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54835 | Is admission standard for math PhD significantly higher than that for physics PhD?
I'm a student at a small LAC, and I'm considering to apply to both math and physics PhD programs. In my school, which is top 15 but do not have large (20 students in each dep.) or well-known departments for either of these fields, students did significantly better on physics PhD admission than on math PhD admission. For math, many students go instead to master's, and only one or two students can make top 40~70 PhD program per year. For physics, some students went to Caltech, Columbia, UCSB, and other high ranked programs in the last year, which was just as usual. A similar phenomena seem to happen not only in my school. Mathgre.com and Physicsgre.com list applicant profiles and admission results for each PhD program, and they show a similar tendency. For example, students accepted to top pure math PhD programs are exclusively those who got nearly 4.0 GPA, took many grad-level courses, had a significant amount of research experience and come from an undergrad institution with a renowned PhD program. On the other hand, students accepted to top physics PhD programs have more diversity in GPA, their undergrad institution, number of grad-level courses taken and amount of research experience.
What causes this difference? Or is my view wrong? If this difference actually exists, I think the following factors are among the causes:
Physics PhDs are funded more, and therefore more students can be afforded.
Physics PhDs have both theoretical and applied subdivisions, while many applied math programs exist as master's programs.
Math PhDs demand its applicants to take a significant number of grad-level courses, while physics ones don't.
Also, how about the situation when it comes to pure math vs. hep-th in the U.S.?
Is your first sentence saying that your university 1) is a small liberal arts college, 2) is one of the top 15 universities in the country, and 3) does not have a strong mathematics or physics department? I don't think all three of these can be true simultaneously.
I mean it's one of the top 15 LACs in the country, so it's not an university, and the ranking excludes universities. Although it has strong departments in other natural science topics, our math and physics deps are not the ones. 2) and 3) can be simultaneously true only when 1) is also satisfied.
Thanks for your comment. In the U.S. is the admission for experimental hep PhD usually separated from the admission for hep-th? I'm not familiar with the process in the U.S., but many PhD programs in the U.S. seem to have the same admission process for both experimental hep and hep-th. If they are not usually separated, do students officially select their "concentration" after entering to the program?
This is an attempt to gather some data supporting or refuting your hypothesis (or rather a slightly different one). Ideally, we would like a direct comparison of admission rates at top places, but I could only find limited data on admissions rates, so let me start elsewhere. At any rate, some of this data may be of interest.
The annual number of bachelor's degrees in physics is about 8000.
From the AMS's annual survey, this number for math is about 28,000. This suggests there may be a lot more PhD program applicants for math. However, I don't have data separating out which math degrees are on a math ed track (or similarly for physics, though I guess the numbers are much greater for math ed), and these people are unlikely to pursue PhDs.
What about actual numbers of PhD students? I didn't see 1st year PhD numbers in physics for recent years but this slightly dated data puts it around 3000 new grad students in physics/astronomy (with about 93% aiming for PhDs), whereas the AMS annual survey has around 3600, and around 5000 if you include masters programs. (Stats and biostats is separate with around 2000, I guess including masters.) These statistics also say the number of physics versus math phd's awarded in recent years are pretty similar (about 1500-1600 for physics compared to 1400 for math). So there may be many more "potential" PhD applicants in math, but both math and physics students seem to compete for roughly the same number of slots in grad programs. (I don't know about how many of the PhD enrollments were domestic BS/BA holders, but we might guess the numbers are comparable as about 54% of enrollments were US citizens.)
So the above data tenuously supports your hypothesis. Can we check this with some actual admission rates?
For physics schools, this website has grad school admission rates. For top schools, the admissions rate seems to be around 10-15% (though Penn State seems to be an anomaly). Unfortunately, I don't know such a nice tool for math schools, but a few math departments mention their admission rates. Northwestern is around 17% (about the same as for their physics program, 16.4%). Notre Dame's is around 20% (a little lower than their 26% for physics).
These were all I could easily find and I'm afraid it's not enough to make any real conclusions, but I might speculate that top math phd programs are only somewhat more competitive than top physics ones if at all. (And in terms of undergrad research experience, I would guess that's more common in physics than in math.)
Edit: One qualitative issue for why you're seeing what you're seeing could be that top schools in math get lots of applications and if an admissions committee isn't familiar with a department, it doesn't know how to evaluate a transcript or the letters of recommendation from there, so it will tend to play it safe and accept students from places it's more familiar with. This is one reason why it's very helpful for students at small, relatively unknown schools to do programs like REUs (or a master's first) where a letter writer from there can compare you with a wide range of students. That said, I know many people who have gone straight from small, relatively unknown schools directly to top math PhD programs.
I really appreciate your effort to gather all these data. I'm surprised to see some of the facts you mentioned and from your link. 1) # of physics bachelor's is only 8k/y. This sounds like physics is one of a few least popular majors among the departments which exist in almost every colleges in the U.S. Maybe media is exaggerating difficulty of physics, and youngsters were discouraged. 2) Acceptance rate of physics programs are much higher than expected (I thought ~5% for top ones). While top math PhD programs enrollment are roughly 20/r, physics
PhD seems to have more capacity. 3) Some of lower ranked programs have pretty low acceptance rate. Penn state, while it's ranked high, is probably not for me. 4) This may be a well-known fact, but about a half PhD students in math and physics can't get PhD. The following list of universities attended by math PhD students at Harvard and UC Berkeley gave me an idea of how prestige of undergrad institution matters in admission for math PhD (because better education nurtured better students). https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/296e60/universities_attended_by_math_phd_students_at/
That only 8,000 bachelor's degrees are awarded to physics students at American universities annually made my eyes pop out. I would have guessed a much larger figure. So a big +1 for presenting hard data.
Another point to consider is that people that end up in physics departments come from a variety of backgrounds. I'm a physicist myself but we have plenty of chemists, materials scientists, IT guys and the odd mathematician in my department. I would guess it's mostly only mathematicians trying to make it to maths PhD programs.
@AranKomatsuzaki Regarding your point 4), I'm guessing that most of the PhD students at top schools can get PhDs. At Caltech in math, almost everyone who started finished, and those who didn't were usually the ones who decided it wasn't for them during their 1st year, so I don't think that's as bleak as it seems. Also, see edit about undergrad institution.
I think admit rates at top schools are a bit irrelevant. The number of students we admit at Stanford in math each year is essentially constant. Therefore the admit rate is really just telling you how many students apply. Moreover, our reputation is sufficient that I believe (and hope) that all the students who have a chance of admission are already applying. Therefore the admit rate is really just telling you how many unqualified students apply.
@TomChurch I agree admit rates don't exactly measure the standards for admission, but how do you compare standards in different fields? Things like GRE scores aren't very good indicators of qualifications, but admission rates provide some quantitative measure of how difficult it is to get into a school, so I think it can be considered a crude measure of "relative standards". (Of course there are self selection and prestige factors in the application process, but that happens in both math and physics, possibly at comparable scales.)
(cont'd) One issue I didn't take into account (and I don't know about any such data) is whether students apply to the same number of top grad schools in both math and physics.
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173196 | Do PhD positions in Germany need to be formally advertised?
Do the professors in Germany have the authority to issue contract or hire a PhD students directly with a formal contract without previous advertisement?
Do PhD positions in Germany need to be formally advertised?
tl;dr: Theoretically uncertain, practically yes.
PhD students in Germany are generally* employed as civil service employees (Angestellte des öffentlichen Dienstes). For civil service employees, the law company Gloistein & Partner on their website gives a nice summary of various, partially conflicting judgements (see "2. Ausschreibung von Arbeitsplätzen im öffentlichen Dienst" - use Google Translate as required). An important one is from the Federal Administrative Court (Bundesverwaltungsgericht), which rejects a general responsibility to formally advertise such positions, but leaves open the possibility that such responsibilities can arise in practice, for example, if an institution regularly formally advertises its open positions.
HR people at public institutions in Germany are typically keen to "cover their asses" and avoid uncertain legal situations. Therefore, in practice, very most if not all PhD positions are formally advertised.
* Actually, PhD students do not need to be employed, but most are (at least in STEM fields), and then they are always employed as civil service employees. Typical alternatives to employment are stipends and being self-funded.
May I suggest two improvements? (i) At first glance, it is unclear to which question your first line refers (since the question in the body of the OP is the negation of the question in the title). (ii) I think the remark "but most are" in the footnote would be better with a specification of the field; I'm quite confident that this is correct is STEM, but I'm not so sure whether most PhD students in the humanities are employed.
@JochenGlueck Thanks, I agree with both suggestions and have addressed them.
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186037 | Publication on hold
I am working in the field of HCI. My relationship with my advisor turned sour due to difference of opinion and eventually I changed my advisor. Now I am stuck in a situation where my paper as a first author is on hold because the ex-advisor is not letting me submit it. This is primarily my work of 2 yrs., while my ex-advisor is a coauthor based on guiding me throughout the research, reading my writing, and giving his comments. What should I do in this situation?
If the ex-advisor isn't an author, what authority do they have to stop it?
@Buffy "involved in guiding me throughout the research, reading my writing, and giving his comments" is almost certainly grounds for authorship (or at least opportunity to complete remaining steps towards authorship like drafting and approving a manuscript) in most fields.
Thank you for responding. My ex-advisor is an author in the paper. Is there any way I can still submit the paper without his approval, considering I am the first author?
Related, possible duplicate: Co-author contributed almost nothing and is blocking publication
Thanks for responding. @cag51 The link you shared is very useful. There is one difference though - in my case, my ex-advisor did guide me through the research and shared feedback on the writing. What can I do in this scenario? Do I really have to sacrifice a publication despite honest work and 2 years of effort?
It sounds like you need to resolve the conflict with your first advisor.
In that case, it sounds like the relevant link is this one: Co-author blocking publication. In particular, the top answer there is exactly what I would have written here (though probably not what you wanted to hear, unfortunately).
You should explain what exactly "not letting you submit it" means. Are they categorically ruling out publication or are they suggesting changes? If they are suggesting changes, how extensive/reasonable are those suggestions? Arguing about those with an ex-advisor is a very different game from arguing about a complete denial for publication.
This is quite a tricky situation. You can't really submit until they either approve or withdraw from the paper. I think, assuming you have asked them several times, then your best option may be to drop an email to your head of department. Stay very polite - emails often get forwarded on, and ask them for advice on what to do. I would think they will most likely forward that to your co-author (without you being on the email) and ask what they are playing at, and things will then move.
Things "might" then move, actually. But good advice.
According to the comments, your ex-supervisor is a coauthor of the paper. The nature of their contributions likely makes it impossible to cut out parts of the paper to obtain a version they would not be considered a coauthor of.
You need the consent of all coauthors for submitting a paper.
How to proceed will depend on the nature of your ex-supervisors refusal.
Scenario A: They refuse based on objections to the research itself or its presentation.
Work under the assumption that their objections are genuine as much as possible, and address them. Do keep in mind the possibility that there could be a flaw in your research approach, maybe even a fatal one. Also keep in mind that publishing a paper with coauthor will on occasion involve making compromises in how to present stuff (and that having the paper published probably is more important than having everything presented just the way you'd prefer it).
If above assumption becomes difficult to sustain, consult another expert in the area (maybe your new supervisor). If that expert is very positive about the merits of the draft, ask them to support your case. (If you get a mere "well, I'd consider this draft publishable somewhere, I guess" - forget about the paper and move on.)
Scenario B: They explicitly refuse, in order to spite you.
I would consider this a very unlikely case, because it would not only be unprofessional to do this to a (former) student, but also be unwise to admit this. Here a complaint to their head of department seems in order.
Scenario C: They just don't consent, either giving you silence or delaying getting back to you forever.
Try to get someone both you and your ex-supervisor respect involved. Maybe your new supervisor, maybe a head of department, etc. The involvement you ask for is simply to ask your ex-supervisor for an update on your paper. Ignoring them will be more problematic than ignoring you, and you'll probably find yourself with either permission to submit, or a variant of Scenario A eventually.
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191225 | Am I considered to be a native speaker of English if I was born in the US?
I'm applying for graduate colleges right now in the US. I was born there and did school till 7th grade and then shifted to India where I have been for the last 10 years until now. English is my first language, and I am a US citizen.
Am I considered a native English speaker for the purpose of admissions, or will I need to submit an English test certificate?
If it's your first language, yes. Citizenship and country of birth have nothing to do with it. Also, this question has nothing to do with academia so I'm voting to close.
@astronat I assume there is an unwritten "for the purpose of university admissions" in the question.
Ultimately, each university will set its own policies regarding who counts as native speaker and who needs to provide a test certificate to prove their competence.
I would be very surprised if "place of birth" counts as evidence for language proficiency. Being a US citizen might suffice, but I would not take this for granted, as English isn't officially the official language.
Having completed either school education or your undergraduate at an English speaking institution is a very commonly accepted criterion; and here I would expect that it is taken for granted that a US school or university is English speaking. However, even if your school or university in India taught in English, it may be cumbersome to prove this to admissions.
Thanks for the answer. My institute of study does have English as the only method of instruction so I hope that does work for admissions.
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173390 | How to identify the pronouns to use for a single-author when citing them?
I am writing a paper and want to cite an author's work. I don't know the authors pronouns and while I could go by pictures I find of the author online, I cannot find their pronouns anywhere.
I can always write "Author (YEAR) wrote ..." but to mix things up in a whole paragraph I write on author's work, I wanted to use a pronoun. But I don't know which pronoun. (I am not familiar enough with the language of the name either).
By now I think it should become common courtesy to indicate single-author's preferred/used pronouns directly on the publication. If the pronoun is not indicated, please tell me how to work around?
No there is nothing on that, I checked it. It’s an Elsevier journal - seems like many of them have the same guidelines
Welcome to Academia StackExchange! Given the slightly demanding tone in your last paragraph, I think it is worthwhile to remark that your perception is probably a bit biased. The concept of announcing one's pronouns seems to be mainly a thing in English speaking countries. Maybe there are also a few further countries where this is common, but it's far from universal. Just as one data point, in STEM in Germany, it is very uncommon to announce one's pronouns. So if you are citing people from various countries, you will quite often find the situation that they have not announced their pronouns.
So it’s basically something I thought was universal and not specific to certain areas of the world. I just don’t wanna be an asshole.
Well I have multiple paragraphs on the work of this author I heavily criticise (also a reason why I wanna be super correct!) and I just want to have a bit of variety in the sentence structure. If mostly is: work shows x (author, year). Just some variety and it’s like also a trope that is in this authors work and the literature has not adequately criticised yet.
@canIchangethis: Well, maybe it's a bit safer to replace "specific to certain areas of the world" with "depending on the area of the world and also on the specific academic field". For instance, the reason why I explicity mentioned STEM when referring to Germany is that such language issues can sometimes be quite differently perceived in various fields (think of e.g. engineering compared to gender studies). So my comment was not meant as advice on how to act in your situation; I just wanted to make you aware that announcing one's pronouns is not as universal as you might have thought.
(@canIchangethis: Oh, by the way: if you use an expression like "@JonDoe" in a comment, than John Doe is notified about your comment. This facilitates communication if you respond to a particular comment.)
Thanks @JochenGlueck I totally understood ur comment as such. And thanks for the reminder to the @ function
@canIchangethis Just as a note, the fact to you find need to use personal pronouns may be sign that you are making your criticism too personal. Criticize the work, not the author. In doing so, you will find that you mostly need pronouns to refer back to the work (ie it), rather than personal pronouns referring back to the author.
This does not directly answer the title question, but instead of using personal pronoun, in many cases you can achieve the desired variation by using terms like "the paper", "the study", and so on (in addition to "the author" that atom44 suggests, which I also find quite common).
This might be preferable in itself (not simply as a work around). After all, the subject of discussion is usually the work, not the author, and the "Author (year)" is commonly understood to refer to the work. (For example, the Chicago Manual of Style specifically states that "an author-date citation is a form of bibliographic shorthand that corresponds to a fully cited work; it does not refer to a person.")
Oh, oh, this is probably the answer!
In English, you can always use the (singular) pronoun they when referring to people of unknown/unclear gender. See the following (fictional) example:
Smith (2014) finds that children under the age of 3 prefer 3-wheeled bicycles. Their research also shows a preference for the color green.
Oh absolutely, I can. But what if that person really wants their she/her or he/his pronouns? Just imagine they are a trans-female or trans-male (as an example!!).
@canIchangethis I would believe that most people who would absolutely want to be adressed by a specific pronoun would be the few ones who might state them. And most people will probably prefer a gender neutral approach to being misgendered.
The thing is, in m field of research I have never seen anyone state their pronouns (especially not on any publications) that’s why I want to make sure I don’t gender people wrong. And yes, imho, using they instead of another pronoun is also a form of misgendering, right?
In English, the "they" pronoun is not specifically for unknown gender, it is also grammatically correct where the gender is known and binary.
@IanSudbery I know. AFAIK, is can be both: a pronoun used to adress a person of unknown gender and a pronoun to adress non-binary persons. I see it as a from of umbrella pronoun that includes everyone, and while most people rather specify their gender more closely (e.g. her/him) it is as if I would call an animal an animal, and some animals might say: but I am a giraffe, others might be content to staying a not-further disclosed animal. But calling any of them an animal is not wrong.
Sursula, I wished it were like that. I would be fine if they were a default one could always go back to. But I thought that’s not how it is. See also the comments under the question telling me that pronoun disclosures don’t happen in some parts of the world.
I think it would be problematic to require (or even encourage) authors to include preferred pronouns in their papers. Some people would want to leave this ambiguous, for example to avoid any real/perceived bias in the review process, etc.
I think you have a few options:
Research the author and see if you can find an interview/bio (which are often written in 3rd person) -- you seem to have already done this
Ask colleagues in the field if they know, they may have met this person at a conference for example.
Use 'they/their' as others have suggested
Use 'the author' ( Surname (1992) set out to prove that the world is flat. However, the author was unsuccessful because ... ).
Email and ask them. If the gender of the name is ambiguous in English they have probably been misgendered before and would appreciate the attempt to get it right.
Jeah I think the addition to a preferred citation could come far after the review process, like in production stage.
But besides that, I am very grateful for the suggestions and as you said I have done that
Upvoted. I particularly like that you mentioned the option to simply ask the author. "Just ask" is suprisingly often a surprisingly simple and efficient solution to a problem. :-)
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157530 | My advisers did not want to be coauthor of my accepted journal article
Recently a manuscript from my Masters by research thesis has been accepted in a Q1 journal with Impact factor nearly 4. At the beginning of the manuscript submission, I requested my advisers to be the coauthors of my article but they denied my request. Is that ethically ok to publish the accepted manuscript?
Why did they deny the request?
The ethical question is now not authorship but whether there is a problem with your paper that is known to you or your advisers. You should not publish if you know about one, unless you stated it explicitly and that is not affecting the main point. In the end, you'll have to ask your advisers why they do not want to co-author.
@ Lighthouse keeper and Captain Emacs: They offered me a PhD position and I denied that. That may be the reason. Otherwise, I have prepared the manuscript from the thesis which has been published as eprint in the website after reviewing and I have already graduated.
@SRC I do not see why they would decline if you choose not to work with them. If they do not give you are reason, go ahead, and congratulations.
What's a Q1 journal?
@AzorAhai--hehim A journal ranked as belong to the top quarter in its area by scimago. Rather meaningless in this context.
Can you address the difference between citing unwilling advisers as co-authors and publishing the manuscript?
You've stated a few times you think its because you turned down the PhD spot, but have you actually asked them the reasons? People turning down PhD spots is a pretty regular occurence (Its a huge investment in preciously short life years), so its odd they'd be that offended by it.
@Arno I don't think it is meaningless in this question. It essentially removes the possibility that the supervisors are declining because they think the journal is predatory or has very low standards.
I guess the discipline would really help here. While e.g. in Mathematics it is normal to be sole author, in Biology it is certainly not (especially for a Masters student). What strikes me most is that you handed it in without your advisors knowing. Usually they would already be part of the Authors list in the SUbmission process if you did the Thesis with them (as they are usually the ones suggesting to go for publication). Without knowing how it came from a Thesis to this publication the reasons are hard to judge.
@JennyH That's an important detail, indeed. Were the authors included in the submission? If not, of course they would not want to be co-authors on revision.
It's odd that none of the answers deal with the OP describing asking for co-authors "At the beginning of the manuscript submission." Any reasonable academic should reject that – to be a co-author implies at least having actually reviewed the manuscript before it got to the journal for submission.
Get a written statement from them that they do not want to be coauthors!
@RadioControlled With a few additions, your comment can become an answer.
@RadioControlled- I have their emails where they mentioned that they do not want to be the coauthors.
@SRC, I guess that would be sufficient if they really wanted you bad and later claimed you did not include them in your paper despite their contribution. Don't forget the acknowledgements though.
@RadioControlled- They did not want to be acknowledged, too. I have all their emails.
There are a few different situations that could lead to this:
Most plausible case: Your supervisors determined that in accordance with the standards of your field, they do not count as coauthors.
Different fields have different customs concerning whether supervisors are assumed to be coauthors of papers resulting from the supervised work. If you worked independently and your supervisors agree, then being a single author on the resulting paper will always be reasonable. Since you mention asking them only at submission stage, it does sound as if their involvement is limited.
Your supervisors really ought to be coauthors by the standards of your field, but declined to give you an (unfair) advantage or similar.
This is problematic from an ethical perspective. Having another persons consent still doesn't allow an academic to present their ideas as ones own. A carefully worded acknowledgement might work.
Your supervisors declined because they are aware of flaws in your paper, and don't want to be associated with it.
While one would hope that peer review would spot problems, there is no guarantee that it does. If your supervisors are aware of any major flaws, it would be your ethical responsibility to find out and either fix the paper, or to withdraw it if it is unfixable.
The manusscript is sound, but your supervisors are under political pressure to not associate themselves with the results. (pointed out by nick012000 in the comments)
Probably no ethical concerns about you publishing here, unless the political pressure is there for very good reasons.
Nice answer. I add that the advisor might think that the paper is not really worth having his/her name on it without any real flaws. This said, I would expect the author to clarify whatever point apply to the situation. Advisor are for that.
@Arno and Alchimista: They offered me a PhD position and I denied that. That may be the reason. Otherwise, I have prepared the manuscript from the thesis which has been published as eprint in the website after reviewing and I have already graduated.
A thesis is usually the work of a single author, at least that's the model that we tend to strive for. Of course where the ideas come from the supervisors, that should be acknowledged. If the paper is based on the masters thesis, it makes sense that it too would be single author -- although it's commonly the case that such papers are not. That might help explain why case 1 holds. (Of course this is speculation; a better way to answer the question would be to ask the supervisors.)
I can think of another case: the paper covers politically controversial content (e.g. showing racial inequalities to be due to genetics, disproving climate change, etc.), and they don't want to be associated with it for fear of tarnishing their careers, even if the science in it was perfectly fine.
@nick012000 Good point, although there way more plausible examples
An interpretation related to @SRC's "PhD position denied" comment is: the supervisors feel that joining in on the paper creates an obligation to further support the publication process, in particular in case of rejection or major revisions. They think it is the right thing to allocate the time they have for such work to the PhD students they are officially supervising.
Another obvious reason is 5. They think the paper is good, but they don't support your viewpoint, either directly or as part of a broader theoretical position. For example, if you've made a stunning argument for free will and they're an authority on authority on arguments for determinism, they're not going to attach their name to your paper. Also if 6, they do not consider themselves experts in the field, which is probably more likely true of supervision efforts at the Master's level.
Having those people as coauthors could be a disadvantage. Whatever prestige is attached to their names (hey, I coauthored with these notable researchers!) also comes with the suspicion that the ideas in the article are all theirs.
@Arno Mankind Quarterly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mankind_Quarterly) is a Q2 journal, and was briefly a Q1 journal in 2013 - I think the examples I gave were entirely plausible.
Worth also mentioning an intermediate case between (1) and (2): According to field norms, the paper was in the grey area where they could have been co-authors, but did not have to be, and they chose to decline out of generosity to the junior author, or similar. In my field (pure mathematics), this is common in supervisor-student relationships — where the supervisor has made a significant but indirect intellectual contribution — and is generally viewed as ethically correct.
If your advisors do not want to be co-authors, I think it is fine. You do not have to feel any sort of ethical conundrum for that matter.
By the way, have you asked them why they do not want to be co-authors?
Maybe they are already well accomplished and well published and want you to be the sole author of the paper; which will be a good thing for you. If that's the case, then your advisers are godly.
While the other current answers are good, they don't directly answer the main question. Yes it is ethical for you to publish on your own. There should be no question about that. Actually, be thankful that they almost certainly think enough of you that they don't see the need or have the desire to share your glory. It is good that the answer of Arno raised the third point, but I think the tis very unlikely.
Ethics enters in to authorship questions when people are improperly included or excluded from authorship. But there is no question of "exclusion" here, since you are acting on their recommendation when publishing without them.
Yes, PK1995 implies that there is no ethical constraint.
Actually they might not have that good intension. They offered me a PhD position and I denied that. That may be the reason. Otherwise, I have prepared the manuscript from the thesis which has been published as eprint in the website after reviewing and I have already graduated.
@SRC If you were upset that someone did not accept your offer of a PhD position, turning down an authorship doesn't make any sense as retaliation.
@SRC--hehim I think implicit assumptions are the enemy of knowledge. Have you asked them why they do not wish to be coauthors? If not, do you have a reason not to ask them? The whole answer thread speculates around the reasons, you can save yourself (and the SE community) a lot of effort if you can say more about the case.
@CaptainEmacs- As they did not want to be coauthors, I did not bothered them. I think, it is not unethical to publish the article. The article has been prepared from my thesis which has been reviewed by 2 reviewers and published in the university website. The article has been reviewed by the editor and two reviewers of the Q1 journal and then accepted. So, the article has been gone through so many reviews. I informed in he cover letter that the article is from my thesis with the thesis link in the university website. If it is unethical, the editor would have rejected my article already.
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57834 | Should I be a visiting student rather than a non-degree seeking graduate student?
Princeton has two nice options called "visiting student" and "qualifying student". UCB and MIT also have the same options, but their policies and names are slightly different. The former is for undergrads from other college who want to take courses in Princeton, and the latter is for those who graduated from their colleges who are not qualified for Princeton but would like to take courses in Princeton as a non-degree seeking graduate student. The cost is roughly the same (no stipend) as my current college, and both are a year only, but the only difference is whether the student is undergrad or grad. As a junior undergrad, I have exhausted courses on mathematical physics and relevant pure math courses offered in my university, so I would like to take courses, attend seminars and do research under professors of Princeton. Although my school's math PhD program is great, it's not comparable to Princeton, since they have Y. Sinai and professors in IAS for mathematical physics.
I can graduate this year (as a junior) and become a "qualifying student", or become a "visiting student" and I can graduate a year later. Which option is better? Or are both options bad? This is for the case that I will not get into PhD program of my choice this year, so please assume that situation. According to the following question, being a non-degree seeking grad student is waste of money. Does it apply to my case, too?
How will study as a non-degree student affect my graduate admissions chances later?
As a general comment: don't conflate the famousness of the faculty with the quality of the courses. They are not necessarily correlated. Also, I would guess that under either of these programs, you will be able to take courses and attend seminars, but I wouldn't count on being able to work on research under the faculty - this may well be restricted to formally enrolled degree-seeking students.
Enrolling as a non-degree-seeking graduate student in a U.S. mathematics graduate program is almost never a good idea, and this is in no way a mainstream option. (I'm talking about not seeking a degree anywhere. For comparison, it's not uncommon to be officially seeking a degree at University X but visiting University Y while your advisor visits there.)
It's easy to get the wrong impression from course catalogs, since they give short descriptions of options that may not reflect how they are used in practice. For example, I doubt the Princeton math department ever admits anyone as a qualifying student; if it happens at all, it is exceptionally rare. I can imagine it might happen for a clearly brilliant student from a deprived background, but not for the vast majority of applicants. There's just too much competition for admission.
If you are accepted as a non-degree-seeking graduate student:
You won't be treated in any way like an ordinary graduate student. To the extent anyone in the department is aware of you, you'll be in a special category of "person who wasn't admitted to the graduate program but is paying a lot of money to take courses anyway", which is not a flattering description. In particular, you should not expect faculty to supervise your research or interact with you any more or differently than they treat the undergraduates in these classes. (It could happen, but I'd guess it probably won't.)
It won't help with admission, compared with doing equally well in similar courses elsewhere. Specifically, any admissions committee will have members who want to make sure this isn't used as an easier back door to admission, and they will be sure to enforce strict standards.
I can graduate this year (as a junior) and become a "qualifying student", or become a "visiting student" and I can graduate a year later.
Are you sure you're interpreting these programs right? In this listing of the categories, visiting students are enrolled in graduate programs elsewhere, while qualifying students are non-degree-seeking students who are trying to make up for weak backgrounds in the hope of future admission. I'm not aware of any option for undergraduates to spend a year at Princeton, except for some international exchange programs. However, I might well be missing some possibility.
I misinterpreted just as you said. I will no longer consider about qualifying student option. Thanks for your advice.
If you want to learn something in an academic environment, without earning credits (which I strongly support you to do while you are treading water), there is a low-cost option at most schools: auditing!
Besides enrolling as an auditor (for a fraction of the cost), you should also contact the instructor directly. You'll want his or her blessing. You should include an informal transcript and a little description of your experience and interests. And an explanation of why you are treading water for a semester (or two).
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87316 | Is graduating a year early and doing research under the guidance of professor a good alternative to spending another semester at my college?
I'm an international student studying math and physics in an American university relatively highly ranked in terms of math. I'm currently a junior, and I'm going to focus on doing research on a certain theoretical physics topic from this summer. I've exhausted advanced grad courses offered in my university, and I don't think taking any more courses will enhance my chance in admission for math PhD programs in the U.S. Since my school doesn't have a professor working on the topic of my interest, I'm considering to work for the next year on research under the guidance of a professor, who is internationally renowned for his work in the topic, in my native country.
My concern is that there is a rumor that admission is more difficult for already graduated students. Does this thing, if true, apply to me? I'm sure master's students are demanded more, but how about me? Even though I will be in undergrad for three years only, I'm afraid they may consider me as someone who has a year of "advantage." On the other hand, I'm sure graduating a semester early doesn't affect a lot, as stated by Paul Garrett in a similar post. Could I assume Paul Garrett's comment apply to me as well? If there is an adverse effect, I can just be a student in name only for another semester or two and meanwhile do a research in my country.
Have you asked your department if you could enroll for one credit of independent study? Is there a professor who would oversee your work remotely?
I haven't asked it yet; however, I'm sure I can find one if that's necessary.
Go for it, seems like a great opportunity! No, it won't hurt you with regards to graduate admissions.
Graduating a year early is a pretty big life decision. I wouldn't want to make such a decision on the basis of a two-sentence recommendation from some anonymous person on the internet.
It sounds good as long as your research under the professor is educational for you and not just a way of taking advantage of you.
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7816 | What are some guidelines and best practices for releasing PR statements and project summary to the general public?
What are some guidelines and best practices for PR statements and releasing a project summary to the general public? My first tendency is to always shorten the project summary, reduce the length of sentences and use more "crisp" words. But what else?
Does anyone have any pragmatic/practical/ advice and is there any sort of tool out there aside from the likes of MS Word readability stats that gives you suggestions to what to change?
EDIT:
Came across this tool today which is inspired by XKCD (what is not?):
CAN YOU EXPLAIN A HARD IDEA USING ONLY THE TEN HUNDRED MOST USED WORDS? IT'S NOT VERY EASY. TYPE IN THE BOX TO TRY IT OUT:
http://splasho.com/upgoer5/
There should be something on these lines available to help with simplifying the language for instance (perhaps with 5000 words rather than THE TEN HUNDRED which is very limiting).
Talk to someone at a media relations, public relations, or press office at your university. Most universities will have folks who work in this area; they are the experts and have a ton of experience, and you should take advantage of them. They will likely be glad to help.
Here are some tips that I have learned from public relations folks:
Identify your message. What's the takeaway lesson? Can you write it in one short sentence, in a form understandable to the average person on the street? Take a lot of time to craft this carefully. Then, your entire press release should be centered around supporting this message.
Look for three facts or points that support the message. Numbers and statistics are very powerful.
Stay on-message! I cannot emphasize this enough. Everything you talk about should be focused on your message. Avoid the temptation for digressions or tangents. Yes, you are a witty raconteur and can wax on enthusiastically for hours about your work, but this is not the place for it. Avoid unnecessary details; give a spare answer that provides just enough for folks to understand the message.
Yes, I know that you and your fellow researchers are fascinated by all of the details of your experimental methodology, the alternative hypotheses you considered and rejected, the details of why your finding is correct, your calculations, and so on. Sorry, but the average person on the street doesn't care. Your top priority is to explain your bottom-line finding, why the average person should care, and maybe a teeny bit of something to give some intuition about why your finding is true (enough to make it sound plausible to an average person).
Edit ruthlessly. You want as many eyes on it as possible, and ideally people who are not involved with your project. Lean heavily on your press office.
In many universities, the press office will help you draft a press release. They'll talk to you informally, ask you a bunch of questions, and then work with you to write a press release. If they're available to do it, grab the opportunity; it can be very helpful.
Brainstorm a list of about 10-20 questions that you expect reporters might ask you. Next, for each question, draft a candidate answer. Your answers should be concise (at most a few sentences) and simple; and, the chance to throw in an analogy or fact or figure can help, too. When you are talking to a reporter on the phone, have this list in front of you. This way, when they ask you a question, you can refer to the list and give your honed, crisp answer -- or at least, you have it to refer to if you need it. The reporter will never know.
Remember that the purpose of talking to a newspaper reporter is not just to educate them about your project. It is also to supply them with as many pithy quotes that they can use in their article. The more quotable you are, the more likely it is that you will be quoted. They will be listening for those great quotes. Take the opportunity to brainstorm in advance a few short quotes, and make sure to throw them into every conversation with every journalist. Read a bunch of newspaper articles in advance so you can see what kinds of statements tend to get quoted.
The public relations folks may also be able to offer media training. If you can get the chance to take a media training course, take it! This is especially important if you might be on TV, where you have to make every second count. There are some powerful but non-obvious techniques that they can teach you.
Great advice! How long should a press release be? One or two pages?
It may be worth looking to see if your university has a press office. My university has a press office. They are happy to meet with research groups to talk about the press release process in general. They are also happy to edit copy to make it more likely to be picked up by the press. I believe they also are willing to work one-on-one and write the actual copy with you. They also have all the contacts and know how to get press-releases actually published in useful places.
More than making the text crisp and understandable, you should work to make it relevant. Typically your "press releases" are in the form of articles for the research community, which understands why you find your work relevant; you're advancing the field. When dealing with the general public, you can make no such assumption. You have to state very explicitly why your work is important.
If you're having a hard time with this, I've had success looking back at the grant proposal which is funding my research. In some proposals, the introduction will have some overarching, practical goal, which will be easily understood by a layperson. Couch any achievement or research breakthrough in this context and the press (and the general public) will have a much greater significance for what you did.
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5229 | Moving to Europe and seeking research assistant work after undergrad / masters - best approaches?
I have just finished an honours degree in Psychological science in Australia - this is a 3 year bachelors with an additional selective entry 4th year involving 50% coursework and research. In addition to this I have about a year of research experience across a few different labs and areas. I'd like to move to somewhere in central / western Europe (e.g. Berlin). The aim is to eventually do a Phd there (although nobody there ever seems entirely certain whether my degree is eligible or if I need a masters), but ideally I'd like to get some involvement in a lab / institution first.
Does such an aim seem reasonable and achievable, or would I be generally expected to just pursue a Masters / Phd path? What is the best way to go about finding such a position?
I am pursuing the networking angle, but don't have many contacts in that direction. I have a sporadic collection of mailing lists and web sites I check, and will turn to 'cold emailing' academics of interest at some point.
I came across this memorandum of understanding between Germany and Australia on academic degrees a while ago - among other things it says that Australian honours degrees are eligible to begin phd studies in Germany, and I did so last year after some time in an assistant like role.
http://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/pdf/ZAB/Bilaterale_Erklaerungen_KMK_HRK/austr.pdf
From my experience, EU citizen and familiar with Australian degree system, you will have a hard time getting into a PhD program. The honors bachelor cannot be considered at the same level of the Masters degree. Regarding employment in a lab in Europe your first hurdle would be getting a working permit. This might be hard unless you already have someone who can sponsor you. I think you are better off trying to find some field technician or volunteer position to collaborate with some of the labs and then perhaps start networking from there.
Otherwise you could try and move to Germany with the tourist visa for 3/6 months and start network that way. However German professors seem quite reachable by e-mail, I would start contacting some of them for which you have an interest in their research and see what they suggest.
As somebody working in Germany, I can assure you that starting a doctoral program is not possible unless you have either a Master's degree or a degree considered "equivalent" to the Master's degree. In most cases, this means that you have to have a Master's degree. To enter a Master's degree program in Germany can also be tricky, because most "traditional" programs require proof of German skills as well as a bachelor's degree that is "equivalent" to the bachelor's degree as offered by three German university in which you wish to enroll. The qualification process for a foreign degree can be very tedious to complete.
However, there are a number of "non-consecutive" Master's programs in various disciplines at most universities. Admission to such programs is not contingent on having a bachelor's degree in the same field, and many of these programs are conducted in English. The DAAD can help you to find a suitable program.
If you are a Master's student, you will typically have to do a thesis project to complete your degree. Until then, however, you won't be able to do full-time research. However, you will be able to act as a part-time worker in a research group. What duties this entails varies greatly from research group to research group.
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3285 | What are some reasons to get (or not get) a PhD?
Lots of people start PhD programs, but far fewer finish (in some programs the drop-out rate is 50% or higher). Some people are motivated to get a PhD by: wanting a job in academia, wanting a job in industry, personal pride, or simply a lack of direction and an aptitude for the field of their PhD program.
Have you noticed that people with certain motivations are more likely to finish their PhD than others? If so, which reasons correlate positively with success? Conversely, do you have warnings for someone considering starting a PhD?
Check out 'Why get a Ph.D.?' in http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html
I am not sure this question is a good fit for a Q/A site. Providing your reasons for pursuing a PhD and asking if they are valid would be better, but possibly too localized.
@DanielE.Shub I substantially rewrote the question to try to make it more appropriate for our site.
@DanC The edited question is much better and is now a good fit. I am leaving my original comment in the hope that it might help JohnJames understand why I initially voted to close.
@john-james Since you have some responses below that seem to answer your question, please consider marking one of them as ‘Accepted’ by clicking on the tickmark below their vote count. This shows which answer helped you most, and it assigns reputation points to the author of the answer (and to you!).
I won't tell you what are and aren't good reasons for getting a PhD. However, to get a PhD, you must stay remarkably determined for a minimum of 5 to 6 years. If you cannot, you will quit. Earning a PhD is hard. When I earned mine, it was easily the hardest thing I had ever done.
During your PhD, you work long hours, for a low salary, with little respect, and bleak job prospects. Most PhD students are at least fairly smart and/or moderately hard workers. Nearly all of them could make more money with less effort elsewhere.
So, why get a PhD? You need to find your own compelling reason. I couldn't imagine not studying math. Undoubtedly, I would be studying it now, even if no one would pay me. I'd never cared too much about money (easier to say when you're in your 20s and single). I was far from balanced, so long hours didn't bother me. I really loved teaching (and still do), and after working with high school kids, I decided I'd much prefer college. So I decided I'd be a math professor. That was my vision, what I clung to in the midst of the storm. And it worked, eventually. Your story will be different. But it must be just as compelling to you, or you likely won't make it.
Why 5 to 6 years? The duration of PhD programs in Europe and Australia is 3 or 4.
I'm speaking mainly for the U.S. I know of a few cases where someone finished a PhD in fewer than 5 years, but they are rare. The entire time I was in grad school, I never met anyone who did this. Since I've graduated, I've met a few.
The difference, of course, is that US PhDs have a lot of coursework in the first year(s), whereas in other countries the undergraduate degree is much more focussed and students tend to do masters degrees.
My friends from grad school that graduated did get jobs, but not all (or even most) as researchers in academia. One works for Google. Another works at a liberal arts school, where teaching is a higher priority than research. One went to the NSA. Another guy I knew teaches high school at a prep school in Chicago. If you want to work as a professor at a school that emphasizes research, then you'll probably need at least 2 more years as a postdoc, before you start on the tenure track.
@DaveClarke 3 or 4 years are only possible in softer fields and/or without teaching responsibilities at my department. Teaching adds about a year on average, and theoreticians need more time than software engineers. More importantly, you have to account for whether the student got a masters degree before starting their PhD.
By far the most successful students will be those who are genuinely interested in the research they are performing. They will be the ones who will put in the effort to think of new research avenues, create and follow-through with collaborations, put in extra thought do their analysis techniques, and do it all with good spirits. Other students can (or more often, won't) do all this work, but they will definitely not do it with the same level of enthusiasm, which will over time make the work less and less enjoyable, and thus more likely to be abandoned.
So, to answer the question, the motivation most conducive to finishing is the motivation to perform the research you are working on. If the student is motivated by anything other than the research itself, there will be a definite waning of enthusiasm—with all the collateral damage that entails—as the student comes to realize that doing PhD research involves a whole lot of research.
Regarding warnings, I offer the following: If you're starting a PhD for any reason other than "whoa boy I LOVE doing this stuff", the next few years will involve a lot of work that you will probably not enjoy at the outset, and progressively dislike more and more as the years tick on.
Early on in grad school, a professor gave me a research problem to work on. Each week I forced myself to spend a certain amount of time on it. However, I never really got a knack for that topic, and (not surprisingly) never proved anything. After a semester of that, I switched to a different topic. Actually, I think this happened twice. When I finally found a research topic that I enjoyed, I spent tons of time on it. Not out of obligation, but because I wanted to. Not surprisingly, I eventually got publication(s) on this topic.
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3172 | What are some options for a graduate student abandoned by Ph. D advisor?
I'm currently doing a PhD in applied mathematics, I'm about to start my final year. The problem that I've been working on for the last 2 years was originally proposed by my advisor and one of his colleagues. The direction of research wasn't that good, the problem had already been studied by previous researchers and there is very little one can add to what's there already.
I discussed this with my supervisor early on, but he suggested I persevere because he saw some promise in our approach. In these 2 years I have struggled to find something worth mentioning, and have only produced meagre results at best. What's worse is that my advisor has virtually no interest in what I do. I don't think he's actually read any of my work, or even read any of the surrounding literature. His advice has not been so useful.
Without anybody to guide me and without a clear problem to work on I feel really lost and a bit cheated especially considering the amount of attention he gives to his other students. I'm no genius but I've consistently helped his other postgrads do their own research (in completely different areas), and while our advisor has guided them into publishing several papers each, I'm sitting here clueless, with absolutely nothing to show for myself.
Sorry about the rant, but I'm really lost. Any advice would be appreciated.
You should mention if you are in the UK (or in the USA). The system is different. E.g. In the UK, you often get locked into your supervisor's project or a project providing the funding. In the USA, people might have some freedom to alter their dissertation direction during the PhD.
@Legendre: I'm in the UK. The funding is not specific to a project, though the research would have to be in the same general area.
Do you have any other faculty mentors (for example, your dissertation committee) who can give you concrete advice?
I find several aspects of this situation troubling. One is the implication that your advisor allowed you to work on only one problem, much less insisted, especially for two years without significant progress. Another is that you are helping other people with their research, which led to their publishing papers, instead of collaborating toward joint papers. Another is the seeming contradiction between "my advisor has virtually no interest in what I do" and "he remained adamant that I continue to pursue this problem". I agree with others: Seek official help.
@JeffE: As regarding helping others, I certainly don't feel that I contributed sufficiently to be a coauthor, and that wasn't my point. My point is that I don't feel it's the case that I'm incompetent and that he's ignoring me for that reason (I hope not at least!).
Thanks for your comments guys. I will be seeking official help, but will do so carefully.
I think many of us would be curious to know how this all turned out for you (hopefully well!). If you ever log back in, please provide an update since it's been 8 years
There are two questions to answer:
If you got another project from this advisor, would you stay?
If you got the opportunity to switch advisors, would you leave?
If you are willing to stick with this advisor, you should bring up your dissatisfaction—and perhaps suggest a plan of action to "migrate" to another topic. (Can you, for instance, use the methodology on a different problem where it might be more successful?)
If that isn't an option—and to be honest, I suspect it isn't—you should work as aggressively as you can to find a new advisor and a new research topic, while if possible staying under the radar. You don't want to create a situation before you have somebody firmly in your corner who's willing to support you.
Staying under the radar is important. Administrators could view you, not the PI, as the problem.
Thanks for your reply. I tried to get another project from the advisor, but he remained adamant that I continue to pursue this problem. I'd like to switch advisors but my only concern is that I have only one year left (getting extensions is not easy in this department). And of course finding a willing substitute.
If you were in the US, I would strongly recommend pursuing both options simultaneously — Ask your advisor and other faculty for new project suggestions. But as others have said, PhD admission in the US is not tied as strongly to individual advisors, so this strategy may not be appropriate in the UK.
Many of my friends doing PhDs in the UK have this problem, even those in top tier universities. Those with the worse problems ended up dropping out and reapplying for the same PhD under another supervisor. I think the supervisor tend to be more integral to PhD students in the UK and there might not even be an option to "switch".
Based on their experiences:
Like aeismail said, you should definitely stay under the radar. This was advised to all of my friends in similar situation. Most importantly, it is deemed unprofessional to openly blame your supervisor, even if it really is your supervisor's fault.
Seek official help: the single biggest turning point for my friends was using the official channels and/or speaking to the director of graduate studies in your department. These people are very experienced at handling situations like your, and will certainly know to do it covertly.
Possible outcomes based on my friends' experiences:
Your director of graduate studies or student counselor might offer to help or get someone to help read your current work and evaluate your situation. This might identify the problems you need to fix to graduate, and they might be able to help communicate any issues to your supervisor.
They might arrange for a co-supervisor. This resolved the situation for several of my friends. The co-supervisor essentially becomes your new supervisor.
In the worse case, it doesn't work out. The student drops out of the program and reapply to another supervisor with the help of the department (making it easier). Unfortunately, it can be a gamble because they have the option of rejecting you. Depending on your school, they might have a different policy and allow for an actual switch instead of having to reapply.
Bottom line: seek official help ASAP. Stay professional and under the radar, do not sound vituperative. Don't be afraid of taking drastic actions like reapplying if need to.
Good luck!
Thanks for your answer. I'll trying to the director of graduate studies. I just hope I don't have to drop out. I certainly won't be able to start a PhD again.
My friends who "restarted" due to supervisor problems did so at the end of their 1st year. I suppose it is harder for you after 2 years. I hope everything works out for you.
If you're lucky, our institution have some sort of principal or someone responsible for the graduate students, someone to talk to about exactly these things. A review on the progress should be done at least every year, to avoid being stuck on a problem for too long.
If things do no run smoothly, it is a problem not only for you, but for the institution, so it should be in everybody’s interest to solve this, either with a new problem or new advisor. As people mention, it is not really uncommon,
but I'd say be careful blaming your advisor, sometimes there's just a mismatch.
Talk to some other professor maybe, they've all been young once, and might have some good advice.
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45130 | Whether to change supervisor in UK Masters degree when supervisor is not providing much feedback and says I can change supervisor if I want?
I am pursuing a taught Master's degree in UK, and my field is social science. I was assigned to a dissertation supervisor by department. My supervisor is a very nice person with good personality, he is also tenured and respected in department.
The problem is that I can not get much feedback from him. I did two classes with him, and during these classes I talked with him about my class projects. I got an impression that he does not care much about what we do in our assignments or dissertation. The results from my assignments under him, did not make me happy, compared to the results I achieved from other classes.
The main problem is, I observe a similar trend for my dissertation work. He does not seem very interested in, probably he is too busy with his own research and other duties. But, at the end of the day, this affects the quality of the work done, and I am totally lost.
I talked with him about this issue and my concerns about the dissertation. He said that he believes I will do good work, but, also he pointed that I am free to apply for an advisor change (though, viability of this is unknown).
I am not sure if he is politely telling me that he wants me to leave or stay. What kind of path should I follow ?
Becky is right. "I am not sure if he is politely telling me that he wants me to leave or stay." He may be saying he is depressed and can't do a good job advising you, and you should take care of yourself by withdrawing from him. He may be saying he is selfish and doesn't want the responsibility of working closely with someone and providing true advising. He may be saying he's got Asperger's and that is preventing him from acting like a mensch.
Just try to talk to your department chair/graduate program coordinator and see what they say. If they have no problems with you changing advisors, then just go ahead and talk to other faculty members.
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119041 | What should you do if you learn after posting a paper to Arxiv that it is not a novel idea?
Consider the following scenario:
Assume you try to publish a paper in a journal, but before sending the paper, you place the paper on Arxiv.
Then, the journal rejects the paper because of it lacks novelty due to an improper literature survey.
Furthermore, Arxiv does not permit permanently deleting papers.
What can you do?
Leaving the paper on Arxiv will haunt you for all time.
Should you replace the pdf with a dummy pdf?
The previous versions will be intact and the people searching for her papers comes to know all those flaws. Is there any way to remove the paper from Arxiv?
Perhaps you could expand it into an expository article about the topic that students and new researchers to the field might find helpful.
Adding something like "After submission of the initial version, it has come to our attention that our main result is a rediscovery of a prior result by XXX (citation)." to the comment section of the arXiv metadata and the frontpage of the article itself should be an elegant way to handle this.
The paper has value in, the very least, independently corroborating another scholar's work. Depending on your field, this can vary in value. For example, in the social sciences, independent corroboration is a strong indicator that the effect being examined is a real phenomena.
Also, sometimes it is not necessarily the idea, but the process of generating the idea which is important.
I think in today's climate where there is a crisis of reproducible results, I dont think you should feel haunted at all.
If you really think your article now has no value whatsoever, then you can withdraw your arXiv submission, following the instructions on arXiv help: To withdraw an article. The article’s arXiv front page will then be replaced by a withdrawal notice; you can include a comment explaining the reason. (This is basically the official preferred alternative to your “upload a dummy pdf” approach.)
However, it’s very rare that an article is really completely valueless! Chances are it has some differences from the overlapping work, in the approach or the viewpoint or the technical details; if nothing else, it gives an alternative exposition of the material. If on reconsideration you think this is the case, then just upload a revised version, prominently explaining the extent to which it’s a rediscovery of earlier work (definitely in the abstract and/or introduction, perhaps also in the arXiv comments field), and if you feel it’s appropriate, also highlighting what is different or novel in your version.
With both these courses of action, the previously submitted version(s) will still be available if anyone really wants to look at them — that’s essentially unavoidable. But under normal circumstances, it’s extremely unlikely anyone would go looking for them, and even more unlikely that they’d hold it against you.
As per another answer, it's an option to add "it has come to our attention that our main result is a rediscovery of a prior result." But, that assumes no novelty. Although that's what the OP claims, it is rarely the case that two independent works discover exactly the same result. Hence, you could consider if there is any novelty, distinguish your work on that basis, and publish those results, possibly in collaboration with the authors of the initial discovery.
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44600 | Is h-index important? Can h-index be used to classify yourself to know whether you are at a given academic rank?
Of all the statistical factors that are used for judging publication record, the h-index seems to be the most commonly used
Wikipedia says
Hirsch suggested (with large error bars) that, for physicists, a value for h of about
12 might be typical for advancement to tenure (associate professor) at
major research universities. A value of about 18 could mean a full
professorship, 15–20 could mean a fellowship in the American Physical
Society.
I am an organic chemistry with an h-index of 16. I assume physics should be similar to (organic) chemistry. I am now applying for a tenure-track position.
I mean to be overqualified for research funds, academic and scientific honors, etc.
Questions
How important is the Hirsch index (h-index)?
How much is the h-index really relied upon?
Can the h-index be used to categorize yourself?
Can I really set a goal that by reaching h-index 20, I am at the level of fellows of my professional society?
Can the h-index be used to indicate whether I am ahead of my rivals?
Can we claim something by h-index or is it just a number?
What should be the h-index of assistant/associate/full professor in chemistry to be a leader of his own rank?
It is just a number. Arguably more useful than raw citation count, but still it is a very crude quantification of an academic's capabilities.
Consider a colleague with an h-index of 5. Each of her 5 papers was cited over 500 times. Do you think she is a less accomplished scientist?
@Bitwise Consider another colleague who was the second/third author of a paper that got 500 citations, while the rest of his work was cited much less times.. Would he/she be a more accomplished scientist?
"h-index is the most important factor for judging publications" - What? No it's not. Citation needed. Ideally publications should be judged by a substantive evaluation of their merits and contributions, not just some stupid number.
Nope. The most important factor for judging publications is the quality of the publications.
@D.W. I meant the most common statistical factor, which is used for judging publications. Otherwise, it is indeed my question: is h-index important? I meant there is no other statistical factor with popularity of h-index.
Popularity ≠ importance.
@JeffE popularity may be/may be not equal to importance. This is my question: is it for the case of h-index?
Ahead of your "rivals"? Seriously?
See also Any quantitative (or other) measures on how well h-index actually measures scientific productivity?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
As with all bibliometrics, the h-index is indicative at best. There is no magic number that says "now give this person a promotion", but if you have an h-index twice that of your colleagues, it might suggest something interesting.
If you really want to use the h-index to see how you compare to other organic chemists, why not look at the h-index of your colleagues, collaborators, or of researchers at the department you're applying to? You will already have a sense of their relative position, you'll be familiar with their work, and it'll help you get a sense of what the h-index might mean in your specific field - as well as the amount it varies between individuals you'd think of as comparable.
(Make sure to calculate all h-indexes using the same citation data, though. You'll get confusing results if some use Web of Science data and some Google Scholar...)
I'm in physics. I hit an h (as computed by inSpire) of 16 while I was still a postdoc, and I was running low compared to my colleagues in the same sub-field (experimental particle physics) whose careers were going ahead faster than mine. On the other hand, most of my theory colleagues at a similar place in their careers were far behind me in h.
Lessons: (A) It might have meaning in comparing two people in essentially the same sub-discipline, but you simply can't make comparisons across narrowly constructed field boundaries. (B) The numbers in the Wikipedia article are too tightly constrained and not broadly applicable.
If you insist on using bibliometrics to compare candidates you need to rate each one in terms of their progress relative their peers as closely defined as possible. That is a lot of work, so it is not for lazy people.
Though I agree with the general point, isn't experimental particle physics the discipline where papers with thousands of authors are common? Typical H-indexes vary by discipline but this would be an extreme case.
Indeed it differs from one field to another.
I think the only way you can know how high an h-index of a successful academic should be, is to examine the h-index of academics that you already know to be successful.
As for the logic behind the h-index, from http://mkhamis.com/blog/whats-an-h-index/
So why is this a better way to evaluate the impact of an academic or a venue than simply counting the number of publications or the number of citations? Well, if it was based on the number of publications, you could just publish a lot of papers at venues that accept everything.. If it was based on the number of citations, you could have 1k citations because of a small contribution to someone else’s paper, that resulted in you being a co-author. In the latter situation, it could be that your impact is not strong after all, perhaps the rest of your publications have very few citations (or none). If that was your only publication, your h-index would be 1.
The first giveaway is "with large error bars". The implication is that there's a weak correlation between career advancement and h-index. Even quite closely related fields will have different publishing patterns, for example:
The typical size of groups working on a project (~length of author list affecting number of papers published per author)
Whether the journal(s) most popular in the field prefer a few long papers or quick publication of results (affecting the number of papers per project)
Those journals' authorship standards.
The typical referencing style of a discipline -- every related piece of work, just those actively discussed or somewhere in between. This may also be affected by reviewers' expectations/demands and is likely to lead to more citations in work on the boundary of disciplines.
How well-indexed the main publications are in your field, by a particular tool (Mine differs significantly depending on whether I ask Google scholar or ResearcherID. This is in a field where journals are the main route to publication. It may indicate how reliable the calculation is.)
So h-index should be closer to a game than a benchmark, and therefore should be of little-to-no relevance in hiring decisions. Besides, the more widely these sorts of index are relied upon, the more people will get onto author lists, and the more self/buddy citations will occur. I don;t mean anything that clearly crosses ethical boundaries, just the error margin in whether someone's contribution is worthy of authorship or citation.
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45104 | How to frame early university troubles related to mental illness when applying for masters program after more recent successes at university?
Years ago I had a really rough few years of college, inability to focus, tons of stress, manic episodes etc. Instead of going into the drama of it all, the bottom line here is that during those years I cheated in a few classes because I felt paralyzed and paranoid almost all the time; by the time I was able to move about without that weight I was into another manic episode trying to get things done but not finding a way out (at this point I knew something was wrong but not what it was). I was caught and in the aftermath I submitted a statement that I fully accepted the consequences instead of contesting my obvious guilt.
Later I would find out that I had type 2 bipolar syndrome that was untreated for the past decade and I was told that I was lucky that it hadn't gotten worse. Once I was on medication I tried college again at a different school and graduated recently with honors.
My question here is that I'm really interested in going to a masters program but I don't know how to explain my first attempt at college, the failures, and the mental illness or even if I should mention it at all. I don't want to hide things but I'd appreciate any advice on this
You should not label yourself as bipolar. Even if putting a name on your problems was a relief you'll have a lot of negative reactions from other people and that will follow you for a long time. Do as if your (hypo)manic episode was a distinct sickness: it was first undiagnosed and then diagnosed and treated properly.
Your outstanding performance in your second attempt should be your focus. Don't let yourself downplay how much you've achieved this time around, because every candidate without your history will be singing their own praises. However, you should, briefly, discuss the previous attempt with as much specificity as you are comfortable in your personal statement. A past failure with mitigating circumstances should not be held against you provided you acknowledge it and your recent performance clearly demonstrates that you've overcome these circumstances.
If your rough patch was so bad that you MUST address it in your application, your best move is to be honest (but brief!) about what happened, demonstrate how you've moved past your mistakes, and focus on your recent achievements.
I speak from personal experience. My second year of undergrad was rough. I was suicidal, diagnosed with a mental illness, abused my medication, failed classes, cheated, the works. I was caught cheating and received essentially the maximum punishment that wasn't suspension: I had to fail the class, and there would be a permanent note on my official transcript that says "This person received a mandatory fail for class XXX due to violation of the academic code." It was a huge wake-up call. I worked my ass off for the next few years, pulled my grades up, and ended up getting into my top choice Master's program (Ivy!)! If you told me that in undergrad I would've laughed because I thought no grad school would accept me. Here's what to do:
1. Mention it only if you have to.
Only mention your mistake in your application if it's visible to the admissions committee. In my case I had to because it was in my transcript and NOT explaining the note would be a huge red flag. If whatever you went through isn't obvious from your other application materials, then mentioning it is unnecessary. The admissions committee only skims your application, and something you think is horrible could be something they don't even notice. Can you give me more details about your situation? What exactly happened that was so bad that you're considering explaining it in your application?
2. If you have to mention it, be honest but brief.
Don't dwell on your mistakes; a few sentences of explanation are sufficient. You want the committee to focus on your achievements and not your failures, so just mention the negatives as straightforwardly, concisely, and professionally as possible and move on. Don't give more information than you have to and don't get too personal. In your case I would not mention the mental illness unless it's absolutely relevant. I didn't even mention my bad grades; I just explained the cheating. I didn't want the admissions committee to remember TWO negative things about my application.
3. If you violated a moral or legal code, show remorse and show that you've learned from your mistakes. Demonstrate how you've moved past your old mistakes onto future successes.
The point of disciplinary action is to teach you a lesson. Show that you have learned from your errors. End on a positive note by mentioning how you've overcome your mistake to achieve your recent successes. Show that you've moved past your mistake and ready to work hard in your dream school's grad program.
4. Submit the explanations document separately from your personal statement if possible.
Your personal statement should be overwhelmingly positive and confident in tone, and anything negative in it will be jarring to the reader. If there is a separate section in the application for you to submit this explanation document, then do that. If they don't offer a separate section, contact the school and ask.
5. If there's someone with clout who can write you a recommendation letter, ask them to explain it for you.
This person should be pretty influential, though -- it should be someone the admissions committee can trust. In my case I got a professor who was on the admissions committee of the school I was applying to to write me a recommendation letter. I had taken a class with him as a visiting student, and when I asked him for advice about explaining my academic violation in my application, he offered to explain it in his letter. This is something I would do only if your letter writer is someone the admissions committee trusts more than they trust you.
Admissions committees are people and they're willing to forgive you. They were students once too.
Congratulations on your recent successes! Overcoming mental illness to graduate with honors is an amazing achievement that you should be very proud of.
I hope I've helped. Feel free to contact me privately to discuss your situation in more detail, if you'd like. I spent a lot of time and met with a lot of professors to figure out how to address this in my application. I'd be happy to share what I've learned.
I should mention that I'm in the US and studying computer science. My academic violation was in an art history class unrelated to my major.
@BenCrowell I'd say remorse if somebody violated a moral or legal code is always appropriate, no matter the reason for the violation. If the OP cheated because the cognitive distortions caused by the illness made him think he has no other choice, then he should show remorse for having cheated (but not for having been ill). Remorse doesn't automatically mean "I was a selfish moron", although some people tend to interpret it that way. It means "I recognize that what I did was a mistake (regardless of the reasons for making it) and I am invested in avoiding it in the future".
Yes, my answer assumes that OP has to explain the cheating incident in her/his grad school application. @rumtscho's comment puts it perfectly. If you don't mind rumtscho I'm going to edit my answer to clarify this point, using your "moral or legal code" wording since you explained it excellently.
@jj080808 you are welcome to use any wording from my comment in your answer.
Your story seems very simple and straightforward:
You had an undiagnosed and serious medical problem.
After diagnosis and treatment, the problem is fixed.
Your grades are the clear evidence for point 2, and in the unlikely event that the admissions process asks for proof of your medical diagnosis, that should be easy to provide.
There are lots of people who are taking life-long medication for a wide range of conditions, and that doesn't prevent them having successful lives and careers. Don't get stressed out just because you are another one of them.
Your whole story sounds like what you would go through during your graduate period. Don't worry about it much. From my experience during the last few months in a Master's Program, there is a bit of panic in the beginning but as long as you understand that failure is a part of the whole process then you should be fine. I failed a lot during my first year but still managed to pick up myself and excel during the last months.
You seem to be conflating the stress of being a student with a diagnosed (and treated) health problem. But "Don't worry about your health problems, they are part of the process" could be spectacularly bad advice, e.g. it could be literally fatal. I am left with the impression that you didn't carefully read the question.
If you noticed, I refrain from talking about the health problems. Instead I try to answer on the failure part. Health problems are different for everyone and I think we can agree with this.
The question was "How to frame early university troubles related to mental illness when applying for masters program after more recent successes at university?" If there was anything in your answer that addressed this, I'm sorry but I missed it. Perhaps you could edit your answer to clarify. (Also, no: some people have the same health problems.)
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30232 | What is the difference between "interpreting" and "reporting" research in a scientific publication?
In line with this question, I would like help with writing a results section in a Computer Science paper. There are many useful suggestions online [1 , 2], but I am confused about one of the key points in these links:
avoid interpreting the results rather than just reporting them. Just present and report the observations and measurements, factually and informatively, without discussion.
What is difference between interpreting and reporting?
The question is too vague. "avoid interpreting the results" is poor advice. Tell the reader why they need the results.
@AnonymousPhysicist this part usually goes in the introduction. It's not "why they need the result", it's "why is this paper important".
I would agree with @AnonymousPhysicist that "avoiding interpreting" is bad advice but my field is business, not science (and interpreting is common and expected). Can you tell us your area of study?
Question is very broad/vague...
I have edited to focus on the answerable section, which the accepted answer also focuses on, and voted to reopen.
Any skeleton/guideline to follow?
Actually the links you provided are excellent and give a good basis to start with. There's not much to add to it. Reporting styles of results sometimes differ from field to field so I think it's best to examine the style used by some of the papers that you cite that are similar to yours.
How do you make the difference between interpreting and reporting?
This is usually the hardest part. A good way to start is to simple make a bullet point list of observations only. For example:
This is a green apple.
Each apple weighs 50 g.
Each box of apples weighs 2 kg.
There are 20 boxes.
This is going to be a boring, unexciting list. But this is exactly how it is supposed to be. Once you got the list, you can create a nice paragraph from it. Notice how tempting it is to just make the short calculation noting how many apples there are, but no! This is an interpretation and not merely an observation.
There are, however, some "obvious" one-word interpretation that sometimes can go to the results section. For example, you may point out that the apple is a Granny Smith cultivar. Or you may note that a 2 kg box is a standard size box. These immediate interpretations should be obvious to the reader, so he will not have to ask "why" when reading. The reason for putting these in the "Results" section instead of the "Discussion" section is that they may distract from the main point you are trying to convey in the full interpretation of the data.
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15276 | How to write a strong introduction into a research paper?
How does one write a strong (good) introduction into a research paper? Some introductions make me really curious about the rest of the paper while others do not. Although it is relatively easy to say which introductions are good and which are not, I find it difficult to distill what makes the difference. There is a previous question about writing introductions (How to write a Ph.D. thesis Introduction chapter?) but it is about Ph.D theses.
write the paper first, then tack on a beginning and end. that way you will know what its about.
Here's a bit of meta-advice on this point. One major way I've learned how to improve introductions is by thinking hard about negative referee reports. In my experience, when a paper gets a referee report that I disagree with, the explanation is often that the introduction needed to be clearer about something.
@Noah's advice is spot on (although one might aspire to write a good introduction earlier in the day than this) and really points to the importance of the question: the difference between an average introduction and a good one is often the difference between your paper being grokked or not by some fairly random referee who has sufficient subject-level expertise but is not closely clued in to your particular perspective.
This is very area specific. I'll start with the caveat that I write papers in computer science, so YMMV.
The way I think about introductions (which is not to say they are GOOD introductions) is that they tell the story of the paper in brief. Every paper has a story to tell, starting with
Here's a fascinating question
Here's what people have tried to do (in brief: not a full related work section, but a high level assesment)
here's the key challenge preventing further progress
Voila: here's our complete/partial/intermediate/awesome solution
(additionally) and here's how it works.
The intro is typically the "hook" to read the rest of the paper, so you have to provide a birds-eye view that draws the reader in without drowning them in details.
The thing that separates a good intro from a bad one is knowing where that right level of detail is, so you're not either totally vacuous or mired in details. Getting this right is an art and depends on your field, your results, the problem, and your understanding of the target audience.
A few pure theory papers begin with "Let X be a..." instead of "Hey look at this shiny rock I found."
This is similar to Simon Peyton Jones's approach
I was recently forwarded (what I think) is a guide full of excellent advice, Writing Tips for Ph. D. Students by John Cochrane. In it, Cochrane has a brief section of advice on the introduction:
The introduction should start with what you do in this paper, the major contribution. You must explain that contribution so that people can understand it. Don’t just state your
conclusion: “My results show that the pecking-order theory is rejected.” Give the fact behind that result. “In a regression of x on y, controlling for z, the coefficient is q.”
The first sentence is the hardest. Do not start with philosophy, “Financial economists have long wondered if markets are efficient.” Do not start with “The finance literature has
long been interested in x.” Your paper must be interesting on its own, and not just because lots of other people wasted space on the subject. Do not start with a long motivation of
how important the issue is to public policy. All of this is known to writers as “clearing your throat.” It’s a waste of space. Start with your central contribution.
Three pages is a good upper limit for the introduction.
This just reiterates the point both Oldboy and Suresh made that the introduction should clearly state what the paper is about, and also some more detailed advice about avoiding generic intro. statements. (Note the upper bound is good for social science articles that may be from 20~40 pages, it should be much lower for briefer articles in different fields or journals.)
Yes, I read something somewhere before about these types of generic introductory phrases, calling the practice "grandfathering" ... which is the idea of writing passages out of a sense of tradition in such a way that they are extremely familiar only to experts and incomprehensible to anyone else. Hence these passages are utterly useless since nobody learns anything. It seems introductions to papers are littered with them. I do it myself I guess. Bad habits. :)
After I read this advice @badroit I went through my current papers and edited such things out. When I first write something I don't care very much about specific sentences, and if writing such things helps get the ball rolling then that is fine - but they should be deleted or copy-edited later on.
I've seen suggestions to use such statements as hyperbole to establish interest in the work in the introduction. E.g. if I wrote a paper about police stops in New York City I may allude to the Diallo shooting in the intro. This is IMO bad practice though, as they tend to be such aloof references to the current work they are basically meaningless. This post discusses similar behavior in citing generic original work, Sociology citing Becker.
Some points to take into consideration (not an exhaustive list):
Correct grammar: for obvious reasons.
Proper literature review: many readers find annoying when the authors claim to be the first people attacking the problem of interest, while the reader is well aware of other relevant references.
State clearly the aims and main results in the introduction. It is frustrating when you have to read the entire paper to understand its purpose.
Not too long, not too short. A long introduction will make the idea of skipping this section really tempting, while a short introduction might compromise clarity or points 2 and 3.
Cover points of interest for different audiences. For example, try to explain the impact of the paper or the topic in terms of both theoretical and practical issues.
Make a concrete analogy. A concrete analogy will intertwine to the text and allow room for the readers to project their background into it.
Make the ideas constantly contradict each other. "Contradiction" here doesn't mean as a logical contradiction, but more about "a surprising, but still logical step of development". It introduces why the topic is important, and is the source of excitation, enlightenment, and satisfaction. Being able to solve contradictions is the reason why the ideas survive and are worth the attention.
Notice where the flow emerges and dissipates. This will help overcome the jargon barrier without having to oversimplify them. Imagine the article is like a heatmap, and each jargon/theorem/proof is a heat source, then the writer's job is to locate them not too hot (too dense) or too cold (too uninformative). The introduction is also the same.
I have an article for this, you can check it out: Making concrete analogies and big pictures.
Start writing the body paragraphs then use the basic ideas of all of them and then create an introduction and concluding paragraphs!
This advice might be helpful to young students writing a typical 5-paragraph essay, but it isn't really applicable to postgrads writing a research paper. Also, we usually expect answers to be more than just once sentence.
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46777 | Famous modern-era academics without academic degrees?
Are the any famous or well-known (today-living) researchers without academic degrees working as professors or permanent staff members?
There are two related questions:
PhD without previous academic degree: truth or myth?
Is it possible to obtain a Master's degree without Bachelor's degree?
However, I am curious about the no-degree (past upper secondary school, i.e. no BSc, MSc, PhD, etc) case.
What about a degree in an unrelated field (e.g. math professor with a degree in history), would that count?
In regard to your question's topic, at least two relevant terms come to mind: lay scholar and autodidact. Once we establish the right terminology, it is not too difficult to find information that you're looking for. In particular, this Wikipedia list and this list seem to be rather comprehensive (you will have to filter the information to select the modern-era academics without degrees).
Freeman Dyson does not have a PhD.
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/04/01/freeman_dyson_on_the_phd_degree.php
-1, Freeman Dyson has a Cambridge MA
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23977 | PhD position interview: How specific should my idea of the topic be?
I just finished my master in Geophysics with some help from here ;). Now I applied for several PhD positions in Natural Sciences and just got an invitation for a personal interview for one of them.
The topic of the position is described in the call but over all it seems very general to me (I really have no experience if that is common for PhD positions).
During the interview I’m supposed to give a 10-15 min oral talk about "specific research questions and methodologies" I suggest to focus on and about "results of a first paper".
I have some experience in one of the methods mentioned in the call and could probably come up with a quite elaborated idea for a paper (though I would have no idea if everything or anything would work the way I propose it, never having worked on a paper)
My understanding is hat even older scientists need time and work in a topic to figure out what exactly there paper will be about. So probably I should just kind of suggest a focus topic within the broad framework of the topics covered in the call?
I guess my main question is: How specific should I really be?
(because I should obviously try to avoid boring my interviewer by only repeating part oft he call)
I should probably also mention that I have only three days to prepare.
The way I interpret the topic you were asked to present on is that they want you to present on some work you have complete such as your first paper (or possibly a masters thesis if you have not published anything).
The idea of this is probably to get an idea of how you think/do research and provide a nice introduction into finding out what your interested in.
From your question it sounds like you think they are asking for something else. Now I could be entirely misunderstanding what is asked for (I just have your question), but if you are unsure I would suggest you send a polite email to clarify what the talk should cover.
For what you should say in the talk I would try and answer these questions:
What was the motivation for the research (why is it interesting)?
What did you do?
What are your results/what do they show?
Why are the results significant/interesting?
From the entire mail I got it is clear to me that they want me to focus on how/where I would start working on the PhD. I'm just not sure what the 'convention' is here. How elaborated should my idea about my work be in advance.
For others wit this question. You want to show your ability to think, and at the same time don't give the impression that you are not open to suggestions/changes. Starting PhD students still have a lot to learn, at that time they need to be able to take supervision and direction.
Although it suprises me that you are asked to give a presentation covering the project you apply for without having access to a grant proposal or other detailed project description, in comparable situations I experienced (as a third party) the presenter started broad and went into detail on very specific and single points (or directions), leaving aside other possible directions (but state that you saw them!).
By that, you show that you are able to immerse yourself into an unknown problem and on your own design a possible route to tackle a specific problem.
Staying unspecific and broad throughout the whole talk would probably bore them more -because they often already heard of it quite some times- than going into detail.
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16436 | How to advise a student looking for an under-grad thesis topic?
There are some good answers here on how to find an masters thesis topic, but I am looking for advice on how to advise undergrad students who are looking for a thesis topic. Finding a thesis topic is a little bit different at undergrad level because it is the first time. How can I best help a student find a good thesis topic at undergrad level which will help them to get into a good university for masters and/or PhD?
Why are people voting to close? This is about research, hence the "undergrad" part is not justification to close. Is the question not specific enough, asking too much for advice. All threads on ASE are somewhat subjective.
Some people have a little bit too Pavlovian a reaction to questions about undergraduate affairs. This would be one of those times where this is a valid question. On the other hand, you can argue that "how to select a research topic" is too broad a question—but this is not an undergraduate-only question.
I made some major changes to the question to bring it into line with the accepted norms for this site. If I have obscured your question, @sadaf2605, feel free to edit.
An undergrad thesis is not expected to be mind-blowing or even necessarily that original (see @Cape Code's response about Lit Reviews, often a great option). Look to make some incremental improvements on a paper you've read that really interests you. Maybe you did a project for a class that you did very well on and would like to explore a bit more deeply. Starting from scratch is quite daunting for an undergrad (even a grad student or professor).
The least successful undergrad theses are often the ones that tried to be too groundbreaking and in the end the author had nothing because they couldn't make significant progress. Most theses are good enough to be accepted, if you get the work done. They do not have to be publishable. You usually only have about 1 year to finish an undergrad thesis, while completing a full load of courses. This is way different from a PhD or even a masters thesis where usually more time can be devoted. This is your first time at research, so have fun with it and don't worry too much about the consequences.
Often an advisor might hand you a project to work on, but you should come to him/her with general interests and having already read some of their papers and personal website.
There is always the option of asking for a thorough, methodologically sound, literature review on a given subject. Especially if you have too many students to allow them to do experiments in you lab for example. By allowing a certain freedom in the subject to pick, you give the personalized aspect without the risk of choosing a broad or unfeasible practical project.
Literature reviews have the advantage of teaching the undergrad how people usually do research. It can also confront them to the diversity of scientific opinion or the large variation in paper quality and thus develop a critical approach to literature reading.
I find these skills to be of great value at the undergrad level. And hey, the result might actually be useful to your research, which will be gratifying to the student.
I did not read the answers regarding master thesis topic search, but at least in Germany I see no difference in search strategies.
My personal opinion is: Look for something which is in the field you want to go into, find something which is challenging but manageable, and get a good advisor who helps you if you struggle.
If you manage to find all three, you did a very good job.
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26017 | How to address a person in a letter?
For example, if a person holds not just "Dr." but "Priv.-Doz. Dr." or "Prof. Dr." should we include the full title after "Dear ..."?
Thank you.
P.S.
July 20, 2014 UPDATE: as some repliers correctly guessed I faced the question when I was writing an email to a German person.
I'm not Emily Post, but if a person holds a doctorate of any kind (except for juris doctor or doctor of pharmacy, and perhaps a few more edge cases like that) I refer to them as "Doctor". If they have a personal preference, they can correct me afterward.
@JonathanLandrum Germany is more complicated than that.
@Parsa This is not a duplicate of the suggested question. The linked question is about how to refer to yourself, not how to refer to the person you are writing to.
As your question is referring to a "Priv.-Doz. Dr." I guess you want to address a German person. Hence, I would like to add to the already existing answers. In general, I agree that when in doubt, simply be more formal and use the full title.
However, at least in Germany you usually just use the highest title. Strictly speaking, only "Dr." is a proper academic title in Germany (i.e. Professor or Privatdozent are job titles). However, Professor is also seens as a title if addressing someone, due to the outstanding position coming with the title.
So, if someone is a "Prof. Dr. Dr. X", you just refer to him or her as "Prof. X". Titles like "Priv.-Doz." are usually not used, as these people normally also hold a doctoral degree, so you would address them as "Dr. X".
Basically it boils down to:
If someone is a professor, you use "Prof. X"
If someone is not a professor, but holds a doctoral degree, you use "Dr. X"
If neither of the above applies, you use "Mr/Mrs X"
When in doubt, use the full title. Err on the side of formality, and let them correct you if they wish.
I would address a Privatdozent simply as "Dear Dr. ..."; when (s)he becomes a professor, I'll write "Dear Prof. ..." Even in German, I wouldn't write "Lieber Priv.-Doz. Dr. ..."
Personally, I think Dear is overused, because people use it when they don't really mean it. I highly doubt that when you say "Dear ..." in these professional settings you really mean dear. (dear: regarded with deep affection; cherished by someone.)
@Cornstalks Certainly, the "Dear" in salutations is just a standard form and has little to do with the meaning of "dear" in other contexts. The same goes for "yours" in standard closings like "Sincerely yours." But so what?
I would use "Dear" in English, but in my opinion "Liebe(r)" (the literal translation in German) is way too colloquial (especially in a formal setting, where the correct addressing is relevant). The standard German form for formal letters should be "Sehr geehrte(r) ..."
It is very, very country dependent, so if you are not familiar with the local language, you should err on the side of politeness.
That being said, I am generally using full title in the address and other pompous places, but "Dear Professor Smith, " or other short form when addressing in the text. This is a place where you can safely err toward giving higher titles, no one ever refused to be called a professor. I would use "Dear Dr. " with people I am sure that they are post-docs or people with no academic affiliation (lawyers, industrial people), and use "Professor" to anyone with habilitation, formal teaching assignment etc.
thanks for your input: you even widen the question in terms of short/long words in the titles.
I strongly disagree that you can safely give higher titles here. As the recipient, you might either want to correct the sender or you even have to - In many countries you are liable to prosecution when given the assumptions you hold a title which in fact you do not. In any case, it is rather awkward four the recipient to write back something as "I am sorry, but I am not a professor."
My opinion is that giving the correct and detailed titles in the full address, and using professor in the conversational addressing automatically erase this liability, but I am not a lawyer.
It is important indeed to address people correctly, more important that initials, one may pay much more attention to the correctness of the name and family name which that person has written in his web pages, letters and papers. Even, if you know some people who know him (e.g. colleague, students, etc.) simply ask them how it is better to call that person.
In my opinion, the best way to address a person and write his name in letters is to copy and paste the exact thing he has written in his web page.
If the person has included his initials in his web page such as "Dr.", "Priv.-Doz. Dr." or "Prof. Dr." then it seems that those initials are important for him and should be included; if there is no sign of those initials; then it is better just to use Dr. or Professor.
If you use something and he feels it should be corrected, then he will use the correct form of his name in his reply email. After that, use his preferred way to write his name.
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137913 | Transferring PhD programs due to parent's sickness
I am a PhD student that has just started my third year in a scientific field. Since I have started my program, my mother has been diagnosed with a serious form of cancer. It has recently gotten worse and I am worried sick. I am considering applying to another PhD program that would be much closer to home.
This other department would also meet my research interests better than the current one. I have not been super excited about my current research so that is a factor in my consideration too (although I was not seriously considering leaving before this happened). I am much better aware of my research interests now than when I first applied to graduate school, since my undergraduate degree was in a different field.
I should mention that the program that I would be applying to is generally higher ranked, although my current one is respectable too. I have not applied to that department before. I have four publications, two first-author papers in good journals and one in Science (not first author). My advisor is very well-known and is very sympathetic to my situation. I have not discussed the possible transfer yet and although they would be saddened if I left, I'm sure they would write a great reference letter. My grades in the PhD program are not outstanding since I was mostly focused on research. I will likely have my master's degree by the time I would be applying in the winter.
I know transferring PhD programs is generally not easy, especially when it's to a more prestigious department, and given that by the time I would start I will have completed 3 years at my current department. But considering my situation and my publication record, how understanding would an admissions committee be? Does anyone have any experience with a similar situation or advice?
Thank you so much.
Does your institution allow supervision via distance or online? If you are not doing a lab-based PhD, you might be able to do this instead?
Another option to consider, depending on your long-term career goals and the job options in the city you want to move to, would to graduate this year.
Advisors are humans too (at least most of them). Most would be willing to think with you to find creative solutions. Maybe you can stay with your old institution, but arrange for you to visit the new institution. I my old institution a couple of months in another institution was mandatory. So you can keep the progress you have made and still spent some time closer to your family. Maybe, you and your current advisor can arrange for someone from the other institution to become your co-advisor. This might enable you to regularly travel back and forth as part of your normal work, and combine that with family visits.
If people are willing a lot is possible, and in situations like yours a lot of people are willing. So my advise is talk to your advisor. Don't limit yourself to that new institution. Your primary aim is to spent time with your family, and the new institution was one possible way of achieving that. Maybe your advisor has other ideas on how to achieve your aim that work out better.
This is the right answer, your advisor may have options and ideas you've never considered and certainly has more influence at the schools in the city you want to move to than you do.
I hadn't considered this, thank you so much! I will look into this possibility.
I'm sorry to hear that you are going through this.
I went through a similar experience shortly after I moved to a new country to start my PhD. I contemplated quitting and moving back home to be with my family. I spoke with my family and they convinced me not to. The reason: they did not want the illness to affect my life. Your parents likely share the same viewpoint: they are very proud of you and your achievements and would not want the illness to interfere with you achieving your goals.
The experience with my family gave me perspective and helped me to see that one should think deeply before significantly altering their life trajectory because of an unfortunate event. That said, you are not contemplating quitting and it sounds like, illness aside, the move will be (professionally) beneficial for the reasons you stated. Keep the following in mind, though:
Give yourself time to rest and potentially take time off to deal with your family. It's possible that you just need some time off to visit and evaluate. If you do decide to move, keep in mind that moving mid-degree is hard enough as it is, let alone dealing with the additional stress of a family illness. I encourage you to take time off regardless (if you are leaning towards moving, discuss the possibility of taking a break in the communication with the new institute)
Nearly every PhD student feels a period of stagnation around their third year. This is natural, don't take it as a sign that you are not in a good program. Any PhD program definitely requires multiple months (possibly years) of painfully slow progress.
If you move, don't feel bad if you take more time to finish your degree. Making a move requires you to settle in at the new place and get used to the new research environment/style of your advisor.
Remember to think about yourself in all this, please be forgiving/kind to yourself!
I'm sorry to hear that you are dealing with this too. I really appreciate this compassionate answer, you have given me a lot to think about.
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8288 | How do I plan for my PhD now that I have graduated with a Masters degree without thesis?
A bit of background: I am an Indian citizen with an undergraduate degree in Electronics from India and a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Computer Science (Funny, it is called a minor, given that 60% of my credits are from Computer Science Dept.).
I am currently working as a software developer with a company in Boston, MA. I was involved in some research work during my grad school, but however, nothing materialized and I decided to graduate with a coursework only option (with many projects as a part of coursework). Needless to say, I burnt a lot of bridges along the way which eliminated even the minutest chance for a strong letter of recommendation.
I wish to, however, apply for a PhD in Machine Learning and/or Algorithms, at least 2 to 3 years from now. The job I am at currently is not a research oriented job. I am doing a bit of research by myself with the data sets available online.
Given that all of the PhD applications in the US, most in Europe need strong letters of recommendations, if not publications, how can I now set things straight in the coming years. What should be an ideal line of action and is a PhD with a good adviser, possible, at all?
Note: I am currently working on some Machine Learning related open problems on large data sets, but I am not sure how much can I get done, while working full time in a non academic environment. Also, I do not have any reputable papers as yet.
Probably the most important thing what you can do to make some doors open is to write a peer-reviewed research paper.
If you have any chances, find someone in academia, try to structure your interest and do some bit of research which you can publish under the academic.
Form another point, I know there are some Universities, which value "business" contacts and experience. Don't give up and apply, apply, apply...
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40755 | Are undergraduate journals a good choice for publishing papers?
I am 18 years old (high school undergraduate) but I have had my first scientific paper published by the age of 16 to a regular (non-undergraduate) journal. However, I am preparing some papers for publication related to Computer Vision, Computational Geometry and Scientific Software and, through a scholastic search at the Internet I found that there are some undergraduate journals that are often more flexible to what is being published since they contain undergraduate articles, as well as in the reviewing process.
So, generically speaking, are undergraduate journals a good choice for publications even for someone that has already published some of his work to regular journals? I know that it heavily depends on the content and the significance of the contributions being discussed in the paper but do undergraduate journals trigger the interest from other researchers to cite work and get informed from them?
What makes a journal an "undergraduate journal"? Can you provide examples.
Google for JURP for example.
Don't publish in weird journals
Work to publish in the mainstream journals, despite their fickle biases and sometimes burdensome cost. Fields often have a pecking order of journals and the journal in which an article is published can change the perception of an article. Journals such as the national high school journal of science may be well-intentioned, but seem to provide a way for people to start worrying earlier and earlier about publishing.
It is premature for you to worry about your publication profile.
You've already published one paper at 16-- that's great. You are ahead of the curve. Graduate programs look for undergraduates to have published. Colleges look for evidence of potential. In the two labs I've worked in, the PI evaluates prospective high school students and undergraduates based on a letter of recommendations and a brief talk with the prospective student. Incremental publications in third tier journals may be a necessary part of the tenure slog, but you have the time now to just learn science and decide whether you want to pursue it as a career. Worrying about publications in high school is putting the cart before the horse.
Thank you very much. Your advice seems very intuitive and agrees with my personal view.
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43565 | What to do when people in a research group use different programming languages for computation (e.g., Mathematica, Python, Matlab)?
I am a very happy user (in 98% of the time) of Python/Numpy/Scipy (anaconda distribution). I switched from Matlab and do not regret the decision. I have reached a level of expertise, which enables me to help others with their computational tasks and encourage people to use Python.
Unfortunately, the situation is not that easy. A senior researcher in a very closely related working group is using Mathematica. One of his students is using Mathematica, one is not sure yet but honestly it would be stupid to use a different software.
If I switch to Mathematica, everyone may benefit from it (code sharing and building up knowledge). I think you can understand that my motivation to do so is not the highest (not again another language; I use Python, Fortran and a bit C++). Additionally, the Python user community is very vibrant, and they frequently come up with interesting projects.
In order to avoid a nonsense discussion about what software to use, let me rephrase my questions as follows:
Have you ever been in a similar situation (either as student or supervisor)? And if you have, did you try to get everyone to use the same language? Did any situation occur where it was good that not everyone was using the same tool?
EDIT:
My field is biotechnology. We do calculate: ODE'S, PDE'S,fractals, system of equations (ODE's, DAE'S, algabraic). Most of the time we do some rapid prototyping (e.g calculating linear pH gradients in chromatography, some combinations of reactors etc., using/extending chromatographic models). I am a PhD student and will continue as a post doc at the same institute including occasional lab exchanges abroad.
Another avenue is to try to make everything modular, so that, for example, a high-level Python script calls more dedicated Python/Mathematica/etc. functions. This can be done directly in a programming language, or you can try to use something sort of workflow management tool (one that I have tried minimally is called Kepler, but it doesn't have Mathematica as a native language).
Why not just learn Mathematica? I haven't had this issue, because I'm the only one writing code for my projects, but I try to write different projects in different languages - it is, in my opinion, the easiest way to pick up a new language. I guess I don't see why you have to 'switch' rather than just pick up a new language. It (presumably) isn't like you are going to forget Python while working with Mathematica.
If you do want to make your case for why Python is better though then you could focus on it being open source and having a very active community. I've run into licensing issues trying to use MATLAB on national HPC systems (I think it is harder/more expensive to license software that can be used by researchers from multiple institutions). One reason I learned R and Python (I also started with MATLAB) is that I might not have access to expensive licensed software in the future.
We decided to get around the issue by learning how to write our shared data analysis routines in C, then wrap them in Fortran, then use SWIG to wrap them into Python, Tcl, etc so everybody could use them from whatever language they wanted. And we knew we would all get the same answers because they all used the same underlying C library.
I think it worth to remark what field you are in: CS? Physics? Different fields have different cultures and level of "reasonable programming skill" also very different. In this particular situation, I also would remark that Python/scipy and Mathematica are very-very different animals, and if one is a good tool for a given problem, the other most probably not. I.e. you can have very good reasons to use both, depending on the problem. Mathematica is a far better symbolic calculator, and scipy is far better number cruncher.
This is an honest comment, not trying to make a point: I don't really understand what is the problem. I use Mathematica as my main tool while most of my colleagues use other software. It has never really been a problem. The tasks I use Mathematica for usually require working interactively, and there is little code sharing going on. It's very different from collaborating on an application. I don't write "applications", I just process data, create figures, automate running my C++ simulations, etc. Is your situation different? Also, why not learn both tools?
@Szabolcs Considering the following scenario: "Hey, the model I'm running is producing some really weird convergence errors, can you come be an extra set of eyes?" or "Man, that analysis you did was perfect for my project, how did you do it?" Code sharing and collaboration go beyond writing an application.
Following up on @dang 's point, if there are "natural" places in your workflow to test or checkpoint-to-file or preferably both!, they should be good places to let anyone change languages (and if you make the file formats and assumptions explicit to enable this, well, needed to be done anyway).
This is very familiar to me - people come into my field from a number of different places, and each has not only their own preferred software, but the software they think "everyone" uses - which invariably isn't true.
At the moment for example, I have implementations of various bits of my work in MATLAB, Mathematica, C++, Python, Maple, R, SAS...
Have you been in a similar Situation (either as Student or Supervisor) ?
I've been in groups that successfully united everyone under the same language banner, and some groups that did not (intentionally or otherwise).
And if so, did you tried to get everyone using the same language ?
I have definitely tried, and occasionally failed. You've mentioned some of the benefits, but beyond merely code sharing, everyone using different languages makes it extremely hard to learn from others, share solutions, or collaborate really in any way. If you have a problem, and it's written in another language than what other folks are using, that problem is entirely your own to deal with - even if folks want to help, they may not be able to.
Did situations occur, at which it was good that not everyone is using the same tool ?
The only time is when the "usual tool" is somehow terrible at what's needed for someone's work. For example, a few years ago, when Python's statistics ecosystem was much worse, it was good to have people who knew R. But assuming they can all achieve roughly the same thing, I've never gone "Oh thank god we're all writing in different languages!"
The one exception is I did encounter someone whose ability to parse whitespace-based code is...less than stellar, which made me glad I could run things in MATLAB as well as Python.
What was your experience with those groups that sucessfully united everyone under the same language banner ?
@Moritz From the perspective of collaboration? Better, vastly, but not perfect (different coding styles, etc. still make things hard).
In theory, writing in different languages is good because you can write two versions of the really important stuff, run them on the same test data, and have a better chance of finding subtle bugs. In practice, who takes the time?
@cphlewis I did exactly that.
Including finding subtle bugs, @TheBlackCat? I am delighted.
@cphlewis Subtle bugs and not-so-subtle ones, I am afraid. Unit testing is a great thing.
The one group I've been in that managed some of this had, uh, probably personal rivalry as well as different language preferences, and I couldn't get everyone to agree on sharing test cases. (Test harnesses: to get all the programmers pulling in the same direction.)
The only restrictions that I place on my group members when it comes to the software that they use in their research work are:
that they not use proprietary software for which the group doesn't own a license
that their work can be shared or reused by other members of the group in the future
Requiring strict use of one set of tools is, I think, counterproductive, as it can force people to spend a lot of time learning things that won't necessarily be helpful to them in their research or later in their careers.
If they're just getting started on the programming side of things, however, I'll ask that they start with Python and the other standard codes that we use, because it makes life simpler for everybody in the long run.
A piece of wisdom my supervisor shared with me a few months back,
when I told him about how cool Julia seemed.
Was (paraphrasing):
We (often) aren't really in a position to choice our language for the
task. We use what ever the best tools are being developed in. Before
that was C++, then it was Matlab, now it seems to be python. Maybe by
the time your PhD is done we will all be using Julia.
Point being, that learning a language is easy.
You just do it, so you can use the best libraries.
One of the things I am loving about Julia is that because of its Foreign Language interface, you can call libraries written is many different languages.
(I am aware of working code to call: C, Fortran, Rust, Python, Java, Matlab, Mathematica, and C++).
Thus having maintained access to the "Best tools"
This is not to say you should convert everyone to julia.
The first point stands.
Learning a language is easy.
Getting the best tools (or in your case perhaps collaborators), is not.
That depends on the language. Learning some languages are easier than learning others, and some languages teach you skills that are more generalizable than others. And lots of languages have foreign function interfaces.
FFI generally refers to being able to interface with C. But indeed it is getting more and more common for wider interfacing, because it is a great idea.
I would be interested to see a answer to this question that recommends using FFI.
Yes I have been in a similar situation both as a student and as a supervisor.
As a student I was the only person in my lab to use Python (others were using Matlab or even Excel macros). Yes I tried to convince them to switch, with little success! But that was not a major problem because I did all the programming work on my own for my projects. I occasionally helped on other projects using whatever the main researcher on the project was using.
As a supervisor this was little bit more complicated, because my student was requiring a lot of micro-management and help on simple programming tasks in a language that I never used. He chose this language because he wanted to extend a program written by another research group. This was very frustrating for both of us, and I was hard for me to decide when to spend time figuring out simple things and when to tell him to RTFM!
In the future I would warn the student before starting the project: we agree that either he manages simple programming problems on its own, or he uses a language that I know well.
In my case, I'm using a mixture of R, C++ and Python whereas the rest of my lab uses Matlab. And it's going pretty fine, though I have to admit we don't need to share lots of code. Some observations:
Having implementations in two languages that are supposed to work the same way helps finding bugs in the code.
I can quickly evaluate new tools in R which weren't implemented in Matlab. Others can do the same with Matlab code that doesn't yet have an implementation in R. This already proved useful, as R is much easier to use in machine learning algorithms, and Matlab has a great library for polynomial interpolation.
If you plan for interoperability early, it's not that hard. We decided on a single file format for raw data that's parseable by all our tools, and in case we needed to make scripts in both languages to interoperate, we can do so too (so far it wasn't necessary). However I admit that having skills in polyglot programming is somewhat necessary for that to happen.
Key advice in this answer: Plan for interoperability early!! Golden.
On second thought, having a back-to-back comparison like bullet point #1 is good too.
Have you been in a similar Situation (either as Student or Supervisor) ?
Yes, frequently - in my current department, people use (depending both on their personal preference and on external requirements) Java, C#, C++, C, JavaScript, Flash, and probably a few more.
It even varies a lot, as students may want to use yet another technology or language for their projects such as Bachelor or Master theses.
And if so, did you tried to get everyone using the same language ?
Never, unless interoperability was an explicit requirement. It may have to do with the fact that I'm in a CS field (i.e. where programming is more at the "core" than a mere tool), but there is what could be called an unwritten rule that you do not prescribe others what technologies they use. At best, it could be interpreted as an immature attempt of starting a flame-war on a "nerdy" topic, at worst, as a violation of other researchers'/developers' personal autonomy by micro-management.
Concerning the aforementioned students, we do make it clear that we cannot provide any technical support if they choose a technology that none of us has any experience with (though it should be noted that we won't provide too much support, anyway, given that Bachelor and Master theses are supposed to focus on the conceptual and methodical aspects in my place, and students are supposed to (show that they are able to) deal with low-level problems while programming their prototypical proof-of-concept on their own.)
Did situations occur, at which it was good that not everyone is using the same tool ?
To avoid making this sound overly one-sided or negative, I'm going to list perceived advantages and disadvantages here:
Disadvantages:
Artifacts by different persons won't necessarily work together.
This has even led to complete reimplementations of prototypes, just so a widget by one person could be used in the application by another person who used a different framework and/or UI toolkit.
Maintenance of existing code-base is not a given. Once a colleague leaves, their code might not be touched again on the single reason that no-one is acquainted with the technology used for that particular code.
Advantages:
There is no way to guarantee using just one language, anyway; there are just too many external factors for this. It can more or less be taken for granted that as soon as one has succeeded at bringing the whole department to one single programming language, the next project with external partners will end up in the consortium choosing a different language for one reason or another. Having a diverse department where know-how on different technologies and languages is present, on the other hand, can help when working on such a project.
As extensively described in Chris White's answer, different programming languages are often suitable for different goals, so depending on what you are doing, a switch of languages might be required.
Seeing permanent change and diversity makes it less likely to "get stuck" with one technology. Creating a growing collection of reusable code is certainly advantageous, but if that results in the use of outdated technologies because "everything so far has been written in the 1982 dialect of a proprietary language that is not updated any more" and the expectation is that a switch would require porting the entire codebase, this does not exactly increase the research output. As research departments usually do not have to produce production-level foolproof code, but just prototypes and demonstrations of concepts, absolute stability should be a lesser concern, and thus, constant "quick-and-dirty" rewrites of some components are acceptable.
EDIT: Every time I re-read this answer of mine, the developer in myself shudders in horror. Thus, let me clarify my view on the advantages: Yes, maintaining, updating and extending an existing code-base over long periods of time is great. In my opinion, an ideal mix is for small groups of people within one department to share a particular technology and thus have an option of exchanging some code (being the only one bound to a given system can be dire), while at the same time making sure there is some slow, gradual flow in which technologies get phased out and replaced over time with new ones.
Besides working out a way to use multiple programming languages (e.g. through foreign function interfaces / compiling stuff in libraries / creating scripts which can be called by other languages) I think you could eventually agree on one programming language.
I recently participated in a hackathon. We were three programmers and had a task to solve. We "filtered" the programming languages like this:
Which languages do we know which are similar appropriate for the task (in terms of ease-to-use / libraries / community stuff like tutorials / learning curve)
How well do the team members know "their" language? (It is better to have one person who is an expert in a language than two who know a little bit, because that way you can ask the expert any question.)
(The hackathon was a success and I learned a new programming language and a framework in another programming language.)
Have you ever been in a similar situation (either as student or supervisor)?
Yes, twice. In my previous group, everyone used MATLAB, but I had to learn Python because MATLAB's multiprocessing was prohibitively expensive. After learning Python, I preferred it and stuck to it. In my current group, everyone besides me uses MATLAB.
For my own personal data analysis code, I use Python, but for code meant to be shared across the group, I use MATLAB.
If you have a programming background, you would think that this would lead to less shared code for data analysis. The problem is that nobody else in the group has a programming background, and they neither know nor care about good programming practices (I haven't even had any luck convincing them to use functions rather than copying and pasting code blocks within their tens of thousands of lines scripts, not to mention adding comments). That means there is almost no code sharing even amongst MATLAB users, and everyone just ends up writing their own data analysis code from scratch. So due to the culture of the lab, nobody would even have realize I used Python if I hadn't told them.
So how big of an affect your choice of language has depends to a large degree on the culture of the lab, or perhaps more properly on how familiar they are with programming.
And if you have, did you tried to get everyone to use the same language?
No. I have suggested that people learn Python in addition to MATLAB, without much success. But people who have asked me what they should learn, I have suggested learn MATLAB first, simply because they can be sure to find someone who has at least used it before. I am the only one with a real programming background, and there is a ton of legacy MATLAB code, so it just isn't feasible to switch at this point. That is why I always suggest people learn Python as a second language.
Did any situation occur where it was good that not everyone is using the same tool?
Yes, two cases come to mind.
First, is the fact that I needed to write a new importer for our proprietary data format. Due to a flaw in the format, it could cause overruns in the file, which were still readable in principle but that crashed both the native C file reader and the MATLAB-based file reader. My Python implementation, however, was more flexible, and could handle the data. Someone else in my group ended up routinely getting these overflows, so I wrote a simple wrapper script that would read the data in then convert it ta a MATLAB file, saving his project from disaster.
The second is the fact that the MATLAB-based tool for something we wanted to do is much, much, much more complicated, hard to use, and finicky than the Python equivalent. This probably saved a good month of work, and resulted in something with much better perfomance.
I suggest to go with different languages: it provides cross-validation of your calculations. A software/hardware/algorithm might be wrong. The best way to check the correctness is to repeat the calculation in a completely different environment. So I think it is actually good that members of the lab use different languages.
Even if all members of the group will switch to the same language — the coding style might be different, and will not help for code transfer. It will only work if all of you code in the same langauge and also hold the same views on the coding itself. For example I prefer maximum modularity, while somebody else might prefer the fastest approach instead.
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23769 | When to use inline versus displayed equations in a publication?
On a publication (thesis, paper, other), when should I write an equation inline and when should it be separated and numbered from the text?
I've seen publications containing both styles, but I don't know if there is a rule to choose among them. My field is applied computer science.
A numbered equation always takes a separate line, so there is no question here — if you need to refer to some equation later in the text, it deserves a separate line and it needs a number.
If your equation is as long as a line, or even longer, then again — it should always be placed out-of-text.
To answer the rest of your question, we should think a little how we (e.g. your readers) read inline equations, and how we read equations on separate lines. First of all, inline equations merge into the text, and provide some smoothness (it is just like you speak and draw on a whiteboard at the same time). In contrast, equations of a separate line break the text (just like you write a long equation on a whiteboard and take a big pause to let your audience reflect on it).
If there are no pauses in the text, it is hard to comprehend. Too many pauses raise similar problems, because it becomes difficult to focus on the most important pieces then. My advice is to think about the role of each equation and put only the most important equations in a spotlight of a separate line.
The whiteboard analogy made everything much clearer, thanks for your answer
It's matter of style. But always think about the reader - what is the most convenient for her/him.
I agree with most of points raised by Dmitry.
However, when reading publications I often see too many inline equations, which make it harder to comprehend. It often happens due to space restrictions.
My personal stance is that only very short and simple things should be put as inline equations (like $x \in {1,2,3}$ or $y=Ax$). That is, ones that at the same time are too technical to deserve a separate line and short and easy, so they can be read with the sentence without any pause.
"too technical to deserve a separate line"? Not sure what that means.
@FaheemMitha I meant e.g. $x \in {1,2,3}$ or $U \in \text{SU}(n)$.
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41767 | How to integrate a paper where I am third author, but did a lot of work, into my master's thesis?
I am writing my thesis currently and I want to include papers that I am included on as an author. I will have a couple papers where I am 1st author, but there is one where I am third but did a lot of the work. How do I go about integrating it into my thesis? Can I copy/paste most of the text still or do I need to rewrite it? I don't want to plagiarize but don't want to rewrite it if I don't have to.
Make sure that you reference the paper, and make clear which part of your thesis is based on the paper. Otherwise you are committing self-plagiarism
This situation does not sound problematic to me. Many people write theses that incorporate papers written under these circumstances.
However, you need to get official permission, rather than relying on what random people on the internet say. Specifically, you need to check three things:
What does your thesis advisor say?
What are your university's regulations regarding reusing text from published papers, particularly with coauthors where it is difficult to identify who contributed to a given passage?
Does the publication or copyright agreement with the journal permit reusing this text in your thesis?
If any one of these has a negative answer, then you cannot copy the text. If they are all positive, then all you need to do is attribute the text properly. For example, you could clearly state at the beginning of a chapter "This chapter is an edited version of the paper BLAH." Your advisor, university, and publisher will have suggestions or requirements for how this attribution should be done.
This answer was merged in from Copy text from co-authored paper into thesis, so that when other posts are closed as a duplicate of this one, they'll see this answer.
If your thesis is a compilation of your published papers, then check with the institution for the rules.
If your thesis is separately written, then most likely the pieces you wrote can be copied, as that's how I've gone about in my thesis. Additionally, you can also refer to the paper itself after you've written a piece of text about it.
Most likely in this situation, copying the text would not always fit the structure of the thesis chapters, and some minor rewriting is needed. Even after thesis review, the structure might modify and sentences will eventually be different from the paper. You refer having done the most work, but check if your paper co-authors are happy with using the text directly (if they've written the text). If the paper is published, cite it, and you could specifically mentioned that it was your work published in that paper.
Also, your supervisor is there to assist you and he most likely know the rules of your department and institution better.
Check with your institution. Some universities allow collections of papers to be submitted, provided there is original material connecting them that is also submitted. See, for example, the ANU's "thesis by compilation" rules.
Right, institutional rules take precedence over any other advice you might get. It's likely that they will require permission from some combination of: your co-authors, your advisor, your committee members, the dean, and the publisher. They may also want a detailed statement as to what your contributions to the paper were.
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213784 | What are the rules and norms for using private student data (such as test scores) in research?
I reckon that it is common in pedagogical research that researchers would want to use data which is generated as part of the teaching process at their university (e.g. exam scores). What are the norms here regarding consent and information of the students?
A concrete scenario could be that the researchers want to see whether students who took a certain subject before do better on another subject now; or a comparison of outcomes between two modules taught using different methods. The core aspect is that the data is gathered independently of the research project, but it is not public.
Just to be clear, you're talking about research per se, not instructors evaluating decisions about their courses? I.e., work that will be submitted for publication.
@AzorAhai-him- Yes, stuff that is meant to be published.
The exempt (and "partly" exempt) categories under IRB rules are detailed at Basic HHS Policy for Protection of Human Research Subjects: §46.104 Exempt research. See part (d), specifically.
This includes quite a lot of pedagogical research, but requires that students not be disadvantaged by any such research. It also requires something like anonymity for the subjects, though it seems like a rather weak form.
Even if you aren't trying to get a specific project approved, it might be worth the effort to have a conversation with someone on the local IRB committee for their advice.
While these are US rules and stronger rules may appear elsewhere, seem logical/ethical. The goal of such proper pedagogical research is to improve education so knowing the effects of various practices is needed.
The short answer is: Talk to your Institutional Review Board (IRB).
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98157 | How to have a competitive research group in a school without a graduate program?
I'm applying to assistant professor positions and my research plan is based on three main projects. My initial idea is to have 2 PhD students and one postdoc working on each project. However, there is an opening in a new school that doesn't have a graduate program yet. I'm planning to apply to this school but don't know how to explain my need for grad students. I'm almost sure I won't have sufficient start-up to hire 3 postdocs. I really want to have undergraduate researchers, as I'm a product of undergraduate research, but I believe the research output of my 5 initial years is way too important to have only undergrads and, say, 1-2 postdocs as my researcher assistants.
EDITED:
The importance of my productivity is related mainly to my research ambitions. At the same, this school is quite attractive to me because it's new. I think my voice will be heard much more in a new school. Do you think it's a good idea to search for potential collaborators in other departments of this school that have a graduate program and state this desire in my cover letter?
I believe the research output of my 5 initial years is way too important to have only undergrads — Presumably you mean "important for your tenure case". But schools without graduate programs generally have different research expectations for tenure than schools with graduate programs. Or perhaps you mean "important for my own research ambitions", in which case you might want to reconsider applying to schools that don't have the resources you need.
One of the key things that this school will be looking for in your research plan, is how you will embrace your role as a faculty member at a school with no graduate program. Trying to "work around" this, rather than developing a research plan that takes advantage of this, will not work in your favor.
@ziulfer states it is a new school, please clarify what you know of the school's or department's plans or expectations? As a newly set up(?) school or department, is it assuming that it will soon/eventually have PhD plans but it is still working on the state/government approvals for graduate programs. Or has it been set up to be primarily for a strong undergraduate and undergraduate research programs.
You should look and see how people at the school handle their research, and how other people at similar schools do their work. In general, undergrads are more common than postdocs. One prominent blogger who covers research at undergraduate institutions is Terry McGlynn (https://smallpondscience.com/2014/04/02/what-kind-of-faculty-job-do-you-want/); another is Chad Orzel (https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/04/10/why-small-colleges-are-great-for-science-students/#1680bf137b9a)
Is it now too late for an answer to be useful?
@Buffy, actually it is not. I currently have a permanent position in an undergraduate institution (not the one I was applying to at that time) and I'm struggling to do research with undergrads. Therefore, I would appreciate your advice.
I am a math professor at a university in the USA with no graduate program. In my area, supervising grad students (and certainly undergraduates) would not necessarily make me more productive. My advisor used to say "Every PhD student is a paper the advisor could have written." When I do research with undergraduates, I view it more as a form of service or teaching, rather than actually helping my research program.
What does make me more productive is a network of co-authors. They always have a lower teaching load than I do, but their emails help me make progress on research even during the busy part of the teaching semester. Another thing that helps is a nearby university with a research seminar in my area. Nowadays there are also Zoom seminars, but I still don't get much out of those.
OP is a physical chemist. My colleagues in physics and chemistry do rely heavily on undergraduates to work in their labs. This involves a huge amount of time training the students and setting up the labs. The amount of research coming out of these labs is of course a lot less than it would be at an R1 institution. But, the requirements for tenure are also lower. Those professors tend to talk up the undergrad research they supervise as a real positive for the university. Students are being trained in research and then going on to good research careers. High school students interested in research might choose our university because of the opportunity to have personal one-on-one mentorship from a faculty member. Some colleagues also co-author papers with professors at R1 universities, with facilities, grad students, and postdocs who can run the experiments. These colleagues are internationally renowned researchers who frequently win NSF grants, so it is possible to have a great research career even without grad students, but you might need co-authors.
Another point worth mentioning is that many grant agencies now have PUI grants for professors at "primarily undergraduate institutions." If you apply for these, you don't have to compete with professors who have grad students. Your odds of being grant funded might even be stronger where you are, compared to an R1 institution.
I certainly empathize with the position of wanting to do lots of research, even if it's more than your institution requires. As long as you are above the bar in each of teaching, research, and service, then it's hard to imagine having "extra" research being held against you in any way. Provosts and deans like strong research faculty, even at places without a grad program. If you win a grant, it could probably fund an extended visit at an R1 university with grad students, where you could set up experiments you want them to run, and help from a distance when you're back to teaching. With grant funding, the provost might let you out of teaching for a semester, to go and set all that up. You could also use your sabbatical to visit such a place and set up such a collaboration. Try to take the long view of your career. It's great that you have a permanent position. You've solved one of the hardest parts of academia. Now you can start to layer in the kind of research career you want, building it up over time, without all the stress of applying for jobs and being a pre-tenure faculty member. Try to go to conferences and meet people whose work you like, to establish collaborations that can drive your research program. Decide for yourself if your research program works better with or without undergrad researchers (subject to the conditions of your job, of course).
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79965 | Nationality on Academic CV in USA
Is it acceptable to put your nationality on a CV when applying for a position at an American university?
For your interest, in some countries it is customary to put your date of birth, marital status, or even your religion on your CV. As far as I understand, this gets an application binned immediately in the USA. But what about nationality?
May I ask what you intend accomplish with that?
Probably putting the country of your passport and whatever relevant visas you have would be of minor interest, but, supposedly, hiring choices at many universities are not supposed to depend on visa/passport situations...
In some countries you put your date of birth, your gender, and even your religion on your CV. I am simply asking for the convention and legal implications.
At least prior to the upcoming administration (I'm soooo sorry, I apologize to everyone...) there were very few nationalities that would be excluded at all from consideration. An example: maybe Iranians currently excluded from nuclear physics/engineering programs. (I don't necessarily endorse this...) But I think that has been the only sort of exclusionary principle, if that's the concern. About the future... well, ... >:-(
in some countries it is customary to put your [...] religion on your CV. As far as I understand, this gets an application binned immediately in the USA. I'm pretty sure that's false. Certainly it would be morally questionable to disqualify an application on those grounds, and will likely be illegal as well. The correct thing to do is to simply ignore the irrelevant information (and certainly as an employer one is prohibited from asking about something like an applicant's religion, but the applicant him/herself is free to volunteer any information they wish to share, in the CV or elsewhere).
I've seen it many times on applications, and it made not a shred of a difference. We did occasionally have Iranian applicants, which is probably the most problematic case, but again it made no difference -- if we wanted to hire someone because of their qualifications, we still did not care about visa issues because that's someone else's problem. For any other nationality, it was a non-issue that wasn't even talked about.
To show you what else doesn't matter: Because I'm German, I put my nationality, birthday, and marital status on my CV for all my postdoc and assistant prof applications. It made no difference: I got invitations to interviews and offers regardless. I don't do it any more because I've learned that that's not typically done in the US. But it really made no difference one way or the other, neither legally nor as far as the hiring committee is concerned.
In summary: You're overthinking the issue :-)
No, don't include it. Generally, for a US position, your nationality won't be directly relevant to the decision.
There are a few cases in which nationality might be indirectly relevant is if the institution wants to know if you already have authorization to work in the US, or if you would need a visa. There may also be positions (especially postdocs) which are funded by the government and reserved for US citizens or permanent residents. But if one of these is the case, they'll ask that question directly on the application, and you just have to answer yes or no. Either way, the CV isn't the place to put that information.
This seems inaccurate. Aren't many postdocs funded by grants that can only support US citizens or permanent residents? (like e.g. NSF RTG grants)
Would it be harmful to include it if it's not required?
@dbluesk: For positions where it's not relevant, hiring committees will know they can't take it into consideration. So if you list it, they will have to make an effort to disregard it and make sure it doesn't influence their decision. That can be a distraction, and you don't want to cause them unnecessary distractions.
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192144 | Asking for teaching recommendation
I'm a postdoc and have recently taught/designed a graduate-level course. Who would be the best person to ask for a teaching recommendation?
I was thinking of our associate chair, who oversees course approvals and assignments. I want to include the syllabus, class project description, an example of homework, my teaching evaluation, sample video of my teaching from one of the lectures.
I would appreciate any input on what to attach and what to ask, should I ask for their emphasis that I also designed the course, or any other suggestions.
The associate chair would be good in this case, but ask them, or a representative they select to observe you in the classroom, possibly several times.
Along with a recommendation, they can also provide you with feedback and advice on how to improve your teaching. I suspect most new instructors will benefit from that and it is part of the evaluation process in some places.
And an observation or three can lead to a more "personal" recommendation.
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197122 | Question on Networking Etiquette
During a conference last winter, I had the opportunity to have an informal interview with a PI from "University A" in Boston. Although the position was not immediately available, there may be a potential opening for Spring 2024. After our discussion, PI-A expressed interest in staying in touch.
I have a talk scheduled with PI-B's lab at "University B" in Boston in a few weeks as part of a post-doc interview. While in town, I would like to reconnect with the PI from University A to maintain a professional network and discuss potential future opportunities. I am unsure about the best approach and would appreciate your advice on the following options:
Emailing PI-A to request a meeting over a cup of coffee during my visit to Boston. PI-A seemed open to this idea during our previous encounter, so it may be appropriate to extend the invitation.
Inviting PI-A to attend my talk at University B. While PI-A's
availability may be limited, it could provide an opportunity to
reconnect. However, I wonder if it would be better just to email
them and invite them for coffee instead.
How appropriate is it to invite PI-A to my talk at PI-B's lab? I am concerned about the implications for my opportunity with Lab-B. Should I seek approval from PI-B's lab manager first? My proposed approach would be to mention that a colleague from University A is interested in attending the talk if it suits their schedule. Subsequently, I would reach out to PI-A to gauge their interest.
Lastly, I would like to know how appropriate it is to invite someone I had an informal interview with to engage in scientific discussions over coffee.
(1) is surely OK. You tell them you will be in town on [dates) to talk at B on (date), ask to meet informally, and see what happens. Perhaps their followup will provide more informatiion.
Why not suggest both? If A can and want to come to the talk, they will come (and you can also meet at coffee later); if not, you'll meet at coffee. If you don't know whether external visitors will be allowed at the talk, just mention this, A might be better aware about how it is usually handled there.
How appropriate is it to invite PI-A to my talk at PI-B's lab? I am concerned about the implications for my opportunity with Lab-B. Should I seek approval from PI-B's lab manager first?
If this is a public talk, as I think university talks usually are, then you shouldn't need approval from PI-B's lab manager. After all, PI-A has as much right to join as anyone. If it's not public, I would just briefly ask PI-B if they'd be OK with inviting PI-A. They probably know each other, so it should probably be fine if they're not mortal enemies.
Inviting PI-A to your talk at University B does not rule out meeting up with PI-A at university A later.
In the final year of my PhD, I gave a short talk at the university in Boulder (Colorado, USA), and to my surprise, a senior scientist I knew from a nearby research lab just outside town came over to listen. He must have found out about it somehow, but not from me. It was good for me, as my main aim with the visit was to network for the purpose of finding post-doc opportunities in the first place, and due to time issues I had not scheduled any visit to the research lab in question.
Aside from options 1 and 2, which you mentioned, there exists option 3:
you can inform PI-A that you will be in town for a seminar, and that, if he is interested, you will be happy to give the same seminar for his group.
[ As we all know, the schedule of official seminars is prepared well in advance, but it is not uncommon to hold an informal "brown-bag seminar" on an ad hoc basis. ]
Such a suggestion would leave to PI-A several oportunities to choose from: to agree to hold an informal talk, or instead to attend your talk at university B, or simply to invite you for a meeting over a cup of coffee.
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40762 | Does having a more successful professor write your letter of recommendation improve your chances of having your application accepted?
My question is about academic careers of a professor who would want to write a recommendation letter for someone. Some professors in my university have better academic career than others, for example they would have graduated from better/more well-known/higher ranked universities around the world, better resume/CV, higher GPA in MSc. and PhD, etc.
Question: Does a stronger professor's letter of recommendation raise someone chance for his/her application to be accepted?
Some basic contexts:
Apply in PhD program in computer science
Apply for US universities
Recommendation letters are all about trust: why should the person reading the recommendation letter believe the person who is writing it, when they say that they should place trust in you?
Thus, all else being equal, a professor with better qualifications provides a stronger recommendation.
Other considerations, however, can be more important, as it all boils down to the basic question of trust. For example:
A little-known professor who knows you well and has worked together with you is a better recommender than a world-famous professor who can only say: "This student was one of 100 who got a good grade in my giant class this year."
A professor with a close colleague in the department where you are applying may be much more trusted in their recommendation than a world-famous professor who nobody in the department knows personally.
Furthermore, you probably will have more than one letter writer, and diversity in your letter-writers can be a virtue: some more prominent, others more in depth, etc. Thus, you really need to look at this as a whole package, and say: "What is the combination of people who will, as a collective, present the most favorable and trustworthy picture of me to the particular places where I am applying?"
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31000 | What is the value to a student of a professor offering to supervise their PhD?
I am currently getting my M.A.T. in secondary mathematics. As a part of my degree, I take graduate level math courses. I am currently in a PhD level math class, and the instructor of this course has told me that if I want to get a PhD in mathematics he would want to work with me because he believes I have a "future" in his subject area.
My question is, what is the value of his offer? Is his kind of offer easy or hard to come by?
The mathematics department at this school is not renowned, but I respect this professor's work. Is his offer something I should definitely take advantage of, or should I shop around for different universities/offers?
I hope my query isn't too specific. I am feeling quite conflicted and would appreciate any and all input.
The easiest way to get into a Ph.D. program is to have a professor who knows who you are and wants to have you as a student. In many other questions on this site, people talk about the difficulty of standing out from the crowd amongst the large number of applicants to any decent Ph.D. program. With this professor, at least, you have stood out, and that's quite significant... if you want to do a Ph.D. with them.
First a sine qua non: don't even consider it if the program doesn't guarantee some degree of funding. Every respectable university should be offering support for its STEM Ph.D. students through some mix of research and teaching assistantships. It should be the department and not the professor that guarantees funding (though if the
professor has funding, they may be able to give you more time as a research assistant rather than a TA, if that is what you both want).
Beyond that, key things to ask yourself:
Do you actually want a Ph.D.? Getting a Ph.D. is a terrible, soul-wrenching process and it renders you unfit for most employment. If you are truly drawn to research, however, it is the best and only course to take.
Are you OK with not being at a famous institution? There are only a few famous institutions in any field, and getting into them is a gamble. Often, however, there are a great many solidly respectable institutions that can launch you on a totally reasonable career, especially since it is often possible to "upgrade" institutions through postdocs.
Do you really want to work with this professor? You don't know what working with this professor will actually be like. One advantage of the high-profile institutions is that if you find things aren't working with your advisor, there are often many opportunities to switch to others. In a smaller and less renowned department, you will likely have less alternatives should things go wrong.
Ideally, if you answer yes to all of these questions, you should start doing some work together now, so that you can get a sense of whether there's a good working relationship. If so, embrace it and be grateful that you found a good match.
Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.
I like the rest of the answer but: "Getting a Ph.D. is a terrible, soul-wrenching process." C'mon. That's a bit dramatic. Getting a PhD is not always easy but it's not necessarily terrible and soul-wrenching. I know it's not everybody's experience but I found getting a PhD to be wonderful, fun, challenging and exciting and with less frustrations that my previous work in industry.
"Getting a Ph.D. is a terrible, soul-wrenching process." This reminds me of the joke that doing a Ph.D. is much like trying to take the Ring to Mordor. See: http://danny.oz.au/danny/humour/phd_lotr.html.
Also that line from the first LOTR film that explains Ph.D. students: "They were elves once. Taken by the dark powers, tortured, mutilated. A ruined and terrible form of life." I guess that makes postdocs Uruk-Hai? :)
I think 3. is the most critical point. Your decision to work with him should also involve your interest in his area of expertise. Note you don't have to be a grad student to work with someone on a project. Also, standing out is good because it means he could be a good reference for another program.
Whenever you get an offer, always shop around. That is not academia-specific.
Generally professors who work in Ph.D. granting programs want to have Ph.D. students. It may even be necessary for them to get some Ph.D. students in order to keep their jobs. Therefore it can be easy to find a faculty member who will encourage potential Ph.D. students. I would not put much value on this sort of offer unless it includes and offer of RA or fellowship funding.
Never get a Ph.D. to please a professor; do it only for your own benefit.
I agree with the other posts, but to directly answer your question about the value of the offer. Unless you want to get a Ph.D. in math, the value of the offer is zero.
If you are interested in doing that you should definitely explore other options. At a minimum, it will help you better understand the plus and minuses of the program at that institution and working with this particular professor. If he's worth working with he should be encouraging you to do this as well, IMHO. Note that most competitive Ph.D. programs not only provide funding, but also invite top candidates to interview and visit. It's usually an eye opening experience.
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31032 | Should you thank helpful referees in the acknowledgements section of a paper?
I submitted a paper to a [science] journal and received some particularly constructive feedback from the referees. I am inclined to add something to the effect of
We are grateful to the referees for their constructive input.
to the acknowledgements, as I have seen in other papers before. But is this considered appropriate?
On the one hand, it seems polite. But on the other, it's part of the job of a referee to make suggestions. Moreover, since they are anonymous and I am not going to specify their contributions, the only information provided in this remark is that 'someone suggested something' which seems a bit pointless.
I usually try to add a line to the acknowledgements to thank anonymous referees and I try to make it honest and clear. Reviewers' time and effort invariably improves my papers and I think it's only polite to thank anybody who contributed for their time, effort, and engagement to making a manuscript better.
Will anybody care if it's missing? Will anybody even notice if it's missing? Probably not. That said, although it may be the "job" of the reviewers to give suggestions, refereeing is something that academics do as volunteers. Reviewing papers is perhaps the most thankless part of an academic job. Acknowledgement of the positive impact that referees have seems like the least an author can do.
@DanielHatton: The advice still applies. For blind review, you are required to withhold this sort of acknowledgement because it it breaks anonymity. For non-blind review, I imagine any editor will allow you to add this after the paper is accepted when you thank the reviewers of the journal in question if you are worried it will bias the reviewers against your work.
@DanielHatton If that's the entire section, it would obviously be fine. The problem is that other text that is commonly in acknowledgements sections reveal things about the authors identity (e.g., workshops, individuals, institutions, funding, and so on).
Referees typically use significant time and effort to provide their expert views on manuscripts in the review process. It is therefore never a bad idea to thank them. That said, there are a few things to keep in mind.
First, keep in mind that your revisions, based on their comments and the editor's handling is what the reader's see. It would not be fair to make it seem as if the resulting article is all due to the reviewers comments. In fact, they may end up disagreeing with some points of your final article.
Second, a bad type of behaviour is to acknowledge reviewers in a way that does not reflect their statement. I know of a case where an well respected peer was mentioned as having provided "valuable input on an earlier version of the manuscript" where the review was a "reject" of a really poor manuscript. In this case it was made to look as if the current manuscript was endorsed by the peer, which really was not the case. [to add a further explanation: one can promote ones own work by implying that someone who is a major name has provided input earlier and by doing so have provided input to the state of the manuscript under review]
So, thanking reviewers is a good way to provide acknowledgement to persons who support the process but remember to phrase it so as not to put aspects of the final paper in their mouth that they do not support.
I fail to see how "thanks for valuable input on an earlier version" implies endorsement of anything.
(1) This answer seems to suggest that you know who the referees are and thank them by name. I had assumed this questions about adding a line thanking anonymous referees. (2) A well explained decision to reject can still reflects valuable input. A "thanks for input" need not and should not not imply endorsement.
No it does not matter if they are known or not. One simply refer to the reviewers as anonymous. In my field anonymity is a choice for the reviewer and it is therefore common to refer to a specific person and an anonymous reviewer in the acknowledgement.
@JeffE I am sorry that you fail to see that one can promote ones own work by implying that someone who is a major name has provided input earlier and by doing so have provided input to the state of the manuscript under review. None of anyone I have discussed such behaviour has missed the point.
Please do not forget that the academic system for publishing original articles owes a lot to reviewers and referees, so I am sure some journal editors will suggest the autor(s) to include the acknowledgemente to them.
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17034 | How to frame incomplete previous studies when applying to new graduate school without being too negative about previous program?
I had a bit of an unfortunate experience with an academic institution where I completed the coursework for a theology Ph.D. without high enough grades to continue. There were other things that were unfortunate about that experience, but the best advice I have been given is that if I try to return to studies, I need to explain why I don't have a reference from my previous Ph.D. programs, and if I document things that were wrong, that comes across as "I am a negative person who will publicly backstab a university by criticizing it after exhausting his appeal options" rather than "XYZ happened and if you can document it, we will make accommodations." (Additionally, I've tried to document the talent I have, but documenting that I am talented, no matter what talent I document, doesn't seem to trip any light bulbs of recognizing I may be a promising student.)
In graduate school admissions, what is a convincing non-negative way of explaining "I don't have references from my prior program?" And is there any way to get connections made between "gifted" and "promising student"?
what is a convincing non-negative way of explaining "I don't have references from my prior program?"
If you dwell on it, it will sound like you're making excuses. It's not really worth spending more than a sentence describing unfavorable circumstances that made you leave this place or that place. It might even be better to not mention at all. Just make sure you have favorable references from somewhere to go with your application.
is there any way to get connections made between "gifted" and "promising student"?
Through achievements. If you say "I am good at X," no one cares, or really believes you. If you say "I did A, B, and C," it's good if you can say "I received award Y," by pointing to things that demonstrate that you are good at X, then you will look good. Talents only count to other people if you use them to achieve results.
+1 for "Talents only count to other people if you use them to achieve results"
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180721 | Interrupting a German research fellowship
I am going to accept a research fellowship in Germany for the duration of 24 months.
In the Guideline, it is written that (in English)
Interruption to take advantage of another fellowship in Germany or a third country is usually not possible.
I came from Italy and my plan is to continue there my academic career. My question is the following:
Can I interrupt the granted fellowship before the two years to take advantage of an Italian RTD-a (it is a short-term research position of the duration of 3 years)? Is an RTD-a considered a research fellowship?
Thank you!
You can quit the German fellowship to take the Italian one, but ‘interrupting’ to go elsewhere for 3 years is unlikely at best…
@JonCuster Ah ok! I misunderstood the word "interruption". Thank you!
Interrupting the German research fellowship would mean something like taking the German fellowship for a year, then being on some other fellowship, and afterwards returning to complete the second year of the German fellowship. The default assumption for any kind of academic position would be that interrupting it in this way is not possible, and the language in the rules here is just to reinforce this default assumption. In particular, this is definitely not saying that you can interrupt the German fellowship for something that does not count as a fellowship.
On the other hand, ending research fellowships early is common (as aligning end and start dates perfectly will not always be possible). Some fellowship schemes have restrictions on this, in particular if the manner of ending it early would interfere with the intended goal of the fellowship scheme. However, in absence of such language my default assumption would be that it is possible to end the fellowship early.
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156411 | Should I choose the schools that I apply to, or should I ask my advisors to do that for me?
I am applying to some PhD programs this year. If I just ask my advisors to choose the school for me, they might think I am lazy and have done no research. However if I do that on my own, I am afraid that maybe the advisors think I am arrogant for aiming for schools out of my reach. The problem is I don't know how strong my profile is and I think that my advisors should be better informed than I am. What should I do?
Fortunately, this isn't an either-or proposition! I agree with your assessment that you shouldn't come to your advisors empty-handed and ask for some schools to apply to. However, it would be perfectly reasonable for you come to them with a couple schools you like - probably spread out by competitiveness and such - and maybe some guidelines for what you want to focus on and where you would be willing to move to.
Ask their opinions on the schools you picked, and ask them if they have some others they would recommend, based on what they know about you.
As @Jeff says, you should follow both of the paths you suggest: develop your own ideas, and then talk to your advisor. (And don't be offended if their perception of your potential versus those programs is not the same as yours. They still may be wrong...)
An important aspect both for you yourself to think about and for discussion with your advisor, is what your ambitions/goals are, and how much risk you are willing to accept, and also stress. That is, there is a genuine and large issue about what your measure of "best" is. It is important also to realize this.
Added: I forgot to mention the practical point that you should contemplate whether you'd prefer (for example) being one of the weaker students at a top place, or one of the strongest students at a less-than-the-absolute-top place. This can have a psychological effect on you while in the program, and can affect your prospects afterward: the second-best student of a famous person in a given year will take a back seat to the best student of that famous person in many (not all) job application situations. (No, this is not sensible, but, in my observation, things tend to work this way mostly. It is harder to justify a job offer that might be accepted, but to the second_best, than to make an offer, that will almost surely be declined, to "the best". The huge point is that the way hiring works (in the U.S., in math at least, at R1's...) is that "the second best" in_a_given_field will never get a chance, because hiring ops rotate through subfields...
But, I think, the hiring game outside of R1's is less nutty... but/and that is a fact that should play a role in your career planning.
I am willing to get a job in private sector. I will tell my profs two categories of school that I apply to. The first category are schools that are good at research and the second are ones that have track record in sending people to top companies. Is that a good idea?
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95022 | How can one disclaim?
How can an innocent person disclaim a plagiarized publication which he did not give consent for publication?
The paper has has been published without my consent and my name was included as a co-author but i want to disassociate myself from this paper?
Was a paper containing plagiarism published with your name on it or is it plagiarized because you did not approve of the publication?
the paper containing plagiarism was published with my name. I saw it on researchgate.
If this is a published with some legitimate publisher, then contacting the publisher and pointing out that you never consented to being named as an author on that paper should suffice. The publication record should be amended, and the paper probably be withdrawn.
If this is not published with a legitimate publisher, the strategy above might fail. You can try to threaten to sue them, but ultimately the most you can reliably do is to put a disclaimer on your homepage.
This could take a form like "It has come to my attention that the publication XXX lists me as a coauthor. I have not been involved in this project / not consented to the final form (pick as appropriate). The publisher YYY has been informed of this on DATE and is yet to take action. (you should probably give the publisher a few weeks to react before putting this up).
thank. What exactly can be in the content of such disclaimer? The paper is already on researchgate and i never gave the lead author consent to include my name or even the Publisher to publish. What do I do?
Contact ResearchGate. They seem to be trying to become legitimate source for scientists, so they should take your complaint VERY seriously.
@xmp125a Assuming that ResearchGate is just reporting that the paper has been published elsewhere, then I think elsewhere is the first point of contact.
@Arno if the journal/conference in question is obscure and uncooperative, at least he can remove it from one of the sources where it seems to reach large audience (since OP discovered it this way).
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96968 | Is it acceptable to use non-English references in a computer science paper?
I am currently reviewing an interdisciplinary computer science paper which is heavily based on previous works in logistics and process engineering that have been unfortunately published only in German (18 out of total 30 references). The overall idea is sound, but as the logistics structures are in some sense a basis of the paper, I have a strong inclination to reject the manuscript as the research cannot be followed and reconstructed by a researcher that does not understand German.
On top of that, virtually none of them are available online, or otherwise easily accessible.
I was going to hit the "Reject" button just a few moments ago, but I still have my doubts: I know that in humanities and also in mathematics people often cite publications written in other languages, but I have not yet seen something like that in computer science. Also, if it were one or two references, but 60%? The journal reviewing policy does not help me in this case.
I was thinking about proposing the following workarounds:
Extending the paper - this is probably not an option as the journal imposes quite a strong page limit, or
A supplementary report - the vital parts of the non-English text could be made available as an Technical Report or an on-line publication (I was thinking about arXiv) and this can be referenced in the manuscript.
Is it fair to reject it? Has anyone experienced something similar? What was your decision?
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
Could you expand on what you mean by "virtually none of them are available online, or otherwise easily accessible"?
As the reviewer, are you fluent in German yourself?
Having many non-English references is absolutely no valid reason to reject a computer science paper.
If a reader wants to follow up on the references, they can learn some German, find a translator, etc. But this is the responsibility of the reader, not the author.
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
I tend to agree with @Arno's answer that citing non-English sources is fine. But that is actually beside the point, since as far as OP's situation is concerned, I think he has much less of a dilemma than he thinks.
The reason is that whether to publish a paper that references many German-language sources should be an editorial decision. As a reviewer, OP should check that the paper is correct (including looking up the references to the extent that's necessary, which OP can do since he speaks German), and that it is novel and lives up to the standards of the journal. If those conditions hold, he should recommend acceptance. He can also point out in his report the potential issue with non-German readers not being able to fully understand the theoretical background the paper makes use of. It would then be up to the editor to decide how to handle the situation, depending on their philosophy and the policies of the journal (which may vary, for example a journal published in Germany might have a different view of such issues than one published in the United States).
To summarize, the question of whether papers like this should be published is a very interesting one, but from a practical point of view, I don't think OP really needs to concern himself with it.
I am not sure that it is only about non-english sources. I have cites tons of non-english results, but it is easy to get hands to the originals or some translations. In the case of OP we are talking about some obscure and impossible to find on-line results. Also, if we expect the readers to learn new languages to understand results, why we have preliminaries and related work where we describe on a high level the techniques/results we need? If I am criticized that I do not explain what Gram-Schmidt Orthonormalization is (yes! it happened), why not the authors of this paper?
@PsySp sure, there are other considerations besides the language (although whether something is available online is in my opinion not a valid consideration; plenty of sources, textbooks in particular, are generally not available online, and no one thinks that this is a problem). But as I said all of those are issues for the editor to consider, and I don't think they should influence the reviewer's recommendation, as long as the reviewer is able to verify the correctness of the paper and evaluate its importance.
I agree with you that the reviewer can make suggestion and explain the issues and then is up to the editor to decide what to do. In any case everybody has focused on the "german/foreign language" issue which to me is not the real issue here. For me is pretty clear: if we cannot even find and/or reproduce the results, the paper looses a lot of credibility and in any case it doesn't help the authors increase the visibility of their result.
obscure and impossible to find on-line results — There’s this brick building down the street with a bunch of books in it, where you can find people who are actually paid to track down copies of “obscure” references like the ones you describe. I believe they’re called librarians.
Your only responsibility as a reviewer is to check that the article is scientific, relevant and original enough. When references are valid, the language should not matter, especially if - as you say - you can check them because you personally do know German.
In other words: I too am shocked that this is even an issue.
Your shock aside, I think it's good that such a question has been asked and so unanimously answered, since it's likely many reviewers out there harbour such misconceptions.
See it the other way round. Many German papers have English references, although not all readers will be fluent in English.
If you cite from a foreign book, eg. chinese it is helpful for the reader to give a (rough) translation.
If you reference to a paper from an 'exotic' language to translate the tile and give a very short synopsis of the content. Because it is helpful to know whether the reference is a paper on a specific problem or giving an overview over another topic.
If you are restricted in length in a journal, create a small website, were you provide the German original sources and make it readable to the english reader, by letting out the German citations.
Is the paper still valid with many foreign references?
As a informed reader I would ask whether the reference given are available in the language of the paper. E.g. referencing to a standard algorithm in a german book, when the same algorithm is described in many english books. If this is the fact I would be more alert concerning the validity of the paper.
However brilliant papers have been written in China, behind the iron curtain and so on, without any reference to english sources.
I'd be happy to read a such brilliant work
I'm not sure how computer science publications work, but having used quite a few non-English papers myself I have the following suggestions.
Almost every paper adds a small increment to the specific subject. Usually, authors can easily find one or several English language papers connected to the non-English paper and cite those instead to support their arguments.
In case the authors cite data from a non-English article, it quite acceptable. In this case they must reference strictly numbers that can be looked up in the article by a reader who doesn't understand the language. If there is a need to cite methods or interpretation of the data, then they should be translated and briefly summarized in English.
In any case, the burden of translating and verifying foreign texts should not fall on the reader of a journal.
From a physics point of view, careful citation of foreign-language sources is fine. Citing data is one case. Another might be citing a major result (such as an algorithm) but in that case I prefer to see the citation of the original paper followed by a clear citation to an English source that discusses it. That of course isn't always possible
-1 for suggesting avoidance of citation of non-English papers because they're not in Engish.
Have I understood your answer correctly as saying this: "When an paper written in English wishes to cite a result first published in a different language, it would be best to cite a paper written in English that explains the result"? I'm pretty sure such a paper must, by necessity, cite the original source, which puts it right back into the category of "paper written in English citing a foreign language source". Is the paper being reviewed the chicken or the egg?
@BenVoigt There's no contradiction in saying that an English-language source should be cited if one is available. Obviously, the first English-language paper to refer to a particular result fails the "if one is available" test, so there is no paradox here. (I disagree with the answer, but your claim that it leads to paradox is incorrect.)
@DavidRicherby: You misunderstood me -- I'm saying that unavailability of an English-language source is not as rare an event as the answer suggests, as it must happen at least once for each foreign language paper. (Alternatively, "if the set of English papers citing a result first published in another language is non-empty, at least one of these papers is reviewed before any of them are published") Sure you can use circular citation to ensure all papers written in English cite another paper written in English using the same result, but that doesn't help the reviewers.
I like your idea to propose the mandatory provision of a supplementary report.
At the cost of some extra effort for the authors, this would be a good compromise between the interests of the authors (getting a fair evaluation of their actual work) and those of the readers (being able to reconstruct and extend the research).
An included benefit for the authors would be the possibility to disseminate the underlying ideas to a wider audience.
We agree (see my answer): it is the responsibility of the authors to convince the audience that their techniques are sound. Readers cannot invest time to learn new languages to understand a paper. Also, this can be done like a conditional accept: provide the neccessary info and then we may accept your paper but in its current form it cannot be possibly published.
I would not call that "some" extra effort.
@PsySp "Readers cannot invest time to learn new languages to understand a paper." That is the fault of dumbed-down modern education systems. When I was a kid (in the UK) learning two foreign languages (and sitting nationally standardized exams in them) before the age of 16 was considered perfectly normal for anyone likely to be educated to degree level. We also learned a third foreign language in a less formal way from age 16 until starting university. And I don't recall any of the kids complaining that "it was too hard" or "it wasn't fair".
@alephzero the dumbed-down educational system in my country? You do not even know how many languages I speak, yet you make assumptions.
@PsySp Apologies. You replied to my comment before I had finished editing it.
@alephzero You completely miss the point. It's not about how many languages I speak or I learned in my dumbed-down educational system (sic). It's about being able to verify something. These references cannot even be found, and besides, what the fact that you speak 100 languages has to do with the fact that a casual reader would need a translator if he even finds the references.
@alephzero PsySp talks about a situation where you must learn arbitrary new languages on the spot to understand a paper, while you talk about learning two or three specific languages in school. Since you grew up in the education system before it was dumbed down, you should have the logical tools to find the flaw in your argument.
no no, no, the responsibility is the READERS, not the authors. Rejecting science based on the INCOMPETENCE of the reader is always wrong.
@GwenKillerby: So if I submit a CS paper written in Latin, is it my readers' responsibility to accommodate that by learning Latin?
@PsySp The references cannot be found online, which is not the same as cannot be found. Libraries are there for a reason.
@MassimoOrtolano Actually, we do not even know if they can be found even through library systems. Anyway, as I outline in my answer, rejecting a paper for such a reason is far from advisable. What would be advisable in this case is the authors to help the readers by providing a summary/whatever of these hard to find references.
Rejecting a paper because you do not understand the language doesn't sound like a good excuse and people will get frustrated.
On the other hand, since it is not some standard and well known/used publication that has been scrutinized and/or translated, and it cannot even be found online
it is up to the authors to make every possible effort and convince the readership that their techniques and relevant results are sound.
I suggest to give them the chance to enhance and update their manuscript with all the necessary details in order to judge the soundness of the paper. Failing to do so would (and should and a fair warning) lead to a regretful rejection.
This, I think, is the crux of the problem: If the sources were available online, then at a pinch an interested reader could hack their way through with Google Translate or similar. But most non-German researchers are going to have a very difficult time getting hold of print-only, German language articles, let alone getting them translated. My (US) institution's library would probably not even ILL a physical document that is only available from libraries in Germany. And if the sources aren't discoverable in any way, then they might as well not exist.
@1006a apparently, it is considered easier for readers to find the hard-copies and then find translators/learn new languages that the authors to include a discussion of the used results. I extensively cite non-English material in my papers but the huge difference is that the reader can find easily the texts, and/or their translations. I could not possibly ask the readers to learn Ancient Greek to understand Diophantine approximations
"Some references cannot even be found online" is an absolutely ridiculous reason for rejecting a paper or suggest the kind of radical changes you're proposing. A huge fraction of the scientific literature, covering the first 90% of the history of science, is unavailable online, but it can easily be obtained by getting up and going to a library, or mechanisms like inter-library loan that were how science did its business for much of its history (and which seem to have worked perfectly in OP's case). Does that mean that all of that archive is now off-limits to citations?
@E.P. As I said, rejecting the paper because the references are foreign is radical thing to do. Having said that, I do not see where is the problem the authors to make their, and our life easier, and explain the relevant techniques used. When you use a technique, don't you give a high level explanation of it? Don't you have a Relevant Work section? Do you exclusively use pointers to relevant results without any attempt to explain them? Why can't we ask the authors to include something similar? It will be win-win situation for everyone.
@PsySp Did you actually read my comment?
@E.P. I did, and I was trying to understand why you think it is a radical change I am proposing. Have you read my comments?
You're proposing that the authors spend a significant amount of work, thereby taking time away from useful research, to make up for a perceived inability of the readers to use inter-library loans in the same way it's worked for decades, and I don't see how you can think that that's a minor change. It feels like you expect readers of scientific literature to have everything spoon-fed to them, from language to availability, but that's not how the research literature works.
@E.P. I am simply inverting your argument: You are proposing that every reader of the paper spends significant amount of work, thereby taking time away from useful research, to make up for a perceived inability of the authors to use inter-library loans in the same way it's worked for decades. How is the time utilized better? by the authors doing the proposed job? Or by every reader does the same job again and again?
Reading the scientific literature has always entailed a certain amount of work. You're entitled to your opinions, but I will just note that if I got a journal rejection based on the kinds of opinions you've expressed on this thread, I would take it as a good reason to take my publications to some other journal that does understand how science and its literature is structured.
@E.P. I completely understand your point. My only objection is that as an author, if you value your work, you should make every effort possible to make it accessible. I honestly fail to see how this is radical.
That is the authors' concern, and possibly the journal's, if they really do have a consistently high standard of accessibility to maintain. It is definitely not the reviewer's role to reject papers on this basis.
@E.P. Reading the scientific literature and, I would add, _transmitting your ideas in the most efficient way, requires time, talent and dedication. I do not mind searching in libraries. But I mind if the authors do not do their scientific job.
Let's not. As I said, you're entitled to your opinions, ridiculous as they are, but thankfully if you chose to act on them to reject papers, most sensible editors would recognize you're overstepping your boundaries and dismiss that report. I don't see the point in further discussion.
@E.P. I do not see either (was a mistake). I respect your opinion, and I won't ever call any other opinion that I disagree, or find excessive, ridiculous.
@E.P. The OP is talking about 18 out of 30 references, and states that "virtually none of them are available online, or otherwise easily accessible." To me, that suggests that fully half of the references in the paper are unverifiable. That's a problem, and not at all usual. Even old journals that were originally only in print are now largely available electronically; my library recently decommissioned 90% of our bound periodicals because they were all duplicated in electronic format. Older stuff, in particular, is likely to be freely available online because it is out of copyright.
Note that I am assuming that "not available online" means not even available behind a paywall.
@1006a OP's first comment on the question confirms he was able to obtain offline all the references required to verify the paper. That is not what "unverifiable" means. Your position would imply that references that are that easily accessible, comprising a large fraction of the literature, are off-bounds to further use.
@E.P. No, the OP's comment is "I did read one of the references and I could read the remaining ones once I get hold of them (virtually none of them is available online even if they are fairly recent -- this is also something that is bothering me, maybe I am just paranoid)." In other words, the OP has so far only been able to obtain (and verify) one out of eighteen of these references.
@E.P. Your position would imply that references that are that easily accessible, comprising a large fraction of the literature, are off-bounds to further use. Please, do not use straw man arguments. Nobody said or implied that and by assuming so, doesn't mean it's true.
@1006a I am not sure it's a good allocation of one's time to try have a conversation with people that attack a strawman and declare different opinions as "ridiculous".
What is the purpose of references? Certainly allowing the average reader to follow the research is a part of it, but the more important part is giving appropriate credit to where the authors got their ideas, which may well include papers in the authors’ native language or which happened to available to them but not the wider internet.
In itself, definitely not a reason to reject.
That said, the paper should stand reasonably well on its own - the text should include sufficient summary that only those particularly interested in the details need look for translated versions of the citations. Also, a qualified reviewer should be able to confirm that the cited paper says what the authors claim it does.
I would recommend rejecting any paper that is incomprehensible to somebody in the field without following its references.
The references not being in English isn't the problem. Leaning on the references too much is.
I would add: leaning on references that you cannot even find online!!
@PsySp Get thee to a library already. Complaining about references not being available online is pure laziness.
I would not go for a reject for this reason.
As a reviewer, wishing that authors provide more background from foreign language papers is acceptable. I would do so in this case.
Like, in normal case it is straightforward to assume that the reader can inform herself on previous techniques from earlier papers and you present the state of the art more to highlight what you have done differently.
Here it is not like this. So, the authors might be required to present a better/broader overview of the related work and state of the art. As a reviewer I would basically ask them to retell the essence of the foreign-language papers, so their paper is understandable and makes sense even if the reader cannot read the foreign language references.
As a side note: where it mattered, translations were published. You paper authors might not be aware of them, but they might be out there. I know that some Russian math journals were routinely translated in English during the Cold war. It's another issue how to cite such works in an English paper...
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11460 | Advisor publishing students' work as sole author - ethics and motivation
This is a question about my advisor (supervisor, professor) in a lab, where I am a graduate research assistant, and had done research together with a PhD student, as a part of his dissertation. The student happened to be one of my close friends. The professor wanted to write a journal paper based on the results of his dissertation with that candidate. This was kind of near the end of his PhD program (three weeks before final defense). At that time he said that he was already stressed out about defense and will write the paper after the event as it won't take him more than a week.
After he graduated, he had asked the professor about the journal paper but the professor kind of brushed it under the carpet saying he is looking for CFPs (call for papers) where they can write and never got back to him, despite his constant inquiries.
For his research on human-computer interaction, I had developed applications which formed the core of his project. So my advisor asked me if I was interested in writing the paper and she convinced me that since I developed the applications (that formed basis of the research) it was fair enough that I write it. But after a week, she ignored me and wrote the paper herself and submitted it to the journal.
I came to know last week that my advisor wrote the paper herself and got it published. This professor is an assistant professor trying to get tenure. I am trying to understand the motivation behind this behavior.
My questions:
The journal paper was published by my professor as sole author. Won't the paper count towards her tenure if she wrote it with a graduate student or will it count towards higher credit if she is the sole author?
Is it ethical to publish the paper based on my friend's dissertation? (I mean it is legal, because she will be referencing his PhD dissertation, but is it ethical or common in academia to sidestep the original author?)
Should I be listed as co-author for all papers coming out of this research because I developed the applications that formed basis for this research? I mean the concept for them was not mine, but I did program them.
There are multiple important questions here I think. Could you possibly edit your question to clearly enumerate the questions you want answered?
It's not clear from the description whether the journal paper was published with the professor as sole author or not.
@Suresh my prof. listed herself as sole author
As a side note, how are you people writing papers in such a short period of time? A journal paper in a week???
@AustinHenley the journal was just rephrasing his research questions and compiling his test results
Crucial missing information: does the PhD student agree with this statement of events and will they back you up? Do they also strongly object to not getting the author credit? Are they still at this institution or have they moved elsewhere? And are there are any other such cases?
Before anything else: Don't walk. Run.
There are almost certainly details of this story that you have omitted, or that you have unintentionally embellished, or that you are unaware of, and clarifying those details here would be inappropriate. What is clear is that your relationship with your advisor is completely broken. Get help, and get out.
Q1) Wont the paper count towards her tenure if she wrote it with a graduated student or will it count towards higher credit if she is the sole author?
All publications count toward tenure, whether solo, with colleagues, with current students, with former students, or with strangers from Zanzibar.
Q2) Is it ethical to publish the paper based on my friend's dissertation? (i mean it is legal, because she will be referencing his phd dissertation but is it ethical to sideshaft the original author)
There are a few different possibilities here:
Your advisor's submission does not report your friend's thesis work as her own, but rather builds on your friend's work in a novel direction. In this case, your advisor's submission is ethical, but perhaps a bit unfriendly. After all, the success of her students is a significant component of her upcoming tenure case.
The results in your friend's dissertation are the main topic of your advisor's submission, but your friend did not make a significant and novel contribution, and therefore does not deserve coauthorship. But in this case, your friend also does not deserve a PhD, and your advisor's signing his thesis was unethical. This possibility seems highly unlikely; passing a thesis defense generally requires the unanimous approval of the entire thesis committee.
Your friend made a significant and novel contribution, which is the main topic of your advisor's paper. In this case, your advisor is being grossly unethical. Fortunately, since your friend's dissertation is easily accessible online (Isn't it?), any competent referee or editor should quickly spot the intellectual theft. That would just be stupid.
I came to know last week that my advisor wrote the paper herself and got it published.
If you believe that your advisor has stolen credit for another person's work—your friend, her former student, or a stranger from Zanzibar—it would be appropriate for you (or better yet, your friend) to speak discreetly to your department head or another trusted senior faculty member, with both the original dissertation and your advisor's publication in hand, asking them to clarify the ethical boundaries. Do not accuse; such accusations are very serious, and your advisor's colleagues may react defensively on her behalf. Instead, explain the delicacy of the situation and ask for guidance. And then listen.
They may react badly anyway, but then you have your answer.
If they agree that your advisor has acted unethically, get out of the way. This is not your fight.
Is it common in academia to do this?
No. I won't claim they never happen, obviously, but serious breaches of ethical behavior, at the level you are accusing, are extremely rare.
Q3 One more question i have is should i be listed as co-author for all papers coming out of this research because i developed the apps that formed basis for this research. I mean the concept for them was not mine but i did program them.
That is a more subtle question. As a general rule, I would say no. Of course you deserve credit for your contributions, but only once for each contribution. If your contribution is a key piece of software, then the first paper that uses that software should describe that software in detail and include you as a coauthor. If you walk away after that first paper, later work that relies on your software—by your advisor or anyone else—need not list you as a coauthor; you already got credit. With good reason, Stephen Wolfram is not a coauthor on every paper that uses Mathematica. You should of course be cited in any paper that uses, builds on, or improves your work, but that's a separate issue from coauthorship.
But reality is rarely so cut and dried. Is moving the software to a new platform a sufficient contribution? Optimizing the underlying algorithms? Adding a new, easy-to-implement feature suggested by your advisor? Adding a new, hard-to-implement feature suggested by your advisor? Adding support for a new input device? I have no idea. You and your advisor should have agreed in advance on the contribution required for you to be a coauthor.
Normally, if you had not had this conversation already, I would recommend having it now, but it sounds like it may be too late for that. You may be better off simply walking away and finding a new advisor that you can trust.
well at that time i didn't knew that i could be listed as co author.I am new to research ,so i assumed since i was paid assistantship ,it was my job to develop apps for research .So i never asked my advisor about this .But right now i feel cheated out of my contribution .The research involved 3 different interfaces for an app and figuring out which interface was most convenient and useful for one professional community. Without me programming these apps ,there would have been nothing to do research on.I guess my advisor knew about it but just simply didn't care.
As a further comment on the third question, while it's not expected for a paper using software to name the software author as a co-author, it is very common to expect citation of the paper in which the software was described, and some software packages explicitly state that you should do this in their license agreements.
In physics, no more than a few decades ago, it was quite common for papers that made extensive use of computer simulations to thank the lowly peon who wrote and ran the code in the acknowledgements. Co-authorship is more liberally granted these days, but it's worth being really honest with yourself before claiming that "Without me programming these apps, there would have been nothing to do research on."
@wsc The dissertation research was delayed by 2 months because i couldnt deliver the apps on time as our initial goals were unrealistic. So yes ,the apps were critical to research.
@wsc: Unless you are doing code-by-spec (i.e., you literally shop out a project, with no intersection with the actual research), programming and gathering specs on research projects is research. Often, picking a specific implementation requires a number of novel leaps. If grad students are making software for research in-house, they should be listed as co-authors. Not necessarily high co-authors (it's far lower than formulating research questions and usually writing/analysis), but listed. It is a novel contribution.
"All publications count toward tenure, whether solo, with colleagues, with current students, with former students, or with strangers from Zanzibar."
Yes, but do they count equally? By publishing as sole author, this advisor might be trying to get all the credit by himself.
@Blaisorblade How they're counted depends on the department, probably. For a single data point: when an old friend of mine from grad school got a tenure track appointment, he said that he was informed that one single-author paper was worth about twice a multi-author paper when promotion considerations came up. His intent at the time was to focus on multi-author papers, figuring they could be done at least twice as easily, though I have no idea how reality has panned out for him since then.
@james234 "Without me programming these apps ,there would have been nothing to do research on" That's not an argument for authorship. For example, in an interview study, the interviewees usually don't become co-authors, even though without them there would be nothing to do research on. The question is whether you contributed to the actual research.
I'm not really qualified to assess how other departments would treat single- versus co-authored papers. As for the other points:
[2] It is completely unethical for the advisor to submit a journal article based on work done by a student as solely her own, even if she were entirely responsible for writing the paper. Being a single author implies that the author is responsible for the entire content of the work described, referring to both research and preparation of the manuscript.
[3] Your rights to being credited for this work depend on the nature and scope of the work that you individually did. If you simply built the apps once, and then did no subsequent work on the project, then you are entitled to a paper credit for a work describing the tools and how they were used (in part or in whole). However, unless you have been doing ongoing development on these tools, you would not be entitled to receive authorship credit whenever the work is used. (You would, however, be entitled to a citation on the use of your work in future publications!)
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8194 | Sex worker student offering her (lawful) services
One of my students is an escort/stripper and she has offered me (and other faculty in my department) her "services". I am pretty sure my initial reaction of "thanks for letting me know, now can you answer the question about how to calculate the standard deviation", may not have been the best reaction. The offers have continued. My head of school is aware of the issue, and has asked if I want him to do anything.
Is the student doing anything wrong by offering her services to me? For what it is worth, prostitution is legal in the UK. Is this any different then a student telling me she works in a restaurant?
What is the correct response in a situation like this?
Did she offer her services free of charge, or is she simply advertising her craft?
@gerrit: Does it matter?
@JeffE I think it might, as one could be interpreted as a bribe, whereas the other cannot. I'm not saying either is appropriate, but the severity of a misconduct can be different depending on what is the case, perhaps (I'm not sure).
Is this any different than a student telling me she works in a restaurant? If she was not your student, and she asked you to eat at the restaurant where she works, would you say yes? If she was not your student, and she offered you her "services," would you say yes? I think the two instances are different. I think more people would frown upon the second instance.
@gerrit I took it more as an advertisement and not a bribe.
@LordScree The fact that they are in a student-teacher relationship makes the situation rather unique. If she was handing out fliers at a construction sites' lunch break it would be a different situation.
It's worth asking whether she said it in such a way that it could be construed as advertising to her classmates as well, or whether it was explicitly directed at you. Not that it's appropriate for the classroom in either case, but if it was intended as a general announcement, the student/teacher crossover is less relevant.
@Bobson it was during my office hours. My door was open, but there were no other students.
You know, I knew a couple girls who stripped to pay their way through college, and both of them would have been mortified if any of their classmates found out, much less their prof. To them stripping was a fun, well-paying means to an end, not something they wanted to bleed over into their "real life." They wouldn't offer their services to friends or acquaintances outside of work. Maybe it works differently with escorts, but I'm inclined to say that it's not just "advertising her business." She's hitting on you.
@AlexanderGruber: it could also mean she probably thinks nothing of it, it's a job and a legal one at her place; there is no objective reason she need to keep it a secret especially if she is the type that don't really care about other people's reaction. You're probably reading too much into it.
The offer is inappropriate because it could jeopardize the objectivity of the teacher/student relationship, which is important for a teacher to do their job properly. Let's not assume malice, she's probably just ignorant about when is and is not appropriate time to advertise a business, and classroom is never the right time to do so.
Prostitution is not legal in the UK.
@Matka According to wikipedia "In Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland), prostitution itself (the exchange of sexual services for money) is legal". It is only since January 2015 that it is illegal in Northern Ireland. I have not heard about any changes in the rest of the UK.
Even if it's legal in the UK, even if she's not simply interested in you, even if you don't feel sexually harassed, she is soliciting the same as if she were trying to sell you encyclopedias. Treat her like any other salesperson who doesn't have a contract with the school. Rain the fury of the bookstore down upon her.
It depends on you actually:)
I believe a clarification is needed in order to answer the question ("what is the correct response in a situation like this?") properly: is the OP interested in her services, or not?
I have edited the title so that it reflects the content of the question more closely (I think), but I am not 100% satisfied with the result; if you have improvements feel free to do so. I have also removed the tag:sexual-misconduct, because "misconduct" already implies a judgment which is not crystal clear in my opinion.
@Federico I think the tag "sexual-sphere" is somewhat ambiguous and may not be a useful tag. I also think it makes sense to have a "sexual-misconduct" tag on a question asking if the behavior is misconduct, without implying judgement, just as we could have an "ethics" tag on a question asking if something is ethical - even if the answer is that there's no ethical problem. I suggest raising the issue on [meta] if you feel strongly about the tag.
@ff524 I don't feel strongly about this. I don't object to you reverting the tag edit, but in addition to that I'd like to edit the tag wiki to specify that it is used for cases of possible sexual misconduct. I will do it right after writing this comment.
@Federico I approved the edit, but removed the line This tag is intended to be used mainly in questions of the form "is doing this OK?" because there are many other potential uses of the tag: for example, questions about creating a sexual misconduct policy for a university, or about impact of sexual misconduct accusations on future career, or about how to protect oneself against accusations of sexual misconduct in certain situations... etc. I don't think the tag is primarily for "Is this OK" questions.
@ff524 After a little thought, I have suggested a different solution in http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3477/rename-tagsexual-misconduct-tagsexual-conduct (renaming the tag "sexual conduct").
If one of the faculty accepts her offer, perhaps she can use a hidden camera to record it and later on blackmail the teacher for a better grade.
@peterh except students are not employees (at least undergraduate ones).
@StrongBad Even if she would have an ice shop and would want to call the prof to visit, it would be problematic. But this student wants to sell sex. The decriminalization of the prostitution happened to defend the prostitutes from the misuses of their "managers", and not make such serious ethical misconducts legal.
It's an interesting asymmetry as if the situation were reversed, you would be fired on the spot. But as a student, in practical terms the university is very unlikely to do anything about it unless she physically assaults you. As it is your only option is to say you are not interested firmly and change the topic. I would ask your head of school to step in if it happens again as well. At least that way the problem can be shared.
Did you talk with your collegues about this and did she also advertise their service to them?
@gerrit: handing out fliers is so 1990s... reminiscent of a Soho phonebox back in the day
First, “thanks for letting me know” is not an unambiguous no. I suppose most people would actually get it, but she already appears to have boundary issues, so you should make it much clearer. The best thing to do would be to make it clear to her that you consider her propositions to be out of line. You can add, that while you don't think badly of her because of it, such offers have no place in the classroom (or in a student/teacher relationship).
In fact, you would probably do the same if she insisted on asking you to come have dinner at a restaurant she worked at: you'd be annoyed by it, because it is detrimental to her (and others) attention. I regularly have students who ask out-of-line questions, and I try to be firm: while I'd be happy to discuss if we were friends, we are not and my class/practicals/whatever is not the right place for that.
However, there is a distinction between talking about sex and dining: the law makes a distinction in many countries, including UK. From UCL's HR webpages (as an example):
Sexual harassment can take the form of ridicule, sexually provocative remarks or jokes, offensive comments about dress or appearance, the display or distribution of sexually explicit material, unwelcome sexual advances or physical contact, demands for sexual favours or assault.
which clearly covers your case, whether the sexual advances are of a paid or an unpaid nature.
Finally, regarding your head of school: the student clearly has boundary issues, probably for making the offer in the first place and definitely for renewing it multiple times after you declined. So, yeah, I would suggest your head of school or a counselor having a talk with her about it.
I agree that the student clearly has boundary issues — all examples I've read about of students doing such work went at great length to avoid ever running into a teacher while working. Whether advertising to sell sexual service is sexual harassment I'm not sure, though.
I'd add that you should make sure any further conversations with this person are conducted in the presence of a counsellor or other third-party, just to be safe.
@АртёмЦарионов I disagree: there are boundaries, set forth by laws, regulations and university policy. I strongly advise to set one's behavior according to one's employer policy, obviously.
In the OP it was not claimed that he didn't want to accept her offer. So maybe his answer 'thanks for letting me know' was perfectly fine.
Why quote from UCL's policies? How do you know what OP's university is? Did I miss something?
@aparente001 It's an example of an English university's policy on sexual harassment. Since all English and Welsh universities operate under the same laws and Scotland's and Northern Ireland's laws are generally similar, it seems likely that the asker's university has very similar policies and definitions to the one quoted.
In practice universities set a high hurdle to cross before they are willing to entertain complaints about student behaviour towards faculty. The safest bet is most likely just to never be alone with the student. (How many cases of sexual harassment of faculty by students have there been recorded in the UK, for example?)
Your initial reaction was thanks for letting me know, now can you answer the question about how to calculate the standard deviation.
This answer is ambiguous and at risk for misunderstanding. I guess you mean no, but you're not saying no. If taken literally, this answer says neither yes nor no. Myself, earlier in my life, would have interpreted thanks for letting me know as an expression of interest, which explains the repeated offers. In sensitive cases like this, I think it's important to be very explicit:
I am not interested in your professional services and please do not offer them again.
Like this, at least it is beyond doubt that you have replied negatively.
No question, my initial answer was ambiguous and could have been better. I was so shocked that I didn't handle it as well as possible, but at least I didn't give my standard reply of "why don't you swing by my office to chat about that".
^ Which would have been both hilarious and very, very disturbing at the same time.
+1 Ambiguity can mean flirtatious, though it's clear from the OP's question that it wasn't the intention.
Big +1. I've mistaken things like "thanks for letting me know" for a sign of interest when I was a student. It can be very ambiguous. In a case like this you need to make it perfectly clear you're not interested.
@StrongBad I think yours was a fine response, especially on the spur of the moment. Most people will get the message, which is that what you care about is how she is doing in math. You can save the blunt response for people who can't get a message otherwise (like this one).
"Possibly adding as long as you are my student ;)." isn't that direction slightly dangerous as well?
This is the UK, right? "Thanks for letting me know" is a very clear signal of disinterest there. "We do offer xxx" - "Thanks for letting me know" [meaning, "I couldn't care less"]
It is a mild sign of disinterest, followed by a clear but polite "no" if she offers again. The OP has nothing to worry about.
@kleineg: No, Captain Emacs is correct. In the UK it's more than a mild sign of disinterest.
This is only a partial answer. I would not vote it down if not for the slightly lecherous footnote.
From what you say, the student's actions are not illegal in your country. Most people, including most administrators of educational institutions, would consider this "wrong." The reason is very simple; it could constitute bribery, or a at least a conflict of interest. Apparently, this has happened to a number of people, your university is "wise," and is willing support you (and others).
The next time it happens, give her an uequivocal "no," and tell her that you don't expect to have to tell her again. You might add that you are "happily married" or "in a good relationship" if that is the case. The "second next time," you might threaten to report her to the university. In any event, whatever you do, make it clear that her behavior is inappropriate, and will not be tolerated.
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84902 | I'm an invited speaker. Can I send a coauthor in my place?
I was invited to give a talk at an upcoming conference. The abstract has myself and two other authors listed. Is it unreasonable for me to back out of the presentation (they were only paying for the hotel, food and conference registration fees and not flight) and have a co-author do it? The reason for me backing out would be over extending myself due to a combination of poor planning on my part and some luck on grant pre-proposals.
The fact that you were invited makes this quite different (versus if you had submitted a an abstract without being asked).
@DavidKetcheson I agree, but I couldn't figure out how to get that into the title. Feel free to reword the title (or the body).
Good idea -- I tried to make it more specific.
Logical nitpick: this isn't a true dilemma, since your proposed action makes no sense: you can back out (whether it's unreasonable or not, at least it's your decision) but you simply cannot "have a coauthor do it" any more than you can auction off the invited speakership on eBay (hmm, interesting idea come to think of it...). At most you can propose to the organizers to invite your coauthor in your place. As for the other aspects of the question, @AnonymousMathematician's answer offers an excellent analysis.
This paper?
This seems to depend strongly on the particular conference, the nature of the invitation, the time available between now and the conference, and possibly other factors. As far as I can see, your best strategy is to ask the organizers of the conference.
One question is whether your coauthor will do as good a job of speaking or otherwise contributing to the conference. If you are well known as an excellent speaker and your coauthor is not, or if you are a much better known researcher, then the organizers may be unhappy with the substitution. Another potential issue may be if your name has been used to advertise the conference, on posters or the web. However, if you and your coauthor are more or less on an equal footing, then I doubt the organizers will object.
I'd recommend apologizing for being unable to make it due to reasons beyond your control (without going into detail), and offering your coauthor as a potential substitute, while still giving them the chance to decline and just cancel your talk or replace you with someone else entirely. I'd make it clear that you are suggesting the coauthor as a possibility without having asked the coauthor yet, so that they don't feel trapped by not wanting to insult a substitute you have already lined up.
I'd say it depends on what the invitation was like. If all three of you were addressed, and were asked to have someone be the invited speaker, then it's perfectly reasonable to ask to replace yourself; and impolite but tolerable to announce a replacement. If you were invited personally, then - no, it's not appropriate.
However - and this is even more important than what I said above so I'll increase the font size:
It is infinitely better to say you cannot make it because of fatigue or just any excuse, than to collapse and cancel at the last moment, or show up completely unprepared.
in your specific case, it sounds like you're just going to have to postpone something else, even if that means reduced chances of getting a grant, missing a submission deadline etc.
PS - It's a question of ethics as well, not just of etiquette, which is why I retagged. You don't get off that easy...
I don't mean to be rude, but what on earth does this have to do with ethics? If you read the question carefully, OP is considering cancelling his conference talk because he has overextended himself, meaning he will either break the promise to deliver the invited talk (already a stretch to consider this an ethics issue even on a normal day) or be forced to break some other promise. So yeah, I think he does "get off that easy" because it would be quite unreasonable to criticize him for unethical behavior here. Incompetence, possibly (though I don't think so), but ethics? Please.
@DanRomik: He has not overexrted himself, he is planning to exert himself by doing things that are apparently more useful to him (e.g. regard grants he's been awarded). So, it does indeed involve ethics.]
I am just as committed to the grant proposals, if not more so, than the talk. Someone else can give the talk almost as good as me, backing out of the grants i am PI on would screw over my CIs and backing out of the ones I am a CI on would screw over the PIs.
@einpoklum I would speculate that if you had ever been a principal investigator on a grant you might not be so cavalier about breaking commitments you made in that capacity. Hopefully some day you will discover what that's like and recognize that StrongBad is being quite reasonable here.
+1 for the first paragraph. If the invitation isn't really personalized (i.e. not necessarily addressed to three authors, but perhaps generic bulk mail to all invitees) I don't think the organizers would mind.
@StrongBad: Note I did not say it is more or less ethical to break commitments regarding grants than it is to break a commitment to speak. But the question of whether you may break such commitments and the implications or justifications for that is ethical; it's not just a matter of etiquette.
Unless this is a keynote address (where the organizers specifically want you because you are a bigshot in your field) it is usually sufficient if any of the listed authors presents the paper. Many conferences have "no show" policies which prevent the inclusion of the paper/abstract into the conference proceedings (and hence prevent publication) when none of the authors shows up.
I think this is less true for invited talks . . .
In my field (theoretical computer science), "keynote address" and "invited talk" mean exactly the same thing. We're not talking about a regular conference paper, here.
@David and in my upcoming conference "invited" means "hey, you showed up last year, so I have your email, care to give a talk this year?" and sending a coauthor would be totally fine.
I'll assume "Can I send a coauthor in my place?" doesn't mean "is this legal or possible?" (obviously yes) but rather "is this an ethical or collegial thing to do?" for which the answer, I'll claim, is "no." The organizers invited you, not your co-authors, for some real reason -- maybe they expect you to speak well, or you're the leader of the work and can comment best on its future directions. And more importantly you agreed to speak. Barring personal or medical emergencies, this means you should do what you agreed to do, and what you were invited to do. Your time management skills are irrelevant. (And frankly, I find the complaint weird -- so what if you have to work on grant proposals? If it's so urgent, do this during the N-1 hours of the meeting that aren't occupied by your talk.)
Having organized symposium sessions, I'd be annoyed if an invited speaker flaked out because they were "busy," and it would not leave me with a good impression of their abilities.
-1 for Your time management skills are irrelevant. Perhaps you are fortunate to be able to predict with such stunning precision your future workload that you have never found yourself in an awkward situation of struggling to keep up with commitments. The rest of us don't have that superpower, and there's no shame in occasionally feeling overextended. How to deal with it is another question, but your statements about time management skills and workload situation being irrelevant or something the conference organizers will have no understanding or sympathy for is strictly false.
Very well-meaning, but none of this tallies with reality. It's common for profs. especially to backout and offer a coauthor/student in their place.
Have you never, once, in your entire life, had to cancel a plan because something else came up? Lucky you.
My phrasing, in retrospect, sounds harsher than I intended. I will again note, though, that the OP is not asking whether it's possible to back out of a commitment, but how backing out is perceived. Have I struggled to keep up with commitments? Yes, very much so. Have I helped out friends and colleagues in similar situations? Yes, very willingly. Have I left "my" tasks undone to keep a promise I made to others? The answer is also yes. These are not contradictory statements. I realize this job of ours is often overwhelming; I often struggle with this. But that is its nature.
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15796 | Shortened version of a math book (without proofs)
I've authored a math research monograph (which can be however used as a textbook, as it is structured like a textbook).
Is it worth to make short version of it containing only definitions and theorems (no proofs) in the natural pedagogical order (not the order of proofs, as in the actual book)?
Will it be legal after copyright transfer?
What is the purpose of such a book ? Mathematics without proof sounds strange. Or do you mean to make a handbook ?
There is "main" book with proofs. I consider to create also a short version without proofs, only with results.
You'll have to talk with your publisher (and lawyer) about what rights you retain after transfer.
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51168 | Duplicate content in multi-volume monograph
A scientist writes a multi-volume monograph reflecting his latest research results.
In the first volume a certain topic is presented but incompletely because at the time of writing the research on this topic was partial.
In the second volume, more research on the topic is presented and the researcher wants to present the topic systematically. Because of this the researcher wants to repeat information that is already contained in the first volume (otherwise it cannot be presented systematically enough). This amounts to about 8 % of the pages of the first volume.
Question: What response does the researcher have to expect from book editors for duplicating information on the topic which was already published in the first volume?
duplicate in second volume the former research done in the first volume, How much will be duplicated in the second volume?
I think about 15%
I calculated: 8% of the pages of the first volume.
What will be the response of the book editors for duplicating in the second volume information on topic X which was already published in the first volume?
This is unlikely to be viewed positively. One obvious question is why not prepare a second edition of the first volume, rather than duplicating this information in the second volume? Duplication seems like a strange solution to this problem. However, there's a deeper issue:
In mathematics, books are not the primary mechanism for disseminating research results. Instead, a subject is ready for treatment in the form of a book when it is relatively well explored and understood, so that you can write a coherent and definitive account. If you are afraid that the subject will progress so quickly that volume one would be an inadequate foundation for volume two, then this is not the right time to publish the book. I do not believe any reputable, mainstream publisher would publish a book under these circumstances.
But I have already written a book and put it at my Web site. I consider not to publish it officially at all, but instead put its LaTeX source online under a copyleft license. If the World will ignore my research because not disseminated in "academic" way, it's World's problem not mine.
I guess I'm not sure what you are asking. Is your question whether self-publishing the first volume would make traditional publishers unwilling to publish a second volume that overlaps with it? (Maybe, but they might view the first volume as unpublished, in which case it might not bother them.)
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50162 | Send book right before the deadline or now?
I have written a research monograph.
I think that the work on the first volume is finished except that it is not yet checked for errors. Well, I am not 100% sure that I won't make any changes, however now no changes (except of hunting errors) are planned.
I am going to send the monograph to a competition of such works and have the hope to win the prize. The deadline of the competition is Dec 3 (now it's Aug 8).
My question: Should I wait to Novermber (probably using this time to check for errors) or should I send the book to the competition right now?
Will the editors of book sent to the competition help me to find errors? If yes, will submission earlier make their help me to find errors more effective, as in this case we have more time which can be used to hunt errors?
I realize that this may be considered as an opinion-based question, but I ask for detailed arguments in either direction.
I'm a little bit confused: why do you think that we will know the rules of some random competition out there?
@jakebeal Because I have told you the only relevant rule: "submissions must be before 3 Dec". All other rules (such as size of the book, language in which it is written, topic, etc.) are irrelevant for my question
But you asked "Will the editors of book sent to the competition help me to find errors? If yes, will submission earlier make their help me to find errors more effective?" How would we know?
@mhwombat I thought that partakers of this site know typical workflow of typical competitions. By the way, the competition is for math monographs presenting new research in accessible way
@porton, I've never heard of such a competition, and you didn't link to its rules. I don't think academic book competitions are very common. Your best bet is to ask the people running the competition what they want. You'll have a better chance of them telling you then us.
I assume you are talking about the Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Prize, since the number of competitions for mathematics monographs is tiny and I bet this is the only one with a December 3 deadline. If so, then:
There is no chance that the prize committee will help search for errors. If they think the manuscript might contain important errors, then they will immediately eliminate it from the competition. Typos or other minor errors probably wouldn't disqualify the submission, but they make a bad impression, and it's not the committee's job to help you proofread.
This competition is aimed at exposition of important results that are already well established, not proving new results. If you submission contains lots of previously unpublished theorems, then I doubt the committee will consider it. Preparing a submission is not worth a lot of time and effort unless you are confident that the committee will consider it suitable.
How have you concluded that they don't accept books with novel research? Do you have any other source of information than their Web site? It seems for me that they do not say anything like this at their Web site. And yes, my book consists mostly of new definitions and theorems. I will try to submit anyway: The cost of 350 sheets of paper and sending post package isn't that high not to try anyway
If Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer foundation won't publish my research, then I may go this route: I am going to put my research online in LaTeX form under a copyleft license. If the World does not accept my research as "academic" and use it in formal academic work, this is a World's problem, not mine. I just want to make it available for free. Too cheap to be academic?
@porton: Anonymous Mathematician is correct in his assessment. You have not accurately conveyed the terms of the prize. It is for a"mathematical monograph of an expository nature presenting the latest developments in an active area of research in Mathematics, in wich the applicant has made important contributions." In other words, it is not a monograph presenting new research, but rather describing an area of active research to which the author has already made important (published) contributions. As another source of information: please read the prize-winning monographs themselves.
My understanding of your situation is this: you have not published any papers in reputable mathematical journals (I have just checked that you have no publications on MathSciNet) but have a lot of pages of mathematics that you would like to publish through whatever channel you can. If that is a correct assessment, then submitting your manuscript for this prize would be a waste of your time and the money it takes to send a hard copy to Barcelona. I write these comments because I've watched you spend a lot of time on this kind of thing over the years and am concerned for you.
I can't contribute anything useful to most of the things you asked. However, I can give you a couple of guesses that I hope will be somewhat helpful:
I would imagine that the more error-free your submission is, the
better your chances of winning, or at least of making a good
impression on people who possibly could be helpful for your career in
the future.
I doubt that the judges of a competition would help you proofread or
fact-check.
I doubt that submitting early would raise your chances (but do ask).
Aside from all of that, it seems to me that you need to do something special to mark having finished a big project. Some people go to a fancy restaurant, some people go for a walk in the woods, some people go on a trip to the beach, some people go bowling.... The sky's the limit, have fun!
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19264 | Are many new math results first published in monographs?
Are many new math results first published in monographs (not in articles)?
What's the difference between a monograph and an article ?
@Suresh: A monograph is a research article which is so long that it has been published as a book. The refereeing process may also be different. Certainly one wonders whether for a 300 page manuscript, every page has been read with the same care as for a 30 page manuscript.
@PeteL.Clark: Is a monograph an article? AMS refused my book proposal saying that there are too much conjectures in my work to be published as a monograph. Conjectures are not a problem with an article however. So a monograph is not just a long article, their conditions of review are different.
@porton: As a matter of definition, no, a monograph is a book rather than an article. The goals of a monograph are however similar to those of an article. With regard to your deductions about the differences between articles and monographs based on the rejection of your monograph by the AMS: it would seem that you first need to have equivalent content published in AMS journals in order to reason in this way.
One example is Dicks and Dunwoody Groups acting on graphs. This gives the first published proof of the Almost Stability Theorem, and currently has 152 citations on mathscinet.
@NajibIdrissi : See? This one is about monographs per se, not about books.
@PeteL.Clark Monograph doesn't mean "book". It means something focused on a single idea.
Research monographs in mathematics certainly exist, but they aren't the standard form of publication. They are generally not as prestigious as papers in strong mainstream journals, they may be less widely read, and they may be viewed as being less carefully refereed. Some important work in mathematics has first been published in monograph form, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you have a very good reason (for example, extremely long proofs, or lots of valuable material that would be harder to understand or appreciate out of context).
There are some journals that publish extremely long papers in monograph form, such as Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society. If you want to publish a research monograph in mathematics, a series like this is a reasonable place for it, while a stand-alone book is riskier.
You are generous.
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5086 | How to respond to the teacher who puts the feet up while talking to student?
A friend of mine who is from Japan told me that his professor in USA puts the feet up while talking to him. He was saying that he felt very bad with that. Is this acceptable culture in USA academia?
Try a google search for "obama feet on desk"...
Possibly useful to know what level of student.
Do you mean "put their feet up" as in "puts their feet on the desk" or "balances a foot upon the knee?" Those are considered two very different actions.
Or do you mean "put feet on student"? This is unacceptable behaviour in almost all cultures.
In countries where putting the feet on the table tends to defy etiquette, it can also be a sign of power to do so. For example, in German, a mid-tier employee or researcher would never put their feet on the table in a professional environment, whereas a professor or senior executive might.
Perfectly common.... At my lab at NYU, we even have "padded mobile peds" for that specific purpose (maybe not by design, but spot on for it!). But I do agree that sets an informal/trusting tone for the meeting, which is probably a good sign...
Not rude in US culture.
I've done my PhD in Japan, and have had much contact with professors in America and Japan.
The academic relationship and work culture in both countries are very different. In America it is generally not regarded as bad when someone puts their feet on the table while talking to you.
I had bosses and advisors in the US who did this. However, in Japan, the advisor-student relationship is more respectful and professional.
I would like to tell you that you should ask the professor to refrain from putting their feet on the table, but if they do it in their office, it is pretty much up to them. Since the office is the professor's space, I do not think it is your friend's business to ask them not to do it.
Agree except that asking the prof. to restrain from doing that. I believe It's common and acceptable behavior in America.
Commonplace or not, if it makes the student uncomfortable, the student has a right to request it not be done. Again, given the generally more collegial relationship between professor and grad student in the US, you are more likely to receive a favorable response.
Thanks a lot. If this is the culture in the US, do you guys also see the student putting the feet up when talking with the advisor (if the student does that in his/her office)?
@ketau yeah sure, here in Canada (mostly like US) it is not uncommon to do it.
My PhD advisor in the States used to take his shoes off and put his feet up. He almost always had holes in his socks. The way I looked at it was his office/lab his rules (within State and Federal laws). Further the more comfortable he was the more time and feedback I got.
-1 for advising them to ask the professor not to do that. That is culturally incorrect. In the US, that would basically be you making a demand about a trivial matter to a person that you should culturally be showing deference to. Also, just weird. I understand that it's uncomfortable for you, from your description--what I'm telling you is that from the US side, you're going to come across as neurotic if you bring this up.
You clearly did not understand my answer, first I say "I would like to tell you....," and then I say " I do not think is the place of your friend....."
Interesting, I never realized it was common and not considered somewhat impolite. I personally never minded people putting their feet on a desk/chair while speaking with me, but I guess my Russian upbringing caused me feel like I shouldn't do it except around friends. I don't live in the US, but the country I live in is extremely similar to the US culture-wise.
I do this when talking to students, but if I student told me it made them uncomfortable I would try my best to stop and wouldn't be offended. I don't think a reasonable good advisor would, so I think the advice to ask is fine.
I think the sentence "I would like to tell you" should be interpreted as "I wish I could tell you"
In the orient showing somebody your feet/shoes is a sign of disrespect.
A person who puts his feet on the desk in the western world shows that he (this is mostly done by males) is at ease/relaxed in an informal atmosphere. However, also in the west this behavior is normally only shown by people who are talking to their subordinates or peers at their own hierarchical level.
Agreed. None of the profs I know in Germany or Switzerland do this, not even the younger and "more relaxed" ones.
Well, when I was a PhD student, many professors have been doing this (e.g., put their feet on the table--and they even wore shorts!). Today, when I talk to students I also try to behave informally. I do not believe that formality has anything to do with science. Formality is something that belongs to hierarchy and authority. I do not have any personal authority over my students. It is science that should be the authority in academia.
You're over-generalizing cultural norms here, both for the "west" and the "east".
Perhaps your friend could tell the Professor, in a somewhat apologetic tone if he doesn't feel confident enough about their relationship, that in his cultrual background, putting your feet on the table is an offensive act, and while s/he is certain the Professor does not mean it, s/he (the PhD candidate) is very distracted by it, so s/he is asking for the Professor's consideration on this matter.
That is, the request to not do this can be made with deference rather than as a form of rebuke.
Your question is "How to respond to the situation". The answer is quite simple in my opinion: do not respond, unless you really cannot tolerate it in which case you don't really have a choice but to respond.
Why would you encourage OP's friend to put up with something that bothers him with no recourse?
@einpoklum The OP's friend seems to have an internal emotional issue; that's his issue to deal with, not the professor's. It'd be different if the professor were say, smoking in their office, and the student was choking on the smoke - that's a physical issue that would need to be dealt with. In the US, making a demand like that of the professor would be considered controlling behavior.
@ChemicalEngineer: You're essentially denying that actions without a physical impact can reasonably be seen as offensive and inappropriate. Suppose the teacher would also hang up his dirty socks in the office and OP's friend had to smell them. He wouldn't choke, it would just be very offensive to him. It would still be an "internal emotional issue", wouldn't it?
@einpoklum As an opposite example, what if the OP was's friend was discomforted by the professor's choice to wear a shirt; would it be appropriate for them to ask the professor to disrobe? These questions of appropriateness are handled by social convention; apparently the OP's friend would be within social norms to ask the professor to change their behavior in Japan, but not in the US. It seems plausible that, at some point in human history, there was a society in which hanging dirty socks was socially acceptable.
@ChemicalEngineer: In your example, the professor hasn't done something active and out-of-the-ordinary (i.e. not what everyone does), while in both OP's friend's case and my example, s/he has. I think OP's friend is justified in voicing his/her discomfort in some way in these circumstances.
@einpoklum "What to do with a student coming to class in revealing clothing, to the degree that it disrupts the teaching environment?" generated a lot of debate on here. I take it that you'd have been on the side that the student wearing revealing clothing should've been asked to dress differently? I ask because you're not factually wrong; it's a social choice about whether or not people should ask others to change their behavior for personal comfort.
@ChemicalEngineer: Not necessarily, since professors have the advantage of authority/power over students and should strive to be more accommodating to compensate for that; will go read that thread now.
@ChemicalEngineer: Ok, totally different situation and I don't want to chat about it here.
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28511 | Has the DeWitt Clause, which prevents publication of named DBMS benchmarks, ever been successfully defended in court?
Several commercial database vendors include an end-user license agreement provision, known as the DeWitt Clause, that prohibits researchers and scientists from explicitly using the names of their systems in academic papers.
Has the DeWitt Clause ever been successfully defended in court?
Several users have suggested People of the State of New York vs. Network Associates as an instance of a DeWitt Clause being challenged, and struck down, in court. However, this case is hugely misunderstood by the media, and so these answers have been very misleading.
This case was an instance of a DeWitt Clause being challenged in court. However, the court's ruling did not directly address the issue of whether such a clause is enforceable. The court ruled on the basis of the specific wording of the Network Associates clause, and so did not generally rule on the enforceability of all such clauses.
Arguments of the Attorney General
Source: Attorney General's Argument in People v. Network Associates
Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of the State of New York, mentions two claims in his preliminary statement for this case. The first relates to the general enforceability of a DeWitt Clause, and the second does not.
Violation of free speech and fair use:
Under New York law, a restriction that broadly chills or restricts important rights -- here, of free speech and fair use -- without a legitimate purpose, will be struck down. This Censorship Clause restricts consumers and the media alike from reviewing the software or disclosing important design or product flaws. Yet it serves no legitimate purpose, such as protecting trade secrets or confidential material.
Deception:
Specifically, it misinforms consumers that the company’s prohibition
against publication of reviews or benchmark tests (itself an illegal restriction) reflects existing “rules and regulations.” Of course, no “rules and regulations” actually exist, under federal or state law -- a fact that most attorneys, including those who drafted the Censorship Clause, surely
know.
...
Finally, the Censorship Clause is also void and deceptive because it conflicts with the License Agreement contained with the company’s boxed software. The boxed License Agreement, which is by its own terms the “entire Agreement between the parties,” omits the Censorship Clause. Yet the company then places that very Clause on the face of the software diskette -- even though it is by the very terms of the License Agreement void and unenforceable.
I'll elaborate a little bit on the latter point, regarding deception. The specific text that is the subject of the lawsuit is:
Installing this software constitutes acceptance of the terms and conditions of the license agreement in the box. Please read the license agreement before installation. Other rules and regulations of installing the software are:
a. The product can not be rented, loaned, or leased—you are the sole owner of this product.
b. The customer shall not disclose the result of any benchmark test to any third party without Network Associates' prior written approval.
c. The customer will not publish reviews of this product without prior consent from Network Associates, Inc.
This text was outside of the license agreement. The license agreement itself did not contain clauses (b) and (c). Furthermore, the license agreement contained a clause specifying that it (the license) constitutes the entire agreement between the consumer and Network Associates, and supersedes any prior communications related to the software.
The major claim of the deception argument was as follows: Consumers - having read the license agreement, with its clause that the entire contract between parties is contained in that license agreement, and without the "gag" clauses - will then read this text. They may reasonably conclude that the restrictions on publishing reviews and benchmarks are not part of the contractual agreement between the consumer and Network Associates, and are instead made and enforced by some other entity.
That is, the text deceptively implies that the restrictions on reviews and benchmarking are imposed not by Network Associates, but by someone else - such as the state or federal government.
Furthermore, the clauses restricting publishing reviews and benchmarking are not enforceable at all in this case (regardless of the general enforceability or legality of such clauses), because they conflict with the actual license agreement. Thus, consumers are deceived into believing that they have no right to publish reviews and benchmarks, when in this case, because of the way it is written, these clauses are not a valid contractual agreement.
Opinion of the Court
Source: PEOPLE v. NETWORK ASSOC., INC
The court rules against Network Associates. However, the ruling states that the Attorney General's claims of deception are valid. It does not directly address the first claim, of violation of free speech and fair use.
Furthermore, the ruling explicitly states that Network Associates is
enjoined from including any language restricting the right to publish the results of testing and review without notifying the Attorney General at least 30 days prior to such inclusion
which suggests that language restricting publishing of benchmarks is not necessarily prohibited. That is, Network Associates is not generally forbidden from writing a license in the future that restricts consumers' rights to publish reviews and benchmarks.
So, this is very nice to know, but the bottom line is that this was not an example of the DeWitt clause being successfully defended in court. Still, do you happen to have a link to the arguments by Network Associations rebutting Spitzer's first claim?
The New York Attorney General got a judge to ban Network Associates' licensing terms that prevented customers from reviewing their software without permission from NA. I think this started as a consumer protection suit by the AG's office instead of a customer defending themselves after violating such a licensing term. This was in New York state court, so who knows what would happen if a database vendor tried to sue someone in a different state.
This answer is not strictly accurate. The Network Associates ruling was on the grounds that the specific language they used was "deceptive," not on the grounds that such clauses are generally unenforceable. It was a much narrower ruling than various media sources made it out to be.
True enough, but it's the closest thing I can find.
Then you should clarify your answer. As currently written, it's very misleading
To paraphrase the court, the language was deceptive because it might mislead the consumer to believe that those terms were enforceable. They were not enforceable, so NA should not have put them in the agreement. I think that's close enough to not being enforceable outright.
See this answer. Hope that helps :) The language was not enforceable because it was stated outside of the license, and the license itself precluded the enforceability of clauses outside of the license; not because such language is generally not enforceable.
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63330 | Bulk download Sci-Hub papers
I wonder whether it is possible to bulk download all papers stored in Sci-Hub.
I am aware of the questions:
Is there a more user-friendly way to download multiple articles from arXiv?
Bulk download of arXiv (or other publication data set) with metadata AND citations
but they focus on arXiv.
Cross-posted question on Open Data (not encouraged by Stack Exchange policy): Bulk download Sci-Hub papers
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about the features offered by a particular website.
@DavidRicherby So how about the two arXiv questions? Why didn't you vote to close them, since they are the same question but for another website?
@FranckDernoncourt Because Sci-Hub is a recent venture of dubious legal status and no original content, while arXiv is a massive, long-standing joint venture that shapes the publication practices of several entire fields.
@jakebeal Sci-hub is much larger than arXiv in terms of number of papers. Also, Sci-hub is over 4 year-old. As for the legal aspect, it's up to the court to decide, and that shouldn't impact whether the question gets closed anyway.
@FranckDernoncourt Thinking that one question should be closed in no way obliges me to check every other question on similar topics.
@DavidRicherby Sure but I clearly linked them in the question.
@FranckDernoncourt: I think the real issue here is not legality, but rather the fact that arXiv hosts the files, while Sci-Hub merely acts as a proxy to get around paywalls; it can't let you access any interface (in order to, say, enable bulk download) except that which is given by the publishers. Frankly, I very much doubt there is a way to use Sci-Hub to mass-download papers without effectively DDoSing the service, which, ignoring the legal issues, would be simply unethical IMHO.
This is to say, there are no papers "stored in Sci-Hub", as far as I know. Still, I think the downvotes are excessive, so have an upvote.
@tomasz No paper is a valid answer. I guess I'll just look at it myself without the possibility of sharing the answer here, since the question got closed. They may save PDFs that got queried, I believe some similar services were doing so. E.g. libgen -> https://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar/comments/39dtdf/libgen_mirror/ Also, http://moscow.sci-hub.bz/ccc288e1864c9588274a4de0bd9ff766/10.1002%40%28sici%291097-0347%28199709%2919%3A6%3C545%3A%3Aaid-hed13%3E3.0.co%3B2-4.pdf
@tomasz As far as I know, libgen is holding a copy of every paper that sci-hub has ever got their hands on.
Step 1 will be getting your storage ready. An estimate of sci-hub volume was at 40 Tbytes (see comments in https://vk.com/wall-36928352_7448, in Russian).
Be careful - the last time someone tried to download a massive amount of academic papers from a website it didn't end well.
@FedericoPoloni: Another reason to not obey. Though it wouldn't hurt to be careful.
Meta question about this question: http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/q/2219/22733
You need to ask how to download libgen, not sci-hub: that's the library where downloaded papers are stored. Libgen offers to download its database dump (libgen.io/dbdumps/ -- if this link does not work in your country, try typing the address in hideme.ru or similar). I see there two dumps, one is 350 Gb and another 3 Tb, no idea what the difference is. In any case, after you have the dump you can set up your bittorrent client to download the whole library (around 40 Tb with all books and papers). That is how one can set up a mirror of libgen.
@amoeba sure a valid (and afaik correct) answer is to say no paper are stored on sci-hub but one should download the dump from libgen..
This is not a useful answer. You can update your question to ask how to download the dump of libgen. That is the relevant question here.
@amoeba Why wouldn't it be a useful answer? It sounds to me as giving a solution.
I don't think it is obvious how to download all papers from libgen. So the answer saying "download all papers from libgen" is only begging the question. Presumably the good answer would contain the specific instructions on how to download all papers from libgen...
@amoeba understood, sorry I thought you meant the question would indicate how to download all papers from libgen. I agree then it's more a comment.
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65554 | I can't access a reference of an article I am reviewing: what shall I do?
From time to time, I cannot access a reference of an article that I am reviewing, either because my university did not subscribe to some journals (and I failed to find it myself on sci-hub, Google, and other places), or because the article doesn't seem to be available online.
Pinging the authors of the article (either the one that I am reviewing or the one that was cited) may work, but not always: legal issues (some publishers do not allow sharing papers online), unanswered emails, blind review preventing from contacting authors, etc.
Shall I just ignore the cited article in that case, even though it could be useful to review the article? Or are there other options, aside from asking my library to pay for it (hoping they would agree)?
Good question. Another reason you may not be able to find the cited article online is that it may not exist, which seems like a useful thing to know about when reviewing a paper.
@ff524 Good one! I'll probably choose it for the next reading group, sounds appropriate for the April 1st meeting.
I like how this question has promotional links to OP's previous questions that have little bearing on the current question.
@Drecate You can't imagine how much money I make with those hidden ads.
References are also likely to contain typos which make them hard to follow.
I am confused as to why "ask your library to find a copy" is the casually-mentioned alternative at the end of this - it seems the overwhelmingly obvious answer. This is what your institution has a library for. Of course they'll get papers for you. Ask...
@Andrew Because it's so last millennium.
Possible duplicate of Literature searches in publications when you have limited access to journals
@iwantmyphd: I disagree. This is about lacking a reference as a peer-reviewer while the other question is about lacking a reference as an author or researcher. This is a crucial difference (see the answers).
While online access is very useful, it is not the only access. Every university I have been affiliated has provided an ILL service either at no cost or a nominal charge (e.g., a $1 processing charge). US University libraries can make requests to both the Library of Congress and the National Library of Medicine. I am less familiar with the ILL system in the UK/Britain, but I believe ILL requests can be made, possibly through a university, to the British Library.
There are of course some articles/books that are truly hard to find (e.g., not held by the LoC with deceased authors). In these cases, it seems reasonable to request a copy through the handling editor. You should never contact the authors of a manuscript under review directly.
In the UK, document supply requests can be made to the BL by individuals as well as institutions - but it's a more limited & more expensive service that way. The institutional approach is (usually) free to the user at point of service, as with the US.
So far, all my invitations to review contained an offer for access to publications via the publisher, i.e., they provide you with a temporary account allowing you to access papers. However, I have no experience with such a service as I’ve never required it.
If the publisher does not provide such a service or it does not cover the publication in question, you can still ask the publisher directly for it. This way, you do not break the anonymity of peer review and ask somebody who has a direct interest to supply you with the article – as you cannot properly peer-review otherwise.
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2219 | How should I deal with becoming discouraged as a graduate student?
I am a third year (starting fourth year in the fall) PhD student in mathematics. I've passed all qualifying exams and am currently doing research. As far as I can tell, I am not doing poorly. I have the good fortune of having a great advisor, being in a very supportive department, and having friends and family who genuinely care about my success.
The fact is research is hard. It appears to consist primarily of staring at a problem for days and days and days without getting anywhere. Sometimes, rarely, I do figure something out and that feels wonderful, but the overwhelming majority of my time appears to be spent banging my head against a mostly figurative wall. I am not complaining about the material being hard, and I am not averse to putting in hard work, but I get frequently discouraged when I realize the vast volumes of mathematics that I yet know nothing about (and probably never will). It's very hard to quantify progress - in particular, there are too few tangible returns after too many hours worked. I find myself thinking along the lines of "Oh, if only someone actually smart were thinking about this problem they would have solved it in moments" and so on.
I've talked about this to some number of people; here is some advice I have received:
Take a day off. Putting in hours upon hours of trying things doesn't magically lead to a solution, particularly if the brain is tired and just wants to sleep.
Have a hobby. Since math research doesn't exactly provide instant gratification, a hobby might provide some instead.
Talk to other graduate students. Realize that many graduate students go through this.
I'm interested to know how other folks have dealt with being discouraged as a graduate student. Does it get better with time and experience? Is this a sign that research is not for me and that I should seriously consider a life outside academia?
@aru I think you should watch PhD Movie ( http://www.phdmovie.com/ ). It shows to you that your situation in not unique...
I would like to impart on you some very good advice that my professor gave to me when I was researching under him: "In the thermodynamic limit, the ratio of time spent understanding things to time spent being confused needs to go to zero. If it does, then that means you're learning something new. Otherwise, you're just doing the same thing over and over."
I share a good amount of your feelings. When I compare to others, I feel I am always less good. I attribute most of this disparity to the fact that usually when other people explain me their achievements they only tell me the happy ending, the things that worked. And the explanation itself takes very little time. Instead, I know all the time and frustration I experienced in my research and study. So it is very easy for my brain to misjudge and think that it required me much more time and effort to do comparable things as them. But it is, of course, a completely deceiving perspective.
+1 for have a hobby to fulfill instant gratification. I'm not in research, but in development, and successful steps are similarly drawn out without any visible progress in between.
I don't know if this will help you. But something bad happened to me the other day. And the lesson I learned was this... You cannot move too slowly, if you're going in the right direction. but anyway, I read the answers and lots of wisdom here from some pretty heavy-hitters. 3-years is really progress, Best
'It it were easy, everyone would do it.' Read that twice, and really think about it.
This may sound completely silly, but try just walking around with a smile on your face. Even if only one person smiles back, the feeling is well worth it at least in my opinion. Feeling positive can help you focus less on any negative ideas you have floating around in your mind. Or maybe I was just raised by hippies and their mindset has rubbed off on me a little.....I think I should go play Diablo III a bit, I feel awkward.
I rephrased the title slightly to avoid the impression that this question is about other people discouraging you.
I get frequently discouraged when I realize the vast volumes of mathematics that I yet know nothing about (and probably never will). This happens to all of us.
The fact is research is hard. It appears to consist primarily of staring at a problem for days and days and days without getting anywhere. Sometimes, rarely, I do figure something out and that feels wonderful, but the overwhelming majority of my time appears to be spent banging my head against a mostly figurative wall.
Yes. This. And it wouldn't be so damn tempting if those bricks didn't wiggle just a little bit every time I slammed my forehead into them. Sometimes I think my eyes must be playing tricks on me, what with the repeated cranial trauma and all. But then I remember how good it felt the last time my head actually went through the wall, and so I keep plugging away.
I've found it extremely useful to have two or three walls to bang my head against at any given time. Surprisingly, sometimes banging my head against one wall actually makes one of the other walls weaker. But most walls prove considerably stronger than my head; so it's helpful to have options, so I don't feel so bad about walking away with some scalp intact.
If you're very lucky, one good smack on the bricks will actually bring the ceiling crashing around your ears. That takes a long time to clean up, but sometimes the debris will knock down other walls for you. And then you have a whole new set of even bigger walls to bang your head against!
I find myself thinking along the lines of "Oh, if only someone actually smart were thinking about this problem they would have solved it in moments" and so on.
Do not listen to the Impostor Syndrome. Everyone "actually smart" is hearing exactly the same voice in their head saying "Oh, if only someone who actually knew how to hit walls with their forehead hit this wall, it would come down like a stack of cards." when in fact the wall really is made of brick.
Does it get better with time and experience?
Yes. Eventually, you'll move from hoping that you'll be able to knock down a wall with your head someday, to being surprised at how often the walls you hit with your head actually fall, to finally believing that you really can knock down walls with your head sometimes. (For me, the second transition happened some time after tenure.)
But your head will still hurt.
@DavideChicco.it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
Your "Aha!" momments will start increasing increasingly. Just think of it as a compounding interest function: x^(1+i). x is the amount that you already know and i is the rate at which you learn. At some point, your gains will be much more noticable.
+1 thanks for a great answer, and also introducing me to the name of my worst quality/habit.
Over the past year, I've been coming back here to re-read this answer because it speaks to me so much. In particular, 'But your head will still hurt' :) .
am glad others are finding so much inspiration here but it has an overly masochistic frame/pov...
@vzn: But research is a masochistic endeavor; you really do have to enjoy feeling stupid almost all the time. See also: http://jcs.biologists.org/content/121/11/1771.full
interesting coincidence just quoted that same article recently. disagree that the feeling of masochism is mandatory, its only one possible interpretation/ mood/ pov/ reaction see eg joy of research by Gilmore president of Sigma Xi
@vzn The joy of discovery is in no way inconsistent with the frustration of hard work.
& as in your final words/bottom line "but your head will still hurt..." :p
So much of this advice applies to my current tryst with preparation for going to the Indian Institute of Technology/IIT. Thank you so much for this answer :)
I could be wrong, but I don't feel that this is a proper instance of imposter syndrome. The fact is, if I were smart enough to have figured something out that I have not yet figured out, I would be smarter. The way I understand it, imposter syndromer would be more like, "I've just tricked my way into this position and now that I can't figure this out, everyone's going to find out that I've actually been an idiot all this time."
This is an awesome answer, and a great analogy (and there aren't many things I like better than analogies :) ).
@user124384 I think "I've just tricked my way into this position and now that I can't figure this out, everyone's going to find out that I've actually been an idiot all this time." properly describes the instance here. The hypothetical person is in a particular position (in terms of professional distance, like having done a certain amount in his/her professional life), feeling that he/she has tricked his/her way into such position.
+1000 ... sometimes banging my head against one wall actually makes one of the other walls weaker...
This is the best answer I've ever read on any stack X site.
12 years on, I still periodically return to read this, thanks for writing such an insightful answer!
It definitely does not mean research isn't for you. Research is hard, and it takes some getting used to. Your experiences sound normal, and it will indeed get better.
Part of the problem is that it's tempting to focus too much on the destination: proving theorems, writing papers. These things happen only occasionally, and thinking about them (or their absence) too much is an easy way to become depressed. Instead, you want to reach the point of enjoying the journey itself. This takes some perspective and confidence, but it will come with time.
For example, imagine that one day you mention a difficulty you're having to your office mate, who tells you about a wonderful theorem that's relevant. If you're feeling insecure, this is awful: you think about the time you wasted not knowing about this theorem, and you worry that your office mate knew it and therefore you should have. On the other hand, if you're confident in yourself, then it feels great: you learned something beautiful that will help your research, and how can it be a bad day when you learned something like that? This confidence can take time to develop, but as you feel more relaxed and bolder, everything will become more enjoyable.
Another thing to keep in mind is that progress is difficult to measure when you don't know where you're going (which is what research is!). Grad students sometimes feel bad because they don't think they're en route to solving their thesis problems. Often they're right, but that's not a problem. If you knew in advance that you were going to solve it, then it wouldn't be research. The goal isn't to solve the problem you started with, and indeed you often won't. Instead, the goal is to find something exciting along the way. Once you're used to this, you can say to yourself, "OK, probably I'm not going to solve this problem, but it's worth a try, and in any case I'm sure that if I think hard enough about it, something interesting and worthwhile will come out of that work."
Basically, I think of this as a phase transition that happens in a certain point in one's development as a researcher. Before the transition, you think "Oh no, there's so much to learn. How can I ever learn enough to be a good researcher?" Afterwards, you think "Well, I don't know that much in the overall scheme of things, but I seem to be doing research anyway. And I'm so glad there's a lifetime supply of great mathematics to learn, so I'll never be bored." The key is to relax and trust that everything will work out, even when it feels overwhelming.
I know this is easier said than done, and I struggled with it myself. For years, I felt like I wasn't a real mathematician, and I would tell myself I would be one if only I could accomplish some goal: publishing a paper, learning some difficult topic, publishing a paper I was proud of, getting a job, etc. However, it was never enough. I thought the end game was deciding I was a real mathematician, but it turns out it's developing the confidence not to worry about this, and I've been much happier since that point.
Developing confidence is so huge. And you won't get it all at once. Some days I have great confidence and research is grand. Other days (or even just other times in those same days) my confidence wavers and it's easy to get depressed for a while. I try to monitor my own thoughts (self talk) and correct it when it becomes less confident. As Anonymous Mathematician said, staying confident is so much easier when you step back from the goal of proving that next theorem or publishing that next paper, and simply enjoy all the beautiful math you get to learn.
Since originally asking this question, whenever I feel discouraged about research I come back to this thread to read the different answers, and in particular this one. What you mention in your last paragraph (about not feeling like a 'real' mathematician despite milestones which sure sound like success on paper) has always worried me, and the fact that it can get better keeps me going. Thank you so much for this insightful answer.
@AruRay, I continually do likewise. This thread has been one of my life-savers.
It’s been 12 years since I asked this question - I had just begun to do research back then, and last year I got tenure, so it’s safe to say a lot has changed. This answer still resonates with me so much though. On most days I’ve learned not to worry too much, on the other days I tend to come here to read this answer :)
Does it get better with time and experience?
sort of, in that you become smart enough to realize that there ISN'T anyone smarter who would have figured it out in a couple of minutes :)
Is this a sign that research is not for me and that I should
seriously consider a life outside academia?
Certainly not !
Research is hard work. You're on the cutting edge, charting territory no one has explored before. It takes courage, persistence, energy and a VERY THICK SKIN for rejection. After all, (and this pertains to CS), probably 95% of your job applications will be turned down, 75% of your papers will be rejected the first time, a grant proposal has a 1 in 10 change of succeeding.
But it's the small sublime moments of joy when you realize that you've discovered something that no one else knows that make it fun. And the feeling, as time goes on, that you're immersed in a wonderful lake of , with beautiful new ideas around you as far as you can see.
p.s the advice you were given is very sound. Take breaks, find fulfilling things to do outside of work, and realize that everyone (even seasoned researchers) feel the same frustrations and highs that you do.
Well, there are people who are smarter that could have figured it out in a couple of minutes, but since they are not working on your project it wouldn't matter much anyway :)
@MichaelLai and conversely, those people that could figure out your problem in minutes might themselves be working on a project for a long time that YOU could have figured out much faster. Everyone has different strengths, and whether or not you already have the knowledge to solve a problem might just boil down to luck.
I love the answers above, but here's another possible bit of advice: find ways to work with others.
Research on your own can be isolating. Working with other graduate students can make the process much more enjoyable. Staring at a problem on your own is both less fun and generally less productive than trying to work through it with a colleague. Synergy happens. Two brains isn't just better than one; it's better than two brains working separately.
In graduate school there's an artificial sense that you should be working on your own to get "your" PhD for "your" work on "your" problem. This mindset is counterproductive, but it may be unavoidable depending on your field and school. If you have to keep some problems to work on on your own, but then find one or two problems to work on with your officemates or others. Once you're done with graduate school, the artificial "work on your own" constraints will start to disappear.
Your situation was once mine. I suffered through the challenge of having a project that just wasn't working, while at the same time both of my advisors happened to be on sabbatical. Adding to the indignity, it was a theoretical/modeling project, which meant that the failure wasn't because some experimental device wasn't working, but because I simply wasn't clever enough. If I were, of course I'd see exactly what's wrong, and figure out what's going on! And, to make the pressure worse, I found out that the next semester, I'd be responsible for giving the very first departmental seminar among the graduate students in my class. So, yeah, it was a bit of a perfect storm brewing there.
Ultimately, though, the "Eureka!" moment did come—I was literally walking around campus when the idea struck. And, the next time my advisors were back (a few weeks later), I had a working prototype simulation to show them!
What am I trying to say? Well, a few things:
Don't give up. The course of true research never did run smooth.
Failure is normal—and even to be expected. Just about nothing works exactly as you predicted it would. More importantly, if something doesn't go wrong, then your project has been badly designed, and in fact, I would argue that you're only doing development, not research!
Don't be afraid to fail! Failure teaches you lessons that you will never learn from success. I needed a few really abysmal grades in college to get me on the right track—the proverbial kick in the pants that allowed me to realize I couldn't coast through college the way I did through high school.
I was literally walking around campus when the idea struck. -- Carry around a small notepad and a pencil in your pocket, for just such occasions.
That last bullet point defines my transition from under-grad to post-grad life.
@JonathanLandrum How about recording yourself with the phone?
I have a perhaps different view, I guess, from most people here...hopefully my experience can be helpful.
Like Louiqa said, it is better to think about it now than later. And it is not about whether you are good in research, of whether you are smart enough (don’t underestimate yourself!). It could come down to what you see yourself doing in the future, perhaps in the next 5-10 years.
I used to be very sure that I wanted to be a researcher for the rest of my life. I did quite well, and actually went straight into a PhD program after undergrad. But I am a very project/task-oriented person (like to “complete” things) and I really enjoy talking to people about science - the basic science research work I did didn’t give me many of such opportunities (long hours at the bench not talking to anyone else). I also don't see myself becoming a post-doc and do more research work. It took me a while to realize that it is not just another PhD student day (and this happened after I passed my PhD qualifying exam with flying colours). I decided to wrap up my project and apply to graduate with a MSc instead.
After everyone went into shock, I freaked out for a week, and then started to look into my past experiences, trying to combine what I liked doing with what I had the skills for. I now work as a Communications Coordinator at a physics dept and I LOVE my job (despite occasionally hating the fact that I don’t have a PhD and cannot lead my own research project) I cannot be happier that I decided to do something else.
To be honest, everyone is different. Another friend of mine just finished PhD, and became a research scientist for a hospital and loves what she does now (she said she also had some really bad moments). In the end it comes down to you. My advice is to start looking at your plan for the next 5-10 years. Do you want to stay in research in academia (post-doc, faculty position, etc). Do you like teaching and inspiring students (teaching only positions?)? Do you want to go into industry? Perhaps you have other skills (a lot of what I do now depends on the soft skills I acquired during grad school, so still time well spent) that might lead to something that you want to do? What are the qualifications required for what you want to do? These are questions that you can ask yourself now, instead of later.
Good luck and I wish you the best!
(btw, a lot of the other advices you got here are also very good, and were found useful by my other PhD friends)
Can I ask you what exactly a Communications Coordinator do? I have googled but the results are not informative.
The fact is research is hard. It appears to consist primarily of
staring at a problem for days and days and days without getting
anywhere.
Here is what I found helpful in this regard: consider switching to a different style
of research. Instead of studying problems, study techniques. Avoid focusing on questions
like "Is X true?" Instead, focus on questions like
"No one seems to have observed that object X is as an instance of object of type Y. Does the available theory about objects of type Y say anything useful about X?"
"There seems to be a parallel between techniques used to prove statements of type U and statements of type V. How deep does the parallel go?"
"Objects A and B appear to both satisfy property Z. Can we prove a general theorem about when property Z is satisfied? What are the really important parts in the proofs that A and B satisfy Z? "
I don't mean my advice to apply generally - this is only my personal experience. I found working on questions of the type "Is X true?" to be very frustrating - immensely rewarding if I succeeded in resolving them, but they felt like banging my head against the wall most of the time. When I changed my research style to study techniques, there was a lot less blank staring involved and research became more fun.
I love the answers here, and I just want to add that I find the following things helpful.
Read the literature. You can get a lot of good ideas from seeing how other people have solved similar problems before. (It's also rather frustrating to have your manuscript rejected by a journal because you didn't do enough reading. It's better for you to find these things out on your own.)
A related point is that learning the vocabulary in another discipline may show you that your problem was actually already solved, but other researchers just called it something else.
Describe your problems to a colleague. Just restating the problem to a third party can help you to see something new. ("Confessional debugging").
Find something bigger to procrastinate on. You can fool yourself into working on an unpleasant task A if you feel like you're avoiding a harder task B.
YMMV because my research is engineering, not math. Good luck!
Edit: I forgot to say that for a short term boost of morale, consider reading all of the Phdcomics. They're funny, cathartic, and painfully true. If you like posting to a forum to complain about the problems in academia, The Chronicle of Higher Education will show you that you're not alone at all. Finally, if you want proof that your problems have occurred before, The NIH Catalyst goes all the way back to 1994 with hilarious comics about the types of people in academia.
Your last point is John Perry's “Theory of Structured Procrastination”, I have found it useful.
The research experience varies considerably across disciplines. I hold appointments in a computer science department and a business school and also collaborate with biologists and medical researchers. In some disciplines you are expected to work solo but in other domains, collaboration and working with a team is encouraged. The depth of the problem being addressed also varies widely. Plant biologists may spend years working on a specific gene and I believe this is true for mathematicians as well. The pace is much faster in computer science and in business schools breadth and applicability to the real world is often favored over deep thoughts.
It is good that you are asking these questions now. I have seen many faculty asking these questions long after they have received tenure and realizing that research is not for them.
Keep in mind that a doctoral degree does open many doors beyond research and that the skills that you have required (logical thinking, formal reasoning) apply widely.
All researchers-in-training must constantly grapple with:
Uncertainty – You have no idea whether the hard work you are putting into your project even matters.
Isolation – Nobody around you understands or empathizes with what you are doing, since they either lack technical context or are too busy with their own creative struggles.
If you can properly manage these two emotions and make consistent forward progress every single day, get private feedback from a mentor every week or two, and get external feedback from paper submissions a few times per year, then you can successfully finish your Ph.D.
The bad news is that it's impossible to fully eliminate uncertainty and isolation when doing research. But if it's any consolation, recognize that these feelings are completely normal; all of your fellow grad students are facing them as well.
Additionally, you have to deal with discouragement. The very fact that there are others like you can be encouraging.
If at any time you feel
You are not understanding what supervisor is saying.
You are not on the right path.
Your colleagues are performing better than you.
Only you don't understand a thing and lagging behind in deadlines.
Your supervisor is not happy with your work.
Your advisor is rude to you but you saw him laughing with another student.
Your work seems easy but others' work is very impressive.
You just want to quit.
You can't quit because of social pressure.
You just wanna go with flow.
Any symptoms like above mean you are doing PhD and almost every student get such mood swings any time. I almost gone through all but when I talked with my colleagues they were thinking exactly like me, some even saying my work is very nice and their work is easy etc... So don't worry just work and read.
Obviously research is difficult but the gratification, though not instant, is worth the effort in the end. Problem solving requires you to bang your head on the proverbial wall. You have to experience failure because working through an obstacle builds resilience. Resiliency stems from your beliefs & attitudes about yourself and your experiences.
Does it get better with time and experience?
Yes, it does. You learn how to cope with not finding the answer. You will also stretch your brain to find other ways of arriving to the answer. As you progress in your career & continue to build your knowledge base you will have more information to pull from when you get "stuck."
Is this a sign that research is not for me and that I should seriously consider a life outside academia?
I would advise exploring other options not because "research is not for you" but because it is necessary to see what life is like in the industry. Then after having experienced both you can make an educated decision. Furthermore, nothing is set in stone. You could start in academia and then move to industry or the reverse.
A duplicate question directed me here. My answer adds another piece of evidence that doing research (in mathematics) can be a drag and it is normal. I've recently read the preface to the textbook "All the Mathematics You Missed: But Need to Know for Graduate School" by Professor Thomas A. Garrity. I recommend reading the entire thing, but in particular, these few sentences made it clear to me that struggling is part of the journey for everyone:
Math is Hard. Unfortunately, people are just not that good at
mathematics. While intensely enjoyable, it also requires hard work and
self-discipline. I know of no serious mathematician who finds math
easy. In fact, most, after a few beers, will confess how stupid and
slow they are. This is one of the personal hurdles that a beginning
graduate student must face, namely how to deal with the profundity of
mathematics in stark comparison to our own shallow understandings of
mathematics.
(...)
Mathematics is exciting, though. The frustrations should more than be
compensated for by the thrills of learning and eventually creating
(or discovering) new mathematics. That is, after all, the main goal
for attending graduate school, to become a research mathematician. As
with all creative endeavors, there will be emotional highs and lows.
Only jobs that are routine and boring will not have these peaks and
valleys. Part of the difficulty of graduate school is learning how to
deal with the low times.
Thomas A. Garrity - All the Mathematics You Missed: But Need to Know for Graduate School
Does the book provide strategies to deal with the low times? It would be useful to outline them in the answer if that is the case.
It's very hard to quantify progress - in particular, there are too few tangible returns after too many hours worked.
This comes down to something called Delayed Gratification. Certain jobs, schools, activies, or frankly anything else, require different levels of Delayed Gratification. For example, at the lower levels, there is the Marshmellow Test. In the middle there are things like studying instead of having fun with your friends. And on top there is college and graduate school. I once heard the following saying, "The Greatest Test Of Delayed Gratification Is Graduate School" or something similar. You clearly have a bunch of it, as you are most likely in a good graduate school and have survived high school and college with good grades. Researching can be one of the things that takes the most. This is a life skill, so try to work on that too. Research will get easier because you'll get better at this - but it will never be easy. If you go into mathematical research then easy discoveries are not what's in store for you - ever.
As to the quantifying progress - Don't try. Also, instead of looking at it as a step function, even if it may be, instead assume you are making progress all the time. And I think you really are. Every path you go down is progress - You've now ruled something out or discovered something. This a tangable return.
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150165 | At American colleges, are student evaluations of teaching subject to code of conduct?
It is well-known that student evaluations of teaching tend to be spiced with language that is insulting, sexually harassing, sexist, or racist.
Most American colleges have a code of conduct that is would disprove such remarks if they were face-to-face or anonymous writings on the wall.
Does that code of conduct apply to student evaluations of teaching at American colleges, or are they considered exceptions? These course evaluations are largely anonymous, which is why students feel enabled to engage in speech they usually wouldn't utter. But this occurs via university media, not somewhere out in the streets or the dark web.
Does this answer your question? How can I address a student systematically boosting their grades by filing frivolous complaints?
No, not at all. That question is about a completely unrelated matter.
I suspect every college has its own policy, so we won't be able to give a general answer.
"It is well-known that student evaluations of teaching tend to be spiced with language that is insulting, sexually harassing, sexist, or racist." Strong introduction there, totally not leading the question. I am not sure where you are teaching but if that is your experience, damn....
A possible mitigation for this issue would be adding a profanity filter to the online feedback system.
Can you say how this is well-known?
Yes, they are subject to the code of conduct. However, they are usually anonymous, so there is no means of enforcement.
As far as I know, when those evaluations are submitted online, then there are records of who submitted them. Furthermore, if a University institution relays such comments, aren't they violating the code of conduct themselves?
@Ambicion so anonymous is not relevant - if you promise students the evaluations are anonymous should you keep your word? Surely that comes under “ethical” or does that not count for you?
@SolarMike Veiled accusations are not called for.
@AnonymousPhysicist afaik these evalutaions are given by students as they are told that they are anonymous... is there a different meaning somewhere then?
@SolarMike: that counts as balancing competing values. While keep the promise of anonymity is a value, the ethics is not as clear cut.
@Ambicion so you make it clear to the students that the survey is no longer anonymous? If you don’t then that must be unethical. Calling it a balance of values seems weasely words...
@SolarMike You said "Surely that comes under “ethical” or does that not count for you?" This implies "I think you do not care about ethics." which is inappropriate. Also, your suggested duplicate is inappropriate.
@AnonymousPhysicist the answers in that duplicate do discuss the code of conduct from a couple of directions.
@SolarMike Mark duplicates based on the question, not the answers.
@AnonymousPhysicist then read the answers - may be there is useful information...
Could we please move the discussion about the duplicate question to the comment thread where it belongs?
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147187 | Efficiency techniques for recording screencast lectures
I use notetaking software on my tablet to write lecture notes, and then I record myself reading and explaining my lecture notes. I use those recordings as teaching.
However, I find it very time consuming to produce good videos that way. I do not enter the same 'engaging' mode as when standing between an audience and a huge black board. I frequently get muddled, forget what I want to say, and falter.
I usually edit those videos but I believe it must be possible to deliver videos with a presentable performance right from the get go.
Recorded lectures only seem harder because you are listening to yourself afterwards. I think if you never listened to them or thought about listening to them you would not notice the difference. Listening to yourself or watching yourself perform is always painful because it's never as good as the imagination.
I recommend limiting your lectures to three minutes. That might seem extreme, but it's what I was taught by several experts and in my experience it works. Several reasons:
Shorter recordings are less likely to have serious mistakes, so less gets discarded
A normal student's attention span is 3-5 minutes. If you lecture longer than that, they can't pay attention. Target your lectures to less than the attention span, because they tend to turn out longer than planned.
Faculty attention spans are not much longer than students'.
Separate your lectures with activities.
Also, during a crisis isn't the time to do a perfect job.
"Also, during a crisis isn't the time to do a perfect job." Just for comparison: A bunch of my lecturers only update their scripts and expect us to work through it by ourselves. The lecturers which actually try, are already great :D
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91019 | Do advisors typically fund travel for PhD students in non-conference settings (e.g., university seminars, industry meetings, etc.)?
Do advisors typically fund PhD students for travel to events other than academic conferences? Examples include:
Seminars at other universities so the student can promote their
research
A Technical Program Committee (TPC) meeting
An industry conference where the student hasn't published anything but is there to promote their work in a talk or demo
These events are not directly related to the bottom line of publishing papers, but are helpful for the overall career of the students.
If you're in a discipline which involves fieldwork, they certainly ought to... :-)
Depends on the funding. I was lucky and had enough to get paid for everything PhD related. Some of my co-students did not have as good project-funding as I had and needed to make the choice of going+paying or missing it.
All work related travel that has been assigned to you by your advisor should be funded. That's a general rule (also outside academia, at least in Germany).
You may also ask your advisor if they'll refund travel costs for the things you mentioned. In this case your advisor may ask you to check for other funding resources (travel grants for conferences, possible refunding by the university that invited you…). More concretely for your examples:
Seminars at other universities: If you are invited to give a talk but the other university is not funding you, then I'd hope yes but no for just attending that seminar.
A Technical Program Committee (TPC) meeting: If you are a member of the TPC then yes (however, for the TPCs I know, the member usually have their own funding).
An industry conference where the student hasn't published anything but is there to promote their work in a talk or demo: If you have a talk or official demo at the conference then I'd say yes, if you only want to go there networking then generally no (unless there are some funds that are going to expire).
The only thing that I 100% agree with in this answer is the part that if your advisor "asks" you to go you should expect funding. In all other cases, the answer is always "it depends on how much money there is, how conservative your advisor is with fund usage, and how well you sell it to her/him".
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36667 | What makes a publication (or a publishing forum) academically acceptable for inclusion in a literature review?
I'm in the process of conducting a systematic literature review and an integral part of this is the definition of inclusion and exclusion criteria for filtering the search-result-publications.
A common criteria for these reviews is that the publication is an academic publication or otherwise academically acceptable. I haven't been able to find a proper definition for this. The ones that I can think of are that the publication fora must exercise peer-review on the papers and that the fora are widely accepted by (inter)national funding agencies.
Hence, my question is what makes a publication or a publishing forum academically acceptable?
Where do you conduct your search? If you only do it on SCOPUS or Web of Science, you should already be partway there, since these already pre-filter academic publications. (And you will still need to read the publications themselves and judge their quality.)
@StephanKolassa we work on a rather new software engineering concept and as such we'd like to consider all possible databases in order to capture all research in the area. For us this means expanding from SCOPUS and WoS to e.g. Engineering Village and even Google Scholar
Acceptability is in the eye of the beholder. You cannot get this "right" for two reasons:
Different scientific communities have conflicting opinions about about the credibility of various publication venues.
Even "good" venues publish rubbish papers.
Some important papers are published as white papers or technical reports, and will not appear on any list of journals.
To my eyes, the real question is not about what the "right" value is, but about how the boundary that you draw will affect the conclusions of your systematic review.
For example, if you are attempting to perform a meta-analysis on the data within other data sets, then you just need a wide enough scope to be sure to get good statistical validity. Therefore, if your topic is well-studied, you can probably restrict yourself to only those publications listed in some field-appropriate major database, e.g., PubMed for biomedical literature, DBLP for computer science. It doesn't really matter which one, because you're not actually going for comprehensiveness, just for sufficient sampling, and it's more important to get well-curated data than all data. Moreover, the bad publications in the dataset are expected to be drowned out be the good ones in your data processing.
On the other hand, if you are attempting to summarize all of the credible thinking regarding a topic, then you would want to set a much broader criteria, e.g., any journal or conference with at least 5 years of publication history and not on Beale's list. In this case, you can be so generous because you are going to be using a lot more personal discretion in deciding how much weight to give each paper and interesting thinking may turn up in obscure places.
These are the two main cases that I typically see for systematic review; for other cases, you may need to adjust or pick other strategies. In all cases, however, the guiding principle is a) there is no "right" answer, and b) your choice should be driven by the effects it will have on your review.
@jakebeal while I now understand that selection of these criteria is very context and research goal specific, I think rules like "5 years of active publication history" and "not on Beale's list" are very good general candidates. Thank you
@Davidmh Right you are - I've incorporated this point into the answer.
2a. ...and even "rubbish" venues publish good papers.
The link to Beale's list is not working anymore, is there another alternative somewhere? (and thank you for your great answer!)
@Emilie Unfortunately, I have not yet found a good replacement.
I am afraid this is an impossible question to get right: An "acceptable academic publishing forum" would be one that is accepted by "acceptable academics" - and "acceptable academics" would be identified by publishing in "acceptable academic publishing fora"...
Peer-reviewed is not a bad criterion, but it falls short: There are peer-reviewed journals for creationists and homeopaths - so the value of peer-review depends crucially on who the peers are. It doesn't even work as a necessary criterion, as missing the arXiv for math-y fields or books for humanities would mean that a literature review is very incomplete.
"Acceptance by funding bodies" gets the question backwards: Funding bodies try to approximate what the academic community considers good publication venues, they don't define it.
If formal inclusion/exclusion criteria are important for you (maybe because you do some meta-statistics?), you will need to look for field-specific standards. In medical subjects, I could imagine that "listed on pubmed" would be an acceptable one. In this case, looking are published meta-studies and their criteria would be useful.
In relation to peer-review, there is also the difference of stating that peer-review is conducted and actually doing proper peer-review. Most fake, predatory journals claim that they do peer-review. So this criteria might be clear-cut in theory but harder to apply in practice (especially during a literature search)
so it is a question of what are the generally applied and hence accepted criterion for one's specific field of research?
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46926 | Can I patent a model that I described in a paper or that I adapted from a model proposed by someone else? Is a patent more prestigious than a paper?
Academic papers in engineering sometimes propose a new model to tackle prior difficulties. These proposed models are not usually patented. For example in experimental papers and many power electronic papers, the models are fully available.
I have a published work that proposes a new model, but it is pure computer simulation and math.
So, my questions:
Can I patent my own published paper?
Can I use others' paper and patent their idea? (specifically
experimental for papers)
If the answer of 1 or 2 is not, how many modifications do I need to
apply in my model be able to patent it?
If I have an original idea to propose a new model, what should I do then: A patent or good rank ISI paper?
My understanding is, the fact that it is published means that it cannot be patented, even if it is your idea.
Thanks. How much modification do i need to apply in order to patent it? @DaveClarke
I don't know. The patent office will decide.
Thanks, If I have an original idea to propose a new model, what should I do then? A patent or good rank ISI paper? @DaveClarke
Note that the motivation for publication and for patenting differ: one is to share knowledge freely, for the betterment of humankind; the other is to make a buck usually of some insignificant idea, without going through the effort of building a proper business idea, though also for protecting actual business intellectual property.
If my objective is to have a better reputation and resume as a graduted M.Sc who would like to achieve a good scholarship for studying PhD abroad, what would you propose? (Note: I have 2 good rank ISI paper already) @DaveClarke
If you want to study a PhD abroad, then publications are more important. Writing patents that essentially steal someone else's idea is pretty dubious.
Good to know, thanks. Besides, I cannot steal from myself lol. @DaveClarke
Trying to patent someone's published idea isn't going to get too far, or should the patent office not do their job, it would not withstand any scrutiny in the patent courts. It is also bad form...
@Jamaisavenir Also bear in mind that filing and maintaining a patent costs money, and if you aren't making money off the patent (by exploiting or licensing it) then it is a complete waste.
If I have an original idea to propose a new model, what should I do then: A patent or good rank ISI paper?
It depends on your objectives.
If you want to make money from your model: Get a patent.
If you want to earn academic reputation: Publish a paper.
In many cases, it's actually possible to do both - assuming your "model" can be patented at all. However, note that patent fees can be quite expensive, and it is usually only worth paying if you really aim to make money from it. The academic reputation gain from a patent is mostly marginal.
The academic reputation gain from a patent is mostly marginal. Good to know. Thanks for your answer @silvado
You don't patent papers. You patent ideas.
You can't patent other people's published work because their published papers are clear evidence of prior art.
Why do you want to patent a computer model in the first place? Why do you want to restrict people's use of it? How lucrative will it be?
Do you think that publishing a paper for your model helps more than patenting it for your reputation? Please tell me your opinion for both academia and industry @curiousdannii
I don't think a patent alone means anything - there are plenty of examples of useless / bizarre patents out there.
Adding to the other fine answers:
It costs a considerable amount of money to file a patent.
Patents are written using very specific idiom and formulations. There are commercial bureaus that rewrite your idea into a proper patent proposal, but that also costs a serious amount of money.
You can find most patents through the world intellectual property organisation (WIPO): https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/search.jsf
. Have a look there and read some patents in your target domain, if you want to proceed.
Don't underestimate the impact of point 2. The language of patents merges technical jargon with legalese. I have trouble reviewing my own patent applications after they have been rewritten.
Im Not A Lawyer. Heres what I have found in my own experience.
First, this is very country specific. Both in terms of what is 'good' for reputation and what is allowed by the patent law.
In many countries, you can publish a paper and then patent the (or some of) idea within a certain time period, usually under 1 year, of course, it must be your paper.
As for modifications, that will be up to the evaluator. There are rules, novelty, innovative step, etc. You need to read your specific countries rules for what qualifies an idea to pass.
In some countries and research areas, patents are well regarded. For example, in parts of Asia, I have seen patents very admired as it helps research institutes make money that can be used outside of the normal grant allowances.
This all depends on your target audience. If you want to join the lab of someone who is very open-source minded, having a patent might be a turn off for them. If you join a lab that has many grants from industry, it is possible they like to have someone with experience in patents, which could lead to a better chance of getting industry funded projects if the company wants to work with people that can get patents from research funding (which can be shared IP or not, depending on location).
It is very good to know these information, thanks. I think I'm going to publish my model as only a paper like my other works. This is also easier for me as I don't need to implement my model and a computer simulation is okay. I was thinking that patent is a huge thing, but now i am convinced that papers are as (sometimes more) important as (than) patents @user1938107
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27198 | What to do when you publish a paper that accidentally included a wrong or irrelevant citation?
My paper was published and later on I found that two references were mistakenly included with the third reference, which is the correct.
My phrase looks like this:
I am worried about this (Smith 2001; David 2006; Magnus 2007)
and this is the correct form that it had to be:
I am worried about this (Smith 2001)
so the references "David 2006" and "Magnus 2007" have nothing to do with the cited phrase and they never did that work; and were not meant to be included but maybe it was a problem with reference management software that I used at the time.
I wonder if this will cause a problem to my paper or even plagiarism/retraction.
I am really worried about this and any advice is more than welcome.
Plagiarism is the use of another author's ideas or words without proper credit. You haven't done that, so there's no need to worry about it. Also, people don't retract papers over trivial editing errors like this.
However, since it's something that might be confusing to a reader, it may be worth asking the journal about printing a correction. Simply get in touch with the editor who originally handled your paper, or if they no longer work with the journal, contact the editor-in-chief. They would typically publish a one-sentence note in some future issue of the journal, stating that the references were included by mistake and should be ignored. Alternatively, they may decide the matter is too trivial to be worth the space to correct it.
Either way, you should post the correction on your web page, and any other place where the paper is publicly available (preprint servers, etc).
This is no big deal and happens all the time. Just get it fixed, move on, and be more careful next time.
+1 for correcting all online versions you have access to. This is often the version people find if they search on Google scholar, so fixing it there goes a long way.
Many thanks, what about the authors of the cited papers that I put them by mistake? Do I worry about them?
@Barry: No, I can't see that they've been harmed in any significant way.
Obviously it would have been better not to commit such a silly blunder in a published paper, but I don't think it matters much. Such errors, especially when accidental, will inevitably occur, much as typographic errors. A slight embarrassment to you, yes, as any typos or errors in formulas would be, but not truly "actionable" by anyone, so far as I know. So, bottom line, "forget about it".
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66009 | Is it normal for the manuscript submission date to change from the original submission date to the revisions submission date?
I submitted a paper to an ISI journal almost a year ago. The submission date of the manuscript was May 20, 2015. I received a referee report on January 15, 2016. The report was quite positive but asked for some major revision. I made all the required changes and submitted a revised version of the manuscript on March 10, 2016.
Ten days afterwards I received from the Editor a message that the manuscript would go into the refereeing process and Date received: March 10, 2016. Is it normal to change the initial submission date of the manuscript?
This is a little bit of a grey area: In some journals, if the editor feels that the revisions asked by the reviewers are major and would take a while, the editor will write something like "we cannot accept the paper at its current form, but after revising we invite you to resubmit the paper as a new manuscript". In this case you will get a new submission date.
In my field, for a time, a very brief time, the time between submission and publication was a factor for people when submitting to journals. Some journals the time between submission and publication was close to two years while for other, equally reputable, journals the time between submission to publication was less than 3 months.
When people started complaining about the time to publications, the slower journals began to cheat. The outcomes of the review process used to be Accept, Revise and Resubmit, and Reject. To "speed up" the process they changed "Revise and Resubmit" into "Reject and Resubmit". The resubmission was treated as a new revision, although you got the same reviewers, so the submission clock was reset. While this did nothing to speed up the process for authors, it reduced the time between submission and publication (it also made the journal look more selective). As I said, it is cheating.
In regards to if it matters, while it would be nice for authors to have access to meaningful statistics, it is not something the publisher needs to provide. Some might argue that "time stamping", but realistically, in fields where articles are infrequently published in the first journal they are submitted to, time stamping does not exist since I have never seen a time stamp based on the first journal an article is submitted to.
One thing to be concerned about when the submission date changes is if the process has gone awry. It is possible that the resubmission is being treated as a new submission and not a "Reject and Resubmit". If that is the case, then you may get a new batch of reviewers (and editor). Unfortunately, the way the automated systems work, sometimes it is difficult to tell what is going on. In these cases, a quick message to the editor is not out of place.
+1 It does matter, not only does it deceive potential authors about the likely review times it means that the author potentially loses priority on their discovery/method, which should depend on the date the paper was first sent to the journal. What happens if someone else beats you to publication because their paper was accepted after one round, even though they submitted it much later than you did?
@DikranMarsupial I am not really sure what priority is, so I asked here: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/66052/what-do-researchers-mean-by-the-priority-of-an-idea
Basically who is deemed to have discovered/invented something typically depends on who is first to publish (goes all the way back at least as far as the Newton-Leibnitz kerfuffle) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_priority
@DikranMarsupial sure, first to publish is not the same as first to submit (at least not in my field).
I think where the date of submission was given, that would be what defines priority (which is why it does matter, although I like Feynman's reported attitude ;o). The important thing is to be able to avoid accusations of plagiarism you want to be able to show when the paper was first submitted to a journal (it would be nice if there was a formal record where it is submitted to one journal and rejected before being accepted by another). Things like ArchivX help, but introduce other problems as well.
The current refereeing process is about the revised version of your manuscript that was submitted on March 10, 2016. This is why the editor message refers to this date and not on the initial date your first version of the paper was submitted.
But they have given a new registration number to the manuscript.
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148 | What is the difference between Ph. D programs with coursework and those without it?
I have been looking into PhD programs in the Engineering field, and I have found different types of programs, such as some with coursework, and others without any coursework.
What is the practical difference between them? (Besides the obvious coursework) What kind of student is expected for each of them?
EDIT: To be more specific, I have been looking into Robotics PhD programs, such as:
CMU Robotics PhD (Coursework + Research).
KCL Robotics PhD (Only research).
It might be great if you were more specific about which engineering fields you are talking about and/or including links to the different types of programs you've found...
@shan23 Done, see edited question.
It seems to me that there are several advantages; none of these are suitable for every student. It's up to you whether enough of them apply to you, to make it worth doing a taught PhD:
A PhD with a bit of coursework in the first year will help those who
are crossing over into a discipline that they're not already deeply
embedded in: it will give you some hand-holding through the things
you'll need to know but don't yet;
it should (if taught well) also teach you some extra research skills;
it will give you some indication as you progress as to how well you're doing, compared to how well you should be doing if you're going to finish
it will allow you to explore different aspects of the field, to help you finalise your thesis topic
it may, depending on the country and institution, give you an intermediate degree at the end of the taught section, such as an MRes, which will count for something even if you then don't go on to do the full PhD
it lessens the culture-shock for those going straight from fully-taught study to a research degree.
Also +1 for the culture shock. Very true. Describes my situation exactly.
Coming from industry + masters, I found the class requirements annoying as they got in the way of me doing research full time. We had 9 required courses and only 2 of them provided any real value to my research. The major unseen benefit of classes is that their difficulty pushed me to make friends "in the trenches" of group projects and assignments. These friendships lasted throughout the rest of my PhD.
One thing to keep in mind is that there are international differences as well. In Germany, for instance, doctoral programs almost never require coursework as part of the research program requirements (although it may be mandated for purposes off establishing degree equivalency, if you come from a foreign country or have a degree from another field). This is because it is assumed that you have taken all the necessary courses as part of your Master's program, which is considered the follow up to the bachelor's rather than the precursor to the doctorate.
The reverse is true in the US: I don't know of any PhD programs there that don't require courses, for the reverse reason.
Does this mean that non-coursework PhD programs require that students have previously finished a Masters degree?
In Germany, it does; however, for programs in other countries, you'll need to check the admissions policy of the individual programs. These are usually available on the Internet; if not, you can always send an email or call the personnel responsible for admissions.
Also, a coursework PhD program is very useful for someone (like me) who took a break from academia to work for a couple of years - it would be invaluable in refreshing those basics that have atrophied during the time spent at industry.
Sometimes, especially in the beginning, it is easier to measure course progress than research progress, and thus good for the self-esteem.
Being able to say "I've accomplished something this semester" is crucial.
Doesn't the extra workload from courses mean that to some extent, you will only get around to start concentrating on the research in year 2 and make comparably little research progress then?
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51 | Submitting the same research to multiple conferences
I'm aware that it's a violation of terms for most publishers to submit the same article to more than one journal, but I frequently see authors whose papers seem very similar, particularly papers released in a single year. In my field, neuroscience, this is particularly true about conference papers; one researcher will often have numerous posters/conference papers about seemingly the same topic. What are the guidelines for acceptability regarding this type of behavior?
"Same topic" does not imply "exactly the same results". This depends largely on which fields you're referring to: many journal papers in computer science would be redundant since they are journal versions of works published in the proceedings of an earlier conference. In mathematics, it's more common to talk about already published work at a conference, whereas in computer science we usually present new work. I'm sure other fields abound with their share of examples.
According to the Committee on Publication Ethics Guidelines on Good Publication Practice, the term "redundant publication" is defined this way:
"Redundant publication occurs when two or more papers, without full cross reference, share the same hypothesis, data, discussion points, or conclusions." In addition, it states: "(1) Published studies do not need to be repeated unless further confirmation is required. (2) Previous publication of an abstract during the proceedings of meetings does not preclude subsequent submission for publication, but full disclosure should be made at the time of submission. (3) Re-publication of a paper in another language is acceptable, provided that there is full and prominent disclosure of its original source at the time of submission. (4) At the time of submission, authors should disclose details of related papers, even if in a different language, and similar papers in press." Note that (2) states that it is generally acceptable to present a paper in a conference and then later publish exactly the same paper in a journal, as long
as you mention to the editor that the paper has been publicly presented.
According to the paper Science journal editors’ views on publication ethics:
Results of an international survey,
"Breaches of publication ethics such as plagiarism, data fabrication and redundant publication are recognised as forms of research misconduct that can undermine the scientific literature." It also stated that redundant publication is an unethical practice. Of 16 ethical issues studied, redundant publication had the highest severity (that is, it caused editors the most concern---more than plagiarism or data fabrication).
Rather than asking what's acceptable, I think it's worthwhile to step back and think about the purpose of scientific publication. Your goal in publishing should be to disseminate useful ideas, not to create a publication record. If you have ten papers that are all very similar, it's hard for people to learn about your ideas because they won't have time to read all those papers. Just write one good one.
While I fully agree with you, you clearly are not at a university whose administration is full of bean counters.
True. My university really values quality over quantity. The Provost recently advised us that it's better not to publish mediocre papers, even if the alternative is publishing less.
Alas, if only academia leaned toward quality, and not quantity!
Personally, I have no qualms with submitting the same talk to multiple conferences; however, in my field (Chemical Engineering), we don't really do conference proceedings. Therefore, it's not such a big deal to present a work more than once; it's being given to different audiences that might not otherwise see the work, and it's not going into the publication record multiple times, so there really aren't any ethical violations going on.
However, in a field where conference papers are required to give a talk, then ethical rules demand that you disclose if a paper has been accepted previously. If you've changed the material enough, or introduced enough new material, then it's a little bit more of a grey area. But it's still better to err on the side of caution than to get caught out.
Essentially the same here (chemist). Conference proceedings papers don't earn you anything in chemistry (they often take about everything, and some even try to force you to submit a proceedings paper instead of having peer review and accepting only good papers). Things are different if there's a special issue about a conference in a proper journal and has normal peer review. Consequently, that's where the field moves.
There are a few things to keep in mind:
Submitted talks vs. invited talks. Many researchers will have given many talks on a subject, but if most of them are invited talks, the reason they're duplicates is because conference organizers have essentially asked for duplicates.
I'd argue it isn't ethical to submit the same presentation, but a topic is a wide ranging thing. Heck, even a single study has a lot of aspects to it, and many conference presentations have less content than a single paper. For example, you might have a presentation at one conference that's highly technical, another for a different audience that's more practical/applied, etc. Those are different talks.
Consider what you want to get out of it. Unless your field is one of those where presentations trump papers or themselves generate papers (CS comes to mind), presentations aren't that big of a deal on a CV such that an extra one or two will really put you over the edge. In my field for example, everyone knows there's certain conferences that will essentially accept as many talks as they have spaces to fill (and they have many spaces to fill), so as long as your science isn't egregiously wrong, you're probably going to get in. What you do get out of that is good contacts, and good advice. If you keep repeating the same thing over and over, your return on "investment" starts to dive.
If your talk is going to be spun into a paper via conference proceedings or the like, be doubly cautious, and make sure if you are double-dipping in an experiment or the like that the resulting papers are clearly different as well. I don't know anyone who doesn't frown on duplicated papers, and more than one venue that will smack you down hard for trying to play a game like that.
Presentations do not trump papers in computer science; conference papers trump journal papers.
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365 | Is it worth to switch from Bibsonomy to Mendeley?
What are the advantages of Mendeley over Bibsonomy?
Is it easy to migrate from Bibsonomy to Mendeley?
Does Mendeley offer equally powerful bibliography exportation?
In detail, the following disadvantages of Bibsonomy are crucial for me:
you can not modify all your bibliographies at once, e.g. exchange in every URL field each # with \#
many references are not present, so I have to import the bibtex myself
search functionality could be better.
Does Mendeley solve these disadvantages?
See also http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/36/what-citation-manager-should-i-use
You ask two questions (Bibsonomy vs Mendeley and how to migrate from Bibsonomy to Mendeley) in one thread, which is not the best suited for SE.
Sorry about that. I thought all my questions were so closely related that I should ask them in one thread.
You shouldn't replace # with \# manually in the database in the first place. Use \usepackage{url}, and enclose urls in \url{} commands, which should handle special characters automatically.
@Federico Poloni: Thanks for your comment. My bibtex-style wraps \url{} around the URL bibtex field. I still have problems with #. The URL manual says that If the argument contains any “%”, “#” or “^^”, or ends with “\”, it can’t be used in the argument to another command.
That documentation seems to be outdated: the comments in url.sty (in version 3.3, 2006) say otherwise. I can confirm that urls containing # work out-of-the-box at least with my tex distribution. Do you have version 3.3 of url? Maybe we have a question for tex.stackexchange.com.
Yes, Mendeley does offer export - BibTex, RIS, and EndNote XML.
The search is pretty decent, though I often find I use Acrobat search instead - its word-stemming seems better.
Batch replacement is very weak - the only way to do it is to go into the database yourself and tweak it. Very unsatisfactory. There is some batch update, in that you can select several papers, and add the same metadata to all in one go: but that's not the same as a batch search & replace. The one batch search & replace it does do very well is that when you get two versions of an author's name, you can drag one name onto the other, and all the papers will get updated accordingly.
I've also found the technical support to be very slow, and often unsatisfactory.
The auto-grab of references from the web is patchy, and you may find you're often correcting it. Often, its guesses seem utterly bonkers, like it's just grabbed a few general words from the title, and gone off to find the closest match for those, in some subject that's completely alien to me.
The interface is klutzy, though I've yet to find a reference manager that had an interface I did like.
Earlier versions of Mendeley did occasionally corrupt the metadata, doing things like swapping round the lead and second author - unbelievably frustrating. This may have stopped now - I don't use Mendeley so much any more, because of this and other problems.
Mendeley does have its evangelists, and it seems to have been very slick at cultivating its fanbase - more resources seem to have been spent there than on the software. The feedback forum has now become pretty much unusable - there are plenty of important things in there that have been "planned" or awaiting assessment for 2 or 3 years.
I haven't got the chance to use Bibsonomy, since I use Mendeley since the beginning.
Concerning your questions:
You don't have to import bibtex files in Mendeley(although you can), you just simply drag and drop a pdf file to Mendeley, and Mendely will grab the title, user, publication details for you, which is the best thing about Mendeley.
Search function in Mendeley is quite satisfactory.
As for modification, I don't have the experience in doing that. Since Mendeley grab the things for you, I guess there is no need to do that.
Also after you registered in Mendely, your references will be uploaded to your account. So when you reinstall your system or something, all your references will come back.
Mendeley is quite great and has other great functions, totally worth trying!
I've got impression that Mendeley is pushing energy into something that is not the desktop software for sure. I had 2 years break from my sci efforts and after that period I've installed fresh new version of the desktop software and found few things:
my online cloud/repository was crashing desktop software immediately after start (after connection is made)
I've just created new username after realizing there is no way to reuse my old account (tried to delete all via web interface but no luck)
So the cloud argument: hm, proved not to be to reliable.
Then I noticed few bugs that blown my mind.
It was all fine before but now (LibreOffice plugin): you click "insert citation" it minimizes Mendeley Desktop (!?! yes, you are at LibreOffice but for no apparent reason, it minimizes the Mendeley Desktop even it is on the second screen), opens popup window within the LibreOffice where you have to know exactly what you want to cite - but, your cursor is not refocused to the input field (HA!). You say: ok, let's see what I was about to cite: you open Mendeley from the task bar and then: HA! the popup window is gone! Then you click "insert citation" again - and guess what: it does the same thing, with the windows again!
So, you might thought that multi-display environment is common in scientific community - but no, you're wrong: apparently 99% of Mendeley users have single screen and find this show&hide game amusing. At least, such impression I've got from low votes on this issue on their support/suggestion issue rank list.
I'm still using the Mendeley because I'm so used to. But if you're a new user, having a learning/adaptation curve to pass anyway: try something else first.
Mendeley does have very good auto-discovery solution for any PDF you put in watched folder(s). Few fantastic features it has, in that direction like auto online search for more data for existing entry. But then some really stupid bugs make you crazy: like you manually edit a field, then open another entry and come back to the edited one: HA! you see the old data, the update you just typed in vanished. I'm still trying to understand a pattern there: because it's like every 4th modification is just ignored, at least in my case.
To me it seems they have to stop with development of new features and go back to fix the stuff that was fine before, but suddenly became buggy for no reason. I wish it is an open source project so I can jump into the code and disable this "now you see me, now you don't" game of the windows. It kills me.
(this is comment, not answer)
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389 | Is there a generally accepted format for submitting papers to journals?
I believe in Mathematics and Computer Science journals usually accept LaTeX documents. In fact, the AMS has a number of packages and document classes for just this purpose.
What about other disciplines? I'm not particularly familiar with the humanities. Would a Microsoft Word document be unacceptable?
Does it vary from subject to subject, or even journal to journal?
In jest, all journals I know of still take physical paper copies through the mail. That is about the only similarity between journals though even in just my field (either in file types allowed or formatting of the content)!
The policies vary entirely from journal to journal about what is considered acceptable. APS journals, for instance, will accept both MS Word-based documents as well as documents formatted with RevTeX, their modified template system. ACS journals and a number of other publishers also offer their own LaTeX- and Word-specific templates for authors to use. Whether the use of the template is required or merely recommended is also a function of the journal. So, as a general rule, you should always check the homepage of a journal before you start preparing an article for submission to that journal.
To some extent, I prefer working with LaTeX in preparing manuscripts, for the simple reason that their plain-text document format makes it a lot less painful to switch back and forth between different templates, compared to a word-processing format like Word or LibreOffice or Pages.
It does indeed vary from subject to subject, and journal to journal. I once got in a short argument with some math students who had asserted "If its going to be published, it needs to be in LaTeX", a disagreement that only ended when I went and found some submission guidelines. For three fairly good journals in my field (Epidemiology), you have some considerable differences.
American Journal of Epidemiology wants everything in either Word or PDF format - LaTeX documents are compatible with this, but its certainly not doing anyone any favors in terms of already being formatted. Epidemiology will accept LaTeX documents, but warns that the odds of typesetting and other erros increases in formats besides Word. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology only requires that an editable version be available.
So the de-facto standard in my field is Word, though of course there are ways around that. And then, as mentioned, there are formatting issues beyond just "what's the file extension?" How references, the text, and figures are reported - must odds ratios be graphed on a log scale or not?. How p-values are treated. What format graphics are allowed to be in, etc. As Fabian said, submitting to a new journal often involves combing through the same content to subtly tweak formatting.
This varies a lot between journals, and probably even more between different disciplines. In the life sciences Latex is rather rare, MS Word seems to me to be the most common format in my subjective observation.
But the actual document format, be it Latex or Word, is only part of the difference between journals. The exact rules on how to format a paper vary so much that you'll have to put significant effort into adapting the same manuscript for different journals anyway. Check out the Author submission guidelines for Nature or those from JACS as an example. They often regulate details like how the axis labelling in graphs has to look like. The journals also often have different length requirements, so you might have to shorten your manuscript if you decide to switch to a different journal.
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3695 | How to find all of the responses to a published research paper?
While searching through various journals with my library's on-line journal search tools, I have occasionally found short articles which are simply comments on other published papers. These short articles might have various kinds of comments, but generally describe why the first paper's research or theories are flawed. In addition, sometimes I have found replies from the original author of the first paper, responding to these comments, for e.g., to clarify the meaning or perhaps to give further support to their original arguments.
Do such exchanges generally only occur within the same journal, i.e. the responses are published in the same journal, or can these occur across journals?
Are there any special tools to assist with locating all of these "replies"?
First, it may depend on your field, but at least in mine (physics and chemistry), it is rare for papers to generate comments or replies, and really extraordinary for a paper to be followed by multiple comments. (The editor usually lets the original authors reply to the comment, however.)
Some publishers provide links to the comments and replies on the webpage for the original paper. Otherwise, you can locate those comments using the following criteria:
they are published in the same journal, or in a preprint server (like arxiv)
their title includes “comment on” or “reply to” (or other such publisher-dependent prefix that you need to identify)
Finally, you should get the list of all newer papers citing the original paper, and check them out. If you're investigating a paper in depth, you’ll do that anyway :)
At least in Theoretical Physics, there are also sometimes errata fixing mathematical mishaps that are more than mere sign errors... Depending on the journal, these are often directly linked to at the paper's online presence, if they are not even included in a re-publication
In pure math, a good paper may be cited only 10 to 20 times. An excellent paper may be cited only a 100 times or fewer. As a result, it's fairly quick to skim the titles and abstracts of all newer papers that cite a given paper. This is easy using MathSciNet. I think Web of Science provides similar functionality for other fields.
I think that answer missed the question.
The point of the answer is that you don't need any special tools. It's fairly quick to do manually, given that you have access to a decent citation database. To say it another way, the best tool is a good citation database.
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3711 | Can "Feel free to contact me if you are interested in a copy of any of my publications." cause legal issues?
I know that some journals allow public archiving of publications (making them available for download) on a researcher's personal website. Some of these journals (at least in my field), however, constrict this right by saying that it is only allowed to public archive after one year following publication. EDIT: My question is concerned with the time frame of this first year or with the situation where journals do not allow public archiving.
To make a publication available to an interested reader, who is unable to obtain the article from the publisher due to institutional subscription policies, does one risk any legal problems on putting the following sentence on his/her website:
Feel free to contact me if you are interested in a copy of any of my publications.
Oh, probably. Feel free to contact me anyway.
A related question I recently posted on [law.SE]
This will likely vary from journal to journal, but the information should be available in the "authors" section on a journal's webpage. For example, Science provides the document "License to Publish—Information for Authors" document, which clearly states:
Once the Work has been published in Science and provided the Work's first appearance in Science is properly cited, authors may:
...
Distribute photocopies of the Work to colleagues for non-commercial purposes only (providing that recipients are informed that they may not further distribute or copy the Work). Authors may distribute photocopies or download and email the Science PDF to their colleagues for their colleagues' personal use provided the recipients understand that the copy may not be further distributed or reproduced without the approval of AAAS.
This license would allow what you described, as it's non-commercial.
The link is broken. The 2023 version of the docoument is not as clear about emailing PDFs, highlighting that policies can change also with time. (I don't think an edit to the answer is necessary; it still provides a good historical example.)
Thanks for highlighting. Old article is here: https://web.archive.org/web/20130626075506/http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/lic_info.pdf
With respect to the specific question of writing such a statement, there is no implication of an agreement that sending you an email will automatically lead to receiving a copy of the publication. If there are specific restraints on your distribution of preprints, then you can explain those limitations when a preprint is not available.
Alternatively, you could indicate which papers are "embargoed," and include a statement that says: "Except where noted, preprints are available by contacting the author," or something to that effect.
Short answer:
So far, I did not see a copyright transfer agreement, which did forbid an author to distribute pre-prints for his/her personal use by e-mail, or in a printed form.
Long answer:
The answer always depends on the particular publication. Whenever you submit your camera-ready copy, you usually also submit a signed copyright transfer agreement, or a document similar to it. Therein, you always have listed which rights to the work in question you are transfering to the publisher and which remain with you. Usually, in my field (CS/AI), there is a section on "Returned rights" where is explicitly stated what (publishing a preprint, distribution to colleagues, figure re-use, etc.) and how the author can, or cannot do it (obligation to include a copyright statement, etc.). Since your question is of a legal nature, I suggest contacting the publisher of the work in question and simply ask whether what you want to do is in line with copyright agreement you, or some of your co-authors signed, or whether you need to handle it differently. But before that, take a look on that publisher's website, all the major ones have these policies quite explicitly, and often including FAQs and other guidelines, listed on their websites.
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2017 | Should writers give credit to reference librarians?
The reference librarians at my school are often very helpful. If I tell them my topic, they will help me find many resources which I might not have otherwise found and generally tend to save me a lot of time. Is it common practice to credit them in someway, especially when publishing a paper? If so, what is the common format?
Yes, the acknowledgements section of your paper is an appropriate place to thank anyone who provided valuable assistance. Depending on the circumstances, you could phrase it pretty generally ("I thank the reference librarians at University X for their assistance in conducting a literature search"), you could thank specific people, or you could even identify particular contributions ("I am grateful to Y for bringing the literature on Z to my attention").
Yes, the acknowledgements section would be the place to acknowledge the hard work librarians do, especially the subject librarian tasked with your field of study, or, any other librarian who you'd like to acknowledge. And, as a librarian (although not a reference librarian), I thank you for recognizing the hard work of your campus' librarians!
In general, I tend to give acknowledgments quite liberally. In particular, if anyone spent more than 3 or 4 hours doing anything that helped improve the paper, I like to thank them by name. I see it as a no-lose decision. It really doesn't cost you anything to acknowledge someone (none of your readers will think less of you or your paper), and I know that I always appreciate being acknowledged (so I assume that most others do to).
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1240 | Should I Cite a Journal's Page Number, or an Article's?
When I'm citing a page in a journal, and the article has an independent page numbering system, should I cite the page number of the journal or the article?
Each journal has it's own rules. Look for the Author's guide for your specific journal. If nothing is mentioned - look at previous published articles in that journal to see what is common.
Beyond each journal having it's own rules, different bibliographic styles have different generic rules. For example, the Chicago Manual of Style generally wants all references to cite specific individual pages referenced. Similarly, APA style wants you to include or not include volume numbers based on if journal uses continuous pagination.
Both! Easy enough to give both... no downside. Just be honest, straightforward! :)
I'm not certain what you mean by an article with an independent page numbering system, but I assume you mean the following. The published journal article is, say, on pages 25-48 of the journal, but there is also a preprint available online with different formatting, and it is numbered from 1-23. Not only the page divisions, but even the number of pages differ, so there's no easy way to transfer a reference between these numberings except approximately.
The most important rule is to be clear and correct: you should leave no doubt or ambiguity about which numbering system you are using. If you cite only one version of the paper, then you should use the same numbering used there. If you cite several versions, then you need to make sure your references are clear.
The second rule is that you should focus on the "most official" version of the paper, whatever that is. In most cases, a journal paper is more official than a conference paper, which is more official than a numbered technical report in a series, which is more official than a random preprint. You want to cite the most final, complete, and authoritative version, and the one most likely to be accessible to future readers. There may occasionally be subtle cases (for example, a paper that has been reprinted in books with corrections or additions), but this generally means the journal version.
P.S. The only other interpretation of the question I can think of is for journals like Physical Review, where an article has its own page number (like 032326) and then the individual pages are given subsidiary numbers (like 032326-1 through 032326-8). In that case, if you want to cite a specific page you could refer to it as 032326-3, or maybe just 3 if the context is clear. In the bibliography, you would write 032326:1-8 or just 032326, depending on your bibliography style.
Yes, your initial interpretation of the question was correct.
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2052 | In a thesis, which comes first - Abstract or Acknowledgements?
I am writing my masters thesis now. I saw some theses with the acknowledgement chapter after the abstract, in other cases it's the other way around.
I think the acknowledgement chapter is not related to the scientific work in the thesis, and thus should not be put between the abstract and the introduction. An abstract could be nice in the beginning if we're looking at a paper for example, but for a thesis (usually >80 pages) the reader would have to turn the pages anyway.
You should check the guidelines from your university. I'd assume that they would have requirements for the order. If not, I always prefer the acknowledgements should come first, that way the non-scientific stuff is out of the way.
Highly country dependent. In Germany, at least at my University, we had 0 (that is, literally zero) requirements, nor guidelines.
@KonradRudolph lucky man.
@Zenon No guidelines is not necessarily lucky, because you are still judged on your choices.
Just to illustrate how strange requirements can get, my doctoral thesis had to have the abstract first. I don't just mean before the acknowledgements, but before the title page.
Actually, under normal circumstances, I would expect the abstract to be as close to the front of a thesis as possible. The reason for this is to make the job of cataloging and searching easier. Abstracts of theses are indexed by services such as ProQuest, and having to wade through additional pages of material makes their work harder.
That said, scientifics is correct in that you should follow whatever regulations your university has. But in general, in the absence of such guidelines, I would put the abstract before the acknowledgments—readers want to know as soon as possible if they should bother to read the rest of your thesis. Burying it after the front matter makes it less likely for them to invest the time.
Just adding my two cents: around me, people commonly print out and bind their thesis in such a way that the one-page abstract is on the back cover. I think it makes a lot of sense, and allows one to get an idea of what the thesis is about without flipping pages (literally).
I would prefer to put acknowledgement before the Abstract so that I will be done with the preliminaries first, so that when one reads Abstract he will have started looking at the actual content. To me acknowledgement coming between the Abstract and the introduction is a disruption. But the guidelines of the University are to be followed.
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3163 | What are the various designations/stages in the academic career of the person
In context of a person's academic profile in a web application, I need to broadly classify the various degree/designations/stages in the academic career of the person.
For example I would like to clearly know what is the current stage the person , in his academic career path starting from a pre-university student & progressing ahead.
So I would like to classify something like (below) & ask user to select one of these designations:
Edited:
Pre-university student
Undergraduate(Bachelors/diploma/associate degree) student
-doing
-earned
Masters student
-doing
-earned
PhD(Doctorate) studs
-doing
-earned
Postdoc
Faculty
Scientist
Independent researcher
Does this cover most of the stages/designations in the academic career or is anything missing ? Is there a better term to represent any one ?
Update:
I don't really need a fine grained classification like assistant prof, associate prof, etc but I do want to include all the academic community & related people who have interests in academic topics(which includes scientists or self learners as well) & ranging from university student to faculty, independent researcher or whatever are the higher positions. May not be necessarily a hierarchical list but at least an exhaustive list is needed.
Update 2:
Another idea was too use classification which includes people from academia & even outside that work on/ explore academic topics & removing ambiguity between faculty, scientist & research positions . Something like this:
-> A Learner/ enthusiast,
-> Pre-university student
University/Research Students:
================================
-> Undergraduate(Bachelors/diploma/associate degree) student
-doing
-earned
-> Masters student
-doing
-earned
-> Doctorate(PhD, DPhils, etc) student
-doing
-earned
University Faculty/Research Positions:
==================
-> Professor
-> Associate Professor
-> Assistant Professor
-> Lecturer
-> Emeritus
-> Other
-> PostDoc,
-> Scientist
-> IndependentResearcher
Did you ask Wikipedia?
@EnergyNumbers: My audience is global. Ok, Scientist does fit into the hierarchy but scientists are also part of my user community so what option would fit for them more appropriately ? Won't "Emeritus" distinguish between current faculty & retired ones!?
One could argue that a career in academics does not begin until you get a faculty position since everything before then is training.
Given the edited list, I would have no idea what to select given I have earned a Bachelors, Masters, Doctorate and have completed a postdoc and am currently faculty. I also consider myself a scientist and independent researcher.
@DanielE.Shub: Gosh, you're right. I suppose the best thing to do might be to separate highest education level earned and current position, AND say pick only 1 from each category that is the closest match.
@DanielE.Shub: the user is asked to provide the match which describes his current position best way.
@DanielE.Shub: and yes, I really dont have a clear idea about how to distinguish between faculty(which also fits into scientists category) & scientists which work outside academia in industry, as I want to include them too. A newer idea was too use classification which includes people from academia & even outside that work on/ explore academic topics (appended to question).
@user01: Postdoc should be in research position. It is not a course/qualification but a job. And like I said in my previous comments, "scientist" doesn't really mean anything. If you're referring to commercial researchers, its better to say so. In academia, basically anyone who do research is a "scientist". And I just realized that there might be non-PhD non-postdoc university research staff (e.g. ex-masters students hired to do research).
@Legendre: Thanks again! I updated my list. About the 'scientist' term, I know you're right. So, could you suggest about how do I include those people in this list that are outside academia but do research like say scientists working in NASA or other research organisations. Sorry that I didn't made it clear in the question before but I also need to include people outside academia that work in industry or research organizations on scientific topics. Could you suggest some terms to represent such people in this list?
@user01 : Those would be commercial/professional researchers. Commercial if they are employed by firms like pharmaceutical, banks etc. Professional if they are employed by firms that are not strictly "commercial", e.g. NASA, Public Health etc.
@Legendre people who do research in the humanities do not generally consider themselves scientists.
@DanielE.Shub - My suggestion was the title "commercial/professional researcher", not scientist. "Commercial/non-academic researcher" would probably be better.
@user01 Since you have some responses below that seem to answer your question, please consider marking one of them as ‘Accepted’ by clicking on the tickmark below their vote count. This shows which answer helped you most, and it assigns reputation points to the author of the answer (and to you!).
Like EngergyNumbers said, you should tailor your classification to the culture of your targeted audience. This list of academic ranks for various countries might be helpful for that.
Also, "Scientist" and "Researcher" doesn't really mean anything. A postdoc, assistant professor, principal investigator, or someone doing research in the commercial sector can be a scientist or a researcher.
I think you know this but just in case: "postdoc" is an (often) temporary job that people take up after obtaining a PhD, and not a qualification. Some people do not do postdocs, and go directly into teaching, industry or become assistant professors after getting their PhD.
Finally, "Post Grad" can refer to both masters degree or PhD students. It is common to say "applying to graduate/grad school" to when referring to applying to a PhD course.
I don't really need a fine grained classification like assistant prof, associate prof, etc but I do want to include all the academic community & related people who have interests in academic topics(which includes scientists as well) & ranging from university student to faculty, independent researcher or whatever are the higher positions. May not be necessarily a hierarchical list but at least an exhaustive list is needed. I made a correction in my list as per your comment about postdoc not being a qualification.
This should be more or less comprehensive: preuni, undergrad, non-PhD postgrad, PhD student, postdoc, faculty, retired faculty, commercial, independent. I think "emeritus" might not be understood globally. Also, independent would cover those doing research without official affiliation (I know a few). And there are masters students (MPhils, research masters etc), who are postgrads, and doing research.
@user01 - Using your current edited list, someone who has earned a masters, did his undergrad and is an independent researcher and doing science would have 4 categories to pick. I suggest having two categories: 1) highest education level (earned or currently a student), 2) current research position (student, faculty, postdoc, commercial/professional, independent/non-affiliated/others). Pick only one that is the closest match from each group. "Scientist" really doesn't mean anything.
I see problems with your ranking.
Firstly, there is not much difference between * (Completed) and the subsequent ** (Ongoing) level - somebody who completed a post-doc probably is currently either a professor or in the industry, where having a completed post-doc experience does not matter much in terms of being an academic rank. Besides that, there are countries where being a "post-doc" does not mean anything special, the official position would be either the same as being a PhD. student, or a staff researcher.
Secondly, if you want to be too fine grained, there are several levels of professor positions missing (assistant, associate, full plus all the combinations with tenure position, or being a teaching/research specific position, etc.)
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, as others here wrote, the ladder is culture specific so you need to think about your target audience. In the case the audience of your website is somewhat local, go with the local tradition.
If your audience is global, my advice would be to give up the particular fine classification. Rather, you could go with a combination of 3 axes of coarse-grained classification roughly corresponding to the track the person currently follows (industry/academia) plus the highest achieved academic degree plus indication of duration of the current status. You would end up with classes such as
academic & BSc + 2 years - your ongoing undergrad student
industry & MSc + 5 years - you are probably facing an experienced professional
in an industry
academic & PhD + 3 years - either a post-doc, or an assistant professor, or lecturer, well anyway an early career researcher
academic & PhD + 20 years - somebody roughly equivalent to a more senior-level professor
Well, this way I guess you can capture more nuanced classification, than with a single ladder. You can of course add your own axes, e.g., tenure vs. pre-tenure, etc.
I take a somewhat skeptical view of the world. I see three stages:
Trainee: It doesn't matter if they are a student or a post doc or working in industry, if their goal is to acquire a set of skills and move up, then they are trainees. Generally, trainees think being an independent investigator is fun.
Research monkey: Someone who is neither attempting to acquire new skills nor is conducting independent research. Generally, research monkeys realize that independent investigator spend all their time trying to get funding to allow research monkeys to do the fun stuff.
Independent investigator: Someone who conducts their own research. Generally, when not looking for funding they are trying to figure out how they could become a research monkey.
Care to explain the downvote?
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3119 | How big of an advantage are publications for Applied Mathematics grad school applications?
How much of an advantage does an Applied Mathematics PhD applicant have if he/she has a publication under his/her belt?
Of course, this depends on the "prestige" of the journal that he/she published in. I suppose publishing in a top tier journal like Nature or Science would be a major advantage, but would the applicant be one of the first picks because of it?
More pertinently (I suppose seekers of such advice would not have a top tier journal publication), what about those with publication/publications in lesser journals?
A publication demonstrates your ability to do research, which is highly valued. The better published the article and the more "yours" it is, the better.
a top tier journal like Nature or Science — Careful! Depending on what you mean by "applied mathematics", Nature and Science might not really be top-tier journals.
"About yea big" (extends arms)
To elaborate on JeffE's comment, some applied math departments are open to students simply applying math (like engineering) and some applied math departments require their students effectively be pure mathematicians that are only "applied" in the sense that they prove abstract theorems in the fields of PDEs, dynamical systems, numerics or probability. Most applied math departments fall somewhere in between: they'd like you to prove something in your thesis and would like to see some actual application, but the rest is up to you.
The question is not answerable at this level of abstraction, because grad school admission is not decided on the basis of easily described rules. If you're a coauthor on a brilliant and important paper, you may still be rejected if the committee doubts you were a major contributor to the paper. On the other hand, some applicants with no publications at all may be accepted.
As a general rule, nobody on the committee will read the paper itself. That would be both time-consuming and unlikely to be fruitful, since the committee probably doesn't even have an expert in this specific area. They may get a little information from the abstract or your personal statement, but everything else they know about the paper will come from your letters of recommendation.
The letters need to indicate why this paper should help your case for admission. Specifically, they need to explain why the paper is interesting, what you contributed to it if you are not the only author, and why your work was impressive.
This task will be easier if the paper is really good, and that's correlated with being published in a top journal, but this is not really necessary. For example, if an undergraduate makes a major contribution to a solid but not exceptional research paper, then that could mean a lot, even if the paper doesn't get accepted to a leading journal. Of course the paper needs to meet at least some standards - publishing in a junk journal or vanity press doesn't count. However, the most important issue is demonstrating that you can carry out good research, not getting your name in a prestigious venue.
"If you're a coauthor on a brilliant and important paper, you may still be rejected [...] everything else [...] will come from your letters of recommendation." Actually, it's sad. It means basically that actual accomplishments are worth less than networking, being at a prestigious university, having a recognized and diplomatic advisor, etc.
I see it as the opposite: it means you need actual accomplishments, not just the ability to attach your name to things. Sometimes people get their names on papers because of minor contributions or networking. Letters give a way of distinguishing this from serious contributions. If you are the sole author of a paper in a top journal, then that may mean a lot by itself, but few grad school applicants are in that position. If you are one of several authors, or the quality of the paper is less obvious, then letters are crucial.
OK, you are right with this "appending risk". However, the first author in a decent-class journal is not that rare.
The answer depends on how the admissions process works. In my school you need to find someone who is willing to be your primary advisor to have any chance of being accepted. I am much more likely to spend a few extra minutes considering a candidate with a publication. In fact, I would say that I would schedule an informal phone interview with anyone with a publication nearly independent of the CV. Beyond this initial stage, which in my opinion counts for a lot, but not everything, things get too complicated to speak generally.
PhD admission works like this in the UK too: students usually have to contact a supervisor/advisor beforehand.
In applied math this is not always and often not even usually the case. Many applied math programs, like math, admit students and then they find their advisors after they have finished some coursework and passed their quals, in the meantime they are assigned a temporary advisor before hand.
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2267 | Identifying new references when appending to existing reference list
I am building a database from several online sources like Engineering Village. Everyday I am searching different/close/related keywords that pertains to my research topic. Then, I am (everyday) exporting and printing out the documents to do manual filtering depending on the relevance of the article/report. I also importing/appending daily search results into my cumulative list. This may lead to duplication which Reference Managers identifies and filters out in most cases. How do I have a daily reference list such that there is no duplicates? In order words, is there a way to know each time I append my references which are the new ones that I generated (through query) only today.
Please let me know if you need any clarifications. Thank you for your help.
If you are using the EndNote reference manager, it will tell you that you are importing duplicates, which references are duplicates, and then give you options for what you can do with them. It seems reasonable that other reference managers will do the same.
As an example, many journals now have adopted the practice of publishing articles online before they have been assigned to a print volume. Thus, I may want the manager to replace the old reference (without page and volume information) with the new (with that information). EndNote lets me choose to do this.
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2225 | Batch editing references
I imported many pdf articles into Mendeley but saw that Mendeley did not capture all the fields correctly. So, I needed to change them manually. It would be a tedious job to do so with many documents. Fortunately, many of the documents share common journal names and years. So, I needed a way to edit them together.
Is there a reference manager where we can edit selected references in one go without having to do this for each reference individually?
I have tried Endnote. Mendeley, and JabRef so far but could not find such a way. I will be grateful if someone has any idea/experience in this direction.
Edit-1:
After solving the batch editing problem, I also had a problem with getting the syntax for the authors correct.
Thanks @CharlesMorisset. This question taught me more thing than I could imagine. I realize the value of SE where you can get questions and answers either not found or hidden in guides and manuals
Mendeley does it actually. I did not try properly before.
Then I had a problem with getting the authors correct. What you need to do is put them as follows
Last Name, First Names
Last Name, First Names
and so on.
After Edit-1:Another useful thing in Mendeley is that, you just have to select the authors from the pdf and Mendeley will give suggestions on the syntax based on existing authors in the current database. See the following image.
If you use bibtex, then you can batch edit with things like sed, awk, or simple find/replace in any text editor.
In my experience, the author syntax changes if you're using DOI or PMID. In addition to the method that @Stat-R suggests, if you filter by authors, you can simply drag and drop author names onto each other and they will merge into your designated syntax.
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3431 | Should honorifics be included in acknowledgments?
In the “acknowledgments” section at the end of a paper, I currently have a sentence saying:
The authors thank Bob Johnson for discussions and insightful comments
However, I wonder: Bob’s full name is Robert Z. Johnson, he is a professor and a fellow of the Royal Society. Should his title be used? What about post-nominal letters? And middle initial? Finally, is it “Bob” or “Robert”?
I initially went with “Bob Johnson”, because that’s how everyone calls him (heck, his academic webpage is title “Bob Johnson”!). But is that appropriate?
In general, when in doubt, you should use the name of the author as it appears professionally. If the person in question publishes under a particular name, you should use that. The only exception is if you and the author have an existing relationship outside of this, in which case it is appropriate to use a less formal name.
You do not normally need to include honorifics ("Prof.", "Dr.", etc.) unless specifically asked to do so.
This leads to the final point: if you have any questions about how someone should be credited in an acknowledgment, ask. They'll generally be more than cooperative.
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198646 | Influence of Letter Submission Methods on Postdoc Hiring Outcomes
Is it common for labs with postdoc positions to ask candidates to request recommendation letters to be sent rather than directly asking from the references?
I've noticed a pattern where labs that ask for letters to be sent to them are less likely to consider me for the position seriously, i.e., either hire or decline within a timely manner and not to ghost me. I also have had PIs inviting me to their lab without asking for a letter, but I have not had luck with someone who asked to send it to them.
This trend has led me to believe that those asking for letters to be sent might not be seriously considering me and are simply collecting them as a backup. This has become problematic since repeatedly asking for letters has led to one of my references not sending the ones I ask for but sending the ones the faculty asks about me. I would appreciate your take on this as a faculty or former postdoc.
It seems plausible that the people who directly ask the references for letters would do so only after reviewing other parts of your application and deciding that you should be seriously considered.
I would attribute the difference to whether the person who makes the hiring decision is working in an environment where (i) hiring goes through a shared portal that allows applicants to enter the names of letter writers, and then automatically notifies these letter writers, or (ii) hiring is done on an individual basis, based on the decision of the PI, who then simply tells the appropriate administrator to hire that person.
I don't think that your inference from procedure used to outcome is valid. I'd think the two are entirely unrelated.
I think this merely illustrated some administrative differences. There are many places that first collect all candidate information, then remove unqualified persons from the list, to finally send out requests for the letters of all candidates. Only after that, the shortlisting process begins.
In other words: without knowing the system that the other places are using, we cannot know for sure, but I believe that there's an effect on the likelihood. I wouldn't read too much into it.
Good luck with your applications!
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196091 | Is it Beneficial for Postdocs to Give Talks to Single Research Groups?
As a postdoc applying for a second postdoc position, I frequently email potential mentors. I have a question regarding two situations where the faculty member showed interest in my work but had no openings. Instead, they invited me to give a talk to their research group via Zoom. While I appreciate the opportunity to give a presentation and have done so before for departments and multi-PI journal clubs, I don't find giving a talk to a single group beneficial. The reason is that the audience members were either required to be there and not interested or trying to impress their advisors by asking questions, and some were very forward. In addition, both occasions involved faculties who were center directors. Therefore, if my work interests them and they are not simply looking for entertainment, I expect them to expand the talk to their center to at least allow me to benefit from networking opportunities. Another view is that these groups are important enough that I should be more than happy to present in their group meeting (one at MIT).
As a faculty or postdoc, what is your position on asking a postdoc to present their work to your group, and if I should ask them to upgrade it to at least a multi-PI level meeting if they want me to give a talk?
Perhaps, also consider that this is a chance for you to interview their group. In your case it may be good to see how the group interacts. Are they providing useful feedback to each other or trying to impress their advisor as you say? This may be valuable information if/when you decide on which group to join.
As well, its possible to meet with more PI's without insisting. Maybe a response like: "Hi, (PI A) I would love to give a talk. Afterwards, maybe we could grab a drink with (PI B) as well..." In most cases you may just see other PI's afterwards and in some cases I imagine those that agree to meet after may want to attend your presentation without you insisting the presentation become larger. I think this is my last thought, otherwise I will group them into an answer.
You should probably regard this kind of thing as a pre-interview for a position that doesn't exist yet.
Let's say you email me to enquire about positions. I don't have any money now, but my postdoc Alice has been interviewing for TT positions and I expect that I'll need to fill that post again soon. And I'm hoping to hear back from the funding agency any day now. Perhaps I'll even get around to writing that other grant application over the summer...
So, while I can't offer you anything right now, I am keen to know a bit more about you in case something comes up in future. And depending on how interesting you turn out to be, I might be more (or less!) inclined to make an effort to find money for you.
So, these talks are an investment in your future. They probably don't pay off now, but they may well impact what opportunities present themselves in a year or two's time. Whether that is a worthwhile investment depends a lot on your current and future plans.
Giving a short talk at a single group's meeting has the following benefits:
Practicing your talk skills. Academia is full of terrible talk-givers. Doing good talks (preparing slides, speaking, answering questions) makes you a better academic and teacher. And the most efficient way to improve is to, well, give lots of talks to lots of different audiences.
Refining your "elevator pitch" -- that is, in a nutshell, what do you do and why should I (another researcher) care? To win grants, make collaborations, and reach wider audiences (such as for commercialization or media outreach), you need to master your marketing pitch.
"I make simulations very fast so people can efficiently model batteries, supercapacitors, and other electrical devices critical for our green future" is better than "I study matrix pre-conditioning and efficient GPU computations for dynamically charge equilibrated molecular dynamics simulations to accurately model conductive boundary conditions that can't be captured by planar dielectric approximations". It's taken me dozens of talks to get there, and I'm still improving.
Tailoring the generalist introduction to your topic. Giving lots of different talks to lots of different groups helps you gauge the "common knowledge" that you can assume, letting you skip to what makes you the best at what you do without leaving your audience in the dark.
Broadening your horizons with in-depth discussions. Giving a multi-PI talk means your subsequent discussion will remain at surface level; giving a talk to a single group will generate deep and meaningful discussion that can result in collaborations. (And if you haven't prepared for generating discussions based on the group's own expertise, you haven't prepared for the talk.)
Thickening your skin and deepening your gratitude. On one hand, an academic will always lose half their audience, simply because other academics are always distressed and harried. You might as well get used to it. On the other hand, you get the chance to share your work! You are doing something few others in the world do, and you have a chance to share your expertise with a community of like-minded people. Healthy scientific subdomains have vibrant communities where people love to share ideas and make friends -- don't ever take it for granted.
Ultimately, this is a personal decision that depends on how you value your time, but in general I would say that as an academic there is hardly a thing as giving too many talks purely from a honing your skills perspective as detailed in another answer.
On top of that, being invited to give a talk by people who are not in your network (yet), should be seen as an honour as they are interested in your work and/or you as a scientist. So each invited talk is another line on your CV, so to speak.
Third, perhaps you should lower your expectations a bit. Even as a PI I still frequently give talks to 'just' a research group. I've also given full center talks where in the end only five people from a single group showed up. As well as talks for up to 300 people in the room. Either one of these can give rise to a good discussion and new network connections and future collaborations. Strength is in interest here, not in the size of the audience.
As an aside, with the advent of zoom it is probably easier to invite people for a talk than it was before, so you may need to be selective - but keep the above in mind.
Why being selective? People inviting you are in general interested, they don't have time to listen to research that is of no interest for them.
I just meant to say that there is a limit - if this person gets 10 requests a month that's too much, but a few each year? That's what many postdocs would want!
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95341 | How to publish your research quickly when it pertains to a topical current event?
I would like to submit my very current research to some Journal. The work is related to recent hurricane in USA (Hurricane Harvey). Since the peer-review process takes months to publish a work, so I am looking for some well-known journal which can publish my research in maximum 2 weeks with no cost. Would anyone have any idea where and how to publish very current research? or already published their very current research in past?
What do you want to accomplish? What is the point of the two-week deadline?
What kind of research did you do in the last few days, given that this is something that just happened? Generally, any meaningful research undertaking (worth publishing) takes time to actually do. There are probably a few exceptions to this... but very, very few.
Yes, I understand your points. I have analyzed the tropical extreme events in past 60 years. Though I had finished all works before July, but this hurricane occured when the manuscript was supposed to submit. My boss told to include the recent one also. Thus part of the result highlights the recent hurricane. Anyway, after getting the comments and answers, it is better to get accepted my few months research through peer-review process.
Scholarly papers aren't like newspaper articles - if something is only of interest because of recent events, maybe a blog would be a better way to disseminate your results than an archival publication?
What is the intended audience of your research? If you publish too soon after the event, your audience may not see your work as they won't be expecting it. If you're trying to reach a new audience, they may not even care if your work is formally reviewed.
Quality peer review takes times: Science takes time and quality peer review takes time. Presumably, you want the stamp of approval that peer review brings. In which case, you will want to publish in a journal where the peer review has meaning. And in this case, peer review takes time. Sure, some fields and journals will get you an initial decision faster than others. But you might get rejected at the first outlet and that can take time; and you might be asked to do revisions somewhere and that takes time to get that outcome, and then for you to make the revisions, and then get an outcome on those revisions. The fastest experience that I've had from submission to in press was about 2 months. And I wouldn't expect to have the same outcome for other work submitted to the same journal.
Consider sharing a preprint: One option would be to post your work to a relevant preprint server. I don't know what discipline you are in, but OSF preprints will accept work in any discipline https://osf.io/preprints/
This would allow you to circulate and share your work immediately.
You could then engage in the more time-consuming task of getting your work published in a peer-reviewed journal.
so I am looking for some well-known journal which can publish my research in maximum 2 weeks with no cost
This is unlikely to exist. There may be well known journals that will publish slowly at no cost, or obscure journals that will publish for free quickly, or predatory journals that will publish quickly for a cost.
But peer review takes time. So a proper publication.
What are you goals? If you want knowledge to be public, you could approach a magazine or newspaper, make a blog post, or post a preprint to ArXiV. This can also help if you want to establish work as yours, so you don't get "scooped".
At the end of the day, the urgent responses to a hurricane will likely come from government scientists, publishing government reports instead of peer-reviewed articles.
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65145 | How secure is a post doc job offer in an email from the department chair prior to receiving the official written letter?
I'm in/from the US. I'm finishing my PhD this semester. I've been offered a research postdoc, via email, by the dept. chair at one of my top choices, but outside the US (would rather not give too many details). I replied to say I'm accepting the position. Everyone seems very happy: me, the chair, the professor I intend to work with. But I have nothing in writing.
In the meantime I have an offer for a teaching job at another place much closer, which I would definitely take if I were not getting the above postdoc. I don't feel comfortable turning this down until the other setup is official.
I emailed the postdoc place asking for an official letter. They said they would send it out by mail, but ignored my request for a scanned emailed copy, and I need to give a yes or no answer to the second place before their alleged letter would arrive. I emailed them again about the scanned copy and no response though it has only been a couple days.
How confident should I be that this postdoc is really happening? How common is it for informal agreements like that to be backed out of? Are scanned emailed letters less customary outside the US? It would be terrible of I turned down the teaching job and then the postdoc fell through.
Also, what should I say to the other place if I am still unsure about the postdoc by the deadline for my yes/no?
Update: I got the requested scan of the official letter today. I ran it by my adviser and he says this seals the deal and I can cancel any other interviews. Whew!!!
They said they would send it out by mail. I have a similar incident recently (nothing to do with job offer). I sent the other party a signed official document via express mail so I know when it gets there and who signs the receipt of the document.
I might be wrong, but I would guess this depends a lot of which country.
Note that there are institutions at which offer letters cannot be written for legal reasons. In such a case, the paperwork that you are expecting would be some form for starting the hiring process. This may be the reason why you are not getting a scanned copy upfront - you could not use it for anything. Since you did not write where your postdoc would be, I'm only guessing here, though.
"Are scanned emailed letters less customary outside the US?" -- Even in the U.S., use of digital communications varies widely by institution. In the early oughts I was at a college where everything was digital. Over a decade later, I'm at a college where basically everything is done on paper, and no one is in the habit of doing things by email (e.g., many people would not know how to scan a document).
This sounds like it is a real offer but I would still be wary of this. A close friend of mine was offered an assistant professor position at a good US university in such a manner and had even worked out details such as how he planned on spending his startup fund. Turned out the reason he wasn't getting the offer was because one of the professors at the department was delaying the process to try to squeeze in an interview for one of his friends and my friend never got the offer he was promised (verbally on the phone by the department head). I suggest you get an extension on your other offer.
I was talking to my mom about some of the comments from here, she is a retired high school teacher, and she could relate. She told me of 2 instances she knew of where a person was recommended by the dept. chair and the principal, which is usually a shoe-in, but the superintendent went with a personal friend instead.
An offer in this type of situation is almost always a real offer. However, this kind of delay in getting a written offer is nonetheless quite common and has to do with the way the university's internal bureaucracy works. And as the word "almost" indicates, there is always a chance that something will go wrong, so you are absolutely right to be concerned.
The way it works (in the U.S., and probably in some other countries) is this: postdoc offers are often made by a department chair, but are often subject to approval by a higher university authority such as a dean. Naturally, the dean needs to actually review the file before approving the appointment, and this takes extra time (sometimes several weeks, since deans are busy with many other things) after the department chair or search committee have already recommended making the appointment. In the meantime, the department wants to ensure that they can secure the candidate's commitment to accept the position. Waiting those extra weeks before contacting the candidate is completely impractical and means that they will almost certainly miss out on the opportunity of hiring the person.
The result of this dynamic is that the university will try to play a game whereby the department chair will contact a postdoc candidate with an email, formulated to look as formal as possible (e.g., containing salary and other details, and a response deadline) without actually entering the university into a legally binding commitment. (By the way, IANAL, but just the fact that it's an email rather than a letter is not necessarily the issue; I believe an email could very conceivably be held up in court to be just as binding as a "written" offer, and that it really all depends what the "offer" actually says, including nuances such as whether the word "offer" is used, and whether it contains weasel phrases such as "recommend your appointment to", "subject to approval by", "pending review" etc.)
Note that the way this process is designed is more or less well-intentioned and done in good faith, at least in places I'm familiar with. The goal is simply to achieve an optimal outcome under the constraints of how the university functions, while protecting the university's interests to the extent possible. In all likelihood, no one is trying to scam you into accepting an offer that they will then not offer you. At the same time, as a department chair myself I often think that this way of conducting the university's affairs is somewhat unfair and places an undue burden of worry on the candidate's shoulders. After all, there is always a chance that something will go wrong, there will be a disagreement between the chair and the dean or some other step in the process will fail and the appointment will fall through. And I wonder if when push comes to shove, the university's position of sending emails that are carefully optimized to get people to think that they have a real offer when the language of the email actually avoids making any concrete promises will really hold up in court. At least from an ethical point of view it seems problematic to me. But that's the way things work in many places, and usually things work out in the end.
The bottom line is that a lot of this comes down to a question of trust: did the hiring department manage to instill in you a feeling that they "got you covered" and are backing up their claims with concrete actions? Or are they behaving in a way that seems suspicious and alarming? The lack of willingness to email you a scanned copy certainly seems like a possible red flag (depending on whom you sent it to - never discount the possibility that that person may simply be incompetent or forgetful, so consider looking for other people in the department whom you can turn to for help). Only you can decide how risky the situation feels, and how much risk you are willing to tolerate to secure the position. The only general answer we can give is "an offer is usually a real offer, except when it's not".
I've been speaking to the dept. chair and the professor I would be working with. When I raised these concerns with the chair he said there is absolutely no need to worry and that he would expidite sending the letter by mail. As for the prof. I am certain he would be very upset if this fell through, even thanked me for accepting. Only cause for alarm is the lack of reply from the chair about the scan request.
While from the chair side of the table, you are correct that these offers are "real" and rarely fall through. The issue I have seen is when overly anxious candidates misinterpret an "expression of interest" as an offer. Candidates need to have a frank discussion about what is happening to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Don't count on an offer until you have it officially, in writing. A verbal offer is not an offer. An email or call saying you will get the offer is not an offer.
You say you "emailed the postdoc place". Who did you email? If it is an administrator they may not understand the urgency of the situation. I would email the professor you will be working for and (politely) make it completely clear that you have a non-negotiable deadline for replying to another offer. You should also state that if you don't have at least a scanned copy of an official offer from him/her before then, you will have no choice but to accept the teaching position, even though the postdoc is your first choice. If they really want you, they will take the 5 minutes to scan a copy of the letter. If they don't, maybe it's best to turn down that offer anyway.
In the meantime, I would also negotiate with the second place for an extension of the deadline.
"An email ... is not an offer" you should provide a legal citation for this. In the US, you would want to read up on the UETA and Forcelli v Gelco.
People break the law all the time. Unless the OP is ready to spend his time litigating a university in a foreign country, the details of the law do not matter.
@JørgenFogh Not to mention "burning the bridges" with those people, if the litigation gets anywhere. - - - - - - - - Actually a police sheriff in a speech ("Don't talk to the police" is the title on youtube, i think) on a law school said that everyone has broken some law at some point.
@JørgenFogh your logic also applies to so-called "written" offers. If the details of the law truly "do not matter" because "people break the law all the time", why is a written offer any better than an email? The answer is that your premise is incorrect - the law does matter, even if not as much as we would like. corsiKa's point is valid and important.
The difference is that the counterparty is much more likely to honor a contract on paper. I agree that in the platonic world of ideals, there is no difference. In the world of reality, there is, even though my argument is technically invalid.
This whole discussion is not relevant to my answer; I did not write that "an email is not an offer". An email very often is an offer!
David, you wrote literally "An email or call saying you will get the offer is not an offer." Yes it is. An email saying an offer is forthcoming and guaranteed is a formal, binding document as per Forcelli v Gelco.
This may seem obvious but the fact that you are asking the question implies that you are unsure as to certainty and that alone should encourage you question anything that is not a signed contract.
Personally I would approach this by contacting them directly and explaining your position. If they are 100% on their commitment then expediting the written confirmation you need will not be an issue. A little pressure will work wonders.
Good luck.
I wanted to say something like this, too. Your immediate problem was already resolved, but if it weren't, I would not hesitate to call the place and explain (again) why a scanned copy in email would be urgently required. Though I'm guessing their conundrum was that they didn't take a photo before putting it in the mail, and producing a scan of a newly printed second copy would seem to be of dubious utility, and possibly raise questions about forgery, even though the purpose is completely legitimate and pressing.
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37704 | Do references, notes, and tables count towards journal word count restrictions?
I'm preparing a manuscript to be submitted to a journal, but I'm struggling with the language used regarding the word count for this specific journal:
The ___________is a peer-reviewed publication. Articles
between 4000-7000 words (double spaced pages) including tables, notes
and references, are accepted for review. The Editors reserve the right
to return papers to authors where they exceed this word limit.
My confusion is, does this mean that references/notes/tables contribute to the word count of the manuscript for this particular journal?
In this case, the journal is explicit in saying that the word count "includes tables, notes, and references". I suppose the more interesting question is what is meant when there is no such explicit statement.
Yes, the references/notes/tables are to be included in the word count.
Cheers. Would this include the bibliography, or just in-text references do you think?
This would typically include the bibliography.
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43173 | How to receive email notifications of newly accepted papers in a specified set of journals?
Is there some way of arranging that I receive emails whenever selected academic economics journals of interest to me, perhaps published by different publishers, post online a newly accepted paper?
I posted this question in the economics site because, as far as I know, the answer to this question is very different from discipline to discipline. As far as I understand, computer scientists are, for example, in this respect much better organized than economists.
Most journal offer an email alert service for new issues/accepted papers. A couple of examples :
https://www.aeaweb.org/notify/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291468-0262 (see "Get new content alert")
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-economic-theory/ (see "Stay up to date")
All of ACM.org offers RSS feeds, which you can instrument with IFTTT
Some publishers have a page introducing the ways by which their readers can be informed whenever a new issue of the journal is published, or a new paper is published in a journal. You should seek each journal for such email subscriptions.
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| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:50.571273 | 2015-04-06T17:18:05 | {
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43035 | What to do about fee from publisher for withdrawing unpublished accepted manuscript?
I had sent my manuscript mistakenly to two different journals and both journals are ready to publish (not yet published) my work which is not possible. So, after knowing their impact factor I requested one of the journals to withdraw my paper. They had just sent me the review of my paper and for withdrawal they are demanding $500 as a penalty. It is difficult for me to decide what to do.
You made a BIG mistake by sending your manuscript to two different journals. This is a NO-NO. Have you considered withdrawing the paper from the other journal?
I had send my manuscript mistakenly to two different journals How?!!!
It is difficult for me to decide what to do. Decide on what? Which journal to publish your paper in? Could you please expand your question a little more on what options you have in mind?
They're demanding $500 as a penalty??? For what? Would they pay you a penalty for refusing your paper? Or if you were the reviewer and gave a positive review but they still rejected the paper? I don't think you are obliged to pay something like that and are good off just ignoring them. Of course, then you'll probably be "blacklisted" in that particular journal and may have a hard time getting published there in the future. But that kind of practice would have me seriously considering if I would want ever to cooperate with them again.
To elaborate on @EnthusiasticStudent’s comment: When publishing to most regular journals, you have to explicitly state that you did not submit to another journal and you usually receive at least some communication before your paper gets accepted. If you actually managed to honestly mistakenly submitted to two journals, at least one of the journals is likely to be predatory; otherwise you are missing out some details here. Also, the only publishers I could find with an admittedly brief search that do demand a penalty for withdrawal look rather shady to me at a quick glance.
@EnthusiasticStudent I suspect that "I sent my manuscript mistakenly" means "I sent it and now realise this was a mistake" rather than "I sent it accidentally".
I would email the editor of the journal with the lower impact factor, say your paper was also reviewed and approved by another journal which is your choice, and apologize for your mistake (if you did not fully explain why you are withdrawing, then follow up and do so). Let them decide what to do based on the fact that the article is going to come out in another journal. You would have to sign a copyright agreement before they publish, so tell them you cannot sign. They will likely drop your paper without penalty (they don't have much choice). It makes no sense for them to insist on publishing.
@EnthusiasticStudent I can imagine at least one situation where one accidentally submits the same paper to different journals--if one accidentally uploaded the wrong file to one journal and didn't check the upload before submitting. However, I'm guessing that's not the case here.
@Kimball I don't think the asker intends "mistakenly" to mean "by accident" but just that it was a mistake (in the sense of something they did deliberately but now realise they shouldn't have done).
@DavidRicherby Yes, I saw your comment and agree (see my last sentence). I was just trying to say that I can imagine that somewhere someone has done or will do a "double submission" accidentally. I've certainly sent someone the wrong paper via email accidentally without realizing it.
@JeromyAnglim I think that your title change drops half of the intent of the question; would you consider reverting it?
@jakebeal Of course and feel free to edit further. I removed the bit about submitting a paper to two journals. I think retaining the focus on the "fee" in the title makes sense as that seems to still be the essence of the question.
I still cannot graps this concept of the accidentally/mistakenly etc dual submission. Author guides/instructions ed normaly clearly indicate a manuscript should not be under consideration for an other journal. Has the OP not read this instructions?
There is wrong on every side of this situation.
First, a journal demanding money for withdrawing a paper is suspicious in the extreme. I have never in my life heard of such a practice from a legitimate journal, which means that you were probably duped into submitting to a predatory (junk) publisher. If this is the case, you should definitely withdraw the paper and refuse to pay the money, but they may not let you: a dishonest publisher may simply publish your paper without your consent and send you a bill. If this happens, you can try to fight it, but you may end up needing to withdraw from the other journal instead and simply write off the paper and/or the $500 as a learning experience.
And what will you have learned?
Never dual submit a paper: it is scientifically dishonest, wastes everybody's time, and seriously annoys any legitimate journal.
Never submit a paper to a journal that you haven't thoroughly investigated to determine that it is not a shady fly-by-night predatory publisher.
About the fight: commercial publisher claim that, among other thing, their role is to take care of legal issues regarding the papers they submit. If the mistake is explained to the journal chosen by Shravan, and if the journal accepts to forgive the mistake of dual submission and publishes the paper, then the publisher might take legal action against the other publisher. Since publishing without signed copyright transfer agreement or any other legal document from the author blatantly breaks the rules on intellectual property, such a legal action has good chance to succeed.
As already stated in a comment, sending the same paper to two journals is just plain wrong and you are likely violating the journal agreements you agreed to when submitting them. So never ever do this again!
As for picking the journal with highest impact, well that seems like a fair choice but I wonder what the journal editors would say if they knew the manuscript was under consideration also in a second journal. Usually this is a specific question to which you state "the manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere" when you submit. So my guess is that your paper would be refused if they knew and I think you should let them know. Perhaps you did this out of ignorance but I think you should come out and explain your mistake, it is only fair and then your case may also receive a fair treatment.
As for the $500 penalty, you need to check what yo actually agreed to and what the journal states as rules for manuscripts. Clearly your manuscript has taken up a lot of resources unnecessarily. Even though I do not sympathize with your actions, there is an open question based on what the journal asks you to pay. Unless they have this in a clear statement or agreement I cannot see it as a valid request and you likely do not have to pay. However, you may of course become "known" to the journal editors which could harm future submissions to the same journal.
So my advice is, come out clean. Explain to both journals, and by cc to the other, what you have done and make sure you explain why you managed to do such a faux pas. Let the editors decide the outcome, your right to decide has long passed. By coming clean the editors may see leniently on the matter and your "choice".
Editor's can turn to Cope to get feedback on cases such as the one posted above. At COPE's (Committee On Publication Ethics) site it is possible to find their recommendations in similar cases. One that struck me as reasonably similar is the one linked to here, but do look around at their cases for additional impressions of where editors stand on multiple submissions and why being upfront about the issue can be a good idea.
Per your "About me", you are also an editor-in-chief, given the circumstances, how would you proceed if you received such an email? Presuming, of course, that no malicious intent of the author is stated in the email and that yours is the journal that the author intends to publish in (i.e. not the one the paper was withdrawn from).
If he just explains the situation to both journals, I can't see any outcome other than both of them refusing the publication… (not implying this is a good or bad thing, but it should definitely be pointed out clearly)
thank u all but i didn't getting what to do finally...i can not pay such a huge amt...m a student...and editor in chief demanding my reply quickly within a 24-48 hrs...and he warned me "How can submit same article in different Journals, we will take action against you and inform to your College regarding this"
and the authors guidelines are here... Pre-Review: The author(s) can withdraw their papers at this step without paying any charges and/or posing compelling reasons.
Peer-Review: The authors must have compelling reasons and pay 500 US$ as the withdrawal penalty.
Review-Final Decision: The authors must have compelling reasons and pay 500 US$ as the withdrawal penalty.
Review-Final Decision: The authors must have compelling reasons and pay 500 US$ as the withdrawal penalty.Post-Publication: Withdrawing at this step is not possible at all.
If the author withdraws manuscript any time after the manuscript has been sent to peer-review till the final decision, then unless there are compelling reasons, the request is not entertained without a penalty. This penalty may be in form of payment to journal for its time and resources spent.
In this situation, author(s) needs to pay withdrawal fee of 400 US$.
@shravan it looks like you tried to be "smart" by cheating the system and now you seem to be disappointed with consequences of your "smartness".
@ Salvador Dali...i was really unaware about my smartness what u r talking about. my intention was not to cheat anybody...i m a fresher...and and i do not have sources for proper guidance...so please don't use words like cheating...these words doesn't belongs to me...and never will
@shravan: I see on the journal web page that submission is be e-mail, is that correct? If you submitted by e-mail without attaching a signed document saying that you agreed to their terms, I very much doubt that really you have to pay, and I believe they can take any legal action against you. I you had submitted through a web form, things could be worse because you could have checked a box that implied you agreed with their terms.
You say they threat to do is to inform your institution, probably your best defense strategy is to come clean also with your institution.
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43504 | How many hours on an average do academics in business and technology spend consulting for businesses?
Early stage startups and entrepreneurs often look at those with experience and knowledge for help in areas such as finance, management (HR), marketing and technology.
How many hours per week/month on average does a faculty member spend consulting/advising/coaching businesses?
Hi, and welcome to Academia.SE! Answers to your question will likely vary enormously by field (business school vs. math vs. medicine vs. humanities), possibly also by geography or school type. Could you please edit your question to indicate what specifically you are interested in?
Thanks for your response and advise. Early stage startups and entrepreneurs often look at those with experience and knowledge for help in areas such as finance, management (HR), marketing and technology. 1) In these areas, how much time do professors spend in consulting/advising/coaching on a weekly/monthly basis?
Welcome to Academia.SE! Please edit your question to improve it. Don't just leave clarifications in the comments -- edit the question so it is self-contained. Readers shouldn't have to read the comments to understand your question. Comments exist only to help you improve your question. Also, we have a general expectation that you will flesh out the question more, and that you will do significant research before asking here and show us in the question what research you've done and what you've found. You might want to peruse our [help] to learn more how the site works.
@HarryGardner I've incorporated your comments into your question
I would say the mean over all of academia is very low, almost zero. I would even go so far as to say that the median amount of time is zero. However, this includes all professors from all fields. It is not impossible for a Professor of German Romantic Poetry to find businesses that need their expertise but I would image them few and far between.
There is also the issue of contractual obligations. My current professorial contract states that during the academic year I cannot work for another institution as more than a "part time job" but during the breaks I could work for someone else full time. While this does not give concrete limits it is presumed here to be about 10 hours per week as a general maximum.
More applied professors I have met were officially funded by outside corporations so their research counted double as both consulting work and as their normal work load. So for them even during the academic year it could be over 40 hours per week.
So what I mean to say is that to get a useful answer you should probably be more specific about which fields you are interested in.
Thank you for the reply. I was looking at first some general responses and your response of maximum 10 hours per week is helpful. Thanks again
Bear in mind that that maximum is the informally understood value at one small college in the US. Nothing more than that.
A common policy is "no more than one day a week during the 9 month academic year." In my experience (at an engineering/science oriented university where there are quite a few opportunities) very few faculty do anything close to this much outside consulting.
I thought this was a rather fascinating question, and it turns out some researchers have agreed - enough to conduct their own studies!
In a paper from 1985, but with too wonderful a title not to note, consider And on the Seventh Day: Faculty Consulting and Supplemental Income
Obviously one will want to review this paper, as it's full of interesting observations, such as on the topic of how much this varies by field and how often/how much they are paid:
Less than 10 percent of college and university faculty employed in
fields allied with science and engineering report supplemental
earnings that represent more than one-third of their base academic
salaries. The comparable figure for faculty employed in the humanities is only 4 percent.
So certainly consulting is much more popular in some fields than others, however also consider:
Sixty to 85 percent of all faculty report receiving some income beyond
their base academic salaries. Supplemental income results from all
forms of income-generating activities (for example, research and
teaching during the summer months as well as consulting) and is earned
both within and without the institution. The amount represents only
about 15 percent of average basic academic salaries. About half of all
college and university faculty report having some form of "outside"
supplemental income during a given year.
So not only does it vary widely by field, but there is also a considerable amount of variation between individuals.
The bottom-line of the report is that a little consulting is extremely common, but consulting a lot is relatively rare - only 5-6% of faculty report consulting more than 1 day per week on average. This of course also permits variance throughout the year, with more consulting happening when classes are not in session. For non-US natives, it is important to note that in the US the concept of an "academic/9-month year" is common, and students and professors alike can take the summer off or work on their careers, take extra-paid employment (including classes), etc...and some people get stiffed and have to work for no additional pay, but that's unpleasant to think about!
This is certainly an older study, so let's consider some more recent research: Outside Consulting Income by University Faculty in Health Administration
Sadly this is pay-walled, but the abstract has good info that agrees with the older study nicely:
Based on a comprehensive survey of health administration (HA) faculty
in the US, the current study presents data on the frequency, dollar
amounts, and determinants of outside consulting income among
respondents. Approximately three quarters of respondents engage in
some consulting activities that yield, on average, approximately 25%
additional income above one's university base salary. However averages
can be misleading given that substantial variation in earnings exists
among respondents at each rank. Median consulting incomes were
approximately 9% of respondents' base salary. Various factors
including rank, gender, and professional accomplishments were
associated with engaging in any consulting activities. Among those who
consult, school of employment, gender, and self-reported expertise are
associated with the amount of consulting income earned.
In a quick Google Scholar search this question seems to have been highly studied in the 1980's, and so the foundation literature is from this time. More recent studies seem to generally accept the older studies conclusions, and then get ever more specific - examining cultural differences (like attitudes of Arab faculty and how it relates to consulting), individual fields and schools (comparing various law professors and positions in their use of consulting), etc.
If you are interested in this area I'd strongly recommend starting with a full read of "And on the Seventh Day" quoted above, as it also deals with thinks like reasons (which seem not to be strictly economic!), effect on research/teaching, and so on. Then some more specific poking around can narrow down your question, or it might just answer your question entirely!
Thank you very much for taking the time and helping out. I will certainly read "And on the..." I was also intrigued to see consulting in Health Administration. The document is pay-per-view but I am interested if the consulting is onsite or can consulting in that area be virtual / technology based only. Thank you again.
While you will get better responses if you narrow this down to specifics, I will answer generally for my experience in public health and medicine, as I have experienced it.
Consulting is definitely possible, and many clinical researchers do some consulting on the side, in addition to having grants from industry. Other than that, consulting is something that comes up from time to time, but not enough that I would call it a routine part of anyone's workload. Keep in mind that part of that is because as an academic you don't get much "credit" for consulting - your tenure package isn't improved by it, your chair isn't happy that you're bringing in some big overhead grants, etc. If it's regular work, it should probably be considered for a proper grant.
As for restrictions on it, I haven't encountered any hard limits as much as "This should not interfere with your actual job".
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46847 | How to download references to database that a paper includes and all articles that cite the paper?
I have some papers for which I want to somehow download an easily manipulated (CSV, Excel) list of references and list of papers which cited the given paper.
On Google Scholar, one can see a "Cited By" option, but there is no way to download this list in bulk. Also, there is no option to get the list of references that the paper made. Although one can look at the paper itself for this information, I'd want a way to get these as a CSV or Excel.
Is there any way to do this?
Cross-link to related question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3078/web-service-to-fetch-article-citations (it deals with the "list of references" part).
Yes, use Web of Science (Thomson Reuter's) database called Cited Reference Searching. You can download a list of citations, which can be exported as *.csv. Here is a link showing some of the basic functionalities.
Of course, this will only capture citations in venues indexed by Web of Science (and therefore almost no computer science conferences).
This is a good source, I actually came to the same conclusion. The only problem is that the database is missing many papers. This answer is good in and of itself, though. Thank you!
Enjoy using CitationChaser. Follow these steps to start chasing:
In the "Article input" tab, paste a list of article identifiers (e.g. DOIs)
Check the articles returned are the ones your interested in
If you want to perform backward citation chasing (which articles did my articles reference?) then proceed to the "References" tab and click "Search for all referenced articles in Lens.org"
If you want to perform forward citation chasing (which articles have cited my articles?) then proceed to the "Citations" tab and click "Search for all citing articles in Lens.org"
You can download a list in RIS format of your input articles, referenced articles, and citing articles for easy integration with your reference/review management workflow.
Thank you for the link, it looks like a great ressource for obtaining refernece information.
As far as I know, RIS and BibTeX are the two standard file formats for moving references around. I store my references on Citeulike, which allows me to download them in either format -- I usually use BibTeX since I write my papers in LaTeX, but I know RIS is used to move references from Endnote to Zotero.
ISI Web of Knowledge and other citation trackers do allow you to export both the citations in a particular paper as well as the papers that cite it in RIS, BibTeX and tab-delimited formats (using RIS column names, oddly enough!), but I don't think Google Scholar has this functionality. You may have access to the Web of Knowledge through your institute's library.
Hi! Thanks for the information, but I'm not sure you understand my question. What I'm asking is: given a paper, can I download a file (CSV preferably) which contains a list of the references made in the paper, as well as other papers which cited that paper?
Ah, got it! ISI Web of Knowledge/Science will let you do this (I just tried this and it worked, but you may need to export page-by-page). I've updated my answer to reflect this, but Brian P beat me to Web of Science :)
I am not aware of such functionality in existing online repositories at the present time. However, depending on your needs, skills and willingness to dedicate your time and efforts to such project, you can consider writing custom software, based on natural language processing (NLP) approaches, in particular information extraction, for parsing papers of interest - individually or in bulk - in order to extract their reference list information. I believe that it should be relatively easy to write such software, as the semantic complexity of reference list sections is relatively low. Having said that, I see some potential difficulties, related to the quality (consistency) of listed references in terms of content, formatting and publication style.
I think that using such software would be perfectly legal and ethical, as that part within each paper doesn't really represent an intellectual property or is copyrighted (please correct me, if I'm wrong).
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47991 | What is the difference between keynote, invited, and oral conference presentations?
I'm a PhD student, and I'll soon be presenting some of my work at a conference. In the program, my presentation is labeled "invited" while others have "oral" and others "Keynote". I am a bit confused, as I was never invited (maybe one of my professors was) and would like to know the difference between these kind of presentations.
it doesn't help that Apple makes presentation software labeled "Keynote".
related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/15611/258
Having an invited talk and not having been invited is unusual, indeed. Maybe your professor was invited and passed the ball to you; the best thing to do is asking him/her.
"Oral" also is unusual for me (but maybe not in other fields). As noted in the other answer, typically the hierarchy is, from most to least prestigious:
keynote/plenary: people who were invited to participate by the organizers, who may also be paying their expenses. Unlike the rest of the talks, they are not in parallel sessions or have a reduced level of parallelism. Sometimes, when there are no parallel sections, "keynote talks" are simply longer.
invited: talks given by speakers that were explicitly invited by the organizers. Typically (but not always), the travel and registration expenses of these speakers are paid by the organizers.
contributed: people who applied themselves for participation (and were accepted) and are going to give a talk, usually in parallel.
poster: people who are going to present a poster instead of giving an oral talk. Sometimes people are given the option to present either a contributed talk or a poster.
I assume that "oral" means "contributed" here.
A keynote speech or presentation is a high-profile talk intended to be of interest to everyone at the conference, and is one of the selling points of the conference. Invited speakers are those who have been invited to give a talk by the organisers of the conference. My assumption is that 'oral' is just every other talk, i.e. speakers who applied to the conference and were selected to deliver their presentation.
In conferences where there are multiple presentations going on at once in different rooms, the keynote presentations will typically be "plenary sessions" in a very large room with no other talks going on at the same time. Keynote or plenary speakers typically have much more time for their presentations (1 hour or 1.5 hours compared with a typical 20 minute or 30 minute slot for an individual invited or submitted presentation.)
Not all plenary talks are "keynote" talks. I have given the former at a number of conferences, but not the latter. A conference generally would have no more than one (or maybe two) keynote talks, given by the most featured senior researchers present. (If the conference has a banquet, it's usually on the same day as the keynote talk.) Even if there are numerous parallel sessions, there may be two or three plenary talks per day, and they can't all be keynotes. In fact, at a couple of conferences I attended, each session organizer gave a plenary talk.
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48119 | What counts as a "project" when a potential employer asks a graduate about recent projects they have completed?
I recently graduated with a BS degree in Physics and I am looking for a job in the tech industry. A common question I get is talking about recent projects, so in general, what kind of assignments in academia counts as useful projects in industry? I've had the pleasure of going to a private institution with one of best science programs in the country, I managed to get coursework and research work in Physics, E.E, Economics, Computer Science, and Computational Biology.
You will likely get better answers at Workplace.SE than here, unless you are very specifically looking for a research job in industry (if you are, please edit your question to include this). Consider clicking on the "flag" link underneath your question to attract moderator attention, then request that your question be migrated to Workplace. (Please don't simply cross-post.)
Speaking as somebody on the other side of that table, what industry is generally looking for is evidence that you can actually put the knowledge that you've acquired to use. The sorts of skills that industry are looking for include the abilities to:
prioritize in order to achieve a larger goal, rather than getting bogged down in subproblems along the way.
work well with others as part of a team
follow through a complex piece of work to completion, rather than giving up after the "interesting bits" are complete
understand how your work fits into a larger whole and goals beyond "I was told this was what we were supposed to do"
synthesize together multiple different types of skills
estimate task difficulty, set a schedule, and manage unexpected problems as they arise
ability to understand the needs of the people who will put your work to use (sometimes jargonized as "customer focus")
determine when you need new knowledge or skills and take appropriate self-motivated steps to acquire these
All of these things are important ingredients in somebody who will be a good contributor to a larger organization, especially an R&D organization where you can't afford to be micromanaging a bunch of poor performers. Somebody who is strong in these abilities but lacks particular technical skills is often much preferable to somebody who has the technical skills but lacks the bigger picture "meta-skills." That's because technical skills are a rapidly moving target, and a motivated self-starter can generally acquire new technical skills much more easily than a technically skilled person can become a motivated self-starter.
Research projects are often good places to find this, as are large personal hobby projects. If you don't have any of these, class projects are a reasonable fall-back, though they will often be viewed with more skepticism, since they tend to be small in scope, have no "customers," and are often somewhat "spoon-fed."
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56245 | How should I react to seeing another student cheat on an exam?
Today I took my midterm exam for one of my classes. I saw that a student next to me was using her phone, and as I turned my head she hid it. At the end of the exam I wrote a note to my professor, I didn't mention the person's name, but I said that such type of behavior is not acceptable and that he should notice it next time.
I am kind of nervous that I will get in trouble for it, Did I do the right thing? What if the professor penalizes me? I studied really hard for this exam and I figured that it wasn't fair for my classmates and I to see a cheater get a good grade, and us a lower grade.
You will not get in trouble with your professor. Demanding that your professor see this next time, on the other hand, is hardly a reasonable request. I can assure you that they tried to spot cheaters. Knowing that cell phones were used might be helpful. I've never cheated and seen plenty of cheating around me. I find it best to just shrug, although others at Acad. SE will or might disagree on this last point.
You should state where this situation happened. Attitude towards cheating is matter of local "unwritten rules" and sometimes even varies from professor to professor. In some places cheating is major offense that may get you expelled. In others it's merely a nuisance and the worst thing that can happen is having another take at the exam.
@Agent_L Sometimes the local rules are completely written, as in the case of University honor codes, etc.
@I think you're completely missing the point. Sure, there may be written rules, but how and if they're applied is completely a matter of local culture and traditions. In many cultures, what's written on paper may be completely orthogonal to what's actually happening. This may be especially unusual for people who come from cultures where the unwritten rule is that written rules are applied.
What was the total potential advantage of a single phone glance? I'm inclined to side with the comments lamenting hyper-vigilance of minor infractions and anonymous accusations. You'd be hard pressed to offer grounds for a reasonable suspicion, let alone probable cause.
Much better to tell this to the professor in person, rather than writing a note. Ask your professor if he thinks you did the right thing in reporting it. You'll see what kind of environment you're in by the reactions. Also, why don't you have a chat with other students about cheating, and see if everyone agrees it should be stopped.
@AndrejaKo However, if an ethics code is written that specifically states that witnessing cheating is to be reported, then the OP would have violated the letter of the law by not reporting. If it does not, nor does it mention what one may witness others do at all, but that cheating is prohibited, then the OP, perhaps, might have violated the spirit of the law by again not reporting... if, on the other hand, there is no ethics code at all (I've attended institutions with all three variants, btw), then the OP would have violated nothing at all, and the only code is personal.
I don't think it's really that unfair to other students. A cheating student can possibly get a better grade, but in the end of the day that's only the grade, not the knowledge. So cheating is unfair to the cheater herself, not to others.
Assume the worst case scenario - that this student is using their phone to cheat and the information in the course is available in some readily usable format. They will still never be as fast in getting the answer as someone who actually studied and knows their stuff, even without having to continually check and hide their phone. They might even do well in the course, but their grade will never be better than someone who actually studied hard. At best, if they're never once caught, they waste years of their life in school without learning anything. They have nothing but a number on a paper.
You were right to inform the professor of cheating, and you shouldn't be penalized for that: your grade in the exam should depend only on what you wrote in your answers and nothing else.
However, I don't understand your motivation in writing the note. You should consider what you were trying to achieve by writing it. The way you describe it, the note sounds like it was lecturing the professor on how to do their job, rather than doing anything about cheating. You describe cheating as "unacceptable" but, by not naming the cheater, you show that you're more willing to accept cheating than the consequences of standing up to it. But, of course, it's your choice and your evaluation of the consequences is the most important.
You should perhaps consider other ways of dealing with the cheating. Other options include writing an anonymous note naming the cheater to the appropriate administrative staff. If you're worried that that would still leave you identifiable because the cheat knows you saw them, you could just start discussing the issue with other people in your class. If it becomes common knowledge that some unnamed person was cheating in the exam, peer pressure might stop that person cheating in the future.
"common knowledge that some unnamed person was cheating" ... I think this lynch mob justice / peer-pressure tactic is an awful way to handle this situation, which may not even be a case of cheating. Maybe the student had an urgent concern (unrelated to the test) that required checking their phone?
@dionys I have not advocated lynching or even threatening anyone. Furthermore, I see no legitimate reason for using a phone in an exam. If you're expecting urgent and extremely important news (for example, if a close relative is gravely ill), arrange in advance that you'll give the phone to the invigilator, who can take the call if it happens during the exam.
Most of your answer is reasonable; my comment is in regard to this advice: "you could just start discussing the issue with other people in your class. If it becomes common knowledge that some unnamed person was cheating in the exam, peer pressure ...". [I can't imagine the 'unnamed' person stays anonymous very long--might even be attributed to an uninvolved third party. So my opinion is this a situation to be avoided.]
I agree with you in principle. But things are often less than ideal in practice. Other than the bit at the end, I quite like your answer.
@DavidRicherby one possible use: if you forgot to turn it off and it suddenly starts sounding in the middle of the exam.
Anonymous letters accusing someone - please no. We had so many of them during the communist regime and their secret police. Too easy to ruin someone's life with fabricated accusations. Anonymous letters belong straight to the bin.
Maybe the student had an urgent concern (unrelated to the test) that required checking their phone? — Then the student should have approached the professor and said, "Excuse me, I have an urgent concern that requires checking my phone."
@VladimirF For those of us who were fortunate enough not to grow up in police states, anonymous tip-offs do not have these connotations. Rather, they're generally treated as a pragmatic (though not ideal) way to deal with exactly this kind of situation: somebody has genuine concerns but is worried about potential reprisals if it becomes known that they were the one who went to the authorities.
This problem is not restricted to police states. How would you react to an anonymous letter stating that your wife is cheating on you? Does someone use a pragmatic way to bring your attention and is just worried to state his name or is somebody trying to ruin your relationship by defamation? You can't trust anonymous letters, they must go straight to the rubbish bin.
Surely, most universities have some kind of liasion that you can non-anonymously report such cases to (for reasons of legitimacy) and who then can take action while protecting your identity? (cc @VladimirF)
@JeffE: If I had an urgent problem, I would be happy if the professor would not tell the whole class about that. In other words, as a student, you cannot know whether or not the student approached the investigator about the phone.
as a student, you cannot know whether or not the student approached the investigator about the phone — That's absolutely right. Which is why you should tell the professor that you saw someone looking at their phone, and the professor should say "Thank you for letting me know." and nothing else.
Depending on the university, there may be guidelines for what to do. My alma mater has this sentence in its full honor code document:
This includes an obligation to report violations by other students to the Honor Committee.
So at the university I attended, students are expected to report other students to the Honor Committee, not necessarily to a professor or anyone else. It is possible that some institutions or honor committees consider it a violation of the honor or ethics code to not report violations that you witness, although I doubt the punishment for not reporting is severe at all, in those cases.
If you have an honor code and/or ethics code or committee or anything like that at your university, then that's where you should look for next steps.
Great answer. Your professor needs more institutional support -- more proctors, clear policy and enforcement regarding electronic devices, larger testing location to allow for more space between students and greater mobility of proctors.
First, I'd like to be clear that I agree with your opinion that cheating should not be tolerated; it is unfair to other students, and generally has a negative effect on both learning and motivation in coursework.
I think honestly informing your instructor about observations or experiences in an exam is generally helpful, and we are almost always greatful for the feedback. In general this should not be something you can "get in trouble" with your instructors over.
That said, I'd like to point out that you probably don't have any responsibility (or authority) to make judgements about your classmate, or the gravity of her offence. I know that when you are stressed by time-constraints and a challenging course load it is tempting react strongly to the thought of someone cheating. It appears that your classmate was doing something wrong, but the fact is that you don't know that for sure. If you think about it in that light, you might appreciate that you are relieved of this burden (judging her and deciding her consequences). Hopefully, your professor can look at the incident more objectively and take appropriate action and/or appropriate precautions for the next exam.
Your reaction, accurately reporting what you saw, was the right one. Now you should let the instructor deal with it, and avoid jumping to any undue conclusions.
I can't imagine any legitimate reason for using a mobile phone in an exam but I otherwise agree with your answer.
@DavidRicherby ... It's possible that the student who pulled out her phone was putting it in "silent" mode, or turning it off. "I'll probably get a call in 5 minutes, I don't want it to disrupt my or other students' work on the exam, I'd better turn it off." The student could even have been making sure it was off, although "using" seems to rule that out.
@DavidRicherby There are plenty of (not good yet not cheating) reasons why someone (especially someone with bad phone habits) might use a phone in inappropriate times, and might still hide it after noticing being noticed.
@david If somebody in an exam realises they forgot to put their phone in silent mode or turn it off, they should attract the attention of the invigilator and explain the situation to them.
There may be reasons for using the cell phone during an exam, but none at all for doing so in a stealthy way. If you have a valid problem, you'd speak to the examiner. If you don't, your problem is either invalid in the scope of an exam situation, or you are ... dumb.
@HansAdler Then she should have cleared that with the invigilator before the exam. And checking that your partner still loves you after an argument is emphatically not a legitimate reason to use a phone in an exam.
@HansAdler Non-accomodating examiners aside, that's fine. If you prioritise something else above the exam in this particular moment -- consciously or not -- that's your prerogative. But the rest of the world can't be expected to share these priorities. In particular, it's the examiners' prerogative to enforce the exam-room rules and fail you. So yes: priorities can be set and impulses can be acted upon, but please be prepared to face the consequences.
@HansAdler That said, if you can't make yourself exclusively free for an exam for a few hours, you are probably not in exam-taking condition, anyway, mentally or emotionally. That's a problem known and to be solved before the exam, though. Escalating in-situ is (almost) always bad.
@DavidRicherby Perhaps you can't, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. The point is that the judgement should be made by someone with authority, not a peer.
Your sense of justice is something to be appreciated. I don't see the reason as to why should the professor penalize you for reporting malpractice. But as for 'getting into trouble' part this may cause problems if any of your peers connected to the one you reported about comes to know of this. So best remain discreet about the issue even to your own colleagues.
Although the right thing to do, it is not something for you to get too concerned about; your main concern should be on your future. Initial reporting is good, but better not try to force the professor to take action. Students who do malpractice do not generally go far in course. They usually do this to avoid a fail than to score the top. When it comes to the end, it is the true skills earned that will determine their job. So, if they do cheat, then they are just cheating themselves.
"Students who do malpractice do not generally go far in course." Some of the best cheaters are some of the most successful people in the world. Because they, erm, cheated.
I meant in the course they cheat in. Could you state any examples otherwise, @LightnessRacesinOrbit?
@ÉbeIsaac Schön got his PhD, a job at Bell labs, and several international awards.
@Davidmh: The society is not composed only of outliers (notice I used the word generally). If a few examples can outrule facts then the need for education itself would be questionable as there are quit a few examples of people excelling without it.
You noticed the use of a phone and put your professor's attention to the fact that a phone was used (possibly for cheating). That's good, so next examination phones can be forbidden (or blocked). But you did not tell your professor: "It is your job to notice this. You failed!", did you? This might not be considered as appropriately polite.
Regarding the possible cheating it would be a point to mention whether it might effect you directly, for example if the top x % of a course pass, getting more points (by cheating) than you could result in you failing the exam (while you would have passed with your number of achieved points if the cheater would not have gotten more points than you). And if failing that course means failing your study, well, standing up an yelling "Phone!" pointing at it might be appropriate. (Otherwise this is not appropriate, of course.)
There are many students like you who often see such incidents but prefer not to complain because a cheater can never succeed more than a meritorious/hard working student. If you are studying well and doing hard work, then she can never get better grades than you. Mostly a student starts cheating when he/she loses faith in him/herself to pass the exam.
If you have reported the matter to your professor, then you have done a good job. Usually, professors take those matters easy and never make it complicated. So stop thinking negatively and prepare for your next exams.
I feel you mate, but my advice is - better try living without the need of things to be fair. That's impossible to achieve and you will be happier if you mind your own business without caring what other have and you don't. :) You should be proud of yourself cause you didn't cheat. And also try not to care about grades so much.. they don't matter. What you learn is what matters. As an example my boss now is 2 years younger than me and didn't finish university yet while i have bachelor degree.
Anyways, i wish you good luck, and try staying away of negative thoughts! ^^
"grades don't matter" is true in some contexts, and very false in others. Talking about graduate students, for example, after graduation grades are mostly irrelevant; but during the program, they are generally the only measure to assign funding, so grades can have profound financial implications.
they are generally the only measure to assign funding — This may be true in some fields, but it is certainly not true in mine.
@JeffE Unfortunately, it is also dependent on the university. In Denmark, a big part of what determines the funding for a department is based on how many students pass the various exams (yes, this is as terrible as it sounds).
You know it is really depends on class and professor if they think cheating is serious professor will do something about it. My classmate caught somebody looked up cell phone while doing the exam. It is a moral issue. Cheating is cheating I told my classmate. That person will not have any proud of in their life. How can you have life and will be able to tell other or their child about moral that make me sick to the stomach.
I understand you could feel angry seeing someone cheating and getting away with that, but I don't think reporting it to a teacher, professor or any board would be good. I believe it's good you didn't tell the professor which student had done it. To me naming such a cheater and reporting them to anyone would sound like informing. It's the person's responsibility and matter of conscience. If you are sure they cheated and are really angry about it, you could always tell the person you didn't like it. However, the person might just reply that it was not your business. Also, if it was a single occassion and the person just glanced at a phone once, I really wouldn't make fuss about it.
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67948 | Can a professor force me to submit my incomplete paper to a journal?
I am taking a graduate class requiring that I submit a paper to a journal at the end of the semester. The professor sent out an email informing us that we can either hand off a copy of the paper in an addressed envelope to her, which she will then mail, or email her a copy of the submission receipt if we submit the paper electronically.
I feel uncomfortable submitting my paper at this time, and I intended to work on this paper with my advisor over the summer before submitting it to a journal.
My advisor told me that I should report this situation to the Chair and I did, but my complaint was passed off to the Director of Grad Student Services within my department. The Director informed me that she had talked with the professor, that the professor would not change the requirement, and proposed that I submit it to a journal and then just immediately withdraw the submission. That has been the plan, but I feel like my right to determine what happens to something that I wrote, my intellectual property, is being infringed upon by this professor.
Can my professor force me to submit my paper to a journal anyway?
I'm fairly sure that if you've gone that high up the chain and the answer they gave you was "Yes, he can", then the only answer we can give you is "Yes, he can". Possibly if someone who read this knew your jurisdiction and was familiar with applicable laws they may disagree, but I don't think we have very many (actual) lawyers that frequent the site. You could try going even further up, to a dean, but at that point you run the risk of burning bridges (whether your objection is upheld or not). Perhaps you should view this as a lesson in "publish or perish"...
You should submit to the Journal of Universal Rejection (www.universalrejection.org). They promise to reject your paper :)
Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a snail mail address for the Journal of Universal Rejection, and their process does not indicate any receipts.
Can you drop the class?
I'm not sure who you talked to has the most authority, was it "the Chair," the Director of Grad Student Services in your dept, your advisor? If it's "the Chair" and they already said it's OK to publish later, then you may want to talk to them again & get some clarification. Or if it's the Director, maybe your complaint was not passed off with all it's details, and talking to them for clarification would help. And what did your advisor say about this decision?
I asked a very similar question a few years ago that might help you: Professor withholding course grade until submission of conference paper. A few important details were different in my case (the paper was only produced in the class and was not really my research or my advisors)
@PatriciaShanahan: That page does say "Submissions should be emailed to [email protected]." A more telling problem might be no visible activity since early 2014.
@DanielR.Collins The class rules require "either hand off a copy of the paper in an addressed envelope to her, which she will then mail, or email her a copy of the submission receipt if we submit the paper electronically.". I don't think either can be done with the JUR, unfortunately. Otherwise, it seems the ideal venue for a paper that is only being submitted because of a class requirement.
This sounds like a very unreasonable request. But let me ask: did you know about the required submission when you enrolled in the course? Is it in the syllabus? It would also be helpful to know your academic field: in my own (mathematics), a paper is a very serious thing -- often the work of one or more years by a single researcher -- and this request would be horrible but also a bit ridiculous. Perhaps there are academic fields in which it is relatively common for "term papers" to be submitted for publication. (Which is not at all to justify the practice, just to get context.)
By the way, if I were in your situation, I would seriously consider simply refusing to comply, stating your reasons, and taking it from there. If you turn in your final paper to the professor along with a one page letter signed by you and your advisor explaining that you feel the request is unethical and therefore you will not be following it, then what is going to happen? You are not doing any less academic work than the DGS's ridiculous hack of a suggested solution, but you are doing the right thing rather than the wrong thing. You would have a great case for a grade appeal...obviously.
I see a couple of options if you conclude that not only can the professor do that, you must also submit your paper in the spirit of the class (i.e. not for immediate withdrawal). You could choose a journal with fast turnaround that is not your target venue, which will provide you some reviews that might help you during the summer. Or you could work hard to get the paper to a state of weak rejection or better. Submitting it to the journal of choice in this second condition might just help kickstart the process of revision that leads to eventual acceptance.
"The Director ... proposed that I submit it to a journal and then just immediately withdraw the submission" - That's ridiculous. Not only does it waste everybody's time, I think the professor could (and probably would) argue that submission followed by immediate withdrawal doesn't really count.
Submit it to wherever you hope to submit it at the end of the summer, and explain the situation in the cover letter. Make it short and funny: editors are busy, but how often do they get submissions that ask to be rejected? Then you should get a really quick rejection with encouraged resubmission. =)
@PatriciaShanahan what is so special about the journal of universal rejection? OP can create his/her own journal - the InterGalactic Journal of Pointless Paperwork with a postal address: InterGalactic Journal of Pointless Paperwork / care of OP / {OP's street address} / {OP's city, state, postal code} {OP's nation}. As editor, OP can accept or reject OP's submission at OP's discretion.
Having forced submission as part of a course requirement is idiotic. Even the brightest researchers need more than 4 months to do enough quality research, and to write a quality paper. I would expect far less from graduate students, so the timeframe itself is unreasonable; I don't see how anyone could get something journal-ready in 4 months. If the goal is to get students familiar with how journals work by actually doing it, it would be a much better idea for the professor herself to mock the journal process for the students.
A quick note: it's not really your intellectual property that's really at stake here (though there is some damage if the journal will require you to transfer copyright in the piece to them), but rather your moral rights to the integrity of your work. These rights also matter! They're part of the foundation stone of academia, and you should consider pitching your case (at least partly) in those terms.
@DanielR.Collins: that the last activity is from 2014 is not worrying IMO. They say on the webpage that they've switched to yearly publication. Many journals backdate their issues, so it's not too late still for them to publish a 2015 issue.
This sounds like a professor that used to make ESL students practice ordering pizza here on campus by requiring them to call a real pizza place--then end the conversation by canceling the order. Neither my wife nor I could convince her that this was both rude and abusive of her students. She only fixated on the idea that since the students canceled the order they were not out any money, so no harm no foul.
@mmh - JUR - what a timesaver!
Stick up for yourself! If you don't want to do it, don't do it. Explain politely but firmly why.
I find this highly annoying that a professor would assign something like this. Submissions take time, time the editors invest, time the reviewers invest. To have student papers submitted that are perhaps not exactly the highest quality is a waste of resources. Journals should record only the best science, not be considered a machine. Did the professor stipulate the journal? There are many journals out there that offer pay-to-publish, and then there is another potentially sub-standard non-peer-reviewed paper out there for search machines to find. I would submit a written complaint about this to the dean.
This. It's irresponsible to have this as a requirement. Submitting papers that aren't ready is not only a waste of the editors' and reviewers' time, but if it does get published it ends up permanently attached to the student's name. And from the question, "the professor ... proposed that I submit it to a journal and then just immediately withdraw the submission," which is an even more pointless waste of people's time, and damages the student's relationship with the editor while accomplishing exactly nothing. Not publishing prematurely is the right thing to do and should not be penalised.
...and not only that but submitting an incomplete version will make it harder to get the final version published if the student does spend the summer working on it. There's just no sense in this at all.
The professor's requirement that you submit for publication a paper you do not want to submit, and the advice from the Grad Studies director to submit and then immediately withdraw your paper, are both unethical, harmful, and -- for lack of a better word -- idiotic. They are asking you to:
Use false pretexts to waste the time of busy professionals who have no connection to your course or to your university; and
Risk seriously damaging your own scientific credibility by submitting for publication a work that does not live up to what you consider appropriate standards, and (if you follow the suggestion to immediately withdraw the submission) professing to do so out of a dishonest motivation.
I see this as analogous to a criminology professor making it a grade requirement for their students to call 911 and report a fictitious serious crime as a way of learning about how the criminal justice system works. This is obviously wrong, and arguably asking you to be complicit in outright fraud. In academia, your reputation and credibility as a researcher are among your most prized possessions, and I would strongly advise you to not take any action that you perceive as risking those assets, whether it's by publishing a paper you are not satisfied with, or annoying a journal editor who is a fellow member of your scientific community with spurious article submissions and withdrawals.
My recommendation is to ask for a meeting with your department chair and go carefully over the situation and the implications of what you are being asked to do, and ask them to intervene. Another option is to enlist the help of your advisor who could help you argue your case. Much would depend on whether your advisor feels comfortable intervening, on local power politics within the department, the precise level of seniority and personalities of the people involved, etc.
Another insight I can offer is a guess about the human dynamics at play here. My experience is that when the system fails to correct bad decisions of this type, the way it happens is often something along the following lines:
Your professor is a (probably senior) person with a somewhat stern personality and rigid views about education of graduate students. She is well-intentioned, but on this issue she is simply wrong.
Your department chair is extremely busy and doesn't always have the time to deal in detail with any complaint from a student, so passed the problem on to the grad studies director. However, if you insist on escalating the issue the chair may have to (perhaps reluctantly) take the time to look more into this issue and possibly intervene.
Your director of graduate studies may be a sensible person, but like many academics may be a non-confrontational person who doesn't like getting in nasty arguments with colleagues, and was reluctant to force the issue even if she disagreed with the other professor, and came up with the "submit-and-then-withdraw" proposal as a kind of cop-out solution.
I'm assuming that the people involved are mostly reasonable people who have good intentions but need a bit of help reaching the right decision. I can't guarantee that this advice will work, and it's possible that you are in a dysfunctional department where unreasonable decisions of this sort cannot be corrected very easily, but I think it's worth a try.
Now I understand where I get all these papers from to review which look as if the supervisor didn't do a proper job - this is called "outsourcing". The OP should be careful not to reveal the identity of the institution, or it should get a warning that it is going to go straight onto the "reject on sight"-lists.
There are two parts to consider:
Your professor can very well make "have a submission ready paper" a criterion for passing a class. She can not force you to submit it, since you could just accept not passing the class. It has nothing to do with "but I feel like my right to determine what happens to something that I wrote, my intellectual property, is being infringed upon by this professor.". I am pretty sure if you tell her that you don't do it, she will say "ok, you dont pass the class" and you can just repeat it.
but
The Director informed me that she had talked with the professor, that the
professor would not change the requirement, and proposed that I submit it to
a journal and then just immediately withdraw the submission.
Frustrating that this should be the solution. I think that one should inform the journals in question so that they should just ban all submissions in this context. Institutions which, despite obvious and known severe problems with a paper encourage theirs students to send these papers are behaving unethical.
What your professor should do is check the quality, and judge the quality of your work, and if it's appropriate, give you more time, or fail you if your work (or project duration) is sub-standard in comparison to your peers. Pressing submit buttons is not an academic achievement.
My advisor told me that I should report this situation to the Chair
and I did, but my complaint was passed off to the Director of Grad
Student Services within my department.
Try it again. But this time, if they recall your first attempt, tell them that you made a mistake, and that you shouldn't have asked for a special dispensation.
By asking for special treatment for yourself, you may have indirectly implied that you were ok with the other students still making bogus submissions.
The fact is, this assignment not only has the potential to tarnish your own reputation, the reputation of those other students taking the class, but also the reputation of any student from the same school (not taking the class) that may submit legitimate papers to those same journals.
A little math-guy-in-a-math-ed-setting moment...file this as a "WLOG" confirmation for the OP, perhaps: not only was I made to do this same thing, but (to raise the pot) it was 1) meant as merely an exercise in the preparatory work needed to prepare a manuscript for publication, most specifically transforming the dissertation into a journal-ready edition (but not at all worth hitting the brakes at the last second, oh no); and 2) it was required of the entire class in question, the penultimate course prior to the actual dissertation itself. Thus (3. corollary) it was true for every student in this penultimate course taught by this veteran professor, and since she was the only person who ever taught it (4. extension) it was required of every student who pursued a Ph.D. in this field at this particular school. Talk about a shotgun blast of uninteresting, unpolished, nowhere-near-finished (hardly begun, to be precise) theses for those poor, hapless saps at the journals in question to have to field (slash, redirect to the circular file). Oy vey!
This does not really answer the question. If you have a different question, you can ask it by clicking Ask Question. You can also add a bounty to draw more attention to this question. - From Review
How does this not answer the question? OP asked if a professor was allowed to force students to submit their incomplete paper to a journal. I gave a specific (personal) example of a professor doing so not only for myself, but for an entire classroom. How is that not precisely what was asked for?
Just that the same thing happened to you does not imply the validity of the process.
Answering a question with "hey dude, it happened to me" isn't answering the question; when someone asks "can a professor do this to me" they're really asking "if they ask me for this, can I challenge it and have a leg to stand on?" Ranting about your situation for catharsis' sake doesn't really help the OP's case. I would also suggest breaking up your text a little bit and perhaps meandering a little less, which would help the quality of your answers.
If that is the stipulation of the class, then the best thing to do is to comply with the stipulation whether you feel like the paper is ready for submission or not. Treat this as an academic exercise. Should you refuse (which you have a right to do), but that will probably earn you an failing grade on that assignment. This request for submitting a paper to a journal appears to be common as it teaches students the process preparing a document and submitting to a journal. Another thing this type activity does is encourages students to write at a higher level. During my first graduate class, I had to do a book review and submit it to a journal.
Administratively, professors have deadlines of their own and have a timetable as when to submit grades. In this case, what does the professor do with your grade? Is your grade for the class marked as an incomplete? Can a grade be changed in the system after a certain date? The professor’s decision likely goes beyond that of wanting to see you have a published paper.
If your paper fails to meet the quality criteria of the journal or loses to the competition, it is likely that the journal will not accept it. Given this scenario, you can still work on the paper and bring it to a publishable state. One condition is that most journals will not accept a submission if the article is being considered for another journal. This can take anywhere to several weeks to several months.
+1 For the "incomplete" grade suggestion. OP should negotiate for an incomplete and plan to submit at the end of the summer.
-1: "If that is the stipulation of the class, then the best thing to do is to comply with the stipulation whether you feel like the paper is ready for submission or not." It is not at all clear that this is the best thing, as the OP already explained. For instance, a silly publication could hurt his professional reputation, and a premature publication of work which is being done with / assisted by his thesis advisor sounds even worse. "Should you refuse (which is in your right)" Yes. "[T]he professor can always refuse you a passing grade (which is in his or her right)." Not at all clear.
Per you comment: "[T]he professor can always refuse you a passing grade (which is in his or her right)." Not at all clear. I added a clarification that the failing grade is for the assignment. That is if the student fails to submit an assignment, then the logical result is an F/0 for that assignment..
It is not at all clear that an F would be justified even granted your premises. If a student only writes 2/3 of an essay, I would not be justified in giving it a 0 or, even, automatically failing it. No more than it would be justified to assign an F to an exam script which answered only 3 rather than 4 questions or whatever. Presumably submission to the journal is not the entire assignment - even if this is admitted as a legitimate part of it. [Also, if the practice is widespread in some disciplines, that doesn't make it any less unethical. So much the worse for those disciplines.]
@TonyH: Your response only make sense in the most narrow sense: the professor can say that the student got a failing grade on the assignment, but she may well be wrong to say that in a way that will get overturned via an appeal. University professors are simply not authorized to require students to follow all their whims in order to get passing (or whatever) grades. If the assignment is to kiss the university president on the nose and the student refuses, then in your sense "the logical result is an F/0 for that assignment"...not a very useful sense.
"This request for submitting a paper to a journal appears to be common..." Appears to whom? I and many other lifetime academics are indicating that we've never heard of the practice and find it somewhere between outrageous and ridiculous. Knowing that parts of academia can differ widely from other parts of academia, I am willing to countenance the idea that there is a branch of academia in which this practice is common...but your answer is not a contribution until you provide information about this part of academia, in particular explaining how the ethical problems get resolved.
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47584 | Can authors from certain origins really not know about the gravity of plagiarism?
With respect to some cultures, in particular Asian ones, one often hears statements such as the following:
In this country, copying is regarded as flattery and thus people do not know the evils of plagiarism.
or (taken from here):
In some traditional cultures in Asia and the Middle East, for example, college students are expected to quote or paraphrase the best known political or religious authorities without attribution because readers, especially professors, are expected to know what texts are being circulated. Indeed, it might be a serious insult to the teacher if the student writer formally cites the text being borrowed.
Such statements may nourish prejudices or lead to it being considered an extenuating circumstance that a plagiarist comes from a such a country (see, e.g., this answer or this case).
I wonder whether this phenomenon really has the extents that would justify the latter, more specifically: Is it conceivable that somebody makes it to the point where they author a paper or a PhD thesis without knowing that they must not plagiarise? Or: Can authors really commit plagiarism out of inexperience on this level?
Note:
I am primarily interested in anything going beyond personal experience (there are individual statements in this article). A scientific study would be ideal, but is probably not the only possible way to fulfill this criterion.
This is not directly about how the respective academic cultures nourish plagiarism and what aspect of the culture is behind this.
As all the answers so far have ignored this: I am not asking whether cultures differ in their attitude towards plagiarism – they clearly do. I am asking whether these differences reach a certain level.
To simply echo the question: yes, based on considerable personal experience (dozens of cases), for some students it is essentially inconceivable not to copy verbatim, and typically without attribution, apparently not at all understanding that (in my context, U.S., ...) this is a serious no-no. In discussions with the people in these cases, it was very difficult for me to get through to them: they were convinced that I was speaking figuratively or had misunderstood their intent (which was to quote the most authoritative sources, etc.). ... [cont'd]
... That's why I started having "draft submission" so I could detect this and tell them that it's against the rules before they committed to the final copy of a writing project... After all, the notion of plagiarism is "a social construct", not an absolute. I think in the vast majority of the cases I dealt with, the kids (many grad students in CompSci...) were acting in good faith, and thought "research" meant ferreting out sources other people hadn't seen, or were older or... something. But no bibliography...? It did surprise me greatly at the time.
@paulgarrett: Interesting (in particular as it clearly contradicts the quotes from the link that I mentioned). However, if I understand correctly, this is for student work, not on the PhD thesis or paper level, right?
Right, yes, I've not witnessed this quite at Ph.D. level.
This is not from a study, just my experience (in central-eastern Asia). I have see many, many cases of plagiarism. In every case, the student admits that they knew it is wrong but they did not have time to do it right. I believe the issue implied by GKS in the answer: Many teachers here do not do authenticity checks and, therefore, students get in to bad habits. I have seen this at the undergrad level and also in master-level classes. I have not seen a single student claim it was culturally acceptable (and I have asked hundreds of good and bad students).
Maybe they just don't have a key for western style quotation marks on their keyboards?
The only unintentional plagiarism I can think of is the kind where you've cited a work and lifted a passage without using quotes or without appropriately linking the two (e.g. citing a work in a bibliography but not a footnote). That really could be poor instruction. But that's a mistake that should only be forgiveable once...
The OP seems to potentially be confusing himself between two very different questions: "Can they write a thesis and not know they must not plagiarize" is actually very different from "Can they write a thesis and not know Western views on plagiarism"? The former is rather easily established positively, as it is very strongly tied into the relevant culture. If it's okay in their culture, then they will definitely not know they "must not" plagiarize: they are likely to know that they must plagiarize! The other one is less clear. The internet can provide that information with a random click.
@zibadawatimmy: Those questions are only different if there are actually universities or publishers out there, which do not even condemn plagiarism in their rules (even if the culture is totally against this), which my research to this question did not make seem very likely (if you have contradicting evidence, let me know). — What information can the Internet provide with one random click?
@Wrzlprmft Virtually any information whatsoever. Click random page on wikipedia and boom, random info on a wide variety of topics. Plus the usual cornucopia of links you can find on websites and social media. I've been given the understanding that not all Japanese universities formally distribute a policy against plagiarism, but don't have a link. It's hearsay from students in Japan, which may not be reliable.
@zibadawatimmy: But what do you conclude from that? You can easily find that a rainbow does not have seven colours, yet I strongly assume that that’s what most people think.
I'd say this: In general, yes, people from a culture with one set of norms or mores going to another culture in which they are not aware of the latter's norms and mores, in which the latter conflict with the former, run the risk of breaching them. Moreover, if the practices which conflict are so habituated, then this risk may be substantial even if informed, due to nothing more than sheer habit.
Does that mean it should be given a "pass" in your own country? Of course not, but it does mean, I think, that one should exercise a bit of understanding during the process of actually handling any infractions that arise.
I am not here to create or perpetuate stereotypes. I just want to make an attempt to explain it.
Yes, in my personal experience, in Asian countries, scholars fail to understand the basic concept of plagiarism. Let me give a background of myself, I finished my undergraduate in India and currently a graduate student in USA.
In almost every American University, there are clear rules imposed on assignments and laboratories. There are certain honor codes and honor committees which oversee the description and prevention of plagiarism. Plagiarism check software are utilized too.
However, in India, howsoever unbelievable it is, there is no concept of weekly assignments in most (just a qualifier) of the Indian universities. At most, students are required to complete one (or two) assignment in a semester. The assignments also happens to be most boring ones. For example, "write report on recent trends in "Biomedical Instrumentation"". Unfortunately, even in those assignments, the grading patterns are usually (again, just a qualifier) binary, i.e. you get full credit if you submit the assignment and zero credits if you fail to do so. Thus, there is no mechanism to evaluate the thought process, the research skills and plagiarism related issues.
However, the concern is, when even most of the professors fail to adhere to plagiarism rules. The reason being the professor evaluation schemes utilized in most (you know, it is a qualifier) of the universities. You are supposed to come up with these many conference papers and these many journal papers for doing fairly well in yearly evaluation. No emphasis on the quality of publications is established. To take advantages of such a sad situation, several conferences pop up from nowhere giving professors opportunity to meet the evaluation requirements. Some of these conferences are pathetic. How pathetic? You can submit a single page paper, for starter; You can submit paper as late as just a week before the conference. And what else is incredible, the conferences bear tags like "IEEE International Conference on _______ _______ and ______". Really? Yes, I know it's sad, but it's true.
These are what I believe the main reasons of why Indian scholars are so much at risk of plagiarism.
This isn't really related to the issue of plagiarism, but not having weekly assignments is not at all specific to India, in my native France also (at least in universities, as opposed to prépas and grandes écoles which I do not know well), weekly homework is rarely assigned, and even when it is assigned it is rarely graded. The attitude is that if you don't want to work, more power to you, you will probably fail the midterm/final exam and that's your problem.
This explores the culture behind the plagiarism and the prevalence of plagiarism in these countries, but what about my central question: Can they really not even know, when they are at the level where they publish a thesis or a paper?
@Wrzlprmft Think about it for a minute. How do you acquire the knowledge of ethics (or basically any knowledge)? Primarily by conditioning through your environment (social pressure), secondarily by thinking long and hard about the good and bad and maybe arriving at the right conclusion. If you don't have time to think about ethics and there was no necessity to do so in the past you will most probably not know what is right and what is wrong.
@Nox: I am aware of this. However, there is a big difference between growing up in a culture that nurtures plagiarism and not even knowing what the Western academic culture considers wrong in this respect.
@Wrzlprmft "Do they really not know?" would be difficult to answer. If these students have had reasonable access to the internet for many years, one would imagine not. If by nothing else but chance they would have likely stumbled upon this concept. Do we believe they've all had access to the internet for a long enough period of time? And even if they have, and did encounter this notion, how much did it really register? Did they think it some antiquated relic that nobody really pays attention to? And if they have no aspirations outside their country, would they care to even remember?
@zibadawatimmy: "Do they really not know?" would be difficult to answer. – Make a survey among such students and ask their opinion on a typical case of plagiarism. I am no expert in designing surveys and do not have the funds, but apart from this is feels pretty straightforward to me and I would not be surprised if this had already been done (hence the question).
Lack of the concept of plagiarism isn't just limited to Middle Eastern and Asian countries. I had a Portuguese teacher who caught essentially an entire class cheating. She said next time if we wanted an A without doing the work to just tell her - that grades weren't that big of a deal in Brazil. To clarify, she wasn't mad that cheating occurred - she just didn't want to grade copied assignments. This teacher was also the recipient of a prestigious international scholarship.
Some people have low standards. No culture forces you to copy-and-paste.
And although the stereotype is of a Chinese student copying full pages into his essay, the most horrifying cases of concrete plagiarism that I known are from Germany, where several high-profile cases of literally copy-and-paste (not only paraphrasing a source) were found in doctoral theses works.
Most of these German academics defended their actions when they were caught. I don't know of any single case of someone admitting his wrong-doing. Somehow a scientific work for them was a patch work of other's works. The fact that they didn't cite the original work were for them a minor issue.
I fail to see how this answers my question. (Also, the popular German plagiarisers were politicians or similar and thus belonged to a group of people that is known for never admitting mistakes.)
@Wrzlprmft: most of those with low standards were not politicians. Some were politicians. And some were students that became politicians some years down the road. But the biggest group among those with low standards were the doctoral advisors, the assistants of the advisors, and the thesis committees. These all think that it's OK to have low standards.
+1 for challenging OP's stereotypes. Ironically, the OP seems to be German himself.
@PierreB: Please enlighten me about my stereotypes – where do I write anything that assumes a stereotype (other than about politicians)?
I don't know of systematic published studies of the problem, but I do know from having had students write essays on the topic that even American students have significant problems in correctly identify instances of plagiarism. So while they all understand that you should not plagiarize, they often do not understand what that entails. They best understand the requirement to set off verbatim copying in quotes and to pair the quote with a reference, and worst understand the requirement to not represent as your own something that you did not create. My opinion is that universities have made the situation worse by plagiarizing statements and policies about plagiarism (implying that no attribution is necessary in advancing an idea about what constitutes plagiarism, or how to avoid plagiarism). For example, dozens of people have committed plagiarism in talking about plagiarism, as this google search reveals. I have actually encountered foreign students who did not understand the word "plagiarism", everybody at the PhD level in the west almost certainly knows the word and knows that it is bad, but there is still a problem with not knowing what it actually is.
Your question sounds very western-centric. As if plagiarism was an obvious bad thing worldwide. No it isn't.
Is it obvious for you that you mustn't hand people anything with only one hand? It's known to be very rude, one need to always hand things with both hands. I learned this was important for Japanese people. I didn't know it. Other cultures don't know US or western Europe attitude as well.
For example in Poland one is not frowned upon when they plagiarize [or cheat or something], but only when they get caught [you can't even cheat? What kind of a student you are?]. We have special words for different kinds of cheating and you don't even have a word for cheating at school [to differ it from cheating on your spouse or something]. So yes, cultural thing.
While my question is asked from a Western point of view, I do not deny the fact that other cultures have different attitudes towards plagiarism. But as I already said elsewhere, there is a big difference between coming from a culture of plagiarism and and arriving at the stage of writing papers and not having even heard about the gravity of plagiarism in the global academic world. And the latter is what my question is about.
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3005 | NSF sponsoring scientist already having postdocs under their supervision
This question seems reasonably focused and of interest, but is perhaps unanswerable. I'm a mathematics student graduating and would like to apply for the NSF postdoctoral fellowship. I wanted to know whether choosing an NSF sponsoring scientist who already has postdocs under their supervision damages one's chances of obtaining the fellowship. I'm not as interested in the question of whether such a sponsor will do as good a job in their role. I'm especially interested in answers which provide some evidence which bears on the matter. This seems slightly(very?) field specific, so answers from people with experience in mathematics or related fields are preferred.
Thank you!
You could ask the people in charge of the program directly. They have no reason not to give you a straight answer.
I am not directly familiar with the NSF scheme, but for the NIH NRSA scheme choosing a PI with previous post docs is a huge benefit. In fact, from what I have heard from young colleagues, if the PI does not have current or previous post docs, the NIH likes to see a more experienced co-supervisor listed.
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3545 | What do co-supervisors get out of a PhD?
PhD supervisors usually get paid to supervise. They also have the prestige of having lots of students under their belt.
It's common to also have co-supervisor (I think it's mandatory in many fields, in Australia at least). What do these people get in return for their services? Put another way: if I'm asking someone to be my PhD supervisor, expecting them to help me out a whole lot for the next 3-4 years, what do I have to offer them?
Ph.D supervisors don't get paid to supervise in the US. They get paid to teach and do research.
Lots of students ≠ prestige.
We don't get paid to supervise. We have to find money to pay students.
I thought everyone made their students pay back 1/2 of the stipend in cash.
@DanielE.Shub sssh!
Lots of students doesn't imply prestige but it helps. And if they spread your ideas there's an indirect prestige gain.
Dave's remark on switching to the student's shoes and contemplating what you can get out of a co-supervisor is, in my opinion, a very useful one and should be of primary concern to students.
Let me put some personal perspective on this. I, as a senior post-doc, act as a co-supervisor of two PhD students (with some international twist to it within the EU context) and have colleagues who do the same, hence my observations below. Of course my view is one of a junior researcher, so take it with a grain of salt.
My benefits from being a co-supervisor are the following, in the order of subjective importance:
new horizons: the students act as drivers and catalysts of research topics I do not necessarily care for in a very personal and deep manner. It means that I can broaden my horizons and get somebody pushing me towards learning something new. That is a good thing for me as a curious person, as well as for my career.
publication record: given the first point, obviously, if the students work well and our collaboration works well too, since I get as much influence on their work as they allow me, or ask me to, we get together some useful stuff done and get papers published. I would stress the word "together", where I rather take the passenger's seat and try to help wherever necessary, but the crucial decisions are student's. The finished and delivered projects, as well as papers are obviously a good thing for both of us, too.
project leadership experience: often the collaboration is in a context of a project, where, as the more senior guy,I would take the role of a project manager, or a team leader. Of course this gives me plus points to the CV as well, not speaking about learning how to do this kind of work. Another good thing for my career.
soft skills: by doing the above and by that closely collaborating with people with whom my bond is tighter than just a joint interest (as it would be with a member of my community from a different institution), in a way, we are supposed to work out our ways along each other. At least for me, that is a good training too and good for my life and career, whatever twist should it take in the future.
should the collaborating partner become a friend of mine during the process, I would add it as a benefit too. But obviously this one is not everybody's piece of cake.
All in all, the points above boil down to a single one: being a co-supervisor means for me to become and act as a senior buddy to the student and prepares me for running my own lab/group, should it become reality one day.
Co-supervisors play different roles, which may vary from individual to individual. Sometimes they are there as a backup, either in case things go wrong with the main supervisor, or if the student needs someone else to talk to. They can read the papers (and eventual thesis) of the student and may even participate in the research, adding a different perspective. In some cases, they can be more active than the supervisor (this is often the case if the co-supervisor is a post doc). Often they will be a part of the committee assessing the thesis in the end.
What does the co-supervisor get out of it? Well, a tick on his/her CV. Publications. Experience dealing with students. Contacts. Ideas. And work. In any case, it is part of what an academic is paid to do.
The real question should be: what do I, as a PhD student, get out of having a co-supervisor?
This is also the case in Australia (I'm assuming the OP is from Australia). They often also add domain specific knowledge, in the case of a cross-discipline PhD. The only notable exception to what has been said is that none of the supervisors (in Australia) assess the thesis, the examiners are all independent. As you noted in other comments as well, no-one gets paid over and above their normal salary to do this either (main or co-supervisor). It is however mandatory to have at least two supervisors in Australia, to be the emergency backup.
I would have thought it obvious what a student gets out of a (co)supervisor...
@naught101: you'd be surprised what is not obvious and what is assumed to be known.
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3022 | In conference review process, what do "author response" and "author notification" mean?
I just visited a conference website where organizers, for the submitted paper review process, listed a date for paper submission, a date for "author response", and another date for "author notification".
It's the first time I see this double wording.
I suppose that "author notification" is when they communicate to authors if their papers have been accepted or not, but what does "author response" stand for?
Thanks
actually it's a very interesting feature that some conferences give to authors, but (at least in CS) very few committees use them
It has to be a conference with a rebuttal phase, where the authors can answer the main points raised by the reviewers, who in turn will be able to draw more conclusive remarks on the paper itself
see also here: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mckinley/notes/blind.html
I assume that during this period you can respond to any questions or criticisms raised during the review of the paper. After this round of feedback the final decisions will be made.
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1490 | Why is the city of publication important in most bibliography format?
Most bibliography formats require the city of publication for books. Why? In this digital era, ISBN would be way more important. But even before the digitalization of everything, why was the city of publication important?
I can imagine some purposes:
to distinguish potential same names of different publishers, and
to help book-seekers find the publisher and the book by actually visiting the city or contacting libraries in the city.
I want to know better stories about the 'city of publication'.
ISBN, ISSN or DOI is the accurate reference. Citation styles are somewhat grounded in the tradition and thus are either holding unnecessary stuff or missing the unambiguous identifier.
Unambiguous identifiers are nice, and we should include them when possible, but they can't replace a clear, redundant, human-readable citation. Plus identifiers have various limitations (they cost money, so low-cost journals sometimes do not use DOIs, and ISSNs have the irritating feature that every journal has two, one for print and one for electronic - this is sensible if you are using them for library ordering purposes, but it forces anyone else to make an arbitrary choice).
Human readability is nice and useful (and I am not saying that there should be only an identifier!). Also, I like when there are actual titles, not only names, as it makes it easier to guess the content, remember and then search (and also for traditional reasons (saving space on paper) there are often not included, even in e-prints).
Mentioning the city in the bibliography is important because sometimes the same edition published in different cities would have different pagination, and occasionally even redacted content. Therefore when someone wants to look up the original source, they need to have this additional information available to them.
Another important reason to keep the bibliographic information on place of publication is for reasons of style. Many of us might have bibliographies stretching a century or more, and it would look odd to mention place for some and not for others.
But naturally changes in citation styles are continual, and another element of the citation that is of lessening importance is the page number for journal articles. For one of my publications, I was actually required to remove the page numbers in the in text citation, because the relevant information is easier to find using a search engine rather than by leafing to the correct page in a printed copy.
By the way, do you know a good reference for the different pagination/redacted content issues? I don't know much about early publication practices but would love to learn more.
@AnonymousMathematician A concrete example: Russel and Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (3rd Ed). the US edition is 1152 pages (published 2009), the European edition is 1104 pages (2013); there also seems to be an Indian edition and maybe a Chinese one, too.
In most cases, mentioning the city in the bibliography is not important. It appears to be largely a legacy of older practices. For this reason, I usually don't include the name of the city in my references, unless there is some particular reason to include it.
In older practices, why was it important?
Decades ago, it was not the case that there were just a few, multinational conglomerates doing essentially all the mathematical publishing in the world, for example. Thus, there were small publishers who'd be sufficiently not-well-known that their location needed to be specified. Further, there were no search engines, so it was difficult to find an entity if its location were not known.
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545 | What happens to the reviews that people write for journal articles after they're sent back to the author?
Are they almost always kept confidential? Or is there protocol for sharing them?
I'm curious about your intent... why would there be a protocol for sharing reviews about a paper you publish? Why would you care about someone's comments on a paper I wrote that hasn't been published yet?
What about reviews post-publication? I'm actually learning how to write reviews myself, so I'm curious. Plus, it's always interesting how reviews shape the direction of a paper.
@InquilineKea possibly duplicate discussion here
@CharlesMorisset: how i knew that i would screw up my first flag :)
I can imagine one context in which it would be extremely useful to share them: rejected and resubmitted papers. As an editor, if I get a second-hand submission, I'd want to know why it was sacked the first time, who did the review, and what the authors did in reply. As far as I know, currently there is no practical nor moral obligation to even inform an editor that it is a resubmission.
In my experience, the contents of the comments of other referee reports are only made indirectly available. Since the authors are normally expected to provide a response to the reviews, the relevant criticisms and comments of the other referees are typically mentioned or discussed in that document. Outside of that, however, there's often little direct sharing of referee reports. None of the eight or nine journals for which I've reviewed (physics, chemistry, chemical engineering) have allowed me to see directly the reviews submitted by the other referees.
At any rate, the results are almost always kept confidential, unless it is an "open" referee process by design. (There are a few journals now that make the refereeing process a part of the publication record for a given paper; an example is The Cryosphere.)
Added a link, although I don't know of many such journals, either.
Some journals/conferences have explicit guidelines that tell you to treat the reviews confidential. I'm not aware of any journal that makes the reviews and authors' response publically available when a paper is published.
I think publishing reviews for your papers would in general be frowned upon, even if there's no explicit rule saying that you can't. That said, I've been wondering about that myself and we had discussions about it at our school because the quality of some reviews is very bad and making them public might help improve the quality of peer reviewing in the long term.
I personally try to write reviews in a way that I wouldn't object to them being published with my name on it (although all the reviews I've done so far have been anonymous).
Regarding low-quality referee reports, you might want to look at http://recursed.blogspot.com/2012/09/bad-referee-reports.html
There are a few journals I've encountered where the written reviews are published alongside the paper itself (the BMJ's new open access journal comes to mind). Other than that, generally I've only seen them sent to the other reviewers (usually because they're BCC'd on the decision/review email sent from the journal editor) or kept entirely confidential.
Probably the most common thing that happens? The authors complaining about idiot reviewers to their colleagues.
In some subset of journals they are openly available. Who was the reviewer and what he/she wrote
BioMedCentral medical journals are often like that.
See example here
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/12/147/prepub
you click on each article's publication history
In all journals I have encountered the reviews are kept by the journal through either an electronic submission/review system (digitally) or in paper copy (if they do not have such a system). In the electronic systems it is usually possible to view ones older reviews but not view other's.
The question whether these are confidential or not is far from clear in general. I would, however, venture to state that a review is treated as confidential unless explicitly stated otherwise, i.e. clearly stated to authors, editors and reviewers (remember that the review comments received may include overruling comments by the editor). Such is obviosuly the case with some journals with open discussion formats.
To some extent the confidentiality issue is new to me because in my field everyone pretty much assume reviews are. I have not heard of anyone trying to push for publicising a review (again, in my field). It would probably not go down well if it happened without consent from the parties concerned. It seems this is a sector that is largely unregulated other than in general terms and understanding.
It varies substantially by field and journal. (As I keep saying, this is true of pretty much every question on this board.) Often they are shared not just with the author but the other reviewers, too. The author can show them to whomever they like. Beyond that, there's no formal sharing mechanism, and no real demand for one.
I agree with Charles, and IMO varies substantially is a bit of a hyperbole in this context. Just because there are some differences between fields doesn't make generalizations between different fields possible. Especially in this circumstance there are really only two or three prevalent sharing rules across most disciplines it appears by the responses.
I acknowledge that here I was exaggerating and that some general frustrations (or more charitably, worries) that I have with this SE didn't really need to be expressed in this answer. Sorry about that. I do remain concerned, however, that a very large portion of the questions to this SE require answers that either are too general to be very useful, or are very specific with respect to particular fields, countries or other such context.
A recent question on meta brings up this exact topic, http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/q/72/3, perhaps you should elaborate on your concern there. It definitely is a point of contention on the site so far, and several posts in meta have discussed it and similar issues.
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3439 | Easy way to see historical trend in keywords in publications?
Is there an easy way or existing tool to generate a historical chart with the occurrence of one or more user-specified keyword(s) (combinations) in academic publications, based on the words in the title and/or abstract of a paper?
There is a almost-what-I-was-looking-for tool called Google Scholar Trend Miner, but it seems to be not working anymore, as it reports after hitting Go: "It seems that Google found out that we are a bot and started offering its CAPTCHA. Please, wait some hours and try again"
Not enough rep to answer; but I found Constellate which does just that
If you have access to it, you can very easily do that with Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science portal. Run any query you want, probably starting with the simplest one: Topic=XXXX. Then, select “Analyze results” at the top-right bottom-left of the results list, and sort them by year of publication:
Great. I couldn't find the "Analyze results" link immediately. Seems it only appears with the "Web of Science" tab selected and not for "All databases"
@Rabarberski some of the functionality is avaible only from the "Web of Science" tab, indeed… I've never really understood why.
I've written a small Python tool for this purpose. It scrapes Google scholar for each year in a given time span, extracts the occurrences and saves them to a CSV file. The tool is located at: https://github.com/Pold87/academic-keyword-occurrence
the scraper gives an error for too many requests. This error handling is missing. Also, it would be nice to have an option to search exact results by adding quotation marks string using, " /" ".
The error handling is implemented but Google simply only allows a certain number of requests. The option to search for exact results is also implemented (see the closed issues on GitHub for an example).
Edit: I though I would update this answer with a tool I recently discovered--trends.google.com
It's not specific to peer-reviewed publications, but allows one to search keywords by country, category (e.g., science), and web/image/news/.
Google's Ngram viewer is also useful. It's quick and easy for seeing trends as far back as the 1800's.
Is there a way to restrict n-gram viewer to academic publications?
@FedericoPoloni I don't believe there is; the only corpuses they offer are specific-language or "Fiction"
See Pold's answer below.
google trend is about what peoples search on google. This tools as nothings to do with publication.
Scholar Plotr doesn't work anymore due to rate limiting by Google. An alternative easy to use and free tool for anyone without academic licences is Dimensions AI:
app.dimensions.ai
It works with it's own publications database and shows a lot of statistics e.g. publications per year, citations per year.
I wouldn't say GooSchol only shows academic research.
according to themselves they do: "Google Scholar includes journal and conference papers, theses and dissertations, academic books, pre-prints, abstracts, technical reports and other scholarly literature from all broad areas of research. You'll find works from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies and university repositories, as well as scholarly articles available anywhere across the web. Google Scholar also includes court opinions and patents." from google scholar
but of course something might slip in there, that isn't of a certain standard.
I just meant that not all academic books and scholarly literature counts under research. For instance, some course notes I've written are indexed by Google Scholar. While they're certainly academic, most of them are not research level.
Now they recommend https://app.dimensions.ai/discover/publication on the top of the their webpage, since their site doesn't work reliably any more.
You can have a look at the arXiv cultoromics website at http://arxiv.culturomics.org, which however searches in articles on the arXiv. Depending on your field of interest, this may or may not be good enough.
Web of Science is a great resource for a historical review or a trend analysis of a keyword or subject. Another resource is Scopus. To use Scopus to search for a review of a phrase, word, or keyword from a controlled vocabulary keyword such as MeSH or EMTREE, enter the phrase, word or keyword in the search box and select the appropriate search filter to the right of the search box. You can search by title, abstract, keyword, or any combination of the three. Results can be filtered by a number of options and also can be exported for further analysis. The caveat to databases such as Web of Science or Scopus is to check the date range of the materials indexed.
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2944 | Should one include irrelevant background on CV after career change?
If one changes careers/subjects dramatically, would it be necessary in the interest of full disclosure to include irrelevant aspects of the educational background and work-experience etc. ?
For instance if somebody has an undergraduate degree in politics and 2 years of experience in PR but then goes on to an academic career in theoretical CS (essentially starting from scratch i.e. including an undergraduate degree), would it be better/necessary to clutter the CV by mentioning that earlier background ?
I guess there must be a certain degree of flexibility, as people would not include say a part-time job in the cafeteria etc. pp. but I am not sure what the academic conventions are in different scenarios. ( I am thinking about this in the context of applications for conferences, funding, workshops, travel funds etc. pp. )
Are you applying for grad school or for a professorship position? I'm not familiar with resumes being requested in grad school applications, but I can't imagine that someone working in politics could successfully apply for an academic position in anything that far outside their expertise.
@eykanal I ve ammended the questions slightly to make it a bit less ambiguous. Thanks for the comment, it s made the ambiguity in the formulation clear !
You can skip minor or embarrassing work experiences, but be careful not to leave any holes in the timeline of your CV: if your bachelor degree ended in 2009 and your master started in 2011, readers of your CV will wonder what you did in between.
The context for what the CV is going to be used for is key. I have a single CV that includes "everything" since I started grad school and selected things from before then including seemingly unimportant part time jobs. Having a long CV makes it easier for me to create short CVs because it means I need to delete things instead of remember things.
For your intended context, I would not include the work experience, but might include the degree in politics. Including that degree will likely lead people looking at your CV to think you are older (which might be a pro or a con). If you are worried about age discrimination, I would drop it completely.
+1 for "it means I need to delete things instead of remember things" On a related note, whenever I do anything that I plan to include on my CV (could be as small as referee a paper or give a talk), I try to add it to the CV on the very day I do it, or at least within the week. This doesn't take much time, and it's so much easier to remember (and remember the exact details) just after I've done it. That way any time I'm asked for a CV, I have one ready to go almost immediately.
Your intuition is correct; filler like that is very easily detected as filler. However, it does serve a useful purpose, in that it informs the person reading the CV what you've been doing for the past few years. If you do mention anything, I would just list the single most recent item. Any more than that would simply exaggerate the fact that you made a career shift, and doesn't provide any useful information.
If I understood you correctly, even for getting the side benefits (attending conference,travel funds) you need not include irrelevant information in your CV.
One need not clutter the CV with something that is far from the requirement of the job. It does not matter how many things you did but rather how much of few things you did. These were my thoughts on your question.
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3286 | How appropriate is to make multiple submissions of research findings to same venue/conference?
Assuming the following scenario:
Person A is a recognized senior researcher, and Person B is an enthusiastic junior researcher. Both of them have been working more or less equally on a research project and are interested in submit the results of the project to a particular venue. Based on the report written by Person B, Person A has written a paper (PA) to be submitted to the venue. Person B doesn’t like the style and some contents of PA, so he makes comments to Person A, who them modifies PA. Person B still doesn’t like PA, so writes a separate paper PB. Since PA and PB haven’t been published, there are citations between them.
At this point, Person A submits PA, which list authors as "Person A & Person B", and Person B submits PB, which list authors as "Person B & Person A."
Is it appropriate to submit PA and PB?
What would be your impression if you were part of the venue’s committee?
As reviewer, what would be your impression about reviewing two different papers about the same work for the same venue?
Any additional consideration?
as part of "4. Any additional consideration?": you should not be afraid to leave aside your supervisor in your work. You don't "owe" him/her a publication. If you feel like you can't solve the editing issue, you can send the paper as your own alone
sure, I was wondering if the paper PA, pre-edits by personB, could be already submittable
I made a number of grammar edits; please review and correct if necessary.
You cannot submit both papers. As others have pointed out, most venues explicitly forbid simultaneous submission of substantially overlapping papers. The answer to your first three questions is the same: Immediate rejection.
In fact, I would go further: Neither PA nor PB can be submitted alone. It is unethical to submit a paper without the explicit consent of all authors, because authorship implies endorsement of and responsibility for the content of the paper. On the other hand, it is unethical to revoke authorship from someone who has made a substantial intellectual contribution to the work. The two authors must work out their editorial differences, like grown-up professional adults, before they can submit anything.
If they can't agree on what to submit, then tough noogies — no paper.
You cannot submit to papers on the same data and that is what this sounds like. It doesn't sound like paper A is the data and paper B is a model.
I would suggest Person B concede to the wishes of Person A and then never collaborate with Person A again.
By venue, do you mean a conference? Depending on the conference, you could certainly focus on different aspects of the same study, or different (but not contradictory) conclusions from the same data (some datasets generate dozens of papers!). There could be a bit of overlap, i.e. in the introduction, but not too much. I'd say the most important thing is to be clear and honest about what you want to present. But if you have together done a large project and are going to write a peer-reviewed paper about it, I don't see any problem in presenting different aspects of the study at the same conference.
Of course, they should not be exactly the same.
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2928 | What are the benefits of getting a PhD in statistics over a MS in statistics?
What are the benefits of getting a PhD in statistics over a MS in statistics (other than being a professor)? Do people with PhDs in statistics earn significantly more than people with MS degrees in statistics?
More generally, does a PhD in a quantitative field provide a salary advantage over a MS in a quantitative field?
What do you want to do with your statistics degree, apart from earn money?
@Dave Clarke: Work on practical and relevant problems.
Possibly of interest is this thread on the Stats SE (also possible crosspost)
Related: To work in statistics for industry and research centers, is a masters sufficient or is there a major advantage to having a PhD?
Actually, this greatly depends on where you get your degree from. Sometimes people who have done just MS are able to get to the bottom of the thing and can use their knowledge of statistics on a practical level. It depends on how solid your concepts are. Once you are in some position earned through your sound academic record you can grow quite fast.
So, if you have good record (not just grades but grasp), you may be able to get to the same level of salary as a PhD would. This is because statistics is an applied branch and is in demand.
Well, there's something different to consider. As a MS student you pay to study. As a PhD, you are paid to study. I know that depends between countries but where I am, a MS is terribly expensive.
The only reasons I see to do a MS instead of a PhD is when someone doesn't have good enough grades to get into a PhD or because they want to shift their area a lot: for example, a chemist taking a master in Biochemistry because he wants a PhD in Cell biology.
They are different tracks and pursuing one doesn't mean you failed or would fail at the other. You have to pay for an MS. But, money shouldn't be the motivation for a PhD. An MS, from my understanding, earns a comparable salary in industry and most people in industry earn more than academics. Well, "earn" in some ways. :-)
Yes. Doing a PhD for money is bound to be terrible experience indeed ;) But someone that goes to university already has some passion for learning (or should) and his question suggests that money is important at the moment. About the "earning", it's no good earning more money earlier, but start in debt. Assuming that he can get the same position after doing a MS or a PHD, unless what he earns in the 2 years difference between MS and PhD minus the cost of the MS, is more than what he gains as PhD, he still loses money in the end. And that's assuming that he can maintain a debt.
Perhaps my cynical bias and personal experience makes me think that attending college is not tightly correlated with intellectual curiosity. I imagine, then, that working in industry with an MS is the best financial option.
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3195 | How do I find similar research problems in other fields?
I have published a paper about the combinatorics of adding a mixture of chemicals to a compound and observing a number of spectral peaks for this, which allows the user to gain information about the compound involved, while keeping cross-chemical effects low.
I am pretty sure the same approach not only occurs in my field of expertise, but also elsewhere in science, as this is a pretty abstract concept. Where can i find other problems like this, so that my algorithm can be solved by simply modifying the input/output of my software? A specific journal would of course only hold articles concerning my own field/their own field.
and can someone create the tag "multiple disciplines"?
In my opinion, you should talk to a mathematician in your institute. Chances are that there is some nice mathematics behind it, if it is that general. (disclaimer: I work in mathematics).
actually it is a lot of mathematics, but applied mathematics (a software) :)
Have you tried your local library? Google? Other users of spectography on your campus?
i have tried looking for combinatorics problems. but of course there is too much reading for this, and only for people advancing this field. what i would need is someone having a problem and this coming to the rescue. I have not talked to other users in campus, there is not much of a network there.
Maybe you could post a link to the paper, so that people could help. Perhaps writing a question for mathoverflow might yield answers, if you can make the question sufficiently appealing (and technical).
@tarrasch Since you have some responses below that seem to answer your question, please consider marking one of them as ‘Accepted’ by clicking on the tickmark below their vote count. This shows which answer helped you most, and it assigns reputation points to the author of the answer (and to you!).
(I answer it in a general way. If you want to ask it for your specific problem, try MathOverflow or Chemistry.SE.)
You may try searching for relevant papers, but then it is easy to miss even obvious references, e.g. due to different terminology, notation, approach or motivation. (So even if you have a paper in your hand, it can take a lot of time to check if it is relevant at all; searching in all papers may be like searching for a needle in a haystack.)
On the contrary, the best idea is to ask people who are working on similar problems. They may know the direct references, or people who know them, or at least give some insight into research lines in their fields (or provide some general references which may be a good source for your own search).
Source: it happened to me quite a few times that even a long searching for papers gave me little information, but asking people doing research in related fields (and perhaps looking up references in papers they provided) has proved to be successful.
Here are some pointers that one can start with; on the multidisciplinary aspects of Combinatorics.
See Annals of Combinatorics
Annals of Combinatorics will publish outstanding contributions to
combinatorial mathematics in all its aspects. Special regard will be
given to new developments which have yet to be given proper
recognition, but which in the opinion of the editors show promise of
eventual mathematical breakthroughs.
Papers published in Annals of Combinatorics will not be limited to the
field of combinatorics in the strict sense. They will range over
problems and theories that have arisen, or will arise, in applications
to computer science, biology, statistics, probability, physics and
chemistry, as well as over work of a combinatorial nature in
representation theory, number theory, topology, algebraic geometry and
the theory of special functions.
See also Journals in Combinatorics and Related Fields and Preprint Links in Combinatorics. The site also has a list of Open Problems in Combinatorics.
From the list of journals, find those are closely related to your requirements and subscribe to their email alerts or RSS feeds using Google Reader or the likes; for latest articles.
Hope these wiki articles (and the external links there) are already looked into; Combinatorics, Combinatorial chemistry, Outline of combinatorics, Combinatorics and physics
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16000 | Postdoc position offer in mathematics.
I am aware of this post
Some questions about math postdoc offers but please let me ask a similar question.
I am currently on the math postdoc job market. Some of my friends were informed that they are on the short list but I haven't heard anything from the job market after 2/3 of January. According to the above post, the most job offers are made in the second half of January. I am afraid that all good positions are already taken and I now feel I need to apply for more positions to avoid the worst case.
My webpage counter does not say that many people visited my webpage since Nov. Is this a bad sign? Do hiring committees really visit candidates' webpages?
Are most of the good positions such as "****** assistant professorship" already taken around this time?
Should I send inquiries about my application this week? Or should I wait for another? I hesitate to ask my advisor to do this, so I think I have to do this by myself.
My webpage counter does not say that many people visited my webpage since Nov. Is this a bad sign? Do hiring committees really visit candidates' webpages?
I wouldn't worry about this, since hiring committees do not necessarily visit web pages, even if they plan to make a postdoc offer. If your application was reasonably detailed and your papers are available elsewhere (for example on the arXiv or as part of your application), then there's no reason why someone would need to visit your web page. Even if your papers aren't available elsewhere, the number of visits you might see is both small and unpredictable.
Are most of the good positions such as "** assistant professorship" already taken around this time?
Almost all of them will be offered to someone by the end of January, but those offers will not all be accepted (so there will be multiple rounds of offers, which may extend beyond the common deadline). I would bet that most, but not all, of the most prestigious positions have already been offered to someone, but I don't know actual statistics.
Note that early offers tend to cluster on the most popular candidates, so substantially fewer people get first-round offers than will eventually be hired.
Should I send inquiries about my application this week? Or should I wait for another? I hesitate to ask my advisor to do this, so I think I have to do this by myself.
Inquiring this week is reasonable. It's worth asking not just your favorite schools, but also schools you are less excited about. (It may signal to them that they have a shot at you after all, and increase the chances that they will make an offer. At this point, you'll presumably be happy to have any reasonable offer, and once you have one you may be able to use it to provoke other places to make offers.) Asking this week leaves a little time for schools to act before the common deadline, although you shouldn't despair even if the deadline goes past.
I now feel I need to apply for more positions to avoid the worst case
If you applied to relatively few schools, it might be a good idea to add some more even now, but don't panic. Unless you're in an unusual situation, your job search doesn't sound really problematic at this point. (I can understand that it is worrisome, but there's a big difference between not getting a first round offer from a top department and not getting a job at all. Of course I can't predict how your job search will end, but I've seen people get excellent offers after having had no signs of interest this late in January.)
Meanwhile, I highly recommend having a chat with your advisor about your job search. If your advisor is not worried, it may help you stay calm, and if you do reach the point where your advisor really starts to worry, I hope he/she will have suggestions for what the two of you can do to make sure you get a job.
Thank you for the detailed answer. It relieved my worry (I was too stressed out). I now see how things are going in the job market.
When you say inquiring, do you mean mailing the committee or the professor that I contacted at that school?
@MathMan: If the professor you contacted is someone you know well (for example, a collaborator), then it could make sense to ask them. The advantage of this is that they may put in a good word for you or report more information than you might otherwise get, but it's asking them to do a little work so it depends on having a personal relationship. In other cases, I'd try to use contact information from the job advertisement, since inquiries sent there will generally make their way to someone whose job is answering them.
I am also an applicant this year, and I have heard from some places.
My webpage counter does not say that many people visited my webpage since Nov. Is this a bad sign? Do hiring committees really visit candidates' webpages?
I was able to guess that an offer was on its way (although one is never sure until you have the offer in your hands) by looking at the webpage counter for some schools. However, other offers/shortlists came as a complete surprise, as I had gotten no visits from these schools since I submitted my application. There were also schools who visited my webpage very frequently, but I heard that they offered their position to someone else. To sum up, the webpage counter is not very reliable.
Are most of the good positions such as "** assistant professorship" already taken around this time?
To nitpick, these are not necessarily the best positions. For example, Princeton's postdocs just go by the generic name of "Instructors" (except the top candidate, who is the Veblen Research Instructor). To answer your actual question, several departments have offered most of their positions. On the other hand, many departments have not had their postdoc committee meeting yet; for some, school hasn't even started yet. Also, just be aware that many candidates sit on several offers at the moment, trying to coax a better offer from their top choice etc. But I think that a lot of these positions will free up again on February 3, the common AMS deadline.
Should I send inquiries about my application this week? Or should I wait for another? I hesitate to ask my advisor to do this, so I think I have to do this by myself.
I think you are supposed to talk to your advisor about this! They are there for you, and he/she would be the best judge of your situation. Some advisors can also contact their colleagues to inquire on your behalf, which may be better.
I now feel I need to apply for more positions to avoid the worst case.
How many positions did you apply to? Many fantastic mathematicians apply to 50-60 places. In this case, it is worth applying to more places at this point.
Also, don't stress out! Breathe! As an applicant myself, I know how you feel. It will all work out in the end. You've done all you can, so sit back and relax, and be patient. No matter what happens, you are still a bright mathematician who will be very successful in your career.
My two cents:
My webpage counter does not say that many people visited my webpage since Nov. Is this a bad sign? Do hiring committees really visit candidates' webpages?
They do but rarely. The standard application file normally contains all information needed for screening and the grapevine provides the rest.
Are most of the good positions such as "** assistant professorship" already taken around this time?
You mean "named assistant professorships"?. Yes, they may well be. However, the normal (nameless workhorse) postdoc offers haven't been even considered yet in many places. The way it usually works is that the tenure track hiring is done first. Another thing is grants. Right where I am, we'll have or not have postdoc positions this year depending on whether we'll get or not get grant funding and nobody expects to hear from the NSF before the end of February (especially after the circus show by our 485 mouth goat herd in Washington D.C.; I still have a strong desire to send them all to deliver the equipment to the Antarctic research stations in small boats with no food; the only thing that would spare them if it were for me to decide is that I would hate to lose the gadgets). So, I wouldn't worry too much yet.
Should I send inquiries about my application this week? Or should I wait for another? I hesitate to ask my advisor to do this, so I think I have to do this by myself.
It never hurts to get the information. Just be careful about how exactly you phrase your request and whom you contact. The last thing I would want as a member of the hiring committee (I was on 3 within the last 5 years) is to have to write "polite and thoughtful" responses to each and every of 70+ postdoc applicants before their consideration has even started.
Thank you very much for the detailed answer. I will politely send some inquiries.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:50.582732 | 2014-01-21T03:05:12 | {
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48124 | How to set up lab rotation when commencing a PhD?
I'll be starting a science PhD program in the fall, and I'm required to do at least three lab rotations. I haven't received any instructions from the program as to when and how I should secure a spot in the labs I want to rotate in. I did contact some of the PI's I'm interested in working for while I was applying, as well as during interviews, but obviously nothing was finalized. Should I be contacting them and trying to meet with them now, or is this generally done at the beginning of the school year?
What field? Not everyone does lab rotations. Are these designed to help you find an advisor or just to get you experience?
Welcome to StackExchange! This is very much dependent on the department you're in. You should contact the director of graduate studies to inquire. I'm suggesting a close flag because of the particularity of circumstances.
Have you even shown up to orientation yet? I think you're getting ahead of yourself. But if you're already in the department wandering around lost then my advice is:
It obviously varies by department but there should be some sort of form you fill out with your top picks. You have a few options: contact your graduate advisor and ask; go talk with a perspective PI and bring it up during your conversation; or ask the other students in your program if they know what to do. The third choice is by far the best. It seems like you're just sitting there in a vacuum wondering what to do. You will quickly die if you do that. You need to meet the other students and you need to work with them to make it through.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:50.583555 | 2015-07-01T02:33:41 | {
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