot" case typical of computing science conferences, without rebuttals, where there is no or limited dialogue between an author and the reviewers.
This is quite distinct from Can I publish the reviews I write? as here I am talking about reviews I have received, not those I have written - the reviews' authors retain their anonymity, and presumably the paper would be included alongside those reviews.
Vijay's response below includes a summary of much of the other responses and my comments on those.
Very related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/545/what-happens-to-the-reviews-that-people-write-for-journal-articles-after-theyre and http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/647/can-i-publish-the-reviews-i-write
I read both of those before I formulated my question. I am trying to elicit a line of argument to support, for example, this answer - being "frowned upon" is presumably what academics are used to if they're actually exercising their tenure. Why the timidity in revealing the poverty of the anonymous peer review process? (in CS conferences, in my experience)
What are you trying to achieve? Why would you publish the reviews, what would you gain? If you have a certain objective in mind, perhaps it would be better to ask a direct question about how to achieve this objective?
I empathise with the OP. Having received reviews that were incorrect, lazy, territorial, or plain vindictive, I feel frustrated and helplessly trapped in a system which has no incentives to rectify itself and has a dissatisfyingly asymmetric dialogue structure. Publishing reviews are the only outlet I can think of. I can also leave academia, which will mercifully make the problem go away (for me).
@Jukka - I'm trying to understand the ethics of peer review! Read my other comments throughout this page for further context. (Sorry, I'm not used to this stackexchange format of discussion.)
@Peter: This is not a discussion forum, this is a Q&A site. You should have a clear, practical question that can be answered, not an open-ended invitation for opinions and discussions.
@Jukka: Why does my question have to be practical and answerable? I don't follow. This being academia.se, I'd expect the best questions to provoke original research and investigation... Also, am I abusing the comments mechanism by asking each respondent to further justify their response? If so, I apologize. BTW almost every answer on SE seems to have an opinion component; yours is that ethical questions can be annoyingly non-teleological. Oh well. Also my question is not open-ended.
@Peter - Welcome to Academia.SE! I recommend you read the "don't ask" section in Help to get an idea how this community works. While we definitely have more open-ended discussion here than on other Stack Exchange (SE) sites, we still follow the Q-A format common to SE sites. For what it's worth, I feel that this question, as asked, is perfectly fine; reasonably scoped, and definitely answerable.
@Peter, stackexchange convention is to improve your original question following feedback. You could add clarifications about your feeling the review process has flaws or poor quality, that you are from a computer science background, that the reviews you intend to publish are anonymous, etc. Also these sites are for questions that can be answered from existing knowledge, not which require new research and investigation.
Let me add some data points to this discussion. Some items below are about discussing reviews and editors in a public forum and not about publishing reviews.
Jens Teubner makes available the reviews to his papers online. I do not know him but I have heard from someone who does that he said he has not received negative feedback about doing this. Maybe you can ask him for more information.
Doron Zeilberger has published reviews in Opinion 87 and for his paper Automatic CounTiling.
Doron Zeilberger's Opinion 61 is about rejections and accountability (it has a response from Luca Trevisan) and his Opinion 81 is about rejection and snobbery.
Peter Clark's mail to Doron Zeilberger about some material Zeilberger published online. This is only tangential to your question, but I think it's good to keep in mind that when you go down the road of open publication, you should be ready for others publishing material about you or your reviews.
The Writings of Leslie Lamport chronicles in very direct terms the stories behind his papers including some notes about editors and reviewers (for example papers 62, 122,129, ).
In The Writings of Leslie Lamport Paper 132 he talks about having written an 'unkind review'.
I have been meaning to publish my reviews for multiple reasons and I am glad to see that other people have been thinking the same and some have done it. I do not think the result or answer should depend on whether the paper is accepted or rejected. If reviews are published, I believe that one should also publish the version of the article that was used to make the reviews. Otherwise, the reviews are like quotations taken out of context. If there are coauthors, one should obtain their permission first, or at least include a disclaimer that you are publishing your reviews on your behalf only. As an example of a disclaimer, see Lamport's page:
Some of the stories read like complaints of unfair treatment by editors or referees. Such cases are bound to arise in any activity based on human judgment. On the whole, I have had little trouble getting my papers published. In fact, I have profited from the natural tendency of editors and referees to be less critical of the work of established scientists. But I think it's worth mentioning the cases where the system didn't work as it should.
The notification of acceptance is usually signed by the editor of the venue, even in the case of anonymous review, so one should ideally obtain their permission if you will reveal who the editor is. The same applies for reviewer permission in signed reviews. I cannot tell whether people in the links I give above obtained editor permission first so there may be precedent for not doing so. Publishing reviews intended for private circulation still takes them out of context. I would add a disclaimer that the reviews and notification letter were written as private communication and if published without permission of named entities, I would note that too. The latter is in case your intention is to protest the status quo by subverting standard conventions.
I haven't answered your question because I don't have a clear answer. Publishing reviews is not conventional academic behaviour. Doing so can be construed as unprofessional depending on how you publish them and what additional commentary you add. Calling it "unethical" seems a rather heavy handed judgement to make. There are things an anonymous reviewer can do that are clearly unethical (steal research, suppress publication, circulate the manuscript) or questionable depending on context (force citations, comparisons, reject without reading, write ad hominem reviews etc.). There is very little an author can do to wrong a reviewer that is remotely comparable and publishing a review does not seem remotely on that scale to me.
There are multiple reasons to publish reviews including accountability for all parties involved (including authors) and as a form of protest. I believe this intent is important to consider because forms of protest do subvert what may be considered acceptable behaviour. A useful thought exercise might be to put yourself in the reviewer seat and ask if you would be fine with similar treatment. I would not have an issue if the reviews I have written were made public (even if I knew that stylometric techniques could be used to identify me). I do not think all reviewers feel that way.
Finally, let me point again to Jens Teubner's page, which comes across to me as a model of how to publish reviews while retaining professionalism and dignity.
+1 for the excellent and interesting links to the blog posts!
If it is necessary to ask coauthors of the paper for permission, why do you think it is not necessary to ask the author of the review?
Thanks Vijay. :-) I would be completely happy to have my name publicly associated with the reviews I have written, and for those to be published in any form. This discussion is making me think that such publication is not unethical, merely career-suicidal. @silvado - the reviewer is anonymous and remains so. How do I ask their permission?
@Peter I don't think it is career-suicide if you do it professionally. I haven't done so yet because I cannot stop myself from ranting. If a large group of us did it, it will not be unconventional. Another option is to start a Wikileaks for paper reviews and take joy in each other's pain.
@Peter You can only ask for permission via the editor, but I think it is unlikely that an editor will forward such a request.
In the journals where I have been invloved as editor, author or reviewer (except in ones where the review process is open on the web), the implicit understanding has been that the communication is closed between the author-editor-reviewer. I have not seen any explicit rules stated by these journals to control against any such public dissemination but I have not looked for it either. I think that, particularly in cases where it is not explicitly stated that reviews are public, posting reviews without consent from the reviewer would be similar to publisihing someone private letters wihout consent. It is not illegal but ethically very distasteful. I do not think it matters whether or not the review was anonymous. Whether the paper was accepted or not would not matter either. I would consider posting without consent just as bad under all circumstances.
This is my understanding too, but I fail to see the parallel with private letters when one party is anonymous. How about if the review process does not have a rebuttal or response phase? Is it unreasonable to embarrass a (CS) conference by revealing the poor quality of its reviews? How else can we signal this?
Good points. Usualy poor practises become known without such public exposure. I would start by discussing the matter with peers who may have had similar experiences (same conf). How to later convey it to the conf. is difficult to assess at this stage.
Peter, it may be that poor practices become known within the community of the conference, but it does not make them common knowledge to the field as a whole. See my other remarks for other utilitarian benefits of author-publicised reviews (at least in the case of CS confs without rebuttals etc).
As argued in the answer by Peter Jansson, it is ethically not acceptable to publish peer reviews that you receive for your paper, and I agree with that.
But there is also a legal aspect to it. The review is an intellectual work and as such will typically be subject to copyright. And that holds even if you don't know the author. So publishing a review will be a copyright violation, unless you get permission from the person who wrote the review.
If you want to highlight bad review practices, instead of just publishing the review consider citing from it. The actual difference may be marginal, but from both a legal and an ethical perspective, you should fare much better with this approach.
And my answer doesn't change depending on whether the paper is accepted or not.
I'm still not seeing an argument for why it is unethical. For instance, if the reviewers make false or abusive remarks, and there is no avenue for a rejoinder, then anonymous peer review is already not very ethical. One reason to reveal the entirety of the reviews is to ensure the reader knows I am not cherry picking from them for effect.
@Peter - How can there be no avenue unless you know for certain that the people writing the reviews are organizing the conference/in charge of the journal? There's usually a hierarchy of people to complain to.
@Peter I think I understand your intention. In that case, there may also be ethical arguments for publishing (as there are for keeping the reviews confidential). If it is some sort of "whistle-blowing", that's often a difficult case-by-case decision. If you are specifically interested in that, why not ask a specific question?
If the question is "Should the author publish the reviews he got for his paper(s)?", then I'd say no (maybe with some exceptions, but this would have require a per-case discussion). I believe the other answers have more or less covered that.
But, if the question is "Should the journals publish the reviews?", then I believe it would be both ethical and useful to publish the final positive reviews, and I have several reasons for this.
First, giving a positive review is like giving a positive grade on an exam. The person doing so should stay behind his "verdict" with his professional reputation. The review is one of the results of the work that the researchers do, so publishing positive reviews doesn't seem to me much different from publishing the results of the research in papers.
Second, and quite related to the first, I've read some really crappy papers, with nonsense, obvious errors, misquotes, etc. Reviewer cannot "catch" everything, but some of the papers get bad enough that it is obvious that the reviewer didn't do his job. If the reviewers knew their names would forever be publicly associated with such paper, I believe some of these might actually try to do their job.
As for the negative reviews, I see no point in "shaming" the author if his paper was too bad (in whatever way) to be published. If this was not the case, but the reviewer is to be "blamed" (i.e., for misunderstanding the paper), the issue can be resolved with the editor, or the paper can be submitted elsewhere, again giving no reason to make the negative review public.
One might argue that the negative review is also like publishing the results of the research in papers, but I see it more like a failed research, which is not something that one usually publishes.
Please read my comments to the other responses. I know the protocol; I am not expecting reviewers to shed their anonymity; I am not talking about journals that have a robust rebuttal/response process. If you want a concrete proposal, consider this: the author has the discretion to publish the (anonymous) reviews of their paper, whether it gets accepted or not. What is ethically wrong with this? What would be wrong with publishing failed research anyway? It'd save the rest of us some time, in many cases.
O.K., I have reread them now, and the questions here made some clarification as well. I am probably not the best person to answer the ethical aspects, since I always vote for the transparency and I would be O.K. with this (even with my name included in the review, although I am aware that you are not asking about that). However, I see two practical problems: 1) no one, or at least almost no one, would be interested in reading/analyzing reviews for other people's papers; 2) the purpose, beyond "badmouthing" a paper/conference, eludes me.
If someone chooses bad reviewers, this will be reflected on the quality of the publication, which I'd expect to affect that paper's/conference's reputation far more than publishing some reviews that almost no one would be interested in reading. Also, it would probably be seen as a personal attack on the paper/conference, which may cause you trouble when trying to publish in the future. The research community is not above the petty "common human" flaws. To summarize these two comments: I'd advise against it, but for the practical rather than the ethical reasons.
Vedran - thanks for your comments, but as I've remarked elsewhere, my interest is in an argument for why revealing reviews is not ethical. (The venue need not publish the reviews - I am suggesting that the authors of the paper have the discretion to.) As for utility: it gives some indication of what it takes to get accepted, how friendly and constructive the community is, and so forth. It also encourages civility and defensible criticisms. Etc. etc.
As I said, I agree that it should be perfectly O.K. and I don't see it as unethical, but I also have a feeling you'd get quite a resistance (probably not even the open kind, but the one behind your back). I'd also expect such revealing to be labeled "unethical" by many, but without the answer to your "why is it unethical?". After all, that's what the labels are for: avoiding real arguments.
The ethics are the same as publishing any other communication that is assumed to be in confidence: if the content contains critical information about an illegal activity, you may (depending on the nature/severity) be morally obligated to turn it over as evidence to an appropriate party; if it is otherwise urgent or critical for others to be aware, you may be morally encouraged to find a venue to publicize it (as "whistleblower"), and in pretty much all other cases, you should keep in private.
You can complain to editors and others responsible for the conference or journal; you can commiserate with colleagues and try to find out whether this is systematic or not. But trying to shame reviewers in public is very unlikely to accomplish any valuable goal. (It may provide a satisfying revenge at the cost of other of your goals; I encourage you to think very carefully before deciding that this is worth it.)
There are all sorts of reasons you might have a bad review (covered in other answers); assuming one that makes you the most angry and/or feel most self-justified is a very natural reaction, but probably isn't the best way to a productive conclusion.
Instead, when you find things like this, you are probably much better off applying to other conferences, publishing in other journals, and maybe quoting (anonymously) the worst parts of the review in a blog or somesuch explaining why you're no longer going to whichever conference or considering publishing in whatever journal. There are options in some fields for publishing with open reviews (the Frontiers life science journals, for instance).
Publishing the full review and naming names is a good way to make people angry, make other reviewers not want to review your work, and to not get anything to change. Adding your voice (and papers!) to existing movements that seek to improve the peer-review process is much more productive, even if it's not as viscerally satisfying.
To be completely clear about the ethical implications: you are breaching the trust of the editor(s)/organizer(s)/reviewer(s) that reviews are confidential information. Breaching trust makes people less likely to trust you in the future, and is (in most ethical frameworks, including intuitive ones) unethical unless perhaps there is a very compelling case why this must be done. In your situation you have not articulated such a compelling case, especially given that are a variety of other avenues to take if you're actually concerned with the quality of the reviews. If you are working in academia, presumably you know how to quote tiny sections of a full work to make your point--that's much more acceptable.
I don't think you have addressed my question. The reviews are anonymous; I cannot name names. I am not looking for advice; I know the protocol is to hold reviews in confidence come what may. I am asking for what the ethical implications would be of violating this protocol. See my other comments for further details. I should add that I am specifically bothered by the low quality of reviews (which I cannot demonstrate to you without violating the protocol!) and not the accept/reject recommendation. It is not helpful to make this an emotional issue.
@Peter - I added another paragraph making explicit the ethical implications that I was implicitly referring to in the rest of the answer.
I'm not convinced by this normative argument - it is just a statement of convention. I expect to be held accountable for the contents of my papers; why should reviewers not be held to the same standard? As I mentioned before, selective quoting of reviews may not be very convincing - of course I'll choose the egregious parts and then be charged with cherry-picking and ignored. Would your answer change if the reviewers knew up-front that their words may be made public by the author? (See my other comments)
@Peter - Ethics in such matters is based on convention (as is what constitutes abusive language, for instance). If reviews are not confidential information, then you are not breaking convention. If the reviewers knew you were probably going to break convention and publish the reviews anyway, then no, my answer would not change, just like I wouldn't say that it was ethical of you to steal pies from someone's window where they were cooling just because they knew you might. To hold reviewers accountable you talk to the editor or organizer.
Sure, ethics have some foundation in convention. I'm wondering if the convention can or should be changed. If the reviewers knew that authors had the discretion to publish reviews (i.e., adopting this as a new convention), what other ethical considerations would stop you from publishing them?
@Peter - You seem to be asking, "If it's okay to publish them, why would it be wrong to publish them"? I'm sure you can think of special cases (e.g. it would be unfairly injurious to some third party). Otherwise, you seem to be begging the question. I'm not sure what you think you're going to learn from my answer.
This might be related to your question: http://www.peerageofscience.org/
The concept is that 1) you peer-review your paper before submitting it to a journal, 2) peer-reviews are peer-reviewed, 3) participating journals send you publication offers if they like your paper, 4) you may submit your peer-reviewed paper to any journal you like
I'm not sure are the reviews public themselves, I did not use the site yet, but at least there are peer-review scores appearing on the main page
If you're a reader of Science, also check this out: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6067/385.1.summary
Why the down-vote?
I just don't see how it answers the question.
Well, maybe you are correct. It does not really answer the question directly. The reason I posted the URL is that the service is taking a step towards what the OP is asking (open peer-review if I see the question correctly)
That would be better suited as a comment then. Or try to relate it to the actual question then.
I am specifically interested in the case (common for CS conferences) where reviews are one-shot and there is no avenue to respond. Given that there is more prestige in conferences than journals in CS, this gives a lot of power to the anonymous reviewers. I'm specifically bothered by reviews of the form "I'm no expert but I'm going to make a string of spurious remarks and give you a strong reject." I find that unethical and wonder what the field will do about it.
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16793 | Ph.D. in the space between two fields?
I'm applying to PhD programs in two fields and I am interested in the space between two fields, where one is applied to the other.
In my particular case I'm interested in researching Software Engineering as applied to Robotics. I will use a similar but slightly different case as an illustrative example between the fields of Software Engineering and Machine Learning, which I am also interested in. Software Engineering applied to Machine Learning could incorporate better ways, such as new language syntax, to design and implement Machine Learning Algorithms. The opposite would be using machine learning to solve Software Engineering problems, such as automatically discovering database regularities in a data mining application.
Essentially, I see understanding, researching, and being able to apply software engineering to robotics as an area that will expand enormously in the next 10-15 years, much like how software engineering research has expanded as applied to mobile devices and data centers.
I am very interested in both fields, but ideally I would be studying how to apply software engineering to robotics.
How do I explain my interests to both Robotics and Software Engineering professors, respectively?
How do I communicate why this matters at all, and more importantly why it matters to them?
Should I focus primarily on Software Engineering programs, Robotics programs, or both to reach my goal?
Answers based on analogous situations from other fields are welcome.
I do not know about robotics, but the combination of Software Engineering and Machine Learning is already pretty well-established in Empirical Software Engineering.
Software engineering + Robotics = Mechatronics = Software Engineering + Electronic Engineering + Mechanical Engineering
@xLeitix I took a look and quickly found information on applying Machine Learning to improve Software Engineering. How much is there on applying Software Engineering to more effectively develop Machine Learning algorithms?
I do not know about any such work ... But is that actually a research topic? Is the development of machine learning algorithms so special that it requires specific engineering support?
@xLeitix Thanks for the great question, you've helped me find the keywords I've been looking for! Algorithm Engineering is what I'm thinking of. I believe that rather than being special, both machine learning and robotics represent typical examples of fields that could benefit from algorithm engineering support.
I know little about either of these fields, but will try to give a generally applicable answer.
I think your best bet is to find an advisor who already has some appreciation for the intersection of these two topics. Convincing someone who only works on one of them that they are important together -- and that he/she should supervise a thesis involving both -- may be difficult. However, since the fields you mention can often be found within the same university department (computer science), the latter approach is also possible.
To decide which type of programs you should look at, ask yourself in which field will I innovate? If you will apply standard software engineering techniques to do something new in robotics, focus on robotics. If you will devise novel software engineering ideas that are useful with respect to existing robotics applications, then focus on software engineering. Of course, the answer is rarely clear cut.
Important: if you're not substantially innovating within either field, it may be difficult to convince a committee that you deserve a Ph.D. (even though the combination may be innovative). You can't usually get away with work that is worth half of a Ph.D. in each field.
As David Ketcheson suggested, the ideal scenario would be to find an advisor who works in both fields. But even if you find one, he/she will probably have preferences on one topic or the other. Both fields are extremely wide and highly "trendy".
So, I believe it comes down to which field you would like to go more in-depth. Either find a highly specialized advisor in Robotics with some knowledge/applications in Software Engineering, or the opposite.
From my perspective (as a Mechanical Engineer), I would suggest to go for in-depth research in Robotics, which has quite sophisticated dynamics, control and solid mechanics, and couple your research to Software Engineering, with for example the design of an efficient graphical interfaces for control purposes or advanced image processing techniques for trajectories planning.
These are just examples, as I said before, both fields are extremely wide in terms of possibilities, so it is up to you and your advisor to find a middle-ground that suits you both.
I think David Ketcheson's answer is the right way to approach it.
One thing that I'd like to add to it is that you might not be that original: there are plenty of interdisciplinary programs that do this sort of heavy collaboration between fields, there could already be a program that focuses on what you want (or something close to it).
Example: Machine Learning is the intersection of Statistics and Computer Science. There are Statistics departments that do ML research, there are CS departments that do ML research, and Carnegie Mellon University has and entire Machine Learning department.
Bridging two topics is more complex than a simple PhD devoted to a single topic. You must be lead by a professor who is also highly interested in and actually helps with your research plan, not just "allows". Professor should take care to make a plan of the suitable PhD research project from this idea.
So start from finding such a supervisor and drop the idea if you cannot.
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41276 | How can PhD student repair relationship with supervisor after PhD student engages in independent research without supervisor?
When I had just started my PhD in Computer Science in Korea, a Physics PhD student in the EU proposed a collaboration. He and I wrote one paper for a conference. I learned last week that the paper was accepted. He is first author. I am second author.
I did not tell my professor about this project even though he was my supervisor then. I mentioned it to my professor recently. He became very angry. He asked me to remove my name from the paper. He said that all my work represents his lab and my university. I shouldn't conduct other work.
My professor's points
The collaboration should be done between supervisors. (My professor's background and interest do not fit with my coauthor.)
Another issue is none of us can present the paper at that time, asking someone for authorship is acceptable for this situation?
My question
How can I mend things with my professor and continue to collaborate with my coauthor?
The main problem is who will provide funding for you to attend the conference, if both of you have not notified your advisors. Obviously you can't go to the conference, since your advisor disagrees. If the situation is the same with your co-author, it does not make sense to submit a paper for a conference, when none of you can attend.
Was your current supervisor your supervisor when you and your friend started the collaboration?
@Alexandros I disagree that funding is the main problem. It seems that the supervisor's expectation of how the student allocates her time is the main problem.
Did your professor mention any objective specific issue with the paper (or possibly the target venue)? I am wondering because of the remark about "representing the lab and the university". If he didn't, you might want to at least think about trying to switch to another supervisor. At latest at the PhD level, you should become able to work on your own, and setting up your own collaboration and managing to submit a paper that gets accepted is actually excellent. A supervisor who goes as far as requiring to take your name off of your own successful work actively hampers that development.
+1 @O.R.Mapper a micromanaging supervisor is not the same as a scientific disagreement
@mac389 The OP changing or not his/her supervisor is one issue. But sending a paper to a conference without attending it, is a) plain stupid and b) gives both students a bad name in the related communities c) It is highly unprofessional. So, It is major issue for the career of the OP, regardless of him/her switching supervisors.
The point of a PhD is to be able to conduct and lead individual research. I think he is very wrong in his arguments, unless the paper is utter crank, in which case he should explain why. A different and legitimate issue is that he may not be keen on your spending too much time on other things.
Thank you all for the feedback, @Alexandros: i'm not sure funding is the biggest problem. Since he is going to attend the conference to. And he will be in the author list.
So you added your supervisor as a co-author? This was not in your question.
@Alexandros: Given the effort it takes to get something accepted in the first place, I somehow agree with a), YMMV on c), but I don't see any reason to assume b). The paper won't appear in the proceedings or the program listing unless they hand in the camera-ready version (and, seeing that the acceptance notification has arrived just a week ago, it doesn't seem like they're that far yet), and also, all conferences I've seen so far have invariably made it a condition for inclusion in the program and proceedings that at least one author has registered by the time of the camera-ready deadline.
If you have a job as a Graduate Research Assistant that is entirely funded by a US government or similar grant your professor won, and this work is entirely unrelated to that grant, there may be some trouble about working on things that could not be covered by those funds.
The main problem is he is very angry with me. I cannot explain anything to him at that time. Adding him as a co-author is not the solution as he mentioned. He want to have supervisor - supervisor collaboration which would never happened as I mentioned
@BillBarth Thank you, but I study in Korea,
@Alexandros: since this paper is main topic of my co-author and he is the fist author. this paper is sponsor by his grant as shown in ack section.
@O.R.Mapper: you are right in publishing policy of the conference, at least one author should be registered and present the paper.
@AtenaNguyen, I presume the Korean government has rules about how you can spend their money.
This sounds like much more of a cultural specific issue than academic. In Korea, your supervisor is most likely looking at you as a student, not a researcher. Many of the comments here assume the latter. The best way to find out is to ask any other foreign faculty that have been in Korea a long time if they think it is a cultural issue or academic.
Your adviser is a jerk, regardless of culture. This is 2015, not 1895.
Start looking for a new supervisor!
It is a pretty anti-intellectual opinion on the side of the supervisor and completely against the principles of academic science, but I don't think it is something you can talk out. Most probably your professor has already rock-solid opinion on such "disobedience issues".
Call his bluff. Tell him you're sorry him supervising you didn't work out and you'll switch to a new supervisor as soon as possible.
In Korea, do you work on a PhD as a job (for a salary), or is it more a student-like situation? If your supervisor pays for your time, he gets to decide what you spend it on.
@gnometorule This is a very shallow analysis.
We western people need to stop giving Asian students cultural advice. Many of the suggestions here are sound based on western standards, but sound like horrible mistakes for somebody studying in Asia.
@xLeitix: I think it's a bit more complicated - probably, many of the commenters (without entirely excluding myself here) are assuming (maybe mistakenly so) that the title PhD is not just an arbitrary combination of three letters, but that it carries some meaning, which is, despite considerable differences between countries, somehow internationally agreed upon on a very abstract level - along the lines of "has a very good overview of the research in a particular topic", "can conduct publishable research", "has acquired the skill to act independently and make their own decisions". ...
@xLeitix: ... Of course, much of this is based on implicit, "unwritten rules"; it certainly doesn't help that we are probably doing a bad job distinguishing between "what we think is internationally expected of a PhD holder" and "what may or may not be practically acceptable for a student in the respective culture". The least solution I can think of is to at least make sure we point out which - possibly culture-specific - rationale we see for our suggestions, especially when those suggestions are of a "this is not usually done" general style.
@BillBarth That is simply not true. "there may be some trouble about working on things that could not be covered by those funds" <-- how about knitting sweaters? That's also not covered by funds. A student's life should not be controlled by their advisor to this extent. After she goes home she should be able to do whatever she pleases to.
@Szabolcs, I meant the work they do in the office, on the job, as covered by their GRA funding, of course. If this student worked on this paper without their advisor's knowledge while funded on an NSF (say) grant and did so during the actual working time of their employment, that could, potentially, cause problems for them if the funded grant and the work done here are not even plausibly related.
@Szabolcs While you have a strong point, here is a question for you. Lets say that as a supervisor, your student didn't do absolutely any progress on his research for lets say 6 months. Suddenly, you found out that in this time your student was working "after he/she/it went home" on another project or two, completely unrelated to the PhD. Would you be happy with the situation? I am not saying that this is the case here, but if the student had a sudden drop in the production at some point, which can be correlated with this new peoject, I could see the supervisor being unhappy.
... Of course, there is a big difference between being unhappy and overreacting.
@NickS There are many ways to waste time and end up being unproductive at work: her work could be affected because she was dating, because she was playing computer games or because she was doing another research project. The latter is not any worse than the former. But this question isn't about not being productive: it's about the supervisor demanding that she takes her name off the paper. The supervisor has no right to do this, or to control what she does in her spare time. This is like a company claiming rights over any software their programmers wrote, regardless of whether ...
@NickS ... it was done on office hours or at home, using office equipment or a home computer. It does happens, but it's not right and shouldn't happen. Of course you're right that writing a paper is a big project and probably does take up a lot of time, also realistically it's very hard to determine how much time she's been spending "on work" or "on personal projects". So yes, there might be reasons for the supervisor to be upset. But we're walking a dangerous thin line here when suggesting that if she's being paid to do one research project she cannot also do a different one ...
As with most questions here, we're seeing one side of the story. It would likely sound very different if it were asked by the supervisor ...
It's reasonable for your professor to want some input as to how you spend your time, and it's customary for students to keep their advisors informed about other things they are working on. You have perhaps committed a slight breach of etiquette by not telling him about this project earlier.
However, in my view, it is deeply inappropriate for him to ask you to take your name off the paper. He is your advisor but he doesn't own your life. You have done the work and as an academic it is your right to publish it. An interaction like this would have me thinking about looking for a new advisor, quick.
If the professor has technical concerns about the quality of the paper itself and thinks that it is not ready to appear in the scientific/academic record, then he should discuss this with you, and you should share those concerns with your coauthor and come to a decision on their merits. But I feel it's not appropriate for your professor's reputation to be part of that conversation - just decide whether the paper is good and publishable or not.
Your second question is unrelated but I'll address it here anyway. Do not add another person as author (your advisor or anyone else) just so they can present it at the conference. In order to be an author, a person must have made a significant intellectual contribution to the work, and it's unethical to "gift" authorship for any other reason.
In many cases, conferences allow a paper to be presented by someone other than an author. So if you know someone who is attending the conference and willing to present your paper, they may be able to do it without you unethically making them an author. But if the conference really requires one of the authors to attend and neither of you can, then I suppose all you can do is withdraw your paper and resubmit to a conference which you can attend.
It's unclear whether the student was working with this professor when her friend and she submitted the paper.
I'm under his supervisor when I conduct the results with my friend
"it's customary for students to keep their advisors informed about other things they are working on" - and this comes with a great deal of variation. I am used to settings where this information sometimes does happen by telling one's advisor about having successfully submitted a paper the advisor didn't yet know about (and advisors generally being very happy about that kind of own initiative, as well as about touching upon different research topics beside one's current core topic, and about breaking out of the apparent constraints one's grant might officially impose).
@O.R.Mapper. If you look at previous OP's question, 5 months ago she was not even on a PHD program and she was talking about how nice her advisor was. So, I am not 100% sure if we know the whole story about the issue. It is different working on an independent project in your first few months of your PHD and different to have an individual collaboration along with your main body of work of your PHD.
@Alexandros: I don't think I understand the difference between working on an independent project and working on an independent project that involves other people (and with that said, the "main body of work of one's PhD" dynamically emerges based on whatever one does, not the other way round), but I agree we may be lacking some insider knowledge for this particular case.
I may be wrong but it seems that OP was working on the paper in his own time, on his own budget, not using the resources of the professor. Professors/supervisors do not own people like their pet turtle.
I'm sorry, but this is Korea. The professor/student relationship is very different than the one in the west, particularly if the professor is from an older generation or is a reputed researcher.
@Greg You are right as long as this extra work doesn't interfere with the research done in the lab. A student should have a night job, even if that is not time spent at work, it would still interfere a lot with the lab work.
Decode your professor first
If this is a scientific disagreement, then you should try to have a scientific discussion with him and perhaps the other author.
If this is your supervisor's indirect/cryptic way of saying that he cannot pay for this, look for other means of funding. Perhaps your university has a general travel fund. At worst, you may have to sit this conference out. Anecdotally, I have seen many formerly well-funded professors who project their anger at their shrinking budgets onto students in situations like this.
If this is an interpersonal conflict, then you have to decide whether the tension results from miscommunication or deeper differences. As @O.R. Mapper says, a PhD student is learning how to conduct independent research. Shockingly, that involves the student taking initiative.
Tread lightly
We all have to deal with irate superiors from time to time. If you two cannot have a civil conversation about this, work around him until things cool off. (See the general travel fund above.) Is there an ombudsperson? Can someone from your committee who is at your supervisors level mediate?
Mind the politics
Invoking Sayre's law, politics in academia can be stupidly vicious, especially if the issue involves people at different levels in the hierarchy. It is wise to recognize if your supervisor is playing power politics and wiser to recognize if supervisors you might go to tend to do the same thing. You wouldn't want to win the battle but lose the war.
He is your advisor but he doesn't own your life. – Nate Eldredge
Professors/supervisors do not own people like their pet turtle. – Greg
Your adviser is a jerk, regardless of culture. This is 2015, not 1895. – gnometorule
I don't think there is such a thing as "regardless of culture". The world is very diverse and sadly, the English-speaking Internet tends to forget that.
As you may have noticed, the hierarchy is very strong in Korean society. Your professor may not "own" you, but he is both older than you and hierarchically above you. As such, you owe him respect. In theory, if he gives you an order, you have to comply, whether you like it or not. If he asks you to come work on a weekend or late at night, you have to. In practice, rules are more relaxed for foreigners, who are not expected to know all these cultural details, but I suggest you be aware of them to avoid any mistake!
What you really have to remember is that you and your professor are not equal. In all situations, your professor dictates what is right and what is not, what you should do and what you should not.
That being said, there are (mainly) two kind of professors:
Your professor is from an older generation and / or he is a reputed researcher in his field. This kind of individual tends to be very traditional and very finicky on "proper respect". If this is the kind of professor you have, I strongly advise: do not displease him. Just obey. Lie if you have to, but do not go against him in any way, the consequences may get way out of proportion. I am serious!
Your professor is more understanding and used to dealing with foreigners. First, start with an apology and try to explain the situation with him: you didn't know you were not allowed to do what you did, and that you will refrain from doing it without his approval in the future (again, lie if you want to, just try to not offend him). He will probably listen to you (but it's unlikely that he will change his mind anyway) and move on. Perhaps try negotiating a collaboration with him and the other author's supervisor.
So, in short:
How can I mend things with my professor and continue to collaborate with my coauthor?
Make an apology, do (or say you will do) what your professor wants, and continue collaborating discretely. Do not get caught again and do never mention any external research again. If asked about it, feel free to lie if needed. It is OK to say something and do the opposite, the only important thing is to not show disrespect.
This may sound stupid or senseless to foreigners, but this is how things work, whether you like it or not. Hopefully, it will change over time, and in fact, it is already changing, albeit slowly.
Hope that helps.
Lying is stupid, regardless of culture. "Do not get caught again and do never mention any external research again". You do understand that a simple google search will retrieve all published works of the student, right? So, how can it stay hidden? Also, if you start lying to your collaborators (advisor), what will stop you from lying to strangers (peer-review) to fabricate results?
Your first sentence makes me question whether you have read my post at all. Anyway, lying in Korea is common: face and respect are more important than honesty, it is a fact. It is not about fabricating results, it is about preserving a relation of respect with the supervisor. Completely different. The OP can stay hidden by using a nickname, even though I frankly doubt the supervisor will take the time of searching for his name in future publications anyway.
Lying is common in Korea [citation needed]. Do you have any studies on that? And the fact that you may lie in your public interactions, does not mean everybody does it. Also using a nickname for publications? That is another silly idea. The OP will spend all this time for her "hidden" research and then she will get zero attribution for it? And how does that help her in her academic career?
@Alexandros You seem to be surprisingly sure about a culture, that, based on names, is not yours but Park's. And, yes, there are indeed Asian cultures were lying is widely considered more appropriate than truthfully telling that you are not going to do what your superior suggested.
@xLeitix You are not Korean either (as far as I can tell). Anyway this is not the Korea.SE and advising the OP to lie, when her hiding the truth from the supervisor until too late, was already harmful to her, may do further damage. Also, do you like your students to lie to you? Are you happy when you find out? Will it be simply OK, if your student was Korean or Asian? After all, "there are indeed Asian cultures were lying is widely considered more appropriate", so it will not really be their fault.
@Alexandros Will [lying] be simply OK, if your student was Korean or Asian? The way you say this suggests that you think there is some kind of inconsistency to advise that a Western student should fit in with Korean culture when they are in Korea and that a Korean student should fit in with Western culture when they are in a Western country. Please explain the inconsistency, for I fear I am missing it.
@starsplusplus "A Western student should fit in with Korean culture". No, he should not if that means lying to your collaborators or violating his ethical code. E.g., If some weird society expects that women should be obedient to men, that does not mean that a female PHD student there should simply tolerate her bulling by her male coleagues to fit in.
@Alexandros I think you may be startled by my use of the word "lying". Maybe this is not the right word. It is not about fabricating results or cheating on others or violating ethical codes. It has little to no moral significance, it is merely about "saving face", if you will, i.e, avoiding embarrassment of either parties.
@Alexandros You completely missed my point. I didn't make any assertions in either direction. I was pointing out the flaw in your argument. You appeared to be trying to say that because it would be wrong for the Korean student to lie to her supervisor in America, it would be wrong for the American student to lie to her supervisor in Korea. Reread my previous comment for the details. I am criticising your logic, not your viewpoint; defending your viewpoint doesn't prove that your logic is sound.
I don't think there is such a thing as "regardless of culture". But there is such a thing as the ethical standards of the global academic community. It is my opinion that for a professor to coerce a student to remove their name from a paper they have already written, for reasons unrelated to the content of the paper, violates those standards as I understand them. The professor's actions in this case may be culturally acceptable in his culture, but I stand by my assertion that, according to general academic ethics, they are inappropriate.
Well, you are dealing with politics, cultural habits, and Asian values all at the same time. He is thinking you should be working for him ALL the time. And having the Asian/Confucian values as their background: respect for seniors and authority is more important than being right or wrong. Or whatever...better not to have too much assumptions about others' thinking.
So solution should be quick and easy: if he want your name removed, either continue with another pseudo-name + email, or retain your name + not using the university email, just your personal email will do. Since this is done without using any of the University's resources, you have the right to retain your name as well, and remove all obvious link back to the University. This is not being dishonest, but your right to do things outside your "working hours".
Ok, if you really want to be honest, just follow whatever he said, and showed him nothing has been done externally. But in the background, just maintained your relationship with your collaborators. Many times in life, a paper is often read and forgotten - good ones are few and rare. But your relationship with other people matters most - in future, you may even coauthor many more papers with your existing supervisor + the "illegitimate" partner after you have completed your PhD.
Bottomlines is always: BRIGHT IDEAS that matters most. A name (in the paper) is just for eternity sake (or may be not): it is not as important as the content of the paper. These contents/bright ideas, are always a result of a cordial collaboration / interaction among people - and you should aim for that, actively working towards perfection.
So solution should be quick and easy: if he want your name removed, either continue with another pseudo-name.... — This is neither quick nor easy. Many academic cultures consider publishing under a psuedonym to be unethical. In particular, once a paper has been accepted, changing the name of one of the authors to a pseudonym may be impossible.
BRIGHT IDEAS that matters most. — Sadly, [citation needed]
I will throw out another opinion here: if your supervisor was paying you to work on his research agenda, it is unethical and unprofessional to instead work on something different without telling him. Likely the money came out of a hard-won research grant that specifically stipulated the type of project you were to work on, and your advisor will be on the hook with the funding agency when the project doesn't deliver.
Even if the supervisor gave up nothing but his time training and mentoring you, there was still an expectation that you would work in good faith on the project the two of you discussed.
That said, what's done is done. Taking your name off of the paper is not an appropriate fix, nor is adding your supervisor's name gratuitously. Have a candid talk with your supervisor, ask him for his specific concerns and how he suggests you make things right, and in the future strive to keep communication more open so that a similar situation does not arise.
I will throw out a strongly dissenting opinion. If you are being paid to do X, then doing Y is neither unethical nor unprofessional. Not doing X is unethical and unprofessional. My paying you to study frogs does not forbid you to study both frogs and trees.
Yes, but I maintain that if I am paying you to study frogs, your secretly publishing a paper on trees represents a very large amount of research whose completion was unlikely to have been compatible with you having spent full time on my research on frogs.
Certainly it will have raised questions, in my mind and others, about whether you were working on the frogs in good faith. Acting in a way that raises these questions is unprofessional, whether you actually committed theft of time or not, and is easily avoided by decent communication.
unlikely to have been compatible — So what? If you are making good progress on your frog research, why should I care what else you're doing? On the other hand, if you aren't making good progress on your frog research, why should I care about what else you're doing? On the gripping hand, if I can't tell whether you're making good progress on your frog research, then we have a very different and much more serious problem.
If I am paying you I expect you to work a certain number of hours (full time) on your frog research. Those don't have to be the 9-5 hours of a typical job, but if you are spending less than full time on frogs because you are caught up on your secret side project, I will be upset and I imagine most professors would be as well.
And if you have some funded students and you don't mind them working on something unrelated to your research agenda, get them in touch with me, I can find them something to do ;)
My students are free to get in touch with you on their own!
Maybe JeffE and all the other people saying similar things are doing a different kind of research than I know about, but I recall that doing academic research involved a lot of time mulling over things at different times. In-between I'd be doing various things, but thinking over things in the "back of my mind" was very important. I think it's understandable, even reasonable to be annoyed if a student is obviously working on other projects. Doing a PhD is not like a 9-5 job where you clock in and clock out.
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18254 | Can I accept two offers from universities and decide later on
I've received offers from two UK universities (Masters degree), first conditional and second unconditional. There's always a possibility that I won't meet conditions so I'd like to keep the second university as a back-up. Is it possible to do it like this, that I accept both offers and after I meet conditions, I will let the second university know, that I decided not to start studying?
Offers of what? Undergraduate admission? Graduate fellowships? Jobs?
I'm sorry I didn't specify, postgraduate, MSc.
No.
In principle, you could do that, but it's not advisable, for the simple reason that if either school finds out you've accepted another offer, then both schools could end up rescinding their offers, and would be within their rights to do so. (Programs want to know how many spots they have filled, so that they can accept more people if needed to meet their enrollment targets.)
Basically, you need to commit to one school only. If the offer is conditional, then you should weigh the probability of meeting those conditions before accepting the offer.
You can also ask the second school how they would feel about this. If they are sufficiently interested in you that they are willing to risk your not attending if the conditional acceptance works out at the other university, then you're all set. If they do not approve of the idea, then you shouldn't do it.
I guess that's probably for the best.
I found this forum http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1833694 that discusses exactly the same question. They say it's quite common that postgraduates accept two or more offers and later on let a university know that they received better offer. What do you think about that? Are there any legal obligations?
Even if it were common, I'd say it isn't ethical.
Yes, for UK undergraduate admissions, you can accept two offers at once - but no more!
One will be your first choice; if you don't meet the conditions, then you have a shot at the second one. So in your case, you would put the conditional offer first, and the unconditional one as your "insurance". (The other way round doesn't make sense, as you can't possibly miss the conditions on the unconditional offer!) You could also just accept one offer.
Make your choices carefully, because the subsequent process is automatic - if you meet the conditions then that's where you're going, unless you manage to convince the university to release you. That is technically possible but should under no circumstances be relied on as a strategy.
For more details, see Replying to your offers on the UCAS website.
I have assumed you are applying to become an undergraduate, as the language of conditional and unconditional offers is particularly associated with this system, and is very standard. If you are applying for a postgraduate position, or for a job, then please disregard this answer.
I've applied for postgraduate so unfortunately, it's not the case.
Oh, OK - then the answer by aeismail is correct, and the comment below by Anonymous Mathematician is also true.
What do you think about this: thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1833694 They say it's common to accept two or more offers.
@wec - It can be done, in that universities can't literally force you to show up, so if you tell them you've changed your mind then they have to accept that. (Assuming at that point you haven't already signed paperwork, paid fees, etc.) But it is not good to put yourself in a situation where you know you will have to break your word to one of the institutions. Better to follow Anonymous Mathematician's advice and ask directly.
Fundamentally, people in charge of admissions do not like it when applicants try to game the system (and they may well remember it if you later try to apply for a PhD at the same place, for example). They are much happier about answering questions and being kept informed.
I completely agree with you, thank you for valuable info.
You can accept as many offers as you wish, but all your chosen universities can find out about any places you’ve accepted through UKPASS. To be fair to other applicants, when you’ve definitely decided which place to take up, inform the university. They will then change the status of your application to enrolled to tell the other unis you won’t not be taking up any other places.
See the UCAS website for further details and official information.
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1967 | Requesting raw data from previously published research
I am working on a mathematical model to help explain some experimental results and generate new hypotheses. Unfortunately, I have neither the resources nor interest to gather experimental data, but in this particular sub-field publishing a model without showing its usefulness on some experimental data is not common.
There are several existing experimental findings that can be explained by my model. However, they are presented in other modeling papers and the raw data is not available with the paper or on the authors' websites. In the papers they only present partially-analyzed data (for instance, they show results averages over participants, but not individual participant's results; or sometimes they only give the results of statistical tests).
I want to contact the authors for their raw data and have 3 related questions:
What is the protocol for contacting by email to ask for authors' raw data? Is this common?
Will the researchers expect to be invited on-board as co-authors? Or is a citation to their papers, and an acknowledgement of the form "AK would like to thank X, Y, Z for providing their raw data" sufficient?
If my model (without fits to specific data) is in a pre-print state then should I send a pre-print to the authors I contact? What if the pre-print points out weaknesses in their approach to modeling similar problems?
See a site for requesting data from papers: http://www.isitopendata.org/
This will, as it seems nearly all questions on this site, vary based on field. My answer applies to Epidemiology and medical research only. Your mileage may vary.
It is very common for this to happen in my field. There has been an increasing emphasis on using meta-analysis and systematic reviews to summarize bodies of work, and with those there is almost always a need for some more information, raw data, etc. to come from study authors. It's fairly routine now. They may not say "yes" for a number of reasons. One may be that they're working on their own projects in a similar direction. But there are others - that privacy laws prohibit releasing data to just anyone or their funding dictates similarly is a fairly common one. So be prepared for "no".
As for the authorship question, it likely depends on the extent of your data request. Generally, if you're just asking for a few numbers that go into a reported value, then in all likelihood, an acknowledgement is more than sufficient. If, on the other hand, you're asking for access to the raw data from their 5 year, many thousands of dollars cohort study? You're likely going to have a member of their study team be an author on your paper, and there will be far more extensive approval processes than just "Sure, .csv file is attached."
"If my model (without fits to specific data) is in a pre-print state then should I send a pre-print to the authors I contact? What if the pre-print points out weaknesses in their approach to modeling similar problems?" For the initial contact, I'd suggest it isn't necessary, because what you're really trying to find out is "Is the release possible". At later stages, I would expect to see what you were doing, either in a full explanation, or as a pre-print. As to your "What if?" question - so what if it does? Science is about improving the methods we use.
I do not think of it as the amount of data being asked for, but rather the extent to which the data is critical for publication. Supplying a ton of data which gets condensed down into a single data point in the publication does not warrant authorship in my mind. Supplying a single number which is critical to the publication might.
@DanielE.Shub It may indeed vary - I picked an example in my field of a request that would very likely require approvals, authorship, etc.
Many journal formats (and the arXiv) indicate a "corresponding author". That's the person you'll want to contact.
Doing so isn't a everyday occurrence, but it does happen.
In some fields access to the data may be covered by agreements to keep it confidential for a certain period of time (or until first publication). These agreement often specify the answer to the authorship question as well.
While I would try the corresponding author at the given email address, often the corresponding author is the grad student who did the work. Grad students tend to move after finishing and sometimes even drop out. If that fails, and I didn't know anyone on the paper, I would try the last author.
In principle, the arXiv lets corresponding authors keep the contact email up-to-date, but the fall back strategy that Daniel suggests is good.
This may or may not be helpful in this case, but you may be able to persuade them to publish the data separately, in a dedicated data journal or other data archive. Depending on the field, they may already have done so (some UK funders, for example, are starting to require this as a condition of funding).
This gives you the additional option to give credit by citing the dataset directly as well as relevant papers, and also opens up the possibility that others will use and cite the data as well, bringing more prestige to the original researchers.
Currently, some researchers are open to this type of data publication, while others are not, so your mileage may vary.
If you want to find data to reuse, or to suggest somewhere for them to deposit, there are some lists of archives available to look through, such as the DataCite repository list and Databib.
As a side note, figshare allows to upload raw data and get a DOI identifier for that (making it easy to cite and get credit).
I talk about biological sciences, but this can probably apply elsewhere. In theory, the moment a set of analysis is published, the data associated with it should also be public or available for:
Other researchers who want to use them
Other researchers who want to evaluate (i.e. repeat) the experiments and verify the initial findings.
So, in principle, if the publication does not have a link to the public data, then you could contact the journal and complain. Of course it depends on the data, but dna sequencing or protein analysis data are usually available. There might be legal or other limitations for patient, medical or other types of data.
This is the formal way.
There are some exceptions: The data are public but no publication is out yet. Because of policy they want/have to provide the data to the public, but the publication is in preparation. In this case you cannot use the data and you have to contact the PI to see how your analysis comes in conflict (or not) with theirs. Every institution has different guidelines.
Back to the initial issue, in reality, you might find resistance in getting access to the raw data of a published work (which, as I said it shouldn't be the case if the data are not sensitive, because anyone should be able to evaluate and validate their analysis).
You have two options: Check publicly available data (depending on your field - I can propose some in biological sciences I'm familiar to, if needed) and work your models on them. That would be easier for you, as you could avoid peculiar situations.
Contact the authors and propose a collaboration to do a different type of analysis than theirs (with your model) on those data. They would be happy to collaborate with you and they might even provide some insights on your analysis that would make it even better.
To the initial questions:
I would say that it's common. It's more common to look directly at the public repositories and see data that are already published. The collaboration proposal might be a safer approach (in terms of results and good relationship and future collaborations)
They might be expecting to be invited. It depends on the terms of the collaboration. In any case, it should be agreed upon on the beginning, so you can avoid the frustration at the time of publication (and after you have spent time on working on the data).
I'm not familiar, but if you go for a collaboration, then it makes sense to explain your method at the first meeting. If you just need the data, or you take the data from a public repository, you don't have to send anything.
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50118 | How should I email dissertation to committee?
I have to send my doctoral dissertation to the members of my committee and I wonder how I should write the email. It is not a question of inviting them to be on the committee (they have already agreed with my advisor), but on how to tactfully send them the dissertation.
Besides, is there anything else I should send besides the dissertation and my CV?
You guys are overthinking these things.
Is this seriously a question about how to write an email to a few people? Lordy...
If you are obliged to send them the two documents, simply do so. Keep the cover letter as simple as possible. Just remember to address each of them separately, it looks better.
Dear Prof. Smith,
I'm sending you, as you are a member of my PhD committee, the PDF version of my thesis together with my CV. In case you had any questions, feel free to contact me at any time.
I'm looking forward to meeting you.
Best Regards,
capadocia
As Bill Barth points out, make sure the people know when the defence is. In most places, university staff sends the official invitation, but if you know the dates, you can include them:
I'm looking forward to meeting you on October 15 at the defence.
What, no "thank you"?
@LightnessRacesinOrbit Well, when sending to the opponents, I would probably add a thankie. When sending to the committee members, I would likely consider it over-polite, but remember I'm in (quite pure) maths.
If they've already agreed to be on the committee and all that, you don't need to say anything fancy. "Here is my dissertation, please let me know if you have any questions" will do just fine.
you beat me by 2 minutes, I decided to include a sample letter, too :-)
The other answers are good, but it might be better to also include some reminders about the timing. If you are sending them your dissertation today intending to defend and graduate this fall, you should say that. You might suggest that assuming everything is looking good that you'll be getting back to them soon to start looking for a time in December that everyone can get together for your defense.
I would suppose that they receive this in the official invitation, which is sent here by the university stuff. I think I should make a remark about this in my answer.
@yo', My university didn't use an official system to find a date. The student, supervisor, and the committee members agreed on a date around everyone's schedules, registered the date with the university, and then it happened. The committee might have gotten official notice at that point, but the date was set by the parties not the university.
Ah ok. Well, still, they are aware of the date, so it's fine.
In my department, in order for a Ph.D. degree to be awarded in a particular semester, all of the committee members must submit their (short) reports to the graduate school office by a certain date, and two of them (the adviser and the "second reader") must submit more extensive reports to the department by an earlier date. If the OP's university or department have such rules, this would be a good opportunity to remind (or inform) the committee members about the deadlines.
I would keep it as short and simple as possible. These folks are going to be doing a lot of work for you (i.e. a lot of reading and reviewing) so the last thing they need at this point is a long flowery email.
You might want to throw in a link to a version of it in the cloud or something though. Giving extra file formats and ways to access the document from various devices would probably be well received.
I am not sure throw in a link to a version of it in the cloud is a good idea. What if there is some discrepancy between the e-mail version and the linked version? Which one do you want the commitee members to read?
Why would there be a discrepancy? This doesn't seem to make sense... if we assume the author is capable of attaching a file to an email isn't it fair to think that he or she is equally capable of copying the same file to his or her Dropbox or Google Drive, etc? Documents don't randomly mutate when stored in a cloud as opposed to an email...
I like the multiple format idea. Some people like to read a PDF, some people like to read a Word file.
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84649 | Italicize translated text?
Should the translation of a name or title be italicized? In quotes? Roman type?
Some examples:
We encoded the list of the National Classification of Occupations (Clasificación Nacional de Ocupaciones, CNO).
They coordinate with the Comunidades Autonomas.
One of these events was the Spanish-American War (La Guerra de Cuba).
Does the publisher list any style (e.g. Chicago) they prefer to stick to? If yes, what does this style say?
Publisher unknown. I'm proofreading for an author.
Ask the author for the specific format they're using, if they have one.
Well, there is only one thing that is for sure: Be consistent.
Other than that, it really depends. If no specific style is prescribed, ask yourself the question: Does the reader benefit from visually marking the foreign words? This shall be your decision point, and we can't know the answer without seeing the manuscript.
Second thing is, how shall these be marked; there are several options:
We encoded the list of the National Classification of Occupations (Clasificación Nacional de Ocupaciones, CNO).
We encoded the list of the National Classification of Occupations (ES: Clasificación Nacional de Ocupaciones, abbr. CNO).
We encoded the list of the National Classification of Occupations (“Clasificación Nacional de Ocupaciones” or shortly “CNO” in Spanish).
...
Which one you choose is up to you. You probably don't need to specify the language if all your foreign terms come from a single language. And so on. The style is mostly up to your or the author's preferences, just remeber: Be consistent.
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56691 | A term similar to "ABD" for PhD student who's completed all coursework but neither comprehensive exams nor dissertation?
Is there a term similar to "ABD" (All But Dissertation) that denotes a PhD student who has completed all coursework, but who hasn't taken comprehensive exams and of course hasn't done the dissertation?
I left my PhD program unfinished, just before taking the comps. Hoping there's something similar to "ABD" that I can put on my CV/resume.
Thanks!
I won't try to give a definite answer, because I'm not 100% sure. But I think that there's no such notion for it. Note that in many countries, there are no courses taken in a PhD programme. So for people in such a place, passing some exams is not interesting at all; they only long for a scientific work done.
PhD pretty much amounts to the thesis... There might some loophole somewhere, but it would be pretty weird... You can put that you started and didn't finish....
Similar question here: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28717/when-can-a-person-be-called-a-phd-abd
Why not just refer to it simply as it is: either "complete coursework toward(s) Ph.D. in ..." (noun variant), or "completed all coursework toward(s) Ph.D. in ..." (verb variant)?
What's wrong with "former PhD student"?
Ah, thanks "yo'" for pointing out some PhD programs involve no course, at all. I completed 69 credit hours in my program. (I wonder if I should mention the heft course load in some way? (PS: I've jotted down a few salient details re. why I left, below.)
Thanks, everyone. I really appreciate it. John, I'll check out that thread, thanks.
In the US, you'd have completed the coursework master's portion of a typical PhD program. There's no shorthand for this. Some people take a master's degree at this point and go on to something else. It's reasonably common to do so. I don't know if typical corporate recruiters know about all of this, but academic-ish labs, government labs, and similar organizations that employ a lot of folks with advanced degrees will understand what happened. So much so that you probably want to have a good stock answer for what happened to your PhD aspirations that isn't a complaint of some sort.
Great suggestion (having a stock answer), Bill, thanks!
Thanks, Bill. I'll def have to work on my "stock answer," as my real answer would only sound like complaint. (See the narrative I've posted, below, added to Pete L. Clark's comment.)
@martyl1000, that's not a terrible story, actually. Good luck with the writing!
In PhD programs where entering with a master's degree is not expected, then the best way I can think of to denote this status is to list your enrollment in a PhD program for a period of years and then list that you got a master's degree at the end. (Added: Forgive me for not mentioning this explicitly, but: of course you actually have to get a master's degree at the end in order to do this! What was left implicit is that this is a very common procedure for students who drop out in the middle of a PhD program. Often it is something that can be arranged with relatively little trouble.) This does not correspond to exactly what you asked for: you mentioned "completed all coursework", but in fact many PhD programs do not have much in the way of required coursework. I think it gives approximately the right spirit: i.e., you left in the middle of a PhD program, you were not almost finished in any sense, but there is a recognizable sense in which you completed some of the work.
If you entered your program with a master's degree, you could still list this if you've gotten a second master's degree (I have seen this happen). However if you were enrolled in a program which has a master's degree as a prerequisite, then I don't know what you can write: at least in my experience there is not a clearly defined level of "PhD coursework" separate from both master's coursework and exams and PhD-level exams.
I should also mention that in most non-academic walks of life, "attended a PhD program and didn't complete it" is about as fine a point as most others will naturally draw. There is usually little or no stigma in having left a PhD program.
I don't follow your logic. If you didn't actually get a Master's degree from the school, I don't think you should claim one by virtue of having completed some or all of the courses in a PhD program. Whether or not the work you did towards a PhD is sufficient to earn you a Masters is a judgement to be made by the school, not the student.
While I cannot tell whether there indeed is a stigma or not on dropping out of a PhD program, the analogy of people in the U.S. sounds unfitting. A PhD is an undertaking that takes a limited amount of time, the general dimension of which (+/- 2 years) is generally clear beforehand, not a lifelong commitment that is citizenship (for those who consider leaving a country "dropping out of something", anyway). Also, a PhD means achieving certain standards, and people usually drop out because they do not think they can live up to those standards, not because they think they're ...
... too good for a PhD. The opposite happened with the ancestors of U.S. Americans, who left hoping to build a better place, not because they felt inferior and unable to live up to the standards of the old world. Lastly, the ancestors of U.S. Americans had to spend some effort leaving their original countries (read: becoming independent), whereas it's the opposite in a PhD again: You do not spend any effort to leave, you spend effort to stay in.
@Tyler: Yikes, I seem to have left implicit that one needs to actually get a master's degree in order to do this! Thanks for pointing it out: it has been added.
@O.R. Mapper: It wasn't an analogy exactly (there are four things in analogy), it was an inequality. But not the most convincing one: I took it out. And for what it's worth: it does take some courage and effort to leave a PhD program, especially to do it in a productive way. I have known several PhD students over the years that took much longer than they should have to muster that effort.
Thanks, everyone. Just FYI, I went into the program with an MFA. It was a fiction writing PhD program, at that time the #2 program in the country. Mine is a not an atypical PhD-student horror story: my committee chair published her second novel in two years and promptly left academia; my second-in-command succumbed to alcoholism (and what a mean drunk he was!); and his replacement died. Needless to say, I felt abandoned, adrift. My writing was going really well -- I won the program's big prize that year. So I left and finished my book. It didn't sell. But I became an entrepreneur. The end.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, O.R. and Pete. I really appreciate.
@martyl1000: Thanks for the additional comments. Your situation is indeed rather different from the typical one on this site, which is quite focused on STEM disciplines. I don't have any direct experience with fiction-writing PhD programs, but I'm having trouble of thinking of a non-academic job which has a PhD in fiction writing as a requirement. Having a prize and a published book seem better to me in all real world situations, and if you are now in the business world I especially doubt that the PhD would matter to anyone. Do you have a situation in mind in which it does?
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57894 | How should I communicate that I do not hold the views expressed in a paper I wrote
I am writing a paper for a class that requires me to write from a perspective I disagree with. To an external observer it may not be clear that I am not allowed to disagree with the premise of the prompt.
I disagree with it to such a degree that I would like to add something at the beginning or end of the paper that expresses my dissent in case my work or record is made public for some reason. It would be professionally and personally embarrassing to have the work become public.
Is there a way to do this professionally? Is there a way to do this without offending my professor?
Can it be incorporated in the introduction like "while I personally do not agree with the premise, some points from the angle of the proponents are worth discussing. In this paper I list a, b, and c...?"
It is in the form of a proposal, the introduction is really a letter of transmittal, it would feel forced to shoehorn it in there.
Footnote on the title page: "The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the personal beliefs of the author."
@JeffE that's much too weak. It sounds like a cop-out, something you would write if you were actually a cannibal/Nazi/racist/whatever and wanted an outlet to express your reprehensible views while maintaining plausible deniability so you cannot be accused later of actually holding those views.
If this is just for a class, why do you really care? You arent going to publish it. If you really want you can delete it when its done.
@DavidGrinberg A seminar paper of mine got a citation. But well, I uploaded it in a public place.
@thisischuck, regarding whether you can do this without offending your professor, that seems very tricky - I get the impression you and him/her have some kind of fundamental disagreement about the subject of the paper, and if you take proper care as I suggested in my answer to make sure your views are not conflated with those expressed in the paper, that seems like precisely the kind of action that is likely to offend the prof. I don't really see a solution except to rely on the professor's sense of professionalism and hope for the best.
@DanRomik It's really none of the readers' business what your real opinions are. But if you insist, take the word "necessarily" out of the disclaimer.
@DanRomik - So in other words you agree with what JeffE wrote because that is exactly what the OP asked for? Of course the OP didn't ask to be compared to the groups you mentioned, but the OP obviously seems to disagree with what they wrote to the same level of contempt.
@JeffE logically you are correct, but in this situation the OP obviously cares greatly how others perceive his views, so from his point of view it is not okay to have a document bearing his name essentially saying "I may be a racist [say], or I may not be one - it's none of your business". Removing the "necessarily" would be an improvement, but I still feel your suggestion wouldn't meet the OP's goals as he stated them in the question.
For what it's worth, this is sometimes known as a non credo statement.
This isn't worth making an answer, but while you seem to have accepted the inevitable about writing the paper, if the stance you are being asked to take is abhorrent to you (morally, religiously, or psychologically), I think you could have grounds to challenge it, perhaps even as a violation of your free speech rights (where compelled speech is as illegal as disallowed speech), depending on the laws of the country you live in.
@DavidGrinberg You never know where your paper will surface 10, 20, 30 years down the road. How many Presidential Candidates have had to distance themselves from seemingly controversial essays written in their university days?
@SnakeDoc I don't know, is it none?
I would precede my paper by a strong explanatory note disassociating myself from the views expressed in the paper, in boldface and surrounded by a big black frame. For extra clarity and safety, I would then quote verbatim the assignment that the project is fulfilling, before starting the actual paper. E.g.:
Confessions of a cannibal
Final project for Philosophy 101
[your name]
Explanatory note: the views in the essay below are written in the context of a final project assignment for the course Philosophy 101. They are fictional and do not represent the author's actual views on cannibalism or on any other subject.
Project assignment: "Write a 4000-word essay written from the point of view of a cannibal living in New York City in the year 1987. Discuss the narrator's views and opinions on cannibalism and other topics of interest."
[body of the essay]
I should note that you say "To an external observer it may not be clear that I am not allowed to disagree with the premise of the prompt." It's not clear to me if you mean that you are not allowed to include an explanatory note of this type, or even to quote the assignment text. If that's what you meant, I'd have to say that forbidding you from including such explanatory text would in my opinion be tantamount to requiring you to actually pretend to be a cannibal (or other such person with unsavory views), which would be a highly unethical requirement. In the face of such a restriction, I would frankly refuse to hand in such an assignment, and take the matter up with the instructor and/or higher university authorities.
+1 for adding the directions copied verbatim. This is probably even more important than the explanatory note because it explains exactly what was asked of the writer and will make the issue very transparent.
Nice creativity. Something tells me you have an active account over at World Building...
@JPhi1618 that would be nice, but one time-sucking online addiction is enough for me at the moment...
I'd like to point out that the traditional debate form often involves defending a proposition that you don't agree with, as may the traditional essay form. A brief statement at the start that this is hypothetical/fiction will do the job (as I said in the comments, this could be abbreviated down to "n.b.: non credo").
But I'm reminded of the student who, in response to te Writing Requirement's demand for "a great man", wrote an essay about Hitlers strengths and successes. The school accepted it without an eyeblink; they understood that he was protesting the assignment, and that all that mattered for their purposes was that he had proven he could write. Unless you're doing things like actively posting the essay without explanation, and/or posting it to hate sites, I really don't think it will be that hard to explain.
It's extremely troubling if the professor will not allow you to disagree with an opinion that is a premise of a writing prompt, except perhaps in a debate class, as was mentioned in a previous answer. It may also not necessarily be the case.
One approach to consider is to email the professor, tell him that you disagree with the premise of the prompt, briefly explain why, and suggest an alternative prompt that is substantially the same but assumes a premise that you can agree with.
The advantage to this approach is that either (1) the professor may permit you to discuss the subject from a position with which you agree or (2) you will have on record that the professor required you to answer the prompt as written.
Why is it extremely troubling?
@jwg: Clearly, the OP finds it extremely troubling, because to him it would be "professionally and personally embarrassing to have the work become public". For me, the key word in my answer is "opinion": if the premise is an opinion--a statement that is unsupported by evidence or argument, or only by evidence or argument that the student can refute--then, in my opinion, requiring the student to accept the opinion is tantamount to indoctrination. Of course, this is my opinion, so I will not ask you to accept it if you find this argument unconvincing.
It's extremely troubling if the professor will not allow you to disagree with an opinion. What gives you the impression that that's what's happening? The professor obviously isn't forbidding the student from disagreeing (what would that mean anyway?), he is simply requiring the student to write an essay from the POV he disagrees with, which is quite a different thing. Writing an essay doesn't entail agreeing with the views it expresses. What I agree would be troubling is if the professor forbade the student from including a disclaimer clarifying that the POV of the essay is not his own.
@Dan: My impression is that "the professor will not allow him to disagree" may not be what's happening--I'm responding to the OP's claim that he is "not allowed to disagree with the premise of the prompt". Unfortunately we don't have the text of the prompt, but my impression was that it is not "write A from the POV of B" but "write a proposal C" which implicitly requires assuming D. This is a problem if the student reasonably believes that D is untrue. By discussing it with the professor first he might avoid the need to write a disclaimer at all.
Provide context by putting the prompt/constraints at the top of the page, preceding the content.
Use this to demonstrate that you are answering the task assigned, rather than coming up with the content completely on your own. That helps shift a reader's evaluation to "how well does this fit the prompt" instead of trying to assess it against their own evaluations (like agreeableness of points presented).
Use a pseudonym. Write a separate email, or tell the professor in person, what your pen name is for this project.
You don't need to give a reason for using a pseudonym.
That's a clever idea, but what if the professor prints out a copy of the submitted paper, and to make sure he remembers, scribbles the OP's real name at the top; 20 years later, OP is running for office, and the paper emerges bearing OP's name. Journalists then ask: "Did you write that paper?" and OP obviously cannot honestly deny it. However OP in this situation does not have the strong disclaimer suggested in my answer to prevent a misinterpretation of his intents. Anyway, +1 for the creativity.
@DanRomik In such a (perhaps contrived) scenario, I'd like to hope that a simple explanation of the assignment would suffice…plus, we now have this question for the record! :D
20 years later, OP is running for office, and the paper emerges — Who still keeps paper for 20 years?
@JeffE people who plan to run for office (and their enemies) :-)
@JeffE: supposedly confidential data are being leaked frequently. All it takes is for some hacker to dump the entire university server on the net, after which point anyone with a search engine will be able to dredge up anything. Maybe this doesn't happen yet, but I would not bet on this not happening in the next 20 years. I already try to write each and every email in a way that it could be publicly available on the net without embarrassing me. Paranoid? Maybe.
@StephanKolassa: I take it one step further. Assume that everything you say or do is being recorded, and act appropriately. I find that it makes me a nicer, more understanding and forgiving person towards other. However, I sudder to think of what this would do to revolutionary types, and I completely agree that society needs a good helping of revolutionary types.
A more likely backfire: the professor misses the clarification and marks the OP with a 0 for not turning anything in, while wondering who is this "thisischuck" that wrote an essay for the class.
Just back up the conversation with an email. If you have a paper trail, you can easily get the grade changed.
Find something better to worry about.
First of all it is very unlikely that someone is going to try and smear you by either publishing this paper or keeping it for a number of years and then publishing. I don't know why you are specifically worried about this, but it's hard to think of many situations where someone would have a significant motivation to do this.
Secondly, even if someone does try and do this, it's unlikely to work. Information simply sticks around longer than it used to at the times of Barack Obama's birth certificate and Ben Carson's joke exam. If it's possible to find your paper, it's probably going to be relatively easy to find the nature of the assignment, details of the course, the contact details of other people who remember the situation, etc.
Thirdly, disclaimers and so on just will not protect you against a certain type of attack. If someone is really holding up your paper in the future as an example of your true but secret beliefs, they will easily be able to claim that the disclaimer is fake, that it was not present in the original, that its presence was itself a deception, and so on. These claims might be laughable - but so was the original one. This won't stop some people from believing them.
You might be someone with a very active imagination, who spends their whole time reimagining how their current actions will look when they are a presidential candidate in the future. Maybe you are simply indulging in a form of role-playing where you cut down cherry trees with your little hatchet, and then refuse to lie about it, and so on. I suspect however, that you simply object to having to write a paper from an opposing point of view, so you have invented this supposed practical objection as a form of protest.
In either case your energy might be better spent trying to develop your compassion and emotional maturity.
These types of things to come up, and as you point out they come up fairly often. "I suspect however, that you simply object to having to write a paper from an opposing point of view, so you have invented this supposed practical objection as a form of protest." I had already completed the paper when I asked this question.
Your addition of an ad hominem statement at the end is quite telling. There were some valid points in there but you go off the rails in the last two paragraphs. Perhaps this answer is more indicative of your own inability to cope with the fact that you have not achieved your goals in life.
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6107 | Should I order references on surname or paper title when using Harvard style?
I use the harvard referencing style.
One of our assignment instructions is:
The reference list should be in alphabetical order
Lets use the following references as an example
Kopecky, J. and Simperl, E., 2008. Semantic Web Service Offer
Discovery for E-commerce.
Sanvido, F., Sanchez, D., Mendoza, A. and Lopez, A., 2011. Dynamic
Negotiation Layer for Secure Semantic Service Oriented Architectures.
Following the instruction I was given to order the references, is it generally implied that I should order the references by the first authors surname: Kopecky then Sanvido.
Or is it implied that I should order by the paper titles: "Dynamic Negotiation Layer..." then "Semantic Web Service..."
From Harvard website:
The entries in the list should be in alphabetical order by the
author's last name [sic].
As pointed out by aeismail in the comment, the second criterion is the date:
Works by the same author should be ordered chronologically, from oldest to most recent
Of course, you might have many articles with the same author and same year, in that case, they say that:
If your reference list includes multiple works by the same author in
the same year, identify them in your parenthetical citations and in
your reference list by a lowercase letter after the year, assigning
each letter in alphabetical order by the title of the work
That instruction should really be "authors' last names," since it's not just the first author's last name that gets used in the alphabetization process. Year should be the second sorting criterion.
@aeismail Thanks for pointing out that I missed the 'Year' as sorting criterion. But thank you so much more for allowing me to add a (sic) on a quote from Harvard website.
I sic'ed your [sic]—it should have gone after "name." :-) [And, even more entertainingly, the sample that website shows doesn't even follow that rule correctly, as two articles are listed out of order!]
Just as an addendum, even outside Harvard style referencing, it is typical to use the same sorting order.
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36620 | What percentage of a professor's salary is paid for by tuition?
Is it possible to determine what percentage of a tenure track/tenured professor's salary is paid for by tuition? At my UK university, our school budget includes income from student fees (we only get a portion of the fees each student pays), grants, and central university funds (presumably some of this is indirectly from student fees). I am curious if a calculation could be made for STEM departments at US R1 type universities. Presumably some of this information may be available for state schools.
I think the answer I am looking for would be something along the lines of the ratio of the total amount of tuition fees (hopefully divided up into undergraduate and graduate fees) given to the department divided by the total costs of teaching (again, ideally divided up into undergraduate and graduate costs). In other words if a department gets $500,000 from tuition fees and the teaching costs are $1,000,000, then 50% of the teaching costs are paid for by tuition. Teaching costs would have to include space charges, IT charges, printing charges, and the cost of staff time. These all seem to be known, well defined, quantities. An exact estimate of the cost of staff time would require going through each member of staff and prorating the salary by the percentage of time allocated for teaching (e.g., 0% for someone who has bought out his teaching and maybe 40% for someone who has not). Presumably, someone in the university/department has access to these numbers.
This is only a guess as to what an answer will include, but if there is a different (more general) way of getting to the answer, that is fine too.
Is the question here just what percentage of the school budget comes from tuition, or are you expecting info of the type "Prof. A is paid to 15% from tuition, while it is 25% for Prof. B"? In the latter case, I am not sure how you would establish this.
There is also the issue that at least in the US, some percentage of (grad student) tuition seems to be basically imaginary money, where a university pays a nominal stipend and partially keeps it in as tuition.
@xLeitix I am not sure how to calculate it. I don't think percentage of the total school budget is enough info. I think the answer needs to focus on the amount of time the average academic is allocated for teaching (e.g., some people might be at 60% time and other might be at 20%, or even 0%, time), the average academic salary and the amount of money from tuition.
In that case I am looking forward to the answers, but I am not getting my hopes up just yet :) basically, I think the only professors where one can really say where the money comes from are Sponsored Chairs.
I think that you'll never be able to sort this out. Most universities cross-subsidize departments to the point that even individual departments don't know how much of their own faculty lines come from the tuition of students majoring in that subject vs. tuition from other departments' students. Does the English department fully fund itself through the fees students pay for English classes? I doubt it. State funding, though a diminishing portion of most state universities' budgets, picks up some fraction of the costs.
Also, departments see level funding in the face of modest fluctuations in class enrollments. If 45 students took Calculus I last fall and 52 sign up this fall, the department doesn't see increased revenue for that. The department has a number of faculty lines coming from the dean's office to teach the projected enrollment. If that spikes or drops off substantially such that more instructors are required, then the department has to negotiate more or fewer lines with their dean.
That being said, I think that most departments negotiate expected breakdowns in effort with the faculty they hire. Of a typical 9 month appointment, a faculty member might be expected to do 35% teaching, 35% service, and 30% research (or whatever), and that might be the expectation regardless of whether the teaching load is a 1-1, 2-1, or 2-2. Where, again, it's entirely unclear whether that 35% teaching is completely funded by tuition or partly funded by tuition, central endowment, and/or a local named chair.
tl;dr: Money is fungible.
I don't always appreciate your snark @JeffE, but when I do I LOL.
Importantly, the percentage can also be 0% for 100% soft money positions.
Seems unlikely that a professor would be paid 0% on tuition dollars and be carrying a teaching load, but I can't speak to academic department budgeting.
What does n-m mean in the context of a teaching load?
@Azor-Ahai, for a semester-based system, it means how many "full" courses per semester a professor must teach or account for. Where by a full course I mean a class that meets 3 hours per week. Typically a professor can either teach those classes or buy out part of their teaching load with research funds or a chair or something similar.
To the best of my knowledge, my university salary is paid out of what the university calls the "general fund". That fund includes the money the university gets from tuition, the money it gets from the state (except possibly for state money earmarked for specific projects, like a new building), and I think also the indirect cost funds from research grants (and maybe other income sources too). Once that money is in the general fund, it gets completely mixed together, regardless of source. And I get the same salary, entirely from that fund, whether I'm teaching my normal course load or whether part of my time is devoted to administrative duties, or whether I'm on sabbatical. So, as far as I can tell, the proportion of my salary that comes from tuition is just the proportion of the general fund that comes from tuition; no finer analysis is possible. (Unfortunately, I don't know what proportion of the general fund comes from tuition, but, since the University of Michigan is a public institution, that information is undoubtedly publicly available somewhere.) [Edit: Deleted the sentence about "25% quite some years ago but not from an authoritative source". That 25% was for state support, which has probably decreased since then. Tuition is probably a much larger share of the general fund.]
As a (slightly fuzzy) data point, someone told me a year or two ago that at UIC (another large public institution), about 80% of the general fund was provided by tuition. That seems to be in the same ballpark as what you are suggesting (maybe slightly higher).
I agree with Bill's answer, but also want to contribute a few more points:
In many other European countries, students pay no tuition, and thus there can be no contribution.
Faculty in the US can be paid according to either a 9-month or 12-month salary scheme. When they're paid for nine months per year, they are expected to raise their remaining salary through external grants. Then you have to ask the question of which salary you're referring to in your calculations.
Salary differs widely among faculty members at differing levels of pay.
Graduate tuition is often an internal accounting device, as graduate students themselves (and particularly PhD students) are rarely expected to cover their own tuition costs.
Great points! I'd say that grad students in the US do receive tuition bills, but many, if not most, of them have benefits directly applied or are given grants/stipends/etc to cover them.
Another wrinkle: different pots of money for different delivery modalities. Where I am, online courses are paid for VERY differently from face-to-face ones. General-fund money pretty much can't be used for online courses, so a much higher percentage of instructor salary for those comes from tuition.
Of course, the mix of online and face-to-face courses for any given instructor varies from semester to semester, so... have fun with that math, I suppose.
Yet another wrinkle: grant funding, for instructors who also pursue research grants. Grants don't last forever, but they may "buy out" one or more classes for a given instructor for a while (at which point less of their salary is from tuition).
The average annual total compensation of a lecturer at a public baccalaureate US institution in 2014-15 is $76,893 ($54,223 for salary only) according to higheredjobs.com. You can look on the chronicle, glassdoor, etc. for average information about the type of faculty your interested in at your institution.
"The average published tuition and fee price for in-state students enrolled full time at public four-year colleges and universities is $9,139 in 2014-15" collegeboard.org. I am sure you can find the tuition at the institution you are interested in. A typical full time student takes 15 credits per semester or 30 credits a year.
Now class sizes are all over (typically from 10 to 200 for intro courses), which is what you would want to know if you are talking about your professor that is teaching your class. However, if you are interested in the total amount of faculty including those that do not teach (research faculty or graduate faculty that do not teach undergrad courses) you will want to look at the student-to-faculty ratio (typically 12:1 to 20:1). For this purpose lets suppose you are interested in a course that has enrolled 20 and the faculty member that is teaching that course (or in general all faculty at an institution with a student-to-faculty ratio of 20:1).
Now we have to consider the teaching load of the faculty member of interest. These can range from 1-0 (tenure track at a research institution) to 4-4 (full time teaching faculty) depending on position (see higheredprofessor.com, I can only post 2 links). Let's assume you are talking about the ever increasingly prevalent full time teaching faculty, which would mean 24 credit hours annually ((4+4)X3) for the typical 3 credit hour course.
Now it is simple math:
$9,139 student tuition / 30 credit hours X 20 students / faculty X 24 credit hours/ $76,893 faculty salary = ~2
This means that income from student tuition is twice that of what the total compensation to faculty are paid or that half of a tuition dollar goes to pay for the faculty that teach the course. This of course is often much worse, where non-tenure adjunct or part-time faculty are paid less to teach larger classes that may have a lot of students paying higher rates for out-of-state tuition. But to answer the question about salary only, lets look at an instructor's salary at master's institution to teach this load with an average class size of 200 students paying out of state tuition:
$22,958 student tuition / 30 credit hours X 200 students / faculty X 24 credit hours/ $46,878 faculty salary = ~78
or about 1 cent of a tuition dollar goes to pay for instructor's salary. This is more of the trend of how things are going as tuition and class sizes increase and higher paying tenure track jobs are replaced with low paying benefits ineligible part-time non-tenure instructor jobs.
The question asks what percent of faculty salary comes from tuition. Your calculations are about what percent of tuition goes to faculty salary, which is not the same thing at all. (Your calculations seem to assume 100% of faculty salary comes from tuition.)
While you're not going to get department- or professor-specific breakdowns, there are reports that show proportions for public colleges as a whole. Unfortunately charts in articles below (sourced from GAO and State Higher Education Executive Officers, respectively) for public college funding don't totally synch up (one says 25% funding from tuition, the other 47% in 2012), but all agree that tuition as a percent of total revenue has markedly increased in recent years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/04/student-tuition-public-colleges-gao_n_6411998.html
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/04/21/states-increase-higher-education-spending-rely-on-tuition-in-economic-recovery
Presumably some of that tuition goes to other things besides teaching (e.g., salaries for the football coach and university president). I want to know about the money that goes into and out of a department.
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91599 | What exactly is "nostrification" of a university diploma?
I have been reading a bit about nostrification of a university diploma, but I don't quite understand what it means. I do understand that nostrification is basically validation of your diploma in a foreign country. But, does it only mean that your diploma is recognized in this foreign country (so you can actually take a job there, or you can continue to a higher education there) or it actually means that you can go to a university at this foreign country and require the same degree diploma from that university?
For example, if you have a civil engineering degree from a university in country A, and you do nostrification in country B, does it also mean that you can go to a university that offers a civil engineering programme in country B, and just require a degree diploma from that university cause you already had one from country A?
Why would you expect the latter? You could not do that with a diploma from another university in the same country either.
@TobiasKildetoft You can actually, if the curriculum is the same in both universities, just transfer the credits and you are more or less done (in rare instances).
No, that is not even close to true. If it were, there would be a lot more people with diplomas from places like Harvard and MIT.
In order to transfer credits, you first need to get accepted by that university, which is a lot harder than getting your foreign degree recognized.
I don't see that anywhere. Once you have a degree, you usually don't enroll for the same degree in another university.
@terett You keep forgetting that in Europe, while you can transfer your ETCS credits to another university, this new university: (1) has different rules set up for many things, (2) can lower the number of ETCS credits it acknowledges, (3) won't acknowledge your thesis (final project) defense, and defending the same thesis twice could be considered a very serious self-plagiarism.
Nostrification is verification that Degree X you received in Country A has the same value as Degree Y received in Country B. You do not receive a new diploma for Degree Y in Country B.
Well, actually a university in Country B may decide to give you Degree Y based on your work in Country A, but it's certainly not standard, and usually bond to university-level agreement and cooperated studies, but even then it's often not the degree that's nostrificated, but rather the thesis, its reports etc. and the defense that's considered.
The most common reason for diploma nostrification is (1) job requirements in Country B, often in governmental jobs such as offices, schools etc.; or (2) continuation of study, for instance nostrification of Masters for the admission to PhD studies in Country B. In neither case, it is necessary to have Degree Y in Country B.
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56901 | Include logo of cooperating company on thesis cover
I've just finished writing my master's thesis, which heavily relied on data that I received from a municipality. The data was collected within a project that was mainly conducted by colleagues of mine in behalf of the municipality (I'm working half-time).
I obviously mention the municipality and my main contact there as well as the company I work for and 2 of my colleagues in my acknowledgements.
Would you include the logo of either the municipality and/or the company on the cover?
What other options do I have?
(engineering science in Germany, if that matters)
What do the municipality, the company, and the university say about this? Are you allowed to modify the thesis cover at all?
This question should have been put in a five-line email, not on the internet.
Have you considered adding the logo on a different page than the cover (a benefactor page perhaps)?
I have written my thesis in cooperation with a very well known research institute and included their logo opposite of my universities' logo on the title page. But smallish, on the bottom. Graduated in CS also in Germany.
The thesis is a scientific work, and it is the university that is responsible for it. The fact that you got someone funding you or that you performed the science somewhere else doesn't change this fact. I would keep the cover as simple as possible, and include only the university logo, and maybe even not that one.
Note that inclusion of logos of institutions that fund you seems to be a thing now. Sometimes rules are set up that the logo has to be on every slide of every talk that the people perform. This means that for some people, the slides are unusable, because they contain 5 or 6 logos. Some authors try to get their logo in an article they publish in the journal I typeset/copy edit; we have hard times explaining them that this is not acceptable in the journal and that only text acknowledgements are possible. Journals are quite strict on this, conferences commence to limit this as well.
Please, do not support this logo frenzy. If you really really want to include the logos, present them nicely in the acknowledgements section.
That last line is golden
In contrast, there are also some conferences that mandate logos on only one slide.
@Fomite Yes I know, forgot to mention it.
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54006 | PhD student hiring a LaTeX expert to typeset thesis?
I am close to finishing my PhD. Some of my peers use LaTeX. Obviously, it looks much better than Word and alike. As I wrote a few papers that go into my final thesis, I however have numerous formats depending on the journal in question. I would like to transform them all into one final document with matching layout. I am OK with TeX, but I'd rather see a professional do it.
I am now considering two options:
Taking my limited TeX-Knowhow to the next level.
Hiring an expert.
My time is limited. I've got a couple more weeks to go and that should be enough for option #1, as I already know a bit of TeX. But I am an external PhD student and I work on the side.
I have two questions:
What factors should I take into consideration in deciding which route to take?
If I decide for an expert, what criteria do I need to evaluate if the expert is any good?
Once I worked (for hire) with translating a master thesis to LaTeX... and I don't recommend it. Even at a low $/h rate it gets costly (LaTeX takes time...) and you would be stripped of the full control. And if you want to stay in science, creating good documents without someone's else help will be an important skill. If anything, I would rather ask/pay only for LaTeX corrections/proofreading than translating it from hand-written notes or Word documents.
I agree with Piotr that investing your own time would give you a better result now, and useful skills for the future -- especially since you say you're already OK with TeX. However, if you really do want to hire someone else, you might find better answers on http://tex.stackexchange.com . In fact, something very similar to your question has already been asked there.. The answers to this question may also be useful to you.
Thanks! I agree, investing your own time usually pays off in the long run. No question. But I am down to a little time constraint. So I am trying to evaluate all my options.
Please read @PiotrMigdal's comment carefully. In particular, you would be stripped of the full control. Exactly because you have time constraints, you want to do it yourself. You don't want to wait for someone to finalize your PhD thesis the week before the thesis defense.
To imagine the costs, you can have a look at this time estimate I posted on TeX.SE and get the price by considering how much you'd pay for an hour of a DTP specialist or a very specialized IT consultant.
Something I haven't seen mentioned is WYSIWYG LaTeX editors, which can potentially give you the power and prettiness of LaTeX without you having to learn the language.
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because I think that it is more appropriate for TeX.SE, and may already be answered there.
@jakebeal (me coming from TeX.SE) I don't 100% agree, I think the relation to academia can be important.
Don't just glue together your articles as published. Aggregate them in a meaningful way that adds value; a shared format is just one dimension.
@jakebeal This isn't a technical question about writing latex code (which would belong on TeX, but not here). If a question could belong on another site, but is still on-topic for this site, that's not a reason to close it.
Asking for a Latex service is a shopping question / product recommendation question. Such questions are not suitable for the Stack Exchange format: see https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/ and http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/158809/160917. You might consider whether there is a question you actually want to ask, that isn't just asking for a recommendation for a particular service/company/product, and then edit your question accordingly.
@D.W.: Ok! I altered the question to better fit the requirements. Should be fine now. I do think that this question is worth keeping for others. Please consider taking the question off hold.
If I may, I don't think that hiring a professional to typeset your document in LaTeX because "it looks good" is that great an idea. I don't really think that having a beautifully typeset document will matter much when defending your dissertation (EWD refused to use anything but his Hermes typewriter to type his seminal papers and nobody complained). If you want to hire a professional to have a pretty document that's okay... but said professional might use InDesign or something. You'd want to use LaTeX because of the flexibility it gives you, the author (eliminating the need to hire people).
I remember that my former boss told me that he wrote his PhD thesis by hand, and hired somebody to type it... But that was in the 1960's...
before thinking of employing anyone for this, read the rules of your University. Many will forbid this. Mine has the following clause: "It is university policy that the practice of engaging professional editorial services to assist in writing the thesis is not permitted." See NUIG Guidelines for Research Degree Programmes section 6.2.3, Directions on Format, Layout and Presentation.
"Obviously, it looks much better than Word" - Not necessarily.
@carandraug: are you sure that applies to typesetting as well rather than just copy editing?
@TobiaTesan that is a question for the university. Considering the context, I would assume it also includes typesetting.
So here is what I did: I did it myself. However, I used a professional academic LaTeX and proofreading service as a final checkpoint - correcting both grammar/syntax and format/layout. I found numoerous services online and chose for a service offered by a renounced journal in my field. I believe I chose for the right mixture between knuckling down on my own and professional help. Thanks again for all the advice.
(I will quote a comment by kahen and a chat message by Ulrike Fischer.)
You have got three qualities of the thesis production: good, cheap, fast. You can choose two.
Hiring a LaTeX specialist is good (if you find a good one), fast (if you find a good one) but expensive --- typesetting a 100-page thesis can take around 20--30 hours of work, easily more depending on the text, on the person you work with, on the amount of discussion about the appearance, proofreading etc.
Making it yourself is cheap. However, unless you are Jarod from the Pretender series or you know LaTeX already, it cannot be both good and fast.
Of course, making it yourself is better in moving your LaTeX skills forward, but I do not think this is crucial for an academic career, surely it is not more crucial than submitting a quality thesis in time. People hire services of all kinds, you get grant-writing, typesetting, conference organization, IT, etc. --- very various kind of out-sourced services for which someone can say: "A good researcher has to be able to do this."
To answer your question about LaTeX services: I doubt universities have, in general, such services themselves. Some have a LaTeX theses class (of varying quality), some even do not have this. However, there are independent LaTeX consults and consulting companies. I can't list any since (1) I don't know them and (2) this is not an advertising site. However, remember that these people are highly specialized, and the prices of their services reflect this.
In particular, getting someone at short notice will be more expensive than if you are flexible with regard to scheduling.
I've seen some of the publications out of the computer science department at my university. The professors who publish such seem to be doing just fine, and their publications are ugly. Interesting, but ugly. Pretty papers (in my opinion) are a bit easier to read, but if the content is good enough I don't really care (personally).
I do not think this is crucial for an academic career — Unless your work in a field where most papers are written and published using LaTeX (like mathematics, physics, and most of computer science).
@JeffE Doing it might be important, but doing it well certainly is not ;). And there are mathematicians who do not use TeX. I know because it was one such I found when I turned up in the maths department frantic that my PhD stopped compiling on the day it was due....
@JeffE It may be important. Still, there is a lot of mathematicians who know a very little about LaTeX, surely not enough to make a thesis look nice.
@cfr Doing it might be important, but doing it well certainly is not — But why would you want to do anything badly?
@JeffE Because you don't care enough and you have other priorities? I can tell you, as a journal typesetter, that badly done articles -- in both LaTeX and Word. People in general do not care too much, and if you asked me, I think that journals should care about the quality of the typesetting and provide the typesetting services themselves. So from my point of view, it makes a sense that researchers are not LaTeX experts in general. They should be able to do the minimum needed to provide comprehensible output, but not to provide a typographically good output.
@yo' People in general do not care too much — Oh, yes, that's very clear, and not only about typesetting. — I think that journals should care about the quality of the typesetting — Me, too! Alas, journals in general do not care too much.
@JeffE It isn't a question of wanting to do it badly. But sometimes, it makes sense to want to do something well enough, without wanting to do it well. Time and attention are short. You have limited resources. You need to jump through a hoop, satisfy an institutional requirement, get a publication.... Since a journal is going to impose their style anyway, how long should I spend worrying about the aesthetics of my submission? I need it to be readable, clear... good enough. Especially if I have to satisfy formatting requirements which undermine typographic quality anyway (e.g. double spacing).
+1 for "surely it is not more crucial than submitting a quality thesis in time."
Actually, people do care a lot about good typesetting, and it is crucial for an academic career in any maths-related subject! Just not all people care consciously. But a well-typeset thesis is easier to read and to remember. If I have two articles with similar results, one with good typesetting, the other with bad typesetting, I'll certainly cite the one with good typesetting. The chances that I've misunderstood a formula because of bad typesetting is too big.
@JeffE My wife used to work for a quite famous scientist in her field, with lots of publications in Nature and Science. He would write his papers by hand, and his secretary would type them out — in LaTeX. (He was already well above retirement age at this time)
In contrast to JeffE's comment "Unless your work in a field where most papers are written and published using LaTeX (like mathematics, physics, and most of computer science)." - this is doubly true in a number of other fields. My own for example, where I have never submitted anything using LaTeX, and doing so would be at best a curious affectation.
The best thing to do would be to practice it yourself and code with the help from forums such as TeX-LaTeX at StackExchange. If your school/university provides the class file for LaTeX formats, then more than half your thesis compilation work is already done for you. The Wikibook on LaTeX is a great start and should have nearly all you need to start typesetting your thesis in LaTeX.
As my University didn't have a standard thesis class (at that time) I had to come up with my own class file for my masters thesis by deriving it from the existing thesis.cls class file. It may take a bit of work for a week or two. But it really pays off at the long run. I never thought typesetting a thesis would be much simpler. I had a much easier time than my colleagues who used Word and was very easy to make from the very minute to the most complex changes without affecting the perfection of the formatting. It is what LaTeX is all about: focus on the content and not the formatting.
Thank you, I agree. But I am down to quite a time constraint. I thus merely see a professional service as a quick fix.
How much time do you have left - days, weeks or months? It took me less than a month to learn and typeset my masters thesis.
Couple of weeks. Shouldn't be a problem, really. But I am an external PhD student and work quite a bit on the side.
The WikiBook is not a great start (IMHO). There are much better choices listed here.
@yo': This is from my experience. I tried lshort (Not So Short Intro. to LaTeX). I felt the wikibook is much better and easier to learn. I suppose lshort is a good way to get to know what LaTeX is about though.
I wonder how you managed to leave this until the last few weeks of a PhD program....
The first 2 books at http://www.dickimaw-books.com/latex/index.html should be perfect for you -- they're listed in the list @yo' linked but IMO these are the most appropriate for you. And that from someone who likes the wikibook at least for some things.
@LightnessRacesinOrbit: I did not. All my articles are formatted individually (depending on the Journal requirement, some even with TeX). Im Ok with TeX, but I would like the final document to look much more professional than what I did so far. I hence am thinking about a professional touch up.
@RachelSleeps, select a thesis class that is near the format used locally (or use the local tweaks, or even use something like the memoir class or something out of the KOMA bundle), and type away. Can even copy-paste your articles as-is. Article formats are optimized for density (more papers in the same pages), theses are more like books, to be read and enjoyed. Just selecting another class makes an astounding difference.
@RachelSleeps Formatting is usually only the matter of the style/class/preamble. So if you are familiar with LaTeX (or do you really do it in raw TeX?), ask/pay someone to modify it, rather than write everything from the scratch.
@yo', you're citing a question where the WikiBook is listed as the most upvoted answer.
@Turion Yep, but also it's the only one with more than one downvote, remember that popular does not mean good :-) Also, it's only my opinion that I state here, nothing more.
focus on the content and not the formatting. LaTeX makes it possible to worry about typesetting-related issues that word users don't even know exist. Microtype package, anyone?
This is a bad idea, as others have said. Instead I'd recommend a very simple copy-and-paste job by yourself. Once you have a template configured (I'm using arsclassica, for example), writing LaTeX is for the most part just plain text; 90% of your thesis will copy-and-paste over without incident. Of course, the remaining 10% (tables, references, equations) will be more painful but after a few hours you'll have a great looking document and a decent life skill.
An alternative is to try an online LaTeX IDE like overleaf (formerly writelatex) which some seem to prefer. I wouldn't recommend desktop LaTeX WYSIWYG editors, if you have all your content prepared I'd imagine such an approach would be more of a headache then the copy-and-paste method.
Finally, as yo alludes to, many academics do just fine producing horribly-formatted documents, posters and presentations — it's the content that's important afterall.
Can you emphasize using Overleaf more? That is the option I came to suggest. Overleaf at least provides a controlled environment and should take a lot of the configuration headache away.
I don't have much experience with it myself (I'm an emacs guy), just I know of previously LaTeX-unaware PhD students that used it for their theses and likewise were positive about it.
Here's my brief story and two cents, since as recently as half a year ago I was in a similar situation. I was not considering hiring someone to help with LaTeX conversion or typesetting (so I won't be commenting on that aspect), so when I said "similar" I meant that in a sense that I had to choose between mastering LaTeX to a level good enough to produce my dissertation report of good quality format-wise and producing it in Microsoft Word, the format, which I have used for all of the previous iterations of my dissertation artifacts (multiple revisions of idea paper, proposal and dissertation report drafts). While I had essentially relatively much more time than you have now, I still decided against ultimately converting my dissertation into LaTeX format (though I have made some brief attempts, mostly using various software programs that automatically convert some formats into LaTeX with varying degree of accuracy). I submitted my final revision in the Word format, but when it was time to submit the document to my institutional e-repository and ProQuest, I have just converted it to PDF format, using Word's export functionality and the result was good enough.
I have made that decision, considering all circumstances at hand and realizing that it would be more valuable to not jeopardize my dissertation schedules, deadlines and defense, while, at the same time, spend more time on producing better software for data analysis and other tasks. Because I understood the importance of mastering LaTeX for my future career of researcher, I decided to go the gentle introduction route and started learning enough LaTeX and various packages (which involved lots of Internet surfing and some TeX.SE activity), so that I could use some of that functionality in my data analysis software reporting modules (hello, reproducible research!) as well as in my dissertation defense presentation slides (using LaTeX/Beamer).
While most previous answers make sense in various aspects, essentially they all are missing your main point and limitation:
"My time is limited. I've got a couple more weeks to go...".
From my experience, it would be rather naive to expect to master LaTeX and a set of necessary supporting packages to be able to produce a good quality dissertation/thesis completely in LaTeX (even without fully reproducible workflow; that is, if you have some kind of data analysis part). Of course, it is possible, if you have had enough past experience of typesetting documents in LaTeX.
P.S. While I said that I won't be commenting on the hiring external LaTeX expert perspective, I just wanted to warn you that, if you will decide to go this route, it is imperative that you would be absolutely confident in a person, whose help you will use, especially, considering your tight deadlines. It is quite risky, as if something will go wrong (that person will not honor time frames or will have issues with conversion or will produce document of poor quality, etc.), you can imagine what kind of problems you might get yourself into. So, unless some people that you trust would highly recommend someone and assure about their LaTeX mastery as well as easiness to work with, I would stay away from that route for good. Good luck with your thesis and its defense!
I agree with the sentiment(s) above. If you are really invested in having a nicely formatted document, learning LaTeX might serve you well. For me personally, using a program like LyX helped me make the transition between WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What you Get") editors like MS Word and LaTeX. I know that some people will disagree with me, but it worked pretty well for me.
Knowing people that already know how to use LaTeX or LyX will probably be your best resource if you are under a time constraint (you mentioned that some of your peers use LaTeX; maybe they have a template you can use). I was also surprised how much a mathematics/computer science research librarian was able to help me.
+1 for the research librarian. I'm always amazed at how little graduate students take advantage of their field specialists at the libraries.
@guifa Well, no school I know has any good library service for academic stuff, not speaking about students. The most I have seen is that "they're willing to get an article for you outside the standard university subscriptions.
@yo' It's definitely going to depend on university (or even individual employees, really). Out of the four universities I've been associated with, two have had excellent specialists in my field, one did not, and the other I can't judge because I was in undergrad and never tried taking advantage of. Obviously, when you have a 1:10-20 ratio of librarian:faculty, they can't be super specialized so they'll be of less use to faculty, but for students they can be a real boon (especially with the tech side — people with MLSs tend to know as much or more than people with degrees with CS, IME)
@yo' The research librarians at the university I got my PhD at were magnificent. Taught me things about finding literature that I didn't even know I didn't know. To the point that the default starting advice for many major projects was "Book an appointment with one of the public health librarians."
Evaluating costs and benefits.
This is not a LaTeX only problem, it is valid for almost every decision we make.
Is this a one time thing or are you planning on using LaTeX to prepare other documents in the future? If you would hire an experts once a year, this will be quite costly.
Many people do not like the work with LaTeX, because that little bit of abstract imagination that you need is missing. You got that? Great.
Are you open to the idea of expanding your knowledge? Great.
Getting around the basics should not take longer than a day. Preparation for writing a thesis might take a few days. Once you have a solid foundation, prettyfying your thesis will be easy. If you have problems, you have enough knowledge to post a good and clear question that can be answered within an hour on TeX.SE. You will learn something new and will have fun.
You need this done just once and don't want to invest time in learning something you will never need again.
Looking out for someone to hire ...
How do you do it when you are looking for a mechanic to fix your car or a doctor to fix up your knee? You talk to people, do some research, read some reviews etc.
As already mentioned, there are experts that can do the job for you. There are also non-experts who want to do the job for you, because you have the money. They might think they are experts, though.
Service A has a nice and professional looking web site, whereas service B has a pretty ugly website. Service A charges more than twice the price than service B, of course you have to ask for the prices first.
Who do you choose? Ask a bit around and you will be told, that service A provides rubbish with a high chance; whereas service B will, with a very high chance, do some excellent work.1
In conclusion, you are responsible as an intelligent human being for making a reasonable decision. Will learning LaTeX pay out for me, or should i pay someone to help me?
1 Yes, this is a real case example.
Unless your subject is very mathematical and you have lots of equations in your thesis, I would stay away from latex at this stage-just use what you're more familiar with (I believe you're studying economics). Do not trivialise how much of latex you need to know to produce a good quality thesis bearing in mind you only have a few weeks and you're also working on the side. Alternatively, if you're ok with latex then just try it yourself for a week and see how you get on. As already mentioned, you really have to trust whomever you contract your thesis out to at this stage.
You also have to consider whether your supervisors or collaborators would be happy to edit your work in pdf which is the format latex produces-I've been forced to do my work in word because my supervisors prefer to add comments, etc in word. You don't want to do the same work twice!
The most time efficient may be to autoconvert it and then fix the resultant markup. Although I started with TeX and was converting to other formats (*.docx and MediaWiki), I have had acceptable results with Pandoc. The main caveat I have is that tables required special attention to fix.
jup, see this great Pandoc introduction for non-techies
Hello! The original post contains 2 questions. Please, how do you answer at least one of them?
It addresses the first, namely the underlying assumption that there are only two options (diy from scratch vs hire expert).
+1 I imagine some combination of pandoc and gui-driven latex editors can get a solid foundation going that you can later tweak, or, if you must, hire someone for cheaper than doing it from scratch
I would strongly advise against making the conversion yourself. Latex hase some nasty caveats which can cost huge amounts of time (creating a double-page table...), if you don't know how to solve them. Combine that with other last minute work, your work and you have a recipe for much more stress than is healthy.
The example problem you mention can be solved in minutes with the help of a simple search. You'll probably find this is the case for any common issue you come across when assembling a thesis in LaTeX.
@blmoore Jep, can be googled. As I have written my thesis in January 2011, I would have needed a time machine... even then, I need the tables rotated and broken across multiple pages. That works, but isn't fun.
You can google all thins latex, it costs time - time which can be spent on other topics, especially in the last two weeks.
LaTeX is very easy to master in a one or two days. What you need to do is make a list of the non-trivial typesetting tasks. E.g. your thesis may contain equations, tables, figures, pictures etc.. Then you just look up in LateX manuals that you can also find online what the commands are. You then make a test tex file where you put in a template for each of the objects, compile it and then see if he result is what is should be. You can then make a few template tex files containing examples for whatever objects you need to use.
The next step is then to make a master text file containing the preamble and each chapter can be put in separate tex files. So, instead of putting the whole content in one big file, you make a master file containing commands like \include{file_1}
\include{file_2}
etc.
where file_r.tex contains the rth chapter. This allows you to work on the editing of the chapters separately. If one chapter requires some more studying to get the typesetting right, you can just skip that one and finish work on the other chapters. You can compile the entire thesis without that chapter, so it's not going to be an obstacle to finish all the other work that you can already do.
So, I would advice against hiring an expert. In case you get stuck, you can get help from experts here who help people free of charge.
Hello! The original post contains 2 questions. Please, how do you answer at least one of them?
@yo' I've included my answer to the second question.
I wouldn't say "Master" in one or two days. Become basically proficient in, maybe.
-1 - this looks like bad advice to me. Many "nontrivial typesetting tasks" require changes in the preamble; splitting the chapters into separate files does not help with that, and is an added complication (for a non-techie).
At my university there was an ancient latex class going around that had been used for years. Some of the comments date back to 1993!
If you know any other grad students it might be worth asking them if they have the appropriate style files and classes etc, with a bare-bones outline of their thesis. That's what I did for mine.
Even if you don't know any other PhD students at your university then I'm sure you could track down an email list and spam it. I think people will help you out because everyone knows that Latex can be a pain.
I would advise taking this approach or just trying to figure it out yourself. I did my PhD in Astrophysics and it had a lot of Maths in. After my viva I had a few corrections, most were very minor but involved fiddly corrections in Latex. If you pay someone it could be tricky to communicate exactly what the examiner is asking for.
If you want I could try to dig out my old classes/style files to get you started, but they are specific to my university.
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2993 | How to sort search results from SCOPUS or Web of Knowledge by number of citation in a specific field?
I use SCOPUS or Web of Knowledge to search papers.
What I need to do is to sort the result in a descending order of number of citations.
SCOPUS and W_of_K both provide this feature.
But I further need to confine those citations only in a specific field.
For example, statistics paper can be cited in another statistics paper or in a medicine paper. What I'm interested in is how many times this paper is cited in another statistics paper.
Using scopus and Web of science, I can see all the papers that cited this paper and then confine to a specific field. But I have to do this for all papers one by one.
Thus I wonder if there is any search engine that can to this automatically.
This is not a question about academia, but rather a question about how to use a particular piece of software. Voted to close as off-topic.
@JeffE - I disagree; this is a question about how to use a particular academic software tool. If this person found it confusing, it's likely others found it confusing as well, and as such this both academia-related (hence on-topic) and broadly useful.
There is no automatic solution to this - it is an extremely time-consuming labour, sometimes performed by bibliometricians - and often only by those with access to full editions of either database (not the web-interfaces, with strict limitations to download sizes).
It is also a tricky subject, as the defionition of e.g. a statistics paper may differ from what you are actually looking at: journal categories. Papers on any topic are also published in journals not directly related hereto, there are plenty of translational and multi-disciplinary journals as well - in other words, what may appear to be a trivial task is actually very complex.
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2999 | What factors does an admissions commitee use when considering a non-degree candidate in grad school?
I have an interest in taking some very specific engineering classes at my local (very competitive) university. I already have an MSEE. As it is not close enough to my current career path, I am trying to get a better background in some areas and stay up-to-date in others. Since I don't really want a PhD, I had applied as a self-financed non-degree candidate. But, I was not accepted.
I'm wondering, is any consideration given to degree status during admissions? Is the admissions process typically identical to MS and PhD candidates?
Not typically identical to MS or PhD but some level of relevant competency is expected of you before admission can be given in that field
Hello, Jeremy. Welcome to Academia.SE. Your answer is in need of some improvement. Please try to include some more details in your answer so that it will be of benefit to other users. Thanks.
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199827 | What are my realistic chances of doing a PHD in Criminology?
I'm 31 years old with a Bachelor's in Sociology and an M.A. in International Security and Conflict Studies. I finished my M.A. degree in 2015, and since then I have not been involved in Academia whatsoever - instead I have been working in Sales in the Tech industry.
Researching and writing is still something which really makes me tick and therefore returning to Academia to do a PHD has always been on my mind - those closest to me share the same sentiment and think a PHD would suit me down to the ground. My dream job is also to be a professor, and I'll talk a bit more about that below
The research topic I am interested in is violent extremism and radicalisation, specifically the rehabilitative methods that are most successful as well as the drivers in the first place.
Upon beginning to research PHD's, I have noticed that there is an abundance of Criminology PHD's in the UK, and that extremism is actually listed as one of the sub-topics in the course description (at least in some of them).
The more I have researched into these programs, the more I think I will find them interesting and engaging - even better, despite the tenure track job market for Humanities/Social Science PHD graduates usually being very rough, it appears Criminology based Professor roles are in demand (at least in the UK).
The part I'm curious about is, whether (1) The fact I have been out of Academia since 2015 greatly reduces my chances of being accepted into a PHD; (2) Whether my academic background, particularly my M.A in International Relations and Security, might not be overly relevant to Criminology and can therefore 'rule me out'.
Looking forward to your feedback on this - thanks in advance!
A quick warning. You seem to like the fact that the labor market in for criminology in the UK is good. However, it is going to take time before you are on that market. At a minimum you will need to have finished your PhD, and in many fields there is a soft requirement that you have some additional years in a post-doc.
The problem with that is that there are only so many tenured positions for criminologists in the UK. Once they are filled with a tenured person, those positions are off the market till that person retires. So it is not uncommon for a particular field to for a short time have lots of positions open, they all get filled by people of that cohort, and than that field is "clogged up" by that cohort until they retire.
There is some movement possible in those 20-30 years of clogged up state: People move, unfortunately some die early, etc. But the competition for those rare places is going to be fierce. To make things worse, the number of free places is going to be smallest just after that window of opportunity closes: the people just started a job and are less likely to move and they are young so less likely to die.
So when the market is good now, the market is in all likelihood at its worst when you become eligible. This is something to consider, when you want to enter on this path. So look at why the market is good now, and if those conditions are likely to persist for say 10 years.
I am not saying you should not do it, or that it is impossible. I am saying you should make your decision knowing this. When you do choose to enter, have a plan B (and C, and D) ready. It is not just important to have those plans but also to have clear deadlines of when you are going to activate the alternative plans so you won't miss those windows of opportunity either.
If you have specific research questions that would be appropriate for a PhD and there are professors you'd like to work with, this would be a good indication you would be well suited to enter a programme.
It's difficult to answer specifically in your case without knowing more. First step is to find those professors you'd like to work with/learn from and reach out, a direct conversation about your interests and theirs is the best way to find a match with a supervisor.
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67050 | Are there risks in sharing a paper after submission and before reviews?
After submitting a paper for publication to a computer science conference, authors are excited about their work and want to share it with friends, colleagues. Are there any risks in sharing the paper while waiting for reviews that might jeopardize its publication?
In Computer Science, conference submissions are usually subject to a double-blind review process.
Do you know how long is the review process?
Reviews usually take 4 months
I see. As long as the paper is submitted (I believe submission date is usually printed on the accepted paper (in my field we generally do not share unaccepted papers, not CS related), you trust your work (you do not wanted to be wrong or be over optimistic about it), you trust colleagues, I think you can share the paper. But, I'm interested to see what CS guys are going to say.
"Authors are excited about their work and want to share it with friends, colleagues". No, they are not always like that. I am glad to share my PUBLISHED work but not my work under review (unless this work is uploaded on arXiv as a preprint).
If you fear that somebody takes your idea, the better way is to publish it as a working paper under your institution's working paper series or send it to plateforms like arXiv, related to your field.
Related question:
http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/54185/should-i-be-careful-who-i-share-my-unpublished-results-with/54203#54203
I think it is important for us to know whether or not the submission was anonymized before submitting. Was it? That could be important because one of your colleagues may be reviewing the paper already as an anonymous reviewer of a paper that they are not suppose to know who the author is. If you send it to them, they may have to disqualify themselves as a reviewer, which could delay the review process.
@mikeazo good point, just added clarification... it is a double-blind review
I work in CS and know of no issues with distributing work to a small group of people. I know a number of researchers (myself included) who share their work with colleagues before and after submission. Sometimes it's to gather feedback, sometimes because a friend is curious about your work or working on something similar. It's generally understood that the research will not be distributed further without the authors' permission.
How do you handle submissions that are suppose to be anonymized? These colleagues may actually be reviewing your paper that they are not suppose to know is yours.
In my field, people in your department are disqualified from reviewing your work as are people you have recently published with. So there are no issues there. As to colleagues elsewhere, they can excuse themselves from reviewing your work. Most people I would call colleagues know what I'm working on and would recognize my work regardless of whether I've sent them my paper, so the anonymity is a little moot.
On @mikeazo's comment... That's why all these supposedly top conferences in CS with double blind reviewing are rigged. It's a boys club with 'top researchers' publishing each other's papers.
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32963 | How much involvement should my advisor have in deciding my availability and actions for me?
I worked in the industry for a few years before starting my PhD and learned many do's and don'ts in the workplace for how you guide subordinates to attend meetings and do things you want them to do. I'm having trouble finding the right mix of transparency/professionalism/availability that I can expect to have with my advisor. Some examples that seem to be ok with my advisor related to availability include:
Advisor tells me I should work and come in over academic breaks
When I'm late for a meeting, sends me an email that says "you're late, get here". Advisor is often late for their own meetings.
On a flight back from a conference, holds a research meeting.
When scheduling a meeting, advisor asks for conflicts, then judges the importance of my conflict vs the meeting. Tells me the meeting is more important.
Advisor schedules recurring meeting over the time I have to eat lunch, tells me I should eat during the meeting
Urges that I come to weekend/post-5pm informal meetups, if I say I cannot attend, asks why my conflict is more important?
Other oddities include:
During research meeting with 15 students, the meeting table is crowded. I grab a chair 5 feet away. Advisor tells me to stand for the meeting (with a laptop).
Advisor tells me I must share a room with another student at the conference hotel
I can't help but feel demeaned by items on this list. I'm a bit older than other students and have a family, so my conflicts are more frequent. Is this advisor-advisee treatment common in academia? I'm trying to seek out the norms of this community.
I'm not sure your official "question" matches what you are really asking. I think the body of your question is more about your advisor's expectations with respect to his/her students' availability and time management, not broadly about "professionalism." Consider an [edit] to make the question more focused.
Your list seems like a mixture of things I have definitely seen in industry as well, things that seem more like minor quirks than big issues, and things that I have certainly done myself. Meeting after 5? Check. Quick in-flight post-mortem of a conference? Check.
To add: in industry, your manager has never told you that this no-fun-at-all sales meeting with a prospective customer is more important than whatever you originally planned for the day?
I'm not sure how to rephrase the question, but I am looking for responses like @xLeitix. If I should just get used to it, then that's all I need to know. I wouldn't mind a sales meeting blowing away my plans for a business day, but I do mind privacy-invasive questions about why I can't make a sales meeting.
Advisor tells me I must share a room with another student at the conference hotel - are his grants paying for said hotel room? If so, that's not atypical.
Advisor tells me I should work and come in over academic breaks - If by "academic breaks" you mean "times when courses are not in session," this is 100% normal and expected. Research does not run on a semester schedule.
The point about standing in a meeting is very odd, and there's clearly more to the story. I don't think anybody here could possibly tell you what that is about, and I think you should remove it from the post. I've edited your question to focus on the meeting availability thing, which I think is a much more answerable question, but please feel free to edit the edit if you find it necessary :)
Restructured and refocused it, thanks for helping me narrow in.
@ff524 Well, for many people, research runs almost only in academic breaks! (Unfortunately. If you teach 14 hours a week and have other duties, there's not much time for actual research.)
Does your contract specify any requirements in this area from your side? If it states your working hours as 9-5, your questions are very valid. If it states anything different your flexibility is a requirement.
Are you sure you are taking all of these the way they were intended? Advisor schedules recurring meeting over the time I have to eat lunch, tells me I should eat during the meeting - that one, for example. The advisor wants a recurring meeting at a specific time, you want to have lunch at the same specific time. Your advisor thus decides that you can eat during the meeting. Myself being from a culture where munching during a meeting is rather impolite, I'd see that permit to eat during the meeting as very accommodating.
some of these seem petty. "Advisor schedules recurring meeting over the time I have to eat lunch, tells me I should eat during the meeting". Eat lunch at a differing time or eat during the meeting. I see no issue here. "On a flight back from a conference, holds a research meeting." what a great use of time. Why do you have an issue with this? Honestly, people are very polite on these boards and this is excellent but I would say aside from the hotel sharing (assuming you pay or have a very good reason, ie some religions, spouse may not allow this) then you just need to get over it.
As with most things, tone matters. All the items on your list don't scream terrible unprofessionalism to me, if done in the right tone and in moderation (ok, the "tells me to stand" one is a bit weird). For instance, I would not force a student to blow off their anniversary dinner for a standard meeting, but I have certainly asked them to cancel some other weekend appointments because of an important deadline on Monday. Further, you mention meetings after 5PM - given that much of my research is done in international cooperation, Skype calls at terrible times are unfortunately not unheard of in my group as well.
I can't help but notice that (as ff524 already mentions), the majority of your items are not so much about professionalism than about time planning. Indeed, in academia, you may need to get used to the fact that most professors require students to be flexible, maybe more so than in larger corporations (but not unlike startup companies, for instance). Nine-to-five workers are typically not popular in academic environments.
You added:
Advisor tells me I must share a room with another student at the conference hotel
The exact same thing happened to me as an employee of a large, international company. Not usual, but yeah - happens if funds for travel are low for some reason.
Interesting point about startups -- the most I have ever worked was for a startup and it spilled into all aspects of my life. I never expected professionalism there because we were in the trenches. Maybe this is the most similar?
@JackWade I guess you can say that, yes.
Here are my thoughts on each of the scenarios in the question. Most of these things are pretty normal and common in academia. For the scheduling things, they shouldn't become habit, but everyone is generally expected to be flexible, especially when deadlines are coming up.
During research meeting with 15 students, the meeting table is
crowded. I grab a chair 5 feet away. Advisor tells me to stand for the
meeting (with a laptop).
That's weird. Crowded meetings happen. But I can't see anything wrong with sitting in a chair away from the table.
Advisor tells me I must share a room with another student at the
conference hotel.
That's normal. Is sharing a room that bad, really? It saves money, so I'm happy to oblige. If you have a legitimate reason to have your own room, it shouldn't be an unreasonable request. Though when there are limited travel funds, you might have to pay the extra yourself or forego a future opportunity.
A fun thing to do when travelling is to rent a short-stay apartment, rather than a hotel. It's usually cheaper (so maybe you can afford your own room), and you have a lounge and cooking facilities for dinner parties.
When I'm late for a meeting, sends me an email that says "you're late,
get here".
Fair enough. Don't be late.
Advisor is often late for their own meetings.
That can be normal. Meetings between my supervisor and myself are scheduled "after the coffee break" - we have an understanding that that time is pretty flexible. Chronic lateness to rigidly scheduled group meetings really is an inconvenience, and I don't think that is acceptable.
If your advisor is late, you can always send him or her an email asking "we have a meeting now, where are you?".
On a flight back from a conference, holds a research meeting.
I'd say that's a useful use of downtime.
When scheduling a meeting, advisor asks for conflicts, then judges the
importance of my conflict vs the meeting. Tells me the meeting is more
important.
I don't think it's reasonable to ask for such details. You should (politely!) say that you dislike re-arranging your schedule and ask to find a mutually agreeable time. Try scheduling meetings with your advisor further in advance -- he or she will have more gaps in their schedule.
Advisor schedules meetings over the time I have to eat lunch, tells me
I should eat during the meeting
I think this is a cultural thing. If it's the culture of the department where everyone actually has a proper lunch break, then you can insist on keeping your lunch break. If everyone tends to work over lunch and eat at their desk, that insistence is less likely to go down well (though you should by all means still have the right to said lunch break).
If your advisor is unusually busy, or there is a looming deadline, just roll with it.
Urges that I come to weekend/post-5pm informal meetups, if I say I
cannot attend, asks why my conflict is more important?
Post-5pm? Maybe that's a reasonable request, especially if you don't keep regular 9-5 hours. Weekends should be off limits, though, unless something important is coming up.
Re: the split room thing -- having a family changes things. I'll get calls when I'm in the room pertaining to family problems I have to deal with and I value privacy there. Good idea about the airbnb-like reference, we could save money and have nice rooms.
I like your other points - straightforward and highly valuable for me to know.
@JackWade Apart from phone sex I can't think of any reason why you couldn't just take the call outside the room or in another part of the hotel. Requesting a single room just so you can make private calls in peace is highly unlikely to go over well.
It's not uncommon to expect students to come in on weekends.
Some of the concerns that you have are reasonable, some are not.
However, I think the basic issue is that your advisor probably has not had practice and training in being a competent manager. He may be a brilliant researcher, but that doesn't mean he's a good advisor and mentor. It sounds like he may also be following what I've dubbed the academic golden rule: "Do unto others as you had done unto you."
My general advice to you is the following:
Where possible, take an active role in your relationship with your advisor.
What I mean by this is that where you see conflicts arising, head them off by trying to be the one to deal with them first. For instance, if you don't like the way your advisor is scheduling your appointments, try to schedule a regular meeting time with him so that there isn't a reason to schedule appointments at odd times.
Advisor tells me I should work and come in over academic breaks
This may be entirely reasonable depending upon which breaks your advisor is referring to, and the vacation policy at your institution. The typical standard in US schools is only two or three weeks of leave per year. Given that there is typically substantially more academic leave than personal vacation time, your advisor can expect that you be at work.
When I'm late for a meeting, sends me an email that says "you're late, get here". Advisor is often late for their own meetings.
This is a simple matter of brusqueness.
On a flight back from a conference, holds a research meeting.
This is unusual—but I would chalk this up to the eccentricity of the advisor. My undergraduate advisor once did that with a colleague on a plane—nearly got himself into trouble over it!
When scheduling a meeting, advisor asks for conflicts, then judges the importance of my conflict vs the meeting. Tells me the meeting is more important.
This is baffling, but I think reinforces the notion I've laid out above.
Advisor schedules meetings over the time I have to eat lunch, tells me I should eat during the meeting
This confuses me—I would think this would be somewhat flexible. Advisors don't normally assign lunch hours for their graduate students! If there's some specific reason that you need to eat lunch at a certain time, that's something you should discuss with your advisor (and perhaps the graduate officer of your department).
Urges that I come to weekend/post-5pm informal meetups, if I say I cannot attend, asks why my conflict is more important?
Except in unusual circumstances, this is unacceptable. Your advisor should not expect that you come into work during the weekend. If you personally feel the need to work to meet a deadline, that's a different issue. If the advisor is willing to give you a few days off in exchange for working over the weekend, that might be an acceptable tradeoff. But the pressure should not come directly from the advisor.
During research meeting with 15 students, the meeting table is crowded. I grab a chair 5 feet away. Advisor tells me to stand for the meeting (with a laptop).
This is rather ridiculous on your advisor's part.
Advisor tells me I must share a room with another student at the conference hotel
As a graduate student, unless you have your own budget and resources for travel (e.g., you're on a fellowship that provides a travel allowance), then you probably should not expect to have your own room at a hotel. It's fairly standard practice for advisors to ask their students to "double up" at a hotel.
This is great advice. Re: the lunch thing, I'm in another recurring meeting until 12:00, then the advisor's recurring meeting is 12:00-3:00. I ask for 30 minutes for lunch, but got the above response. As I'm reading, "the advisor's time is more important" is quite the theme.
I had precisely one three-hour meeting with my advisors as a graduate student, and that was entirely unplanned. Is this a meeting just for you, or is it a group-wide meeting?
@Jack sometimes it can be almost impossible to schedule large meetings, with everybody's courses, teaching, administrative meetings, meetings with collaborators in other time zones... I don't think it's unreasonable to schedule a recurring lunch meeting if that's the only time that works for everyone.
@JackWade: I am a faculty member who strongly disagrees with the idea that "the advisor's time is more important." Everybody's time is valuable—which, as ff524 mentions, can mean that some people are inconvenienced because of the need to get things scheduled for everybody.
I'm curious - why did your advisor nearly get in trouble for discussing research with a colleague on a plane? If they are both there and want to talk, why shouldn't they? If the colleague wants to sleep then trying to talk about research is perhaps inconsiderate but hardly something that would get someone in trouble. Was their research some sort of secret?
@NateEldredge: Largely because blocking the aisle on a plane for the better part of an hour is bound to tick off the flight attendants.
@nate It might also cause problems if the research involves such things as blowing up points on a plane.
Right now, there are 3 close votes, one "unclear what you're asking", two "too broad". I'd lean more towards "opinion-based".
In some academic groups, this is the normal modus operandi, and people are routinely expected to be available at ungodly times. The one other environment where I have observed this ("let's discuss this over lunch, since we both will likely be working until 10pm, and the presentation needs to be done today") is management consultancies. One element that is common to both environments is that most people working there are young, and that it's an up-or-out culture. In academia, you'll either leave with your degree and go into industry, or you end up as a professor - and in management consultancies, you either again leave, or end up at the top of the pile as a partner.
In both environments, there is much less emphasis on work-life balance, and much more emphasis on getting the job done. Young people are inherently more resilient than middle-aged ones, and of course it helps that the typical junior consultant or Ph.D. student does not have a spouse and family - that makes 60 hour-weeks over extended periods of time much more feasible.
Now, all this is very much opinion-based, and I'm sure there are working groups where professors actually respect your outside commitments. However, you seem to have entered a group where the professor has been conditioned by Ph.D. students who don't, like you, have family to attend to. This older answer of mine may be helpful in understanding what I mean.
Right now, I'd suggest you sit down with your professor and have an open discussion with him. Explain that you understand that many of your colleagues can bring youthful energy and few outside commitments to the table - but that you offer more life experience, and that your current situation with a family means that you have commitments you simply can't cancel on short notice, since you may need to pick your kids up at daycare.
Then again, you will likely need to accept a few things that may jar with your previous workplace experiences, like working through lunch, which really isn't all that bad, or working with your professor in judging whether conflicts in scheduling can't sometimes be resolved in favor of the professor's meeting.
Trying to narrow in, but I don't feel I'll escape opionion based. I will note that many answers seem to be clarifying the norms of being a doctoral student. I think your final two paragraphs are strong and found your older answering enlightening.
"there is much less emphasis on work-life balance" - I think this statement is rather misleading as is, at least with respect to academia. It's more that the boundary between work and life can easily be extremely blurry in academia, given that preferrably, your research is one of your major personal interests, and vice-versa, your major personal interests considerably shape your choice of topics and activities during work.
An answer to your 'question' (?) will depend on what you want.
Taken explicitly, the only really idiotic thing is the table. I have trouble imagining a situation where in a 15-people discussion everybody can cluster within 5 ft.
The other stuff: mostly harmless, you should consider that the Prof's time is more valuable than yours -- at least to him; and the Prof. probably needs to juggle more things than you have to. The conference room-sharing thing is actually really usual, conferences cost money, hence it makes sense to reduce costs by sharing [assuming, of course, the usual boundaries].
A better question might be how to handle expectations from your Prof. that you are not willing to say yes to. That depends on how willing the Prof. is to accomodate you. Especially since you have not said what happens if you do not, say, show up for meeting that doesn't fit in your schedule.
None of this means that you are a slave of some kind, but you have to accept that you are subordinate in certain matters. If you can't come to meeting I schedule at 5pm your excuse should be 'Doctors appointment', not 'I want to go home and watch TV'; I probably only have time at 5pm.
the Prof's time is more valuable than yours — [citation needed]
@JeffE the part after the '--' belongs to the sentence as well. And to expand a bit: times between 10am-4pm tend to be filled with lectures, which makes late afternoons possibly the only time available.
You're a grad student. This means you're a slave to your advisor. I was a grad student once and I found the conceit that grad students are human beings and that they are to be treated with dignity beyond comical. Don't talk about professionalism as a grad student - this is not the time and the place, you are off-topic and unfortunately, you are making yourself look ridiculous. If your advisor pulls your chain, you go along quietly, with your tail wagging.
My little brother and I found a preventive cure for this kind of treatment: get a full-time job and go for your graduate degree in the evening. Your adviser is a lot less likely to give you lip if he knows that you, as a grad student, are also a senior engineer at Google :) As they used to say on 42nd Street in New York City in the 1970's: "Money talks and b.s. walks" :)
That's utter rubbish.
@xLeitix I have been a grad student, I have lived through that experience and I have fellow grad students who lived that experience. Yes, there are faculty advisers who are good to their grad students but the fact is, an advisor's power over their grad students is nearly absolute. Especially if the grad student depends on their fellowship or student assistantship to go on.
You generalize from a very bad experience. You should have moved to a different group, and contacted people in position to help.
@cbhoener And who are those people in a position to help? Be specific. Fact is, I was treated with more respect and consideration where I was moonlighting as an engineer.
Other Professors, colleagues, the dean, family, lawyers, depending on what is going on. I don't know your specific case. Nobody forces you to stay with an advisor you don't like -- s.th. JeffE points out regularly.
@choener That's one reason I left a year after I got my Master's. I would have under a lot worse pressure if I had not made sure I was making my own money while I was going for my Master's. Other profs, the dean - it's the same bunch, pal. Family - what power do you think family has? Lawyers? Not on a grad student's money. Be realistic. Aside from that, being mean to graduate students is not a legally actionable offense.
I think the reason this answer has so many downvotes is that you present it as a universal experience. This may be consistent with your experience (and some of your friends), but that doesn't mean you have to resign yourself to this kind of treatment if you want to be a grad student.
@ff524 US-born STEM students certainly don't put up with this because they have the option to hit the job market - That's partially why there are so few US-born STEM grad students. On the other hand, foreign STEM grad students on a student visa are over-represented.
You're a grad student. This means you're a slave to your advisor. — [citation needed] — Your adviser is a lot less likely to give you lip if he knows that you, as a grad student, are also a senior engineer at Google — [citation needed]
Vietnhi has a point, IMO. I'm in 'industry' and while some of OP's complaints are unreasonable (e.g. expecting not to have to attend meetings at lunchtime and not to have to work after 5pm), others are classic "I am more important than you" social status markers from the senior person. Habitually being late to their own meetings while insisting that everyone else is strictly punctual is a classic one: by making the junior people wait for them the senior person makes the point that they believe their time is more valuable than that of everyone else in the meeting put together. ...
... This goes on all the time in 'industry' of course, but it's not good practice. It sounds as though either the senior person is an inexperienced manager or they are insecure about their work status and feel the need to emphasise their seniority frequently. As OP is a little older than his/her peers, maybe the advisor sees him/her as a threat to their status. Either way, it's certainly not good management, but it is pretty normal, and Vietnhi is right that OP has little alternative than to 'suck it up', while looking for an alternative position with a more agreeable boss.
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19819 | How to state that you “rigorified” an existing paper without sounding arrogant or condescending?
I am writing a paper aimed at a physics journal which extends an old paper (not by me), which introduced a mathematical formalism for a physical problem in a rather handwaving way and without addressing most of its mathematical background.
In addition to exentding this formalism, my paper elaborates on this mathematical background and relatedly introduces the formalism in a ”more rigorous” way.
I consider the latter one of my paper’s key features for the following reasons:
One might consider the formalism and the methods derived from it not to be properly substantiated in the old paper.
Though the mathematical background has no other application so far, it is interesting for its own sake and perhaps from a philosophical point of view.
My approach to the formalism might be more accessible to some people and make them give a better understanding of what they are doing when applying the formalism and related methods.
As these points are rather opinion-based, I do not intend to elaborate on them in the paper – at most I might shortly mention the didactical aspects in the conclusion.
(I mainly mentioned them here to give you some idea what I am talking about.)
However, I do want to briefly mention in the abstract or the introduction that I “rigorified” the formalism, where briefly can be anything between one word and two sentences.
For example, my abstract could look like:
[Old paper] introduced [old concept], which is useful for [application].
We extend this concept to [new concept] and also rigorify its mathematical background.
My problem is that rigorify its mathematical background is far from what I actually want to say.
I am therefore looking for a way to say this without seeming arrogant or condescending on the old paper and in particular without implying that the old paper “did not do its mathematics properly”.
I intentionally do not give my best solutions for now, as I do not want to induce any bias on them, in case I may underestimate them.
I am also torn between Academia and English Language & Usage for posting this question.
The word "physical" can be useful in situations like this (if the other paper was written by physicists). E.g. "this was done at a physical level of rigor by..."
@NoahSnyder: This is exactly the kind of tone, I want to avoid. And that’s not even taking into account that I am a phyisicist and I am intending to submit the paper to a physics journal.
@Wrzlprmft: The fact that you are a physicist might be relevant information for the question. Also, if what you are adding is mostly mathematics, have you considered submitting to a math journal instead? (Or perhaps an interdisciplinary journal?)
For inspiration, here's an example of an existing paper that does something similar: http://synapse.cs.byu.edu/~dan/673/papers/wiggins.pdf . Quote: "I will attempt to make Boden’s descriptive hierarchy more precise. In doing so, I will suggest some additions to the theory, which may or may not be implicit in Boden’s account and show how some of the distinctions over which she has been challenged may perhaps be supported. The formalisation will also make it possible to identify desirable and undesirable properties of creative systems in abstract terms."
I like Kaj_Sotala's comment. You can also add "tongue in cheek" remarks like, "At one level, my contribution can be seen as a mathematical paraphrase of the path-breaking intuitions of so and so; at another level, I like to think that I have built a small bridge to connect two distinct fields of inquiry" or something like that, make a joke about your ambition, to cancel out the possible perception that you're overstretching the importance of your contribution. Maybe.
@PeteL.Clark: I added theis information to the question. I have considered interdisciplinary journals, but my work does either not fit their scope or the journal’s level is far too high.
Something along the lines of "We provide a rigorous underpinning" should be fine. Avoid "rigorify": as far as I can see, it's not a word. (The only definitions I can find are at urbandictionary, which is completely unreliable.)
It sounds to me like you are viewing the older paper through the lens of the type of paper you would have written in the first place and are finding it wanting. It also sounds like you are viewing your own work as "fixing the flaws" of the older paper, almost as if you want to replace the older paper in your mind with your paper and pretend it had been written that way all along. More quantitatively you have your eye on the mark that the older paper should have hit, you are filling in the gap between the actual old paper and your eyeballed mark, and since you are measuring from the eyeballed mark you are giving the difference a minus sign. This framing seems to be behind most of your problems. Try recasting the entire thing more positively in your own mind.
1) Someone else published an inspirational paper way back when. This paper introduced some formalism and concentrated on its application to a physical problem.
2) Your paper gives much deeper attention to the mathematical aspects of the formalism, while also extending the formalism. Since 1) showed that the formalism is interesting and useful, your work has evident value.
There are no "minus signs" in the above description: 1) + 2) = your eyeball mark.
Unless there are actual mathematical errors in the older paper, you don't need to say that you are fixing or "rigorifying" (not really a word, by the way) the older paper. By the way, I don't know whether you've heard my rant about this use of the word "rigor" in mathematics and its applications. As an adult mathematician I have become increasingly skeptical of mathematical "rigor": the other paper either made mistakes (which you will need to correct), made claims which were unjustified or insufficiently justified (in which case you make clear that what you are contributing is the justification and not the claims themselves) or they weren't doing mathematics at all (which is fine: that's what you're adding). Adding rigor must mean one of the things above, right? It is not some generic ingredient that you can sprinkle more or less liberally over a piece of "unrigorous mathematics" and make it rigorous.
In summary: unless there are some clear mistakes, you don't need to bill your work as fixing their mathematics. You can bill it either as adding the math or adding more math. Both of these are good things added to other good things: no problem.
Large parts of this answer capture my motivation for this asking my question really well: Adding more math is exactly what I consider myself to do, but I lack a word or phrase to describe it that does not sound like I am fixing some shortcoming of the old paper. I like your formulation “giving deeper attention to the mathematical aspects of the formalism“, which is at the very least a good starting point. — I also share your dislike of the word rigor, which is why I put in in quotation marks (except one omission).
How about something like this:
WeakMath et al [foo] introduced a formalism for the problem we study. Their framework conveys valuable intuition* about [the problem] but is not precise enough for further development of the mathematical structures introduced. In this work, we elaborate on their ideas, placing them in a formal mathematical [something] that allows us to [do awesome things]
* if it does
You get the general idea: give them credit for intuiting the right ideas which will lessen the blow when you drop the hammer on them :)
So far as I can see this may still be unnecessarily negative. The formalism of the older paper was precise enough for whatever their purpose was. The OP is adding new mathematical structure on something that has proven to have important applications. Adding to someone else's work is not a critique, is it?
It's possible. Hard to say without details. I've certainly been in a position where the prior work was NOT precise enough, because the paper somehow escaped reviewer attention and was intuitive. In such a case, I'd like to point out that my formalism adds a nonzero amount of value.
In addition to Pete L. Clark’s comment, my “added mathematics” do not allow for anything new so far.
You are taking a problem from another paper and providing additional perspective which will allow future research to solve or add to solving the problem. This does not make the original paper any less worthy.
To get into the mindset for writing in a non-dismissive fashion, you might adopt the following scenario: "Their paper is the greatest thing since sliced bread! My model and formalization will allow others to handle this and similar problems with a more formal perspective. How can it possibly be any more win-win?" . This may exaggerate the current situation, but it is not a lie when framed properly. With such an attitude, you can write glowingly about the inspiration provided by their paper, and the anticipated benefits your perspective and formalization will give. I don't see any need to "drop a hammer" on anyone.
Putting myself in such a mindset, and making things general, I come up with:
"We take inspiration from Their paper [1], and provide additional mathematical perspective.
Our model of the problem reflects the intuition in Their paper, and has among its benefits a framework which we feel can be carried to other situations. In particular, we believe it furthers formal and rigorous treatment of the problem."
Take reasonable precautions: whatever you write, have your mentor or colleagues review it. If someone in your department who is politically adept approves, you can try sending an advance copy to the authors of the inspiring article, to see what suggestions they may provide. DO NOT send them a copy without such outside wisdom and approval.
I like “provide additional mathematical perspective”. “we believe it furthers formal and rigorous treatment of the problem” does not really apply however and also sounds as if I was claiming that the treatment in the old paper lacked something (formality and rigor), which is what I want to avoid.
@Wrzlprmft, it may sound that way to you, and of course you have to be satisfied with your choice of words. I used "further" in an additive sense, not to claim the original paper lacked any, but that you found more to add. In any case, I hope you find something that works for you.
Also, you may find English Language Usage.SE helpful in this regard. I don't know if the question is on topic, but the folks there may have useful opinions on the tone of a particular paragraph.
In this paper, we re-examine the results of [OriginalReference], extending its ideas to [X and Y and Z], providing a new approach via [method] to the original which may better illuminate [aspect W].
Essentially, "okay, the original work was pretty cool but we can do more with it, so we're going to run with that to get to this new stuff, specifically by doing this thing here because it makes a point or points more accessible and obvious".
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182178 | Can a professor / institution drop absent/non-contributing students from a course (any known precedent)?
In the scope of undergraduate college courses, is there any known precedent of being able to drop students from the course due to excessive absences without reason, lack of any real contribution, or little to no performance?
For example, something like:
Notice: given your grade of 35% you are at risk of being dropped from the course, you have 2 weeks to make a passing grade.
In the US this is a local question dependent on university rules. I doubt that it is commonly permitted, but you have to ask locally. Other places there might be national rules that apply.
"Poor performance" and "disruption" are different things. I had a colleague with a student who got quite threatening and scary. That is different than dropping someone for failing.
How would one know, a priori, who is 'highly interested' and will remain 'highly interested' once in the course? "Sounds cool! Wait, I have to do hard work???"
As noted above, I think this question should be split in two. Poor performance and disruption are different and should get different answers.
In this case I think I intended "poor perf & disruptive", last year had a low perf student drag class culture down. In theory it seems more quantifiable to drop a stop for a quantitative grade rather than "disruptive". I'll rescope it there.
I’m voting to close this question because is offensive in equiparating poor-performing students to disruptive of the class. This is a dictorial-style thinking
@EarlGrey looks like that remark was added by another editor, I have removed it
Actually, I copied-and-pasted that remark from your comment above. As it is, your question is very vague and has attracted several close votes; so, I suggest you add some rationale about why you would like to drop the poorly-performing students.
Yeah we need to close this... others are trying to fix the question and are just making it worse. I'm voting to close my own question :D
It's not unusual for students to be required to attend class during the first week and to be administratively dropped if they don't but I think you're talking about something less clear cut than that.
In my experience, I've taught for schools with the following policies that I think address what you're asking:
Students who are inactive for two weeks are administratively dropped regardless of their grade.
Students who are inactive and can no longer numerically pass the class are dropped.
Students who have a grade below passing at a fixed point in introductory math and English classes are dropped.
It's worth noting that a good search term for this policy is "administrative withdrawal," which is a process found in many university handbooks, at least in the US.
But those aren't "faculty decision" rules. And they are clearly spelled out to students in advance.
Your example simply won't work in many US institutions. There are too many ramifications for the student (e.g., failure to reach full time student status, tuition dollars already paid,...)
The time to address this is before students enroll, by being very specific about prereq work. The catch-all would be "instructor permission required" as a prerequisite.
For the example you describe, the correct course of action is to let the student know they're at risk of failing the course... period. This lets the student determine if there is a mechanism to safely dropping the course. If the student doesn't drop, and does not merit a passing grade, at the end of the semester, you simply issue a failing grade.
As an aside, if you're providing adequate feedback as the course progresses, the student should be aware that they're at risk of failing without such a notice.
I don't see prerequisites mentioned in the question; I don't think it is fair to assume that the cause of the students' performance is due to lacking prior foundational instruction based on the information provided, nor is it clear that anything could have necessarily been predicted ahead of time about the student's performance, the question is about whether this is an option once the student is present in the class and does not seem likely to be able to achieve a passing grade.
@BryanKrause The original question asked about advice to make sure only appropriate students enrolled in the class, and this was partially responsive to that.
Most often this is done via prerequisites being enforced. Generally, in such a course you will need to have received at least a "C" in the prerequisite classes or you will not be allowed to register for such a course or you will be de-registered before the term start (in the case where you enroll in the next course in a sequence in consecutive semesters).
Generally it would be unethical for a professor at a university to outright drop you from a course. However, you can ask them advice based on your background and they can give feedback as to whether their course might be appropriate given your background. In institutions like mine where classes can be as big as 200+ students it is almost a given that at least 1 student will fail the class, so professors and instructors generally are not as worried about this.
I don't see prerequisites mentioned in the question; I don't think it is fair to assume that the cause of the students' performance is due to lacking prior foundational instruction based on the information provided.
I'm saying that from my experience, this is the only way where students can be dropped from a course other than them doing so on their own. Instructors may be allowed to waive prerequisites and allow a student entry into their class but institutions and departments have set rules on what instructors are allowed to do so it depends on such factors.
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3684 | Isn't ghostwriting reverse-plagiarism?
Ghostwriting is when an author writes a work and attributes it to someone else.
Isn't this reverse-plagiarism (someone taking credit for someone else's work, but with permission)? I'm not sure it happens in academia a lot, but I've seen instances where a professor "ghostwrites" course notes for another professor. Actually those notes are really bad and it seems like he doesn't want to take the hit of delivering the course himself. Instead he ghostwrites it for other people. It seems wrong to me.
Unattributed work in academia is generally considered unethical. In my own experience, however, I believe that I've come across very few instances of actual ghostwriting where the real author was unnamed. Normally, at least some acknowledgment is called for, either in an editor's note or introduction.
Now, to answer Mankoff's comeent below, by "unattributed work," it can be okay for authors to choose to remain anonymous, if they feel it is in their best interests to do so. However, to take someone else's work and to pass it off as their own is clearly unethical behavior. However, from an ethics standpoint, even if the ghost author is asked about attribution and declines, the "named" author should not attempt to claim sole credit for the work. Instead, the author should make some sort of reference to those who assisted in the preparation of the manuscript. Otherwise, they're passing off someone else's work as their own.
I wonder: it is ethical (though probably not very common) to pay for proofreading or translation services, or to pay for someone to make graphs, figures or other visualization work for you… what is fundamentally different about writing that it wouldn't be ethical to hire someone to write papers for you? (I mean, just the writing part, based on a draft of your results and discussions, or something like that) Where is the limit?
There are many anonymous academic publications. See, for example, "author:anonymous" search on Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=author%3Aanonymous
@mankoff That search returns mostly results on rsc.org that correspond to editorials of journals of the Royal Society of Chemistry… even though they don't have the metadata properly given in the HTML, you can look at the PDF and the articles are signed by their authors
@F'x you are right. However, I do know of some famous highly-cited anonymous publications. I cannot find them in my reference library at the moment. Regardless, your edit clarifies your stance on this.
In general, I would say that ghost writing does not constitute plagiarism and using one is not an academically dishonest. A scientific writer who is not an expert in a particular field can convert research notes into a manuscript. These words are not the contribution to the field, but rather the research they encompass. While converting the notes to prose could be viewed as worthy of authorship, I think it is also reasonable to say that it is not. If the writer and the researcher agree that the writers assistance is not worthy of authorship, then there is no problem.
While I do not use a ghost writer, I see this as no different then employing a programmer to write code to control my experiment, an RA to collect the data from the experiment, a graphic designer to create the figures, and a statistician to run the statistics, all of which I do do to varying degrees. To me the contribution is the design of the experiment and the analysis and interpretation of the results. I acknowledge these individuals to varying degrees in the manuscripts, but rarely give authorship.
The ICMJE guidelines for authorship are
Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.
A ghost writer does not meet conditions 1 or 3.
If an unlisted person is responsible for the production of the actual text of the final publication, then they have a right to be an author. An author could choose to give up this claim willingly, but I don't see a real advantage for the "true" author to do so that doesn't create an ethics issue somewhere along the way.
@aeismail I disagree, I added a link to the ICMJE guidelines which make it clear, in my opinion, that a ghost writer should not be an author.
@aeismail The job done by a hired person is more or less that of a transcript writer; like in medical or legal transcriptions. But to the question OP is asking, the answer is; It is unethical in the part of the professor who actually uses these course notes without sufficient attribution (as long as he/she is not hiring the other professor to prepare the notes).
If you have hired somebody to write a paper for you, then that fact needs to be acknowledged in some manner. Failure to do so—even as an acknowledgment—is still unethical behavior, because you are presenting someone else's work as your own!
Frankly, if the ghost writer has done their job, the author of the study may not meet condition 2. I look forward to an era of authorless papers.
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160901 | New proposed theory is the same I asked in this network some years ago
Imagine that I make a post in which I propose a new theory or idea, but I don't write any paper about it.
Then, some years later, a researcher independently and completely unaware of my post, proposes the same theory/idea in a peer-reviewed paper.
In what circumstances could I claim co-authorship of that theory/idea and how could I handle that?
EDIT: As suggested, I rephrased this question. I kept the original question below, for future reference. The context of how this question arose was maybe idiotic, and that was making the answers to drift away from a general view of the problem. As I said in the comments, I was not realistically considering to claim any authorship for the idea or act on it in any way - it is a genuine curiosity of how things could be handled in a generic way. At least, I'm glad to see that this community can engage in a controversial question like this without being disrespectful (no sarcasm).
Some years ago I made this question which was closed soon after.
I was basically suggesting that sleeping could be an evolution advantage as they allow dreams to happen, which in turn allow you to simulate different situations in a safe environment, thus being more well prepared to react in new situations in real life.
Recently, a researcher proposed the same (similar?) idea.
Now, I honestly don't think he stole the idea from my post. It's perfectly reasonable that someone in this field could come to the same hypothesis.
However, I am creature with an ego bigger than one could consider healthy, and this feeling of "I also had that idea before, and I think I deserve some acknowledgment for that" is lurking on the back of my head. I'm sure that with it will go away, but what I would like to ask here is: do I have any reason/right to claim co-authorship of such theory?
I know that history of science has many cases of independent researchers doing the same discover, and I'm sure all around the world there are people who already experienced this "ah! but I had that idea before!".
So, even though this really doesn't matter and it's just food to the ego, I am curious to know how this type of situations can be handled.
I hate to say it, but it isn't like many of us have not had that idea in the past. And, like you, did nothing in particular about it.
Yeah, it's not a particularly novel idea
Recall that ideas are worth a dime a dozen: researchers have all plenty of ideas. The difference is made by those who fully develop the ideas.
I think the recent paper/proposal/idea is based on new and recent information about how the brain works. Especially the speed with which parts of the brain can be "repurposed". Not my field, but I think that is new.
I work in neuroscience, specifically in the area of consciousness and anesthesia which relates a lot to sleep. This is a really old idea, not novel at all. I knew Erik when he was a grad student. I don't have access to the full article, but I suspect the novel contribution he's suggesting is a specific mathematical approach to this particular hypothesis. He's not suggesting he's first to the generic idea.
I would consider generalizing this, as Massimo suggested. The answer here seems to be a trivial no, because your idea is not novel/specific enough. But if you generalized to consider, say, a proof on MathOverflow that was later presented in a publication, the question might be more interesting.
@MassimoOrtolano "Ideas are a dime a dozen." - this sounds plausible, but is so often untrue, that it's practically vacuous. There are some ideas that are not worth much unless they come with an implementation, these are ideas easily imagined, but hard to realize at first (flying, remote control, etc.); but there are ideas which are really hard to see ahead of time. Relativity, integration, public keys, quantum mechanics, paperclip; yes, once seen, they cannot be unseen and are retroactively obvious. But it does not render them cheap ideas.
@BryanKrause, if you are interested the (pre-print of the) paper in question is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.09560, specifically it appears to suggest that dreams are a biological equivalent of human methods to counteract over-fitting in machine learning by adding noise to your inputs. Based on the intro the novel idea is the analogy to an approach in AI, and he claims there are some testable predictions you can make from this idea.
@NAMcMahon Thanks, that's something like what I expected. To OP, if you read this you'll see he's making a specific prediction not related to what was previously posted on SE.
@BryanKrause, I've added a new answer with the link and a comment on the differences, so the OP should see it
Thank you for your comment @BryanKrause. I'm really sorry that the way I wrote the question was interpreted as I would seriously considering acting on it. I didn't know that this was an old idea (my original post of some years ago was actually to question if this had been proposed by anyone). This situation just triggered me into thinking what could happen in a situation like this, if I really wanted to act on it and if the idea was really original. Clearly my example was a terrible one, but I hope now, that I rephrased the question, this can get a different type of attention.
A question based on a vague idea is not "a theory" in the scientific sense.
No, you have no reason/right to claim co-authorship, or I believe any acknowledgement at all.
For those curious about the paper a preprint is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.09560
I have skimmed through the paper and have some background in AI, but even ignoring the fact that the topic of the paper is different to what you wrote about, what you have linked to is no more then a random thought. Any contributions from you can be summed up in the following hypothesis:
Dreaming can be a significant advantage since it allows you to experience a virtual world, simulated situations and reactions, without taking any risks. In this way specimens who could dream were better prepared to face new situations and how to react.
This statement is very vague and doesn't actually specify anything. How are dreams simulating a virtual world? Why are dreams better than being able to run simulations while awake? How does the specimen decide upon which simulations to run? Possibly a good starting point to develop a more specific research question but not a research question by itself. The statement was also after you asking if anyone else had ever looked at this kind of idea.
Even if the author had read your statement and that had inspired him to start thinking more about the subject I don't believe there would be any ethical issues by not referencing you since the statement above feels lacking in substance to me (just like you wouldn't reference a handwaved/madeup science fact from some sci-fi book if it had inspired you to look into a topic).
Now considering the actual paper, and based on my skim of the paper a few months ago, the topic is actually different to what you suggested. The paper proposes that dreaming solves the problem of over-fitting. This occurs in reinforcement learning (AI) where the algorithm is trained on a data-set and can perform very well on classifying/responding to that data-set, but when input that it wasn't trained on comes in the algorithm does something stupid.
So instead of simulating the situations and reactions that the creature may run into, the paper suggests that dreams are the result of training yourself from your daily experiences, but with added random noise to the input training set (your daily observations). This means that you won't assume that everything will occur exactly the same as what you observed today, and that will be beneficial. Specifically it balances against the innumerable number of variables that you couldn't have been aware of which impacted your daily experience.
Posting an idea on stackexchange does not count as prior publication when thinking about coauthorship or some other way to establish priority. The scientist in the post you link to seems to have done some actual work on the hypothesis in question. I don't think what you have done amounts to "discovery" or calls for any acknowledgment.
In your situation I might consider a polite email to the author, saying that you had a similar idea several years ago. If you actually followed up on your idea you might try to engage with them to see if your thoughts ran along similar lines. Your goal should be to advance the science, not to get some credit.
Next week on Academia.SE: "I published a paper, and now someone has emailed me claiming they had a similar idea and posted it on a now-deleted website... how am I supposed to respond?"
I mean, you're right of course. I was not realistically expecting to get credit for this and I understand that the author did some work based on AI. But again, imagine that I'm fully driven by ego (not the case)... I am curious to know in what situation could I demand co-authorship for a theory.
@avid ahah! it won't happen because of me I assure you :)
I can imagine a situation where you could expect (not demand) co-authorship. This isn't one. In any such situation the actual chain of events, not your ego, should determine what happens.
"Posting an idea on stackexchange does not count as prior publication": I severely disagree - in the sense where "publication" means "claiming priority" (which I assume it does). There is no "rule" what establishes priority on an idea, it can be a published paper, a preprint (which in the past also did not count), a talk, or a SE post. Sometimes even just the knowlegde in the community that someone found a result (and how) is sufficient reason to establish priority.
@avid This is nonsense. A traceable and timestamped post and a unfounded claim of priority are in no way the same. Next, only publications in ISI-indexed journals will count.
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3697 | Is it reasonable to cite published computational results rather than reproduce them yourself?
In computer science, when we write an academic paper, we often have to include comparative results that our method has some kind of quantitative advantage against some other state of the art results.
While it is sometimes easy to reproduce a cited paper's results (e.g., classification of small datasets), other times it is very time consuming and you could spent the better part of your research time just writing code testing the other methods.
However, it sometimes happens that when we reproduce the method, we do not get the presented results. So it can be tricky to do that as well.
Is it reasonable just to cite another paper's results at face value?
What suggestions would you give to this conundrum?
I treat computational results as in silico experiments. They have been published in a peer-reviewed journal, so I trust them by default, unless I have a reason not to. I cite them without a need to recompute them.
Sometimes, I have a reason to doubt them: they don't match my intuition, or they don't match my own results in a related case; they seem incoherent; they don't match experimental data; etc. Then, I redo them, possibly in more than one way (different software, try checking the effect of some of the assumptions, etc.). If I learn something from it, I consider publishing this study.
Well, if you need to compare performance of your algorithm to the performance of the cited algorithm, the only fair way to do it is to run both experiments on the same system under controlled and as similar conditions as possible.
@walkmanyi yes, indeed. But the question was not about algorithm timing the computational results.
our method has some kind of quantitative advantage against some other. My understanding is that the question does indeed cover performance results, those are the quantitative advantages.
My most-cited work arose because we couldn't reproduce an earlier published paper in the field. We did a much more extensive study, and demonstrated conclusively why the previous results were unreliable.
So, while you don't need to reproduce every single result that has previously been published, it can serve a useful purpose to try to reproduce at least some of those results—because then you can be sure that your model is working the way you would expect it to (provided the previous data can be trusted; as my case showed, this isn't always the case!).
Is it reasonable just to cite another paper's results at face value?
In my opinion, there are only few limited cases where this would be acceptable. For example, when comparing industrial-scale systems, or comparison of qualitative features of the works. Also in the case there exist an established set of benchmarks and your algorithm can solve some of those the other can't, you do not really need to reimplement. Possibly also when testing the algorithm cannot be done in a reproducible manner (industrial-scale field tests). When it comes to experimental efficiency, however, I think you usually do not have much choice and should reproduce the others results - if possible at all.
What suggestions would you give to this conundrum?
Depends on what you need the cited work for. In the case you developed an algorithm which is supposed to be more efficient than the cited one, to prove your point you need a controlled experiment when both methods are run under same conditions (e.g., implemented in the same programming language, and run on the same system etc.) and with the same set of benchmarks. In such a case, if you want to demonstrate your point properly, your best is to reimplement (or ask the authors for their implementation and adapt it to your conditions) and run head-to-head. Otherwise your performance curves are going to be incomparable. For good examples of how to do this, see for example comparisons/evaluations of experimental performance of planning algorithms, or SAT solvers.
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17499 | How should use of a preprint server be incorporated into the publishing workflow?
I am a biologist and very recently there has been a movement to increase the use of preprints in publishing biological research. This has generated a lot of discussion about preprints and their merits and has spawned a few servers (e.g., bioRxiv) but I have not gotten a good sense of how I should incorporate the preprint server into my normal publishing workflow.
What specifically is not clear to you? What options have you considered? What considerations are/aren't important to you? Why do you want to use a preprint server? What are your goals, specifically? This question is subjective, unclear, open-ended, and does not show much evidence of effort to articulate a well-posed question, so it might not be an ideal fit for this site.
Why close votes? There are so many question on Academia.SE which are very specific (page-long description of one's situation), very broad or in general "give me a life advice" that don't get down votes. This one is short, clear, important and re-usable.
Workflow may be different, but the one I am familiar with is:
put preprint on arXiv along with sending it to a journal
after the final version is confirmed, update the arXiv with the newest version of text (with your formatting)
(in case there are serious mistakes or omissions, update arXiv at anytime)
Sometimes version on arXiv is put before the submission to a journal, for example:
there is some work that need to be done before the submission, but we want to have it before a conference we are attending, or a talk at another department (so we can point the preprint to the reader),
we haven't decided yet where or if we want to send it.
And in some cases, arXiv is used instead of a journal, especially if:
the work is not suitable for publication in a journal (e.g. a PhD Thesis, textbook), but we want to disseminate it, preserve it and make it easily citable,
the author prefers it that way (e.g. it is a short note, or the topic is unconventional and the author prefers to avoid struggling with editors).
The role that pre-prints have in the collective workflow of people in a field depends half on each person's preferences and half on how it gets established as a means of communications. There are no 'right' or 'wrong' workflows for using a pre-print server (though there are wrong ways to use one), and you should use the one that fits you best personally and lets you communicate best with your colleagues.
There is a broad spectrum of reasons you might want to upload a preprint, which are explained in detail in this question. To give a brief summary, you might upload a preprint or postprint
to provide free access to your content to researchers and students in institutions without subscription to the journals you publish in, which is also a way
to help increase the use of your papers by the community, and hence the number of citations;
to establish priority of a result, and particularly as a way to get more widespread credit for having introduced an idea at an early stage;
to open a manuscript up for public comment from your colleagues after you feel it's mostly ready but before you're prepared to set it in (published) stone;
to make it visible to people who browse it often as a way to see new results;
to cite as-yet-unpublished work in some other paper, in a way that referees of the second one can see it;
to fulfil open-access conditions on a grant;
or for many other reasons. Whether these (or others) apply to you will determine how you use the repository. Some of these are personal choices, and may come down to how much you feel you stand to gain from non-institutional readers having access to your work. Some of these are field-dependent, and hinge on there being a significant fraction of the workers in your field that regularly check the repository.
The appropriate time to upload will typically vary on a case-by-case basis. You might upload at an almost-finished stage, at the time of submission to a journal, at time of acceptance, at the time the paper is published, or even six to twelve months after that. Each of these corresponds to some or other of the motivations above.
One thing that's important to keep in mind is that you must have a good idea of prospective journals you'd like to publish in, and of what their preprint policies are, before you upload, as it can rule out certain publication venues if you're not careful. This is again field-dependent; many physics journals take that as standard but biology ones might not.
I'm compelled to add an answer to this question from the biologist's point of view. arXiv and bioRxiv are extremely important in the field (both wet-lab biology and dry-lab bioinformatics/computational biology) for 3 reasons:
Getting your work out there ASAP (since peer-review can, and often will, take over a year). As such, if another paper gets published that's very similar to yours in study design, methods, and research, then you have the benefit of the timestamp of arXiv/bioRxiv submission and can claim precedence. Which brings me to the next point:
From personal experience, I've been in situations where my work was in the middle of peer-review but someone publishes a related paper (in the same subspecialty as me) in an Advanced Access issue of a peer-reviewed journal (e.g., Bioinformatics, Nucleic Acids Research, etc). Their paper did not include a citation to my bioRxiv work, so I emailed the editor of the respective journal drawing attention to my preprint and timestamp. The editor sent my query to the authors and all agreed to cite my bioRxiv work in the next edition of the paper (which came out the next month). If I had not posted my preprint to bioRxiv 6 months beforehand, the situation would have been very different. Once my paper got accepted, the bioRxiv citation transferred automatically to the journal article. Hence, I did not lose a citation needlessly.
arXiv/bioRxiv is indispensable if you feel that giving away your work to peer-review might open you up to the "non-public domain", which is slang in our community meaning "opening yourself up to getting scooped." This is important if you're publishing in a very hot, fast-moving field and/or there is academic funding/grants at stake (think study section at major organizations). There are many reasons (not all of them noble) for why people volunteer their time to journal editorial boards and/or grant review panels. I'll leave it at that.
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31900 | How do advisors typically apply pressure on PhD students to get work done?
I tend to get much work done when some external force (a teacher) applies pressure. Skills such as speed reading and rapid writing come to me only while working under pressure. Also, sometimes the best solutions only come to me immediately before deadlines. I am interested in starting a PhD, but nervous that there will be long stretches where I will not have to submit progress or there might not be much pressure for me to get work done.
Do students working towards a PhD thesis typically face frequent deadlines and pressure in the form of specific targets? How do advisors typically apply pressure to their PhD students?
I feel that there is no single good answer to this. Many advisors don't apply any pressure at all (this can happen when the buy-in for the advisor is too low). Those that do, do so in various forms.
@xLeitix definitively. Anyway, you have many different flavors of pressure, if you are worried only about the lack of pressure then you can set deadlines for yourself, either for whole papers or parts of them. Sure, you mentioned an "external force", but you can take the PhD as an opportunity to learn many skills, including being self-driven, which is only going to be good in the long term.
Some supervisors don't. Some do it well. Some do it badly. You'll need to take particular care in who you work with if this is a major issue for you.
Enthusiasm is an important factor in research, if you are not eager to pursue research without external pressure, you might not enjoy the sort careers for which a PhD is a requirement. As a researcher you need to be self-motivated. A PhD is three years of study, and you might want to consider whether it is something you really want to do.
When I was a postgraduate research student (MPhil) I had weekly one2ones with my supervisor where we'd review what I'd done and what i was going to do in the coming week. He did the same for all his PhD students and this meant we all had some regular pressure applied to us. Some students tend to drift a little when their supervisors are absent for weeks and months but under this regime it was impossible. If i ever undertake a PhD i'm going to insist on weekly meetings with my supervisor.
I am interested in starting a PhD, but nervous that there will be long stretches where I will not have to submit progress or there might not be much pressure for me to get work done.
Congratulations for having identified one of the major differences between research projects on the PhD level and earlier levels even before starting a PhD! In my opinion, dealing with problems on your own and without real pressure for weeks ore maybe even months is really a characteristic feature of PhD research. One of the competences which you should acquire before the PhD degree is to go through such phases successfully.
That said, there's of course different types of support (or pressure, if you prefer to call it so) from your supervisor and your fellow researchers, mostly your supervisor's group or collaboration partners.
Your supervisor may ask you or suggest to submit a paper to a specific conference, which has a submission deadline.
You may be involved in a collaboration project, where regular meetings with project partners take place, and a presentation of the latest results will be expected.
A third-party funded project may require regular reports on research results, which you may be asked to provide if you work on that project or a related topic.
Many groups have regular meetings where people discuss their latest research results. You'll be expected to contribute some results of yours from time to time.
But of course, how much pressure is built up by such expectations varies from place to place.
Also, a difference to undergraduate research or coursework is that consequences usually do not come immediately if you fail to "deliver", but will only be visible on the long run, over the course of one or two years maybe.
Generally, I'd say that a young supervisor with a growing group will put more pressure on you to deliver research results than a more established researcher with a large group, because the young supervisor depends more on your results for his own progress, and should have more time to work with you closely.
Also, the group you're involved in matters a lot, because discussion with colleagues stimulates research ideas, and also puts you into a mode of "having to deliver something". Check a potential group for jointly authored publications (not only PhD student + supervisor) to get a feeling for how active it is in terms of collaboration. The latter point is especially important for a large group with an established senior supervisor.
I was wrong. This is in fact a great answer.
I'd say that a young supervisor with a growing group will put more pressure on you to deliver research results than a more established researcher with a large group — And what about young professors with large groups, or established professors with small groups? (I know the former, and I am the latter.)
I agree, many undergrads and failed PhD students need somebody directing them towards solving the problem, including providing the pressure to do so. Finding self-motivation and self-pressure is a key point to develop independent research skills. One must be careful though as too much self-pressure during a PhD easily leads to burnout.
@JeffE I'm not sure I can provide better advice than "it depends" here. Many established professors with small groups work very intensively with their few students, providing an excellent research environment, but I also now persons at this stage who don't even care to recruit students, much less working closely with them.
In my opinion, the most important thing that one should learn during the course of a Ph.D. and postdoc is how to be an independent researcher, directing one's own line of research. Part of that is learning how to acquire your own motivators. If you need external motivators, the academic world is full of deadlines that you can apply to yourself: conference deadlines, journal revision deadlines, project review deadlines, grant application deadlines, collaborators who need you to hold up your end of a bargain.
If you find a framework of deadlines is important for you, you should be able to arrange for weekly meetings with your advisor, which can provide a running set of deadlines for you to target. Early on in your program, much of the goal-setting is likely to come from your advisor. Later, as you mature as a researcher, hopefully it will shift to be more coming from you. Depending on your field, your advisor, and your personality, that may come sooner or it may come later (which is why I included postdoc above).
At the same time, I will warn you that deadlines and short-term goals are a good way to avoid one of the hardest things about research: finding the perspective to step back, take a look at the bigger picture, and figure out what is actually important to do. At one point in my Ph.D., my advisor told me that now was the time that I needed to just go sit under a tree and think for a while. He was right, and I didn't like what I found when I stopped doing and thought seriously about how those things related to my actual dissertation goals.
It's entirely possible to do a Ph.D. and postdoc in an entirely project-focused and deadline-driven way, while never developing as an independent researcher, but instead becoming sort of a "super technician." In fact, pressure from grants provides incentives for professors to push their students to do so, creating deliverables rather than learning to self-direct. You can have an excellent career in industry or a non-PI position in academia on the basis of such work, and that's fine. If you want to be an independent investigator leading your own line of research, however, then at some point across Ph.D. and postdoc, you will need to learn how to handle the dreadful freedom of managing your own time and expectations.
+1 for "short term goals are a good way to avoid ..... looking at the big picture.." There is a time to focus on tangible short goals driven by deadlines and there is a time to step back and take a long view of things. The hard part is to know when to do what because sometimes sitting under a tree is the best way to avoid getting anything done.
I would offer two suggestions.
First, the structure of the relationship between a grad student and their advisor is partly dependent on their individual styles, but is largely what they make it. So don't expect that your advisor would automatically set deadlines, targets, etc (some might and some might not), but if that is something that would be helpful to you, ask your advisor to help you by doing it. You could arrange a system where at each meeting, the two of you agree on what you will have finished by the next meeting (or by intermediate deadlines in between if needed). You might find it helpful to describe it as "accountability" rather than "pressure".
More broadly, I completely understand your tendency to "work best under pressure" (I sometimes feel the same myself), but I would suggest that ultimately, rather than relying on people around you to impose that pressure, you might consider working on changing that aspect of yourself. In my own experience, I found that saying "I work best under pressure" turned into "I only work when there is pressure, and until then I procrastinate." (Sometimes this is due to the work being consciously or subconsciously stressful; perhaps paying attention to a project brings up the fear that maybe I'm doing it all wrong, I must be an idiot, I'll never graduate, etc. So it's easiest to avoid these thoughts by avoiding the work until it can't be avoided any longer.)
The work got done in the end, but it wasn't my best work: it was last-minute and only marginally acceptable, and had I started earlier I could have produced something better. It's not easy to change one's own habits and thought patterns if they are ingrained, but it's something that can really be a long-term benefit.
For your coursework, if any, you will face the same sort of deadlines you'd find in any college course. Expect little or no slack on late or sloppy work, though. In one of my courses, grades were 100% or zero. For the dissertation, it will depend on your supervisor. Mine required biweekly reports. When you get near the dissertation stage, ask potential supervisors or committee chairs how they do that.
In many places, PhD studies do not include coursework.
@CapeCode: Thanks. (My experience is a sample of one.) I'll adjust the answer.
There is no unique answer for this question of course. So I would like to add also my view:
Some supervisors "apply pressure", by being very passive and not setting any deadlines at all, but giving students a lot of self-responsibility. For some people there is no greater pressure then the pressure they set themselves. So the idea is they are learning you to create your own pressure.
It is kind of in the same way as the most horrible teacher, can in the end be the best teacher. Because in case you didn't understand anything of his/her horrible explanation, you had to figure it out yourself, and after you did, you never forget it. Whereas the good flowed story of the great professor, saved you a lot of time, and boosted fast understanding but might have hindered you to question important assumptions, or to study fundamental aspects firmly.
If supervisors help you by setting a lot of deadlines, chopping up the work in small pieces, and specifying the targets, it may help you, but also it could hinder independence. This is why I think its very difficult to compare PhD's because even of 2 people would have done the same work, but under completely different supervision, and resources, the grade or rating, should be different.
My recommendation is that you tell him, how you liked to be supervised. In my case I would have asked for a gradual transition from very structured with deadlines in the first year, to complete freedom in the last year.
Don't bother. You will be wasting your time and others, and possible stopping someone more deserving from the getting opportunity of a lifetime. I expect someone with or aiming for a PhD to be telling me what needs to be done, not expecting me to tell them.
The whole point of having a higher level certificate is not to prove that you can be taught, it is to prove that you can learn and you can work. As an employer, I want someone that I can present with a problem and get back a solution. If I have to stand over your shoulder asking "have you done it yet?" then you wont enjoy my company, and I certainly wont enjoy yours.
---- edit to address some of the comments below ----
I was being deliberately harsh but not (intentionally) insulting, I apologise for any offence taken. I did not criticise the OP for his or her self-organisation, only their self motivation, and it is this I am hoping they will re-evaluate. In academia, as in commerce, it is expected that a junior will have to be told what to do, and that a senior will already know and be getting on with it. This is often the most useful distinguishing feature between them. I would expect a PhD candidate to be a senior, or one their way to becoming one, but I accept that opinions can differ.
I do not understand how the certificate of achievement can be considered as anything other then a significant accomplishment. In industry, I do not much care what subject you have mastered as it is unlikely to be relevant, and extremely unlikely that I will be able to ask you meaningful questions on it, but I do care that you have mastered a subject, and I will want to know how you solved problems and approached difficulties. For it is that ability to overcome obstacles in the pursuit of knowledge the makes you a master in the eyes of your peers.
To the original poster, I suggest you find a way to internalise those external pressures you say you need. Whether it is your diary or your professional pride that is applying the pressure, you need to find a way to keep focused and keep working when you are bored, tired, distracted and/or frustrated. When not only is no one pushing you, but when people are telling you that you are wasting your time, wasting their time, that you are wrong or that you have already failed.
That's just insulting, and terrible advice. Half of my PhD students are horrible in self-organization, and they are certainly not "wasting my time".
Note that a significant fraction (perhaps a majority) of students seeking a PhD are looking toward careers in academia, so they have no interest in working at a "company" in the first place. In academic research, one rarely faces the situation where the boss presents a problem and demands a solution.
The whole point of having a higher level certificate — Sorry, no, having the certificate has no point at all! Surely, even as an employer, you look at the applicant's actual accomplishments.
To address your edit: In your terminology, I would say the entire point of getting a PhD is to make the transition from "junior" to "senior". In most fields, a student entering a PhD program definitely fits into your "junior" category.
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14395 | How to check and correct editorial changes to a manuscript post-acceptance?
A journal which accepted a paper of mine has made some alterations to the text of the paper as part of their editing process. They sent me the edited version for approval, and I discovered that at least some of these changes are erroneous (for instance, one of the changes included a typo, and another was changing the spelling of a technical term incorrectly). I asked for a list of all the changes made, and was told that this was "too messy" (I assume because the alterations to the text are mixed in with the changes to the formatting of the paper, which is a more standard part of the editing process).
At this time the journal is waiting for me to approve/make changes to the final proof before publication.
My question is how I should deal with this situation. I feel like I have an obligation to be responsible for the contents of a paper published in my name. (Though, if I'm mistaken about this, that would be a helpful answer.)
I can think of a few solutions, ranging from the tedious (compare the PDF files line by line to identify the changes myself), to the demanding (insist on a list of changes anyway), to the passive-aggressive (either withdraw the paper or add a sulky footnote disavowing responsibility for the unknown changes to the paper). These all have problems, so I'd appreciate more constructive ways to approach the situation.
Sadly, this is normal. Do the tedious and move on with your life.
Various programs exist to make the manual proofreading less tedious — most notably, versions of diff adapted for PDF, which can take two similar-but-not-identical PDF’s and highlight the specific differences. I personally like DiffPDF, and find it takes a great deal of the labour out of this kind of re-proofreading.
@PLL: I wasn't aware of DiffPDF. That looks like it may be a big help
Failing that, so long as the paper isn't too mathematical, you could copy/paste to text files and use diff :-)
I've run into bad editing situations like this. In these cases, I've gone through the paper line by line, with a fine tooth comb. Yes, it is painful, but it is a good idea even if the journal editors aren't obviously screwing up. (This can get doubly horrible if you have complicated formatting in your paper.)
You should bear in mind whoever is doing this is unlikely to actually understand what you are writing, and my experience of people doing this sort of thing is that they can be well-meaning and not too bright, so they can take it upon themselves to "correct" your manuscript, while not understanding what they are doing. Additionally, if you give them last minute changes to the paper, make sure to check they have applied them correctly. Are you the sole author? Can you get anyone else to help with this? It would make it less awful.
Your other ideas sound less viable. Asking for a list of changes assumes that there is someone there who actually knows what those changes are. My experience is that journal staff are often amazingly technically incompetent, and probably have never thought of using version control for example. though I'd love to hear about the exceptions. But you can certainly try to insist.
Your passive-aggressive ideas just sound bad. You don't want to withdraw your paper over an issue like that. And if there are errors in the paper, they will reflect badly on you, and nobody else will care.
At times I've thought someone should start a site like ratethisjournal.org where people could discuss their experiences dealing with different journals.
I've run into bad editing situations like this. — I don't think I've ever had a journal paper where the copy-editor didn't introduce at least one (usually minor) error. So I go through every copy-edited paper line by line with a fine-tooth comb.
PLL's practical solution (use DiffPDF to make it easier to find the changes) is probably the best answer to the practical question, but it's helpful to get a little background on how the paper got into this mess in the first place.
A Copy Editor speaking. I have couple comments:
It is true that it is impossible to seperate the changes in the text and changes in the formatting, even in good systems like LaTeX.
Good Copy Editor never changes any scientific terms as is. Sometimes we have to change a formula (split in two lines, etc.), or we are dubious about a comma, preposition, hyphen or whatever. Even though the Language Editor corrects these, I sometimes don't make the changes if I feel it is against the intention of the author. Honestly, this is a complicated process, even inside the Editors' Office, not speaking about communication with the authors. As well, we put some notices in the Proofreading version if we're unsure about something, so that the author can be aware of it. Unfortunately, it seems to me that not many journals do quite a great job in Copy Editing.
What can you do:
Read your manuscript really carefully during the proofreading. No matter what
happens, you can get as angry as possible at the Editor's, but if there was a mistake in the proofreading version and you did not point it out, it's your mistake, not the journal's.
Prepare the manuscript as perfectly as possible. Use the correct template (esp. in LaTeX), follow the (typo)graphic manual of the journal etc. This way, you minimise the changes the Copy Editor/Typesetter has to make, thus minimising the chance of something going wrong. My experience is that the amount of mistakes that appear is highly dependent of the quality of the manuscript when you send it. (Example: We work in LaTeX, and when I receive an article in Word, I have to re-write/revise all the math formulas. Imagine how many mistakes I make during this very stupid process.)
There are tools that allow a document to be "linearised". Then you can linearise the accepted version and the proofreading version and compare them. However, I don't have any how-to for this.
If you find a serious mistake after the publication, see what errata policy the journal has. In our case, the online version (we're open access) can be corrected, and additionally, Errata are printed in the next suitable issue.
A copy editor writes “I have couple” and “seperate” as the first few words in their answer. This is why we have so much trouble with them.
Well, I had fortunately been backed up by a Language Editor during my years at the publisher, so this wasn't really my concern.
My point is that that would be the concern of anyone who reached high school.
Copy-editing is a normal part of the publication process, and a few errors can be introduced that way. A good proof-reading is in order, of course, but if you miss a typo or two it's not the end of the world. Moreover, if you later come to realize that a critical error has been introduced, which was not present in your initial copy and which you did not find in the your proof-reading, you can always ask for a correction at that point.
However, many publishers give you more information to help review the copy-edited proofs. For example, many publishers will gladly give you (automatically, or upon asking) the list of changes made (“edit track” or something like that). Something a bit like a latexdiff output, in most cases. It's a crowded document, and hard to read through because there are many formatting and copy-editing changes, but it can be helpful with some details.
Some background. Many copy-editors (I would say most) are not experts in any field but are experts on the house style of the publisher. I have experienced how copy-editors new to the journal make lots of mistakes, they sometimes edit several journals with different styles. They should not make such mistakes but sometimes the communication between the publisher and the copy-editor does not work well for one reason or another. Note that the journal and its editors may not be involved in this part of the process; I cannot say what applies in your case.
I would suggest you contact the editors of the journal, or the contact to which you are supposed to return the comments. State that your manuscript has been corrupted by the copy-editing and ask how they suggest you should proceed (considering that the state of the paper is completely unsatisfactory). What you can also do is to try to summarize the systematic errors you have observed so that the journal/publisher can provide these comments to the copy-editor. Unfortunately, the copy-editor will not likely be able to make any better judgements on the corrections without input from others, so I think it is safe to say at least some will most likely fall back to you to correct in the end.
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79176 | Is there any published research on pedagogy of the semester vs trimester systems at the high school or university levels?
I have found some anecdotal evidence, but I only found one systematic study by Bair and Bair
I'm specifically interested in the answers for Mathematics, Physics, and Engineering disciplines.
Could you provide details on the bibliographical search you have already carried out in relation to your question? Sounds like it would be a great question for a subject librarian in an education department.
@user65587 It's not like there's a reason to assume that a document pulled from trimesters.org is going to have a bias one way or the other.
I do not know about semester vs. trimester, but I have seen research showing that taking 2 semesters to learn Calculus I prepares students more completely, and makes them more resistant to leaving STEM majors:
Nelson, M. (2014, September). Oral Reviews: Retaining STEM Majors. In Innovations in Teaching & Learning Conference Proceedings (Vol. 6).
and
Nelson, M. A. (2010). Oral assessments: Improving retention, grades, and understanding. PRIMUS, 21(1), 47-61.
Two semesters vs one semester? Or two semesters vs two quarters? Three quarters? Your control group / comparison group is unclear.
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49278 | How to write a review for a strong paper?
I was asked by Program Committee members to be a sub-reviewer for some papers related to my research. The PC members are big shots and I really want to impress them.
It is easy to write a review if I can discover weaknesses in the paper. However, if the paper is strong or I am unable to find any weaknesses, I feel my review is useless.
Unlike the flaws, the authors tend to repeat and highlight their contributions. So my review is just rephrasing the contributions and how I am impressed by them.
If I'm unable to give any suggestions to improve the approach or the narrative of the paper, what should I do to write a good review? How to show the PC members that I didn't just skim through the contributions, and agreed with the authors (strong papers are often written by well-known researchers)?
Would you mind expanding PC? Does it stand for paper committee?
@mkennedy: I am used to PC serving as an abbreviation for "program chair[persons]" and therefore implicitly assumed it meant that, but the author should indeed clarify.
@O.R.Mapper that makes sense. I understood the question, but couldn't decide if the OP was reviewing for a conference or journal, or something else and thought expanding PC might help to clarify the point.
@mkennedy: PC stands for Program Committee, those who review or assign sub-reviewers in (CS) conferences.
While it is understandable to think in terms of "impressing", this is a very corrupting element to add to one's thinking. I'd recommend trying to pose and answer (for yourself, for example) the question without such self-emphasizing qualifications/words first, before starting to think about the professional game-playing aspect. Sure, the latter is present, and often very important, but complete prostitution is undesirable.
I got reviews that consisted of "correct the typos X,Y,Z, otherwise the paper is good and fit for publication". Nothing wrong with that, but, as the other answers mention, it would be even better to explain the strong points (as you'd explain the weak ones).
The key principle is this: just as with a negative review, you need to demonstrate that you have read the paper thoroughly and are making your judgement for sound scientific reasons.
If you like a paper, you should be able to say why you like it. Beyond the paraphrased summary of goals and contributions (which should begin any review), you can spend a sentence or two saying what aspects of the work or its presentation you found particularly compelling or particularly elegant, and why.
It's also a rare paper that doesn't have any minor errors or needs for improvement, and you can also point out those, prefaced with something like, "The only things I see needing improvement are a few minor points of copyediting and clarification."
In the end, your review might be quite short, and that's fine.
I suppose you implicitly mean this, but it should probably be explicitly written down: If you can find a few minor issues this is a good indicator that you actually thouroughly read the paper. In particular if you are doing a regular review, it’s more beneficial to the editor and author if you list some minor issues than if you have nothing negative to remark at all.
@Wrzlprmft True. I have however, had a couple of occasions where I literally had nothing bad to say about the paper because the authors were apparently better proof-readers than I. Which is why I think that giving good details on why you like the paper is an even better way to show that you have read and comprehended it.
Personally I wouldn't both to work hard to find minor nits to pick. Why waste everyone's time trying to make the authors (and the editors/reviewers) do more work if the flaws are only minor and do not really affect the conclusions, nor the ability of the reader to understand them.
@IanSudbery My view is the complement: if I notice minor changes that would make the paper stronger, why wouldn't I give the authors those suggestions? But that's the context I put it in - "things that will make the paper even better" rather than "homework you must do to satisfy Dr. Gatekeeper"
It is easy to write a review if I can discover weaknesses in the paper.
That is because you comment on the weaknesses. You do this to show to someone who is convinced of the paper why you think the paper is weak.
For a strong paper, you would do the opposite: You highlight the strong points, in order to show to someone who is convinced that the paper is poor that it is not.
If it helps you, you can create a checklist for yourself, listing aspects that you expect to find in the paper. For instance:
Is the contribution clear?
Do I understand all parts of the novel idea?
Are there any examples of how to use the novel concept?
Often, some of these questions are already provided in the invitation for the review. In any case, you can highlight the answers to these questions in your review, and thereby corroborate your suggestion to accept the paper.
In all the cases, I'm unable to give any suggestions to improve the approach or the narrative of the paper.
You do not need to do this. If you really think the paper is great, and if that impression is supported by the aforementioned checklist, there is no point in suggesting changes for the sake of providing some suggestions.
How to show the PC members that I didn't just skim through the contributions, and agreed with the authors
That is exactly one of the reasons why you should explicitly highlight which parts of the paper you liked. One way to show that you actually understood the content of the paper is by writing a short summary of the paper in your own words at the beginning of the review. Later on, when you highlight positive aspects of the paper during the further text of your review, you can refer to the various parts of the paper content that you already mentioned during your short summary. This should be sufficient to show to both the authors and the PC members that you based your positive evaluation on actual comprehension and thought, rather than a cursory impression.
Just write a thoughtful review on why you think the paper is strong. If the paper is well written, then say how it is well organized, and why the idea is clear; again, justify, justify! You may include its significance and how it will contribute to the discipline as a whole. ...
You will give a good impression if you show that you have been diligent and reflective in your write-up.
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18369 | Job portal of US universities: when is the application status updated?
I recently submitted applications for tenure track positions to several US universities via their online job systems (https://jobs.xxx.edu/).
Last week I got a feedback from one of the schools that my application would no longer be considered. However, a week later, the status of my application on the portal is still "under review".
This raises a question for me: after the department has decided to reject the application, how soon is the status in the online system updated?
I want to know that because I have not received a feedback from the other schools I applied, and am wondering if it's possible that the department has already decided to reject but the portal was not updated?
Sometimes you just don't get a reply. Ever. Either a bug in the system or the search committee forgets to close the search on the jobs site.
+1 to @mankoff. Also several univs have their HR set up the web forms for tenure track jobs. There ends up being a disconnect between search committee and HR and the latter ends up not updating information on a regular basis (or ever).
Indeed, I don't think this question has any general answer except "whenever they get around to it".
Academic jobs are a nightmare from the HR perspective. While the posting might be on the jobs portal, the files themselves initially go to the hiring department which comes up with a long and then medium list that they then do some preliminary screening before ending up with a short list for on-site interviews. This can take several months.
The search committee then comes up with a ranked list with some candidates "above the line" and some "below the line" that the department votes on. This list -- which may have one, two, or three people that the department thinks are hireable (or in some cases, none, if the search fails). This list then goes to the provost, equal opportunity, and numerous other sundry university committees before getting approved (or not) and sent back down the line. This can take several more months.
So we are now 4-6 (or 6-8) months into the search. The search can have several results:
A single finalist who is contacted. Maybe they
dawdle for a couple of weeks in giving a reply. If they decide not
to take the job, then the search is failed. The department may or
may not be authorized to search again next year and if they are, the
search remains open.
Two finalists. The first accepts (or not). If the first doesn't, the second is given a chance. If both decline, then it's a failed
search.
No finalists. Failed search and the slot goes back to the provost's office. It may or may not be returned to the department.
The provost hates all of the finalists and either cancels the slot or forces the department to re-run the search.
In other words, there are many reasons why a job posting might still remain open even one or two years after the initial posting. Departments are hesitant to finally close files unless they are absolutely positive that they are never, ever getting that slot back again -- or that the person who accepted the offer really is going to show up on August 1st.
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86088 | If asked to submit both a shorter and longer abstract, is it possible just to send a shorter one that meets both word limits?
I saw the following abstract submission guidelines:
Please submit a 500-word text abstract for technical review purposes that is suitable for publication. Accepted abstracts may be published
with the printed Technical Program for distribution at the meeting.
Please also submit a 300-word text abstract suitable for early release. If accepted, this abstract text will be published prior to
the meeting in the online or printed programs promoting the conference
My question is, how close to the prescribed word count do you have to be? Would it be possible to send one abstract for both requirements?
Note: every time I have seen a range given for a word count, it was always + or - 10%. So 450-550 and 270-330 would be a very reasonable range to assume. If you would want to have 1 word count for both targets, 387 gets you 29% off target for both. That does seems a bit much, but I cant make clear and hard judgements here.
@dimpol: That is certainly field-dependant. In my applied-CS-subfield, the indicated word count is sometimes a hard upper limit (automatically enforced by the submission system). Conversely, it's indeed an upper limit, and if, for some reason, 50 words fully convey what the submission is about, that is just as acceptable as using the full maximum of 500 words.
I'm guessing this is not for a math conference.
@DanRomik Am I allowed to post the conference? Nope. It's a remote sensing conference.
Yes, what I meant was that mathematicians would be more precise with their language and not say "please submit a 500-word abstract" unless they meant an abstract of precisely 500 words. Thanks for confirming my guess.
It is possible, but you would not want to do that.
Apparently, these are the guidelines for some sort of conference. Usually, you send in a preliminary abstract, then you get a message back that they will accept your permission within a certain deadline. Now you can write and hand in your article.
If you haven't finished your article in time for the abstract submission deadline, you basically have to write an abstract first. But after you have written your article there are most likely changes that need to be addressed in the abstract, which is why you get more words for the final abstract to amend your early release abstract that will probably be available on the website of the conference.
Didn't think of it that way. Thanks for the insight!
How close to the prescribed word count do you have to be? Would it be possible to send one abstract for both requirements?
If you write an approximately 300-word abstract you are happy with, and want to use it for the 500-word-max abstract, that is probably okay. They will let you know if they want something fuller.
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18866 | Is it legal for a university to post a copy of a copyrighted (pay for access) journal article?
Extensively using Google Scholar, I've realized that most of the articles belonging to publishers that limit access to material (i.e. ACM, IEEE, Elsevier) also have PDF versions available for free, and these files usually are hosted by universities or other aggregators like ResearchGate.
Is it legal for the university/organization to host a copy of an article, if this has been published on a conference or journal with paid access? Does it matter if the authors of the article belong to that university/organization?
you've never heard of Aaron Swartz then? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Aaron_Swartz
Note: this depends heavily on the country you live in. For example, you may sign over most rights of a work you produced in the US, but you can never do so in Germany (you always keep "copyright").
To answer the (original version of the) question in the title:
Are scientific articles of public domain?
the answer is absolutely not, unless the relevant copyright holders declared it so or that its copyright has expired. Note that public domain is emphatically different from open access.
To answer the question in the body:
Is it legal for the university/organization to host a copy of an article, if this has been published on a conference or journal with paid access? Does it matter if the authors of the article belong to that university/organization?
the answer is it depends.
What does it depend on? Very simply, the publication agreement or the copyright transfer agreement or the licensing agreement signed by the author when the article has been accepted for publishing. For example:
Here's the version for Science
Here's the one for IEEE
Elsevier compiled a handy table for their journals.
As David Ketcheson points out below, a great resource for checking the self-archiving and open access policies of is Sherpa/Romeo.
The question in the title is ambiguous but a bit more phylosophical: if articles are meant to expand human knowledge, and if universities (therefore everyone) pay for the research, shouldn't the outcomes be available to everyone?
@clabacchio, there's a lot of debate about this at the moment - "open access" (as Willie Wong mentions) may be the phrase you are looking for rather than "public domain" which has a rather specific meaning in the sense of licensing. It's worth having a read of what's out there at the moment.
@ChrisH you're right, it's my mistake, I'm not really fond of these technicalities
@clabacchio: I would guess that the only people fond of these technicalities are those who stand to profit from them.
@clabacchio: if you're asking if something should be X, then it's a completely different question than asking if something is X, and I'm not really sure if such questions are related. It's not ambiguous, it's very clear - one is about the legal status of such articles and your legal rights regarding them; the other is a 'what would best achieve our goals' type decision relating to values, morality and the ethical duties of various organizations and groups of people.
A general, extensive resource for what publishers allow is Sherpa/Romeo.
To answer the question in the title: free access to an article depends largely on the version. It's almost always fine to post versions on your institutional page. Some journals do have embargo periods, during which you must refrain from doing so.
Depending on the field and journal, authors may post one of the following on their institutional website:
published version: article as it appears in the journal
accepted version: manuscript after peer review but prior to journal editting/typesetting; typically allowed after the article is published (ex: Nature, Science, The Lancet)
preprint: manuscript before peer review (this is almost always allowed)
Many journals encourage disseminating accepted versions, including posting them to repositories like PubMedCentral.
Additionally, some fields make heavy use of preprint servers like arXiv to get work out to the public as soon as possible. This is particularly relevant for fields with long review times (maths, physics, ...).
Many universities now have institutional open access policies. Most of those policies assert a non-exclusive license to distribute research authored by university employees.
Does the university's pre-existing non-exclusive license remain in effect when a restrictive copyright transfer agreement is later signed?
This has been considered in great detail by Eric Priest in a study published in the Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, Vol. 10, p. 377, 2012. This seems to be the most authoritative work available on the matter. His conclusion is that the non-exclusive license granted by Harvard-style open access policies will remain in effect in such cases, at least under US law. This is based on a careful analysis of section 205(e) of the US Copyright Act, which reads:
(e) Priority Between Conflicting Transfer of Ownership and Nonexclusive License.— A nonexclusive license, whether recorded or not, prevails over a conflicting transfer of copyright ownership if the license is evidenced by a written instrument signed by the owner of the rights licensed or such owner’s duly authorized agent, and if—
(1) the license was taken before execution of the transfer; or
(2) the license was taken in good faith before recordation of the transfer and without notice of it.
But journals require you to assert that you have the authority to assign the rights... don't they?
@BenVoigt I'm not sure of the exact legal situation, but note that everybody profits if a) high-quality research is published in high-profile journals and b) made publically available anyway. Who would sue?
... and that is why sometimes publishers will require authors to get waivers from the University when they think there may be a potential conflict between the copyright transfer and the open access policies.
@BenVoigt You do have that authority. A non-exclusive license does not prevent transfer of copyright, and transfer of copyright does not overrirde a non-exclusive license.
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955 | How to write a rebuttal for a conference
What are good practices (does and don'ts) when writing a rebuttal for a conference?
For example, for a journal rebuttal letter you can make changes to your paper, and resubmit it for another revision. However, for conferences (and for the tough ones) you cannot make changes to your paper (as far as I know). So you can only address the reviewers comments', don't you? In that case, what are good things to do and what things you should avoid to get a good rebuttal.
"... you cannot make changes to your paper ..." I assume this depends on conferences. After all, nobody was ever interested in the author's opinion as far as the conferences I submitted to were concerned, so no rebuttals were asked since the decision was always final.
It does. In some machine learning conferences, you can now submit an updated version of your paper after a first round of reviews, and this paper goes to a third reviewer who has NOT seen the original reviews.
Even for conference papers you can still perform (relatively small) changes after the notification. When trying to rebuttal, it makes much sense to address the main issues raised by the reviewer (and not to pick on the minor changes they suggest). Some good practices include:
Acknowledge good suggestions made by the reviewer. If those suggestions are easy to fix, say they are fixable and will be fixed in the final-version.
If the reviewers suggestion makes no sense or is not valid - explain why their review is invalid. However, you should acknowledge the fact that if the reviewers did not get it right, there might be a problem in your paper. Promise to clarify those issues for the final version.
If the review raise up a valid point that makes your result significantly weaker than you claim, I don't think there is a reason to rebuttal, but other might think differently (trying to justify why it is still a strong result).
Don't claim that the reviewer has no idea what s/he is talking about (even if that is indeed the case..)
Bottomline, you should be respectful and polite to the reviewers. Thank them for their suggestions and suggest to fix whatever is fixable even if you think nothing is wrong.
In particular: No matter how idiotic the review, do not write your rebuttal while you're angry.
@JeffE: great piece of advice.
For Computer Science conferences, I found this article by three AI researchers/profs very helpful: https://medium.com/@deviparikh/how-we-write-rebuttals-dc84742fece1
Hi and welcome to Academia SE. We prefer to have self-contained answers, in case the link gets broken (most links break one day or another). Could you please shortly summarize the key points of the article into your answer?
Also, are you one of the authors of that article? If yes, please disclose it.
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20880 | How to define author order of a collaborative paper where all authors have contributed equally?
I am finishing writing a manuscript in collaboration with a dozen of colleagues. The paper is mainly theoretical, does not involved experimentation of any kind and is born from numerous discussions between all the collaborators (it is actually hard to tell when the project started). No one really took the lead in the project, at least not during the whole time (for meeting setup and so someone had to take the lead, but only temporary). In addition, the ten collaborators are coming from 6-7 different research groups and universities.
In such case, when everyone as more or less the exact same contribution, what is the best way to determine the author order on the paper, without making any diplomacy misstep?
PS: in my field , alphabetical order is really not common.
PS2: we do not have time for a 25 games croquet tournament...
If you are actually writing the manuscript with all the attendant hassles (sending versions out to collaborators, keeping track of edits, merging them all together), this sound like you have as good a claim as any for a senior position. For everything else, talk to the senior people whether they could agree that the more junior people could get a slightly more prominent position. Apart from that, roll dice.
I know a duo who solved it by writing two papers, Jones and James and James and Jones, but with N authors you'd need to write N! papers, which may be impractical.
The title is slightly misleading here - it's not really about who should be listed as author, just in what order.
@Mangara you are right. I changed the title...
croquet
Since your field does not normally do standard alphabetical ordering, then its use here might signify that something unusual is going on. So you could in principle list everybody in alphabetical order, identify the corresponding author, and then insert a note in the acknowledgments that everyone contributed more or less equally to the paper.
Alternatively, in some fields, papers can be authored by "teams" instead of individuals—although all the individuals participating in the team are cited somewhere. This is more typical when the collaborations run to the hundreds of authors rather than a few to a dozen. If the journal you submit to allows this, it would probably be the fairest option of all.
Recently I have seen a paper draft that had a footnote at the author list (which contained more than the two persons named below) stating that
A. Uthor and C. Ollaborator contributed to the present work in equal parts and share first authorship.
Maybe this would be an option in your case as well? By this you have made clear which persons did the main part of the work and give the first position in the name list to the one who managed all the submission process.
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"Wiliam",
"gerrit",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1033",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/481",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/56981",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/56982",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/56993",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/57063",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/57313",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8185",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96",
"user119481",
"user57063"
],
"all_licenses": [
"Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"
],
"sort": "votes",
"include_comments": true
} |
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