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4075 | Should the tag [united-kingdom] be removed, and replaced with its 4 countries?
https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/united-kingdom contains the warning:
Note that the UK does not have a common legal system across its jurisdictions - consider using [scotland] or [england-and-wales] or [northern-ireland].
Yet many posts with this tag still neglect this distinction, and answerers must ask the questioner or express their confusion about the intended jurisdiction.
Wouldn't removing it teach posters and spur them to choose jurisdictions? From Tom Bolam, Senior Associate (as of 1-29-2018), Fladgate (Solicitors' firm):
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (to give it its full name) has three separate and distinct legal systems: (i) Scotland; (ii) England and Wales; and (iii) Northern Ireland.
There are some questions that are unique to a particular country, but many issues in academia are UK wide and others are EU wide. I wouldn't replace the tag, but it might make sense to create a Wales tag if there are enough Welsh specific questions. That said, it seems you want the tags to make a statement and that probably is not a valid reason.
So, Tldr: keep UK, add subregions when needed.
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4107 | Closure: Which academic subjects examine human reading?
Can Which academic subjects examine human reading?. please be reopened? I've tried to edit it for clarity. Please LMK how else I can improve?
In general, we can't just reopen a question on request because a user would like it reopened. If there is a specific reason to do so, that should be explicitly mentioned in the question. (This is different from the other question you asked about, since that question is originally yours and was auto-deleted.)
The question title and body still do not match. The question in the body seems very broad, opinion-based and possibly not within our scope.
The existing answer matches the titular question. It would be good if you could edit your question to match that answer. You can ask the question in the body separately, but I do not consider this a good question (see above).
You can cast reopen votes on your own questions pushing them to the reopen queue. There is no need to make a Meta post for this. This is what happened after your last edit. Three reviewers voted to leave the question closed in its current state.
What you can use Meta for is to debate the closure, but then you would have to bring arguments. Arguments (delivered in comments) may also help you to get your question reopened through the regular mechanism.
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4184 | Why are the majority of questions here related to either CS or mathematics?
I have been here for about 1-2 months, and clearly see that most of the questions come from mathematicians or computer scientists.
Am I wrong? Is it because these disciplines are on their computers more, relative to a chemist or biologist?
are you sure that is not just sampling bias? I have seen questions from a wide variety of disciplines here. but yeah, people working in CS fields naturally spend more time on their computer, so...
Related: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2159/20058
By "PC," do you mean "politically correct"?
@JoelReyesNoche PC stands for the personal computer in my question.
Do you mean "on PC" is that these fields are more related to programming, which are easier to know this site because they have to visit Stack Overflow regularly?
@Ooker yeah, even though I am a chemist, I also know here from Stack Overflow, whenever I have a problem with Fortran or even MS Excel macro formula, still even if they don't do programming, through surfing it is still more likely I guess.
It seems that the claim that number of computer scientists and mathematicians on this site is higher, compared to other disciplines, is supported by results of Academia Community Polls from 2013. (Of course, things might have change since then, in either direction.)
As Aeismail points out in their answer, the Stackexchange network grew out of the StackOverflow site - which is for programming queries. Therefore, people who program in their daily lives, i.e. people in STEM subjects, will be more likely to think of coming here.
But it's perhaps also worth noting that a huge number of questions that are closed for being off-topic are from computer scientists; for some reason they seem to assume that "academia.stackexchange" means a place to ask academic computer science questions. This has always baffled me. Maybe it's for the same reason?
While there is an actual prevalence of people from those fields here (due to reasons elaborated in other answers), this even gets emphasised due to the fact that they are somewhat peculiar due to their subject of research and history, for example:
The research process in many subfields of mathematics and computer science can be quite different from, say, an experimental field.
Publications in mathematics are put to special scrutiny (for a reason).
Computer science has a mostly unique tradition to publish at conferences.
Compared to this, many other scientific fields are rather homogeneous – they form the default backdrop, against which the above peculiarities can be seen. Therefore, for mathematicians and computer scientists, their field is more likely to be a relevant factor to mention in a post – and thus more visible.
Note though, that there are other fields with similar peculiarities such as law, which you will hardly ever read about here, because they are indeed underrepresented.
+1, has this feeling too. Biology, medicine, etc. feels almost "generic", people mention this less often (and it seems to matter less often) than CS or math.
I'm note sure I agree with this, given the prevalence of assumptions that also exist on this site like "Everything will be written in LaTeX" or "arXiv is where pre-prints go." The CS and math folks seem to be perfectly content to assume they're field-specific quirks are the default.
@Fomite: 1) I am not disputing that there is a prevalence of those fields; I am just saying that the effect may seem larger than it actually is (see my first sentence). 2) Your examples least also apply to Physics. 3) Actually, the examples you gave are rather unusual in my experience. Most people in the ArXiv and LaTeX fields realise that those things are special to their fields. What happens more often is that things like publishing at conferences or review times of a years are assumed as the norm.
On 3, it may be just my biased observation, but I find them to be relatively common and assumed to be the default.
As its name suggests, the Stack Exchange network grew out of CS-based websites, so there is likely to be a lot more questions from scientists than from the humanities, because that reflects the user base.
It’s also worth noting that there aren’t nearly as many resources geared toward STEM faculty: most of the books I’ve seen addressed to faculty have been written from the viewpoint of someone who is working in the humanities rather than the sciences.
As its name suggests, the Stack Exchange network grew out of CS-based websites Well, it could also suggest that it comes from finance-based websites, as the pun in the title suggests... :)
If you have no CS background whatsoever, it wouldn't be obvious to you the words "Stack Exchange" have anything at all to do with CS.
*muttermutter* CS isn't programming, just as creative writing isn't word-processing.
Not to forget that mathematicians use LaTeX, and at some point it becomes impossible to use LaTeX without using Stack Exchange.
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4194 | Why has D.Hutchinson been banned for 28 years?
@scaaahu noticed in the Ivory Tower chat that https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/91603/d-hutchinson?tab=profile has been banned for 28 years. Incredible! I took a look at D.Hutchinson's posts at academia.SE and found nothing bad. Really nothing. I might be missing something, but which kind of offense would lead to such a long ban? In practical terms, this is "forever". The way we know the stackexchange site today, it need not even exist for such a long time span. Some of us might even be happily pushing up the daisies by then.
What I could imagine is that the user might be way too young to discuss academic issues, say, 5 years old. Then, about 20 years might make sense.
We will probably never know the details of what happened because moderators cannot reveal them, but since the ban is network wide, the offense might be related to his activity elsewhere and not specifically to that here on Academia. Afaik, common issues that can bring to long suspensions are sockpuppeting, repeated rude behaviour and such.
Voting on Meta is different. Questions about the suspension of a specific user are usually not answerable. and the downvotes probably just reflect this. I don't think anyone has taken your question personally.
Every community has its own personality, and reactions to the same type of inquiry can be quite different. Maybe it also depends on the degree of affection between the community and the suspended user.
I will just mention that this question on Meta Stack Exchange is (to some extent) related to this specific suspension: Could network-wide suspensions last longer than 10 years?
The first chat message regarding this topic is here, in case you are interested with it.
Stack Exchange's policy on this kind of issues is "no, we won't tell you the details. Trust the moderators or find yourself another website". Just so you know.
Apparently another user just got banned and I can not really understand why. I think he had annoying & paranoid behaviour.
The suspension is network wide. This means the suspension was issued by a stack exchange community moderator employee. As for what the offense was, it is unlikely to be made public. Suspensions that long are rare and in my experience do not have common underlying behaviors beyond being unwelcome. It is unlikely to be useful to look at the user's activity since there is likely deleted content spread across multiple sites. Avoiding a suspension like this is not something you likely need to worry about as users receive numerous warning prior to such a suspension.
I took a look at D.Hutchinson's posts at academia.SE and found nothing bad. Really nothing.
The vast majority of suspensions is issued for either vote abuse or posting delete-worthy content (usually lots of it), such as offensive posts, spam, etc. Either way, regular users won’t see what is problematic, because it was either never visible to them or, well, deleted. Even the privilege of seeing deleted posts won’t allow you to track down deleted posts, since it doesn’t allow you to search for deleted posts by a given user. Looking at it the other way round, if you could still find suspension-worthy content by the user, this would be worrisome or it was missed during cleaning up (either way, flag it).
Admittedly, there are some suspended users whose undeleted content exhibits borderline behaviour or otherwise gives you a strong hint at why they were suspended, but these are only about half of the suspended users.
And even this is only half the reason why you cannot find anything; the other half being that this is a network suspension.
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4237 | Why questions about race is on topic, but about LGBTQ not?
Latino is not even race, Is this statistic about how many Latinos/Hispanics have a PhD in the USA correct?
and it was only referenced via social media,
my question Is there any relible evidence of underrepresentation of LGBTQ scientists in STEM fields?
even after referencing Nature and New Your time is off topic?
Is there some issue with LGBTQ on this part of SE?
P.S.
in my opinion the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Department of Transportation),
are not part of Academia
@Nicole Hamilton, Buffy, user3209815
Hmmm... - most of the places listed in your PS hire quite a number of people from academia, and interact closely with academia at conferences, on journal boards, and through research collaborations. Excluding them seems a bit misplaced. For the hold, I would consider paring down the question (note that your quote is tangential at best to the question, and frankly laughable in my experience - I've known many STEM people who are extraordinary musicians. Math and music seem particularly entwined).
@JonCuster are you telling me that those federal agencies are part of academia and they represent how work and organization is done in academia?
All PhDs, whether at a university, government lab, or government agency, all come from the same pool of people, all of whom have been through academia and all of whom keep interacting with each other throughout their careers. Further, you seem to be trying to argue that, say, the NSF is not intimately connected with academia. Good luck with that!
@JonCuster again I dont understand how is that relating to academia?
I can think of dozens of questions about LGBTQ issues here. Your assertion that this is considered off topic is simply wrong.
Further, the question about underrepresentation in STEM is a question for the main site, not the meta.
I will cede that the issue is somewhat light on tags, though
But I put it on main.
@Stefan Ignore the "off-topic" close reason. It looks more like it was closed because people couldn't understand what you were asking. The system to put questions on hold leaves much to be desired. I think the comments your question elicited pretty much describe the situation.
how to reopen is there any mechanism?
After some thought, I think that there is a core issue here that Academia should be interested in. That issue closely parallels concerns about under representation of (females, Hispanics, ...) in higher education, either as students or faculty. I would say that, having run a few journal queries, that the topic of LGBTQ demographics in academia is pretty new, and in general the topic of LGBTQ in overall society is still pretty new (consider the wide range of various estimates for simply the number of LGBTQ individuals in the general population).
However, the question as asked contains various elements that made it possible to vote as unclear or off-topic. These included
That "people in STEM tend to be more feminine"
The whole second half of the question about hiding piano playing
A fairly aggressive tone insisting on 'academia' relevance and ignoring comments asking to clarify things.
(I'll note in passing that the linked Nature item is a commentary, not a technical article)
So, given that, I would suggest that a simpler, broader question on LGBTQ in academia would still be appropriate. One more focused on what do we know now about LGBTQ demographics at least through undergrad -> faculty (actual data). A second question might revolve around what, if anything, is out there pointing to acceptance of LGBTQ in academia (perhaps focused just on faculty, may differentiate based on area).
I would like to clarify something, I expressed my personal opinion, but I put it clearly that it is just opinion. and I asked if people have sources that indeed STEM academia is homophobic, please let me know for such reaserch, I find STEM more accepting towards LGBT then Arts. but again that is my opinion, the piano quote is from popular litterature that claims how possition is very very tense. Which again, never in my short lifetime I experienced.
I didnt understand any comment in that question :( i tried to see again, but I dont see how is related to close vote?
@Stefan In reading your question I got the impression that you were on a bit of a poorly-disguised rant against LGBTQ folk, especially phrases like "so called" that are often used to discredit claims of under-representation. If this was your intent, your attitude is unlikely to be welcome here. If this was not your intent, you should read carefully the suggestions JonCuster makes here, edit your post to remove that content, and request a reopen. I agree fully that it is a relevant question to this stack if that is removed.
As Scott pointed out above, the specific close reason is not that helpful; it only shows the plurality reason that close voters gave - it may be that most of the votes came for other specific reasons. This is a known issue with close vote reasons in SE as a whole. You should pay more attention to the feedback you are getting here on meta rather than the specific wording of the close vote.
@Stefan - the piano quote, I think, detracts from the core question. In my (likely longer it seems) experience in STEM the anecdote rings patently false. One institute where I worked arranged a trip to Paris for everyone to hear one of our grad students play in an orchestra putting on one of Bach's Passions in Notre Dame - nobody would have batted an eye at somebody playing the piano (other than asking them to join a trio or whatnot). So: focus on the core question.
@BryanKrause NO!!! I am LGBT no intention, I just wanted to point out that STEM filed is most openminded, how can you do science if you are not?
@jona Custer, comment on Piano was made by famoust matematician who works in academia and is part of LGBT. I think it is relevant bcs it depict one feelings toward academia, and connect not haveing hobby to heteronormative
@Stefan - I get it, you really like that quote. It is an anecdote that reveals that LGBTQ people can have negative interactions in many different ways. But, it is not the data you are looking for.
Here is a possible edit, incorporating comments from both the main question and this question, that might help clarify your point and address concerns about the question. I'm not going to just make the edit because there's only one chance at getting put into the post-edit re-open queue, but please feel free to adopt any of it that you think is useful.
Note that I did add the second footnote wholesale, to address questions about "what does representative mean?" Of course you are free to edit or ignore that bit (or any other part of the suggested rewrite) if it doesn't match your intent.
What the edited question would look like:
According to the Nature article "LGBTQ scientists are still left out"
there are some "heteronormative assumptions" in the STEM field which artificially suppress the number of LGBTQ people in the field. This view of the sciences1 doesn't match my own experience and anecdotal evidence. (I have seen evidence of a sexism issue but it is a separate issue from LGBT.) In my (admittedly subjective) experience, people in STEM tend to be more open-minded than any other profession.
The Nature article cites a few studies, but none seems to be directly on-point (one study focused on government workers rather than scientists in academia-proper, and another had results that were not statistically significant and whose authors admitted they had made mistakes). Again maybe I'm wrong, but I would like to see a more relevant peer review study (gender studies or social science) explaining this problem.
**What robust studies exist on the representation of LGBTQ individuals2 in STEM fields within academia?
1 The idea that STEM fields are especially constrained comes up in other contexts, too. For example, according to an opinion piece by Manil Suri published in the New York Times, in science it is also not appropriate to talk about hobbies.
Manil Suri is a famous scholar, his description of the situation in academia is worrying, and gives the impression that behavior is constrained and under close scrutiny.
Being too expressive of personal identity can be viewed as running counter to scientific neutrality. In competitive venues, where complete immersion in one’s field might be the promoted ideal, the mention of an extracurricular pursuit can even be seized upon as a lack of commitment. I remember a young mathematician at a prestigious research institute sharing his love for piano playing after hearing I wrote fiction. “Don’t tell anyone in my department I own a piano,” he requested in the next breath.
This is a shock to me because I perceived the STEM field as most openminded.
2Representation could measure the percentage of LGBTQ faculty in STEM fields in comparison to other academic disciplines, or something like dropout rates for LGBTQ students in STEM fields compared to dropout rates for other students.
thank you. Done.
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4274 | My reason to quit
I closed my account and it will be effectuated within 24 hours. I received an indirect personal attack on my posts. I also do not like how quickly sincere questions of (new) participants are downvoted or labelled as a duplicate because a couple of years ago a similar question was asked. These responses are mostly targeted at questions that criticise (or question) current practices in science.
Current practices work for those affiliated to established research groups. Current practises do not work for minorities like me, and practising science comes at high personal costs.
For those personally criticising or downvoting participants who have the courage to raise their voice, I would like you to ask yourself the following questions first:
• I am working in an established research group?
• Does my group’s or supervisor’s reputation benefits how my work is received?
I really hope, one day you will experience the joy of being generous, the joy of lifting those in your circle of influence. Yes, science works for you but that does not devaluate the experience of others.
I also hope, some day you will understand that we all go to processes in which we search for how relate ourselves to experiences and circumstances. Do not judge too quickly. This is a necessity for human growth.
I especially want to thank some participants. @Allure for your honesty and ongoing search for truth and improvement. @Buffy for your quest for humanity. You have to reach a certain level of experience to practise such wisdom. I am not there yet but I promise I will shepherd those in my care. @Scientist for your brutal honesty, courage and believe in righteousness. Science needs people like you. I will remember your response: “do not fear (…).” . @user3209815 for your sincere response to one of my questions, which many would see as a rant.
Finally, I want to thank all the other community members who lifted me up or provided useful feedback. May your lives and careers prosper.
This will almost certainly be closed and deleted, but before it is, I'd ask you to reconsider. While I may not always agree, I've found your posts thought provoking, which is something we all need. I've attracted some "extreme dislike" here and been called vile names - posts removed, of course. You might ping me in the chatroom if you want to chat about this.
Any post that you feel is inappropriate, especially attacks should be flagged. The moderators can intervene though they tend to be permissive here, I think, compared to other SE sites.
Come visit https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2496/the-ivory-tower, the main chat room.
@Alice To draw more attention to your question, maybe change the title to "Why I've closed my academia.stackexchange account and what you should do about it" or something similar.
Although I do think we can do better with (new) participants, any participant that asks a duplicate question is devaluing the usefulness of this site, because information is then distributed, rather than centralised. But perhaps you have a different perspective? Regarding trolling/attacking users, I completely agree, I have experienced it myself. I wish you all the best for the future.
It may not be your aim to explain your experience and reasoning with this particular post, but just in case it is: I, as someone who has little involvement with the community or individual participants, lack a lot of context and therefore hardly understand what's wrong, in your perception, and how one could improve. In other words, your post may not be "accessible" to a wider audience here, but if that's not your intention, then that's fine too as far as I'm concerned.
But if there are trolls here, don't let them win by chasing you away making the average contribution worse.
@Buffy I am either not controversial enough or the site has gone badly downhill since I was really active around here (multiple years ago by now), because I literally can't remember more than 2 or 3 instances of people actively being rude to me despite posting multiple times a day.
@xLeitix, I think it is pretty rare. A few newcomers in their first days haven't yet absorbed the culture and say inappropriate things. Once the trolls learn they can't troll they are likely to go elsewhere or else clean up their comments. But on some topics like copyright people can get pretty hot. But if you never get down voted you aren't working hard enough. :) I sometimes give answers that, while likely correct, say things people just don't want to accept. They want to bend the world to their will.
I don't know what the personal attack was, but I noticed that the person who made it apologized and deleted the comment (assuming it was the one you described as such in a comment).
I'd also add that some of the struggles that are themes in your questions and answers about problems in science particularly around peer review are not exclusive to you, nor has it been my perception that this stack has much of a bias in favor of the status quo - if anything it seems to be the opposite. It seems like you are having some personal issues with academia as a whole, and yet you talk of publishing 3 papers during your PhD - many people would see that as highly successful, so I think it's worth taking a careful look at where your dissatisfaction is arising.
Yes dupe questions are not 'bad' at all, in fact SE encourages dupes to live - they enhance accessibility to the original question. There's a meta post somewhere on SE meta main.
If you wish to discuss specific events/questions, please start with providing a link to them and explaining what you think is wrong with them. For instance "my question was marked as duplicate because a couple of years ago a similar question was asked" seems like things working as intended, to me.
One observation; I think this shows how many of the frequent accusations of unwelcoming behavior (throughout all the stack exchanges) are not driven by explicitly rude comments, but by how the SE process itself (up/downvoting, closing dups, enforcing topic guidelines, etc.) can often SEEM like an attack on the poster's value.
@kbelder Not only that, but the system doesn't notify you (for some godforsaken reason) when your question is closed or marked as a duplicate or whatever, and you aren't told what it means or how to fix it, so a lot of users get their question closed unknowingly, they don't get any responses, and if they check in later, their question is locked and they don't understand how to fix it. When was the last time a new user had their question closed and they fixed it and got it reopened? Plus, no one goes back and checks on things they voted against
I only saw this now. A pity, because as it is I don't even get the chance see this user's ancient name. I do agree that there is resistance against status quo, which is exactly why it exists as a concept. Passive-aggression is the general rule in higher circles, such as in the Academia. I wish this user had made this discussion available prior to deciding to leave. Always put up a fight: fighting is the best of medicines.
The current system is unjust and broken in many ways. But complaining about it on here isn't going to fix that.
@Flyto Maybe that's why he left. He realized there is no use complaining and just wanted to state the reasons so that the people still left maybe understand why some choose to leave. Complaining is not same as explaining.
@Scientist OP's nickname used to be is Alice.
@FranckDernoncourt: Is it possible to search for her questions and answers?
@user3209815, there are some who are insanely obsessed with reps, so they falsely downvote others. It is best to pass no heed to them. Try to grow a thick skin, as it is essential for withstanding hostility in hubs and workplaces.
It's a pity to see you leave, but as somebody who has been around this community (at times more, at times less) for a few years now, I feel you are misjudging the intentions of the community.
Particularly, I am talking about this paragraph:
I also do not like how quickly sincere questions of (new) participants are downvoted or labelled as a duplicate because a couple of years ago a similar question was asked. These responses are mostly targeted at questions that criticise (or question) current practices in science.
The reason why these questions tend to be closed as duplicates isn't that people hate to challenge the status quo (I would wager that the average community member here is significantly more progressive than most of our colleagues), but that we literally had all of these questions before, usually multiple times.
You may respond that some of these questions are important enough that they should be revisited every so often, but that's unfortunately not at all how a Stack Exchange works. Once a question is asked and answered, the topic is done. I would argue that this is primarily what differentiates a Stack Exchange from a forum. I agree that this does not work well for certain types of questions, but those tend to not be overly well-suited for a Stack Exchange in the first place.
You may also respond that the fact that the person asking the question is a minority makes it a different question which should not be closed. This is absolutely a fair comment. If the circumstances of the poster are made clear in the question (ideally already in the title), and these circumstances actually make the situation and likely answers differ from previous questions, I would personally be more than happy to leave a question open or vote for re-opening it. In fact, I would argue that questions related to problems minorities face in academia are generally handled pretty well. Take, as a recent example, this question about whether not being able to apply for state funding is a problem on the academic job market.
Personal attacks in answers or comments are of course not ok. These can and should be flagged and removed. However, closing a question as duplicate or downvoting a question is not a personal attack, even if you disagree with the closing or voting (not saying that this is what you meant with "indirect personal attacks", but I have seen cases where posters were offended when their question was closed).
Great answer but I disagree with Once a question is asked and answered, the topic is done. If you know something has changed, then a question can be revisited. If you think something has changed you can start a bounty because answers are out of date.
@StrongBad I feel this is the aspect that does not work well, at least here. Can you think of a case where this actually happened, because I certainly can't. To me, the subjective impression is that once a question is asked and answered, the topic is for all practical purposes dead.
@StrongBad "Start a bounty" also has an obvious drawback -- you need to have enough rep to "spend" on the bounty. Perhaps not a consideration if you have 10k+, but if you're a new user on the site who feels an old question is not adequately answered or feels a new take is needed, you're SOL because you're not "rich" enough to endow a bounty. (Or doing so would substantially affect where you are on the privilege track.)
@R.M. I bet we have a fair number of users besides myself who are happy to start bounties for new users. They just need to ask in chat or a comment or someplace that someone will see (which of course is not easy if you are new to the system).
@StrongBad I think a new user won't be aware of this strategy out of inexperience
A community can not have intentions. The creators of a community can have intentions and the users can have intentions or maybe some third. So which do you mean?
@mathreadler The collective behavior of a community might show intentions, which might or might not be known for its induvidual members.
@peterh but that can also be because of a loud/"pro-active" minority of moderators which actually does not reflect the member base particularly well.
@mathreadler Exactly. But I didn't experience too much bad from the Academia SE, at least compared to other top sites. Well, I was once 6-times insulting-flagged for a not enough PC answer to a political post, and this was also boosted with a 1-month suspension of a mod. I had also a brutally nit-picked and downvoted answer which made clear that I am strongly opposing any legalization of drugs (but not this was the essential part). Except these, no one harmed me and my answers have got typically many ups, actually much more than I expected.
You are mainly right, but deleting your account is a bad strategy. With it, you give up all your hard earned privileges. You could use them to make the system better.
Between the SE sites, the Academia SE seems to me mainly friendly, except some... sensitive, mainly political topic.
It is the internet. Here people can anonymously give, what they want to, without any too serious retorsion. It doesn't have always the best effect.
The best what you could do, in my opinion, would be that you don't delete your account, but silently become inactive. On this way, you could have the possibility to once go back and start to fix.
Furthermore, after so many work, it would be better if you wouldn't deattach it from your name in a sudden upset. I would suggest, think a week and go away only if you think the same after cooling down.
Having more than 2000 rep, you are only from steps away from the last really useful privilege, you could cast close and reopen votes. The real influence of the users with much higher reputation is not much bigger. With these votes, you would have some saying to move the whole system into a better direction, if you are unsatisfied with it.
No he probably can't. If it is obvious to him that some people are there just to make the place toxic... In that case the best strategy can simply be to just gtfo.
@mathreadler It depends on, what he wants. I believe that making the world a better place deserves some effort from our side, even if there is no visible reward.
Yes of course, to some extent. But one also has to pick where and when to try to do that as one usually does not have unlimited energy and time.
"Between the SE sites, the Academia SE seems to me mainly friendly" <- Really? After SO, this is the second most cut-throat site in my experience. And at least at SO they can justify their criticism on technical merit even if it is derisive. "except some... sensitive, mainly political topic" <- Issues involving a large group of people are inherently political, and many (most?) questions fit this criterion at least somewhat IMHO. "You could use them to make the system better." <- Barely.
@einpoklum Your top sites are imho friendly. My top sites (SO, PSE, SF, MathSE) are hostile (or at least they were as I was there active). Behind the political psychopathy I see the political psychopathy of the whole western civilization, which started around in 1968 and became particularly asphyfixicating in the last decades. I use euphemisms to avoid the insulting flags, and I live with the downs together. In general, euphemisms help a lot to deal with the psychos, while you don't need to change the essential meaning of your posts. On the SO I typically don't get technical critics (or if I
@einpoklum get, I fix them), my posts are simply voted down (example), to close and so on. I experience also often revenge downs after I criticize them on the meta sites. PSE doesn't do revenge downs, there is only a generally super-hostile atmosphere on the meta. Academia SE didn't do any of these (although I was not ever very active here).
What you describe is a common phenomeon here (and even worse on many other SE sites - I myself experienced it under a different account). You may not know me but I liked your questions and answers. I wish you all the best!
(I do not know if I am allowed to say this here, but "AskAcademia" on Reddit is a very good resource - in my opinion, the quality is not as high as here (in this regard, Stack Exchange is really extraordinarily great) but the atmosphere is really, really welcoming and friendly which makes up for this.)
Thank you!
It unfortunately took me too long to find this discussion: user93911 has already committed 'digital suicide' by now.
I have a few comments that might help others in a similar situation, or even our dear ex-user93911 reading this from another plane of existence.
(i) I always say that one should be ready to quit in order to feel stronger. Being ready to leave makes you ruthless: never leave without a good fight. Fighting makes you feel swell, and helps improving the world. When you think you've brought out all you could and you loose interest, then you may leave holding your chin up -- however, usually you will find that your enemies are cowards and that there is still more war to be fought. On the other hand leaving suicide notes intended to bring tears will instead bring out the laughter of your aggressors and further lower local standards. Fighting in social & business circles cannot kill you, whilst depression will.
(ii) As someone said, you left at the brink of exerting the power of voting for closing/keeping/editing posts. All your issues could vanish just with a tad more patience. This is how life works. I have just now voted to keep this post open, while writing my answer!..
(iii) Modern Academia is unfortunately full of opportunistic gamblers and abusers, worldwide. I have probably seen the worst of them. Don't lower your gaze: look at them straight in the eye. So many colleagues believe in playing sheep and goose to succeed in the field, out of cowardice and brainwash. This is making the weak oppressors stronger with little effort -- any veiled threat and all of their wishes are granted. They are not many, but they may look powerful and confident. Experience though will show they are scared to the bone inside, all too aware of their incompetence. This is why any opposers and potential rivals are quick to be targeted with passive-aggressiveness, cold treatment, lies, scooping. These guys are desperate! Listen, don't give them a good time: resist, don't play minion. They won't stop using you and everyone else. Play smart, see through the lies, sabotage their goals (usually petty and in the short-term). And the most important: never leave a good colleague alone. If someone asks you for help, help them in whatever way you can.
Anyway, this is getting too long. Hopefully this user will come back, stronger. I will proceed with sapping some bad guys. You know where to find me, here. You might find me in the real world as well, next door.
Fight the good fight!
It's difficult to look them straight in the eye once your fixed-term employment expires....
If it is easy, it means you’re not from fighting.
A few thoughts about this:
This is Academia SE, which means it's read mostly by academics. Academics as a demographic have certain characteristics, e.g. they're liberal as opposed to conservative, they think their profession should be paid more, etc. So if anyone expresses a contrary view, they can expect to be downvoted.
Ultimately, answering questions on Stack Exchange is a recreational activity. I do it because I find it fun, and I suspect most others think the same way as well. It's not appropriate to dictate what others should or should not find fun. So I think questions such as this one should not be closed. The 19k views and 10 answers indicate people find the question fun. Besides the stated close reason is "unclear what you are asking", which is ironic because at least ten people do understand what the question is asking. That's not to say that no question should be closed, but I do think we should err on the side of leaving questions open, especially if they've attracted lots of views and / or answers.
About marking as duplicate: I personally don't think it's a problem because if it's indeed a duplicate then the question suddenly has multiple answers already. Still, unless the question is an exact duplicate (not common), to actually close the original question seems rather unnecessary.
Personal attacks are unfortunate and it's very possible that one person finds something offensive while others can't see what the problem is at all (example). It's a pity we don't have an ignore option.
Downvotes are sometimes necessary but bad. To go from 0 to -1 is significantly worse psychologically than going from +10 to +9, even though in both cases it's just one downvote. So I've been upvoting things if they're negative just to get them back to at least zero. It's a good thing that it takes rep to downvote (I'd even increase the amount required), and a single upvote outweighs multiple downvotes.
In the end everyone has a right to their own happiness, so if you find you no longer enjoy participating here, you should absolutely leave. Best wishes!
A side comment on your last point: there is also a "mob effect" (not sure what to call it) on votes: most people are sheep, meaning they merely follow the lead. From my experience here and elsewhere, from the moment you are the only one in a thread with a -1, you should expect more to come. Also top answers seem to be automatically upvoted, so they keep climbing up the rankings. If you manage to stay on top of the thread for long enough in a highly-popular post, you will earn a lot of reputation with minimal effort. BTW I have upvoted here: you had the -1.
+1, when I encountered this answer, it also was -1. @Scientist is all over it.
I completely agree with you. I feel like all my questions are automatically down voted. I also hate that questions are marked as duplicates. Everyone's situation is different and these people are reaching out for help online, because maybe they don't have anyone else their life to ask. They want professional help from others in academia. Even if it's duplicate maybe you would help someone by answering and their situation is probably different. I understand if it's duplicate and the question is something that does not change through time, like for example "how can I get into grad school?" but the majority of people who are new are reaching out and asking for help for something they probably couldn't find answers for online easily.
I don't understand this negative energy people have here.
This place has the opportunity to be a ask and answer platform that can help new graduate students or in general everyone in a academia and instead the people who are ancient here spend all their time trying to get more points by editing other new user's questions, marking duplicates that are probably not duplicates exactly, and belitting others.
If you want and need professional help (in the sense that some professional counsellor gives you advice tailored to your individual situation), consult a counsellor who is willing to spend hours to assess your individual situation in an interactive back and forth and ideally is familiar with the mechanisms of your institution. This site is not a good place for this. All we can do is help you to help yourself by showing you new perspectives to look at your situation or similar. So, yes, every situation is different, but if those differences matter, we are not the right place to ask.
The reason why duplicate questions are frowned upon is it because it makes it harder to find and curate good answers, which is the mission of SE. We are not a bulletin board-style or Reddit-style forum and the goals are different. If there are already good answers for a question, the user should be pointed to the page where the answers already are.
Furthermore, reputation for experienced users is earned by asking and answering questions, not for edits or marking duplicates. We are not here to harass new users. And also note that the up- and downvotes on Meta work differently. It's a statement of agreement or disagreement rather than a vote of quality.
If that is the case then I guess I'll delete my account too. There is no point in having an account on a website that just points you to similar questions from ten years ago every time you ask a question. If it can't adapt and grow over time and the same old people keep censoring everything with so many rules then what is the point of having an account. It would be great if there was a place new recent grad student could ask for help and advice and reach a larger online community for help instead of talking to some one specific counselor who has only one opinion.
There are just so many rules here. You can't post a question without someone pointing you to 10 pages of rules, regulations, and formatting. It will take someone new so many months to get used to it. It's not worth the effort, especially if users just point you to older questions from years ago. We can't just have one version of a question, it's too narrow of a view.
What you’re looking for—while laudable—isn’t really the intended purpose of Stack Exchange. It’s a curated Q&A site. Good questions should have value to someone visiting the site at a later date and beyond the original poster. You may find that people have already asked similar questions to yours. If there’s a significant difference, then you can mention that as part of your question. But if the differences are minor, why would someone who’s already answered a question here give you a different answer? That’s when we point to duplicates.
I don't know what happened, and I'll offer no advice on whether to delete your account or not. Judging by what you wrote about minorities, I probably disagree with you on a lot of issues. However, I also strongly agree with what Scientist wrote. The only path to earning the respect of those who actually matter is through fighting injustice, even when the task seems thankless. I strongly, strongly, strongly hope you keep fighting evil even when it's hard and bears no rewards. It's the only good fight there is.
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4288 | Can I ask a question about guidance for looking for a PhD?
I have an engineering background but I want to do a Ph.D. in psychology. Can I ask a question about this giving the details?
There are lots of existing questions on "if I have a degree in ____ can I apply for a PhD in _____" - I'd look through those before posting any question of your own. They get pretty dull and uninteresting and usually end up depending a lot on individual factors so many get closed.
"I have background X and want a PhD in Y" questions are both fairly common here, and often get closed because they depend on individual factors we can't know - like how receptive a particular lab or labs would be to someone with that background, etc.
If you want advice, I'd strongly suggest you refine your questions more to things that are specific and that can be answered generally (at least within a field).
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4294 | Why was my question closed to death?
See this: How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the UK, particularly for weak or borderline students?
And, compare it with this: How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?
I am not understanding why the former was closed while the later one bagged 110 votes.
USA and UK are two big and popular higher education destinations with slightly different systems. Both have a good number of followers. For instance USA=>{Switzerland, Canada, China, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and so on}, and UK=>{former British colonies and vassals, and compatible with most part of Europe}.
UK is world leader in producing research papers (on the 3rd position after USA and China. But, produces way more as compared to its population size). Also, because of its past empire, it has a large follower, probably larger than the USA in terms of population.
So, What is fundamentally wrong with my question?
If you (or anyone) is interested in writing a comprehensive answer, which might help clarify how this question would be helpful, flag it (or ping a moderator in chat), and we can briefly reopen it to allow you to post a pre written answer.
The highly-rated question you linked was created as a community wiki as a way to close numerous related questions as duplicates, since these types of questions are quite common here. As such, it includes an answer to a question that would ordinarily be far too broad to be accepted.
See this meta discussion.
Had that question not been created as a community wiki question based on a discussion in meta, it would have been closed just like yours.
Exactly. This is not a typical example, but was created to serve a specific need: so that we don't have to answer each "how do I get admitted" question individually. I can see having a similar question for the UK, but that only makes sense if the answers would be substantially different to the US version. I personally don't think this is the case, but I don't know the UK admission system enough to be able to tell.
They probably would be different. The question may be whether it's answerable for the UK, where (at PhD level) such things tend to be decided entirely by individual universities or departments according to their own rules. Perhaps an experienced academic would be able to generalise enough to make it broadly applicable without being so vague as to be useless...
The thing that is fundamentally with your question about the UK is the same thing that is fundamentally wrong with the one about the US. The questions are both too broad and too narrow at the same time. The admissions process in both countries is a huge topic with books and books written about it. At the same time a good answer depends on the individual department and individual student.
I am not understanding why the former was closed while the later one bagged 110 votes.
Your question on the UK was closed for that reason (i.e., not a good fit for the SE system). The one on the US was not closed, most likely, because it was the result of a meta discussion that concluded that the community wanted to make an exception for the US. As for the up votes, my guess is a lot of people found it helpful and some people up voted it simply because it helped solve the problem of the influx of bad admissions questions.
There is nothing special about the US question and we can make another exception. All it would take is a clear demonstration of the problem and how the question would solve that problem. As it stands now we do not get a lot of UK admissions questions. This means that there may not be a problem to be solved.
I don't know about the UK system, but as I gather from the comments below your question, there might not be a sufficiently uniform admission process there, and there may be not specific advice that can be given for weak students.
For instance, if you asked the same question about my country (Italy), I'd have voted to close too, because there are probably as many different admission processes as universities, and the criteria may even change year after year (the admission process for me 20 years ago was completely different from the current one in the same university, and we changed the process at least another couple of times). And I wouldn't have any specific advice to give to a weak student before the application, it would be too late to do anything.
you have to understand that UK is world leader in producing research papers only second to the USA. Also, because of its past empire, it has a large follower, probably larger than the USA in terms of population.
@yahoo.com I understand that, but that has nothing to do with the admission process and doesn't change the fact that there may be not a sufficiently uniform admission process around the country.
@yahoo.com Nitpicking: no, the UK is not "world leader in producing research papers only second to the USA". China is second. (Other charts compiled with different criteria seem to confirm.)
@FedericoPoloni, Okay. My bad! Corrected in the main question.
It's called American exceptionalism.
This doesn't seem to add value and makes no argument that links the referenced question with this idea (which I'm presuming is your opinion).
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4317 | What is the main goal of academia stackexchange?
I'm deleting my academia stackexchange account so I don't really care if this my last question will be marked as duplicate or off-topic. The reason why I'm asking this question is that I feel the academia stackexhange community right now heavily focused on hierarchy of this forum such as preventing duplicate, off-topics, etc. rather than actually answer the people's questions. I think every-time if someone, whom specially is new in this forum, asks a question a lot of experienced people will rush to the newly posted question in order to edit its content and discuss its relevance and find duplicates when it is applicable. I think this rush created a censorship, which does not allow new users to express their questions or ideas. Furthermore, I believe every question, which is asked by unique person, has some originality even if it shares its topic with other similar questions and I think it's not fair to mark every question as duplicate or off-topic because his/her questioner is not an experienced user in this forum. I know, even this my last question will be marked as duplicate, off-topic and will be closed, on hold, or even deleted. But, I'm happy that I just expressed my ideas and I don't really care if even I don't receive any response because my account will be deleted anyway.
Note that your last question has four of five votes needed to reopen it (i.e., not consider it as a duplicate anymore). Also please note some answers to this question.
My experience is not formed solely based on my personal experience, which I had for my last question. I saw in many other questions, which is asked by new users, despite of originality of the question, people did not answer it or at least not in the satisfactory way, because the question has a little chance to get high views count and high reputation for those who answered this question. That's really sad when some (not all) educated people are thinking about answering questions in this forum as a game to get more reputation or privileges.
I don’t think our users are as motivated by views and reputation as you think. It is just that the things that are interesting to new users are not necessarily what is interesting to longstanding users who have seen many of these questions before.
The goal of Academia.SE (similar to the other stack exchange sites) is to develop a useful Q&A that applies to a broader audience than the individuals asking questions. This is why we close questions that are too specific to a single individual, or mark as duplicates questions that have already been answered.
These approaches filter out the messy individual circumstances and give the best chances for other people to find answers here without having to ask their own question.
Closing a question as duplicate is never an attempt to censor a particular question or questioner, it seeks to point you toward information already here. Additionally, we can't really answer "what should I do?" questions: you have to make your own decisions based on what you value. Your advisor is likely to be a better place to get information when you need to make a particular decision, because they know you and your circumstances better (though even then you may disagree).
I'm sorry you feel that way, and thank you for taking the time to post your experience. Looking over your posts, I'm not sure I understand why you feel that way... your last question (>10k users) was pretty well received and good discussion helped improve the question even more.
There is a well-recognized phenomenon of older users rushing to close questions, but try to view it from their side... many new users post without checking history, and in many cases the answer has already been discussed. This site has been around for over six years at this point, we have quite a body of knowledge built up. Sometimes mistakes happen, but overall it tends to work fairly well.
That said, as you point out, it's not perfect. I'm sorry you're not feeling welcome, and I really would urge you to reconsider your decision. You've only been a member for a few weeks now, but in that short time you've contributed a few pretty interesting questions. Don't let one bad experience ruin that for you.
Thank you for your kind answer! At the beginning, I really liked this forum and I thought it serves research community as a problem solver. But, I think like many other communities the goal of this forum is buried under rush for editing or marking questions as duplicate or off-topic and people don't answer questions, when there is a little chance for getting high reputation or views, which in my opinion it is really sad for adult and educated people to behave like this. I'm not saying all the people here behave in the same way but always bad reputations have more impacts unfortunately...
@MehrdadYousefi Why did you delete the linked question? I have now no chance of evaluating the general context of this situation. That, for me, is a total opportunity-killer of adding a more personal answer.
@Scientist - I just re-opened the question.
Thanks! Now I see and can add an answer. I have personally voted to close this linked question. Clearly a duplicate. Can't see why someone would take some kind of personal offence in being directed to FAQ?.. And I couldn't care less care about reputation (e.g. getting downvoted) as several of my answers demonstrate.
I suspect by the time I post this answer here, you will be gone already. Still, my answer might serve someone else feeling likewise.
I am a regular SE user. I think the main objective of the database is to provide a Q&A search interface for specialists in different fields. Meaning that if one has a problem, there might be a dedicated SE discussion for it, freely available and still open for additional discussion. I follow and participate different topics in SE, and I can say this website has helped me beyond measure.
Now, there is the matter of the main goal of users in SE Academia. I believe your question was meant to highlight a distance between what I wrote in the paragraph above and what users are actually seeking here. You seem believe most users are just selfishly hunting for reputation, and one of their strategies is nitpicking at selected questions what won't bring them any more views or points. My answer here is based on this personal interpretation, and I am afraid you won't be here to reply or edit the question anymore.
I do not seek reputation in SE Academia. My profile is anonymous, and many of my answers oscillate between controversial and unpopular. Perhaps I often state facts and opinions many academics engaged here don't want to see or be seen in public? I don't know, and I don't care. Because my main personal objective here is (in answering) to contribute to colleagues here who seem to need help in situations I may know about, and also (in questioning) learning what colleagues elsewhere think/advise about a certain topic or situation.
I should state I have voted to close one of your questions, linked in another answer here. It seemed and still looks like a duplicate of another, Frequently Asked Question (FAQ). I did not seek to censor you, not understand why anyone would do that on such a trivial question. Being directed to FAQ is a very helpful outcome, as you may find a suitable answer among many other discussed aspects, or else reformulate your question more specifically on a details you still quite don't understand.
I do believe some users may occasionally misuse this platform on occasion, mostly by passive-aggressively attacking others in comments (or even edits) and by downvoting and voting to delete material they personally disagree with without clear technical or objective reasons. This may be interpreted as a form of censorship, and is unfortunately very common everyone in the real world as well. However I do not think this is widespread in SE Academia (and I would say if I did) and I do not think you seem to have been a victim of such situation.
I agree with you again!!! Nothing is more frustrating then literally having a question and being in need of help and the first responses on your account are people editing your original content, and making it something else entirely by changing your tone and diction, and/or people saying your post is irrelevant. It is rare that you will actually get help.
Try to go reddit. I'm thinking of going there when I need help now.
Hi! This looks like a comment, not an answer. I know, rules are a pain, but this is how more structured places work. Try living in Switzerland. Now, on your feelings, I think you can seek help in different places at same time. These are different communities, and I am sure SE has a lot to offer. I've found a lot of help here. And a few scumbags. Good luck!
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4503 | Disclosing one's field and privacy issues
I've been using academic.stackexchange quite enthusiastically during a rough postdoc devoid of mentorship. However, since I am a young researcher and since some of the questions I want to ask are rather sensitive, I am careful about what information I disclose, my field being one of them. My specific field is small, and it wouldn't take much effort to figure out who I am if I disclosed my field on top of the other personal clues I've given in my questions. I've noticed others doing the same, probably for similar reasons. However, some would-be-answerers rather aggressively insist that I disclose my field in order to answer my question. I'm wondering if there is some way around this-- i.e., how to guard my privacy while still offering enough information for an apt answer?
I've already hidden other SE groups that I'm a member of, and changed my username (but I doubt that would deter an eager detective; at some point SE was even storing old usernames publicly, and @ tags to old usernames remain). I completely understand that practices change from field to field (and even from subfield to subfield). Yet there are real privacy issues at stake. I'm even considering just deleting questions after I get a satisfying response, but I know that defies the point of SE.
This question is related, but does not deal with privacy.
I'm sorry you think the responses are aggressive. Generally they are trying to tailor an answer to your field or sub-field. There is a lot of variation in norms between fields, countries, etc.
I understand this completely. I just wish there were an easier way to be specific and also protect my privacy. After perusing related issues in meta.SE I'm realizing that hasn't been a major component in the development of SE sites.
When people are asking for your field they mean something like "applied math" or "history" rather than your narrow research interest.
It looks like you're using the default avatar, which may be a privacy concern. Changing it may help.
Deleting a question after you get an answer is only possible if the answer does not have any upvotes. If you delete your question after getting an answer before it gets an upvote, that is a sure way to get a warning for a moderator and an eventual suspension.
The SE system allows you to create unregistered guest accounts and even multiple registered accounts (although you need to create new email addresses) for exactly this reason. All we ask is that if you create multiple accounts (registered or unregistered), is that the accounts never interact (i.e., no voting for yourself or leaving comments from one user on another users posts). The reputation you gain on these accounts will not be linked.
However, some would-be-answerers rather aggressively insist that I disclose my field in order to answer my question. I'm wondering if there is some way around this-- i.e., how to guard my privacy while still offering enough information for an apt answer?
I haven’t checked the comments on your questions specifically, but my general impression of these comments (and my intention when I make them) is to allow us to give you a more helpful or to-the-point answer.
If you accept that we cannot do this or sometimes your question is too broad, I see no problem with you omitting this information.
To pre-emptively avoid these comments, I suggest that you explicitly state an your question that you will not name your field to avoid identifiability.
Note that if you can give a broad hint to your field (STEM, humanities, etc.; experimental, theoretical), this can still be helpful at times.
I've already hidden other SE groups that I'm a member of
Note that this (sadly) does not make you completely unidentifiable.
Everybody who knows where to look can get to your network profile from a hidden account. (But not vice versa.)
@ tags to old usernames remain
As StrongBad already noted, if you want to avoid detection via this, it is legitimate to use a sockpuppet to ask questions.
On this and more legitimate tricks to avoid detection, see this Q&A.
I think you mean "throwaway" (one use account) not "sock puppet" (account which appears to be a different person which you use to respond to your main account).
@NoahSnyder: For whatever it’s worth, the sockpuppet is used for all kinds of secondary accounts on SE. A throwaway account would not necessarily be correct here, since it would be reasonable to re-use the second account for other “private” questions.
SE offers a feature to disassociate your account from a question upon request, as mandated by the CC-BY-SA license it uses. However,
the procedure is rather cumbersome (you need to contact support, and I suppose your query is handled by a human);
it is not guaranteed that all references to your username will disappear: it takes a while for the username to be deleted from the database, and then it will still be present in older data dumps, in the internet archive, etc. Your question has already been linked to your username and to all your other questions on the SE network, and, as the old meme says, one does not simply delete something from the internet.
Hence it is best to post sensitive questions anonymously from the start, if it happens again in future. I agree that the user interface does not make it easy: a "post anonymously" button in the Ask Question page would help.
Now that you have already posted the question, a crude workaround to prevent further information leaks from your future activity on the SE network is: make a new Stack Exchange account and use that in future. I know it feels bad to lose all your reputation, but in the end it's just imaginary internet points.
Unfortunately, dissociating my account from a question and getting a new account do not solve the problem. The issue is comments made by other people to my username at the time. I've since contacted admin, who instructed me to flag each comment (thankfully there weren't many) and ask for changes or removal.
The best precaution one can take is to dissociate SE Academia account from outer hints that would give away his identity. Also avoiding disclosing too much of specific details is the safe path.
Nonetheless, you know what? My bet is that in most cases, the fear of being identified is almost complete paranoia. This website has apparently few users per institution, and the most active ones do not seem eager to investigate into other user's private details. Stalking isn't as trivial as it may seem to the common user, and plus, most academics are still unaware of the existence and power of such Q&A websites.
Unless you're really bashing a hot shot in some online-savvy department in the US or UK, I think you have little to fear. In case you work in a non-English speaking institution, you ought to just chill.
Well, if you've been stalked before, your paranoia might be founded. Also, this website is viewable even by non-users. It's quite common to reference an SE site without ever making an account.
I was, and I am stalked. I’ve been in the bitter side of internal enquires as a whistleblower. Colleagues will gossip, and that’s it. SE academia is as much open access as many papers I’ve written to nice journals, and Wikipedia entries I’ve created about them. No effect. I guess everyone really is looking at cute cat videos and on instagram. Reality is, most ‘bad guys’ are flat dumb & lazy and usually nobody truly cares about us. Give whoever you think hates you a few months of shunning and you’ll become part of the landscape again. Take minor precautions and chill out.
Do not post questions that put you at risk.
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4513 | How to save the question "Daughter wants to advocate physician-assisted suicide as her life goal. Shall she be professor?"
Many apologies for Daughter wants to advocate physician-assisted suicide as her life goal. Shall she be professor?. How do I edit it and make it on-topic? Thanks!
There's a legit question about whether/which academic jobs facilitate advocating for social/political change.
For example, advocacy is a terrible fit for most science departments: even departments that don't mind the attention will be vastly more interested in the professor's ability to run a successful research program (i.e., land grants and publish papers). Political science might be an option, but I think most departments focus on how policy decisions are made rather than the policies themselves. I know even less about philosophy/bioethics, but those areas do seem more interested in staking out a position. I think this could probably be fleshed out into a more complete answer with examples, though I don't know enough to do it myself.
I am not sure you can, but your question is pretty unclear so maybe you can. It seems you are looking for recommendations about undergraduate programs to prepare your daughter for something. This is likely off topic. You say you think she wants to be a professor, but I am not sure how that relates to the rest of the question. Even if she wants to be a professor, a question about the best career path for becoming a professor is going to lead to opinion based answers. You should take a look at our help center and familiarize yourself with our community.
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4531 | After someone moves your comments to chat, you lose the right to delete them. This is unfair. How to regain this right?
After someone moves your comments to chat (without asking you), you lose the right to delete these comments yourself. This is unfair; after all, you've done nothing wrong that would justify losing this right. How do you regain this right?
I mean moving resulting in "Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – StrongBad♦" with a URL to a chat discussion (the name "StrongBad" is just an example here; there is nothing personal here, and my question is general).
When speaking about the right, I mean the right given to you earlier by Stack Exchange (not by the law, a distinction rightfully noticed in Wrzlprmft's answer).
Very generally, once you put something on the Internet, it is very difficult to undo. While some legislations grant you some right to delete your private information or similar, there is no universal right to delete your content.
Specifically, when you post something on Stack Exchange, you do so under a Creative Commons licence. The reason for this is that this site is supposed to be a repository of knowledge and wouldn’t work if people could arbitrarily delete their stuff. You retain a right to have your name disassociated from your posts though (but I presume that this is not your issue). Thus, if you so wish, forfeit the right to delete your content when you post it. You are only granted a certain right of self-deletion so you can clean up after yourself. But:
You cannot delete your questions once they have an upvoted answer. (Also see this FAQ.)
You cannot delete accepted answers.
You cannot delete chat messages older than two minutes. Also see this declined feature request on Meta SE: Allow owner of message to delete them in chat.
Finally in the specific case of comments moved to chat, your comments are already deleted. They continue to exist in another form as chat messages, but then this is the least prominent form of content on Stack Exchange anyway. Also almost everything that has been on the Internet for a certain time persists in some archive. Finally, there usually should be no pressing reason to delete such a message:
If you posted something rude or otherwise bad, you shouldn’t have done so in the first place (and deleting it doesn’t make you less accountable for it).
If you posted something that is now obsolete, there is no shame in that.
There are some rare exceptions, e.g., if your comment contains sensitive information due to some accident or similar. In this case, please flag the original post for moderator attention and specify the message and provide a good reason why it should be deleted.
Can you moderators delete chat messages, too?
Note that, even if you don't have the right to delete them, the Creative Commons license gives you the right to disassociate your name from them (i.e., make them anonymous). I suspect that SE will make the procedure to do it unnecessarily complicated, but it's your right.
@FedericoPoloni: Yes. Going by experience, disassociating posts is not made very complicated. I have never witnessed a request by somebody to disassociate chat messages.
For reference: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/96732/how-do-i-remove-my-name-from-a-post-in-accordance-with-cc-by-sa-3-0 . Note that the "contact" link is wrongly named there, that there is no "contact" link at all in chat pages, that in the contact page there is no predefined help topic for "I want to disassociate a post", and that for this reason the request will likely go through a human customer support representative rather than being fully automated. I call this "unnecessarily complicated", when compared to a simple "disassociate" button in a context menu, but that's my view. :)
@FedericoPoloni: Right now, post disassociation is a very rare event. I have encountered only a handful of such requests during years as a mod. Making this user-controlled would require a considerable effort, as you would have to prevent all sorts of accidents and loopholes, such as somebody posting a rude comment and then immediately disassociating it to cover their tracks. This effort is simply not worth it.
I guess that part of the reason why you encountered only few such requests is that the suggested protocol to handle disassociation requests (as described in my link above) does not involve asking a moderator, but contacting SE's customer support.
@FedericoPoloni: I doubt that. I would expect that a considerable portion of users doesn’t care or succeed to find the suggested protocol and just flags the post. Yet, I have never seen this happen. (The disassociation requests I mentioned were all embedded in larger drama.) Also, think about in what circumstances you would reasonably want disassociation of individual posts. In many cases, deleting your account, renaming your user, or using a legitimate second account will get you what you want in an easier and usually cleaner way. Disassociation is by nature exceptional.
It doesn't surprise me at all that a feature that is not advertised, buried in the license, uncommon in other internet forums, and cumbersome to request is a very rare event. I am not sure in which direction the causation arrow goes, though. :)
@FedericoPoloni: PS: I dug a bit, and an SE employee told me that they have roughly one disassociation request per week (for the entirety of SE).
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4434 | Canonical question about adding unrequested changes during revision
This very recent question:
Is it acceptable to add a result to a paper when a journal asks for revisions?
prompted a short discussion in the comments about it being a duplicate. As I wrote the (only and accepted) answer to
Adding a citation after paper is accepted,
I linked to this while voting to close as a duplicate. The SE meta thread on this matter:
How should duplicate questions be handled?
says
Questions may be duplicates if they have the same (potential) answers
and
Questions asking about the same aspect of the same concept, but with different examples, may or may not be considered duplicates. It depends how easy it is to figure out one example from the other. If it's only a matter of changing some numerical values or some variable names, they're duplicates.
The same situation with marking as a duplicate occured in
Adding new results during review process.
In both questions I voted to close I argued that the "answer there is aplicable to a wide range of instances, particularly to this one" and "that answer covers what is asked about here". However, this triggered comments saying that "adding a new result is pretty different from adding a new citation" and "But the two questions refer to two different situations".
For completeness, my opinion on the matter is that
if you found something that the reviewers didn't ask for, but adding it to the text improves the quality/completeness/etc. of the paper, you definitely should do it. [...] Overall - aim at the highest quality of the article that you can achieve at the moment."
While researching to ask this question, I found these questions asking about very similar things:
Should I add a non-requested work to my major revision of a scientific journal paper?
Can I correct a mistake that the reviewers didn't spot in a paper that has not been accepted yet?
to which I'd answer similarly as above (i.e. with the above quoted excerpts).
Question:
Which one should be the canonical question for marking as duplicates questions asking
"can I add [anything] (e.g. citation/sentence/paragraph/section/plot/table/hypothesis/conjecture/proof/theorem/discussion/hypothesis/etc.) in the revision?"
If no existing thread is general enough, maybe we can edit one accordingly?
The downvotes recently seem to be given very hastily and freely...
I disagree that those two questions are duplicates, at least of each other. Yes, they are related. Yes, they have "the same (potential) answers", and your answer applies to both. However, I think this is because the answers are more general than the questions themselves.
Going back to the SE meta thread, it states (emphasis mine):
Questions asking about the same aspect of the same concept, but with different examples, may or may not be considered duplicates. It depends how easy it is to figure out one example from the other. If it's only a matter of changing some numerical values or some variable names, they're duplicates. If understanding why the questions are at all related requires a detailed explanation, the questions aren't duplicates, merely related.
In my opinion, asking about adding "new results" during revisions, or "citations" after acceptance, amounts to more than a change of variable names - there are nuances involved. It's certainly natural to think that adding new results is a more significant change than adding a citation, and that changes before and after acceptance are rather different.
The point is that the questions are different, even if the answers don't have to be. Yes, they are related, but somewhat different questions about changing a paper, but as Jeff Atwood put it,
One thing I want to be clear about, though, is that duplication is not necessarily bad. Quite the contrary — some duplication is desirable. There’s often benefit to having multiple subtle variants of a question around, as people tend to ask and search using completely different words, and the better our coverage, the better odds people can find the answer they’re looking for. And isn’t that, really, the whole point of this exercise?
Furthermore, it’s OK for duplicate questions to have duplicate answers. While you could argue that the duplicate questions could all be merged into one question with a “master” set of answers, this is kind of irritating from the perspective of the user looking for an answer.
In this case I think a more general catch-all question could work, as it's not a moral equivalent of saying "RTFM". However, if we go that route, I'd prefer seeing two questions, separating the pre- and post-acceptance cases*. I imagine questions like
Can I make modifications to my paper during revision that were not requested by the reviewers?
Can I update my paper after it is accepted?
For 1., either Adding new results during review process or Is it acceptable to add a result to a paper when a journal asks for revisions?
would be a good starting point. (I prefer the framing to the former, but the answers to the latter.) For 2., editing Adding a citation after paper is accepted to be more general would be fine.
*If I know that I can add a result during revisions, then I can infer that I can add a citation or two during revisions, but I couldn't necessarily infer anything about edits after acceptance.
Thank you for your opinion. That's more or less what I have in mind, but clearly laid out. I find the quotes you give quite convincing. I agree also about separating cases before and after acceptance – for the latter a canonical answer should be "consult the editor", though. For the former, Adding new results during review process seems indeed better phrased, and the answers are concise. In my own answer I refer to in the OP I purposely gave the most general answer that was possible at the moment.
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4623 | Contesting a duplicate question: non-standard career path and two PhDs
Some time ago, I had a question closed and marked as a duplicate. I found the experience to be quite bizarre-- the post many claimed answered my question did not, from my view-- I had in fact read that post in detail before deciding to write my own question. Furthermore, I revised my question multiple times to make the differences clearer.
I wonder if part of the issue is that my question deals with possessing two PhDs at once, the very notion of which seems to trigger many academics. I suspect that many of the closers did not actually read the question or its revisions in detail, instead defaulting to the "two PhDs is bad/sad/mad" opinion and taking action to close the question.
So my meta-question is: how can I get the "duplicate" notice removed from my question? Someone already provided a great answer (which I accepted), so I'm not necessarily looking for further attention. It just feels silly for the "duplicate" marker to remain, as it undermines what I think is a distinct and real issue for many people.
Did you actually vote to close your own question as a duplicate? Or for some other close reason?
I did, out of annoyance. My thought was, enough people got the question to answer it, might as well speed up the judicial hammer and move on.
You were the fourth one to vote. If you did not vote to close, the question could survive. Now, it's hard. Re-opening a question is always much harder. It takes five votes or moderator intervention to reopen . Next time, please don't vote to close your own question unless you really want it to close.
@scaaahu Considering how close-happy people are on this site, I doubt my question would have remained open. Furthermore, it seems impossible to get a question re-opened because there aren't many avenues for advertising a "damned" question. Sure, it'll move to the top of the queue as having been edited recently, but people will still see the duplicate or closed label and move on.
Your question is pretty broad and has a lot of background. I think it really boils down to
I want to know what to expect if I start pursuing a PhD in an unrelated field altogether, given that I have a PhD already. (Something like this post.) Possible considerations that don't have to be precisely answered: could my current PhD be a hindrance in getting accepted into a new program? Will my supervisors and colleagues see my past PhD as an asset, or as weird-looking mole they will try to politely ignore? What are other questions should I ask myself to make sure this is something I really want?
At the highest and broadest level
I want to know what to expect if I start pursuing a PhD in an unrelated field altogether, given that I have a PhD already.
and
What are other questions should I ask myself to make sure this is something I really want?
seem very related to the linked "duplicate" question and do not seem like great fits for the site. In this case the problem with the question being broad is that it overlaps with other things and it becomes difficult to focus on the unique aspects of the question. The rest of the gist seems different from the duplicate question and a much better fit.
Could my current PhD be a hindrance in getting accepted into a new program?
and
Will my supervisors and colleagues see my past PhD as an asset, or as weird-looking mole they will try to politely ignore?
Why not ask those two questions as stand alone and separate questions. Maybe from there you will see a way forward to getting at the deeper aspects of what you want to know.
I'm having a hard time understanding why it's considered so broad, given the range of "acceptable" questions on academia.SE. The sub-questions are meant to flesh out the main one-- what to expect-- asking them separately would get hyper-focused answers that aren't helpful.
@artificial_moonlet I think it's broad because of the word "unrelated" you use. Chemistry and Theoretical Computer Science are unrelated in some sense. Material Science and Japanese Study are also unrelated in another sense.
@scaaahu I specify the fields in the question... should the title of the question itself should be burdened with details?
@artificial_moonlet You have "let's say" in the question. I do not take it as you specified the fields. Had you said jumping from STEM to Humanity without "let's say", I think it would be better.
@scaaahu I'm not revealing my actual fields. But I'm consistent with the two I've stated.
@artificial_moonlet Still, it could be considered a dup. But, the problems you might encounter while applying for admission and studying would be worthwhile asking, imo.
@artificial_moonlet I edited the answer to try and make it clearer is that the issue with your question being broad is that it overlaps other questions and it is difficult to see the unique bits.
I agree it's not a duplicate of the linked question, but I also agree with StrongBad that it's quite broad. If you like, we could change the close reason to "too broad." Given the excellent answers already there, I would not want to substantially rewrite the question at this point (though you're welcome to open a new, more focused question as StrongBad suggests).
I wonder if part of the issue is that my question deals with possessing two PhDs at once, the very notion of which seems to trigger many academics.
Maybe, but I suspect (another) part of the issue is concision: your question is very long and contains a lot of extraneous information. I suspect you could easily reduce the length by 50%. Of course, this shouldn't affect the determination of whether it's a duplicate -- but reviewers are not perfect. It's easy to just read "a bunch of personal factors....two PhDs....yeah, it probably boils down to the same question."
I agree I could trim the narrative-- at the time, some of the context felt important.
Apparently, I'm responsible for initiating the close reason. I did read the question in detail, but not the revisions that had not happened at the time. Here is why I voted to close:
Your question was "What should I expect if I do X?" The correct answer is "Don't do X." Therefore I consider the question to be a duplicate of "Should I do X?" because they have the same answer. There's no reason to have both questions on this site.
As edited, your question is primarily opinion based, so I don't feel it should be reopened.
I'm sorry you didn't like our answer to your question. You are not likely to get a better one elsewhere, because few people have two PhDs, and most of them are not like you.
I have looked at the latest edit, and now it looks like the question comes down to:
The answer to this question strongly depends on individual factors such as a certain person’s preferences, a given institution’s regulations, the exact contents of your work or your personal values. Thus only someone familiar can answer this question and it cannot be generalised to apply to others. (See this discussion for more info.)
Which is another reason it is not suitable for our format, so I have left it closed also.
I'm actually fine if it stays closed. But it shouldn't be marked as a duplicate. Anyway, I just earned the reopen vote privilege and was excited to exercise it. :D
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4626 | What about directing advice-seeking questions immediately to chat?
The Q&A format of academia.SE is limited when it comes to questions where someone just needs advice or a brief therapy session from a formless elder in the ivory tower. Yet many people (especially those new to SE and unfamiliar with the format) ask away anyway. Then they either get closed or get a flurry of attention and opinions that are probably not really what they were looking for in the first place.
I've been wondering if there's a better way to process such questions without overwhelming or shutting down a real person in real distress. Already there are mechanisms that suggest if someone's question might be a duplicate or opinion-based when someone is typing a question. This is great. But would it possible to also refer the question-asker to chat? Such a feature might even help with question qualitiy in the long run, because the question-asker would have a chance to work out the kinks in chat and then, if they still deem it necessary, post a question.
This question is related: Better use of the chat room: Discussion groups proposal?. In fact, I think my proposal would help achieve the OP's goal of utilizing chat more.
I don't know whether the SE staff can implement such request or not (and whether they'd be willing to implement it), but take into account two things: i) to use the chatroom one should have at least 20 rep, and most of the users that are in distress, and have trouble asking questions, are newcomers with 1 rep; ii) our chat is not particularly populated and the chances of getting an answer there may be thin.
I think the current process works to a great extent, i.e. we use comments to tell the OP what to improve and how to improve their questions. SE allows the asker, even 1 rep point to write comment under their own questions. I think this is better than the chat room. If the comment thread is too long, a user can open a chat room or the OP can flag the mod to move the comments into a chat room to continue to chat. As far as I can see, it ain't broken yet, no need to fix.
Also, my personal experience (I actually did the kind of things you suggest) is that many users got the useful info/solution/suggestions, they just left. Never improve the question, never come back. After a while, the chat room would freeze. No one would read the contents. That's it. After a few such instances, I stopped doing that.
@scaaahu Bummer, but makes sense.
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4637 | Identifying Universities
I was preparing an ethics question and realized that while I was carefully anonymizing the people involved, I was identifying the universities, etc.
Personally, I believe that knowing the universities and/or locale involved adds context to the situation but might serve to assist someone with 'less than altruistic intentions' in identifying the participants in the dilema.
I also know that while I've only recently joined this community, I have followed many ethics questions in the past through the Hot Network Questions sidebar from other sites. TBH, I don't recall other ethics related question(s) where scholastic institutions were named.
How should I proceed and stay on-topic while accurately describing the situation? An accurate description of the situation involves at least five universities and a couple of countries. I feel that locale is important because the ethical conundrum involves student loans.
See https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1297/929
Thanks @StrongBad. That didn't directly address my issue but it did help provide perspective.
It's a judgment call. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Ask yourself whether an identification of the researchers involved is realistic, and if yes, whether it's worth risking anyway. There are quite a few sui-generis universities in the US alone, so there will be cases where even despite a lack of anonymity you'll want to mention the place.
I recommend sharing the relevant details without naming the schools. For example, instead of "Columbia University," you could say "a prestigious university in a large city in the US with several other nearby universities." I can't imagine any ethical quandary that is so specific it only applies to a single set of universities (and if it does, it is probably not a great fit for this site in any case).
As an aside, questions with many actors and locales are difficult to write cleanly. A lot of questions provide too many details and end up attracting few answers. Even moreso when there are awkward naming conventions ("Professor X in Country Y talked to Professors A and B...."). So, I really recommend boiling it down to the key issues and most important details.
The ethical quandary is directly regarding student loans and the avoidance of repayment. While the particular universities may not be identified, their general location (and governing laws) is a sacrosanct part of the ethical question. Maybe I'm just shortcutting my question's narrative.
including the country, or part of the world, seems reasonable (meant to include that in my example, will update).
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4661 | Fade out of questions?
Recently I noticed questions on the front page that appear faded out:
What is that supposed to indicate? Is it some new feature and I missed the announcement?
This is because it contains tags that you have marked to be ignored.
More details on meta.stackexchange.com that explain it:
Ignored Tags
...
By default, questions with these tags are shown faded; they are still visible but less prominent. It is possible to hide them completely, for more details see: How do I hide posts matching my ignored tags?
Thanks. I must have marked [tag:application] by accident. I certainly didn't do it intentionally.
Thank you. I had the same problem. You saved my eyes. (I thought I should go see my eye doctor).
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4778 | If your essay limits 1500 words, can you just reference essay prompt without discussing it, then criticize it?
Apology for If your essay limits 1500 words, can you just reference essay prompt without discussing it, then criticize it?. How can I edit it so it doesn't strongly depend on individual factors?
My question can assist and matter any university student writing essay with word limit! Thanks.
EDIT
I don't know why my question closed, but these created:2y.. open. Don't these depend individual factors? I want know for future so I don't downvotes and suspended!
Graduate student with abysmal English writing skills, how to help
Colleague blames me for not spotting typos when I only reviewed the structure and content
How to deal with my PhD supervisors rudely critiquing all my draft papers?
How to write papers efficiently when English isn't my first language?
Should I cite a really bad research paper published in my small research area?
How to to deal with advisor's criticism of my writing?
How to improve scientific writing skills?
Advice on writing a research paper in a less time
PhD Advisor is lying about funding and doesn't write their own grants
Which could be considered an appropriate number of self-citations? asked 19 hours ago.
Those questions (at least from the title) appear considerably different as they are about writing publications (not coursework) or are about conflicts with a supervisor (which cannot be answered by the supervisor themselves). Can you argue why any of these questions should be closed as per the FAQ?
The essay prompt should be obviously incorporated (not copied) in your introductory paragraph. 1500 words is roughly 6 double-spaced pages, so there is plenty of room for a good introduction to the question at hand.
@Wrzlprmft I'm not arguing they should be closed. I'm arguing mine is like them and mine can open too. How writing publications differs writing coursework?
I'm not arguing they should be closed. – Well, try to apply the arguments from the FAQ to those questions. If you conclude that they should be closed, [edit] your question to elaborate why and there is something we can explain or discuss. If not, you might understand the rule. But if you do neither, we cannot make any progress, because we do not understand why you fail to see the difference.
How writing publications differs writing coursework? – The criteria for publications are universal (with some minor dependences on field and some dependences on journal). The criteria for essays are made by the instructor.
I'd suggest editing the title of this meta post to actually reflect what the meta post is about, e.g. "My question about referencing an essay prompt was closed for 'strongly depending on individual factors'. How can I edit it to fix this?" Right now, this meta post is just titled identically to the question, which doesn't make it clear what this meta post is actually asking.
You cannot. Your question is a textbook example of the point “Questions on your […] teacher’s preferences” in the respective FAQ. The only person who can answer this question is your instructor. Everything we can provide would be a guess, which may be misleading.
There is no generally valid answer to this question, except: “It depends on your teacher’s preferences and the context.” The close reason in question was made for exactly such questions.
I don't think my question is “Questions on your […] teacher’s preferences”"? My question can be generalized so it doesn't depend on teacher. Obviously if you spend 1500 words just regurgitating author, then you get low mark.
@ParkKiHyun: That wouldn’t solve the problem. Please see my edit.
Thanks again. Please see my edit post?
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4780 | Where comment? What is the Latin term “pace” used for when referencing other scholars?
citations - What is the Latin term "pace" used for when referencing other scholars? - Academia Stack Exchange
However, I can imagine that some authors simply use pace for variation from "contrary to" without this particular nuance (essentially as suggested in the comments). (As may be clear from my question, this was in the field of linguistics and written by an author with an exceptional sensitivity to the finer nuances of language.)
When I click "suggested in the comments", I don't see comment. Just question. This comment deleted? Can you post it thanks?
The comment did not include any new information. I removed the reference.
In the future, if you see something like this, please just flag it for moderator attention as only moderators can see deleted comments anyway.
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4787 | Complaint about Academia Stack Exchange
I had a falling-out with a professor last year, and the situation has been quite distressing for me. I'm trying to deal with the situation in real life, but so far I haven't gotten answers, so I was posting about it on Academia Stack Exchange. It was a complex issue; thus, it's not something that can be fully addressed in one post. As such, I've posted various questions relating to the matter; however, they weren't duplicate questions; each had a distinct topic and could be applied to various situations. However, I've been prohibited from posting anything related to it, and I don't feel one can be prohibited from posting about a topic unless that topic is offensive and/or unrelated to the stack exchange. (My issue is directly related to academia.)
Yes, I post about this a lot, but I haven't broken any stack exchange rule, so I wanted to complain about this.
Yours is a rather unique case.
Of your 26 questions, more than 15 reference the same conflict, and 14 had a negative total score.
You have a received a cease-and-desist letter from the institution in question, and the professor in question has replied to your overtures through counsel only.
You have received very clear, unambiguous advice from this forum: leave her alone and move on with your life. You have explicitly stated that you will not take our advice (in which case, why ask for more advice?).
Indeed, your later actions (meeting new professors and asking them to relay messages to her) present a very worrying trend -- both in terms of your mental health and in terms of your legal exposure (neither of which are within our area of expertise).
As for "not breaking any stack exchange rule" -- this forum does not allow duplicate questions. Several users have suggested that many of your questions could be rewritten so as to avoid any reference to the above situation; this would be perfectly allowed. In fact, I explicitly suggested that you do this on one question two months ago, but you chose not to so until a week had passed and the question had been closed and heavily downvoted (perhaps the question could be reopened now, but that is up to the community).
@cag51- I just edited that post to remove the specifics of my situation.
It was a complex issue; thus, it's not something that can be fully
addressed in one post.
Stack Exchange sites are repositories of well-defined and virtually independent questions and answers. They are not a good place to ask a long series of questions connected by a thread, and with little or vague differences from question to question.
Users cannot follow such a long thread, can hardly see the differences between the questions and vote to close, even more so if the questioner doesn't seem to follow the advice given in previous answers and comments.
I don't feel one can be prohibited from posting about a topic unless that topic is offensive and/or unrelated to the stack exchange.
We're sorry for what you're going through, but you have to understand that Academia Stack Exchange is simply not suitable for all types of questions related to the academic world. It's really not meant to be so: there are academic questions we can answer and others we can not. In particular, see also Why was my question put on hold for depending on individual factors?.
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4968 | Does a user's experience/qualification matter when answering?
I have recently finished my undergraduate degree, and will join a graduate degree in Fall 2021. I have hung around the main site long enough (even before I became a member) that I (kind of) know what questions make sense there1, and I (kind of) know what sort of answers are useful.
This means that when I try and answer questions, it is not always from personal experience or any citable source, but sometimes draws from other answers I have read on the main site (and find useful). Some of my answers may seem as though written by someone way more senior than "just a graduate student", as though I know absolutely everything I'm talking about, but they do usually draw from other answers on the site.
I do this because I can, because I (kind of) know what answers will be given by other, more senior users, based on previous answers I have read. However, I would rather that no one thinks I am "just a graduate student" and have no idea what I'm talking about. Whatever I answer is based either on personal experience or on something I know makes sense, because I've read similar answers before.
For instance, I have answered questions on uploading to arXiv after acceptance and on Mathematics GRE for an engineering course, since I have been through the same problems before. On the other hand, I have also answered questions on whether a Ph.D. student should mail another researcher from his country, on whether a summer project abroad makes sense for graduate studies and on poor undergraduate grades for Ph.D. admissions. These are, in general, much better answered by those in a more senior position with experience of how these things work. I have answered them however, because I can guess what the accepted (or highest voted) answer will say.
Is this okay, and does it make sense to continue doing this or should I defer to someone with actual experience?
1: Meta is a different beast, but I guess I'll find out now.
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4994 | Voting for just one candidate in Mod election
It does not seem possible to vote for just one candidate in the current election.
How can one do this?
Yes, it’s actually possible, just drag your favourite candidate in the ballot box. What exact issue are you experiencing? Which browser and system are you using?
@MassimoOrtolano It's probably just me. I was expecting some sort of 'submit' button to appear and supposed that it wasn't doing so because I hadn't filled both spaces.
Personally, I would prefer to elect them both!
@Araucaria: It isn’t just you. I too found it confusing that after entering a candidate, or making your rank order list of candidates, there isn’t a “confirm” (or such) button. Not a fan of that aspect of the interface.
Let me start with a general note that is not so relevant to this election, but explains why the interface is how it is: In the STV system employed by SE, you do not vote (strictly speaking) for a candidate, you rank all candidates. If you “refuse” to rank any candidates, this is equivalent to ranking them last. It’s not that you can explicitly not vote for them.
(The guidance to only rank candidates you think would make good moderators is misleading in my opinion.)
In the current scenario – a one-slot election with two candidates –, the votings system boils down to a plain majority election where the candidate who is ranked first by most voters wins.
Thus, the following are equivalent:
Rank Candidate A first and do not rank Candidate B.
Rank Candidate A first and rank Candidate B second.
That being said, you can do the first thing, by dragging and dropping only one candidate in the list. The selection will be automatically saved every five seconds:
The fine print: "It’s not that you can explicitly not vote for them" -- this is true in the current scenario (2 candidates for 1 slot) but not generally. For example, if we had 3 candidates and 2 slots, and everyone voted for Candidate A without providing a second choice. In this case, the election fails with only 1 slot filled. (I'm not sure exactly what happens if B has some support, but not enough to reach the 50% threshold after all the vote transferring is done).
@cag51: If there is a single voter ranking B over C, B will win that seat.
I've thought about this for some time, and my thinking is still the same. Your explanation seems to be not voting for a candidate makes no difference to the outcome of the election, therefore you cannot 'explicitly not vote for them'. My feeling is that this is not true. One cannot 'explicitly' vote for anyone. But what you mean is that it will make no difference to the result of the election. However, it will make a difference to the record. When you cannot affect the outcome of an election, the record counts for something.
It's also worth pointing out that the guidance on voting explicitly states "You should only rank the candidates you think would make good moderators." Either the people who wrote that guidance have a reason for doing so - or they don't understand the way the election works. [However, I'm just making that point. I'm grateful for the explanation of the drag and drop.]
When you cannot affect the outcome of an election, the record counts for something. – If it counts for you, I cannot dissuade you, but mind that all those interpreting the record must also take into account that many voters are aware of how the system works. — Either the people who wrote that guidance have a reason for doing so - or they don't understand the way the election works. – It’s the latter. Actually, all of this prompted this Meta SE question of mine, which I somehow forgot to mention here.
@Wrzlprmft That's a different and very specific scenario where there are two people you don't wish to vote for.
@Araucaria: I am not exactly sure what you are aiming at, but the example I used with two people is only an example. The advice (“You should only rank the candidates you think would make good moderators.”) is generally not sound. As long as you have only one candidate who you consider unacceptable, it is irrelevant, but still incorrect. — two people you don't wish to vote for – That formulation suggests that you are thinking about STV in terms that don’t apply to it, but rather to primitive voting systems.
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5016 | How do I make this "academia" question not opinion based?
Standard practices to turn a career of research in pure maths into fundamental physics?
Many popular questions in SE academia seems to have the same level of "possibly opinion based". I don't this particular question being different from the other. Still it has been closed as supposedly opinion based.
I feel like real examples of transitions would be actual data points and absolutely not opinions. Any way that this could be transformed into something that fit the moderator idea of what is not opinion based?
Examples from even a dozen individuals still don't create a standard, especially if they reflect different social and cultural norms. By the time you have enough "actual data points" you're not asking a question, you're conducting a poll, not what Stack Exchange is for.
Your question is opinion-based because it is highly improbable that the evidence needed to answer the question exists.
First, there are vanishingly few academics in your (unspecified) part of the world that have done a PhD + postdocs in math, left academia, and then successfully pursued a career in physics research. So, I think you are unlikely to get any super helpful answers. We could speculate (and some of the existing answers already have), but as a PhD yourself, your ability to speculate is probably comparable to ours.
I assume this is why certain users voted to close. That said, I am not convinced this decision was correct. It's possible (albeit unlikely) that we have a member here who has been in physics at a high enough level for a long enough time that could give an authoritative answer. It's true that there are probably no statistics or references that anyone could provide, but "personal expertise in academia" is routinely used as the basis for answers here. Again, I think it's unlikely that you'll get an answer like this, but we do not close questions just because they are unlikely to find an answer.
Anyway, I'll leave this as it is for a while to see if we get any other points of view. To the other points you raise....
I feel like real examples of transitions would be actual data points and absolutely not opinions.
Perhaps not opinions, but we don't really take "poll" questions. Our format is that we vote for the best answer; if you ask for examples, then all answers are equally good. But you are correct that if you ask for an authoritative answer, one could provide an answer based on a single data point (it would then be for the voters to judge this type of answer).
Would contacting professor working on the topic I'm interested in help me make progress towards that aim?
Could doing student projects with a professor work as a preliminary step (and learning exercise) towards a real postdoc?
I doubt that without guidance I could make any meaningful contribution to the topic, but maybe I'm wrong to think like that?
Is there any concrete step I could do to achieve my goal of becoming a researcher in say, the mathematics of particle physics?
Note that you are asking four different, though related, questions here. I think it's okay in this case, but it is a bit of a "red flag"; you might consider making your question a bit crisper.
This post has been reasonably well received (and no other answers were submitted), so I have made some edits to the post and reopened it.
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5162 | Do we have even high level guidelines on how controversial posts are moderated?
I've been somewhat confused by how the moderation on our controversial questions is conducted. That's not to say that the mods need to be superhuman, but I really do think things are frequently handled inconsistently.
In January, we had this question go through: Examples of successful push-backs against DEI (diversity, etc.) initiatives in academia?
This was obviously a controversial post, and the moderation philosophy was aggressively focused on deleting comments (even those that weren't consulted) and on keeping the post open. I'm not really happy about how it was handled, but at least that is one policy.
Today, we've had the controversial post Was it appropriate to discuss the reply-all? come through, where the response was to issue a 24 hour lock because a moderator was unhappy with the original poster's edit strategy.
Is there something I'm missing that differentiates these questions substantially enough that they require such different strategies? I feel like we could have just let a regular close vote of one sort or another execute on the second question and that would've been closer to the spirit of how the first was handled.
And the lock has now been removed.
Different issues need different responses.
I’ve locked today’s post not because it is controversial, but because in a few hours it was edited twenty times in a way that completely changed the core question and context, thus invalidating existing answers and making it impossible for users to answer.
The lock lasts for one day, and it does not correspond to the closure of the question: it is meant to prevent further rushed changes (closing a question does not prevent this), but it can be removed by us moderators any time the author reaches a final decision on the content (as it happened shortly after I wrote this). It also (again temporarily) prevents further answers because such answers would be at risk of being invalidated by new edits.
The January’s question didn’t have this issue: it was edited just six times and none of the edits changed the core question.
I appreciate the response (and Cag's) and understand the contrast between the questions regarding the edit pattern. I'll think it over. It does feel to me somewhat philosophically distinct to how the January question was approached, though, and I think they do have some similarities (the pace of comment generation is a big one). In the January case I felt like the moderation was very deferential to the asker and towards letting the non-mod procedures execute, whereas the intervention here was a quick lock.
@AnonymousM Generally, when two things are handled differently, I would focus on the ways they are different rather than the ways they are similar. If you focus on the similarities you're certainly going to find unexplained inconsistencies.
@BryanKrause I've appreciated the thoughts on this question including this one. But wrapping back to this particular comment: I personally think consistency is a worthwhile thing to strive for in moderation and this comment comes across to me as "Consistency isn't something the mods strive for."
@AnonymousM We moderators try to be consistent as possible when all things are equal, but here things were different, and we also look at the different responses of the community and of the poster. Moreover, mod tools allow us to take certain actions only, and this might be suboptimal in certain cases.
@AnonymousM That isn't the meaning of my comment at all. What I am saying is that if you have two situations that are handled differently, it will always appear like there is inconsistency if you choose to focus on the similarities in the situations and ignore the differences. If you want insight into the reasons for differences in action, you have to look to the differences in situation. We certainly should not strive to react to different situations consistently.
To the title question: The only difference in policy between a "controversial" question and a regular question is that the former have a post notice reminding people of the rules. Specifically, this notice reminds people (especially new users or hot-network-question users) that this is not a discussion site, and we do not welcome arguments, debates, or opinions, only authoritative answers backed by personal expertise in academia and/or references.
With respect to your first example, you say:
"the moderation philosophy was aggressively focused on deleting comments (even those that weren't consulted)."
I'm not sure what "consulted" means in this context. But as you know, the purpose of comments is to suggest improvements or request clarification. Comments that do not do either of those things may be deleted without notice. In many cases, we do give grace periods or move comments to chat rather than just deleting; we do not want to be obnoxious with deleting comments that are just a hair over the line. But when the controversial post notice has already reminded people about the acceptable uses of comments, we are less likely to give the benefit of the doubt.
"and on keeping the post open"
I'm not sure what you mean by this; the mods did not take any special action to keep this post open. I suppose we could have unilaterally closed it, but we normally leave such decisions to the community.
the response was to issue a 24 hour lock because a moderator was unhappy with the original poster's edit strategy
Locking a question is pretty unusual; I don't think this is a routine "strategy." But I also don't think it's exactly a mystery why a moderator took this action -- this post has been through 20 revisions, many of which substantially change the question being asked, which will lead to a bunch of answers that address different questions. As the moderator said in the comments, this lock will be lifted as soon as OP tells us that the question has stabilized.
I feel like we could have just let a regular close vote of one sort or another execute on the second question
For this specific problem -- a constantly-changing question -- I doubt it. Getting five close votes takes some time, which will lead to confusion and delay. Further, closing the question is not really appropriate if the question itself is on-topic. This is the sort of "exceptional case" that moderators were designed for -- and indeed, a user correctly flagged this post so that we could intervene.
Anyway: thanks for asking, it is good to be able to explain our actions and get feedback. But I'm pretty comfortable with how our team handled these two cases.
Re the January question: I had multiple comments (as did others) moved to chat that were well within the scope of the "Controversial Post" rules, as they were suggesting specific improvements to the question. This is one approach, but seems fairly different compared to today's post.
I see. As noted above, we do not generally delete comments that are within the acceptable uses of comments, even on controversial questions. Of course, things do slip through -- please feel free to raise a flag next time.
Looking at it now: it looks to me like your comments were moved to chat, not deleted, and a moderator even said that your comments were "constructive" and he hoped the discussion would continue in the chat. By this point, the OP had already declined to make the change you suggested, so there did not seem to be a "realistic chance that the post would be edited." But these things are always judgment calls, and things do slip through, so we're usually happy to discuss/reconsider -- please don't be shy about sending a note in future if it seems like we've deleted valid comments.
@AnonymousM I have observed that moderators moving comments to chat/deleting them is more the default than the exception around here. https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5091/2021-a-year-in-moderation
There is no relationship between the two questions.
I requested moderator intervention in Was it appropriate to discuss the reply-all? because there were an unreasonable number of edits to the question, making it impractical to tell what had been changed. This seems like abuse to me.
I do not think the question should have been closed as "opinion based" because the several answers and most voters were in general agreement.
This seems like an understandable reason to request the particular intervention that ended up happening, but the intervention itself was very strong and it didn't take long after unlocking for a close vote to be approved (As an aside: I don't have the rep for those so didn't contribute to it at all). In the other question, the asker was also somewhat out of line in that they aggressively tried to turn every comment into a discussion prompting many moves to chat. But that question was left largely alone to remain on HNQ for a long while and moderation moved comments disagreeing with the asker.
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5222 | Why was this question closed by 1 person?
Is it normal to reject a peer-reviewed paper and then reject it after accepting it without specifying the exact reasons?
Usually, you need 4, but a moderator was quick to close the question. I just want to know if it is at all unusual to reject a peer-reviewed paper after accepting it. How can I change the question to prevent a moderator for closing it without any good reason?
I commented why I closed it. What was unclear about the comment?
I think @Mark's comment pretty much answered your question. Only the journal editors and reviewers can give you further explanations.
Note that a high rep user with appropriate gold "tag" badges can also close some questions on their own, especially those that are duplicates. Mods of course have the power always. You can also flag your own closed question and request a review. Or edit it to respond to the reason for closing.
I just want to know if it is at all unusual to reject a peer-reviewed paper after accepting it.
I think you know the answer to this question, which is that it is unusual.
The interesting question is of course whether this unusual procedure is justified, which is nothing we can answer as it requires dissecting the specific issue at hand and information not available to us.
Also, if this is what you wanted to know, you could have simply written that and only referenced the specific issue as an aside.
Instead you wrote things like:
I am thinking it's a bogus excuse and it's because of political reasons only
Whether intentional or not, this invites discussions about the contents of the paper and its political implications.
I don’t see a question related to this issue that is neither trivial (i.e., we all know the answer) nor opinion-based, off-topic or otherwise unsuitable for this site.
The interesting question is of course whether this unusual procedure is justified We really should answer the question that is asked, not the question we think is being asked.
@Allure: I wasn’t contesting this. But we need to take into account that most people answer the question they think is being asked, even when the asker takes extra care to point out what their question is not about. If a question is particularly prone to attracting answers that do not answer the explicit question (e.g., by large digressions or strong claims about something else), that is something that needs to be fixed. And if the explicit question is probably not the one that the asker wants to ask, then it’s best to close, so things can be clarified before anybody answers.
In that case I'd argue that the problem is the answer, not the question. if the explicit question is probably not the one that the asker wants to ask This is also not something for others to comment on. If the question is not what the asker wanted to ask, it's still the question that should be answered, and if the asker wants to ask something else then they can edit their question.
In that case I'd argue that the problem is the answer, not the question. – And …? Closing prevents answers and thus prevents problems. A singular non-answer can be deleted, but if a question is prone to attracting non-answers, we deleting all of them would be a major disturbance (particularly if people upvote them because they are accurate despite not answering the explicit question).
The asker didn't cause the problem, the answerer did, but you are blaming the asker. I don't see why you don't seem to think that's a problem - it's similar to victim blaming.
This is also not something for others to comment on. – I strongly disagree. If you have a reasonable suspicion that you (or others) misunderstand somebody’s communication, the only ethical thing is to seek to clarify this, ideally before more confusion arises further down the line. Think about how you would communicate outside the Internet.
Sure, but then you ask "are you sure you are asking X question instead of Y question", instead of (as Bryan Kreuse wrote) "This question appears to be about Y instead of X".
The asker didn't cause the problem, the answerer did, but you are blaming the asker. […] – This seems to boil down to the conception that closure is a punishment/blame for the asker. While I understand where this conception comes from, it is not a basis we can operate on. Closing simply means that answers to the question are prevented. Most questions we closed are not asked with bad intentions. Often there is some degree of neglecting guidance involved, but at times there isn’t. (Mind that in this particular case, I won’t put zero blame on the asker as outlined in this answer.)
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1937 | How do you cite from a presentation or poster at a conference?
For example, a presentation whose PDF is listed at http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/exoclimes/2012/pdf/talks/Day02_Ferreira.pdf?
And what if the presentation doesn't have a publicly available URL? How would the citation style differ from that of a poster?
It's worth checking with the conference... for example, Society for Neuroscience poster abstracts have a citation style listed at the bottom of every page (scroll to bottom of page, under "support" heading).
I would try to avoid citing a presentation or poster in the first place. It won't make a very good reference for your readers, since not only may it be hard to find, but it won't have a complete description of what the previous authors did. Instead, I would contact the authors of the poster, and ask if they have a paper about their project, or at least a preprint, and then cite that.
The specifics of the citation would depend on the citation style you are using. I am most familiar with Chicago style. To cite the presentation you've linked to in Chicago style, I would put:
David Ferreira, et al., "Climate of an Earth-like Aquaplanet: the high-obliquity case and the tidally-locked case" (presentation, Exoclimes 2012, Aspen, CO, January 16–20, 2012), accessed June 8, 2012, http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/exoclimes/2012/pdf/talks/Day02_Ferreira.pdf.
Following these guidelines: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/08/
For APA style, you would only cite a presentation in a reference list if there is a tangible remnant ("recoverable data") of the presentation (e.g., slides posted on a website). The citation would look like:
Ferreira, D., Marshall, J., O'Gorman, P., Seager, S. & Lau, H. (January 2012). Climate of an Earth-Like Aquaplanet: the high-obliquity case and the tidally-locked case. Paper presented at Exoclimes 2012, Aspen, Co.
For more examples in APA citation, look here: http://citationonline.net/CitationHelp/csg04-manuscripts-apa.htm#53
It turns out that one commonly used weight update strategies for neural networks, RMSProp, was first introduced in a slide:
Given the number of citations, it should give you plenty of examples on how to cite a slide.
One common citation format:
T. Tieleman and G. Hinton. Lecture 6.5-rmsprop: Divide
the gradient by a running average of its recent magnitude.
COURSERA: Neural Networks for Machine Learning, 4,
2012.
To supplement Nate's comments, what I have usually seen is "personal communication". The poster isn't yet peer-reviewed and if it has yet to be written up as a manuscript and you can't cite it as a paper that is "in press", "personal communication" is a good substitute.
I find "personal communication" rather poor as a citation. How can one look that up?
Well if it is personal communication with Dave Clarke, it gives people an idea. At least it is better than trying to cite a url that may not exist in a year.
I don't even remember the conversation ...
@Dave Clarke, Touche
"Personal communication" is what you write when you've given up on citing anything that could actually help the reader, and just want to give credit to your friend. Which is about as much as citing a presentation accomplishes.
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1593 | What do publishers provide to authors in different disciplines?
Discussions about academic publication (for example, the recent Elsevier boycott, the actual cost of publication, open-access initiatives by universities and funding agencies, citation cartels, or post-publication review) are often muddled by the fact that publication practices and culture vary significantly from one discipline to the next. I would like to see some of these differences explicitly teased apart.
I'm particularly interested in exactly how publishers in different disciplines help move authors' ideas to formally published papers. Publishing in any discipline requires the combined effort of authors, publishers, editors, and reviewers, but the distribution of these efforts (and their associated costs) seems to vary from one discipline to the next.
What specific services do publishers provide to authors in your discipline? Please only one answer per discipline. (If necessary, define "discipline" as "set of researchers with the same publication practices".)
(At a deeper level, I am curious why so many people seem to associate the value, authority, and prestige of various publication venues with their publishers instead of their authors, editors, and readers. But that's not a good question for StackExchange; let's stick to the narrower factual question.)
I'll provide an answer for my own discipline.
So... nothing, then?
It doesn't directly answer your question, but you might be interested in Priem & Hemminger's "Decoupling the scholarly journal", http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2012.00019 for the types of services that could be shifted away from the publisher. (eg, why should peer reviewers have to deal with papers that haven't even been edited for spelling and grammar mistakes?)
A question asking for a big list. A proper answer would have a list inevitably as long as the number of disciplines or longer.
In theoretical computer science:
Papers are written, illustrated, and typeset (in LaTeX) by authors and refereed by unpaid volunteers. Some publishers give free journal subscriptions to editorial board members; a few pay a small stipend to the editors-in-chief of each journal; otherwise, editors are also unpaid volunteers.
Most journal publishers provide an online system to help editors track submissions and communicate with referees. Conference publishers do not; most program committees use free systems like EasyChair or HotCRP.
Some journal publishers employ copy editors, who produce the final camera-ready paper directly from author-provided LaTeX and image files. Specifically, copy editors correct (and invariably insert) spelling and grammar errors, and reformat the paper (especially the bibliography) to fit the publisher's standards. For other journals and most conference proceedings (Springer's LNCS series being a notable exception), copy editors simply do not exist; camera-ready papers are produced by authors using publisher-provided LaTeX packages, except possibly for page numbers.
Most publishers provide electronic versions of their papers to subscribers. Some publishers also provide extensive indexing and cross-referencing of their publication catalog. Online-only venues are still relatively rare, so for most venues, publishers print, bind, and ship paper copies.
My experience (logic programming, concurrency, software engineering) is very similar. Around 2000, one of the Springer journals claimed to retype the entire article despite being provided with the LaTeX source files. Fixing all the typesetting mistakes introduced during this process took me ages. In a different paper the copy editor decided to replace temporal logics by temporary logics...
Yeah, everybody seems to have a copy-editing horror story.
In mathematics, the publisher mainly:
organizes the peer-review (for example by providing an electronic platform for submission, communication with authors and referees, etc.);
provides copy-editing;
publishes in paper (organizes printing, sends the volumes, etc.) and electronic formats (manages a website, cross-links, a database, etc.).
I would add a remark: it seems that many of the cheapest journals do all these three things a lot better than most the expensive ones. For example the professionalism of copy-editing was far better for my papers handled by the London Mathematical Society or the American Mathematical Society than for the one I got published by Elsevier, Springer or World Scientific. My only copy-editing horror story happened at Springer (seven errors in formulas introduced after the proofs).
In psychology and neuroscience, in addition to all the services noted by JeffE for theoretical computer science, the publisher lays out the text and the figures on the page to fit the standard journal layout.
This usually requires manual intervention because papers in psychology and neuroscience are rarely composed with LaTeX. More often they are submitted as a Microsoft Word document or a PDF. The need for intervention by a person makes this process expensive, although it is sometimes outsourced to India to make it cheaper. In many cases, layout seems to be the process that preventes academics from publishing their journals online themselves without a publisher. Doing the layout seems too time-consuming for academics to manage on their own.
One can easily produce beautiful layouts with LaTeX, if provided with the right style file.
@DaveClarke: As others have pointed out elsewhere, producing a functional layout is "easy" only if (1) you've climbed the LaTeX learning curve already, and (2) someone else provides a polished class file. But producing beautiful layouts is NOT easy, in any platform. If they were easy to make, at least one CS or math journal would have one!
@JeffE: I agree. However, many of the difficulties of producing beautiful layouts are actually related to the specifics of traditional printing press: the need to save space (e.g. overuse of inline equations, mixing figures and text on the same page, and the use of two-column layouts), the need to justify the bottoms of pages on a two-page spread (e.g. controlling orphans/widows), etc. If our primary goal was to produce reasonably beautiful papers for reading on screen, with an appropriate tool chain it might within the reach of a much larger fraction of researchers.
Indeed. If only there was some sort of... markup format, that would like... be formatted for a screen, right? Oh well, I guess we're stuck then. :) On a side note, does anyone actually go find a print copy of a journal in the library any time other than when they couldn't find it online?
@JukkaSuomela Mostly agreed, except that figures should arguably be next to referencing text if possible for readability (according to e.g. Edward Tufte). But I learned typesetting papers from a CSist with typography books; doing better than stuff outsourced to India is certainly much easier.
@Namey If you suggest HTML, that's not really sufficient for typography. It might be fine for plain text and section titles, but reasonable output for figures and equations is much harder. In my field those are also typically formatted by hand (with line breaks) for a specific size, and that's hard to avoid to reach a certain quality.
I used to work at an academic publisher and so have some knowledge of what services are provided to all STEM fields. Social sciences should be similar, although I am less familiar with them.
Publishers provide:
An editorial management system ("EMS"). See this question. EMSes help the editors keep track of the status of each paper, as well as things such as the performance of reviewers, author blacklists, and so on. EMSes (at least the more powerful ones) are usually not free and charge by per paper handled.
Editorial office support (the "desk editor"). Desk editors are usually degree holders although not necessarily in a relevant discipline. They handle everything that might need to be done for the journal. Examples: answer author queries, liaise with Clarivate Analytics to get a journal indexed in Web of Science (see selection process and the list of deliverables), operate the EMS for editors / reviewers who can't figure out how to use it or are not interested in learning, negotiate special issues with conference organizers, choose articles to feature on the journal's website, maintaining a publishing licence from the government.
Acquisitions. The editorial board does a lot of this, but it's also possible a motivated desk editor or more senior editorial consultant will do some acquisition work too. Typically this involves emailing researchers and asking if they'd be interested to write on ____. They may discuss the topic with the editorial board before attempting to acquire for it. Usually editorial board approval is still required. The publisher may also attempt to invite people to join the editorial board.
Peer review. Some journals are set up so that the desk editor assigns a member of the board to handle the paper. Desk rejections can also be due to the desk editor, although it requires some experience on his or her part. Actually handling the peer review process also happens relatively often in my experience. Sometimes the editorial board is either not very active or that no member of the board is interested in handling the paper, whereupon someone has to do it and that someone is the desk editor (or editorial consultant). Alternatively there could be an editor assigned who doesn't do anything for two months (example), and the desk editor moves the paper forward by inviting reviewers.
Marketing. There're often publisher booths at major conference. One may also see insertions in these conferences. Other marketing activities include making flyers (visit your local library if you want to see what these are like), usage marketing, or things like "we just discovered gravitational waves, here're some of our papers on gravitational waves for free".
Copyediting & proofreading. Self-explanatory.
Typesetting. Most authors actually don't know LaTeX very well, if they use LaTeX at all. It is very rare that a manuscript does not require typesetting. Expressions such as "Ref (??)" or figures being placed 3 pages away from where they are referenced are quite common, as are poor quality figures or even hand-drawn ones which need to be fixed. TeX occasionally also does things like split the caption of a figure between two pages. If one has reviewed papers in one's field one should also be able to see firsthand what the typesetting does, since the paper that's sent for review has not been typeset yet.
Website maintenance. Self-explanatory.
Electronic distribution of published papers. This includes generating epub files, xml files, and DOIs.
Customer service. This could e.g. be librarians asking why they haven't received an issue of the journal they subscribed to (which is a reason to publish issues whenever ready and not hold papers in reserve). If print issues are necessary, they + their distribution are also handled by the publisher.
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2330 | What are some general good principles for creating a poster for a poster session?
Should one create slides similar to those that one uses in a good powerpoint presentation? Or are there things that a poster should include that a powerpoint should not include? (and vice versa)
I asked a related question on the stats site, How should I organize my poster presentation?. I've also added the poster tag to this entry to go with your questions.
I strongly recommend Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and everything written by Edward Tufte ever.
Related: Poster orientation: Landscape or portrait (horizontal or vertical)?
The title is your bait, the first paragraph is your hook. Make the bait big and tasty, make the first paragraph catchy.
A poster is primarily an advert for you. Secondarily, it's an advert for your research. Thirdly, it's an advert for your department. And it will succeed at those things best, if it gives the casual reader an easily accessible introduction into what's novel about your research.
Know the flow: it should be clear to anyone reading, what they should read first, then second, and so on.
Make it clear that it's your work. Get your name and affiliation in big letters, with a photo of you. Include your contact details, and make sure you can be reached on them during the conference.
Don't use powerpoint. A poster is graphic design, so use a graphic design package such as InDesign. If you don't have an eye for graphic design, design the poster with someone who does. Most departments have at least one natural talent. It's often the person who keeps winning the "best poster at conference" prize. It's orthogonal to (i.e. independent of) quality of research.
Use a big, clear typeface. Not everyone you need to reach has the healthy, clear vision that most students have.
Briefly state the problem, the method, the results, and the implications.
Pretty pictures are crucial. The words are there just to supplement the explanation of your work given in the pictures.
Test, test, test. Print it out life-size (tiled sheets & sticky tape are your friend), show it to a couple of colleagues (one hot on your area of research, and one hot on design), watch the order in which they read things, ask for feedback. Implement any advice on content that comes from the one who is hot in your area of work. Implement any advice on design that comes from the one hot on design.
Is number 4) field-specific? I have never seen a poster on a CS conference that had the photo of an author on it (and I think I would perceive it as extremely self-aggrandizing, in the way that I'd do my best to stay at a certain minimum distance to the person who is trying to present themselves like that).
More images, and less text. A poster is a highly visual, two dimensional medium, and you should use the real estate as such. Since poster viewers will be skimming it while you explain something to another viewer, it's best to have lots of pictures so they can get a gist of the ideas.
PPT slides are the poor man's way of making slides on the quick. But they're not ideal. Again, it's best to use the entire real estate as a continuous medium, rather than as a set of tiles (unless you can do some creative flowing with the set of tiles).
Having said all of that, readers still like some sense of progression through the poster, so it helps to have visual cues (arrows, arcs, etc) that help the reader understand the order in which to read things.
Also, more images and less text. And after you've done that, more images and less text.
"More images and less text" is good when you plan to stand near your poster for the entire session. But if you intend to also leave your poster alone for some time, you must include in it enough words to explain itself.
I broadly support most of the tips given in the previous answers, but I'd like to add some more general concerns which I feel that you should think of before you even draw the first line:
Take-home message: Think about this long and hard. If you had to describe what was exciting about your work in one single sentence, what would it be? What is the one thing you want people to remember about your work? About your presentation? Make sure you're 100% clear about this before you start writing your poster.
Clarity: Once you have your take-home message, make your entire poster subservient to it. Place it prominently in your title and make it crystal clear in your first paragraph, as EnergyNumbers and Ana suggest. Anything that's on your poster that does not contribute directly to the take-home message shouldn't be there.
Lead your readers/viewers: If your main argument requires a chain of explanations, display these prominently and mark them as such. Make the text flow follow the flow of your argument or reasoning. Place figures where they nail a point home, and nowhere else. Clip arts and colour can be cool, but don't use them if it will distract your readers from your take-home message or otherwise make their eyes wander.
Preparation: Try to think of the three questions people will ask you when you present your results, and try to answer them pre-emptively in the poster. Also try to be as prepared as possible to explain stuff while standing next to it, e.g. make sure it still has all the data you need to point to when making an argument.
This may all sound a bit reductionist, but remember that apart from the space restrictions, you're also dealing with time restrictions. People usually just browse posters while on their coffee break. Your job is to captivate them and make the most of that short break.
This might also all sound a bit too much like leading the viewer/reader like mindless cattle. Don't worry, though, they won't care. I've yet to hear anybody complain about an argument being presented too clearly. If anybody wants details beyond the take-home argument, you'll be standing there to give them, which is why you should be prepared and ready for questions.
Apart from the excellent advice you already received, here are some additional points:
Bulleted lists instead of flowing text helps make your points more concise. They are also easier to read.
Don't be too concise. Although text should be minimal and the poster is not a stand-alone thing (i.e. you're there to present it), take into account that people who are interested in your work will ask you to mail them a pdf of it after the conference. They should be able to reconstruct your work from it (after having heard you present it once).
Make the research question and conclusion stand out. Circle them, put them in bold, give them a different color, anything. A person looking at your poster should be able to read the title, the question and the answer at first glance.
Make the data as easy as possible to read: circle the important parts in the graphs, point arrows to them, write in words what they tell you.
Avoid putting tables, unless they are really small. Tables are difficult to read. Wherever possible, replace them with graphs.
Avoid trying to tell your audience everything. Choose one key point to present.
Aesthetics have a slightly different logic than usually. An ugly background color might work in your favor for example, as long as it makes your poster stand out. Symmetry, however, is highly valued. Also, I wouldn't go for more than 2 colors (apart from the background color and letters).
I've heard that sans serif fonts are considered better for posters, though I'm not sure why.
people who are interested in your work will ask you to mail them a pdf of it after the conference — So then why not preemptively have a stack of preprints next to the poster? Or even better(?), a stack of business cards with the preprint's URL (and the author's contact info)?
Those are good suggestions as well, and many people follow them. The last conference I've been to actually provided the URL - we all uploaded our posters, and the website of the conference now has a searchable database. I found that a great idea. I didn't need to lug printed stuff back from China, which I would invariably forget in my suitcase before the jet lag wears off :)
Regarding fonts, sans-serif fonts don't have the "spiky" edges and look more neutral/natural. THat being said, I recall reading studies where it was very clearly shown that human eye uses the serif details to distinguish tightly packed letters, so for running text (i.e. paragraphs) serif is the way to go. My rule of thumb; sans-serif headings, serif body text. Works for documents, slides and poster :)
"the poster is not a stand-alone thing" - if this were about presentation slides, I would agree. Posters, on the other hand, are pretty much a stand-alone thing IMO. A poster session at a conference is the only opportunity to talk to a poster author (and even then, not everyone gets their timeslot), but that is by far not the only time the poster is looked at during the conference (preferrably, posters should be left available for the whole duration of the conference), and also afterward (when the poster moves to its final resting place at a wall in one's home university or so.
Here you have a great article for the Ten Simple Rules series, by Thomas C. Erren and Philip E. Bourne:
Ten Simple Rules for a Good Poster Presentation
Take a look!
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18 | How do I select a graduate program?
I've applied to several graduate (MSc) programs overseas, and I've received several acceptance letters. Now I have the problem to select one of those programs. How should I do it? What should I look into each program?
No program offers funding, and some programs are elegible for a local scholarship.
I can fund some programs with my own money.
-1: Isn't the question way to broad? We even know nothing about your country, your discipline or your preferences. And even with that is a very subjective matter...
Possibly related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/124/79
May I ask why you chose an MSc instead of a PhD? What is your career goal? I don't mean to imply one is better than the other. If you are going to spend a lot of money and time, it should be well-spent.
In some places, like the UK, not much more time is needed to get a PhD beyond an MSc. In the U.S., PhD's in the sciences are usually completely funded. Per badp this seems not to be the case in Italy.
For either an MSc or PHD I suggest looking at the career paths of former graduates of that lab. This is something I wish someone had told me when I entered my lab. The charisma of the lab boss or excellence of the equipment are meaningless if, after 2-3 years, you can't move on as you hoped. Trace the career path of the last few graduates - from MSc all the way to how many wanted to and got faculty positions and how long it took them. In my experience what you do is much less important that who you know, which comes from getting into the right environment.
I want to get the PhD, but the MSc is just the first step into the PhD.
@Matias: My point was that I don't believe that a Master's must necessarily precede a PhD. Nor, do I even think it is common. I am reasonably sure that this is correct in the U.S. both for people born here and for those who come here to do graduate work. It is true though that many of those coming to the U.S. have other degrees.
@mac389 If you are asking clarifying questions, please post those as comments. There's no need to post not-an-answer as an answer and then edit. This messes with voting and generally isn't how the whole thing is supposed to work. Getting your clarifications and then posting a comprehensive, informed answer is a lot better. Thanks.
Even though this answer is posed as a question it is IMO actually a pretty good response. Taking the PhD track is an easy way to circumvent no funding, and for my program there is no commitment to continue with the PhD (although I don't know to what extent this generalizes to other programs).
@mac389 hm... I dunno how it works there, but at least in Italy you can't study for a doctorate without getting a master first.
@mac389 I have been looking at CVs in my field of interest and practically all of them have Masters preceding the PhD.
@badp, Matias: See my edited answer. I think the most important question becomes then where do the students of any lab you are considering go afterwards?
As you are presumably pursuing this degree so you can eventually work in industry, I would consider the following:
Find out which programs are more highly regarded in industry.
Consider the success rates of each university in helping their graduates find employment; this can vary significantly from institution to institution.
Consider the extra-curricular aspects; what does each program's city have to offer? Programs with ties to local industry may help you obtain some useful internship experience.
Depending on which country you are talking about, there may be league tables for the universities in that country. While the total ranking can be misleading, they provide useful information such as staff to student ratios -- the higher the ratio, the more opportunity you will have to ask questions.
I would also look at the reputation of the universities in the specific field that you want to do your MSc in, e.g. how many people work in that area and are they well-known (involved in many conferences/journals and similar).
In the end it might boil down to money though, so you should probably look at what you can afford first (not only in terms of tuition, but also living expenses in that area).
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14534 | Is it better to apply to doctoral program in the fall semester or spring semester?
I plan to apply for USA universities. Is there any difference between the number of PhD opportunities in spring and fall semesters? I mean in which semester do I have a better chance to be approved?
In my country application for spring semester is not so usual. What about USA?
Most universities offer Doctoral admissions exclusively in fall semester (once a year). Deadlines for applications are typically in December. For more detailed information, you should check the particular department's webpage.
All institutions I know of in the US have deadlines for submitting applications to the doctoral program. The earliest ones I remember were in December, and the later ones were in early spring.
Your chances of being accepted are zero if you submit after the deadline, and if you submitted early it would be at best annoying. So long story short just follow the rules of the institution to which you are applying.
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16852 | How to phrase the title in a presentation at an academic interview?
When delivering a presentation at an academic interview, what are some keywords which should be included in the title of the presentation? Should the title be in the first person? What are some good examples?
The position I am considering is assistant professor / lecturer
I imagine some choices to be:
The interview presentation for JACK JAY
The presentation for lecturer at Uni Awesome by JACK JAY
JACK JAY'S presentation as candidate lecturer at Uni Awesome
Can you provide us with: i) The position you're applying, and ii) A few samples for us to comment on? Usually, faculty candidates in my institute titled their presentation with their highlighted project or research. Occasionally, a couple may have some catchy titles, but still they never deviated too far away from the key project.
@Penguin_Knight, does this improve the question?
I simply put the title of the talk, like I would title any other talk. I've never mentioned it as "a presentation by" or "an interview for" in my slides.
You don't need to include any of the proposed titles in your presentation. They all come across as stilted and affected, and are entirely unnecessary.
Instead, if this is a public presentation, treat it as you would any other such presentation: indicate the title of your talk as you normally would have it, and so on.
If this is the "private" presentation to the faculty, then you should give it a title representing your current and future research interests. You don't need to say "what" the presentation is for—again, the location of the talk should be sufficient.
Just throw it out here. Perhaps others can upload their suggested topic slide as well? That would be fun.
I don't like to appear to be overly kissing-up, so I'll opt for toning down the university. My talk would have been broadcasted and posted for a while at the institute so the audience should know why they are here. So I'll just focus on up-playing my topic and who I am.
It'd be prudent to clarify with the hiring committee chair on the format and topics to be covered. But beyond that, just be at ease with the format stuff; focus on the contents. Be very, very certain that you cover just enough background to show you can think in breadth and depth, explain what your research questions are, and present your methods and results in alignment with your questions, and state briefly the implication. For job talk, leave a few minutes to elaborate how your work can grow into your career path, and highlight potential synergistic collaboration with some hot areas that your target institute is good at (e.g. "I'll also love to collaborate with the specialists at your Marine Dietary Assessment Center to cast a more critical look at the diet-obesity association.") You'll need to read their website/reports up on that. Find some friends, colleagues, and mentors to sit in your practice sessions.
Best of luck!
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57397 | Should I translate experimental materials for my thesis?
For my Ph.D. thesis, I developed a new usability method which focuses on a survey. The main contribution is a description for practitioners how to conduct such a survey. For this, I could not develop a standard questionnaire, but gave guidelines on how to construct one.
I am validating the method by conducting such a survey myself. My target population consists of German-speaking people (I’m measuring the usability of a software available only with a German interface), so my questionnaire is in German.
I want to add the questionnaire in the appendix. But my thesis is written in English. Now, my question is: Should I provide the questionnaire in English or in German?
If I provide it in German, some readers won’t be able to understand it, and it won’t be useful as an example if some of them want to apply the method themselves. Note that my reviewers speak German, so this won’t be a problem for them.
If I provide it in English, it won’t be a documentation of what I actually used in the experiment. Note that in psychometry, a translated questionnaire is not considered equivalent to the original and when a standard questionnaire is developed, any translation is required to be validated again.
What is the proper thing to do here? Use the original experiment material, even if it is of no use to many readers, or create an approximation which has not really been validated and whose usefulness is thus diminished as well?
Returning back to my old question, now that I am close to finishing - there is about 15 pages per questionnaire, with 4 questionnaires, so I already have a 60 pages in this appendix. I also have another appendix with 50 pages. If I double the questionnaire-containing appendix, I will have 170 pages worth of appendices at a 100-115 pages thesis, which seems excessive.
Why not include both?
I don't see why the size should stop you from including both versions. However long the texts are, they are very relevant to your work.
Providing both the original and the translation would satisfy everyone.
This could easily be done with a simple table, depending on the length of the questions. It's important that it be both, too - although it's only once and clearly anecdotal, I've seen a paper rejected because the reader could not understand a 'foreign' language in the paper. Their reasoning was that if you want to publish a paper in an English publication, a reader who only speaks English should be able to understand it. If you're publishing for an international group, perhaps it would be more accepted, although you still can't expect people to speak two specific languages.
Both. Depending on how you structure your thesis, you may include one of them in an appendix.
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16671 | Difference between criterion validity and reliability equivalence
In the book Doing research in the real world by David E. Gray, there is a section on experiment design. When discussing validity and reliability, the author defines “criterion validity” as
This is where we compare how people have answered a new measure of a concept, with existing, widely accepted measures of a concept.
and a little later, in the “Reliability” part, there is a subheading “Equivalence”, which says
Another way of testing the reliability of an instrument is by comparing the
responses of a set of subjects with responses made by the same set of subjects on another instrument (preferably on the same day).
So if I got this right, we are both times measuring if there is a difference between the answer on our new instrument and another, existing instrument.
Is there a practical difference between the two concepts, or only a philosophical one? And whether practical or philosophical, what is the actual difference?
Update The author discusses validity and reliability in general, then lists 7 different aspects of validity and 5 different aspects of reliability. "Criterion validity" and "reliability equivalence" are only one type of each, respectively. Please consider in your answer that this question is not about validity vs. reliability in general, but only about these two specific aspects.
This question appears to be off-topic because it is about experiment design and not academia.
The list of topics doesn't say that research methodology is off-topic, and doing proper research is part of being in academia. Is there an existing policy against "how is research done" questions, and where can I read about it? I don't personally see a good argument why being a good university teacher should be on topic but being a good university researcher should be off topic.
CV is the right place, because validity and reliability play a big role in measurement and research design, thus deserve focus in statistics and epidemiology (what CV focuses on.)
Cross validated is absolutely not the right place. Statistical validity is a tiny part of validity. This is about theory of science, not about statistics.
Anyhow, I often feel we spend too much time putting questions into silo. Answer submitted.
@dgraziotin not that I know of, otherwise I would have suggested it :)
Let's say it's criterion-valid to post the question here. But I bet the answers we got here and in CV will be reliable.
@rumtscho sorry to have been terse. I am not sure if we have discussed if "how is research done" type questions are on topic. My feeling is that experiment design is much broader than experiment design for academics. But I only have one vote. This is probably worth a meta discussion.
To anybody interested, I posted a question on meta, http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/779/are-questions-on-the-theory-of-academic-research-on-topic
@StrongBad the fact that experiments are also used outside of science shouldn't be a reason to not accept the question here. Alcohol is used outside of human consumption, as a biofuel for example, and corn starch is used to make plastics. On Cooking.SE, we still answer questions about alcohol and corn starch, unless they happen to be obviously focused on the non-cooking application only.
I disagree that CV is the wrong place, but I +1'd your point that statistical validity isn't the whole story anyway. Thing is, same's true of CV answers. Lots of good scientists over there with a strong sense of validity in a larger sense and plenty of enthusiasm for extending it beyond statistical issues alone (e.g., Is Facebook coming to an end?). That being said, no objection from me to asking here; +1!
@NickStauner the validity of a research tool is not a statistical topic, it is a topic from scientific theory. We happen to use statistic methods as a convenient way to measure it. Many statisticians will know quite a bit about it, because statistics is applied on data coming from experiments, and therefore statisticians learn about good experiments. It is sad that many grad students are not taught scientific theory and research methodology separately and only have some exposure during other courses, for example statistics - but it is a separate research field.
No disagreement if you're saying there are meaningful differences (nor with the deplorability of grad education on basic theory and methodology, or your comment in general), but as a statistician might say, validity and statistics are only partially independent :) I only really disagree that CV is a bad place to ask! I acknowledge that meta-SO discourages cross-posting, but I've managed to do it successfully myself following some advice on how to pull it off justifiably. Worth considering no?
@NickStauner and anybody else bothered by my insistence that this one question is for here, please see my post at http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/a/784/103. I made a mistake in hastily wording that comment in such a provocative way, but did not mean to imply that Crossvalidating is in general a bad place for asking on validity and reliability.
Criterion validity concerns with measuring the right thing. For instance, GPA is likely to have criterion validity to measure a student's academic understanding. While the change in weight in the last semester has much less criterion validity to measure the same trait. Basically, if the measurement you use and the trait you want to measure has a high correlation, then there is likely criterion validity.
Reliability concerns mostly with measuring the thing right. For instance, if GPA can measure a student's academic understanding, and percent attendance can also measure a student's academic understanding, then GPA and percent attendance should correlate, aka, they are reliable. Before subjected to reliability assessment, the tests are usually checked if they are criterion-valid. However, it's possible to have two tests that are highly correlated (reliable) but invalid. Such as using dietary fat intake and serum lipid to predict a college graduate's earning potential.
Notice that there a few different types of reliabilities, the one you cited is more about alternate forms reliability, there are also test-retest reliability and inter-rater reliability, etc.
Practically, they are not interchangeable. Validity happens between the true trait (or behavior) and the measurements. Reliability happens between two measurements (or modes/instances of measurement.)
See also accuracy and precision.
Slightly off-topic as the terms you ask for are more specific, but:
Unfortunately, there is some ambiguity as to what exactly is meant by different terms in this quality control/validation/method context.
E.g.
in machine learning the "validation set" is often used to optimize parameters - as opposed to proving whether or not the model "does its job" (a shortened version of one definition of validity). The latter is measured with the "test set" (again, in my opinion, a rather ambiguous name).
The Handbook of validation in analytical chemistry spends several pages to compare and discuss differences between several definitions given in literature and norms specific to the field of analytical chemistry. The bottom line of these definitions is that in analytical chemistry, validity is not only about measuring the right thing (as @Penguin_Knight nicely explained), but also about measuring the right thing right.
I'd therefore recommend that you state what you are speaking about rather than relying on these terms.
Validity is comparing the new results with the existing literature, without doing extra experiments.
Reliability is comparing the new results with some extra experiments that you carry on with some other settings/devices.
I agree with @StrongBad that this question is off-topic, but there is no SE site on research in general and I think this question is quite interesting.
I don't know where this view comes from, but it is certainly not the one the book author had in mind. In another subchapter, he insists that external validity has to be shown through comparison with a series of new studies. As for the off-topic suggestion, please share your view on Meta, http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/779/are-questions-on-the-theory-of-academic-research-on-topic.
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53 | Should I take courses that are not directly part of my research topic?
I've received conflicting advice as to whether I should choose my coursework based on my research topic or not. The main pro usually is that I'll quickly be able to get up to speed on my research. The con is usually that there are so many other courses that I could take, in which I could learn topics I may not ever have a chance to formally learn, and given the constant need to hunt for funding, I may never have a chance to put aside and study in-depth again. Any definitive answers to this topic?
I don't think a "definitive" answer is possible, but the following is based on personal experience and observation of many other students.
If your advisor is okay with it, take as many courses as you can in things that interest you and are in the realm of your discipline. As an applied math grad student, one of the best things I did was to take a graduate course in optimization from the CS department, even though I thought it had nothing to do with my thesis (in numerical discretization of PDEs). It ended up being crucial and allowing me to publish at least one paper that I never would have written if I hadn't taken that course. I also took courses in things like astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and turbulence; I don't use those things much but I can converse with scientists in those fields, which is often useful.
Of course, I didn't take, say, philosophy or Italian or business management courses -- stick to courses related to your field. And make sure that whoever is paying you is okay with it.
As with David Ketcheson, I don't think a definitive answer is possible, but here are my thoughts:
It depends on the attitude of your program. Are they trying to ramrod you through your coursework as swiftly as possible? Do they support "dabbling" in other aspects of your graduate career - side projects, practicums, etc.? The answer will likely change wildly depending on those answers.
How set is your "research topic"? I've bounced around several in my time - I think picking up skills that might be useful trumps "Is it directly relevant to Thesis Aim #1". After all, the moment you get out of your PhD program, your research agenda changes again. If all you have is a hammer, and what you'd really like to do is research screws, you're in trouble. If on the other hand, you took 'Seminar in Advanced Screwdriver Theory'...
When it comes down to it, do you need to "take" the course, or do you just want to learn the material? I've sat in on several classes (my university doesn't have a formal auditing system) because I wanted to hear what they had to say. That's a nice, low risk way of expanding one's horizons.
I've found if nothing else it widens your contacts in the university, gives you a better feel for "Surely someone in Department X knows how to deal with that...", etc.
If you are interested in a teaching job, my answer is yes, definitely. You may be asked to teach some courses that are not in your field, or even before it happens, the search committee may want someone who can teach a wide range of courses.
Yes!
How do you know in advance what's going to be useful later? The wider a net you cast, the more tools you have at your disposal.
I think this does depend a lot on the kind of person you are/ the way of job you like to have.
I studied IT, but I visited a broad variety of courses. Even history, chinese for beginners, and some other stuff which you might think is not related to my field of work. I don't regret it!
But as a Software Engineer it's actually important to understand a lot of different fields. As you can be on projects that differ a lof from each other.
Also you propably can widen your personal network of contacts, if you go to class with students that you didn't know before!
I would stick to the topics you are interrested in, instead of ending up as an unhappy person after your studies.
In graduate school, you have to maintain a higher GPA than an undergrad. In some schools I've been to, a C lands you on probation, and a second C gets you dismissed. In my view, this means that courses too far away from your core research will be excessively risky. I dislike this, as it means that I can't afford to learn things that stretch my boundaries.
As @EpiGrad, @JeffE, and @Swiss Coder said, you should learn about subjects that are outside the direct focus of your research. This provides you with knowledge and tools you might otherwise never obtain. I would add though, that it is rarely wise to take a course in something you have no interest in simply for the sake of "knowledge". However, if you are truly interested in something, don't scrap the possibility of taking the course just because it is not directly part of your research topic. Higher education is intended to help us become well-rounded humans,not force us into the narrow trench of knowing only about a specific field.
Also consider, of course, whether you really need to take a course on this, or if there are other ways to learn what you want to know. Auditing a course is a good option, especially if you don't need to receive credit for it. There are also numerous online options for learning,on your own time and without tuition costs. For myself, though, online learning without the support of a professor and peers rarely works well. I need the motivation of knowing that someone is tracking my progress.
So definitely explore subjects outside "your" area of expertise, and keep in mind that a formal course may not be the only or best option.
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508 | Is a self-taught person allowed to compete with other in a prize like Nobel Prize, Field Medal, etc?
If a person studies and/or does experiments at his/her own home or laboratory because of some reasons, is he/she still allowed to compete with others to get a prize like Nobel Prize, Field Medal, etc?
More precisely, from the beginning he/she never gets educations from formal institutions (schools, colleges, universities).
Yes, there are no formal criteria in this direction. The results, their significance, and wide acceptance count. But I do not thik this question belongs here.
@abatkai: So do I have to delete this question?
@DamienWalters: no need, let the community and moderators decide.
@DamienWalters: It was only my opinion, not the general opinion. Let us wait.
Note: This question is not related to me but for my friend who dreams of getting such prizes. :D
@CharlesMorisset: The link is related to this question. My question might be a duplicate of it.
@DamienWalters Dreaming of getting such prizes may be not the right approach (and most likely lead to frustration), see http://xkcd.com/896/ containing But you don't become to be great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it hard so that you become great in the process.
The question is in my opinion meaningless. These prices are not awarded on a competitive basis. Candidates are nominated by others and are selected by a committee. See e.g., here. Anybody can be nominated.
Allowed - yes. Have any reasonable chance to compete - no.
(But to learn university-level things, given the determination - yes.)
There are two separate issues:
you won't learn stuff abut the current research lines and you won't be able to attract others to your results,
in academia things like degrees and university/advisor name do matter.
First, you can learn a lot of stuff by yourself. However, it is hard to get to research-level. Moreover, now most research requires a lot of collaboration. A century ago it may be still possible to invent something in one's private workshop (but still a lot of knowledge and infusion was required). Now it is not true anymore. Also, you need to know the tools and which problems are open, solved or seems to be dead-end. Moreover, you may end up solving problems which are difficult but not of the interest of other academicians.
See also from Gerard't Hooft, How to become a good theoretical physicist:
It so often happens that I receive mail - well-intended but totally useless - by amateur physicists who believe to have solved the world. They believe this, only because they understand totally nothing about the real way problems are solved in Modern Physics. If you really want to contribute to our theoretical understanding of physical laws - and it is an exciting experience if you succeed! - there are many things you need to know. First of all, be serious about it. All necessary science courses are taught at Universities, so, naturally, the first thing you should do is have yourself admitted at a University and absorb everything you can. But what if you are still young, at School, and before being admitted at a University, you have to endure the childish anecdotes that they call science there? What if you are older, and you are not at all looking forward to join those noisy crowds of young students ?
Also: almost all Nobel prize winners had advisors, which were also well-know and are from first league universities.
Second, the academia is less meritocratic than it seems to be. While certain skills and knowledge are essential, they are not the only factor. It does matter if you have a certain degree*), from which university you are and who is/was you advisor. Many contacts are within a clique, were you need to have a recommendation by people they know.
*) In science no matter how smart you are, you won't have chance without a certain degree, while in programming your skills and experience are more important than if you have a PhD degree or not even a BSc.
Nevertheless, finding enough skill and determination to do experiments in one's own home may be a good predictor of later success in science or engineering.
But internet can help him/her to know subjects in which most people are interested, to make a lot of collaboration with others, etc.
@DamienWalters In principle, yes. In practice - it is very hard. (Even being in 'mainstream' science I tried many times to get into collaboration with people I don't know in person and I never succeeded; at best there was a longer and interesting conversation that was never promoted to sth like a collaboration.) Also: there is a reason why Wikipedia did not come not from the academia. And why e.g. theoreticalphysics.SE does not flourish.
Of course, needless to say, internet makes it a lot easier to learn specialistic stuff (even if one has no library nearby, one can get almost any book), makes it easier to contact with like-minded or experts (via SE/usenet or a private correspondence), see what happens on the frontier (TED.com, blogs, ...), follow activities of scientists (via their homepages) and even be in touch with recent papers (arXiv.org, ...)
"in academia the world is way less meritocratic than it sounds" this should absolutely not be understated.
Modern science is a social institution, not just an abstract set of standards for discovering and evaluating knowledge. While in principle the abstract standards leave the door open for contributions to come from anywhere and anyone—and this is a good thing—the social organization of science means that such Robinson Crusoe fantasies are almost never realized in practice. They persist partly because of the mythos that grows up around individual scientific geniuses. A consequence, as the 't Hooft quote shows, is that scientists in many fields have drawers full of correspondence from cranks.
One part about "in academia the world is way less meritocratic than it sounds" is that, contrary to what we (pretend to) believe, when we judge one another (e.g. for hiring purposes, or prices), we do not measure one's strength, but one's successes, which rely a lot on chance, good connections and other factors (although one do needs some strength and background to seize the opportunities given to oneself).
@BenoîtKloeckner You are right, but it goes beyond. As an undergraduate student I already had a few publications but I got rejected from every summer research opportunity I had applied to. Now I see that a lot of funding is with restriction (e.g. in fact only for people from US, but it is not officially stated) and subjective opinions and contacts play a crucial role (i.e. a recommendation from well-known prof. counts higher than an actual proof of one's skills; which IMHO is deeply unfair for people not from the most prestigious universities).
The important factor here is that these prizes are awarded for making a significant contribution to knowledge. This cannot generally be assessed at the point at which you had the idea, and it is for this reason that prizes are usually awarded for contributions which are decades old.
For example, John Forbes Nash, Jr. was awarded a Nobel prize in 1994 for work done as a graduate student in the late 1940s.
It's only after many years of further research, by the originating researcher and the community as a whole, that the importance of an individual idea can be understood in that context.
A corollary of this is that only research which is published, presented at conferences and generally publicised in the research community is likely to attract sufficient attention and further development to be considered for such a prize.
It's certainly possible, if you're a genius on the order of Srinivasa Ramanujan and can invent an entirely new, provable/repeatable, and productive field from first principles.
Likely for a mere mortal? You've probably got better odds of winning the Lottery, being struck by lightning, or fill-in-your-least-likely-scenario-here. Not because there's any prejudice against autodidacts, but because the odds of someone selftaught actually finding something new -- and being correct about it -- are just not that great.
Go for it. Just don't expect recognition of that kind until you have produced work with is widely agreed to be truly revolutionary.
(Except, as noted, for the peace prize. Which is sometimes given based on hope rather than achievement. Even then, you'll probably have to be someone who has worldwide recognition.)
A person is nominated for a Nobel Prize by someone familiar with his work, and the Nobel Prize committee judges it for its originality, depth, and service to mankind.
It's barely possible for someone to make a highly original contribution to a field outside of the usual academic circles. In the unlikely event that this occurs, the Nobel Prize committee will consider it on its own merits.
For instance, the Nobel Prize was awarded to a new finance concept called microlending, developed by a banker, not a professor. Admittedly, it was the Nobel Peace prize, but it could have been awarded as the Economics prize.
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101 | How do you judge the quality of a journal?
A colleague and I recently submitted a paper to a journal with an impressive-sounding name, the "International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Computational Research". According to their website,
IJAICR is a referred [sic] journal in the field of computer science, artificial intelligence and soft computing methods.
It was accepted two days after we submitted it. That's too fast. We were suspicious. Although the journal said that all papers are peer-reviewed, we could not see how that was done in two days. Plus, we received no comments from the reviewers. Also, the submission guidelines didn't ask for a "blind" copy (without our names or any references to who we were).
But wait, there's more.
The acceptance letter asked us to send them US$300 to publish it. We did not. We've withdrawn our submission and will submit a new version of the paper to a more reputable journal in the coming months.
How might we make a better choice of respectable journals before we submit next time?
I think this question is really about how to recognize "vanity press". Judging quality among respectable journals is a completely different question.
The link you have provided in your question does not work.
Being asked to pay for publication is not the best indicator of a bad journal, there are just as many open-source journals that are questionable in their conduct and quality. The overall quality of the articles and the 'street cred' of people that publish in that journal should be the measure of its credibility. So you should probably at least dig a little bit deeper before coming to this conclusion (although in this case your assumption is likely to be correct).
The link in the question now points to a website that sells sex toys in India
Thanks @robertspierre. I've removed the link.
I used to get periodic spam of this sort. Every month or so they would announce the launch of a new journal whose name consisted of "International Journal" (IJ) and four other letters. They were apparently in diverse fields of science, but it was obvious from typos and other details that the same scammers in India were behind all of them.
The way I usually choose journals is by looking at where people I trust/follow publish, and where previous work was published. It is usually not too hard to compare the quality your work to the quality of the work you are citing, and chose a target based on that. Unless your field is highly mutli-disciplinary, you will see the same journals/conferences popping up again and again in your references; submit to one of those.
Before submitting, however, it is always important to look at a few articles from previous issues. This will give you a second gauge of quality for the journal and also let you pick up on any formatting and presentations quirks that might be present in the publication.
Shorter version: Submit papers to the journals you cite most often. Don't submit papers to journals you never cite.
@fredsbend Doesn't that just push the question back to "which papers should you cite?" — No, of course not! Whether or not to cite a paper has absolutely nothing to do with where that paper is published. — what do they do? — They read a lot of papers and chase a lot of references (both forward and backward).
You may want to check that the publisher is not on Beall's List of Predatory, Open-Access Publishers.
Surprisingly, the publisher in question is not. I've found Beall's list to be fairly comprehensive, but the vanity press industry seems to be booming.
Caveat: that list is just one guy's opinion. But it resonates with my own experience.
Update: As of late January 2017, Beall's list has been taken down.
A very good and useful link!
Beall's list does more good than bad, but it is based on subjective intuition, not data or transparent criteria. It lists Frontiers, and I know of many reputable academic editors and reviewers who provide high-quality reviews for their journals. The controversy [http://www.nature.com/news/backlash-after-frontiers-journals-added-to-list-of-questionable-publishers-1.18639]. A better procedure: check if it's on Beal's list, if listed, check if it is on the open access whitelist [http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-website-gets-tough-1.15674]. If on both further investigation may be needed.
The best way is by word-of-mouth: ask around the department, ask your PhD advisor, ask people you've worked with.
If it is a specialist journal, and you are a specialist, then the next best way is to look at the previously published issues of the journal and see what kinds of articles they accept.
Failing that, the Australian Government's Research Council puts out a ranking of journals and conferences every now and then. It is not perfect, but should give a rough idea of where a journal places in the eyes of the bureaucrats :-). Note that "new" journals (journals that have not been active for more than X years) are not ranked, so omission from the list does not necessarily mean that the journal itself is not worthwhile.
Notice that it has been announced that the Australian ranking will ne replaced by a score indicating "journal quality profile"
you can also recur to journal's impact factor from ISI Web of Science
"How do you judge the quality of a journal?"
One answer is already known to you: Submit a paper to it and see how it responds. I once submitted a few papers to an online journal (no print equivalent) and the referee reports that I got clearly showed that they read and understood the paper and that they knew the subject well. They even suggested ways how the paper could be improved. The quality of the referees reflect the quality of the journal.
IMHO, this is the best answer here, even though you don't really have time to go through the process of testing every journal you might be interested of. However, if the peer-review process is good, then the journal is good. End of story.
I disagree with @Speldosa. All you know on the basis of one submission is that the journal has at least one editor who picked good referees for at least one paper. Another half of editors could be accepting junk for all you know. Multiple submissions increase the odds that your conclusion is correct, but is not this an extremely expensive experiment to undertake, given that you are paying with your research output? Especially when you have a lot of observational data already available: other papers published in the journal.
@LVK That's a fair point.
Somehow, @LVK's reasoning (though correct), reminds me of the old black sheep joke about generalizing from a small amount of data. :)
PS - The only sad part of the story is - LVK doesn't seem to a mathematician from his/her profile. :P
This is like if you want to find out if that is a poison, test it out!
For some hard data I like eigenfactor, because I think there methodology makes a lot of sense. The default settings are a bit odd, you want the AI score not EF score. I also like the "eigenfactor category" under advanced search better than the "ISI category" that you can get on the main page. Certainly it's better to have a more in-depth understanding, but also sometimes you just want a quick ballpark guesstimate of how good the journal is, and eigenfactor does that.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned this yet, so I'm adding it as a separate answer:
Read some articles from the journal (in your subfield), and see how they feel like
When you look at a journal and check that the 5 or 6 latest articles in your domain are of the meh type, you probably don't want to publish there. If they make you feel “oh, I never quite thought of that, it's clever… I see how I may use it”, go for it!
I think that "quality" is a bit overrated, and that you should think most deeply about "fit" (i.e., how well your content matches the interests of a journal's reviewers and readership). With that said, when I'm looking for the best journal to put an article, I have three methods:
Look at my cites for similar work to my manuscript, then look at where they published (similar to Artem's comment). If your paper isn't citing related work, well... it probably has a pretty terrible lit review. If you're citing sources out of your league for that paper (i.e., Science, Nature), find the publication list for that lab to find their fallback journals.
Ask greybeards I collaborate with where they would publish such a paper. Good senior academics have a huge amount of expertise about the social networks and publishing networks in their fields.
Use journal rankings. I find Scimago to be the most convenient. That also charts things like cites/paper over time, so you can see if a newer journal is growing or stagnant. The Austrialian Research Counsel (mentioned by Willy Wong) is probably my #2 resource. Thompson's ISI stuff is also useful, but I've found it sometimes has glaring omissions and has been less convenient to me (annoying to log in). Conferences are harder to rank using indices. Google and Microsoft have ranking systems that catch those pretty well, at least for comparing citations within a topic. However, given the choice, I'd still go with option #1 or #2. I mainly use this approach for interdisciplinary research that doesn't have an obvious, natural target journal.
First of all, I look at the publisher. If you don' find a lot of references to the publisher on the web, it is suspicious.
Then, I look at the editor in chief, and at the board of editors. If you don't find many big names here, this is again very suspicious.
Finally, google the journal name and look who is publishing in the journal. Most of the time it becomes clear if the journal is serious or not.
Highly specialized journals may not get mentioned a great deal on the open web, and googling is a very crude and time-consuming way to answer this question. This has the same issue as justin's answer in that predatory publishers lie. You're better off working from good authors (the ones you read and cite) to discover unknown journals than starting from an unknown journal and trying to then assess the quality of their authors.
"How do you judge the quality of a journal?"
Look at the editorial / advisory board. They've gotta be from the top schools or they've gotta be top researchers.
I agree. However, please note that some journals include well-regarded people on their editorial boards without their permission. See, for example, http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~razborov/
Just in case the contents of the website I linked to earlier changes, let me note that it involves the inclusion of Alexander Razborov's name on the editorial board of the South Asian Journal of Mathematics without his knowledge or permission.
You can test them yourself. This procedure will speed up by your experience. There are signs during submission and during review which shows which journal is really good and which is not. But there is another way too: look at the objective information below. It is possible to judge a journal based on the COLLECTIVE information you obtain from these factors:
Their editorial. You don't know them? Ok pass to the next ones.
Their publishing country (India? no thanks unless the paper is not good or the journal is an exception).
Their publisher (yes good publishers usually select good journals, although some weak journals with a lot of money can again hire a good publisher)
The time passes since you submit and they respond
The above factor SHOULD be considered along with the amount of manuscript they receive. Good journals receive thousands of manuscript a year, but still do not waste authors' time by keeping them waiting for too long before a rejection decision. Bad journals receive sporadic manuscripts and keep the authors wait for months until they tell the author their decision. It is a pain when you see some of them have "lost" you paper, or some of them reject your paper with a couple of lines of comment, after 6 months. Good journals do the same in less than 24 hours.
Indexing databases. Look where the journal is indexed in. ISI Web of Science? Medline? or what? The scam journals usually are not indexed in any accredited databases (not Google Scholar or Scopus). If a journal is accepted to be indexed in ISI or to a lesser degree, Medline, it is unlikely to be able to have low quality. Otherwise, ISI would have booted them out.
There are other factors too. But these will give you 90% insight already.
The indexing. I would've thought that would be the top answer actually.
Ask your institution's scientific librarian.
It's part of their job to know about journal reputation and quality.
Look at the journals responsible for the references you cite in your own manuscript. Upside, these are the journals publishing relevant and credible work in your area. Downside, there are plenty perfectly good journals that are newer, or less specialized, and so might be missed.
BTW, a very fast review time with no reviews is suspicious. But charging an article processing charge (APC) is not, in itself, a reason for worry. That said, do look to see that you are getting the full open access you pay for if there is an APC (i.e. no transfer of copyright to the publisher and the article is released under a CC-BY license). You can search for copyright policies by journal or publisher here: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
The Journal Ranking site (www.journal-ranking.com) aims to rank many (11K) journals, according to their measure of impact (mainly number of citation, but weighted according to the ranking of the citing journal), number of articles, etc. It also let you sort by field.
But again, this is only their point of view, and their way of measuring quality.
(and it only ranks journals listed in the ISI's SCI)
The latest “breaking news” from that site is dated 20 May 2008 ;-)
yet, their data is updated to 2010.. Not that bad.
Generally, the scientific specialists' communities have traditionally identified journals having high editorial standards. That is the key: who are the editors and what are the standards. Are the breakthrough discoveries sent to that journal? From that, reputations are built and filtered down to preference and use by the community.
You can search for conferences/journals on Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en
Search by the full name (not the abbreviation), and you'll see its h5-index, which is the h-index in the last 5 years. Although it is hard to judge a conference using its h-index, you can at least compare them to one another.
There is also a list on the left from which you can get the conferences/journals with highest h5-index.
The Impact Factor is usually a good independent means of establishing a journal's quality. Essentially it is the average number of citations of its articles. The higher, the better. The logic is that good quality articles are cited more, so a journal that only lets in better quality articles will have a higher impact factor than one which lets in practically anything.
The quality of the journal you submit to will reflect on the quality of your paper, so you should try to submit to the better ranked journals within your field. You should be able to readily establish a short-list of suitable journals just by listing the journals of the papers you cite.
There are a few things to be aware of when comparing the impact factors of journals:
Impact factors also reflect the size of a field, so you cannot use it to compare the quality of journals from two separate and unrelated fields. A group of papers in a large popular field are naturally going to get cited more than those from a very small field.
Almost all journals have impact factors, unless they have been excluded as a result of being in some way nefarious (such as predatory journals), or if they are newly established and therefore haven't been around long enough to get one.
I could not find an impact factor for the journal you mentioned, even though it seems to have been around for at least 5 years. You are right to be cautious of it. I would not recommend submitting to a journal which does not have an impact factor, even if the reason for this turns out to be quite innocent.
To make a better choice for submitting I would google and use Wikidata.
Googling might lead you to lists like Jeffrey Beall's https://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/ and provide you with context about the journal, such as editorial board, blog posts, etc.
Wikidata will provide you with pointers to indexing services and journal rankings. Consider Journal of Machine Learning Research at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1660383 . It indicates a BFI level of 2 which is the high category of the Danish journal ranking system. It shows that Scopus is indexing the journal. (Strangely the Australian ERA link does not seem to work). I do not find "International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Computational Research" in Wikidata, which should call for suspicion
You could use a combination of some simple rules and common sense. Among the simple rules once could list:
Presence in major databases, e.g. Web of Science, PubMed, etc
Does anyone in your field cite papers in this journal?
The quality of other papers in this journal
Do your colleagues publish in this journal?
Do they have typos in their webpage?
And common sense could help in a variety of ways. For example, today, I got the following letter, a rather nice one, seems like someone would have written it specially to me:
I hope this email finds you well. I wanted to get in touch with you
about a paper you authored entitled "Using principal component scores
reduces the effect of socially desirable responding". Firstly, thank
you for taking the time to publish this, it was an interesting read.
Have you continued working in this area? If you have any other
articles or ongoing research I would love to know more.
I am hoping to discuss with you having a short follow-up article or
perhaps a review article published in one of the next issues of the
journal I serve as an editor for, the Medical Research Archives. I
think our readers would be interested in a paper with information from
any continued research or new data since this was published. It would
be especially helpful if the article could be written for more of a
general medicine audience so that many sub specialties could gain from
it. The article would not have to be long, and any of your co-authors
or colleagues would be welcome to contribute to it. I am happy to
assist in any way I can, and there is no hard deadline.
Ok. First of all, they refer to a paper on psychometrics and ask me to publish something on the same topic in "Medical Research Archives". Makes no sense. Second, they tell me "thank you for taking time to publish this" (gracias de nada! this is my job!) and "it was interesting to read" (how on earth would you know - having not read it? and what is the point of calling it "interesting" if you have nothing specific to say about it?). At this point, it it quite clear that they have a script sending these letters, using a database with e-mails and titles of research papers. It is not written the way an actual editor of a bona fide journal would write, so I just delete the e-mail. (It was better written than most such e-mails, that is the reason why I even checked their webpage, - not that I would for a second consider sending a paper to their journal - but just for curiosity about the new tricks of predatory publishers.)
Quality of the journal is reflected in your own experience.
When you've reached the level when you start thinking about publishing in your field of expertise,
and you find out about a journal you've never heard before through several years of undergraduate and postgraduate studies,
it is a good enough reason to be suspicious and cautious.
Many good answers are provided here. Along with the editorial board, publisher, and impact factor, one should check http://www.scimagojr.com/.
This site provides ranking for journals, and country.
The ranking of journals based on Q1 through Q4 in the specified subjects ensures of the quality of journals in that issue.
Q1 journals are the best in that subject and Q2, Q3, and Q4 are decreasing impact of the journals.
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88924 | Scientific publications and related software sourcecode
I want to create a dataset (offline, only for my research purposes) based on scientific publications (research papers), which are somehow connected to software source code (for example given by a git-repository). The research domains of the publications are irrelevant, as long as they are talking about related software source code (for example by mentioning functions or variables).
In order to create the dataset, I need journals/websites where papers and their related code are listed. I already found the Journal of Open Research Software, which fits my requirements, but I am pretty sure there are more resources like this out there.
How can I find publication venues in which papers regularly include links to related source code?
I don't see any question mark in your question. So, what is your question? If you want a list of such sites, sorry, we do not take shopping questions.
You can just get a DOI for your dataset/code, without having to publish it in a journal.
https://guides.github.com/activities/citable-code/
@scaaahu I thought the question is quite obvious - I am in need for ressources where I can find research papers related with code. I already searched a lot. I thought maybe someone knows such a journal and can help me.
See e.g. https://www.journals.elsevier.com/computer-physics-communications/
Even so I answered to this question, the Open Data SE might be a better place to ask.
The ACM Transactions on Mathematics Software ("TOMS") publishes a lot of papers on software.
You could try to extract this information from the Related identifiers of Zenodo software records (the related identifiers that are marked as Supplement to).
Here are two examples:
https://zenodo.org/record/345130
https://zenodo.org/record/570830
This is the search for all software records in the database:
Zenodo offers data following the crawling protocol OAI-PMH. So harvesting this information should be managable.
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10714 | Official abbreviations for CS conferences
Some journals like to abbreviate journal names in the papers they publish, and the AMS maintains a list of abbreviated journal names for those who need them. Is there a similar resource for conferences (in computer science)?
EDIT: to clarify, I'm not looking for acronyms (SODA, STOC, ICALP), but rather for something like "Proc. 6th Ann. ACM-SIAM Symp. Discrete Algorithms".
usually I just take the .bib source of the paper whether its abbreviated or not
@seteropere: I usually use unabbreviated citations, but I'm told to shorten a submission and I'd rather sacrifice unimportant parts like these before I modify the actual text.
I am not aware of any comprehensive list of abbreviations for CS conferences. One way to see many abbreviations is through CS conference listings and ranking. For example, here and here. The most obvious way is googling the name of the conference then checking the conference website.
I didn't see the edit which seems different from what I was trying to answer.
I think your answer is fine. If the conference web site uses the abbreviation itself, then it's official.
AFAIK, there is no such resource, and even if it existed, it would not be very useful.
In general, people do not know the full names of the conference, only their acronyms. The full names tend to change slightly every now and then, while the acronyms are much more stable.
You can safely write pretty much anything that resembles the correct name, as long as you include the acronym. You can often save some space by removing useless words such as "Annual", "International", "ACM", "IEEE", etc.
For example, "Proc. 6th Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA)" would be perfectly fine and unambiguous.
Why wouldn't it be useful? Some journals have a misguided official policy of not using conference acronyms, and it would be good to have a standard set of abbreviations of conferences to use in these journals.
Removing "Annual" and "International" might be OK if you really have to save space, but it's better not to remove the "ACM" or "IEEE", since knowing the sponsor makes the conference easier to track down.
@Anonymous: "IEEE" isn't on the cover title of the Proceedings for the FOCS conference. How do you justify putting it in?
@Peter Shor: If it's not in the title, one certainly shouldn't modify the title to include it, but it's worth listing separately then ("Foundations of Computer Science 1997, IEEE Computer Society, ..."). For really major conferences it's not such a big deal, but minor conferences can be difficult to track down, and even major conferences may be unfamiliar to people in other fields.
I disagree with @AnonymousMathematician; if the society isn't named in the title, don't add it to the title. Report the title literally. I rare cases that Google doesn't find the correct proceedings as the first hit, you should definitely include the publisher in the citation (for example, Springer), but not in the title.
@JeffE: That's exactly what I meant by listing it separately (but not modifying the title to include it). I meant the "IEEE Computer Society" as being the publisher, not a continuation of the title.
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13186 | How to handle being removed from a paper for (perhaps) unethical reasons?
I was recently replaced in my role of analyzing data in a project by another person on the project. It's not clear that the person has the authority to do this. He is a resident in neurosurgery with no formal training in research.
This removal came nearly immediately after I communicated to him unequivocal null results that a colleague of mine confirmed. When I asked, he offered no explanation for this removal. He will replace me with a statistician who works for the device whose efficacy we were testing.
If I learn that he publishes observation on the current data set that completely contradict my findings, do I have an ethical duty to make this known?
This was a side project for me. My removal from it has no adverse professional impact for me. Nor do I think that speaking up will have an adverse impact for me, it may even not for him.
The story you tell certainly leaves off a certain fragrance. The key question seems to be whether or not you have been replaced in order to get more "friendly" results. It is clear that it is possible to have an opinion about how data should be analysed and that opinions may deviate. It is also possible to interpret results differently. But, all within reason. If your analysis is sound and provides a certain outcome while a new analysis provides the basis for a different there can be either a matter of academic disagreement or that one or the other is flawed. I cannot judge this of course.
Depending on which case you are facing the necessary, or possible, action would be to write a letter to the editor providing your analysis and view of the results to be published in the same journal, or to write the editor pointing at the error on the publication. In the latter, worse case, you of course need to be able to show without question that your view is correct and that the other is flawed (beyond just opinion). If the results are seriously flawed and may cause serious harm, the paper may even be retracted (see e.g. policy from Elsevier and examples from the New England Journal of Medicine).
So in short, the way forward depends on the seriousness of the flaw. An alternative option is of course to simply walk away and find better collaborators and more interesting vistas. But, if there are serious ethical problems you need to take action. Where you draw the line is not clear but usually a person with questionable behaviour has a history so you may be able to assess the over-all seriousness of the problem.
They want a significant effect. There isn't one on any of their stated outcome measures. My fault is continuing to work with them despite them having threatened to do similar in the past. I pause about walking away because this could affect patient care by revising some treatment guidelines. On the other hand, they don't change guidelines based on one study.
Also thanks for the articles. I was unaware of them.
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13 | Scientifically meaningful sources of bibliometrics
Whether we like it or not, modern academia is increasingly being measured, in some vain attempt to get objective measures. Although it is unwise to fight 'being measured', it is at least possible to steer the measures away from meaningless ones, backed by peer-reviewed research that establishes this unrefutably.
There are a lot of different metrics that have been defined - I am not looking for those. What I want is pointers to the research behind the scientific validity of those metrics.
So the question is: where should I look for scientific assessments of bibliometrics?
Could you clarify your question? Are you asking for a listing and definition of the "scientific productivity" indices? Or, are you asking for a comparison and to start a discussion on the development of another one? Mike
I do not understand what you look for: there are easy-to-compute measures that are measurably well-correlated with scientific productivity. Once, one starts to use any of them for making career-impacting decisions, the people whose careers are affected respond to the stimulus. There is no way one can have an irrefutable meaningful statistic.
Johan Bollen and Herbert van de Sompels are two researchers to follow in this area. Bollen did an analysis of 39 different citation-based metrics which is a good place to start. However, it's crucial to note that there are serious errors in trying to use citation-counting methods as some sort of ground truth. Citation counting is problematic because:
Different fields have different citation practices. In biology it's common to have 10 or more authors on one paper, whereas in math you often have only one or two.
Citations take a long time to accumulate, penalizing early-stage researchers.
Citations only tell part of the story, leaving out the useful contributions made by researchers in the form of code written and datasets released.
Citations often mutate over time.
It's now possible to get more information about a paper than just who cited it, and it's possible to get this information before several years have passed and before the information about the impact of the paper becomes old and less useful. The Public Library of Science makes detailed article-level metrics available and Mendeley has an API from which you can collect real-time data about how many readers a paper has, as well as social metadata such as tags and annotations and reader demographics. These metrics are being consumed by services such as Total Impact and combined with data from Github, Twitter, and traditional citation metrics. My bet is that if you're looking for a meaningful set of measures, you're going to find it in these richer sets of aggregated data.
Although just a start, we had a "journal club" over at the stats.se site on such bibliometrics, and had a chat over this particular article;
Arnold, Douglas N. & Kristine K. Fowler. 2011. Nefarious Numbers.
Notices of the AMS 58(3): 434-437. PDF link from publisher
Abstract from initial ArXiv print:
We investigate the journal impact factor, focusing on the applied
mathematics category. We discuss impact factor manipulation and
demonstrate that the impact factor gives an inaccurate view of journal
quality, which is poorly correlated with expert opinion.
As far as scientific assessments the authors in the above article are pretty negative of such rankings, and give a few examples of editors having citation practices that intentionally inflate their journals rankings.
I'm sure more literature on the topic exists than this though (so I look forward to any other suggestions).
Unfortunately the transcript from the chat is currently not linked to in the applicable thread on meta stats. But I will update here if it becomes available.
This has been published in the March 2011 Notices of the AMS, vol. 58, no. 3, pp. 434-437. http://www.ams.org/notices/201103/rtx110300434p.pdf.
The paper lists additional references that could be of interest.
Concenrning mathematics as in the answer of Andy W, the International Mathematical Union has a report on possible policies to measure and rank journals.
I'm against "productivity-based measures" like the h-index, to the point that I wrote an article on an alternative measure. This measure is based on impact, and it tries to remove productivity as a factor for evaluating scientific work. The article is open, and you can find it in Scientific Reports.
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153578 | Is there a way to see which papers have used a particular R package?
I'm a new user of an R package (tidy text mining) and I'd like to see what papers have used this package as examples for the kind of things I can do with it. Is there a way to do this?
Best suggestion I have is read the help file - usually has examples.
Sometimes (not often) papers will formally cite the package.
This is more likely to work if the authors have published a peer-reviewed paper that describes the package; it makes it easier to cite/more likely to be cited. In the case of the tidytext package (which may or may not be the package you're referring to), you can find the citation info here. More generally, try citation("package_name") within R. On Google Scholar, this page lists the articles that cite Silge and Robinson 2016.
Or you can use Google Scholar, which does a full-text search and may pick up the name from papers that mention it even if they haven't formally cited it.
Silge, Julia, and David Robinson. “Tidytext: Text Mining and Analysis Using Tidy Data Principles in R.” Journal of Open Source Software 1, no. 3 (July 11, 2016): 37. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.00037.
Great, thanks so so much!!
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153567 | Asking A Colleague for a Letter of Recommendation
I am working as an Assistant Professor at a university for over 2 years, but I am not happy with my current job and university. I want to apply to a university in another country (from where I've done my PhD) for a faculty position.
I'd like to know if it would help the application if a colleague who is a PhD and already holding a Tenure Track Position writes a letter of recommendation for in support of this application?
To be sure I understand correctly, the colleague is a more senior colleague at the place you are currently working at or they are at the place you apply to?
To explain more, yes, he knows me for over 2 and a half year, but he is working with me at my current place of working, not at the place I am applying to
In a comment, you noted that this individual is working with you at your current position.
Yes, I think you should have a letter from a colleague at your current institution. Indeed, if you didn't have a letter from a co-worker (ideally, your chair, but I know that's tough for assistants) it would raise red flags. This letter should speak to your expertise in research, teaching, and service but almost more importantly, provide some context as to why you are departing. Search committees will want to have a narrative that you're moving to another university because it's better or for some other germane reason, and not because you're being forced out or are a toxic colleague, if that makes sense.
So not only should you have a letter from a colleague at your current university, I would argue that it's almost always a necessity.
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375 | How much guidance should I reasonably expect from an MSc Thesis Supervisor
As part of my MSc I have to produce a Thesis/Dissertation which forms an integral part of the program and classification (roughly 1/4 - I imagine the subject can make a difference, so I should say that my MSc is in Mathematics in the UK).
I am wondering to what extend I should expect to be completely on my own in this endeavor. I have a supervisor who has a pretty good research reputation as far as I can tell from his publications and collaborations, so I'm quite happy in that sense, however it s becoming increasingly evident, that he will not provide much guidance when it comes to specific topic selection or anything else for that matter.
Is this normal and to be expected for an MSc Dissertation, or is it a bad sign that should make me think whether it may be better to switch? (I was under the impression that at such a junior level one could still expect quite a bit of hand-holding when it comes to the selection of a feasible topic).
Have you asked your supervisor this question?
@JeffE: I think he is convinced that he does what is required of him. I m trying to gauge whether this is the case, because if it is then I don't want to complain, and just accept the challenge. I think asking him directly will not give me the information I am after, as I m sure he will not admit to being less interested in his supervises then he should be. I did ask him for a narrower set of feasible topics given my background, but he says this is entirely up to me.
If you can't ask your supervisor directly about the job he expects you to do, you have a dysfunctional relationship with your advisor. If he honestly (and not just defensively) believes he should not give you (and I mean you specifically, not just "his students") more guidance, and you honestly (not just defenseively) believe you (again, not "his students") need more guidance, then you might need to look for another advisor. Or your current advisor might have good reasons to believe you don't need as much guidance as you think you do. But you won't know unless you actually ask him.
@JeffE: I am of course talking to him directly about the job that s expected. It s pretty clear to me what he wants me to do, namely produce a Thesis on my own :) I also know that his approach seems unusual to me, but this may be due to my lack of experience, and may not mean anything negative, which is why I m trying to gather some more information. It s only wrt this last question that I m not sure going to him is the best idea.
I'm not sure how much of your issue is related to the specific field—mathematicians are known for being somewhat more independent than graduate students in, say, engineering.
That said, your advisor should at least show signs of being interested in your research. If you feel like you need help, and aren't getting any, then you need to make arrangements to get it. At first, I'd recommend talking to other graduate students and postdocs under your advisor. Next, I'd talk to other students outside the group; finally, I'd move on to other faculty.
It really depends on how easy or difficult it is to change advisors. If it's relatively easy, then in the end, it might be necessary as a last resort. If not, you'll need to make do with a rather unfortunate situation.
Ultimately, this is a case-by-case kind of situation: you'll need to talk to more people in your department and find out how widespread this is. Some advisors are completely hands-off, and expect their students to be self-motivating. Others are hands-on to the point of micromanagement. In math, my impression from conversations with colleagues is that the tendency is towards being hands-off, but it's impossible to say what will be the case in your specific department.
I have spoken to another supervise of his. He is in the same situation, so I m not being targeted at least. I want to get a feeling how normal this lack of involvement is though, before I decide to switch !
I've added a paragraph to address this point.
Staff at my department have to propose specific projects for MSc theses (possibly together with the student). Even if your university doesn't require that, I would expect your supervisor to help you significantly with selecting the topic of your thesis. For the thesis itself the help will be less, but I wouldn't think it reasonable to expect an MSc student to essentially come up with their thesis topic unless they want to.
It can vary a lot by advisor. You should always talk to current (and former if possible) students of an advisor before committing to one. Some questions you might ask:
How often do you meet with your advisor?
Did your advisor help you come up with a thesis topic?
Does your advisor answer your emails quickly/at all?
Do you feel comfortable asking your advisor for help? Does he/she give it?
Does your advisor know and care about your career goals?
Is your advisor expected to stay around this school for long? (An advisor could be pre-tenure and expected not to get it or could be up for sabbatical soon.)
When you thought you were done, did your advisor agree or want you to do more? How long did it take to get the advisor to read the thesis?
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4941 | Any risks down the line choosing maths vs. stats PhD programme?
It seems funding for a PhD (at least in the UK) is a lot easier to get for a PhD in statistics rather then maths. Provided one can find a supervisor who has the background and research interestes that would allow one to keep extending ones pure mathematical toolbox are there any major risks in going for a PhD in stats ?
It seems to me that at any given stage there is a lot of flexibility with a degree in mathematics. (For instance people seem very open minded to let a maths MSc do a stats PhD). Is it justified to be worried about losing this flexibility if one opts for the PhD in stats rather then maths?
In particular I am worried about whether it is possible to transition back to the maths departement for a postdoctoral position or something equivalent. So essentially I want to know whether one will get branded to an extend that would make it difficult to go on and work in pure mathematics after the PhD.
Looks much better. There are a few mathematicians on this site who can hopefully provide a good answer now.
Provided one can find a supervisor who has the background and research interestes that would allow one to keep extending ones pure mathematical toolbox are there any major risks in going for a PhD in stats?
There's a small risk, but it can be managed. The first issue is that you need to make the mathematical content of your work very clear, for example by publishing in journals that could be considered both math journals and statistics journals (e.g., IMS journals). However, if you're interested in math departments I assume you'd be doing that anyway.
The slightly more subtle issue is how mathematicians view statisticians. There's sometimes a mild prejudice that people in mathematical statistics are overly specialized and outside of the mainstream of mathematics. For example, it's possible to get a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics while having considerably less breadth of mathematical background than would be considered acceptable for a math grad student. (Of course, the flip side is that you are expected to know other things instead.) There's sometimes a fear that a statistician would be unlikely to talk much with other math department members, or might be unwilling or unable to teach anything but statistics.
Plenty of statisticians have found jobs in math departments, so I don't want to be discouraging. However, I'd recommend focusing on mathematical breadth. For example, if you work with people in combinatorics or algebra, then it will be clear to everyone why a math department is a natural fit. If you talk only to statisticians, it will be less clear. It can still work out even then, but generally when the department either has a thriving statistics group or has decided they really need a statistician (and either way this cuts down on the flexibility of your job search).
I cannot answer about stats/maths directly, but in general the department you get your PhD in matters less than who it is with. This is especially true in places like the UK were there is no course work component. In my current department, psychology, about 50% of the faculty, including myself, did not get our PhD from Psychology departments. That said, if you are only willing to teach in a Maths department, then you should probably go to a Maths department. If you are willing to teach in either Maths or Stats, then it doesn't matter too much.
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74779 | Writing my speaker's bio when I have very little relevant experience
I started a new job a month ago, the first one after my PhD employment. Recently, a conference organizer invited an established researcher from our group to give a talk at their conference. The researcher was not available at that date, but suggested that I hold the talk, which the organizer accepted.
Now I am required to submit a "speaker biography", which I assume will be printed in the conference programme. There are parallel sessions, so I expect the speakers' biographies will have an impact on people deciding which track to attend.
The problem is that I have very done little in my career to interest the conference goers, whose background is in a completely different field than mine. None of my previously published research is of much relevance for this conference. The content I will present interests them, but it is the work my colleagues did before I joined the group.
So I see a few options:
Leave the biography at 50 words stating name, institution and current project. It will probably appear very short in comparison to the other speakers' (upper limit is 250 words).
Add previous work, even though it is neither relevant nor impressive (the PhD is not yet finished).
Write a bit more about the current project, which is relevant for them, but not exactly biographical. And also awkward to phrase without giving the impression that I am responsible for the work that has been done so far.
Due to a tight printing deadline and it being vacation season, I cannot get advice from the conference organizers about what they would prefer. I also don't have access to earlier years' speakers biographies, or to any other material from earlier years of this conference (abstracts, programmes, proceedings, etc).
What would be a good strategy for writing the biography in my case?
Have you looked at speaker bios from previous conferences?
@Kimball I don't have access to speaker bios from this conference. Random bios from other conferences list the speakers by boasting about their impressive job titles ("director of research center for X"), current responsibilities ("manages the EU initiative for Y"), or awards. I have none of these. They also mention current research interests. I have not yet found a research interest in my new field, and I am currently filling a mundane role which gets an important job done but is unknown to scientists and is outside of the academic pecking order.
Don't overthink it. It's true that people will be attracted towards some talks because they are given by a "big name", but it's also true that people will also base their choices on the content, regardless of the speaker. The majority of attendees, if they see a talk on a topic that is of interest to them, will not turn it down just because the speaker has an unimpressive bio. In fact, I suspect many people don't read the bios at all, certainly not all 250 words!
I would recommend a cross between 2 and 3. Give a brief mention of your previous work, because it's a part of your background, and if nothing else, people like to know about the different career paths that others have taken. Then perhaps describe why you moved to your current role/area (avoiding phrases like "filling a mundane role"...), with an emphasis on what you find interesting about it and any ways that it links with your previous experience. That should allow you to talk a bit about the project while still keeping it relevant to you personally. You can keep it fairly brief though - don't feel like you have to use up all 250 words just for the sake of it.
I understand your dilemma but it will not be the last one (sorry to be blunt :-)).
You have been proposed (not for marriage) by an established researcher. He did not give your name out of nowhere, so there must be a reason why he trusts you. The very first thing you should do is to trust yourself.
The length of your resume is not important. You are a young researcher and everyone will be OK with that. Now, did that researcher wants you to be just yourself or to represent your whole lab? I suspect that it will be the second choice so you would be the spokesperson for your lab and, then, you should speak about your lab and not about yourself. Of course that means you should know everything your lab did.
I know you have been in your lab for only 1 month. It is uncomfortable to say the least but be sure that your fellow researchers, i.e. the attendees, will not try to take you down.
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8914 | What exactly goes into MS by Research?
I recently gave a entrance exam for a graduate program, MS (by course) in computer science. Since I did well in exam, now I am being offered for MS by research. In first semester I can attend 3-4 subjects, at the end of my semester I have to chose my research area and a adviser. I do not have prior research experience nor have published any papers, so I believe it is a wonderful opportunity for me to get into research.
My question is, what exactly constitutes an MS by Research? What are my responsibilities? What should be my minimum contribution for thesis to graduate?
related http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8479/what-is-the-minimum-contribution-expected-from-msc-thesis
@seteropere: Good catch. Indeed, I'd be inclined to close this question as already answered (i.e. duplicate).
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12838 | How to look for a master's program?
I am looking to join a masters program for next year. Unfortunately, I've found that comparing masters programs is difficult since the information is not displayed the same way in every university page. My question is: what is the best method to search masters, gather their information and analyze so as to make the best choice?
Other questions about searching masters is the following one, which is directly relates to the previous one: does exist any webpage, document or reference sorting masters and giving unified information about them?
To those who cast close votes that I (unintentionally) cleared: after reading the question, I cast the final close vote thinking that this question is too broad to be answerable. Then I read the top-voted answer, which perfectly answered the question. That is why I re-opened... the question seems too broad, but apparently it isn't.
You can also find search tools specific to regions, such as MastersPortal.eu. If you just need the same sort of general information that you will find on a program's Web site, all in one place, this will be useful.
If you know of a specific major that you want to study, many professional associations or organizations will put a long list of programs on their Web sites, see for example this list of linguistics programs at the LINGUIST list or this database of schools from the TESOL International Association. Sometimes these lists include detailed overviews of the programs, courses offered, and estimated costs, but usually not enough information to know about the quality of instruction.
For thorough student reviews and comparisons of schools, see StudentsReview. This Web site has various tools for searching for and comparing the various details of schools, based on your personal requirements, such as the University Comparison and the UltraSearch.
Actually, I've gathered quite a bit of information on the website phds.org. It is specifically suited for researching Ph.D.-granting institutions, but there is also an option for ranking Masters-granting institutions.
When searching for programs I found that I overlooked a lot of good programs when looking at "database" type sites. They are useful for getting basic data and narrowing the programs you look at, but also consider getting advice from people in (or near) your field and (if applicable) looking at publications in your interest area to see where the research is coming from. I also found organizing the information that was the most relevant to me in a spreadsheet useful, even if it is time intensive.
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60393 | How to argue against questionable research practices such as P-hacking and Harking?
I have come into conflict with co-authors when being asked to do things that I consider to be questionable.
Once I was told to try every possible specification of a dependent variable (count, proportion, binary indicator, you name it) in a regression until I find a significant relationship. That is it, no justification for choosing one specification over another besides finding significance. The famous fishing expedition for starfish (also known as P-Hacking).
In another occasion I was asked to re-write a theory section of a paper to reflect an incidental finding from our analysis, so that it shows up as if we were asking a question about the incidental finding and had come up with the supported hypothesis a priori. The famous hypothesising after results are known (Harking).
In both cases I refused to comply and explained my reasoning, what led to conflicts with the other party. I tried my best to not sound accusatory (not to give the impression that I doubt the ethics of the other party), but it nonetheless led to attrition and a worsening of the working relationship. In the long argument that followed, I was told that 'social science is not done as the natural sciences,' and that I was 'too inflexible,' 'too positivist,' and that everybody does these things that I was being asked to do. The argument culminated with me being asked to 'stop obstructing the progress of the paper,' what made me feel very frustrated.
Since then I have seen several cases of what I suspect to be this type of research practice. For example, PhD students coming to me to ask about what they should change in their models so that their results come out significant, and people working at the same computer lab as me asking me for the same type of help.
I do consider these things to be seriously questionable from an ethical point of view, and would like to be able to argue against them effectively. However, the other parties are usually experienced researchers or students under the supervision of an experienced researcher. As a young researcher, I feel that I'm at a disadvantage when arguing against. It is often the case that I'm arguing against the instructions of someone who has more experience, publications, and, supposedly, knowledge than I do.
Is this one of those cases where we can't do much but try to be the 'change that we want to bring about,' shud it, and just make sure that we are doing the right things ourselves? Should we speak up more often? If so, any good strategies to be more effective and convincing?
p.s. The tag is social sciences because of my field, but I reckon that this happens in other areas as well, and I welcome input from other fields.
EDIT 1: In example 2), at no moment anyone suggested that we would confirm the new hypothesis in a new set of data. The intention was to pretend that we got it right from the onset, which is why I objected.
EDIT 2: Just to make clear. I am aware of the right way of doing these things (i.e. cross validation, confirmatory analysis in a new dataset, penalising for multiple statistical tests, etc.). This is a question about how to argue that p-hacking and harking are not the way to go.
EDIT 3: I was unaware of the strong connotations of the word misconduct. I have edited and replaced it with 'questionable research practices'
But is it ok to pretend that you had the hypothesis all along? I'm not comfortable with doing that. As you said, we would need to confirm the results with new data or be honest about what we did.
Not acknowledging the post-hoc nature of the hypothesis is close to using deception to overstate the quality of our results.
Just concerning the "fishing expedition": this is nowadays called "Data Mining". It's not a particularly exciting form of doing research, as you get simply a jumble of numbers with more or less significance and have to read in their entrails. However, per se it is legitimate, and people use it to discover hypotheses. I do not very much like that style of research because it doesn't grow out of understanding. But then, botany suffered under the same problem until the Darwinian unification. Not sure I would call it illegitimate, only not very attractive.
The problem is not the lack of theoretical justification, but the willingness to capitalise on type 1 error in order to get publishable 'significant' results. It defeats the whole purpose of using inferential statistics to begin with.
@CaptainEmacs It's only legitimate if you correct for multiple hypotheses (which so few people do in practice), or if you're purely using it as an exploratory method and plan to collect new data to verify any potential findings. Relevant XKCD.
@Roger Fan Completely agreed - when you evaluate the significance of the hypothesis, you have to pay the penalty of having found it from the data. Indeed, see my answer below.
"Misconduct" is generally taken to be a very strong criticism. People will listen better to you IF YOU DON'T SHOUT -- so let's look for a different word to describe what's bothering you. How about "shoddy research practices" or "sloppy approach to research"? Often people are sloppy out of laziness or expedience or ignorance. But that's different from a willful intent to mislead -- which the word "misconduct" brings to mind for me.
I see. It may have been my ignorance of that connotation that the word has.
Questionable -- I like it!
Unfortunately, you may in a "null field", per Ioannidis. What you're seeing seems endemic to the social sciences, which explains the crisis of replicability noted in those fields.
Unfortunately I have empirical confirmation that it is the case.
See http://andrewgelman.com/2015/12/20/once-i-was-told-to-try-every-possible-specification-of-a-dependent-variable-count-proportion-binary-indicator-you-name-it-in-a-regression-until-i-find-a-significant-relationship-that-is-it-no/
Wow, now that is someone whose opinion I'd like to know. It seems that I'll be reading that paper he is referring to.
Are you kidding me? Of course it's unethical. Of course it's misconduct. Shame on anyone saying otherwise. Bravo, Kenji.
@BenCrowell In any field where the results matter doing this is straightforward misconduct. If you were prescribed a drug by your doctor would you be happy to learn that the paper supporting the use of the drug had been written by someone who used these methods to get "significant" findings for a worthless drug? Researchers doing this literally kills people. Faffing about and pretending they don't doesn't help. It's less serious if the results don't really matter. But if they don't matter why are you doing the work at all?
Have you thought about asking them to justify each action? If they ask why you want to know, tell them you want to learn. Why would someone drive tests to that direction? Collect some evidence about what they are proposing with their justification and bring it to someone with more experience and verify if action+justification makes sense.
When things become "dark" or even "strange", ask a "higher instance" to arbitrate over the situation. Bring everything to that person and ask him to let you stay anonymous as much as possible. Like as if it's his idea or an audit point of view.
@gnometorule It is as if I throw a dart at the wall and then built a target around it. Of course, I hit a bulls eye every time - without even trying. If you revise a hypothesis based on empirical data you should collect new data.
@gnometorule: "A key point in proper statistical analysis is to test a hypothesis with evidence (data) that was not used in constructing the hypothesis. This is critical because every data set contains some patterns due entirely to chance. If the hypothesis is not tested on a different data set from the same population, it is impossible to determine if the patterns found are chance patterns." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging
@gnometorule Cancer research or sociology, if you formulate your model based on looking at one dataset that dataset can no longer be used to support your model in any context other than saying "after looking at this data I came up with this model". If you present it as "this is my model and it's supported by this analysis I did of this data" without mentioning that you constructed the model only after looking at the data that's research misconduct because you're back to constructing the dartboard around wherever the dart landed while implying that the dartboard was there all along.
Please take extended discussion to [chat].
Ask that the methodology is described accurately in the paper, and provide the description you'd like to include. Describe what you did without unnecessarily pre-judging it. If "everybody does this" then that should be perfectly fine to include.
If you get resistance, or worse, someone later drops the description, then you need to talk privately to the dean of your department, provide examples (without naming) and your interpretation of the scientific value of those examples, and ask how the dean wants science to be done at the department.
@BenCrowell: You might try asking on stats.stackexchange to understand why this is unethical.
Kenji,
For the last few years, I have given a continuing education course called Common Mistakes in Using Statistics: Spotting Them and Avoiding Them. I hope that some of the approaches I have taken might be helpful to you in convincing your colleagues that changes are needed.
First, I don't start out saying that things are unethical (although I might get to that eventually). I talk instead about mistakes, misunderstandings, and confusions. I also at some point introduce the idea that "That's the way we've always done things" doesn't make that way correct.
I also use the metaphor of "the game of telephone" that many people have played as a child: people sit in a circle; one person whispers something into the ear of the person next to them; that person whispers what he/she hears to the next person, and so on around the circle. The last person says what they hear out loud, and the first person reveals the original phrase. Usually the two are so different that it's funny. Applying the metaphor to statistics teaching: someone genuinely is trying to understand the complex ideas of frequentist statistics; they finally believe they get it, and pass their perceived (but somewhat flawed) understanding on to others; some of the recipients (with good intentions) make more oversimplifications or misinterpretations and pass them on to more people -- and so on down the line. Eventually a seriously flawed version appears in textbooks and becomes standard practice.
The notes for my continuing ed course are freely available at http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/mks/CommonMistakes2015/commonmistakeshome2015.html. Feel free to use them in any way -- e.g., having an informal discussion seminar using them (or some of them) as background reading might help communicate the ideas. You will note that the first "Common mistake" discussed is "Expecting too much uncertainty." Indeed that is a fundamental mistake that underlies a lot of what has gone wrong in using statistics. The recommendations given there are a good starting point for helping colleagues begin to see the point of all the other mistakes.
The course website also has links to some online demos that are helpful to some in understanding problems that are often glossed over.
I've also done some blogging on the general theme at http://www.ma.utexas.edu/blogs/mks/. Some of the June 2014 entries are especially relevant.
I hope these suggestions and resources are helpful. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
This sort of thing happens in both the social sciences AND physical sciences. For instance, often a scientist will collect data to test a theory but will also collect lots of extraneous data. Analyses on these extraneous data often should be considered exploratory and labeled as such (because significant results could be due to the multiple tests) [As another example, you don't want to know how often chemists repeat an experiment until they get a good yield, then stop and report that yield without mentioning that that was the best in 20 experiments!]
The fastest solution is to agree to do the multiple analyses, but then tell what you did in the methodology section. If you say that you analyzed it several ways and one way showed significance, readers can decide whether or not to believe the result. Just tell your co-authors that not mentioning that you did multiple analyses is leaving the research improperly described.
However, you can (occasionally) save the day. If, for instance, you did 10 different analyses and picked the best one, you'll be ok if the result would hold under a Bonferroni correction (i.e. instead of requiring significance at the 0.05 level, you require significance at the 0.05/#tests level). So it the final test shows a p-value such as 0.000001, you probably are on safe grounds.
Another approach is to a priori decide that some tests are obvious (confirmatory) and some are just searching around the data (exploratory). Then you can demonstrate the confirmatory results, while labeling anything interesting among the 'exploratory' results as 'needs further research'. That is, you can mix well-founded tests with 'data dredging' as long as you acknowledge the difference between the two sets of tests.
But if it isn't possible to rescue the result, I'd go with insisting that they describe what they did, with the comment that if they are embarrassed to describe it, they shouldn't have done it. :)
You might also add that it is often obvious (at least to statisticians) that a researcher has pulled this trick. When we see a test in isolation that would not occur to us to be the obvious approach, or a hypothesis that we'd not choose a priori, it looks suspicious. For instance, I recently read a paper that claimed that a certain group of people tend to commit suicide more often if they were BORN in the Spring. It was clear that JUST testing the effect of birth in Springtime was not something that would occur to anyone, without testing the effect of birth in other seasons. So they probably had a spurious result due to multiple comparisons.
Yep, I know about all the ways to deal with it: correct for multiple comparisons, use cross validation, etc. I would not object if we would describe what we did or if we would use one of these techniques. The problem is that it is not what I am asked to do (also not and what I see others doing). Upvoted you for the 'if you are embarrassed to describe it, you shouldn't have done it.' I will try using it next time.
You don't correct for multiple comparisons after you've done all of the analyses. Of course, this is about decisions. If you you a priori were not going to keep the significant effect unless it passed Bonferroni then it's OK but if you were going to keep it regardless then the correction is invalidated. You can do the simulations but it's not hard to imagine why that fails considering the p for null effects is uniformly distributed. .05 if just as likely as .00001.
This is an excellent question. I do think you (and others in similar situations) should speak up, but I realize this is very difficult to do. Two things I'd suggest:
Try to figure out if the people you're dealing with understand that the methods they're proposing (p-hacking, etc.) are dodgy or not -- i.e. whether it's an issue of ethics or ignorance. This is harder than it may seem, since I think many people genuinely don't understand how easy it is to find patterns in noise, and how "researcher degrees of freedom" make spurious patterns easy to generate. Asking people, non-confrontationally, to explain how doing tests on "every possible specification of a dependent variable" and selecting those with "p<0.05" corresponds to <5% of "random" datasets having a feature of interest would make this clearer, and would perhaps give you insight on the question of ethics or ignorance. I'd bet that a good fraction of people aren't deliberately unethical, but their cloudy grasp of quantitative data obscures ethical thinking.
Something I've found helpful in related contexts is to generate simulated data and actually show the principle that you're arguing. For example, generate datasets of featureless noise and show that with enough variables to compare between, one can always find a "significant" relationship. (Obviously, without correcting for multiple comparisons.) It may seem strange, but seeing this in simulated data seems to help.
Good luck!
This is a nice idea. I have tried this myself for quite some years now. (This is how I know it's nice.) Unfortunately, it takes a specific kind of understanding for randomness to really understand what your examples in 2 mean in the context of p-hacking. And this mindset is rare among social and medical scientists. I have been able to instill some in a few people I have been working with for years now. It's a long-term educational strategy.
I think there are quite a few comments on the original post betraying the ignorance you describe....
Your instinctive concern about creating hypotheses out of data and pretending they were there from the outset is on the right track:
In statistics, the so called chi-square test can be used to compare data with models which have been fitted out of the data themselves. However, for this, the chi-square test must be adapted to essentially "penalise" one's extraction of the parameters when testing how significant the match is.
This is not easily generalised to other setups, so in general learning theory and practice, one splits the data into multiple groups. For example, where one part is used to optimise the parameters, one, at first unseen, part is used to optimise the generalisation, and the last, unseen, part never feeds into the model construction and is used to test how well the first two stages worked. This is called "cross-validation".
Perhaps you can suggest (or simply introduce) to your group such a methodology, by splitting the data randomly into different components; out of one you construct the model, which then is tested with the unseen data. Details of how to do the split would depend on your domain. This way, you have the confidence that the model is predictive. For this to be sound, you need to make sure that it is not using the complete dataset in any form (not even through one smart colleague that remembered that the data are parabolic on the whole). Best is to not ever look at the unseen data until the model is complete.
As for post-hypothesising, I found this often not even to be necessary. You might start with a hypothesis, then discover it is not valid, but then find another, interesting phenomenon instead. This is called "discovery" and the coolest papers result from that. If the top journals of your field do not accept such a style, because they want the standard "hypothesis-experiment-validation" cycle, then the problem lies deeper in your community than with your colleagues.
In short: fitting models out of your data and comparing match is ok if you have a way of penalising that extraction (as in the chi-square). Failing that, you can do "cross-validation" for sound results. Finally, instead of post-hypothesising, my suggestion is to hypothesise, say, invalidate the hypothesis and demonstrate the emergence of a different hypothesis.
Yeah, what you wrote is in general in line with what I was taught. It is not like no one in my field knows of it, it is just that they seem to not really appreciate how problematic it is to just p-hack and use post-hoc hypotheses all the while pretending that we did it by the book.
Then, this is indeed a problem. One cannot change easily the culture of a place, it's better to go somewhere else with a culture of integrity.
Or stay where you ar but collaborate with folks from other institutions.
Describe exactly what you have done in the paper. As long as you are honest, the paper will be judged by the reviewers, editors and readers.
Even people doing p-value hacking will have a hard time removing an honest description from the paper. If they tell you to remove it, ask them why and you will have the upper hand in the resulting discussion.
This is the ethically and scientifically correct answer but may be somewhat naive, the challenge isn't knowing that this is the correct answer, the challenge is to get the other authors to agree to actually publish it with all this info. In an ideal world #overlyhonestmethods https://goo.gl/wC76up would be perfectly acceptable and "professional" to include in a research paper.
Lots of good answers already. However, in academia, it's always better if you can back up your position with a nice published reference. Happily, the question of p-hacking and replicability is being raised and addressed more and more often in different disciplines.
I'll set this up as a CW post to collect pointers to relevant publications we can use in discussions with coauthors that don't see the problem with questionable statistical practices. Everybody, please feel free to edit with your discipline's relevant articles or conference papers.
Psychology
Here is an editorial by the Editor-in-Chief of Psychological Science, which is pretty much the mother of all psychology journals (Open Access. I also recommend papers cited by Lindsay.):
Lindsay, D. Stephen (2015). Replication in Psychological Science.
Psychological Science, 26, 1827-1832. DOI:10.1177/0956797615616374.
Here is a study in Science that shows that we indeed have a "replicability crisis" in psychology - a large collaboration set out to replicate 100 effects reported in well-regarded journals, and only 36% did replicate:
Open Science Collaboration (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349, 6251. DOI:10.1126/science.aac4716
One option is to make 'constructive' points. If your co-authors are (as many are) used to different degrees of p-hacking, they will probably not be too happy to hear that their results are unpublishable as they stand.
If you were able to offer a solution to publish the results while also avoiding these bad practises, then few would object. The best way will probably to try out doing bayesian analyses. Here, (in some cases) non-significant results will also be interpretable and thus publishable.
I hope you don't mind, but I want to take this chance to give you a different set of advice from what you are asking for - to advise you not to take this approach to tackling this issue at this point in time.
I am making the assumption that you want (i) some level of academic success - enough to support yourself, and (ii) to improve the quality of research, and the social benefits that result. Assuming I am correct, I don't think you should pursue this argument (at this stage).
I don't think you should pursue this argument (at this stage) if you value your academic career as it will cause you to burn important bridges and close doors. For instance, if your supervisor p-hacks and you expose and destroy him for it, then you will have lost your main support and dramatically reduced your likelihood of being able to secure a career in this area.
As related to this, (at this stage) I don't really think that you are optimally placed to challenge the negative influence of p-hacking. Here are a few reasons why I think this. First, as related to what I said above, if you are in the infancy of a career within a specific social system then you cannot easily impact the behaviour of those who are already established in that career, and who neither know nor respect you. Second, you cannot fully understand why the system operates as it does, nor the levers that need to be pulled to change that operation, until you are more familiar with it. You might be able to make a micro level difference (e.g., you expose some people you work with), but I don't see that as likely to be very effective, as it will cripple you to do so.
To sum up my thoughts with an anecdote: imagine that you grow up in a city where all the teachers are corrupt and incompetent. Do you think it would be best to protest against them when are in the school? Probably not, as you would achieve very little, and the teachers would probably use their power to prevent you from graduating and essentially ruin your life. Alternately, would it be better to tolerate the teachers flaws until you are out of the system (or higher up) and in a position to actually change things? I would think so as in that case you might end up in a position of authority, and have the resources available to do something to change the teaching system.
Of course, all of this is just my opinion and I could see many ways in which you could argue against it :)
28/12/2015: Adding some more content to explain and address comments.
I would like to put more emphasis on my main point; to appeal to pragmatism and wait for a better time to act. Personally, I think that there is a time and a place for activism, that sometimes it is best to keep your mouth shut and wait until you have a better chance to do something rather than to speak up and get shot for nothing. Thus, in any case where activism is an option, the decision whether to engage in it should be contingent on various consideration, such as the severity of the undesired outcome, the risk to the individual in preventing it, their ability to prevent it, and their moral framework (e.g., deontological or utilitarian). As the saying goes, you need to pick your battles; every battle will take its toll and some tolls might not be worth paying for what they get you.
Personally, I feel that if you are going to publish something that might wipe out humanity or end up with someone getting killed then by all means you should make a personal sacrifice to prevent it (if you can do something). On the other hand, if the current 'negative' outcome that you foresee is unethically (by some/most authors current norms) changing the focus of a paper (that 5 people will actually read) to look at one significant relationship (e.g., age and correlation to frequency of cycling) rather than another previously planned relationship (e.g., gender and correlation to frequency of cycling) that turned out to not be significant, and the new outcome is either (i) you will be sacked and the paper published without you, or (ii) nothing will be published and no-one will ever benefit from knowing about the significant relationship that you found, then I am more convinced that engaging in activism is not the way to go (at this stage anyway).
And yes, I accept that my arguments here are flawed simplifications of what is a very complex reality, but I hope you can understand my general point and give some thought to it.
Arguably, there always will be someone above you with sub-par ethical standards, so you may end up to never challenge the system. And if you do, your opponents will simply expose your own works which have the same flaw you will be arguing against. It will be damn hard to sound credible then.
While still a junior researcher, it seems that Kenji is asked to put their name as co-author, or lead author, on a paper that conceals its methodology in such a questionable way, and contains meaningless results. Won't that paper harm their career now? Surely the junior has to speak up in private to ensure that the paper is neither misleading, nor incorrect, nor meaningless, nor even recommend a damaging change to public policy.
This is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of ethical practice with real consequence for the researcher career, the advancement of science, and the perception of social scientist in general. At this stage, that field is broken. At this stage, when 60% of published finding cannot be replicated, no one should openly be advising the kind of practices OP mentioned. At this stage, the researcher should be guided by their ethics and not wait until they have enough power to do the right thing. Your comment is terrible advice.
@DaltonHance: unless you are an activist who is ready to devote your life to fight for the right thing; it is harmful and pointless to speak against the status quo: you won't make things better for others and you'll make things worse for yourself. It is better to have an ethical competent scientist who has to compromise sometimes -- work within the system, not against it.
@J.F.Sebastian That's great advice for Michael LaCour and Andrew Wakefield. "Fake it 'til you make it and then fix it." You have presented a false dichotomy. Choose to be either the activist pariah or the ethically-compromised but good-at-heart insider. P-hacking may not be as morally egregious as outright fabrication, but the consequence is the same: erroneous findings presented as scientific knowledge. These things have real consequences, even in social sciences. I need only point you to the vaccination rates in liberal enclaves as a real and potentially deadly consequence of bad science.
@DaltonHance: it is disingenuous, to interpret my comment that way. I say things as they are, not as they should be -- it is the principle difference between Aristotle and modern physics (no real progress can be made unless the world is accepted as it is, not as we like it to be). The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Consider the actual consequences of your actions, not theoretical one. It is not about opinions, it is about facts -- read the question: the paper hasn't improved, OP working relations are worse.
@J.F.Sebastian Science is not a job, it is a calling. Your advice is fine for somebody working some 9-5 selling people pens or paper. Your advice may even be fine for somebody working in politics, that art of the possible. The problem in your view is depicting the academy as just a job. To accept the status quo is antithetical to scientific progress. Anyone who is espousing your view may hold power temporarily but will be condemned to the dustbin of scientific history. Scientific progress is not made with questionable statistics nor is made by weak-kneed, but perfectly congenial collaborators.
This is how bad systems of all sorts become systematically entrenched. Recommending that researchers use invalid/disingenuous research practices in order to become well-regarded enough to challenge those practices is like telling potential slave-owners to go ahead and get rich using slave labor before speaking out against slavery.
@J.F.Sebastian One final point: your advice exposes OP to guilt-by-association. Consider the case of Donald Green, Michael LaCour's co-author. His reputation is irreparably damaged because of his co-author's misconduct. Even if published, OP may find his co-authored paper picked up in the blogosphere by the likes of Andrew Gelman, or otherwise (and rightfully) questioned. Should OP then join his co-authors in a rebuttal, defending the very practices he/she finds questionable? It is absolute nonsense to suggest that working relations are more important than ethical research practices.
@DaltonHance: that is why I don't like religion: it makes good people do bad things justified by some dogma. What you are saying is dogma that ignores reality (burning bridges is not the way to make p-hacking less common). Unrelated: I object to you calling my comments "your advice" -- my comments contain some statements: they can be right or wrong (based on evidence) -- nothing in it is advice. You should probably post your comments as an answer. See, the last sentence might constitute an advice, though I consider it a mere suggestion to consider the question.
@J.F.Sebastian You're suggesting that opposition to unethical research practices is mere "dogma", and that it's a "bad thing" to encourage people not to go along with unethical research practices? As for objecting to the term "advice," how is "work within the system, not against it" not "advice"?
@KyleStrand: (1) I'm not suggesting it. Don't twist my words. It would help if you point out a specific (literal) fragment from my comments that you consider to be false and what evidence do you have to support your claim. (2) Agree: "work within ..." sounds like advice -- what I've meant is that it produces better results (less p-hacking in the end) compared to the alternative. To be clear: It is not an advice.
@J.F.Sebastian It sounds to me what you don't like is Science. Scientists are notorious arsonists of bridges. The best dynamite the trestles for good measure. Galileo burned bridges with the Church. Newton and Hooke burned a bridge so ferociously that its light continues to illuminate scientific progress. Science consists of that which can be tested and replicated or else refuted. P-hacking for "significant" results is not science. Maintaining congenial relationships is not part of science.
@J.F.Sebastian I'm not twisting your words. You said "What you [DaltonHance] are saying is dogma that ignores reality", and what he was saying is that OP is describing unethical research practices and that OP should not go along with them. This is a straightforward reading of your comment. As for the "it is not an [sic?] advice" quibble--I'm not really sure why you're opposed to the word "advice." When you say that one course of action is better than another, that is advice. That's not pejorative, either; advice isn't a bad thing.
@J.F.Sebastian DaltonHance's last comment is maybe stronger than I'd have put it, but I agree wholeheartedly with "Maintaining congenial relationships is not part of science." It's not incompatible with science, but in this case it sounds like there's a conflict between congeniality and sound science. A scientist should never sacrifice research-ethics in order to maintain a good relationship with someone who advocates unethical research practices.
To respond strictly on Peter's answer here, granted that the OP is an adult (not a minor dependent in grade school), the OP should take this stage as an opportunity to reflect on whether this field, with its given practices and quality of published results, is one to which the OP really wants to dedicate their life.
Comment on the 28/12 edit: "... nothing will be published and no-one will ever benefit from knowing about the significant relationship that you found... ". They almost surely did NOT really find a significant relationship (subject to a real follow-up test). It's illusory; that's the whole problem with data dredging; and anyone who reads such a P-hacked paper is being misinformed.
Thank you all for your comments, all of which are reasonable and well intentioned. I have not got the time for responses, so here is an attempt to conclude. Do you agree that it would be better to (i) attend a protest where you know a pirori that no good change will occur and that you will be jailed for attending, or (ii) wait for an uncertain, but probable chance to effectively protest later? I assume (ii). Is this analogous to the situation that the OP is in? I think so. However, it is clear that some of you do not agree. None of us can know for sure so I suppose we should leave it at that.
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36479 | Is it acceptable to ask someone for help revising your paper?
I am an undergraduate and I was wondering if it was appropriate to ask someone (who isn't an author) to help revise the draft of a conference paper that I am writing.
I am new to writing and this would be helpful to get input from as many people as possible.
It depends what you are asking them to do.
You should definitely ask someone (maybe multiple someone's) to read your paper, give you comments about what was confusing/particularly clear/incomplete as well as suggestions on how to improve the paper. (In fact I would recommend this to anyone writing a paper at any stage, not just an undergraduate.) This might be done by your advisor if you have one, and you should thank them in the Acknowledgements section for their help (and personally too, expressing gratitude is always good!)
You should not ask someone a non-co-author to actually edit your paper and make changes to it themselves. Any actual editing should be done by you or your co-authors, otherwise plagiarism becomes a concern.
+1: This is a better expression of what I was getting at in my other comment.
Thanks - I have a few professors that I am good friends with and they said that they would be happy to look it over.
It is not just acceptable -- it is to be recommended!
It is generally a good idea to have people read your work before it is submitted, or in your case, presented at a conference.
Having someone from outside your specific research area read your paper is particularly good. Even if your reader isn't familiar with the fine details, they should still be able to follow your general argument from background, through your method, results, analysis and finally to your conclusions.
Approach your intended reader and very politely ask if they would read your work. Make sure you are clear about what you want from them. If it is a colleague who is familiar with your work, you can perhaps ask and expect questions or comments on the finer points of your work. For someone outside your particular field, you can expect general comments on structure or questions on the broader aspects of your work.
At a previous institution, we were all expected to hand our draft papers around for two internal reviewers to read, neither of whom were to be from the particular research field on which the paper was written. This was a very valuable exercise.
I totally agree that it's great to get other people to read your papers and make comments on them. If that's what "help revise" means, then sure. If it means that the other person is actually doing the rewriting...that is less clearly good.
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117421 | Should a professor recommending me talk about my (bad) grades in his or her letter?
I recently graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics. I'm now applying to research internships and some of these need recommendation letters from faculty.
I did very badly during the first 2 years at college (having scored around 6/10 (=2.4/4) GPA in my courses until the end of my 4th semester) -- however, I learnt from my mistakes and became much more disciplined in my 3rd year, when I scored an average of 8/10 (3.2/4). At the end of 3 years, I had to graduate with a sub-3 CGPA of 6.88/10 (2.75/4).
I did really well on research projects and other quantitative projects at college, which is one reason why I've found professors to recommend me. I understand that my poor GPA will probably put me in a bad position, but what's done is done and I digress. One of my possible references asked me to draft a letter for him and that he will make changes as necessary before sending it in.
My question is: should I ask my references to talk about my poor grades (something along the lines of "While X does not have impressive scores in his undergraduate degree, it can be clearly seen from his transcripts that he picked up pace and discipline during his final year. I believe that X has taken home the importance of hardwork after a few hiccups in his academic life".)
Even if the above phrasing doesn't seem good, in general, is it a good idea to talk about your bad grades in a recommendation letter? Or is it simply better to let this go and concentrate on my strengths?
The idea of the professor asking you to draft the letter is rather controversial, see https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/29041/what-does-it-mean-if-a-professor-asks-you-to-draft-his-reference-letter-for-you.
Yes, I understand. That said, it's pretty commonplace where I live (India) and in any case the professor is the one who'll be sending it in at the final stage after making the changes he feels necessary.
The bad grades are there on the transcript - something to address them (since they will stand out from other applicants) seems prudent.
It really depends on how the professor knows you.
If the professor only knew you "after the change", the letter might say "I am aware of student's relatively low grades during the first few years, but by the time of my class, they were a top-performing student", that kind of thing.
If the professor has known you for years, it might be appropriate to comment on having observed this change, and expressing confidence that you can handle the role in question despite the low cumulative QPA.
Is it a good idea to talk about your bad grades in a recommendation letter?
If not asked about it, why shed the light on it?
Your professor can talk about your points of strength and your efforts through the years. No real need to talk about everything in details.
If you really feel that the grades by them self are subject to questioning, it will be a good idea to mention them in that way but, in my opinion, everybody knows that the grades alone aren't really a factor and in fact, your grades getting better time after time is the biggest factor.
I would suggest, if you really need to talk about it, to say something among these lines:
X has shown big improvement through his undergraduate studies which proves, with no doubt, that he is capable of handling bigger projects.
I am not a native English speaker so this might need some improvement.
Bottom line is to focus on the good side without really mentioning the bad/down side that got you there.
"Why shed the light on it" --> because the reciever of the letter will see the bad grades and thinks the opinion of the professor is not well justified or even worse it's a standard letter which is used for every student.
The receiver will also see the improvement. This is why focusing on the important side is better in my opinion
The suggestion to focus on the positive is very good; but the initial part of this answer, which seems tantamount to advising against mentioning it at all, is imprudent in my view. As OBu says, the recipient will see the poorer grades, and if they are not mentioned at all will likely become suspicious of the letter’s relevance.
Maybe the way I said it isn't what I meant 100% (as I said, my English isn't perfect). All what I thought about is that : "the recipient will see the poorer grades" -> "talking about them might seem like a defensive stance without a sure attack from the recipient" -> "don't talk about the grades themselfs" -> "however, mention the improvements that OP did (according to the grades)". All of the idea is because the recipient will also see the good grades and will get what the improvement means.. hopefully this made myself more clear
It depends on whether or not they can speak to the "story".
Your letter of recommendation is an opportunity to turn your CV into a narrative, and if part of that narrative is your grades suffered early on for one reason or another, and that's been resolved, it's potentially worth talking about. But not if it's just "Joe used to be bad at this, and he's gotten better." They should be able to talk about your growth, how that came about, your development in new directions, etc.
TL;DR: Yes, but only if they can do it well.
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90937 | Are all papers published by ACM indexed in DBLP?
Will a paper accepted by a new conference, whose proceedings will be published by ACM and indexed in Ei Compendex and Scopus, also be indexed in DBLP?
In particular, will the proceedings of ICCBDC be indexed in DBLP?
"and got the answer alone" - if you got the answer, why don't you post it here? You can answer your own questions.
In general, a reliable way to find out in the case of DBLP would probably not be by asking the conference organizers, but the people who curate DBLP.
In the past, I've sent the curator of DBLP an ACM journal which they failed to index. They promptly changed that.
I think this question can be answered via DBLP's FAQ, specifically: What are the criteria for dblp to index a journal or conference? In a nutshell,
DBLP has a venue application and review process that seems to be applied to each newly included venue,
During this process, a set of minimum standards for newly included venues is considered. One of these standards seems to be inherently fulfilled by conferences published in the ACM digital library: ''All full-texts of contributions should be available online (either openly or as a paid service) in an established digital library.''
There are no guarantees for (timely) inclusion: ''Please note that beside the eligibility of a publication venue, the workload and the resources at dblp are always a limiting factor for the inclusion of new venues''.
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570 | Are the Survey rankings for the National Research Council really more objective than the Regression rankings?
This blog post argues so, but I have my doubts since the author works at a graduate program whose S-rankings are much better than its R-rankings. I have a feeling that R-rankings do capture some things that S-rankings don't capture. Professors who are far ahead of their time, for example, might be recognized as such, but I would expect that their papers probably won't get very high citation counts for some time.
Do you mind perhaps elaborating on what S and R rankings are here in the question. Also I assume by NRC you mean the National Research Counsel? Although I do it frequently as well, best not to leave undefined acronyms when possible.
No, both rankings are basically nonsense. Even if you agree with the NRC's choice of a single "quality" model across all intellectual disciplines, the rankings are based on horrendously incomplete and incorrect data. This is especially true in computer science.
Also, the claim in the blog post is an obvious joke. The S-rankings are "better" because writer's home department's S-ranking was better than its R-ranking.
Any ranking that tries to distill a large bunch of heterogeneous statistics into a single number should be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism. There is no inherent reason why a particular set of statistics should be weighted with one set of weights instead of another—and the two different weights could lead to widely divergent results.
That said, if you see a large number of rankings, and they all tend to have fairly similar results, there can be some predictive power in the collective set of rankings. And I would say it's a "loose" scheme at best: the difference between #1 and #2 on such lists is probably not indicative of much; the difference between #10 and #30 or #50 is much more meaningful.
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1712 | Suggestions for high school student who is visiting a professor for HS research?
So this is what she sent me:
i emailed a caltech neurobio prof, dr. X, and he emailed me
back and wants to meet me, im visiting him on june 16...i went through
this sort of thing with ucla and stuff but this time i'm sooo nervous
because he's a caltech prof and caltech is caltech...do you have any
tips for me?
So my general suggestion to her is this: show that you can do something that can reduce the time load on his research (which is pretty much what all PhD/UG/HS research is about) - you want to do things that the professor wants to do but doesn't want to spend the time on, although some professors might be willing to "waste" a little time mentoring high school students and undergrads.
he already asked me what lab and general knowledge i know i told him i
know gel electrophoresis, pcr, restriction endonuclease digestions,
immunohistochemistry, and some basic cell culture techniques and that
i learned some basic neuroscience neuroanatomy and neurohistology and
how to read fmri images through the us nat'l brain bee competition
I also suggested this: when making a list of your skills, show - don't just tell (although this is really hard for many high school students since they haven't had the chance to show yet). Professors are used to people who claim to know more than they really know.
====
What are some other general suggestions that can be helpful to high school students who are trying to do research with specific professors? Generalizable cases are fine - as I do get quite a few emails from high school students who want to seek my advice on how to get research with a professor.
As a HS student visiting a lab, a willingness to do some of the "grunt" work in exchange for a chance to do "real" research is helpful. Being able, and willing, to do literature searches on a database (e.g., pubmed), to download easy to get papers, and go to the library to get hard to find papers papers is really useful for a lab. Most researchers would happily trade their time teaching about the methods they use and love, in exchange for not having to make a run to the library. Being able to do data entry and carry out statistical tests, with guidance, in a program like SPSS, is really valuable. Being able to make charts/figures in programs like Excel, Photoshop and Illustrator is a real plus.
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7501 | Which Internship should I take?
I'm a Chemical Engineering major in undergrad, and I currently have two internship offers this summer.
The first one is a 10 week summer research internship at a top-10 program in petroleum and chemical engineering. The internship concludes with a poster presentation of the work you've done. My work here could potentially turn into a publication. It's worth noting that I've technically already accepted this position. I didn't get the offer for the next one until after I had accepted this one.
The second offer is a full summer semester research internship at the uni I currently attend. I'd be working on the research I'm doing now all summer; as a result, I'd almost certainly be published by the end of the summer, possibly twice since my PI has a couple of papers that just need one more topic covered before they get fully published. It's worth noting that this internship would get me almost twice as much money by the end of it.
My question is: which should I take? I have a very good shot at the Goldwater next year, so I need to know if it would be better to be published, or to have a letter of rec/research experience at a top university.
I'm also meeting with my PI next week to see if I could possibly postpone the one at my school to next summer, so I'd have a chance at doing both.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Welcome to Academia.SE. I just wanted to point out I've edited your question to remove the personally identifying information (which schools you have offers to, and are attending).
Welcome to AC.sx. As your question stands of know, it is not really clear how it relates to academia. Which internship to take really will depend on your future goals. The problem I see is that including your future goals then would make this question very specific to you (see localized in the <http://academia.stackexchange.com/faq faq>. Please consider editing your question to make it both on-topic and broadly of interest.
This is a situation not many people find themselves in—having to choose between several very good options.
The basic issues to ask yourself are the following:
Do you have enough high-quality letters of recommendation for your future needs? If you're doing fellowships, you will definitely need three, and may need four. Again, these should be people who can comment on your abilities beyond simply just reciting grades in lectures. These must be people you have had an ongoing working relationship with. Ideally this is a full-time research mentor, but realistically also can include people such as part-time research mentors (such as REU-like work during the semester), instructors for whom you've worked as a teaching assistant, industrial employers (for an internship), and possibly your academic advisor (if it's someone who's advised you for multiple years).
Regarding the letter writers: are they all at the same institution? If so, then it might behoove you to find one at another institution. This will be helpful to you, as it shows you're not just a "system" product.
Is the research that you're doing something that you know you want to do, or just think you want to do? You will in general be more likely to have real success if you enjoy the work you want to do.
Will the pay for the "away" program be sufficient to cover your living expenses and needs? If so, then you should neglect the difference in pay between the two programs, and focus on the relative benefits of the two programs for you.
There's no right answer to this question; you just have to choose which option is easier for you to live with.
Thanks, I think I'll go with the top 10 program, because I could definitely use some more letters of recommendation. Publication can come later if it needs to. I think it might be better to build a good foundation (letters and experience) before moving onto something like publication.
Don't misunderstand my points above: publications can be very useful. But a very good letter from a "known" name is probably more valuable than a co-author credit on a publication. (Not to mention—it might open doors for you at the other school, too!)
In the first bullet point, I would change every "should" to must. Your letters must address more than your grades, and they must be from people you've actually worked with.
@JeffE: I agree with you on the second point, but the first point is out of the applicant's control.
@aiesmail: No it isn't. The student can ask point-blank "Are you willing to write a strong recommendation letter that describes more than my performance in class?"
@JeffE: For students in some countries, maybe. In some cultures, including herein Germany, you risk ticking off the faculty--or having them write the same boilerplate letter that they write for everybody else.
@aeismail: I'd be shocked if any of my (many!) German colleagues reacted that way. But then computer science is different.
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8221 | Is a "big ego" necessary for a tenure-track faculty position?
I have worked in a few high profile research institutes for my PhD and postdoc, and find myself a little intimidated by the "strong opinions" and arguments that seem to crop up at the principal investigator level. My personality is somewhat more laid back or agreeable, and I find myself wondering if this would be seen as a "personality flaw" in the somewhat cutthroat funding and scientific world (or at least that part I am exposed to). I'm sure it helps to have a strong opinion of one's own work, but I sometimes find it hard to do so, as I tend to be more self-critical and more concerned about stating something correctly and figuring out what is "right" than necessarily being self-promoting and overconfident in my own abilities, but I feel like that ends up manifesting as some sort of fundamental flaw in relation to others I see advancing into the faculty ranks.
No. At least, it's not a necessary condition in all fields and at all institutions. It is necessary in some fields, at some institutions.
A "big ego" is not a prerequisite; self-confidence and a thick skin are much more important.
@aeismail Hear, hear! I'll also add that academia certainly has a large share of "big egos", but anytime you have a group of people with power to wield, you will likely have a similar situation. Think politicians, lawyers, doctors, CEOs, etc.
@che_kid I like the idea of academics wielding power
This is a very curious discussion. The OP said, "I see people in academia as having big egos", and then all the replies were "No, we don't, these aren't really egos", etc.
I think a "big ego", or at least a healthy dose of self confidence, is necessary for survival as an academic. Our jobs are one of repeated failure. Success rates on grants, publications, experiments, and job applications are often less than 10%. In the face of such frequent failures an abundance of confidence is a require for maintaining ones sanity. Further, many departments verge on dysfunctional and there is generally someone looking to push you down to get ahead (I am not saying everyone is out to get you, but there is generally at least one person in every department looking to get ahead at your expense.) Being confident, outspoken and to an extent self prompting is useful for dealing with these people. The difficult part is not being too self confident and too outspoken and being able to admit when you are wrong.
I wouldn't necessarily say "big ego." I would say a "thick skin" is a prerequisite.
It's important to distinguish inner from outer perspectives here. Someone that is perceived as 'having a big ego' might not feel that way inside, and might be compensating for a bad case of Imposter Syndrome. Or they just might have a big ego through and through :).
As others have pointed out, what you really need is a thick skin, in order to deal with the constant rejection you'll face (jobs, papers, grants, awards, ...). You can acquire a thick skin by having a big ego ("People are too stupid to appreciate my genius") or by being bull-headed ("I don't care what people think: I think this is interesting"), or by other coping mechanisms. This is an internal focus: it doesn't matter what you show on the outside.
Occasionally though, it's helpful to project an aura of confidence and assuredness, most commonly when you're interviewing, or when you're psyching yourself to write a grant or pitch a project. Again, this is an external focus: it doesn't matter how you feel on the inside.
Ultimately, you'll (hopefully) find a harmonious balance between what you project to the outside world, and how you feel on the inside. They don't have to necessarily be the same view though: they rarely are.
I am sure a psychologist could provide an indepth analysis to a large part of this question. I am not a psychologist so I will try to stick to what I think I can answer. First, it is usually the big and loud heads that stick out and are seen, there are probably just as many quieter academics in similar positions that you do not see or hear.
I am sure it is possible to talk yourself into a top position but not without showing excellence in your science, usually reflected in a publication record and funding success (sadly to a lesser extent teaching). But, the academic record on paper is typically what counts and it would only be in an interview situation between two equally talented candidates that things can be swung. But even then, I do not think the ego would necessarily have an advantage. Then there is the question what happens after you are employed and how one develops as a person but that is out of scope for me.
A problem more timid persons experience is to strike the right tone in pushing ones own merits. Taking advice from entrusted clleagues is a good way forward. But, as a whole a "big ego" in the negative sense is not necessary, a good academic record is.
A "big ego" is definitely not necessary. Of all the scholars I have interacted with, the biggest-shots were often less egotistical than the average person. Especially at the highest levels of academia, the strongest work often comes from those who are willing and able to listen to and improve on the ideas of others.
However, you do need to make yourself heard. You do need to be bold. I do not know a single successful tenure-track person who sits on ideas until they are sure that they're right. You don't find out an idea is right by mulling it over. You find out by formulating the problem rigorously, by testing a hypothesis, and by subjecting it to the most scathing peer-review you can find (not necessarily in that order, as you might do some of these steps multiple times). There's no harm in being self-critical or unsure that you're right. There is harm when that hinders you from taking the necessary steps to find out if you're right.
You don't need an ego. In fact, ego just makes life more difficult in many ways. All you need is to able to project confidence, and the ability to assert yourself. A simple ability to stand your ground and stand behind your opinions, even if quietly so.
Think about the guy or gal you know who doesn't talk too loudly but everyone listens when he or she speaks. Try to emulate that person, not the egos in the room. People generally dislike people with big egos, but they love people with genuine confidence. People will respect the hell out of you for it.
There are many resources online regarding how to project confidence--I suggest looking there.
Usually, it is the person with the money, or with the administrative influence, who is being listened to in most meetings.
Academia, as many other fields, is the survival of the fittest game. If you see PIs with big egos (or rather if most of the PIs you see have big egos), then it means that this is the personality trait that academia cultivates, albeit unknowingly, implicitly and subversively.
Academia is a race against time -- if you hesitate about your research idea for too long, and wait to perfect it, you will either be scooped, or will run out of your time in your (presumably rather junior) position. Submitting something that is just "good enough not to disgust the three referees" that you yourself know isn't the greatest paper, and getting it published, gets you the confirmation of "Aha, I am a smart enough person to game the system". Then you learn to salami-slice it to boost your # of publications; then you learn to attribute collaborative teamwork to yourself when your chair asks you, "How many papers have you published this year?" -- all these things sound a lot like "I, me, myself", and occasional big carrots (your R01 grant; your tenure) are obviously about you. When you do this for 20 years in a row, your skin gets so thick that it looks very much like a big ego from outside.
Don't worry, you will see big egos in most other fields at the higher levels -- think real estate development and golf, which are closely intertwined, anyway; you would not find folks in these lines of work very approachable.
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34555 | Why the taboo against naming discoveries after yourself?
It is often considered a very bad idea to try to name a discovery (a law, phenomenon or an invention) after yourself.
On the other hand, there are many species names which seem to be a bastardized Latin of the discoverer's name. With gene names, I'm not sure, but I've seen many frivolous gene names, such as those inspired by cartoon characters. I wonder if you could get away with naming a gene after yourself if you wanted to.
In other cases, such as names of synthetic strains and plasmids, it is in fact preferable to use the researcher's name. Off the top of my head, I recall GFAJ-1 - the surrounding controversy aside, given all the work she's done, what is so wrong about her wanting to name it after herself?
However, why is this so? Apparently, it can even advance to an extreme where many years after a discovery has become established and associated with Dr. Jones, when he writes a review article on applications of the Jones Effect he will still carefully avoid acknowledging this name.
Isn't it convenient to simply name something after yourself when no clever acronym exists? Isn't doing the work of the discovery enough to earn the right to name a thing? Doesn't the fact that the discovery is important enough to be published automatically imply that it's important enough to be named after oneself?
Why you would think the "Superbest" phenomenon would be a good name for something? Jokes aside, naming things after yourself is best reserved for cranks and not scientists.
@Alexandros Like I said, ever so often one makes a legitimate discovery which is difficult to name in a descriptive fashion. In such cases, especially when comparing a new, tentative discovery to others, it seems like naming it after yourself is the best (pun intended) option.
Does everything need an explicit name?
@AustinHenley My question is about those things for which having an explicit name is very convenient.
My impression is that many such names are given to the discovery after the fact. The first paper to cite the initial discovery might call it the "Jones effect" for the sake of brevity, and so the name sticks.
Sonic Hedgehog is something from biology. Can you tell me what it is? If you're going to name it after yourself, or something, it helps to indicate what it's about. Newton's theory of gravity. Jones Effect of double-frying fries.
@Compass In fact Shh was named that because the mutant fly embryo looks spiny - this doesn't explain exactly what it does (though already suggests a central developmental role!) but then expecting it to is unfair, since its function was not well known when it was named. Anyhow, have you ever had discussions about "Jones model, Smith model and the model I propose"? That is where the utility is supposed to be.
@Moriarty True, and I am wondering: Why not just cut to the chase, and name it after yourself to make discussion easier? Given how often communities choose to go with that convention, one suspects it facilitates discourse. If it facilitates discourse, why not obtain that facilitation sooner, by naming it yourself?
@Superbest my guess is that that is a rather pompous approach to things. It's your peers that should decide if it is an important enough discovery to earn a perpetual name.
Btw, as well as being frowned on it's probably unwise. What if you name something the "Jones effect" and then a couple of years later discover an even more important effect? You call it "Jones's second effect" and look a proper charlie? ;-) Whereas if the name is informal and takes a while to be taken up, you still have a shot that the important one ends up called the "Jones effect".
Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/34547/10643
@CapeCode Not just related, but inspired this one!
@SteveJessop Why not? Newton got a first, second, and third law; why can't I have a first, second, and third effect? ;P
@Doc: It would be cool if Newton had published the first one as "Newton's law of motion", with great fanfare and trumpeting, received his knighthood, and then came back "oh, hang on a minute, we're going to need another one". Then five years later, "look, you're not going to believe this..."
related
Do you have any links to sites where it is mentioned that this practise is considered taboo?
Is there an existing word for this (discouraged) practice? I suggested autoeponymity at one point.
While appears to be true that GFAJ-1 was controversial and that the discoverer named it after themself, it appears that the controversy was centered around the extraordinary biochemical claims about GFAJ-1 that were then refuted by other research groups rather than the name itself. And while naming something after oneself tends to be rather poor form, that particular name appears to have been humorous, making it less objectionable.
In general, the name of a thing should indicate an aspect of it which is very important to the person assigning the name. A person who creates something and names it after themselves implies that they think the most important thing about it is that they created it. That would in turn suggest to anyone who isn't interested in the person who created it would likely not be interested in the thing thus named.
Thus, naming something after oneself is not necessarily a sign of ego, but rather the opposite. If Alex Johnson (made-up name) publishes a paper entitled "Alex Johnson's Laws of Quarkions", the title would suggest that the paper was primarily relevant in relation to Alex Johnson's other work and would have little relevance outside that. If instead the paper had been simply published "Laws of Quarkions", that would have a stronger implication that the author believed laws described therein to be universal, and thus relevant everywhere.
It is only after the importance of something becomes self-evident that the attaching of the creator's name to it really serves to elevate the status of the creator. Until such time, the attachment of the creator's name will tend to deprecate the importance of the thing thus named.
"the most important thing about it is that he created it" - I think this was exactly the answer I was looking for. I'll accept since I can't argue with this logic.
Traditionally naming after scientists has been considered an honour bestowed upon somebody by their colleagues. This is why there are plenty of such names in latin animal or plant names. one very good example is Strigiphilus garylarsoni, a chewing louse, named after Gary Larson, author of the Far Side.
Naming can also be subject to strict laws. In some countries, it is, for example, not possible to name official places after persons until after they have passed away. This is to prevent people to inflate their own reputation while alive (it is quite easy to see where such behaviour is going overboard). But, this is a digression.
The main point is that etiquette indicates that one does not name things after one-self, one can hope that the work is so appreciated by others that a naming occurs. It is probably also a good thing that everything we discover is not named after a person. I drove my Smith at 120 kiloJones per Dickens.
Wouldn't you you want a guacamole of Hydrogen molecules, though?
Interesting! But Gary Larson was far from a lousy cartoonist ;). More trivia: the lemur species Avahi cleesei is named after John Cleese (which he regards as a higher honor than the knighthood he declined).
Please, kilojones per dickens. The unit name is with a lower case letter. ;-) (Also, careful you don't get a ticket.)
What's the difference between a kilojansson-richerby and kilovolt-ampere (kVA)? Actually, I guess I do prefer more romantic names, rolls off the tongue better...damn you Watt, Joule, and Tesla!
@NickT Note also that he didn't drive his Smith, but he could have driven his Ford.
One reason is that academia tends to frown on self promotion of all sorts (not just naming things after yourself). This is certainly not a universal rule, and some areas are more tolerant of self promotion than others, but it's a good first approximation.
Another reason is avoiding conflicts of interest. A meaningful, descriptive name is better than naming something after its discoverer (imagine if black holes were called something like "Smith objects"). Furthermore, several people are often involved in any given discovery, either as coauthors or as authors of related papers, and it can be tricky to decide who really deserves the most credit. If you let people name things after themselves, they will naturally have a bias to choose that name instead of a more meaningful or appropriate name. Ruling this out of course doesn't eliminate all bias, but it's a start.
I don't think the terminological clarity argument holds up very well: we may have back holes, but we also have Wolf-Rayet stars and the Chandrasekhar limit.
@jakebeal: We do have plenty of things named after people, but I believe that naming pattern is worse for the community (it's a small but real increase in barriers to understanding and memory). This is best reserved for cases in which it's difficult to think of a really good descriptive name or when the community wants to honor an outstanding contribution (and is willing to sacrifice clarity to do so). Either way, it's a conflict of interest for someone to make this decision regarding their own name.
The one word answer is: culture. The culture of academia — and indeed many other areas of life — has a variety of rules placed on self-promotion and naming. These are, in many way, arbitrary, capricious, and often illogical or unreasonable, but that's just how culture is. It serves various functions, some good and some bad.
The general rule is: complimenting someone is an honor, while complimenting yourself is usually frowned upon. The cultural mores are that you should be concerned with other people's opinion of you and work hard to win their high regards, but you should be humble and uncertain of your own personal values.
This is partly due to a myriad of psychological mechanisms, like the fundamental negative bias (people are naturally better at spotting and remembering negative things), attribution bias, illusory superiority (everyone thinks they are above average), tactics to combat free-loaders/loafers/cons, and vested/conflicted interest.
In short: we are highly skeptical of people who are trying to tell us how great they are. Also, naming things is hard, at the same time as having something named after you is considered an extremely high honor — a truly grand compliment.
If I said, "Man, that Brian guy is really an amazingly great person" or if I discovered a previously unknown kind of rock and named them "Brian rocks", there are many people who would immediately have the urge to punch me in the face.
It is further generally recommended that you avoid doing things that make people instinctively want to punch you in the face. And so it goes in academia. You are free to ignore it and name a tower after yourself or try to place your own name on a discovery, but you should just be warned that some people might not react well to this.
Ultimately, it's just a weird social truth: it's always better to have people compliment you than to have to do it yourself. That's not to say you can't toot your own horn (especially when no one else seems to want to), but it's way better to get yourself a shill.
Man, that Superbest guy asks great questions...
Note: Not all cultures are this way. Indeed, in business it is generally accepted that you can name the business or product after yourself all you want, and self-promotion is often actively encouraged with far less limitations. This is, one might imagine, an area where business and academia don't always see eye to eye.
Oddly enough, I've hardly ever wanted to "punch someone in the face" simply because they named discoveries after themselves. It always seemed like a natural thing, and part of the motivation.
@Superbest Me either, which I think is why it seems so weird at times - I mean, I really don't mind, so why should someone else? Unfortunately that's not how things work - some people mind about all kinds of stuff. While I generally love "those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter" I'm not sure how well this applies in academia. I don't know of any horror stories though, so I perhaps wonder just how bad this is - is it just frowned upon by some, or is it a poison pill? That I don't feel qualified to answer, as I haven't witnessed it either way.
My sense of this is that a name on a scientific artifact is seen as a form of immortality. Newton's Laws will remain Newton's Laws for untold centuries to come, and Isaac Newton will be remembered as an important figure of science for discovering them, just as Carl Friedrich Gauss will be remembered, and Leonhard Euler, and Edsger Dijkstra, and Marie Curie, and so on. Even when the students who use their names don't know their biography, they honor their memory.
If you name something after yourself, you are saying that your accomplishment is as significant and deserving of going down in history as the ones that I have named above. Most scientific work, however, doesn't turn out that way. Even the work that does is mostly identified only by how it stands the test of time. So if you name something after yourself, you are effectively saying that you are so smart that you can see into the future and tell that history will judge your work as super-important.
What a massively egotistical assumption!
Note: Some things, like synthetic plasmids, are exempt from this principle because they are not so much immortalizations as card catalog indices. You are not likely, for example, to find "Janet Wang's plasmid," but rather "pJanetWang-73j-v2" meaning something like Janet Wang's 73rd plasmid, type j, version 2.
"If you name something after yourself, you are saying that your accomplishment is as significant and deserving of going down in history as the ones that I have named above." - But when you submit a paper, you are not suggesting the same for your work? Even greater discoveries have been published, that were not named for their discoverers. Besides, the egotism you describe seems to be self-punishing: If the thing I name is not truly worth naming, no one will bother repeating that name anyhow.
@Superbest When you submit a paper, you are not suggesting the same for your work? Of course not: putting your name on a paper is just signing your work.
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153716 | How does the American PhD system works for foreign students?
I'm a MSc Theoretical Physics student from Italy, and I'll most likely graduate around the end of next year: for the Italian academic system, this means that I'll be ready to try to get into a PhD program (after 3 years of BSc and 2 of MSc).
I'm considering other countries' universities too, and since I spent a year of High School in the US I was looking for information about it. For what I understood, their post-secondary education system is college (4 years) for a BSc, then either Master or PhD (? years). Is this understanding correct? If so, do they have special rules for foreign students who already have a BSc and a MSc?
Does this answer your question? How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?
@GoodDeeds not fully, as my question specifically regards foreign students, but it cleans some mist off the subject, so thanks for the link.
Apply and find out.
Before you go, be very careful to find out all of the costs and what funding you can get. Be very sure that you can tolerate the debt you may have to take on, if you must. In this context Google is your friend. Google up grants and scholarships and tuition costs. Many scholarships require you to apply in order to get considered. Ask the secretary of the head of the departments you are considering. And be VERY nice to that secretary.
In most fields, US PhDs can start right after a bachelor's degree. Some incoming US students will have masters degrees, either because they've been uncertain about their career path and or because they pursue a masters to get more experience to make their applications look better (especially if their undergraduate research experience is lacking).
Because US PhDs usually start right after a BS/BA, they are typically longer than the European variety; 5 years is common, though for some fields they can be much longer, up to 10 years.
Coming in with a European masters (or a US masters, for that matter), there is not typically anything that will allow you to complete the US PhD faster than normal. There might be cases where you can skip some coursework, but that will be handled on a case-by-case basis.
Funding can sometimes be more difficult for foreign students unless their own government provides support, since some funding sources are not available to international students (especially fellowships from the US government). Other funding is available to all (most TAs, sometimes with a more strict language requirement, many RAs and PAs; check with programs you want to apply to about their funding availability).
Many programs and universities will have information for potential incoming international graduate students, you should search the websites for individual schools/programs you are interested in. Some of this additional information will cover things like visa requirements (including funding) and language proficiency. An example from my own institution is here: https://grad.wisc.edu/international-students/
As far as PhDs as a job, I'm less familiar with Italy but have seen the German system explained often here: US PhDs are not jobs like German ones are. That said, almost all US PhD students (and especially in STEM) have some sort of funded position that includes a stipend, and typically this comes with tuition remission, so you take home a (modest) income to pay expenses, while not paying tuition. Other students are on fellowships or traineeships that specifically fund a students' education and include a stipend.
For some fields, these are usually Research Assistant positions, where you work on a research project for pay (sometimes this is the same as your PhD thesis, sometimes not - again, depends on field and circumstance), or Teaching Assistant positions, where you teach or help teach a course or two. Programs typically guarantee some sort of funding for X years; if you take longer, you could possibly find yourself without funding (the likelihood of this depends on the field; I don't know about theoretical physics but my educated guess would be that there are enough TA positions in physics that as long as you're willing to teach you'd find a TA spot). There are also cases where someone might do an unfunded/self-funded PhD - unless you (or your family) are independently wealthy I would strongly advise against this (you will find other Q&A here about it).
At the most you might shave off a year or the equivalent of a semester. That's pretty field-dependent though.
@AzorAhai--hehim Agreed, and probably the only chance for that would be in a heavily coursework-dependent field and with directly overlapping prior courses.
Or perhaps continuing in the same department (although obviously not relevant for this OP).
Thanks, this combined with @Anyon 's comment answer my question. You mentioned funding: is the PhD in the US not a paid job? In Italy they pay you (not much, but at least it's a positive income)
@MauroGiliberti Yes and no; I suspect in practice it's pretty similar, though; I've edited a bit more explanation to expand on that.
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159248 | How to know one's way around for PhD in Covid times
I'm a physics graduate student in Italy, and I'd like to continue my formation with a PhD after my thesis.
I would like to consider the idea of going someplace, but the problem I encountered is I wouldn't know where. By this I mean, even in the field of theoretical physics, and even in the subfield of high energy theoretical physics, there are a ton of different research subjects and different teams researching them, even finding "the right one" among my professors was hard enough. How am I supposed to find one among many universities in many countries?
When I asked some friends who are doing a PhD away how they did it, they simply said "Oh I don't know, talking with professors and other students, listening to coffee-break chats, this kind of things". As you may guess, the past year (and possibly the current too) has lacked this kind of things.
How should one approach this problem in Covid times? Is there an online list of who is doing what in what university? Is it common to ask "what are your researchers doing" in an email?
You should ask your thesis advisor and other professors in your department for advice.
It's fine to email people. Many funding agencies publish lists of grants awarded recently.
In my experience in finding a PhD, I would try two things: 1. Discuss your plans for a PhD with your thesis supervisors and ask them if they are aware of any relevant open positions or researchers you could email. 2. Search online for open positions or interesting research groups. Unfortunately, there isn't one place that lists all open positions etc., so you'll have to do a lot of searching online.
for theoretical (and especially high energy) physics look at https://inspirehep.net, under "jobs", plenty of PhD positions advertised there. I moved abroad for my PhD, and I found the position advertised on a similar website. Also, it sounds dumb, but I spent a lot of evenings looking up "[city] theoretical physics" on Google for many major European cities and ending up on department websites. I got some replies and interviews just by emailing random professors expressing interest.
I'd like to continue my formation with a PhD after my thesis.
You should have told us why. Think over it. Be ready to answer that question. Only go for a PhD if you can tell why. If you find your own answer convincing.
consider the idea of going someplace...
Excellent. Go to some place where research is decently funded, and where corruption is low. An easy measure for corruption is in the faculty's CVs: did they come from outside, or have they been promoted in-house?
even in the subfield of high energy theoretical physics
Don't choose the prefered subfield of some of the brightest minds, except if you are so brilliant that you can reasonably hope to make some difference in that field. Rather be the clever guy in a down-to-earth subfield. There are fascinating research questions everywhere. Lots of engineering is built on wild heuristics that is waiting for solid physical foundations. In condensed-matter physics, given the incredible variety of material structures, there are much more challenging questions than in theoretical HEP, and much less theoretists per question.
How should one approach this problem in Covid times?
Yes, times are hard. But I see there also a little advantage for your remote applications: as these days everybody has to use electronic means of communication, this brings you in one line with local candidates.
Is it common to ask "what are your researchers doing" in an email?
To whom would you write that mail? Wouldn't they get the impression that you haven't done your homework?
Is there an online list of who is doing what
Of course you can start from faculty lists, then proceed to their CVs and publication lists. But as you are not yet decided geographically, it's better you scan recent editions of high-level research journals, and look for work that is really impressing you. Then contact the authors.
in what university?
In many places, universities are second-tier. Don't overlook the well funded national laboratories and other research institutes outside the university system.
WRT Covid. Note that times are hard, indeed, but everyone else faces the same issue.
WRT field. I differ a bit. Do what you love. Don't try to be strategic about it if you wind up doing something you find boring.
@Buffy: Thanks. Edited Covid paragraph to acknowledge actual hardship. Regarding field: I'm eternally grateful to a HEP prof who did not accept me as a student ... I would not have gone far in that field.
Who can say. You may have done better than you think. I studied math because, mentally, I had no options (gave myself no options). It was great. But I had to switch to CS because of market conditions. I adapted as we all must. And I still think of myself as a mathematician, primarily.
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19801 | What should I do if an admissions office asks me for a bachelor's thesis, when my program didn't require it?
I recently applied to a university for a PhD program.They asked me to submit all of my documents.When I submitted my documents they asked for my Bachelors thesis. There is no Bachelors thesis or undergraduate research in our university.You can do it but its not a requirement and nobody does it given the time constraint of 6 months for Bachelors Final project. I have my Masters thesis but there was no bachelors thesis. There was a final project in bachelors but it was not research based. The hr said that "in case the thesis is not available,you can send an extended abstract". How do I properly address this situation ?
Send your master thesis?
Send the results of that final project?
Have you emailed/phoned them to ask them what to do/ what they actually want?
Send the one sentence "My university did not require a Bachelors thesis, so there is nothing for me to submit."
@Paxinum They are asking for both bachelors and Masters thesis.
@jojo I believe you already have the answer to your question: send an extended abstract of your project. You can also add a letter explaining the situation and stating that no Bachelor Thesis was required. You should send your Master Thesis as well.
As suggested in the comments above, I would send both the final project writeup and your masters thesis with a letter explaining the situation (no bachelors thesis required at your university), and contact the department and ask them how they wish you to proceed. At the end of the day, it's their requirement, so it's their call.
We were only required to submit the source code of the application and then give a viva of the project.No write up or document was required. What should I include in the bachelors write up ?
@jojo - Given that, I would definitely start with just calling the department and asking them what they want you to do.
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10152 | How do researchers handle hypotheses?
In my field (biology), the end of the introduction in a research article generally ends with a list of hypotheses that the researchers tested. A common structure of this part of a research paper is:
'We tested (1) hypothesis X (2) hypothesis Y and (3) hypothesis Z'.
The research papers I read often test between two and four hypotheses. I'm interested in how the researchers generally arrive at this list of two and four hypotheses. Do they start with a list of 10+ hypotheses, and tick off the ones that they fail to say anything useful about? Or do they stick with the same two to four hypotheses throughout a research project? Or do researchers not begin with any hypotheses, and fit some suitable hypotheses after checking their results?
What is your hypothesis?
In a typical math paper, the hypotheses at the end of the introduction are called theorems at the end of the paper after rigorous testing. How to pick them depends on a large number of factors, and it's a skill you first learn at grad school and then keep honing as you get better at math. I'm guessing it's more or less the same in biology.
I disagree with the previous comment. In a typical math paper, there are no hypotheses, only theorems, and they are not tested, but proved. Typically the theorems in the paper are chosen by painting the target around the arrow after it lands.
@JeffE It's not a serious comment if you didn't notice. But I do believe that what authors claim is a theorem should be understood as a hypothesis (or conjecture) until you read the proof and convince yourself or come up with your own. The editorial "we" haven't proved them; "we" are going to prove them. Hence, they're hypotheses or conjectures when you first see them in the first section. To prove is to test the validity in a specific way. Thus, it is still testing. I agree with your second point, and I think it's the same as in other fields. I don't think it contradicts my comment.
I believe that in many fields of study, the hypothesis is "implicit," in the sense that we're not explicitly writing down a statement such as "we believe that effect Y is the result of cause X." This is especially true in fields associated with "inverse" methods, where the idea is to build a model that explains a result. In such cases, you know what the "answer" is (the phenomenon you're looking to explain or quantify), but you might not necessarily predict in advance what causes the result you want. Even if the model is successful in reproducing the result, you may not be able to predict why that model worked without deeper investigation of the data that is produced. Hence, any attempt at formal, explicit hypotheses is largely guesswork.
In social science, there are often a number of formalized hypothesis in every paper. This is because in human behavior study, there are often a number of nuances which are being studied at the same time (which allows you to reach aforementioned hypothesis)
The way in which I, as a current graduate student (not in social science but intersecting with it in my work) have been trained is through the following two approaches.
If I am doing qualitative research then I often adopt a grounded theory approach in which there are no pre-determined hypotheses. There could be research questions instead.
If I am engaged in quantitative inquiry then I adopt formalized hypothesis from the existing literature. e.g. existing literature says X contributes to Y. I think Z is another variable which might contribute to Y ergo, I might develop H1: X + Z contributes to Y.
In (cognitive) neuroscience, most often there is either a single hypothesis in the introduction, or two competing ones. The Journal of Neuroscience, for example, limits introductions to 500 words, which doesn't allow for much space to describe the theory behind many hypotheses.
In the results and discussion section, however, it is common to offer alternative hypotheses which could explain the obtained pattern of results, and to then proceed to discard them through control experiments, additional analyses, or on theoretical grounds. There is no real limit on the number of alternative hypotheses tested, but usually, the stronger the journal, the more analyses you need to persuade the reviewers that your explanation is the most likely one.
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1471 | When meeting a professor for the first time, is it always a good idea to ask about their research interests?
I'd imagine that a good fraction would actually start to tire (a bit) of the repetitiveness of describing their research hundreds of times over, and would probably want to talk about something else.. After all, does the professor usually benefit when they talk about their research to a random undergrad?
Yet, "ask the professor about his research" is generally considered to be standard social advice in academia... (after all, people love to talk about themselves - http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-people-brain-scans.html ). Is the pleasure of talking about your research similar to the excitement of having the liberty to be self-centered and to talk about yourself?
But maybe professors would prefer to talk about something else - it's just that it's hard to think of a topic that they would prefer talking about, so it's simply a "safe option" to ask them questions about their research?
What I am really interested in - is this - would professors usually prefer to talk about something other than their research, if some such common topic could conceivably be found?
Whenever you meet anyone for the first time, discussing their job/work is almost always a safe topic of conversation and can serve as a good icebreaker. Academia is no different.
Oh I see - good point.
@eykanal: I kind of disagree. For most people, their current projects and publications cannot be found on their website, which is often the case for professors. At least in some situations - e.g. having an appointment with a professor to ask him about getting a project topic - wouldn't starting the conversation with "Can you tell me about your research?" be the worst possible start, immediately raising the first red flag for the professor by showing that you didn't even bother to check what topics that particular professor is actually interested in?
It depends on the context I guess.
If you are alone at a coffee break, and eager to discuss with someone, you should maybe consider discussing on something else, or on someone else research (talk about the talk just before the break, talk about the nice venue, talk about the quality of the banquet, etc.).
But If you have a purpose wrt talking to a specific person, go straight to the point. You have a technical question about one of my paper, ask it! You are looking for an intership, say it! Don't try to be too smart by starting a broad discussion that you will narrow later. You have only a few minutes to go from the status of "yet another boring chitchat" to "mmm, interesting", don't spoil these minutes.
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4887 | How do the "proposed research" essays of those who win NSF Fellowships compare with those who don't win NSF Fellowships?
I just looked at the research proposals of a few people who failed to win the NSF Fellowship, and they actually scare me a bit.
I know that the NSF cares about Broader Impact a lot, and that is where I might actually be strongest at. But the reviews look at intellectual merit first and foremost, and that's what scares me, since how can you convince the reviewers that your idea has more intellectual merit than a huge number of other very strong applicants?
@user4512 That is really bizarre.
As someone who reviews graduate applications, both for admissions and for fellowships, I can say that the number of strong applications is really large, and now in many cases is almost certainly larger than the number of fellowships being awarded in most of these competitions. The unfortunate side effect of this, which is obvious here, is that in most cases, you could have an application that is "strong enough" to merit receiving the fellowship, but not get it. Unfortunately, you don't get to do multiple stochastic realizations; you have to deal with the events the one time they unfold.
That said, how do you impress the reviewer? By having a clear sense of what your project is, and being able to talk about coherently and convincingly. The reviewers are looking for good ideas and good people to fund. You need to convince them that you're going to be a good researcher, and you have a good idea to "sell." If you don't think your research is all that amazing, how are you going to convince somebody else about that?
Very good points. :) The one important question I'd like to add, though, is this: can you convince them that you're a good person to fund in the proposed research statement? Usually this convincing is done in the personal statement instead, but I'm wondering if it can be done in proposed research too?
The only way to do that is to bring in relevant details about your experience into the research proposal. Make sure the research proposal is primarily a research proposal. But you can try to make the case that you're the right person for the project, and why. But I certainly wouldn't try to drive that point home at the expense of making a better case for the project you want to pursue!
"But you can try to make the case that you're the right person for the project, and why. But I certainly wouldn't try to drive that point home at the expense of making a better case for the project you want to pursue"
^Wow - that is an amazing point!
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485 | Are university counseling services usually able to help with the professional troubles that PhD students face?
The thing with PhDs is that it often takes someone who knows the politics and people of the field in order to really understand (or help) a PhD student's troubles (if any arise). At the same time, there are many similarities.
If they don't, who are the other best people to talk to in case issues arise?
This question is pretty vague. "Counseling services" can refer to many departments (student services, medical assistance, benefits...), and "issues" is very broad. Perhaps you could specify what you're referring to?
In particular, do you mean personal troubles (like anxiety or depression or impostor syndrome) or professional troubles (like administrative hurdles or paper rejections or an irresponsible advisor)?
Professional troubles. But also personal troubles that arise out of professional troubles too.
Many university mental health centers have PhD-only group therapy programs. These often focus on stress and anxiety. They will be proctored by a professional counselor but are designed to be a space where graduate students can help each other.
The benefit is two-fold - you get to talk to people who are in grad school in your university, perhaps in a similar field or program. You'd be surprised how similar some issues are regardless of field of study (research falling behind, concern about funding, conflicts with PIs/advisers, etc.). But in group therapy you are able to work through issues in an explicitly private space. If you are having a serious issue, it may be good to start here rather than within your department. I'd say that is any grievance you air to someone within your department has the chance to spread.
In general, university counseling should be aware of how to deal with PhD student affairs as well as undergraduate issues. (Perhaps different staff or the two groups, perhaps not.) However, I'll focus on the "if they don't" part of your question.
There is usually a graduate "officer" in most departments, who is tasked with making sure that graduate students complete the requirements of their studies, and that departmental regulations and policies are being followed. This officer should be the first person to talk to if something goes wrong, and the problem can't be resolved between the parties directly.
Beyond that, the members of the thesis committee have an obligation to intervene in the case of severe conflicts that could disrupt the program. Ultimately, though, the chair of the department would be the last "internal" stop before you would have to go to the university-level administration (the office of the dean of graduate students, or a similar position).
If you are looking for advice from fellow students, perhaps you can get information from the student committee that is present in most departments.
Generally speaking, you'll get the best advice from one of the following, in order of usefulness & availability to help:
Your advisor
Postdocs in your lab/field
Other graduate students in your lab/field
Close collaborators
Your committee members
University departmental staff
...
In the past, I have spoken with departmental staff for issues, including my department chair, but often they're pretty limited in what they can offer. Your most useful advice will often come from the top three in the above list.
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1563 | Can graduate students be forced to leave graduate school under pressure from their advisers?
And how often does it happen? I know someone who was de facto kicked out of Harvard due to some conflict with his advisers, though he was later able to transfer to Caltech.
As an example - what if there was an irreconcilable difference between the student and adviser, and what if other advisers were reluctant to take the student on (for whatever reason)?
Define "forced". Does it differ from "driven around the bend and taken away by the nice men in white coats"?
As an example - what if there was an irreconcilable difference between the student and adviser, and what if other advisers were reluctant to take the student on (for whatever reason)?
@InquilineKea: In that situation, even if they aren't officially kicked out, leaving the program might be the student's sanest option. (I really hope this is just a hypothetical question.)
At the university where I did my master's, the form for submission of dissertation asked "is this dissertation submitted with the acquiescence of the supervisor?" -- I always wondered what the procedure was for "no" answer here, since the rest of the form assumed the supervisor's approval.
Like @Suresh says, in the US, I would expect that the advisor-advisee relationship would be separate from enrollment in the department. The advisor can decline to continue funding the student, and can decline to continue advising the student. However usually the advisor cannot force the student out of the graduate program; that's up to the department or university. I would expect that most departments or universities would have an established process for asking students to leave, which would typically be if the student is not making satisfactory progress towards their degree or meeting other requirements. Normally I would expect this process to include some degree of warnings and feedback.
That said, there is some coupling between the advisor-advisee relationship and one's status as a graduate student. Many PhD programs have a requirement that the graduate student must have a faculty advisor. If the student's current advisor is no longer willing to continue advising them, and if no other faculty is willing to advise the student, then this may eventually lead to the student being asked to leave the graduate program, for failure to meet the program requirements. Normally I would expect that to happen only in egregious cases: most departments probably feel a sense of responsibility towards their graduate students, take care to look out for their students, and try to create an environment that gives students a chance to finish their degree.
"towards their degree or meeting or other requirements." Can't parse this. Perhaps "towards their degree or not meeting some other requirements", perhaps? Also "try to create an environment gives students a chance to finish their degree." I think there should be a "that" before the "gives", or similar.
This is such a loaded question I'm hesitant to answer. While it might seem that a student was "kicked out" of a program for conflicts with an advisor, most departments (including ours!) have a procedure and policy for when students are asked to leave the program.
Usually, the reasons would be some mixture of lack of basic minimum grades and lack of satisfactory progress. if there's conflict between a student and advisor, there's usually some departmental mediator (a director of the graduate program) who should be able to step in and deal with the situation (either finding the student another advisor, or something like that).
But I'm not aware of it being generally possible for an advisor to fire a student and have that student then be removed from the graduate program: these two things are usually separate.
The answer is "it depends". It depends on the country and it probably even varies between universities.
In some countries, Sweden or the Netherlands, for example, it is virtually impossible to force a graduate student to leave, though eventually the funding allocated to that student may expire. I am aware of one case of academic misconduct in the Netherlands where the student was more or less forced to quit or otherwise face a long and painful series of disciplinary hearings to officially make him leave.
In other places, Belgium, for example, students are often paid based on year long contracts (graduate students are employees). The contracts can be evaluated each year and terminated in the case of unsatisfactory performance. Of course, matters are handled delicately, and often by involving the student in the process. That is, discuss the student's performance and paint a bleak picture and let him/her see that quitting is the best option.
From the student's perspective, it is best that they do not waste 4+ years of their lives and achieve nothing.
From the university/department/professor's perspective, it is best that the student does not waste 4+ years of funding and achieve nothing.
It's a win-win.
Almost absolutely. This happened to me at a university computer science Ph.D program in the US. I was admitted with only one year of funding guarantee. When I asked about the offer and questioned about the funding for remaining years, I received vague answers.
When I arrived there, I was told if I can not find an advisor in a year no more funding would be offered. Though this seems reasonable, the trick was that no advisor was interested in or available to take me. I was ignored to death and could not find an advisor in a year. The funding did not continue and I had to leave the United States, as I was international and can not pay from my pocket.
Later I realized that this was a scam and department over admits in the need of cheap teaching TA labour under the disguise of a PhD. No professor had voted for my admission, at least softly. Also, students they trusted were offered full (multi- year) funding packages. Though I was suspicious of only one year funding guarantee in my admission offer, I was naive to US funding system and could not see the scam at that time.
I had written the university name for shame and name purposes, seems like it is removed and anonymized. Not surprised how these suckers can get along with what they do easily, as they are protected by the community by being anonymized.
In my college a graduate student was terminated with a master degree in the middle of PhD due to his inabilities to perform well in the lab.
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21238 | How should I prepare e-prints (pre-prints and post-prints) of already published papers?
I am about to embark on the publication of pre-prints or post-prints of about a dozen papers that have already been published in peer-reviewed journals. I plan to use the SHERPA/RoMEO database to decide whether to publish a pre-print or post-print, and when it is appropriate. I have backed up the published papers at both the pre-peer review and post-peer review stages.
These documents will be lodged primarily with my institutions repository, but also on a personal website and perhaps academia.edu. Due to my field of research, arvix is not appropriate.
I am aware that I may need to make some modifications to the manuscripts before lodging them as a pre-post print. For example, it seems appropriate to link to the canonical, published version of the paper on the cover sheet. But I am unaware of what other changes I may need to make to the manuscript. A checklist of modifications to make would ease this process and help me to avoid missing things.
What steps should I go through to prepare a manuscript for publication as a pre-print or post-print?
UPDATE: I've made an example post-print here. Are there any concrete improvements I could make on this, or important things I'm missing?
I am wondering: why one would want to publish a pre-print if a (probably improved by referee's comments) post-print is available? Except for copyright reasons of course...
@Taladris so that people can read the paper without a subscription? And see my answer: referees suggestions are often allowed to be included.
@Taladris: Also, in some cases, you might be happier with the pre-print version. I heard of somebody who recommends to read his preprints, as only they include conclusions along the lines of “another possible explanation for these results is that [main-stream hypothesis] is wrong”.
Your link is broken, it might be worth putting the post-print somewhere more stable than a Wordpress site.
One thing I suggest is do not put up the paper in submitted-manuscript form. You are free to change from double-spaced (if that is the case) back to single spaced (or as appropriate); you can put figures and tables where they belong; you can use a nice typeface; you can even change the referencing style to a one you like better.
Use the version that incorporates changes suggested by the referee if at all possible. My guess is you didn't sign away rights until after you made said changes and sent it back to the journal -- or this may have happened, and it may be that the original submission came with agreeing to terms that include all rights in various versions of the paper in the case of acceptance - I hate these types of journals. In any case, knowing your field would help regarding advice here.
This website can help you find out if you are allowed the post-referee-comments version: http://rchive.it/ (it uses Sherpa/Romeo data), but the ultimate answer will come from the journal website.
This will make your paper more pleasant to read, and help dispel the myth that preprints are ugly.
Thanks David. I'd be obliged if you could comment on my postprint attempted here.
@fmark looks good, from my completely ignorant perspective (I don't know what the conventions are in your field). As dgraziotin mentions in his answer, make sure you provide the doi and full information of the published version. If people have the subscription, they will want to look at that copy, and publishers like you to do this.
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79004 | What is the equivalent of an Australian or New Zealand honours thesis in British universities?
Although it is somewhat discipline specific, in Australia, to receive honours for a bachelors degree, a student must undertake an additional, optional year of fulltime study, turning a three year degree into a four year degree. Generally, the vast majority of that year is spent conducting an independent research project which is written up as an honours thesis. An honours project generally has two supervisors, and is examined by two independent academics, including one from another university. In my field (human geography), they are usually 12,000 - 20,000 words long, and generally include the collection and analysis of new research data. Although they are somewhat more detailed and verbose, an honours thesis in my field should contain research equivalent to one or two academic papers in terms of the quantity and scope of the work, although obviously quality varies from student to student.
1st class honours in Australia is generally sufficient for admission to a PhD program here, although a scholarship will generally require either exceptionally high grades or additional demonstration of research potential.
I understand that a New Zealand honours is similar to its Australian counterpart.
I have supervised several honours theses in Australia. I am currently applying for lectureships in Britain, where I understand that the honours system is quite different. How can I explain succinctly to a British audience the scope and magnitude of honours supervision? Is there a simple equivalence with some other form of thesis in Britain?
I thought UK universities did not have honours theses or honours years. And that UK honours were granted on the basis of performance in undergraduate study. Good question.
At my UK university, an honours degree is awarded if the candidate has not failed any modules during the course of the degree. The Australian system you describe sounds more like the 4th year of the UK integrated Masters degree. In the UK it would be very unusual to go straight from a BSc into a PhD without this additional Masters year.
Small sample size, but the one AUS honours thesis I've read seemed to exceed most UK Master's dissertations in my area. Perhaps you have to emphasize this is not just some kind of 50 page "4th year UG dissertation", done as a component alongside taught courses, but something lengthier and more substantial (and, therefore, where your supervision can be compared with other applicants' supervisions of PhD students)
How can I explain succinctly to a British audience the scope and magnitude of honours supervision?
I suggest emphasizing the similarity to Masters.
Something like:
In Australia Honours is a postgraduate degree, very similar to a heavily condensed Masters degree. It runs in 1 year, instead of 2; and like most Masters comprises coursework, and a research thesis competent. A Honours degree, can allow talented students to fast-track their entry into a PhD program. Australian universities and scholarship organizers consider earning high marks in Honours as equivalent to completing a regular Masters.
If that is too long, just use the first sentence or 2.
Give them enough so they know what to lookup.
But that explains the scope of the honours, not the scope of the supervision.
in England, honours is granted after three years without a mandatory thesis or essay component. Scotland is more similar to Australia but not identical.
Even in Australia, the requirement for an honours thesis varies. I don't see why you can't be explicit. Explain that honours is an optional fourth year similar to a one-year English masters and detail what fraction of the year was spent on the thesis. If your students' theses were publishable, get them published and say they led to publications.
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997 | A better way to train future Theoretical Computer Science researchers
My questions:
Are there universites offering a B.Sc. in computer science aimed solely at giving the best training to future theoretical computer science researchers?
(in the universities I checked, the programs are a combination of training people for research and training people to be programmers in the industry).
As it seems not to be the case in most universities, is there a reason not to offer such programs? (financial maybe)
The motivation for the questions:
I am a mathematics M.Sc. student.
I had several conversations with researchers (full/associate professors) in theoretical computer science when I was looking for a thesis advisor. Three of them mentioned to me that they wish they would have learnt more mathematics in their basic training (two of them had a B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science and said they wished they did an M.Sc. in mathematics as well and one of them studied computer science only for a B.Sc.).
Their comments referred to funtional analysis (by a researcher in metric embeddings), to group theoretic constructions of expander graphs, etc.
This led me to check the program in computer science and here is what I found:
If a student really tries to get as much cs-theory and mathmematics in his B.Sc, he can study: 38% theoretical computer science, 40% mathematics with mathematics students, 6% mathematics with cs-students only, 16% technical courses. This amounts to 16% waste of time (for a future theoertical cs researchers) and 6% non-optimal use of time (as these math courses with cs-students feel a bit like high-school math).
I included the basic programming courses under theoretical cs because I believe they are essential in order to "know what you're talking about" when studying algorithms, computability, etc.
The situation is even a little worse from the perspective of this student because I included all the graduate courses in theoretical cs offered to undergrads, so he will have less theoretical cs courses to take during the M.Sc.
It seems like a much better choice for a future cs theory researcher is to study mathematics and take the cs theory courses (together with the most basic programming courses) as the "free choice" courses. I feel lucky to have done that as it seems that I would not have received such an excellent training if I had gone for the university's fixed cs+math program.
I think that the cs world could benefit alot if universities offered both B.Sc. and M.Sc. programs in "mathematics and theoretical computer science". This can be good both in giving a better training and in encouraging future colloboration.
So here's another question:
Do you agree that such programs ("mathematics and theoretical computer science") are a better alternative to cs-only programs or math+cs program which include many technical courses, as far as future theoretical cs researchers are concerned?
I couldn't find better tags for this question. I'd be happy if someone else does (or creates the appropraite tags).
Can you give an example of a "technical course" that you would consider a waste of time for a Theoretical CS researcher?
The word you're looking for is "Isreal".
@ESultanik: Ofcourse, everything is relative, but I think a course in C and a course is C++, for students who already learnt Java, is a much worse use of time, relative to, say, another course in algorithms.
@JeffE: I don't understand what your comment refers to.
@user302099: The only place I've seen degree programs of the kind you describe is at Israeli universities.
It is not at all obvious that those 16% are a waste of time. Take a look at this question or its blog post summary
@JeffE: Can you please give a name of one university where you know such program is offered?
http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/
@user30209: I consider a course on any particular language a waste of time for any computer science major. I thought you were referring to courses on operating systems, or compilers, or networking, or architecture, or graphics, or distributed systems, or machine learning, or scientific computing, or parallel computing, or programming language semantics, or human-computer interaction, or computer vision, or robotics, or real-time systems, or databases, or bioinformatics, or software engineering. You know, computer science. In my opinion, none of those courses is a waste of time.
I agree with @JeffE completely. In my undergraduate degree in computer science (with a focus on TCS, AI, and pure mathematics), I didn't take a single course that taught me a programming language. There was only one course that covered the basics of programming, and that was just in the first semester of freshman year. Do literature majors take a class on how to use a typewriter?
@JeffE and others: You convinced me. Most technical courses are not a waste of time for a future theoertical computer science researcher. Yet, I think it's a good idea to include more (theoertical) computer science in math undergraduate programs, at least in the ones I checked.
One downside is the "all eggs in one basket" problem. If you're sure you want to go into theoryCS, then this is great. But if you want to hedge your bets, then some more programming and general CS courses at the undergrad level would be helpful. Also, even within theoryCS, a solid understanding of computer science at large helps with asking new questions about other models of computation, or evaluating the value of theoretical questions motivated by some practical applications.
As Suresh points out, most majors aren't narrowly focused towards exactly one career track, because many people don't end up in the career they expect to. (The exception I know of is that some schools offer things like pre-med and pre-business majors, but note that 1) there are a lot more spots in medical schools than in graduate CS programs, and 2) many schools don't offer these programs, precisely because they're so narrow.) That 16% of time is only wasted, at worst, for the very few people who are absolutely sure of what they want to do.
The purpose of an undergraduate degree is to give someone broad knowledge of a field, not to make a bee-line for academic research. This is the same reason most schools require some level of "general education" requirements, under some name or another---they want their graduates to have a broad overview of academia in general, partially because some people end up being inspired by something they hadn't expected to, and partially because having a broader base of knowledge makes it easier to answer unexpected questions.
Finally, many schools offer some sort of "make your own major" program, which would be a way for the student who is actually sure they want to study CS theory to focus on that earlier.
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174 | Advisor isn't advising
I'm having the problem that my advisor isn't providing me with any real guidance. To avoid making this a rant post, I'll just state the facts: my advisor is an MD/PhD, working almost full-time as an MD. He comes to the lab once a week for lab meetings, and often doesn't have time to meet. He seems to have lost interest in doing research, and isn't being helpful at all regarding how I should proceed with my research.
So far, here's what I've tried and how well it worked out:
Talking to department graduate chair: marginally useful, scheduled a useless meeting with me and my advisor. Nice meeting, but no results.
Talk to other members of my committee: pretty useful, gave me some very good advice about my research, but I wonder how often I can use them as a resource
Any other suggestions on how I can handle this?
Some of the advice columns from the Chronicle of Higher Education may be useful, such as: http://chronicle.com/article/Dealing-With-a-Difficult/64035/
My answer depends on how far along you are in your research and whether you are in PhD or MD?PhD program.
If you are in a PhD program and you are less than a year in leave the lab. If you are more than a year in at you next Thesis Committee meeting, if it's scientifically reasonable, try to either set a date for graduating or ask for a co-PI.
If you are in the MD/PhD program, you will have to consider your PI's position and whether a lukewarm letter from someone in his position is worth your staying in the lab. If you plan to go into a competitive surgicial or medical subspecialty, it just might be.
I, sadly, think that checked-out PIs- even those without the excuse of having to go see patients- are increasingly the norm. Getting to be a professor is a great way to age rapidly and burn out, especially in the biomedical sciences. Also, professors aren't selected for their mentoring skills so much as scientific productivity. Often scientific productivity means exploitation or disregard because of self-involvement rather than nurturing.
I had a similar issue with my advisor between 2006 and 2009. Eventually things didn't quite work out as he was just trying to exploit me. I dropped out of the PhD program and got back in with an other faculty member who was good at mentoring.I am on my way to graduate with a PhD in about 10 months now.
+1 for "getting to be a professor is a great way to age rapidly and burn out" :)
In addition to the department chair, is there a head of graduate studies or the like (e.g., an ombudsman)? You may want to consider talking to them.
Generally speaking though, unless it will severely derail your progress, I'd consider changing advisors, and starting to talk to your committee members about shifting who is your chair.
Agreed. If your advisor isn't doing their job, fire them.
@EpiGrad: I don't totally agree. Politics in academia can be very petty, so burning bridges is dangerous. One effect of the glut of biomedical PhDs is that some (anecdotal evidence, I know) feel that the post-doc is what distinguishes you. Then, the PhD just becomes proof that you can manage most of a scientific project somewhat independently. So if your advisor is a mentoring failure but has clout and you can still finish (albeit with an inferior education) in his lab, it's not outlandish to stay.
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36707 | To cite a publication with two authors in a presentation, should I write "X and Y" or "X et al."?
I am preparing to give a presentation after few days. Some papers are authored by two people and some are by three. While referring their work during presentation what should I write for two authors.
Suppose there are two authors only - X and Y. Shall I write X et al. proved that ...... or X and Y proved that....
You say "write for two authors" but presentations involve speaking. So just to clarify, are you talking about what citation information to put on a slide?
Follow a specific citation style (APA MLA ..etc) and put whatever it says
@JeromyAnglim yeah presentation involves speaking and using slides too.
@monalisa so are you concerned with the written or the spoken convention or both?
@seteropere: I disagree. In fields in which author order is always alphabetical, "X et al." is rude and even discriminatory to those who happen to have names at the end of the alphabet. Assuming the list of all the authors' names fits on a single line, I see no reason not to include them all at least once.
@PeteL.Clark nice perspective. Had no clue that this might look bad in some situations.
@JeromyAnglim ... Its about both. I am going to present.
This was addressed on English.SE, Is "et al." acceptable for citations with exactly two authors?
The answers there indicate that major citation styles (MLA, Harvard) do not use "et al." when there are only two authors.
APA style also does not use "et al." for only two authors.
I'm not going to exhaustively check every citation style, but I'm not personally aware of any where "et al." is acceptable when citing a publication with only two authors.
Also of interest to those who happen to like grammar: the English.SE answer also points out that using "et al." for two authors can be considered incorrect, regardless of style considerations (text in brackets is added by me):
The Latinate abbreviation "et al." is short for "et alii," which means, "and others," and always refers to people, not objects. So if you had two authors, adding "et al." would indicate that there were [plural] other authors - and since there are no[t multiple] other authors in this case, it is incorrect to use it.
While "et al." could also technically stand for the singular "et alia" which would be technically correct, that's certainly not a conventional abbreviation.
+1. Obligatory nitpickery: et alia would be the correct singular only if the second author is female - if the second author is male, the correct form is et alius. SCNR.
Follow the requirements of the journal, if they are firm. But let me argue why you should include all the authors, if possible, in many circumstances, even if there are three or four (or more). In particular, I come from a mathematics background, but this applies to many fields.
When you cite a paper as "X et al.,", the other author names are invisible. If the paper is good, and gets cited often in this way, people may begin to know it as the "X et al." paper - thus obscuring the contributions of the other authors. Thus X gets, in effect, sole credit in the text, and the other authors are relegated to the references section. The same holds at presentations.
Reputation is particularly important for many authors - especially younger ones, but even well established ones. It helps build their reputation for quality work, which in turn is related to jobs, grants, editorships, etc. The authors whose names are obscured may miss out on recognition that they actually deserve, solely so that an author can save a few characters in an electronic document.
This is particularly relevant in fields where authorships are alphabetical by default, such as mathematics. In this case, the first author only had the luck to have a name that comes earlier in the alphabet.
There have been studies where the effect of having an early-in-the-alphabet name have been investigated. Two of them are:
What’s in a Surname? The Effects of
Surname Initials on Academic Success
Liran Einav and Leeat Yariv
Alphabetization and the Skewing of First Authorship Towards
Last Names Early in the Alphabet by Jonathan M. Levitta and Mike Thelwall
The essay "Et al." is unethical by Noah Snyder was influential in my thinking about this issue.
Yeah, I agree with you. thanks for the answer.
While in publications, you should follow whatever the official style is, in presentations you are typically much less constrained.
My own guiding principle for slides is to minimize the amount of visual clutter on screen, and especially to minimize text---after all, I want people to be listening to the talk, rather than simply reading the slides. What's important to communicate is:
This material belongs to a particular publication (either yours or somebody else's)
A sufficiently unique identifies that somebody can find it in an associated bibliography.
I go for a fairly sparse slide format, so I tend to communicate references in the tersest way possible on the slides, using [X & Y, YEAR] for 2 authors and [X et al., YEAR] for 3+, and then saying the citation more fully as I talk, e.g., "X, Y, and Z's paper last year in Annals of Randomology." In presentations, however, there is much space for personal style and expression. At the other extreme, I have also seen people include entire full citations on slides, complete with page numbers and DOI. What is important is to give credit while you can experiment with what best suits your own sense of design and the balance between communication and completeness.
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97096 | Should I recommend accepting a manuscript with major revisions because of a strong topic, but quite poor content?
I have been given my first manuscript to review for a journal. The topic is a very good one, it fills a research gap nicely and is an area that I specialise in. However, the execution of the paper is lacking. I am about halfway through making comments on it. The English is consistently poor in both spelling and grammar, and the structure is dire, which makes it hard to follow the main arguments. I am aware that bad English is no reason to reject a paper, but the English in this paper is very confused in many places, sometimes multiple times per paragraph, and it's a trial to follow.
I believe that the paper could only be salvageable after a rewrite, but by a third party. I don't believe the author's English is good enough to bring it up to standard. I do not care about being 'kind' to the author, but the topic is so good that I would love to see it go through, but I am torn between accepting it with majors or recommending rejection. My PhD supervisor has advised me to recommend rejection, but I am still unsure which way to go. Should I recommend acceptance after major revisions in the hope that it will improve based on my [now extensive] advice or just recommend rejection?
I faced a similar problem in the first article I reviewed. I did not consult anyone with more experience in reviewing. In the first round I pointed out a few mistakes and then said that language and grammar should be revised in general. After they haven't fixed anything, in the second round, I said that this paper will only get accepted after major language editing. Haven't heard of it since...
You cannot "accept" or "reject" it, you can only recommend to the editor and the editor can decide. You can write the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript and your personal opinion that it could go through if the lnguage is dramatically improved and that's it.
@PsySp Indeed, I am aware of that, but thanks for the clarification.
In that case write your brutally honest opinion to the editor. Nothing wrong with that! Will be up to the editor on how to interpret this and what to decide next (based on the other reports).
bad English is no reason to reject a paper — [citation needed]
@JeffE it was a highly-rated answer here on ASE, I can't locate it presently.
BTW, is the major revision option in your case actually called "Accept with major revision" or just "Major revision"? The second would be more common and leaves more uncertainty as to whether the paper can eventually be accepted, depending on possible insights from the revision.
@lighthousekeeper I think it's called "provisionally accept with major revisions".
Are you distinguishing between whether the between whether the topic is exciting to you, and whether the paper is a well-reasoned and good research paper on the topic? From the OP's comments, I get impression that it is both the language and organization that make it difficult to tell (OP can't follow arguments, etc). While I can agree in principle with @JeffE that bad English (on its own) is no reason to reject a paper, when one can't figure out the arguments/validity/etc, because of language, it is a reason to reject.
Bad(ly written) papers can inhibit research in an area, because people wanting to go into that area feel like they need to read the paper but are turned off by what they see.
While I can agree in principle with @JeffE that bad English (on its own) is no reason to reject a paper — Sorry I wasn't clear. I think bad English (on its own) is definitely sufficient reason to reject a paper.
As reviewer, you are not responsible for language editing. It is always nice to point out a few spelling/word selection mistakes, next to a proper, content-oriented review. However, if there is a need to improve the language in order to understand the paper, something as simple as "The paper needs editing by a native English speaker (or someone at comparable level)" should be enough. if you can, add some comments regarding content, but refrain from correcting sentence by sentence. It's not part of reviewing, in the sense of, it's not worth your time. There are people getting paid for that.
As reviewer, you are not responsible for language editing---Actually, almost all competent reviewers do include basic language corrections in their reviews. This is from experience.
@Dilworth Yes, basic corrections that can be added to a review. However, not rewriting a paper in order to be able to review it at all.
I would reverse the question:
Should you accept a weak paper written in terrible English, just because it's about a topic you like, a niche you care about or a something nobody else is writing about?
Like mentioned in some of the comments: this could actually be detrimental for the overal interest in the subtopic, and this publication might prevent more capable people from publishing the same thing (but better) because something is already out there.
In addition, the low level of English and lack of structure might also let you fill in too many blanks and give their reasoning too much value, just because you're very comfortable with the topic. Are you sure a pass by a language editing service would fix this? If it has to be rewritten by an "expert in the field" that person might as well just write the whole thing from scratch.
Finally: rejection is (most of the time) not the end of a manuscript. You can write a shorter review message with your opinion and advice and reject it. In a few months you'll see the manuscript being published in another journal, either re-written so it got accepted in a decent journal, or published in a journal with much lower standards.
This was very insightful and gave me plenty to think about. The article has lots of information in it, and the author has interviewed plenty of people but hardly includes any interview material. Most unusual. You're right, I could be just pasting in my own understanding of the topic to fill in any gaps, but to other readers it might be quite confusing. Thank you very much.
Jeff Offutt has a very insightful scheme for calculating the final recommendation based on technical, presentation, and omission grounds (source):
The fields in the matrix correspond to different types of problems:
Technical Problems
Minor: Mistakes in background, related work;
Moderate: Does not affect the key results;
Major: Changes the key results;
Critical: Negates the key results.
Presentation Problems
Minor: Typos, spelling, grammar;
Moderate: Make understanding the paper harder (organization, notation, repeated grammar);
Major: Prevent understanding of part of the paper;
Critical: Prevent understanding or evaluating a key result;
Problems of Omission
Minor: Omitted background, related work;
Moderate: Not part of the key results;
Major: Missing in the key results (proof or experiment,
lack of control in experiment);
Critical: Must be in the paper to evaluate the result
(experimental study, etc) or not enough results.
The source also provides additional information and context.
Based on this scheme, I think the appropriate recommendation in your case would be a major revision.
This is a very interesting and useful source, thank you.
Under "Problems of Omission", you're missing "didn't cite my papers".
According to the grid, one should only recommend rejection if there are major or critical technical issues, regardless of whether spelling, grammar, and structure are dreadful. If an author majorly revised a badly-written and structured paper, there is still a chance of rejection after a second review. Would it simply not be fairer to recommend rejection having given advice for resubmission so that the journal can focus on accepting better papers?
@C26 Bad language should not protect from rejection in case there are major technical problems, but bad language should not be a reason to reject a paper that is fine from a technical perspective.
You do not accept or reject the paper. You recommend a decision to the editor, and the editor decides.
You should copy what you have just written in your question to your review: it is an excellent assessment of the quality of the paper that clearly indicates why it has merit and where it needs to be improved.
If you think it has a chance to be published after being rewritten: "major revisions". If not: reject.
If the manuscript seems to be technically sound, just because of English you can not reject it.
Different graphical finding can give you the feeling about the good and bad of the work ...
if its good, put up your thoughts on the paper and leave the decision to the editor...
mostly in these cases editors tend to ask authors to give one more look on their manuscript and shares your views with them ...
it would be really ok. the only favour you can do it to keep the tone neutral while suggesting or making comments on the manuscript.
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45625 | PhD Students research/annual assessment
Some departments do an annual assessment of their PhD students' progress. It includes questions about topics such as: being independent, writing skills, analysis skills, time devoted, reliability, conscientiousness, punctuality, self-reliance, independence, intellectual curiosity, communication skills, etc.
It also includes a self-assessment done by the student as well as another one by his faculty research adviser. What I found interesting is that sometimes the assigned faculty meet the student before submitting the self evaluation form where he/she often tells the student to change some of the self evaluation responses. It is even indicated in the instruction of some universities' websites.
My questions are:
How they are assessed, are they only to evaluate students or is it also to evaluate the faculty advising skills?
How do these reviews impact the student graduation timeline? Although they are important skills students should acquire, mostly they are not part of the fundamental milestone for student graduation like qualifying exam, proposal, etc.
Are hypothetically asking or with regard to your own situation? Especially your second paragraph; which of this applies to your situation?
Ask your advisor. Every department is different.
I don't think your two questions can be answered in a very general way, different universities obviously practice this differently. What I can say is that I don't think these self-assessments have much of an impact on the graduation timeline, more that they're used to identify any problems as early as possible (when they can be more easily fixed).
I'll instead comment on this almost-question:
What I found interesting is that sometimes the assigned faculty meet the student before submitting the self evaluation form where he/she often tells the student to change some of the self evaluation responses.
There's at least two categories of things where this makes sense:
1) PhD students (especially at around half to two-thirds in) will be overly-critical of their own performance. It's very easy to look at others and think they're doing much better than you are. Without being sexist, in my experience women in particular give themselves extremely harsh (informal) self-assesments even when they are very talented. In this case staff would correct this overly self-negative outlook.
2) These assesments are not the proper avenue for everything. In particular, at my university it is particularly stressed in the guidelines for filling out the assesment that this is not the correct avenue to initially notify the university if you're having trouble/disagreements with your supervisor. There's probably more examples of this.
As a grad student, it is all too easy to get into a situation where you are coasting, perhaps not making any real progress. A good advisor ensures that such a state does not persist for long. In my experience, the main purpose of these assessments is to
serve as a reminder to less-conscientious advisors to check in with their students; and
in extreme cases, serve as a mechanism to spur less-motivated students to get back to work (possibly by putting the student on probation or something similar).
When the student and advisor are taking their jobs seriously, the assessment is usually superfluous. But it can also be an opportunity to highlight great work to the program chair or dean.
Every department is different: I don't have any suggestion about how you actually answer the question. I know that faculty in a department will give different answers, and fellow students will give you different different answers. In my department, the assessment (a discussion in a faculty meeting behind closed doors) was nominally only about students, but it can turn into a gently scrutiny of the advisor if there is a problem. This is because it is organized around a cohorts; but earlier, it was more based on "report by advisor", which tended to encourage discussion of advisors (unpleasant!). The typical point of the review is to give fair notice to the student that their are not making satisfactory progress. A milestone is a requirement that a student do something by a particular time, and the assessment isn't something that the student does. But if your funding is cut off, as can be a consequence of a negative assessment, then that tends to have a consequence for progress to degree.
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55429 | To what extent is it acceptable to copy definitions from reference materials?
I'm working on my master's thesis and am thinking of writing parts of a chapter as an introductory segment of a sub chapter within my work.
Is this acceptable if I include a portion of introductory matter of a source text if the source material is referenced?
I'm using only the well accepted definitions to set a basis for the reader to build on for the main topic described later.
Certainly reference your source. But (if possible) also define things that are not widely known, even if they are in your referenced source.
Your question seems a bit vague, and the paragraphs (and title) seem to be asking different and unrelated questions. I assume there is a connection, but it's hard to understand at present. Can you be more specific about what you have in mind?
Ideally, any work should be self contained. I usually explain what the reader needs to know to properly understand the work, then I include a reference to a more comprehensive work on the matter. Of course, it won't be a good idea to copy stuff verbatim (even worse, without making clear is a citation - big no no!)
I can't tell whether you're asking (1) Is it OK to include background material that is not original in a thesis? or (2) Is it OK to just refer to the source of the basic concepts in thesis, and not describe them in more detail? or something else. Please [edit] your post to clarify, then maybe it can be reopened.
@ Nate Eldredge I'm asking if it's allowed to copy extremely general definitions of a concept into a master thesis as they are from a base reference in the field.
@NateEldredge: I edited the question for clarity, hence you may remove the hold from this question. It's clear enough for me to answer.
Is this acceptable if I include a portion of introductory matter of a source text if the source material is referenced?
There are two issues here. One is whether you can be accused of plagiarism. That's simple: you're safe if you cite the source and clearly indicate what was copied with quotation marks or a block quote, but you could be in trouble if you don't make it clear what was copied, even if you cite the source. (Occasionally you can avoid quotation marks by saying something like "The following definition is taken verbatim from reference [3]:", but it's risky to try that with longer quotations.) If you are not copying any text, then you still need to cite the source but you don't have to worry about plagiarism.
There's also the issue of whether extensive quotations are acceptable to your advisor, regardless of whether they are plagiarism. Even if you cite appropriately and use quotation marks, your advisor might think you are quoting too much and ask you to rewrite it in your own words. (But this isn't a matter of academic honesty, just of what constitutes a good thesis. Relying on lots of lengthy quotations is honest but lazy.)
Students sometimes worry about how much text is appropriate to copy from a definition without quotation marks. This is a little tricky, since there are certain standard phrases that get used repeatedly. For example, the definition of a group in mathematics might start "A group is a set equipped with a binary operation". I just wrote that myself, but a web search reveals that half a dozen people have used exactly the same wording (because it's a pretty standard way to express things). If you read a definition that starts this way and later use this phrasing when defining a group, that's not a problem. However, you shouldn't be copying elaborate definitions verbatim without attribution.
In particular, if a standard phrase sticks in your head and gets repeated when you write the definition, that's fine. One test is whether you need to copy from a book. If you can write a clear, correct definition without copying or looking at any materials while writing it, then you should do so (and you won't have to worry about plagiarism). If you can't write a clear, correct definition without copying from a reference book, then you need to cite the book and indicate that the definition is copied (since this is clearly a complicated or subtle enough definition that formulating it well deserves credit).
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98659 | Grant award Dates (US)
I've been in a conversation with a professor about hiring me as a potential postdoc. Recently he sent me an e-mail saying he would like to accept me to his team, but he can do this only if he can get a new grant.
As I understand the situation, his current grant is ending soon, and he hasn't been able to get new grants yet, but is still trying.
In general, when do US-based foundations announce their grant awards? (I'd like to know so that I can ask him again on time whether he got a grant, so I don't lose the position that I kind of have right now.)
You do not "kind of have" a position right now. You have a good lead on a position, but that's not the same thing.
There's no fixed timeline. For example, the National Science Foundation has deadlines for proposal submission that are scattered around the year, and once a proposal has been submitted, it may take the NSF 3-9 months to decide. There are also numerous other funding agencies.
In other words, the only way for you to find out when that date may be is to communicate with the professor. He may have an idea when that may be, but the NSF doesn't set a fixed date when they will announce their grants -- that email may come on a random day and a random time.
Good answer. Also, the US Government has not had a proper budget for over a decade and is operating under a "continuing resolution". These, and the potential for retroactive budget cuts make it hard for NSF to administer grants.
That too. I'm sure that's one of the reasons why the NSF can't promise any deadlines.
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89912 | Question on rationale behind doubled "Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN" journal name
I am not sure this forum is the right place for this question, but I'm pretty sure it would quickly be closed at MathOverflow.
There is a well-known mathematics journal called "International Mathematics Research Notices", published by OUP. It's almost invariably cited as "Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN" [sic] or similar, which has always struck me as oddly redundant. The curious ubiquity of the abbreviation is doubtless due to the fact that MathSciNet provides references in that format: "JOURNAL = {Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN}".
On the other hand, Worldcat has many listings for the journal, some of which have the double IMRN, and some of which don't. As far as I can tell, the journal's page doesn't specify a preferred abbreviated form.
Another possibly relevant factor is that the journal is usually referred to be this initialism: people call it "IMRN" in ordinary conversation, which isn't the case for any other journals I can think of, JAMS perhaps excepted if you count pronouncing it (and nobody writes "J. Am. Math. Soc. JAMS").
The question: why does MathSciNet double the journal name, and should I be doing the same? (Perhaps the underlying question is: who decides on official journal abbreviations?)
If there won't be any definitive answer from the math community in a few days, one may consider reasking at MO…
"which isn't the case for any other journals I can think of" - I use in conversation JFM (Journal of Fluid Mechanics), ZAMP (Zeitschrift für angewandte Mathematik und Physik, that one is a bit of a special case as the title isn't English), PRL (Physics Review Letters).
Interesting, I don't know these! I'd just skimmed through a couple algebraic geometry bibliographies, so I've probably forgotten others. "MRL" might count. J. Reine Angew. Math. is another complicated (to me) German name, but it just becomes "Crelle". And "Math Z" is "Math Z".
Another example where the journal is almost always referred to by the initials: GAFA. Outside of the mathematical sciences, PNAS is common.
This is just speculation, but the reason could be because of the slightly complicated history of the IMRN journal.
Throughout you should remember that MathSciNet grew out of what originally was a print publication called Mathematical Reviews. It was extremely important that they have a uniform house style for referring to journals.
Originally there was a journal called International Mathematics Research Notices published by Duke Univ. Press from 1991-2001. On MathSciNet its abbreviation was Internat. Math. Res. Notices. When the journal moved publishers to Hindawi in 2002, the abbreviation became Int. Math. Res. Not. on MathSciNet. In 2005 Hindawi started a new journal called International Mathematics Research Papers, which was indexed by MathSciNet under the abbreviation IMRP Int. Math. Res. Pap.
In 2006/7, the two journals were both transferred to Oxford Univ. Press. There was some relationship between the two journals (I remember seeing it in an old author submission guideline) and the two are treated as sort of a pair. Probably in an effort to clearly distinguish the two journals, either OUP or MathSciNet decided to list the two journals as, respectively, International Mathematics Research Notices. IMRN and International Mathematics Research Papers. IMRP with abbreviations Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN and Int. Math. Res. Pap. IMRP.
In 2009 or thereabouts, OUP merged IMRP into IMRN.
I would surmise that the "duplication" appeared in an effort to add some redundancy for better disambiguation of two journals with extremely similar titles. Now it survives as a vestigial testament to the journal's history.
Re: the relationship, IMRP was meant to be for longer papers than IMRN. I guess, in part, because IMRN was meant to be fast.
@Kimball: turns out you are mostly right. I dug up the journal about page on the Wayback Machine, and while IMRP is also meant for "fast" publication, they are meant for much longer articles. From the description, each issue will be only one article.
Not a mathematician, but neither I nor any of my colleagues was ever able to paste bibliographic references without revising them. I wouldn't necessarily care about somebody else writing "Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN"—. At least, "Int. Math. Res. Not. (IMRN)" or similar punctuation would highlight the redundancy better—but I'd avoid introducing a third form if two are standard.
The question: why does MathSciNet double the journal name, and should I be doing the same? (Perhaps the underlying question is: who decides on official journal abbreviations?)
Your style file comes with guidelines—I'd guess they don't standardize journal abbreviations, so there's no standard.
Style manuals also come with guidelines, but I've never seen this matter being regulated.
I think this is a case where math is special - the MathSciNet database is comprehensive and almost universally used. I've always been able to paste BiBTeX entries directly from it, and use them without any revisions. Journals invariably provide BiBTeX style files that process those entries as the journal prefers - but I think any math journal where you couldn't paste from MathSciNet would find its authors really annoyed.
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10935 | How do I understand the main concepts in a paper by just skimming through it?
What's the best method to understand the real concept that a paper is trying to explain?
Should one go through the paper as it is presented, from first page to last page? Is there a specific walk-through to understand it faster, such as first reading the result section, followed by the concept section, and then discussion/conclusion section? Is there a best practice to be followed?
"How do I read?" ... What problems have you had reading papers so far?
Here's what I do: figures, abstract, beginning of intro, skim through results, conclusion.
Likely duplicate: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/50/73 I'll note that, as stated in the linked question, your field of research is highly relevant here, as journalistic styles differ from field to field.
If the paper is well written, then the abstract should tell you most of the story at a high level. Then the introduction should give more technical coverage again of the whole story – you should then know the problem and the results obtained, though not all the details. The remainder of the paper then will contain just the details.
Of course, most papers do not do that, so you may also need to read the conclusion, the discussion section, and perhaps any other introductory sections. In the end, you may need to read the whole paper before you get what it is about.
However, to really understand the paper, you will need to go through it very slowly, with pen and paper at hand, and try to replicate the reasoning/ideas given in the paper, filling in the gaps – possibly with the help of additional literature.
Not all papers need to be read so deeply. Reading just the abstract and maybe the introduction and conclusion should help you decide how deep to read the paper.
I'd say it slightly differently: a well-written abstract should tell you if you'll want to read the paper, and a well-written introduction should help you figure out how to read the paper. But overall I agree with this.
try to replicate the reasoning/ideas given in the paper — Better yet, try to derive the same results as the paper without looking at how the paper does it. After a good-faith effort, whether you actually succeed or not, you'll be better prepared to understand the paper's reasoning.
NEVER READ A SCIENTIFIC PAPER COMPLETELY FROM START LINE TO FINISH LINE.
Idea is to get an understanding of what concept is presented in the paper
Open powerpoint/paper
Read abstract - Tells us briefly WHAT experiment WAS DONE and WHAT WAS FOUND. What specific results are mentioned - are they relevant to your research.
Discussion - Summary of important results and gives reasons based on conclusions and assumptions - Do you agree with the logic of the conclusions and are those useful to you
Introduction - Motivation and importance of the research and tries to sell the paper to the maximum. Provides some background information.
Results - Provides some raw data which can be related to your own research. Figures and Tables provide data in a compact format for easy understanding.
In figures - does the graphs make sense ? , what are the axis's used and does it mean anything ? Check the units used.
FINISH - I have a brief understanding of the paper and I have tried my best to cover all the relevant attributes of a scientific journal.
Check the references and see if they are related to the main concept of the paper in hand. Follow through.
Manage a reference library like mendeley to keep an updated list of the literature you reviewed.
I would be careful with such a general claim. Depending on the field, journal format, length of the paper and skill of the authors, it is sometimes fine, in my opinion, to read a paper from start to finish. This can often be due to many of the details getting pushed into the supplemental information section.
Only a Sith deals with absolutes.
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86468 | Should I include Abstracts (short descriptions) of research papers/thesis in my CV?
I am writing my CV for a postdoctoral position. I have just obtained my PhD. I have a decent number of published papers. Should I write a very small (2-3 line) description of what I have done in that paper? Maybe also with a smaller font and written in italic so that it is easily skipped if not interested. Same for the PhD/Masters thesis.
The counterargument is that short abstract would be considered negatively, either as padding or just making the CV harder to read.
Thanks!
Welcome. I would, personally, consider it mild "noise". At the end of the day, people want to see where and how much you have published and if it is compatible with their own research interests. They would not bother, at least in a preliminary screening, with the actual content of your research. If they are really interested, they could look up or ask for a pre-print.
Thanks for the answer. Yes, I understand your point. My thoughtprocess was that a tiny abstract would help seeing if "it was compatible with their own research interests". I am working in pure maths and sometimes name of papers don't immediatley tell you what directions it is related towards. Thank being said, I am starting to agree with you. Thanks.
This was initially a comment but I think I can be expanded as an answer.
People, in general, want to see in your CV a brief summary of your academic achievements. Towards this, it is enough to compile a list of publications. The amount and the quality of the journal/conferences are enough to indicate your research profile in a preliminary screening. If they are more interested in your actual research, that's why you are asked to supply a research statement which sometimes can be as long as 4-5 pages, usually 2-3. There, you can briefly discuss your research and they can get a feeling also about compatibility (if that was not apparent from the list f publications). If they are interested in more depth they can request preprints of your works.
So, having an abstract for every publication in your CV does not add any information and does not help in any meaningful way except that your CV might look more "beefy" (but I am not sure it's an advantage).
Thank you for your answer. It does make a lot of sense. As expected with this kind of question, I suppose it does a little depend on opinion, so I will also gladly listen to others suggestions, if they are willing to write as well. (Even short ones such as yes/no are apprechiated). But thank you for your suggestion.
@EvilHamster If you are asked to supply a research statement (and, in fact, I can't think of any PostDoc application where you are not asked for such document), then I doubt is based on opinion. Keep your CV (as well as everything else) short and to the point.
I'd like add that you could give a very short summary of what you have done during your PhD in your CV. So it's not part of the publication list at the end but of your working experience at the beginning. Since researchers sometimes switch the research focus depending on the project/funding, this is helpful to understand what exacly you did (beyond the job description "Post Doc at institute/university X").
thanks for the replay FuzzyLeapfrog. So should I should I write a very short abstract/description of my thesis then?
@EvilHamster I think that's the role of the research statement where you present your research during your PhD among other things.
@PsySp Yes, I understand. I was just trying to assertain what Fuzzy was saying.
Great answer. @EvilHamster - congratulations on your recent graduation! // You said you had more than one published paper. I wouldn't write a summary of the thesis. I would just write 25 words or less describing the specific research area you are interested in.
@aparente001 thanks. (I actually have more than four published. Does not seem to help though. That is why I am revamping my CV etc. Thought might have been a good idea too add something like that. Anyway. Thanks all for the help.
@EvilHamster Remember: you will be judged on your academic/scientific record. Each PI knows how to do that. You won't be judged on the format of your CV.
Great point from @PsySp. I had an idea. If you don't have people to run your draft CV by where you are, I think there are websites where you can get feedback on a CV. // In general I think fine print is to be avoided on CVs. // Did you know that in the non-academic world, it is difficult to get HR people to read one's CV? I've shown up to interviews, where the HR person has the CV in front of him, and then he wants me to walk him through it and tell him what it says. So from that experience I have learned to keep it quite streamlined, and bold certain key words. Their eye jumps from...
...heading to heading, from bold to bold. I think academics are not so lazy about reading the CV, but note also that they'll have other materials to go by as well. And perhaps you'll have a cover letter. That is a great place to give a succinct description of the area(s) you've worked in so far, and of the area you want to work in. You should try to match that up as closely as possible with someone in the department whose interests align well with yours, to make it easy for the hiring committee to pigeonhole you correctly.
Thank you guys. I will take that advice. Much appreciated.
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1639 | What are the advantages and disadvantages of having multiple advisers?
Could multiple advisers mean that it might be easier for you to get funding? (since you're not just limited to one person?) Could it also mean that you get more overall input in your project (the input of 3 different people), and that maybe your project will be geared in a way that it's "interesting" to more people, and consequently might also get more citations that way?
They might pull your project in different directions, but how much is this really a concern?
And what about the special case where they explicitly expressed the desire to interact with each other more through the student? (this was actually the case in my situation).
The answer (as in case of most answers in academia.SE) is it depends, often widely from case-to-case. Unless presented with an exceptional example, I would generally view having more than two advisers as a major hindrance - the perceived benefit of having another source of ideas is negated heavily by the communications overhead between them, and the scope for misunderstandings about their role, which might cause the student to be either overloaded in multiple (possibly conflicting) areas, or languishing without any significant guidance. The rest of my answer is based on the assumption that the number of advisers is 2.
What is the defined role of the said advisers - are they equally responsible for guiding the student towards completion of their graduate studies (as I've been told is the case in some European schools/research schools), or is one of them the principal guide and the other a co-guide? The amount of time/effort invested by each would depend on their perception of how much they are actually responsible for the student's growth as a researcher.
As with most social interactions, it would help greatly if there is a good (or at least professional) working relationship between the 2 guides, as well as a healthy overlap of research areas - a new student might not be able to handle multiple research problems in completely different areas at the same time (without affecting the time to graduate, or the quality of results).
Assuming the student publishes with both of them independently, it would look good on her CV that she can produce publishable research with multiple established researchers. This could also have the side-effect of enhancing the student's research network - as a lot of papers (in CS at least) have more than 2 authors, and often collaborating on an paper could lead to more papers/research done with the same set of persons in future.
I think it's detrimental to research progress to have more than two advisors "in practice." (By this, I mean that there should not be more than two people directly involved in day-to-day matters. A "formal advisor" who does not play a substantial role in the thesis would not count.)
There are a number of reasons for this:
It can be very difficult to get all of the advisors together in the physical sense, and even harder to get them to agree on anything, when they all will want to have their viewpoint considered and accepted.
A substantial part of your time as a research student may be spent "translating" back and forth between the different advisors. On the other hand, this can also be a potential strength, in that you will have to learn how to make arguments using several different research "languages."
Funding and bureaucracy will become more complicated the more advisors you have. (This will be true for multiple advisors, even if some of them are "hands off" or formal rather than practicing advisors.)
So, in general, it's best to have one or two advisors.
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512 | What are some practices for getting a name change so that people can find me more easily?
For a similar thing, see this thread, where Jay Wacker managed to get people to call him by the name Jay even though he didn't need to get a legal name change. I'm not sure how to go about this though.
The main problem with me is that I have such a frustratingly common name that a lot of people cannot find me when they google me. So many of them simply don't notice the middle initial that I always use in between my first and last names, and this could actually become a major issue in academia, since people have little time and are prone to giving up quickly if they want to look for me (or for my papers) and can't find me at all (I know this having seen how several academics use the Internet and how they look for people's names). This, in turn, could easily ruin my citation count in the future (it's not just that - it's helpful to others when I have a less common name so that they can more easily locate my stuff). I already know at least several people who specifically told me that they tried to find my email but that they couldn't find it (and this isn't limited to just them - there are many, many more - including long-lost friends who have wanted to talk to me for a long time, but who couldn't find me due to said ultra-common name). Of course, people can go through the respective university directories, but how many people really do that? From my observations (when I've seen people look for someone else), very very few do it. Hell, there are even several people at my OWN university who share the same exact first+last name as me.
In Academia, this is even a bigger problem because the vast majority of your connections will be people who only vaguely recognize/know you, so they may know most of the search clues. Even a "full name" + university won't solve all the problems, because I may switch universities and people may only remember the old university that I was in. I'm also very very interdisciplinary, so I want to be searchable to people outside my field as well.
And even if I fix the issue for Google with a massive SEO operation or whatever (that may even be impossible for my ridiculously common name), it's still not going to fix the problem for all of the other ways that people use search.
I'm currently transitioning between undergrad and grad school, so now may be the perfect time for a name change? But I don't know what to do. Is it better for me to change my first name or my last name? The problem is that a citation like "Chen 2011" is going to produce so many entries that no one will ever find them, even though they frequently do google things like that (and I simply cannot prevent people from googling something like that). Chen is so frustratingly common that even a "Chen and Name2 2011" paper could come from some random medical paper rather than from something I wrote.
As an additional complication, the % of Chinese people using the English Internet is exponentially rising, and I can only expect the problem to get worse in the future because of that (and not just for my first name, but even variants of my first name too).
Good question, and it's a frustrating situation. Anecdotally, though, I'm not familiar with anyone who resorted to a name change to solve this problem.
http://people.cis.ksu.edu/~robby/Home.html ?
Do you have a middle name, and/or a Chinese first name which you could use as a middle name? If you consistently go by "Alex [Something] Chen" I imagine that would make you easier to find.
That's actually a very good idea. I've been thinking of consistently going by my middle name instead (instead of just the middle initial).
Vary relevant question, maybe even a duplicate Researcher with the same name in a different field (and check answers, they are good).
You just ("just", like it was that easy) need to make you work good and visible enough that people will not think of you as Alex Chen, but the Alex Chen. My own doctoral advisor was Cheng, which is about as common as Chen, but her papers have always been influential enough that, when you drop the name "Cheng" in a conversation, she is the first Cheng person that people think of.
My grandad suffered under the name of John Smith. In the early 20th century the bank where he wanted to open account said they were not taking any more John Smiths, so he had to come back with something else. He then suffixed his mother's maiden name to Smith, thus becoming unique.
I don't get how people not being able to find you by your name should negatively affect your citation count. Shouldn't citations be based on the publication itself, not on the name of the author? Or am I slightly too idealistic here?
I think that https://orcid.org/ is set up precisely to solve this issue?
I think people stress too much about the "what if people can't find my papers?" problem. That's what CVs are for. Don't overestimate how often people will actually try to find all of your papers outside of hiring situations. It won't be often. By the time you are established enough to accumulate a significant number of publications, you will be connected to a research university or institute which will make it easy to link you to your publications.
If "the vast majority of your connections will be people who only vaguely recognize/know you" you've got a problem that changing your name will not solve.
I'd especially like to hear from someone who have had this cause a career problem. My (legal) first name is one of 10 most common, and my last name is in the top 20 (within the US). While this is annoying, it has not caused me any career issues.
Thanks for the reply. The thing with the CVs, though, is that they won't be able to find your papers if they can't even find your CV to begin with. And CVs are not exactly the most user-friendly way to find some paper that you're looking for.
Regarding the career problem - the thing is - no one is aware of what opportunities they missed due to other people not finding them. I do know of cases where people have looked for someone else's paper and have given up due to said person having a very common name.
If people gave up every time they came across a common name, there would be no successful John Smiths in science. If you want to spend the time and money in court to change your name, that's fine. People do it all the time for lots of reasons. If you're doing it because you want people to find your papers easily? I'd say there are better ways to use your time to further your career.
Obviously as someone with a VERY common name I have very personal opinions on this. And as a woman, it irks me that after all the fighting for ladies to choose to not change their names when marrying, it's now expected that women in science NOT change their names to make it easier for other people to find their papers. We're all smart people here, right? Common names/name changes should not be such a vexing problem for academia.
No doubt are there successful John Smiths in science. The barrier they face is not an extremely significant one, but it can possibly prevent some collaborations from coming up (most likely not ones that will affect one's career, but still ones that could be useful). The time it takes for a name change isn't all that significant, in any case, especially if one is doing it before starting as a PhD student.
With that said, it could simply be a friendship thing as much as a science thing. It irks me when none of my old non-Internet friends can find me due to my ultra-common name (and the figure is definitively far over 80%). My Internet friends all know what search terms to use, but they're not going to be most of the friends I make in academia.
I also simply appreciate it when other academics (esp. those I haven't been in contact with for a while) can simply know what I've been up to lately, but they will tend to give up more easily if they can't find me.
"it can possibly prevent some collaborations from coming up" - this is conjecture. My conjecture is: your career will not be based on or affected by de novo searches for you on the internet.
If you are going to be very practical, you're right, you should change Chen. But there might be emotional reasons against that, of course. It's a personal choice.
I'll note that you need to be very consistent, professionally; but you can still use whatever else personally/legally. You can choose a professional name like an artist chooses a stage name.
If you start now, always referring to yourself professionally using whatever you choose, and publishing &c under that name, people will know you like that. It's really that simple.
I always spell out both my first names in print, but I never insist that people treat me like that in person. My Portuguese friends tend to, but more random encounters sometimes do, sometimes don't and it's fine.
Name changes are a significant and sensitive issue for many people—particularly female academics who get married, and then have to determine whether to change their name professionally, or to use one name for legal purposes and another for professional publicity purposes.
An extremely common last name is certainly a difficulty in finding you; however, changing your first name won't necessarily improve your visibility, because, as you mentioned in your question, first names aren't normally included in citation searches. Therefore, whatever you do will need to be done to your last name.
Perhaps you could add a hyphenated extension to your last name; whether this would be a legal action (requiring a visit to a court, in most venues) or just unofficially for your profession is for you to decide. (However, it should be pointed out that a legal name change can have major implications on your everyday life, and should not be entered into lightly.
Ah thanks very much - I like the hyphenated extension idea! But it's hard to choose one, especially since some people (especially Chinese people) are rather sensitive to last name changes. Especially one that would still sound "normal" and not weird.
Is it possible to use one last name for legal purposes and another last name for professional publicity purposes? Usually, nicknames only refer to first names.
As I mentioned above, married women do it fairly frequently: they will keep their maiden name as their "professional" name, even after marriage. This is particularly true if their last name is much more unique than their last name.
I know someone whose parents did this. Their last name was a very common name in Israel, so they changed their last name to middlename-lastname to make it easier to find in listings.
One small suggestion:
Set up your Google Scholar Citations page. This will make your publications and name more visible in Google scholar.
Certainly adding (or just making up) a middle initial to your name will help to differentiate you a lot if someone if looking for your papers specifically. But you have to be consistent and use it everywhere professionally. I work with someone who inserted a made up initial in his publications just for this purpose and says it works quite well. I don't believe that he visited a court or anything to do this.
For hiring purposes, your CV (as mentioned by others) and a "publications" page on your professional website will be the best. If you don't have a website, something like ResearchGate.com or Academia.edu will work in a pinch.
Look into how pen-names are handled in your jurisdiction. Authors often take pen-names for much the same reason you are considering changing yours, you want something more distinctive. Given the relatively global nature of this practice, there is likely a legal way to handle it everywhere in the world. This is a different route to changing your name everywhere, as you would for a married name. Depending on your legal system it may be easier.
For example; in the UK there is no singular definition of a persons legal name. Your birth certificate need not match your passport and your passport need not match your bank. So in the UK, everyone is entitled to have as many pen names as amuses them, so long as they don't try to make unjust gains by pretences involving multiple names (that would be fraud).
The only slight complication in this will be email addresses. My institution (not in the UK) automatically granted me my full passport name as an email address. This was not what I had wanted, as it's an absolute mouthful. But a polite email to the IT department, along with a couple of references to places I had used my shorter name, was enough to convince them to offer me the shortened form instead. So my advice there would be to use a personal email where possible anyway, because you don't change it between positions, and to ask nicely if you want a different address from your institute. Ditto for changing information on institutional webpages.
Don't underestimate the downsides to changing your name as it might not actually solve your problem. My cousin changed her name almost 15 years ago, and there are still friends and family members who think she just dropped off the face of the planet because they aren't aware she changed her name. It's practically impossible to communicate that sort of thing to everyone who needs to know. Your long-lost friends are now even less likely to find you because they won't even be looking for the right name anymore.
If you want to improve your findability online, it seems like you'd get a better return on investment by keeping your name and improving your internet presence. Keep a blog or homepage of some sort where you talk about the interesting things that you're doing and can link to your research. When you meet people that you might like to collaborate with one day, add them to your LinkedIn (or whatever social network you use for your professional stuff). Don't make them go looking for you, be the one that initiates the connection. There might be a bunch of people named John Smith in academia, but there's only one John Smith that I met at that photonics conference in Brussels and added to my social network. Connecting directly with people like that means they don't have to wade through the entire internet to find you. Even a well-connected person rarely knows more than 2-3 people with the exact same name, and the picture on your profile should make it clear which one is which. That personal connection is better than any SEO you could ever do, plus they'll see your posts about new publications without having to go search for you at all.
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3729 | How to encourage students to work more carefully and independently?
One of the challenges of advising students is working with students whose "quality control" expectations do not agree with that of the advisor. When such mismatches occur, how do we encourage them to provide "better" quality work. Note that it's not the number of hours being worked the concern, but rather issues like returning a marked-up manuscript with half of the important suggestions left unaddressed, or leaning too much on the advisor or more senior members of the group for help.
I recently heard a nice angle on this problem. Computer Scientist Olivier Danvy, adapting Buddhist philosophy, stated in a recent presentation that you need to inhale before you can exhale. What he meant was that in order for grad students to produce quality work, they need to see, read, ingest and understand quality work. Perhaps you can show them the difference between the high quality work and low quality papers you've also come across. Try to get the student to gauge where his/her work fits in relation to these other papers.
You'll also need to explain that even though poor quality work can actually be published, that this is not a good thing. Not good for science. And not good for building a career.
Many iterations of corrections is important. It takes time. But for every comment that is ignored, you need to find out why it is ignored, and make the student aware that it takes your time and is annoying if you need to make the same comment over and over again. Maybe the student does not understand the comment. Maybe the student is overwhelmed by the vast amount of comments. Maybe that just missed it accidentally. Maybe they just disagree.
In my experience, teaching "quality control" in larger-scale projects is part of the enterprise, since (in mathematics, for example) standard coursework provides no inkling of this. That is, it is not typically the case that sloppy or flawed homework or exams are returned with detailed comments, for iterated corrections, to be repeated until the thing is acceptable. Rather, as we know, schoolwork is presented to students as a high-volume stream of disconnected small tasks, most of which truly do not merit "perfecting", but, rather, treating as a bulk-processing problem.
So the methodology and style of iterative improvement and "perfecting" a larger, months-or-years-long project is arguably a novelty to the student. The "solution" seems to be to just keep iterating the corrections, perhaps making the auxiliary point of the inefficiency of your making the same point several times.
I've had the opposite problem a few times, as well, namely, exaggerated attention to over-perfecting an initial fragment, effectively avoiding addressing the sequel and larger project.
Thus, I think that imparting a functional sense of editing and quality control is part of the task of the mentor/advisor/supervisor, although, yes, energy allocated to this takes away from the more literal scientific/intellectual tasks. Advisor's firm repetition of the standards is essentially the only constructive response, I think, since, for example, it seems infeasible to hope that novices can sufficiently critique each other, as they usually share the same inexperience.
I would cite one of the maxims in industry. Your people is only as good as your structure. A good structure designed to give incentives to current students and guidance to new ones can do wonders for any organization.
You can streamline a lot if you have a whole system in place where you have older students mentoring fresh students (one to one basis) and a more structured way of presenting the job. This way the students (and the adviser) won't be running to catch deadlines and will be way more efficient.
I do not think that giving too much liberty to someone that essentially has never worked or known the stress of self imposed deadlines is necessary a good thing. It looks more as a two edged sword.
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2994 | Coordination of a class taught by different professors: how to be fair to the students?
A typical freshman course on calculus has about 100 students every semester. If the course is divided into 4 sections, each has 25 students and a different instructor.
Because the instructors are different, a student's grade may strongly depend on who teaches his section. Lazy students could ask other students before registering who is the easiest grader or who makes easy or straightforward exams, etc. This is unfair to the rest of the students.
Has anybody else faced the same problem? And how did you overcome it?
What criteria one should impose to guarantee that a student's grade will only weakly depend on who is teaching him?.
We are thinking about giving all sections the same midterms and finals. But, obviously this is not enough
The more common problem across multiple sections of large courses taught by several different instructors is content drift, not grade drift. At my institution we have three General Chemistry I sections, and the distributions of A's, B's, and C's among the students does not change significantly depending on which of 6 people teach the course. The distribution of D's and F's does vary, however. What is more troublesome to us is that some instructors will cover 8 chapters, some will cover 9, some 10, and so on.
However, if you really want to minimize grade drift, then do the following, which will also eliminate content drift:
Coordinate the class - same textbook, same syllabus, identical assignments, exams, everything.
Agree ahead of time on a common grading policy, including cutoffs, curves, grade disputes, etc., and enforce it uniformly.
Teach from a common outline so that all sections get the same material in the same week.
Meet frequently, including at least one meeting before the class starts.
Grade equitably, which may seem difficult, unless you do the following: Professor A grades all of Assignment 1 across all 4 sections. Professor B grades all of assignment 2, etc. Better yet, hire one person (a grad student maybe) to do all of the grading for all 4 sections.
Just to add to the last suggestion: when I’ve been involved with such courses, we’ve usually split it up more finely, like “On Assignment 1, Prof A grades Q1 for all students, Prof B grades Q2 for all students…” and so on. This both helps further with evening out the grades, and means that the professors’ workload is more evenly distributed, since “Prof A grades all of assignment 1 for all students” would be a lot of work in a big class.
So far, I think this is better to make a rotation of the instructor. Split the course in 4 parts, each part being taught by one instructor to all the students. Each part is graded independently by each instructor as well.
If this is not doable (slots in parallel, with a strong sequencing of the content), then the only thing I can think of this making as much grading as possible in common (same exam, etc.) and normalize the grades for the rest.
Another possible way of action is to randomly select the correspondence between groups and exams. Let me be clearer: let say that two instructors A and B give a lecture in common. We toss a coin to decide whether group A (or B) have exam by instructor A. In that way, students cannot have a strategy that maximizes their grades.
Doing each part being taught by one instructor to all the students is not always possible since each student may need to learn sec-1 before sec-2 and sec-3
I suspect the intent is that if you have three instructors over three sections in a fifteen week course, the first instructor teaches all three sections for the first five weeks at the same time and then the second instructor takes over, and so on.
The above is the common situation in Israel. Most of the freshmen-year classes are given by multiple lecturers, while the students are tested by the same midterm and final. They also have exactly the same homeworks and due dates, etc.
Officially, the sections are "identical". One professor is declared as the leading-professor and s/he sets the syllabus and takes any course-wide decision. Since all the professors are aware that the homeworks/exams are the same, they all teach the same material, more or less, giving the same emphasis on different subjects, more or less, etc. It should be the case that if one student misses one lecture at some week, s/he can go the the other lecture and be able to continue from the same point.
Of course, this is not perfect, and the different sections are not "identical", but rather, "close enough". In addition, an important thing is that students can choose which section to go. Indeed, sometimes "good lecturers" gets a class full of students (with people sitting on the floor, etc) while "bad" lecturers teach a half-empty class. Most of the times, there are no "bad" lecturers (there are better and worse, but many time the difference is not substantial enough that students change their schedule), so most of the classes are 70-90% full on avg.
Exams are graded by the same team, regardless of the section you are enrolled to. In general, the sections are "technical" partition, and any decision is course-wide and not section-wide. All students from all sections should be treated the same in the most objective way.
You already said, "we are thinking about making same midterms and same finals exams to all sections, but obviously this is not enough".
In effect it is not possible on a practical level to be equal since it all depends on how each professor teach and interact with his/her students. Each professor has specific personality and way of doing things which different people/student would like and dislike. However, somehow the following principles are followed by each professor, each class may be comparably good:
Professors are dedicated to student's welfare
There is a good understanding among the professors and they are in agreement with what should be taught (This may include regular meetings among themselves)
Apart from this each professor has his/her natural way of teaching that he/she is most confident about and this cannot be separated.
I disagree. If the common background and the exams are designed before the beginning of the lecture, then it is perfectly doable to share most of the material. Instructors can share exams without giving the exact same lectures.
I was trying to hint at something deeper beyond setting common exams/examiners/section-instructors. I said there will be some difference always unless there is some randomness and each teacher teach a given section to all the students.
I did upvote most of the other answers... but would like to add something:
Yes, it is important to try to be "fair". Sometimes, "uniformity" is the best approximation we can systematically arrange to "fairness". Other answers discussed how to implement this (common mid-terms, common finals).
However, there is sometimes a danger that "uniformity" seems to demand that everyone's situation be degraded to that which can be guaranteed for everyone else. That is, while it is highly desirable to guard against bad effects of poor teaching, it is surely also desirable to not prevent benefits of good teaching, as a side effect of administrative design.
Similarly, while the impulse is understandable, keeping instructors "secret" so that students cannot seek out desirable instructors (desirable for both wholesome and less-than-wholesome reasons) is a bit perverse, in my opinion. Namely, it always seems to me that "equality" achieved by suppressing information is not at all moving to maximize social welfare, but only "equalizing" it in a rather poor, default sense.
Students "voting with their feet" is a "problem" at all levels, and some of that is reasonable, some unreasonable, of course. But the "solution" of having instructors be "secret" amounts to merely ignoring genuine issues in the situation by trying to obliterate information.
Should all information about the teachers be revealed? For example, should the age, gender, political affiliation, and race of each teacher be explicitly mentioned?
In the U.S., unless an individual voluntarily and deliberately discloses such things as @Joel mentions, they are "private" information. The actual chain of events would be that giving the instructor's full name would lead to their university web-page, and, yes, also, google-able information.
thanks for the clarification. I agree with you that "uniformity" is sometimes not desirable.
Aside from having common exams, one possibility is to withhold the names of the instructors until the registration is finished. In that way, students cannot choose sections based on who is teaching it.
Another possibility is to have all, say, 4 teachers teach all 4 sections: Teacher "W" teaches section "A" during the first quarter, then teaches section "B" during the second quarter, ..., while teacher "X" teaches section "B" during the first quarter, etc.
I do not completely agree with your statement that "the student grade in any section will strongly depend on who is teaching it." I think that the teacher is a factor, but not the main factor. An extremely lazy and weak student will fail no matter who the teacher is; An extremely hardworking and strong student will pass no matter who the teacher is. I believe the student is the main factor.
I think it's more the interaction between the teacher and the student with a productive interaction being only one of four outcomes. A motivated student can leave a class with a "bitter A", turned off from a topic he is talented in, because the professor and he didn't click. Not that you can click with every student (or faculty member).
For any individual student, the choice of instructor can have a profound effect on their grade, their mastery of the material, and their enthusiasm for the topic.
I've had different experiences. Sometimes entire batches of students have different experiences.
My control systems Professor was lenient at grading, keeping the class average at a C. He taught well, but however had to shift to another university before the second semester of that year. The other half of my batch had to deal with the second professor whose mean grade was a D.
I think a Professor, in this way could perhaps make a large impact on a student's grades. Perhaps even on the grades of an entire batch of students.
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5683 | How many years of industrial experience needed for a Mechatronics Professor?
I have a Bachelor's in EE and Master's in Automation and 3 years experience, including 2 in software development. For me, an academic career would be both more meaningful and professionally rewarding in its flexibility.
I think someone with experience but without formal qualifications could teach a subject such as mechatronics well.
How I might switch to teaching mechatronics? Should I stay in industry for a few more years and then move straight to being a full-time professor? Or, should I work part-time for a lest prestigious college and try to progress incrementally?
Note:
I don't want to obtain a PhD. Rather, I'd prefer to obtain the necessary qualifications while part-time, while working as a professor.
As far as I know, you cannot be professor unless you hold a PhD in the first place.
@seteropere I think it's location dependent. At some places, PhD is not an absolute requirement to teach at a college. Full professorship would require PhD. However, I believe the qualification varies differently and 3 years is far far away from it. It's also far away from a senior technical position in industry.
There are quite a few professors without PhDs. And there are a lot of professors without industrial experience. And once you've got a professorship, why would you then want to study for a PhD?
@EnergyNumbers I personally know people(more than one case) who taught at colleges as assistant professors holding only masters. But it's very hard to get promotion(e.g. to become associate professor), so they had to get PhD to get to higher positions.
I dis-agree with scaaahu here. There are people who teach with just a Masters degree. Typically they are termed as 'Lecturers' then. A Professor, has to have a Ph D.
@Naresh Again, I think it's location dependent. Different systems, different locations and different titles have different meanings. I don't disagree with your statement.
There is a full Wiki page
In the US, it's very common for faculty---including tenured full professors---at two year colleges not to have a PhD. The same is true at plenty of four year career-focused institutions.
Your answer seems to confuse teaching with being a professor. One can teach without being a professor. Furthermore, and although this may be controversial, I think the quintessential characteristic of a professor is a scholar who can carry on substantial independent research.
Neither teaching skill nor experience in industry counterbalance the lack of that.
It's not clear where you're writing from, and where you'd like to become a professor. But it's almost certainly true that, given your chosen field (mechatronics), you will need to be working at a four-year university with an engineering program.
In the US and Western Europe, this means that you will almost certainly be required to have a PhD before you begin your position as a professor; this isn't really negotiable. You would not be permitted to complete the PhD while being a full-time professor. In other parts of the world, this is not a strict requirement.
However, if what you want is to teach, the rules are substantially different. In such cases, having a PhD is not required, and you can instead work part time as a lecturer or adjunct professor (or other equivalent title, depending on location). You would be expected to teach a certain number of courses per semester, but otherwise you would not be responsible for teaching students, nor would you have many of the other commitments required of full-time faculty.
In many fields, and at many schools, even lecturers and adjuncts are strongly preferred to have a Ph.D.
@NateEldredge: This is true, but it is certainly not required. In many cases, particularly for design courses and other "practical" courses, having a PE (practicing engineer) degree might be more useful than the PhD. But especially at top universities, yes, a PhD might still be expected.
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48325 | How is the training for MS students different from MBA students?
How do universities train MBA students differently from MS students? Statistics and quantitative reasoning are vital parts of the MBA as analytics have become crucial to many aspects of business. In what sense does an MS in Statistics have better training in analytics than an MBA?
How do MBAs add value to a person's career? Is their broad (if not deep) command of statistics, economics, finance, etc., the reason behind their astronomical salaries? Is there specific training that makes them 'managerial'? If yes, what is that training?
Broad question. Can you focus it to something like "How does an MBA in X (say Finance) differ from an M.S. in X (say Quantitative Finance)? Perhaps focussing will reduce the answer to searching through a few course catalogues.
MBA, as its name indicates, is training in specific business management skills. An MS is training in another set of skills They differ in the same way that an MS In EE differs from a MS in Anthropology.
What do you mean by analytics? Your question stem hints that it is a field in statistics, but I have seen it used in the context of machine learning and decision support. I don't want to seem like I'm picking at semantics, just want to understand better part of your comparison.
An important aspect of MBA training that I haven't seen mentioned in other answers is networking. A huge amount of getting things done is business is about networking, and while you will not find a formal course on networking in an MBA program, most good MBA programs will have a lot of networking events and opportunities connected with them. MBA students are also often grouped together in cohorts or otherwise treated much more as a unified group of students than MS students. All of this adds up to a very important extra-curricular curriculum component that is often a key differentiator for success or failure after business school, and is largely neglected in the more technically focused track of MS students.
Exactly, from what I gathered the purpose of MBAs is almost exclusively networking. The content is irrelevant. Prestigious, expensive MBAs attract influential people from companies successful enough to afford the tuition. Very useful to have in your address book if you plan to climb the management ladder.
I believe an accurate rephrasing of your question is Why do some MBAs make so much?
The upper decile of MBA holders surely earns more than the upper decile of those with a MSc, although that is my educated guess. I, similarly, wager that the average MSc earns more than the average MBA.
I am not sure that an MBA derives its value from content, nor am I alone in that view point (See what a graduate and the FT say.) An MBA allows for powerful networking, especially if you already have a powerful network to barter with.
As to the content, A Master's in Business Administration (MBA) differs from a Master's in Science (MSc) in many ways:
Curriculum: MBA classes do not cover technical subjects in as much depth as MS classes. An MBA student may take one class in financial economics that involves no calculus or concepts from analysis. An MSc student would take at least two courses, involving higher math and perhaps computer simulations.
Point in career: An MBA is a terminal degree in business, inasmuch as degrees matter in business. An MSc can be a terminal degree in engineering and computer science. In math or economics the terminal degree is a PhD and one picks up an MSc along the way.
Point in career (2): An MBA is supposed to be acquired after substantial work experience. Many pursue an MSc shortly after undergraduate education.
CS has phd as a terminal degree I think.
I didn't say MSc is the only terminal degree in Computer Science. Edited to make that clearer.
From an educational stand point, a Master's degree in a specific discipline is not much different from an MBA degree, in that they both are Master level degrees. There is one caveat, though: Master of Science (MS) degrees are, naturally, focused on scientific research, whereas MBA degree is not. The consequences of that distinction can be found in different structures of academic programs as well as the typical requirement of a thesis or a similar major project for an MS degree. Those Master's degrees that do not use the MS designation are usually referred to as professional Master's degrees.
Now on to the core of your question. In it, stating the importance of analytics for business, you are making an IMHO unfounded implied assumption that analytics is vital for business. There is a big difference between being important and being vital. While analytics and data-driven decision making are, certainly, important (more or less, depending on the industry, business type, size and other factors), I would argue that, in general and by the very definition, having excellent business knowledge, skills and experience is more vital to a business than the same traits in analytics department. In other words, MBA holders potentially have a more significant and immediate effect on a business' performance and other results, than data-focused professionals. The former are "closer to the bottom line", so to speak.
For a case in point, an anecdotal example of Warren Buffett and his Berkshire Hathaway company. It is a well-known fact that computers and computer-based data analytics are almost unused by the company and, especially its boss, Mr. Buffett. However, that fact clearly does not preclude the company from achieving its tremendous growth and overall business success. Therefore, that is done by applying mostly general and specific business knowledge, skills and experience, rather than modern analytical approaches and tools.
Note that above, when referring to knowledge, skills and experience, I used the word "excellent", which, usually (but often unfairly!), implies that MBA graduates are top business schools. Therefore, their higher salaries on average, when compared with similar graduates from analytics, data science or similar MS programs. If we would consider graduates from both MS and MBA programs from programs beyond top tier, the latter not only will not have "astronomical salaries", but, AFAIK, their salaries (especially, starting) will be lower than narrow technical professionals, graduated from MS programs.
As for specific training for MBA graduates that "makes them managerial", certainly MBA programs offer specialized managerial courses (i.e., strategy, marketing, accounting), which are simply typically not offered in MS programs (or, are optional and significantly more limited). Hence, naturally, more significance of MBA graduates to business results and, thus, higher financial compensation (again, I imply here only top tier MBA graduates and their starting salaries).
This largely depends on the type of MS degree. An MBA is geared towards business. A graduate from a MBA program should be able to immediately apply his or her learning to a business environment.
MS degrees differ. Some are geared towards research, requiring a student to write a thesis. Others require only classwork. A MS degree in statistics that emphasizes research may not discuss how to use statistics to make business decisions. That MS degree may, instead, teach the mathematical underpinnings of statistical tests or how to analyze data. Data, here, means not just stocks or inventory, but time series in general.
One can leverage a quantitative research background into a lucrative career in business. I have known a few physicists who are well paid for their knowledge of mathematics, programming, or thinking processes, all valuable in a business setting but not taught in MBA classes.
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100900 | What should I do if I submitted more recommendations than needed for an academic job application?
I am applying for academic jobs in mathematics. Most of the jobs I am applying for ask for three or four letters of recommendation.
At the beginning of my application process, I spoke with an academic who has served on multiple search committees, but who is not a mathematician, who told me that it is ok to send more letters of recommendation than asked for. As a consequence, I obtained five letters of recommendation, and used all five for almost all the jobs to which I have thus far applied.
Recently, I read some things on this site (here and here) that made me wonder if this decision was an error.
In addition, I reflected more on my choices of recommender, which had really been made with the first job application in mind, and wondered if some of the letters really didn't make sense for some of the applications. (I am applying to a variety of positions.)
The question is what to do now. Almost all the applications are through the website mathjobs.org, which allows me to change them at any time. But in many cases the departments are supposedly already processing applications. I wouldn't want to just make a change to an application that is already being reviewed, without comment. The options I have thought of:
1) Don't worry about it. Leave everything as is. Let the departments contact me if something needs to be changed.
2) Contact the search committees and ask them if I should withdraw a letter or two.
What is your advice for me? Are there other options I should consider? What is your recommended option?
I am particularly interested in hearing from people who have served on search committees, or who have gone through the search process and received feedback from departments about issues related to the above. So if you fit either of these descriptions, please say so.
2) Contact the search committees and ask them if I should withdraw a letter or two. I doubt you would get a response to such an inquiry, as the search committee is too busy.
What's done is done. Five is no big faux pas, just more than needed. I would move on and, perhaps in the future, trim the number you submit.
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17533 | Grid lines on graphs
I'm told there are conventions in scientific papers around graphs. I'm publish material for a general audience based on a the findings of a scientific paper (unpublished) and having a disagreement with the author of the paper about how graphs must be presented.
I'm specifically asking here about the conventions for scientific publishing. I'm very aware that conventions outside scientific papers for graphs are much more open, I take my visual data cues mostly from Edward Tufte's books.
I'm being told that displaying horizontal grid lines implies a greater accuracy in modelling data and therefore should be absent in the case of this carbon sequestration modelling since it's not the results of measurements? (I would have thought significant figures on axis, axis spacing and fundamentally the caption explaining the data source and assumptions were more relevant to that)
I'm told that titles are a no go, captions only. (I've found a Uni spec online for science papers saying titles are mandatory). I'm told titles are rare in journals.
Is there any right or wrong to these matters of convention or is it just opinion?
I'm pretty sure grid lines are unacceptable by APA standard, which is typical in social science journals (APA = American Psychological Association). I know this is irrelevant to your field; just giving a datapoint.
In my field, journals and conferences that publish usually specify details such as usage of captions/titles and the placement of captions/titles in relation to a figure. (Graphs being regarded as figures.) I've never heard of any standards regarding grid lines.
displaying horizontal grid lines implies a greater accuracy in modelling data — what is this i don't even
If displaying horizontal grid lines implies a greater accuracy in modelling data is true then you should suggest removing the y axis as well.
On grid lines
It depends on the points you would like to make with the graph. If you're just going to show an upward or downward trend, then the grid lines are probably redundant. If you'd need refer back to a certain point of a curve, and knowing the vertical position of that point would be crucial, then grid lines can help. It's not about the graphs (or I may go so far to say even within publication culture,) it's about the points you are trying to get across. If the grid lines will get people there with less puzzling or work, then yes to grid lines. In all other occasions, then no.
I'm being told that displaying horizontal grid lines implies a greater
accuracy in modelling data and therefore should be absent in the case
of this carbon sequestration modelling since it's not the results of
measurements
This is perhaps the oddest graphical rule I have heard in the last 12 months. For most grid lines are just an extension of the tick mark on the axes. As long as you provide the tick marks on the y-axis, anyone can draw horizontal grid lines.
It is, however, not advisable to provide tick marks or grid lines finer than what your instrument or model can discern. For example, if your measurement or prediction is in the unit of meter. Then, at most I'd just put grid lines at 0.5 m increment. I wouldn't go so far to put 0.01 or even 0.1 m increments. That would imply some precision that I never had. I believe your partner author's concern may be more related to this problem. In that case, you two need to talk and make sure at least the tick marks make sense.
On caption vs. title
I'm told that titles are a no go, captions only. (I've found a Uni
spec online for science papers saying titles are mandatory). I'm told
titles are rare in journals.
Yes, they are rare in my field (biomedical.) We use captions (located below the graph) most of the time. The caption usually starts with something like this:
Figure 1. The [would have been title]
[texts explaining the graph.]
If you have a title in the illustration, it only serves to duplicate information, making it redundant ink.
Though, depending on fields and journals, the rule may differ. Check with the journal's guideline and other published work in that journal for clues.
Thanks for these comments. This is a publication for a general audience so I'm going with my instincts and design trends at large towards simplification. Was interested about the standardisation around these ideas in academic publishing.
There is no right or wrong when it comes to grid lines. There may be conventions varying between disciplines. The basic question of whether to use such lines or not, is if they add something useful to the reader to better understand the data displayed. A go figure should communicate as many thought as possible to the reader without to much effort. If you want to get some ideas of thinking about graphics, try to locate the book The visual display of quantitative information by Edward Tufte. There are many constructive thoughts about displaying information there worth considering.
In the end you need to look at how others publish similar data and figure out if a "standard" has developed. It may not be the best way to display data but since many are familiar with the format it becomes an efficient communication. Otherwise you should try to display the data as clearly as possible, lines or not.
See Are gridlines and grey backgrounds chartjunk and should they be used only on an exception basis? for some discussion on this at the stats site.
As I mentioned in the OP I do take many cues from Edward Tuffe on visual communication of information. Have several of his books including the one you cite. I'm confident from a comms point of view of what I'm arguing for but I was curious if this claim about implied accuracy of modeling in scientific papers had any basis in fact.
@Andy W I should have mentioned that by using faint gridlines I am able to remove the solid vertical-axis which makes for less chart-junk in my view. There's an obvious trend towards this presentation of column/line/scatter graphs in the design world. It's cleaner in my view and lets the data take centre stage, not the apparatus of the axis and ticks. Removing that left hand vertical element seems to remove some kind of hierarchical impediment to 'seeing' the data for me, however subtle this may be.
Regards audience you hit the nail on the head. That's the nub of the disagreement. For me and the publisher it is the general public, for the author it would be academics (since the paper remains unpublished at this time).
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215312 | My final transcript print is bad (Low quality print)
I'm interested in studying abroad (US,UK), but my transcript got very low quality print and my college is not ready to issue new transcript, does bad quality print affect my abroad study chances? what should I do, Please guide me. {I'm from India}
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215771 | What is the best action if a reviewer did not read my work (survey paper) but still advised me to cite at least ten of his works?
So I'm talking about a survey paper on a very specific topic. This reviewer suggested that I include hyperparameter training and a comparison with the SOTA model, indicating that he did not read my work because it was a survey paper with no model proposed. However, he suggested at least 10 of his works, some of which are not even relevant. I appreciate the recommendation to make my work more complete, but I believe it should be based on the topic relevance and significance of the recommended work rather than his personal recommendation. What would be the best action? I know citing 2-3 more papers to avoid trouble is fine, but not 10 papers from 1 person with some of them off-topic.
Just do it and add an acknowledgment thanking a referee for pointing out refs 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10. without using them in the paper. People will understand.
Response to reviewers comments
This reviewer suggested that I include hyperparameter training and a comparison with the SOTA model, indicating that he did not read my work because it. aAs a survey paper with no model proposed, this does not seem appropriate.
However, he They also suggested at least 10 additionsl of his works, some of which are not even
relevant. I appreciate the recommendation to make my work more
complete, but I believe it should be based on the topic relevance and
significance of the recommended work rather than his personal recommendation. I also noted that the recommended work all share an author in common. We apologise for missing the work of this author and have included the subset of these references we feel relevant to the work.
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151002 | How to write the introduction of a stapler PhD thesis?
It looks like I am going to have three articles (if all goes well) that are dealing with quite different fields (psycho-accoustics, time-series analysis and machine learning). I do not have a single clue on how to start writting the introduction for a thesis that should tie these together ...
Do you have tips for writting introduction when dealing with "sandwitch"/"stapler" thesis ?
If you have an advisor, this question would be best suited for them because it is very field specific.
Does this answer your question? Differences between the introduction of a sandwich thesis and a paper
As a comment says, this really is a question for your supervisor. I'm assuming it was your supervisor's idea to put your three papers together in the thesis, so perhaps they have suggestions on how to make them fit together.
If it was your initiative, check with your supervisor first. They might propose to leave out one of the papers so that the resulting thesis will be more homogeneous (at the expense of being shorter).
My thesis included only some of the publications I did during my PhD, those that were part of a larger project. In the meantime I did other things which have not been included in there.
Otherwise try to find a common denominator to all the papers, no matter how far it is, write a section about it, and then specialize to the topics at hand. I suppose there has to be a common denominator of some sort, but I'm not an expert in your specific field.
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354 | What are some good practices when asking people to share their PowerPoint presentations from a conference/talk?
In many cases, they (understandably) don't reply (or they are uncomfortable with sharing them, as they often contain unpublished material). Also, I do this often, and don't want to be known as "the person who asks people for their powerpoint slides".
At the same time though, it's simply far easier to remember the content of a presentation/talk when you actually have access to the stuff inside (and I do discover that I learn faster from talks than from any other source). Most of the time, I request the slides as a reference for learning the material (since I'm still new to the area, and they are quite helpful for that).
(though I do wonder - what are the underlying circumstances when most people ask for them?)
Most people ask for them for the same reason you do; to simplify note-taking, and to help remember some idea for future research.
Whatever you do, just don't call them a PowerPoint unless you know they were actually prepared in PowerPoint :-P (I am among the minority of people who get a little offended when someone asks about my PowerPoint - because I prepare my slides in LaTeX)
In my experience, conference organizers often ask speakers to provide their slides, to be posted (after the talk) on the conference web site, so everyone can access them. (And @DavidZ will be glad to learn that, instead of calling them "PowerPoint slides" regardless of how they were actually produced, we usually call them "Beamer slides" regardless of how they were actually produced.)
There is no magic when it comes to asking for presentations. And there is nothing wrong with being the person who asks people for their powerpoint slides (at least you show that are interested and it may result in them being cited; and it shows that they got their job done - though a presentation they interested others in their idea).
If they don't reply (or don't sent it), it is usually of one of the following reasons:
They are busy and missed your mail,
It would take their time to find the presentation and send it (it may be big so it is not just sending an e-mail),
They would prefer not to make it public as:
It is not polished enough for anything but a presentation,
It may contain things that they would prefer not to share publicly (e.g. plots form other papers, preliminary data which may later proven to be wrong or incomplete, pictures or video they don't have right to share further, etc).
If they don't want to share it - they have right to it. However, usually they have nothing against (and actually are happy to do so) as long as you make it quick and easy for them.
So it is a good idea to ask for slides just after their talk - they may have it on their computer (so you can copy it to your stick) or on a stick (o you can copy it to your computer) or send it right away.
Also:
Send your e-mail at most a week after the presentation,
Be short and concise (what exactly you want, what do you want with do with it),
If there is no response try writing the same e-mail a week later.
Be very clear on what you want it for, particularly whether you will be sharing it further (even within your group, with your advisor, &c).
I often post edited version of the slides online, but I always want to have control on the contents that are public, semi-public, or private.
I don't mind sharing my presentations, but I make sure that I provide a read-only format only (PDF) with slides scaled to e.g. 1/4 of actual size, in raster format (so that more than one would fit on a page). When people ask for presentations, I expect they'd like to have the material handy for further reading and reference, not to present it or use it themselves.
One would go even further and restrict the PDF printing, copying and modifications, although these can be circumvented with a reasonable effort if you know what you are doing. I don't do this as a matter of principle, but I can see how some people might want to have such kind of control.
You can ask for a redacted version of the slides, without new data. Do note that this will require extra work from the presenter; in my experience, I've found that most people do not go this route. I would follow the route you're currently taking; ask for them, and if they don't wish to share, then drop the subject.
If you're uncomfortable asking the authors of the slides, for some event types, another idea could be to ask the organizers of the conference, seminar, talk, etc., if they could make the slides available to everyone on the event website. Depending on their attitude, the organizers may think that this is a good idea and do it on your behalf, and there may have a higher chance of getting a response from the presenter.
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684 | What are the 25th-75th percentile ranges for the annual income for graduate students in the United States?
And are there differences in average income between different types of fields, or different types of schools?
The diagram below says that the average income for grad students is $17k/year. But I'm more commonly seeing incomes in the range of $25k-$30k/year on PhysicsGRE.com...
Okay just changed it
In jest, 25th percentile - poor, 75th percentile - not quite as poor (but still poor by most standards!)
Note that those statistics are often averaged over all possible disciplines, and therefore, since there is such a wide disparity of stipend levels between different schools, and between different disciplines at the same school.
At the institution I attended for graduate school, engineers had stipends approximately 30% higher than the science majors (chemistry, physics, math, etc.). Similarly, at the undergraduate institution I attended, a similar disparity existed between science and humanities graduate students.
It is also important to ask if master's students, who often don't receive a salary at all, are included in that average. (And, since humanities students tend to stay longer, they may skew the statistics even more than one might expect.)
(One final note to directly address the question: competitive national fellowships in the US currently pay between $30,000 and $35,000 per year as a stipend. I would estimate, then, that most stipends are significantly below that amount. I'd say something in the range of $20,000-$30,000 would be appropriate in STEM fields, and probably $15,000-$20,000 for full-time humanities PhD's.)
It only makes sense. Companies aren't willing to pay all that much for historians to finish their phds like they are physicists. How could what they have to offer have any bearing on today's scientific research anyway?
I would suggest the major driver of differential graduate student incomes is the varying sources of funding for different research areas. Some funding agencies list the amounts they fund explicitly on their website (e.g., NIH NRSA grants gives $22,032 for graduate students, other numbers available on their site), while others require the amounts to be listed by the PI in the grant proposal (e.g., Air Force Office of Scientific Research grants do not list any specific amounts in the call for proposals).
Given the large number of funding sources across all disciplines, finding actual numbers (beyond anecdotal reporting) would be a major undertaking. If you do research and publish the numbers, though, I'd love to see them.
Here is a nice list of PhD stipends in different fields and schools in the USA:
Brown University – 20500 (Political Sciences in 2013), 27500 (BioMed:Biology in 2013)
California Institute of Technology – 21321 (Physics in 2014)
Carnegie Mellon University – 27600 (Biological Sciences in 2013)
Columbia University – 32447 (GSAS in 2014), 31666 (GSAS in 2012)
Cornell University – 36080 (Life Sciences/Physical Sciences/Engineering in 2014), 31293 (Humanities/Art in 2014), 30533
(Policy in 2013), 30533 (BMCB in 2013), 29067 (MBG in 2010)
Duke University - 28773 (Arts & Sciences in 2014), 29420 (Medical Sciences & Nursing in 2014), 27850 (Engineering in 2014), 27934 (Arts
& Sciences in 2013), 28700 (Medical Sciences & Nursing in 2013), 26910
(Engineering in 2013)
Emory University – 28000 (BCDB in 2014), 28000 (Biomed in 2013)
Harvard University – 32232 (SEAS in 2014), 31284 (SEAS in 2012), 32616 (OEB, GSAS in 2012), 26795 (GSAS in 2009),
John Hopkins University – 29218 (Biochemistry, biophysics, cellular, developmental, molecular biology in 2014), 22000 (Political
Science in 2014), 25000 (Biostats in 2014), 21000 (Political Science
in 2013), 20000 (Biostats in 2013)
MIT – 31968 (Engineering PhD RA in 2014), 30888 (Science/English PhD RA in 2012), 30630 (Chemistry PhD RA in 2012), 28236 (English MS
RA in 2012), 31644 (Science/English TA in 2012), 28524 (English TA in
2012)
Northwestern University – 22992 (average in 2014), 22428 (avg. in 2013), 28000 (IBIS in 2013), 21936 (Physics and Astronomy in 2013)
Princeton University – 32000 (Molecular Biology in 2014), 26784 (Humanities in 2011), 27504 (Natural sciences in 2011)
Rice University – 26000 (Chemistry in 2014), 24720 (Chemistry in 2013), 28000 (Biochemistry and Cell Biology in 2013)
Stanford University – 36500 (PhD with SGF in 2014), 29500 (Neuroscience in 2010), 29250 (GSBS in 2010)
University of California Berkeley – 31000 (Molecular and Cell biology in 2014), 30500 (PMB in 2013), 30000 (MCB in 2013)
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) – 26000 (Ecology and Evolutionary Bio in 2014)
University of California San Francisco (UCSF) – 31000 (Neuroscience in 2014)
University of Chicago – 29000 + $500 relocation fee (BSD in 2014), 28500 (BSD in 2013), 28000 (Humanities in 2013), 28000 (BSD in 2012)
University of Notre Dame – 25333 (Biological Sciences in 2013)
University of Pennsylvania – 30500 (Biochemistry and Biophysics in 2014), 27615 (Art & Sciences in 2013)
University of South Carolina – 17500 – 22000 without tuition
Vanderbilt University – 25500 (CPB in 2011), 25500 (Biomedical Sciences in 2009), 20000 (Chemistry in 2005)
Washington University at St. Louis – 28500 (DBBS in 2014), 28500 (Biology/Biomed Sciences in 2013)
Yale University – 32500 (BBS in 2014), 31700 (BBS in 2012), 35700 (BBS with NIH or NSF funding in 2012)
Nice list. Do you know if this includes tuition? For the University of South Carolina it specifies without it.
@Davidmh I'm pretty sure it does in most schools. All grad schools I know a friend from in the us includes tuition (otherwise you'll be in serious deficit).
There's a comparison with other jobs that uses current data on simply hired. You might be able to drill down to what you would be looking at specifically using their search.
I think I would be surprised if it were $30000$. I, for one, get much closer to $20000$, though it is pretty easy to do a little here or there and get a little extra if I wanted to.
On the other hand, I do work all day, and I don't spend any of it ever. So in a sense, I get too much.
In addition, my school is very willing to fund our grads visits to conferences, so that's not (always or completely, but rather sometimes and/or partially) out-of-pocket.
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555 | Does a informative and clear professor webpage often increase the number of prospective PhD students who apply to work for the professor?
Here is what I would call a particularly informative and clear professor webpage.
Of course, it's not the most important thing (for me, personally, I mostly discovered professors through asking current professors whom to contact). But a lot of PhD students do discover professors to contact through Internet searches, which may be especially relevant for PhD students who might not have as many connections (especially international ones). And maybe a strong professor webpage could also increase the "fit" of the applicants who do decide to contact the professor.
Hm, a lot of information, or good web design. I'll have to admit that "strong" is subjective, but the webpage I linked is unambiguously strong.
Hmm. I'm not sure how your linked webpage can be called "strong" either (how would you define "strong" there?). As for the one I linked, http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dargan/research.html contains individual pages for all of his research subareas (if you click the hyperlinks).
okay I updated it
I still wonder why you call this page informative or well designed or fitting to the applicants. Maybe you can elaborate on what design choices you found that good.
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368 | Is it a good or bad idea to list declined fellowships (for a PhD program) on one's curriculum vitae?
E.g. as shown in the example here.
2011—Centennial Fellowship, Princeton University Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (accepted)
2011—Top Student Award, University of Washington (declined)
2011—Program in Climate Change Fellowship, University of Washington (declined)
2011—Faculty Fellowship, Columbia University (declined)
2011—Charney Prize, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (declined)
2011—Regents Fellowship, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (declined)
2011—Chair’s Award, Stanford University Department of Earth and Environmental System Science (declined)
What do you mean by declined - it means that u were offered the fellowships, but u declined them for reasons unstated?
One reason is if you want to go to another institution. If Berkeley offers you a fellowship to be a PhD student and you choose to go to MIT, then obviously you have to decline the Berkeley fellowship.
Yeah - by declined I mean that multiple universities gave the PhD applicant a fellowship, and the PhD applicant had to decline some of them.
I am not sure we will have a definitive answer to this question. But as a committee member, I will not count such a list at the advantage of the candidate.
I have seen this commonly used with NDSEG and NSF awards
I'd like to see this question focus on EITHER grad fellowships that were declined OR other fellowships (more like grants/awards).
Aeismail makes an important point about location: what's standard in Germany differs from what's standard in the US.
In a US context, I would strongly recommend against listing things like declined graduate fellowships. It will look strange, and even beyond that it can work to your disadvantage: everybody will already assume you declined several attractive offers, so giving an explicit list will do nothing but focus attention on what isn't on the list. (If the list of declined offers is short, readers will be disappointed, and if it's long, they'll spend more time speculating about what's missing than being impressed.)
The only time I'd recommend highlighting this sort of information is if for some reason you had to turn down a vastly more prestigious offer than the one you accepted. For example, maybe you were offered a tenure-track job at a top department, but ended up working as an adjunct in the middle of nowhere so you could take care of a relative. You should then make sure everybody knows this the next time you are able to apply for jobs. However, you should be very careful when doing this, because if the prestige difference isn't absolutely universally acknowledged, then you run the risk of offending people who feel you are unfairly denigrating a perfectly fine career path.
Bad idea. If you turn down an award (or an acceptance to a univeristy, etc), you don't get to reap the benefits of that award.
No one cares about the universities you could have gone to or the fellowship programs you could have worked for, they care about what you have actually done and that is all you should include on your CV/resume. Period.
To me, the resume linked to above reads "I had no one else edit or evaluate my resume before I posted it online."
Yes, exactly this.
As I mentioned in a comment below, I got exactly the reverse advice from several career professionals. There's no single right answer here. Some people may take offense, but others might find the information useful.
I'd argue that the including declined fellowships would not offer enough of a boost/benefit to offset the risk of your CV coming across as "padded"
@Amy I agree - especially since "padded" is I think the most charitable negative reaction that comes from this. There are several others that are worse. And not printable in polite company.
Like so many other matters, your location plays a role in what is considered accepted or not.
In the US, I would limit listing "declined" awards to national, competitive fellowships which had to be declined because of the fact that you're not allowed to accept multiple fellowships. However, the awarding of multiple such fellowships shows that you are a "hot commodity," and therefore does confer some benefit to you. (As an example of other countries' practices, here in Germany, it is expected that you would list offers of faculty positions that you have declined, for exactly the same reason.)
However, I would agree with Amy and Ben that in the present case, those awards should not have been listed on a CV. On the other hand, "DOD Fellow" and "Offered NSF fellowship" would be a different scenario.
As a USian academic, I completely disagree about DOD and NSF. If you decline the fellowship, you decline the award. (Choose wisely.)
I am also a US-born academic, and was offered a number of fellowships. I listed that fact on my CV at the advice of several recruiting professionals. So there's no "absolute" correct answer here. I'm just trying to argue that there's a big difference between a national award that everybody's heard of and a minor departmental- or school-level award.
@aeismail - recruiting professionals for academia or industry? In the US? I assume that you're currently employed, so keeping these things on your CV worked for you - can I ask what kind of work you are doing now? I'm trying to imagine a scenario where listing these things would work to your advantage.
@Amy: I had a staff position with the DOE, and the inclusion of the fellowships was recommended by the recruiter. Now, I'm working as a professor in Germany.
I agree with this answer and disagree with Anonymous Mathematician and Amy. If you were awarded a highly competitive national fellowship, but had to turn it down in order to take another highly competitive fellowship (or for some other reason), the fact that you won both awards is meaningful. BUT: the drek listed in the original question is not an example of the sorts of things that should be listed as declined. We're really talking about things like the NSF or similar stature here.
I also agree with this answer because hiring committees want to know about your potential earning ability, and the fact that you were awarded a million dollars worth of grants tells them you did have that ability, even if you declined the award for whatever reason.
@aesmail what about listing declined fellowships for a Master's application in Germany? Would that also be seen favourably?
I don't think there's one answer to this question. Different people react to different things on CVs in different ways. The level of listing above is silly; if the candidate in the example had asked me for my advice I would have told them not to (they're basically listing jobs they were offered; interpreted generously, it looks like CV padding), but occasionally it can make sense to list a prestigious fellowship you declined due to circumstances.
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1449 | How do professors usually discover "new" research interests?
Usually, a person starts out with a single primary research interest as a PhD student (closely related to that of their adviser). But then as they move on through the assistant professor stage, they discover new research interests. Do they usually discover new research interests through collaborations/discussions with professors at their university or through conferences? Or do they discover new research interests through what can earn them funding (through the NSF and other agencies?) Especially since any topic could theoretically be interesting to them? (even though they might find some topics more interesting than other topics).
Is it more often that they do what they're most interested in, or that they do what they obtain funding for (and find what they get funding for interesting enough)? And can they sometimes even discover new interests through their PhD students?
I'd be surprised if there is a "usual" method. (How do people meet new friends?)
I'd think all of the above, as well as just plain old "thinking" :)
The more difficult question is how to narrow down the innumerable interesting areas and decide which to focus on.
Here are a couple ways that have resulted in new research directions for me:
Reading a paper/book. Reading a paper/book can inspire new ideas. You may find that a paper is missing something, or you think of a way of doing it better, or perhaps you can combine the ideas in the paper with something you already know.
Obtaining funding. Often funding is obtained in groups, generally to inspire collaboration and cross-fertilization of ideas. As a result, one is forced to venture into new territory.
Talking to a colleague (generally from other institute). Simply chatting with someone at a conference or when visiting another institute can inspire new research directions. They may have a problem; you may have the tools to solve it.
Changing job. This brings you in contact with new people who have new problems. Collaborations my result from conversations in the coffee room, or by going to research discussions within the new department.
Following up on something a student has done. You may set a masters student, for example, to look at something you find interesting, but have not yet had time to explore in depth. The student may come up with something useful, but then leaves.
Some points (I'm no Prof., but which research topics might "pay out" (wether citations, patents, fame) is imo rather a matter of common scientific sense):
It may be cheap/easy/time-efficient based on the current lab hardware and expertise/knowledge of the group to "dive" into a additional topic. So I would call this economical reasoning to exploit new research opportunities similar to funding reasons.
Publish or perish. Which research fields are trendy or will become trendy and offer high chance to publish and get citations. Visualisation tools for the publishing landscape or search engines might show you which fields are currently booming more or less. Or browse research forums like mathoverflow,citeulike,... to see what top and experienced scientist are currently interested in.
Finding a niche, which needs of course a really good overview on and understanding of a research field. Contrary to bullet point 2, focusing on a topic/problem no one else is interested in or thinks of may give you the chance to become a trendsetter, find a new effect/phenomenon and may earn you a lot "automatic" citations.
simply working off the list of unsolved problems :) (Wikipedia knows also, what we don't know!), http://www.openproblems.net/, science's magazine 125 big questions
As much as possible, I'd encourage you to pick research topics because they really interest you, rather than because you think you can get funding for them. It's so much easier to bring passion and energy to your research when you love it (rather than when you've chosen it to get funding). That said here are a few more ways to develop new research interests.
Hear a talk at a conference.
Write a paper with a colleague who knows a different area than you.
Chase references for a paper you are reading or writing. I often learn quite a bit the first time that I write the introduction of a paper in an area that's new to me.
Dave Clarke's answer is excellent, and just to add a few more:
Changing funding opportunities. The unfortunate reality is that grants are often hard to come by, and it's not unusual for professors to tailor specific grant applications to the nature of the grants being offered. Depending on how unpopular the professor's previous research interests are at the time, this may result in a shift in research topics.
Single topic diverges into multiple topics. To describe this via example, at one time our lab was working on a neural imaging project related to human decision making. This research led to investigating decision-making on a larger scale, as we tried to create computational models. This led to a few papers detailing the applications of ontologies to behavioral and cognitive neuroscience. Simply by following the various aspects of the project we were able to investigate a wide range of topics.
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3108 | What is the average number of articles written per author in a year and has it increased recently?
Did anyone research the data about scientific productivity? I.e. what is the average number of articles written by author in a year in a specific field? I am referring to average, since this is maybe easiest to calculate, but it would be interesting to see the distribution data too. This of course depends on how many journals we want to scope, but I would be interested to see any data on say most popular fields like physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, psychology, economics, etc (order is of no importance).
can you rephrase/edit your question to define why one would want to study such numbers? in other words, give us a context of the question
It's been my impression that quantity is not as critical as quality. A paper in a reputable journal is worth more than several papers in their less reputable counterparts.
A single number "papers per author per year" is nearly meaningless. Publication and coauthorship rates vary radically from one field to another — in many subfields of physics, people publish tons of papers with lots of coauthors; in many subfields of economics, people publish few papers, with few or no coauthors.
I need to settle argument with a colleague. I know that quantity is not quality.
@JeffE, yes different fields have varying number per articles written. So this is why in my question I mentioned that I want to see the data for different fields.
@Paul do you have data to back that up? My recollection of Byrnes's study in psychology (http://pss.sagepub.com/content/18/4/283.short) is that that is not the case for tenure review in the US.
@ElCid I think knowing these numbers for your field can be valuable to both new people in the field and the tenure review process for calibration purposes.
@DanielE.Shub: Paul's contention is certainly consistent with my experience in computer science, on both sides of hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions. (We tend to refer to "Publications in less reputable counterparts" as "non-publications".)
Number of articles written? Or number of articles in which someone shows up as one of many authors? Because those are two very different things.
A comprehensive review was conducted in the field of psychology in relation to publication rates and tenure. There is also a "fun" review related to beer consumption and publication in the field of avian evolutionary biology.
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01889.x
Psychological Science April 2007 vol. 18 no. 4 283-286
From the psychology study: It is possible that the only way to fully understand this finding will be to conduct detailed case studies in which chairpersons or colleagues of the candidates for tenure are interviewed about the cases. — Really? Ya think?
@DavidKetcheson the link works for me. Added the doi at the end.
Thanks; it works for me now too. Maybe just a server hiccup.
Though this is not a direct answer to your query, this hopes to lead to more productive / useful answers.
See this Wiki article, on Hirsch index or h-index that is a widely accepted measure of
both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist
or scholar.
The article also points to other indices on scientific/academic productivity and impact in the field.
The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service provides a gateway to the online Astronomy and Physics literature. A new interface of the ADS provides a tool to visualize the author and paper networks; that tells you how productive the author is, quantified with the number of collaborators and papers produced.
For e.g. see this link; a search for the name Narlikar. On top of the resulting page, next to Top 200 results, you can see a drop-down menu, on which you can select various options like Author Network, Paper Network etc to get various visualizations.
You can contact the project personnels here http://adsabs.harvard.edu/ . They do conduct studies on bibliographic data, which is one of the measure of academic productivity.
Update :
Here is a link to the articles that cite J. E. Hirsch's article - An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output- on h-index via Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=link:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnas.org%2Fcontent%2F102%2F46%2F16569.abstract
Widely used perhaps, but widely accepted? Really?
There is a scope for another question, then :-)
I have added a question http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/which-is-the-most-accepted-measure-for-an-individuals-academic-productivity
In the subject that I am familiar with, political science, there is a recent study using bibliometric data on patterns of publishing in journals - maybe this could be interesting (and might be similar to already mentioned work in other comments): https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/patterns-of-publishing-in-political-science-journals-an-overview-of-our-profession-using-bibliographic-data-and-a-coauthorship-network/D946105595ED2C314AE2A04138F7A5B6
As the authors state:
We drew on more than 67,000 papers published from 1990 to 2013 in one
of today’s 96 core journals. The network consists of more than 40,000
authors located worldwide.
and regarding your question, they find this:
Whereas some are highly productive in terms of publications, the
majority of authors published only a single paper, which suggests
significant turnover in the community.
You should have a closer look at it (although polsci is not in your list of mentioned disciplines)
Papers on coauthorship networks such as Newman (2004) have the descriptive statistics on publication rates in different fields, e.g. publications per person per year.
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449 | How do I find research groups that do work in field X?
What is the best way to go about to find a certain research group that do work in a specific field (e.g research groups doing empirical brain investigations but working from a dualistic perspective, or research groups doing eyetracker work on infants)?
Um... did you try Google? (In computer science, it would unthinkable for a faculty member not to have a web page advertising their group's research results, usually with pointers to local copies of their papers. This is a comment instead of an answer because it looks like you're in a different field.)
Well, I find reasonable numbers for research groups focusing on eyetracking by using Google and search operators. Of course, you should add some redundant similar terms (eye-movement, baby,...)
Notice, there are some patterns:
american universities nearly always have edu (actually it's even a domain) in their URL, german univ. uni. So using inurl:edu in google filters out a lot. Non-university institutes like german Max-Planck often have URL patterns too.
further add -filetype:pdf -filetype:doc -filetype:ppt -filetype:ps to filter out more useless results
add 2010..2012 to be sure the site/group is still active and the topic on their agenda.
add research | forschung (latter being german translation, but afaik nowadays most natural sciences groups in Germany have a english (& german) page)
Some research branches also have a online directory, there exist also internet directories like dmoz (not sure if this stuff is up to date, probably some dead links):
http://www.eurosys.org/directory/
http://www.dmoz.org/Science/Biology/Neurobiology/Research_Groups_and_Centers/
http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/etai/actions/colloq/groups.html
At least I can say that most research groups in Germany will have a english home page and short summary/research topics/open positions on it. So there should be no general problem to find them by some "serious" googling. But don't use too specific keywords, "eyetracking on infants", "dualistic view" is too special imho, use keywords being specific rather to the topic than the exact methodology. They are probably mainly interested in how the visual recognition system adapts and learns over time, this is the bigger thematic picture. You attract master and phd students not by naming a special experimental method, so you will not find these type of keywords often on a group page, where they often try to put in a minimum of time.
I've nearly forgotten that you actually can make more specific Google searches than just typing in a bunch of words and hope for the best. This is some great advice, thanks!
@Speldosa googling is a art & science but imho the most important soft skill for todays students with growing redundancy of online contents, but there is light at the end of the tunnel http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html Take a look at the websites of some research groups, there are more patterns, like often links named jobs, positions, people, staff. Include this in your search. Know the operators AND use them.
Thanks for the link! To learn to google things more efficiently will be my project this week!
Note: Just using the "uni" designation would exclude most of the TH's and TU's in Germany—which are the schools most likely to be doing the kinds of research the original poster might be interested in! Also, if there's no English-language version of the homepage, you'd need to search for the German-language equivalents of the search terms.
@aeismail Correct. To my knowlegde TH/U's focus more on applied sciences and engineering, less on fundamental research (here imo the case) in medicine/biology/neuroscience. But I mainly tried to show OP some patterns he should look for in the countries of his choice, I cannot cover all countries here. Helmholtz, Max Planck, Leibniz... also have different URL patterns. The group websites are in natural sciences afaik mostly english, as one of the main purposes of this sites is to attract master/phd students. For humanities in Germany I would rather use german search keywords.
I would try the following, in order of "how useful the results will be":
If you know someone - anyone - in the field, have them recommend names of labs/professors to you. The names they give you will likely be people relevant to their research who have done solid research, and have really established their names in the field. This is the best approach.
If you have access to journal articles, find a good journal in field X and look for a recent paper. There are two ways to do this one:
Look in a couple of articles that seem interesting and see which authors are cited most often in the "introduction" section. Chances are, those authors have completed some recent seminal work, which all these other papers are using as their research springboard.
Look for a review paper, and see who is cited often. This isn't such a good method, as I've found that many review articles will be fairly biased towards themselves/their collaborators, but it still can be useful.
Go to any big-name university's department web page for field X and browse the faculty listings. This is a total crapshoot; you'll find lots of labs, but there's no surefire way to tell quality of lab from their department web page.
+1 for "see which authors are cited most often in the "introduction" section"
Frequently formalized groups of academics hold conferences, or if it is a more specialized field they are frequently part of a broader conference but have special panels/proceedings/meetings within the larger conference.
So possibilities of finding such groups are;
Looking at the CV of authors in the field to see if they are members of such organizations or have presentations at said conferences.
Looking for conferences in the broader field, and seeing if they host research on specific topics.
Other possibilities include email list-serves and forums. I'm not sure if I have any better advice to find such groups than besides doing regular internet searches though.
One way is to ask ChatGPT. Although its answers are sometimes inaccurate, it can help a lot when your question is a bit vague. It understands what research groups are and it understands the connections between fields.
With ChatGPT you don't need to list all the different synonyms for your field or their subfields and it can choose to ignore some parts of your query if they're too specific.
For my own search I've seen that out of the 10 suggestions it gave me,
2 were misnamed or didn't exist, but the rest all seemed to be very good suggestions.
Of course this is just a tool and you should never rely on it too heavily, but it can help you find research groups which are a good fit for what you're looking for. Also note that ChatGPT was trained on data from 2020, so it might be outdated.
Here's an example output of ChatGPT for your query:
Can you list several research groups doing empirical brain investigations but working from a dualistic perspective, or research groups doing eye-tracker work on infants.
I can certainly provide you with some examples of research groups that fit your criteria:
The Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture at Emory University: This interdisciplinary research center includes researchers who work from a dualistic perspective to investigate the relationship between the mind and brain. They use a variety of empirical methods, including neuroimaging and behavioral experiments.
The Human Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Utah: This lab conducts research on the neural mechanisms underlying human perception and cognition. They use both behavioral and neuroimaging techniques, including fMRI and EEG, to investigate these mechanisms from a dualistic perspective.
The Center for Cognitive Science at the University of Minnesota: This interdisciplinary center includes researchers from psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and neuroscience. Some of their work investigates the mind-body problem from a dualistic perspective, using neuroimaging and behavioral experiments.
The Infant Cognition Center at the University of British Columbia: This research group investigates the cognitive and perceptual abilities of infants using a variety of methods, including eye-tracking. They have published several studies on infant perception of social cues and facial expressions.
The Developmental Neuroscience Lab at the University of California, Berkeley: This lab uses a variety of methods, including eye-tracking, to investigate the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying developmental processes in infants and young children.
I hope this helps! Please note that this is not an exhaustive list, and there are many other research groups out there conducting similar work.
If you know specific search terms you're looking for, you could begin by searching Web of Science for the specific combinations you're looking for, and then following up on the specific groups that are returned by such a search.
You may need to use some creativity in narrowing down the search criteria to avoid getting 5000 hits that you need to sift through, but there are a large number of possible "narrowing" options on Web of Science (year of publication, location, sorting by citations, etc.) that can help you.
Alternatively, sites like academia.edu or even a more generic engine like Scholar Google may be able to assist you in this process.
I agree. Only that Scholar Google is not one of the best options given all the noise that it pro cues. Sometimes Scopus works much better than WOS
I found one possibly relevant result searching Mendeley for your topic of interest. The advantage of using Mendeley over Google is that you can limit your search to researcher profiles. On-site people search is a little broken sometimes, so you might have better luck actually doing a Google search but limiting it to Mendeley profiles like this: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=eyetracking+site%3Amendeley.com%2Fprofiles%2F
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20655 | Better chances for math grad school: graduate in three years or four?
I finished freshman year of college and I am transferring from a liberal arts college to a university to study a more rigorous math curriculum. I got accepted at UC berkeley (but as a junior transfer, so I can only be in college for 2 more years). I'm going to hear back from stanford, cornell, and colubmia next week. I would choose stanford over berkeley if I got in, but I'm not sure about the other schools since berkeley is a top ranked math school.
-My question is, if I get into columbia or cornell, should I go and be in college for 3 years, or go to berkeley for only 2 years? Is it better to stay in college for 3 years to be more competitive?
Background: I took real analysis, topology, complex analysis, algebra 2, linear programming, cryptography. I'm self studying algebraic topology and homological algebra, but recently I'm studying probabilistic methods and graph theory to prepare for an REU this summer. I'm interested in anything algebra related.
Why I am worried: I looked over mathematicsgre.com, a forum where grad school applicants post their stats and results. People who get into top math schools usually have taken 10+ grad level classes and did research, REUs, and (probably) have great letters of rec. If I go to berkeley, I only have 2 years, actually less since I would apply to grad school as a senior so I only have full 1 year and a few months.
Wouldn't your studies at the other schools also be limited to 2 years? Or, why do you get an extra year at Stanford/Cornell that you don't get at Berkeley?
I have enough credits to be considered as a junior at Berkeley, so I only have enough financial aid for 2 years. I guess my studies could be limited to 2 years at other places, but I'm not quite sure (I have to see what credits transfer, as well as the financial aid package.) I could get up to 3 years at other colleges but it has to be 2 at berkeley.
Find some required class that you need to graduate, and then don't take it until you're ready.
What jumps out at me in your question is the assumption that because of your advanced standing you can only stay at Berkeley for two years and thus only spend three years in college altogether. Though I do not have any direct experience with this (i.e., financial aid at state universities in California), I find that quite surprising. Berkeley is an elite institution, and presumably they don't let just anyone transfer in. The fact that you have two years' worth of university credit after one year in college is to your credit and probably factored into their decision to accept you. So they turn around and penalize you by only offering you two years of financial aid? That doesn't make much sense.
I would at least make a phone call and, if necessary, schedule an in-person appointment with a financial aid officer. My first guess, honestly, is that you may not be understanding the situation correctly. If you are, you need to explain why the junior standing could stop you from making best use of the amazing resources that UC Berkeley has to offer and could make you less competitive in your later academic plans. I would expect them to be sympathetic to that.
On the other hand, I find your discussion of what it takes to get into a top mathematics program (here and in the other question you asked) a bit reductive. It is not simply a matter of taking the most graduate courses, doing multiple REUs (in my opinion as someone who was involved in graduate admissions in my math department, one REU has the same effect as multiple REUs unless you do some truly notable research in one of the REUs, which is unusual; also, doing multiple REUs makes it natural for you to get more than one recommendation letter from an REU director, and this is a mistake: most REU letters sound the same no matter who is writing them or is being written about), and so forth: the goal that you rather want to pursue is to show mastery of mathematics and show the potential and the interest in doing mathematical research. You can show this by taking 5 graduate courses rather than 10. (Ten courses sounds almost ridiculously high, by the way: I took 9 trimester graduate courses -- so the equivalent of 6 semester courses -- over the last two years of my undergraduate program. I got into all the top mathematics departments. If I had taken a few courses fewer I don't think the outcome would have changed.)
In fact, the list of math courses that you've already taken compares well with what very strong undergraduates take up through the end of their second year in top mathematics programs in the US. If you did really well with them, then I think you would be ready to take graduate courses (what other undergraduate courses would you take?) in your next year and thus as far as I can see you could graduate in three years and still be competitive for a top program. But do you really have to? If you are serious about studying mathematics, then you have the entire rest of your life to do that. I would recommend a more balanced undergraduate experience that is not 100% calculated to optimize the graduate program you can get into and which lasts for the traditional four years: there are other interesting courses to take as an undergraduate which you will never take again, and there are other things to do with one's undergraduate life aside from coursework. Don't get shortchanged on your undergraduate experience.
To echo Pete, I took 10 graduate courses and three years of research, but did not get into the top universities for graduate schools for math. It matters who is writing your letters, how much they know about you, and what your math GRE scores are. Pete's right though with balancing things out. Have a nice undergraduate experience and not worry about grad school now. You may burn yourself out.
@TK: It also matters a lot what your undergrad institution is. At a top department like Berkeley, their "honors" undergrad courses will be more similar to basic graduate courses at a place like UGA than to undergrad courses for majors at UGA. Rattling off a list of courses does not tell this story: the difference between two courses called "real analysis" could be all the difference between getting into a top program or not. P.S.: You did okay.
Another point to make is not getting into a top grad program is not the end of the world. :-)
Well, the term "top grad program" is nebulous. Sometimes it is used to mean "Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton" -- the ones which always come out at the very top of the list, in various orderings. (Although this year's USNews puts MIT at the top!) In terms of admissions goals, I would say that shooting for a top 20 program is more qualitatively meaningful -- so, as I said, TK did okay -- and that it is worth thinking twice about accepting an offer outside of the top 75 or so.
Thanks for the answer! The reason I said I have only 2 years in Berkeley is that my financial aid is limited to 2 years, and they expect me to graduate on time. I'll call them and ask, but I don't think I can get an appeal.
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10510 | How can I cite the same reference in successive sentences?
I've just read a paper that cited the same reference in two successive sentences:
This is the first sentence (xxxx 2013). This is the second sentence
(xxxx 2013).
Up until now, I would have cited the reference just once, like this:
This is the first sentence. This is the second sentence (xxxx 2013).
Which method is correct?
"This is the first sentence (xxxx 2013). This is the second sentence."
Wouldn't the term ibid apply? "This is the first sentence (xxxx 2013). This is the second sentence (ibid)." Or is ibid used only in end-notes and footnotes?
Ibid. is only used in certain styles of footnotes and endnotes. It is not used when directly citing works in the text (in MLA style, for instance).
I have used loc. cit. in situations like these.
In such situations, if it can be done, I'd just qoute the source rather than cite to it. Depends on what's easier.
In general terms, the reference should be made where the cited information occurs. If you cite in the second it is not clear from where the information in the first originates. A similar problem occurs if you cite an entire paragraph by adding a reference at the end of a paragraph ass "(Xxxx, 2013)" (I am fully aware that this is the norm in some fields).
Citing the same reference in two sentences is clearly wrong. The solution as I see it is to write the sentences so that it is clear they belong together. There are several ways to do this. One way is to avoid the passive, parenthetical, reference and use the active reference where only the year is in parenthesis. As an example, you can start the first sentence by stating "Xxx (2013) states ..." and then in the second say "They furthermore ...". In this example we provide a bridge between the two sentences so that it is very clear it is the same reference that applies. Instead of "They" you can also use "Xxxx".
There are clearly numerous ways to bridge sentences so the form depends on what you need to say. As a result I would recommend putting the reference in the first sentence, not the second.
Nice answer. Though I could imagine a situation where it is not "clearly wrong" to cite the same paper in two adjoining sentences because, e.g., you cite the same paper in two clusters of references like: yadda yadda yadda (xx1 2011; xx2 2011; xx3 2013). yadda yadda yadda (xx1 2011).
+1 - As a general point, many citation questions seem to assume that the text cannot be changed, only the citations, when the citation issue could be more easily addressed by editing the text itself. Compare http://rasmussen.libanswers.com/a.php?qid=107534
@OswaldVeblen: I think that assumption is simply based on the issue that changing the text may fix the citation, but break something else at the same time. Maybe the text ended up exactly like it is because every synonymous version would not sound good in the complete context (reptitions of words etc.). Note that incidentally, in the example you linked to, the "good" version is also the longest one - just by one line, but one line can make a page count difference, and also, lines add up -, and space in a paper can be (depending on the field) a very sparse resource to save at all cost.
@O.R.Mapper: every synonymous version? We're talking about a natural language here. Sometimes - in fact, often - the best way to fix a problematic paragraph is to delete it and write it again. Putting in citations as you go, and planning ahead for them, is key to good writing. "Avant donc que d’écrire, apprenez à penser." (Boileau 1674)
@OswaldVeblen: Well, sure - and, as you go ahead in a systematical way, you usually try to consider all possible ways to express the intended statements. Some of those synonymous ways have to be ruled out because they don't fit in the context, and others remain. And sometimes, only one such version remains. The point is that citations do not need to "flow" grammatically in the sentence, and thus are still the most flexible part of the text to change, even when the sentences themselves are already restricted to a particular version based on the surrounding text or by the layout.
Neither is correct, it is a matter of style.
Refer to the style guide of the journal, publishing house or conference that you're writing for.
If the style guide does not provide specific instruction for that matter, what then? Neither is correct or neither is incorrect?
Where style guides are silent, it is normally a matter for academic judgement. I would suggest that you either cite by sentence or by paragraph; rather than citing "all sentences prior to this citation." I come from a footnoting field though, your field will vary.
I disagree. In the second example the first sentence isn't properly cited (given only the info provided).
@KennyPeanuts: the question of what counts as "proper" citation varies greatly depending on the field of study. In my field, it would be unusual to cite the same source more than once in a paragraph.
This is exactly what the abbreviation "Ibid." is used for:
This is the first sentence (Xxxx, 2013). This is the second sentence (Ibid.).
It derives from the latin word "ibidem", which means "in the same place".
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibid.
Edit: Disclaimer
Following the comment discussion below this answer, I would like to state clearly that the usage of "Ibid." is highly dependent on the field of study and the general citation style you are using. If you have never encountered this abbreviation before in your field of study, you should probably not start using it.
In the Wiki page you linked: was cited in the preceding endnote or footnote. Are you sure your answer is correct?
Quoting from a bit further downstream of the article: "Ibid. may also be used in the Harvard (name-date) system for in-text references where there has been a close previous citation from the same source material.". So, since the OP seems to be using Harvard-style references, I guess the answer is yes.
The style manual determines whether "ibid." can be used. APA parenthetical citations look identical, but do not allow "ibid." http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2014/07/does-apa-style-use-ibid.html
As Oswald Veblen correctly points out, whether you actually do want to use "Ibid." depends on your academic discipline. Different academic fields use very different citation styles, and one should certainly stick with those conventions intrinsic to one's field of study. However, without knowing the field the OP is coming from, it's hard to give a definite answer. I was just stating that it is possible to use "Ibid." in such a case.
I've yet to see ibid. in Computer Science papers. I'd say your answer is misleading without some proper disclaimer.
Following Blaisorblades valid argument, I've added a disclaimer to my answer.
APA - Documentation does not need to be repeated for every idea within a single paragraph. For example, if you retrieved information for three consecutive sentences from the same source, you can put the information after the third sentence.
What I would do in this case depends on whether you're citing two different claims/results or just two pieces of text within that paper related to the same claim/idea/point.
If it's two different results, definitely cite them separately, regardless of whether the citations are closeby or not; and I would make an effort to indicate, with each citation, the exact location of the specific claim/point, so it would be clear to the reader that these are two distinct claims. (If you're using LaTeX, it would look something like\cite[\S 1.2]{ThatXXXPaper} and \cite[Appendix B]{ThatXXXPaper}.)
If it's the same result/claim/point, and you're just citing the continuation of the text, take the advice in other answers, i.e.:
It may depend on the stylistic conventions in your field
It may depend on the stylistic conventions of the conference/journal to which you're submitting the paper, or your university's regulations if it's a thesis
You might want to use "ibid." (ibidem) instead of repeating the citation
You might be able to cite just once at the end of a paragraph (assuming that doesn't create ambiguity)
You might want to avoid the second citation by appropriate rephrasing as @PeterJanson suggests.
I think if you are writing something that refers to several sources repeatedly maybe you should use a different referencing system. Maybe use superscript numbers like the Vancouver referencing system.
I assume this is a problem more likely to be faced when writing a cohort / review paper.
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19990 | Construct a network of citations
I had the thought that I should run a computation on my document to see things like: How many times I cite each source, how many times I cite each author etc.
Then I thought that isn't enough.
What if I cite A_foo, B_foo and C_foo, but both A_foo and B_foo cite C_foo.
That is worth knowing.
A graph of citations between the texts that I am citing will revel interesting information.
For example nodes with out any parent, will generally indicate new and original ideas. While they may draw on other things, those things are distant enough from my work that I am not citing them.
Nodes that have no links to any others, show that I am bringing in an idea from another subfield, perhaps.
This graph should be computable, I know google scholar maintains a list of almost everything I've cited, and for each thing lists who has cited them.
Has this been experimented with? Are there existing tools for the job?
If there isn't I might mess around with some python and put something together.
My references are all in bibtex.
I would like to construct a graph of the citations.
Possible Duplicate: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13329/map-tree-of-citations-references?rq=1
Strangely enough, this question was asked on SO a while back with no real good answers. There was a link to this question, which links to PaperScope, which looks promising, although there hasn't been activity on the project since April 2013. I've never used it that tool.
Microsoft's Visual Explorerisn't exactly what you're looking for, but it's related. Hubmed used to have a graph view but I can't find it now, maybe you can.
The problem will be that even going just two nodes out - your citations, and your citations' citations - will include thousands of papers from hundreds of authors. As discussed in the aforelinked SO and SU questions, simply choosing an appropriate way to display the data will be a non-trivial challenge, and making useful inferences from the results will probably be even more difficult. Still, it may be interesting. Good luck!
In terms of collecting data from google scholar it does not appear to be very easy - no API last I knew. I've seen other examples where researchers say they download articles from Web of Science and then create the network (see an example graph here).
I don't have access to Web of Science though, so it is unclear what download the articles means exactly (if it involves cleaning out citations from PDFs then that sounds like a difficult task, although from the description it may come as more structured than that).
"The problem will be that even going just two nodes out - your citations, and your citations' citations - will include thousands of papers from hundreds of authors"
I only want my citation's citation's If they are also by direct citations.
This cuts the nodes right down.
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32326 | Can a professor accuse a student of cheating on an exam without witnessing it firsthand?
Can a professor accuse someone of cheating after checking his or her test? How is that possible, if the professor has not caught the student cheating red-handed?
To get more informative answers, you will have to include at least a few more details about the situation. You can edit the question freely to add them. In particular, the systems are very different in different countries, so saying which country you are interested in will give better answers.
I am referring to UK.
The general answer to the question is "Yes." There are a lot of reasons why a professor might suspect a student of cheating, some of which do not require an eyewitness. You'll have to give more details (i.e., what did the professor say/do? why does the professor suspect cheating?) in order to get a helpful answer.
oi think she suspects because people might have the same answers. but can she accuse someone if she didn't even catch them doing it? how can she accuse them when she has not even seen them doing it?
what can be the consequences of cheating on a test?
@usman: Consequences? Anything from a zero on the exam to expulsion from the university. You're going to have to provide more detail if you want better answers.
Is this a question, or a complaint? Do you really want a literal answer to the "how is it possible" question?
There are certainly situations where I can be quite sure a student cheated on an exam. Two students, who sat next to each other during the exam, turn in papers containing proofs that are almost identical, except that one has correct proofs while the other has a few isolated words that are different, similar (so that they could be miscopied), and make no sense in the context.
Generally speaking, the answer to your question is "Yes."
If there is a strong similarity in answers that is highly unlikely if the students worked independently, it can raise suspicions of cheating.
For example, in Reilly v. Daly,
At the conclusion of the exam period, the professors held the exam papers of Reilly and the neighboring student in order to determine whether their answers matched. A comparison of the exams revealed that the first seven pages, which included twenty-seven multiple choice and matching questions, were identical.
...
Taking the conservative approach of comparing only wrong answers on only the multiple choice questions, the professors were advised by a statistician that there was a one in 200,000 probability that such a match of wrong answers on the multiple choice questions would occur by chance.
...
Reilly also presented her own statistical analysis of the exam and brought to the professors' attention the possibility of "lure" questions on the exam which would heighten the probability of the match occurring by chance. The professors thereafter obtained a new statistical analysis taking into account "lure" questions on the exam. This analysis demonstrated a one in 500 to one in 5000 probability of the match occurring by chance.
Whether this kind of evidence is enough to initiate disciplinary proceedings, and what the consequences could be, depends entirely on the detailed specifics of the scenario and the university policy.
For example, in Papelino v. Albany College of Pharmacy vs Union University, while similar statistical evidence raised suspicions, it was not considered sufficient to conclude that the students had cheated.
These court cases are interesting but I'm worried that focusing on the legal system might give OP the wrong impression. My understanding is that it would be very unusual for the courts to get involved when a professor accuses a student of cheating. (Of course the student can try to sue to school but this is almost always just a waste of time.) Although plaintiffs won in Papelino I would guess this is not relevant to the OP because that was a Title IX retaliation claim.
@Trevor Sure. The point is that suspicions may be raised just by looking at the exam paper. The court records happen to provide several examples of this. (Generally academic dishonesty proceedings are not publicly available unless it happens to go to court.)
I'm not familiar with the case, but I'd say that there's a good chance that in, say, thirty years of US university tests you'll get a couple of 200k to 1 coincidences. It reminds me of the Sally Clark case (albeit a little less depressing).
Here is one way to catch someone cheating without seeing them do it. Plagiarism. You have no idea how many times in online courses I see fellow classmates simply copy paste from sources and not cite them, but in my experience, I get professors that ignore plagiarism for some reason and do not enforce the honor code. Usually they are tenured, the adjuncts are bit more on the ball
@NZKshatriya: On the other hand I have seen documentation of identical student work in computer science being confirmed to be independent.
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37043 | Does GPA/Transcript matter for academic jobs after the PhD?
Courses taken and GPA can matter quite significantly for undergraduates, both for applying to graduate school and applying for jobs. What about courses taken and GPA during PhD? Do they matter at all for postdoc/professorship application? Do postdoc/professorship application usually ask for a transcript? What about for industry positions? Are there positions that would care about "good grades" or "advanced courses taken" during PhD?
I would guess the answer is largely negative, but I'm willing to hear other opinions.
Related (possible duplicate): How important are my grades to the rest of my PhD career?
@ff524 Thanks, I've added one aspect that I'm particularly curious about (and hasn't been addressed in the linked question.)
In my experience on many search committees I've never looked in detail at the coursework or grades of an applicant. We have however required transcripts as proof of the academic degrees that the applicants claim.
For what it's worth, I've served on dozens of faculty hiring committees at an R1 institution and I have never had a transcript made available to me as part of the application materials. So not only do we not care, even if we did care we wouldn't have the ability to do anything about it. It's true that competition is intense and any relevant edge helps--but grades aren't even part of the contest.
Perhaps things are different in industry or possibly even at teaching institutions, though in the latter case I doubt it.
Yes, applying for academic jobs and post-docs will require your transcripts. How seriously they view the grades will vary from institution to institution. I would suggest, however, that while low grades may not exclude you from consideration, they certainly don't help. Coursework during a PhD is essentially training. You are being trained for your work as an academic. How well you fare in that training reflect something about you.
If you have a stellar publication record, fantastic references, and a killer dissertation, grades are likely not very important. But just remember, you're going to be competing against hundreds of other applicants for a job. Do you really want your transcript to be full of Bs? In a pool of candidates with 4.0 GPAs, you don't want to be the guy with a 3.0.
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41193 | How would we identify a better measure of academic productivity?
Measures of academic productivity, like the h-index, m-index, i10-index are useful but imperfect. Their imperfections are more than an abstract concern. Hiring committees consider them in determining how the applicant stands in relation to his peers. The weight committees give to these numbers varies, especially with newer metrics.
How do we know which measurement of scientific productivity is the most accurate? This question suggests that no measure is accepted as generally accurate. The h-index has a retrospective validation for some fields. Have studies tracked a cohort of scientists over time to compare the ability of these measurements to predict who received a tenure-track appointment in the next five years? (I realize that is not everyone's goal. It is one that tenure committees care about.)
If I had the answer, I would be publishing it in Nature (and collecting lots of citations, hehe). I find this question akin to ask what is the solution to Navier Stokes in Physics SE, or if P=NP in CS.
Because promotion committees use these metrics in deciding who gets promoted, you cannot disambiguate causation.
With respect to predictive validity: ability to predict what? Citations? Tenure? Future h-index? Prizes? National Academy Membership?
@Corvus point taken, I meant tenure, edited.
Not entirely sure if Goodhart's Law applies here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
The question in the title and the last question in the body are totally different. My down vote is for the question in the title which is ill posed. I would prefer the question to focus on "What metrics have been successful in predicting academic success?"
@DIrk the last question resulted from replying to Corvus' comment "ability to predict what", a tenure-track appointment is one definition of academic success, but less broad and so perhaps answerable.
I don't know that anyone has done this on a broad scale for tenure. There is a fairly recent study that used a machine learning approach to figure out what metrics are predictive of success in achieving a faculty position.
van Dijk, D., Manor, O., & Carey, L. B. (2014). Publication metrics and success on the academic job market. Current Biology, 24(11), R516-R517.
For an overview and a simplied version of the application, see this Science Careers story.
From the paper's summary:
The number of applicants vastly outnumbers the available academic
faculty positions. What makes a successful academic job market
candidate is the subject of much current discussion [1–4] . Yet, so
far there has been no quantitative analysis of who becomes a principal
investigator (PI). We here use a machine-learning approach to predict
who becomes a PI, based on data from over 25,000 scientists in PubMed.
We show that success in academia is predictable. It depends on the
number of publications, the impact factor (IF) of the journals in
which those papers are published, and the number of papers that
receive more citations than average for the journal in which they were
published (citations/IF). However, both the scientist’s gender and the
rank of their university are also of importance, suggesting that
non-publication features play a statistically significant role in the
academic hiring process. Our model (www.pipredictor.com) allows anyone
to calculate their likelihood of becoming a PI.
tl;dr Publish lots of papers that get lots of citations in good journals. But you knew that already.
This study, while a good descriptive work, does not separate cause and effect. It does not actually study productivity, but rather the way that people are judged on their productivity, which just brings us back to the original question.
@jakebeal I agree one hundred percent. But in the post and my clarification comments, the OP specifies that he is interested in measuring productivity by whether or not people get tenure: "Have studies tracked a cohort of scientists over time to compare the ability of these measurements to predict who received a tenure-track appointment in the next five years? " This issue, like hiring, depends on the way that people are judged by their productivity. So I believe the study I describe is as close to what the OP seeks as one can find.
I wonder why gender is a factor. It suggests to me that the model is reflecting the biases of the data set. That's understandable, although the authors don't try to correct for that.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:48.617413 | 2015-03-07T00:59:33 | {
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