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10261 | How to know if these congresses (i.e. organized by ISCA) are good?
One of my colleages has published a couple of papers in the CS congresses organized by:
http://www.isca-hq.org/
For what I saw that the papers that got accepted in their conferences, are indexed in DBLP and INSPEC. Actually I would like to submit one paper in the conferences that they organized, but I am a little dubious about it. My main concern is to know if it would be a good idea to submit to that conference.
Could anybody give me his straight opinion about those congresses that they organized? do they seem good enough?
thanks
Have you ever cited (or even read) a paper from those conferences? If so, was it a good paper?
Consulting the Australian Computer Science Conference Ranking reveals that one of their conferences, CATA, is ranked C. I did not check any others.
Indicators that the conferences are not good include:
The conference is extremely broad. CATA covers topics including Algorithms, Programming Languages, and Multimedia.
The conference is in an exotic location (e.g. Hawaii).
People involved in the conference are not the leaders in their field.
Conference is not well established.
Conference does not appear in the Conference Ranking list, even though it has been around for a long time.
Note that conferences satisfying some or all of these criteria are not necessarily poorly ranked.
How is an exotic location an indicator of anything? The top software engineering and HCI conferences tend to alternate between the US and an "exotic" location.
@AustinHenley: Certain low quality conferences appear always in Hawaii.
My (limited) experience suggests that conferences that are in "tourist" destinations tend to be less productive, as more people are distracted with things other than the conference. Also, good conferences do not need a gimmick of a tourist hotspot to attract presenters. Of course this is just a general observation, and isn't a hard rule to suggest all conferences at tourist locations are bad.
@AndyW: None of my rules are hard. They are indicators.
thank you for your advice @DaveClarke, one question, do you know other computer science conference rankings apart of the one that you mentioned?
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19855 | Should I write a paper on open-source software I've built?
I have been fairly active in the open-source software community with a few projects that have gotten some attention. However, my reputation in the academic/publications world is a little bit low and I'd like to improve that.
I've seen papers written for all kinds of things ranging from simple summaries of a given project, up to discovering new ideas.
I'd like to write a paper about a specific open-source software project that I've built but I'm puzzled whether it would be appropriate to write a paper about it. After all, not many important software projects were published in the form of a publication.
Edit: as a concrete example, this is one project I've built: http://lmatteis.github.io/void-graph/ - it can visualize RDF structures as a dynamic graph which can be saved in SVG and used in presentations or slides. Would you find this appropriate as the subject of a publication?
Right, but I'm actually wondering whether it would be appropriate to write a paper in the first place. I guess there's no rules as long as it brings something new and interesting to the field?
Should you write a paper for what audience? For what venue?
If a paper turns out not to be the right fit, you may want to consider submitting to a demo track. Something like ESWC or ISWC might be a good fit for your stuff. Of course, conferences can be an expensive exercise if you have to pay for yourself.
See this answer: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/14041/49. Quoting it: "This is possible because I opted to publish a software paper in the Journal of Open Research Software. It is a fully Open Access journal. This journal only accepts software papers on open source software for research."
@dgraziotin Feel invited to expand it into an answer!
Look here for some options on where to publish (and add more if you know of them): http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/questions/660/venues-for-publishing-papers-that-emphasize-software
I'd like to write a paper about a specific open-source software project that I've built but I'm puzzled whether it would be appropriate to write a paper about it. After all, not many important software projects were published in the form of a publication.
Edit: as a concrete example, this is one project I've built: http://lmatteis.github.io/void-graph/ - it can visualize RDF structures as a dynamic graph which can be saved in SVG and used in presentations or slides. Would you find this appropriate as the subject of a publication?
I can help with specific suggestions for suitable venues in your area (that accept system papers) in order of decreasing impact for improving your research rep:
Semantic Web Journal accepts Tools and Systems papers. You need to be able to demonstrate real-world impact of the tool/system. Effectively, this track is for paving the cow-paths: publishing about tools/systems that are already well-known in the community but don't have sufficient scientific contribution for a research track (and incentivising the developement of tools/systems that are useful for the community). First step is to get your tool/system to be well-known.
WWW Demo Track: Write a short 2-page paper on your idea, pack it with as much academically-restrained ehthusiasm and technical detail as you can and hopefully you'll get to present it at the WWW conference. These 2-page papers will be published in the supplementary proceedings and will be indexed in DBLP. The criteria for demo papers as WWW is (in my opinion) often fickle ... a lot of demo papers are borderline/rejected full papers. Otherwise reviewers follow their own whims.
ISWC|ESWC Demo/Poster/Challenge tracks: Probably you want to aim for a demo track. Submit a four or five page (LNCS) paper to ISWC or ESWC describing your demo. Main emphasis for reviewing is on the novelty of the system itself, technical soundness, and how nice a conversation-piece it will make at the poster/demo session. Demo papers are sometimes (not always) published as a CEUR proceedings, which will sometimes end up in DBLP.
The first option is essentially free (money wise) for you.
The latter two options will incur the cost of attending the conference to present a demo. If you are an independent researcher, that might not be an option: it might be a high cost for little reputation gain. But it depends on your long term goals.
Another option is to find your inner scientific contribution and go for a research track submission.
The most important aspect is that an expert in the area will learn something about the area that they didn't already know and couldn't find out about elsewhere (without doing the research themselves). As a reviewer in a research track, after reading a paper I will always ask myself: did I learn something? What did I learn? What is its nature (theoretical, experimental, analytical, synthesis, etc.)? Where else could I have learned that?
As an author, I apply the same principle in reverse: what is the reader going to learn from this paper and how can I highlight it and frame it in the proper "research-speak"? (This may appear cynical, and perhaps it is a little, but being able to identify, highlight and sell your core contributions is a delicate art that does lead to better papers ... as well as higher success in peer review.)
Ultimately, with experience on your side, it sometimes doesn't require much effort to find an angle from which something can be turned into a scientific contribution.
Also, take encouragement from the fact that many of the most highly cited papers/references in the Semantic Area refer to software projects or systems of various types (Google Scholar citations): Jena (856), Sesame (1346), Protege (1060), DBpedia (1344), OWL API (265), and so forth.
Being system papers, all of these papers were (arguably) arguable in terms of scientific contribution.
Likewise, many authors in the area have made their names through works that are inherently practical while being based in industry (e.g., HP Labs, Talis, Bell Labs). Looking through the author list of some of the papers above will throw up some such names.
Also ISWC have added a (Data/Benchmark/)Software Track to their main full-paper schedule this year. It's too late to submit for this year, but this would rank up there with an SWJ paper. A quote from the CfP: "Software Frameworks advance science by sharing with the community software that can easily be extended or adapted to support scientific study and experimentation. Jena, Sesame, hadoop, and many other software frameworks have clearly impacted our community but were, similarly, difficult to publish."
(arguably) arguable?
I had faced this exact situations a few years ago. I had developed an open source project, which went pretty popular and started being used by many corporations across the globe. Since, I was looking for strengthening my presence in academia, I planned to write a paper on it and sent to a decent journal. The result was rejection with a plethora of useful comments and suggestions. It took me almost an year to publish that paper in a reputable conference.
So, the lessons learnt were (and possibly applicable to you as well)
The expectations of research tracks is not only that your thing just works, but you need to justify how and why it works
There should be results (mostly analytical), to demonstrate that your technique works and hence can be used by other people referring/reading it.
You need to answer why your work is important and what it contributes to the field
Moreover, most conferences have or accept papers from industrial or application tracks, where you can describe your work in an implementation centric way (possibly giving you some leverage from nuances of research papers as mentioned above)
Yes, you should. But on the other hand, do not necessarily assume it will be accepted easily. Some advices:
Your best bet is a demo track in a CS conference (as Peter suggested). For CS demo apps maximum number of pages is usually four, so use them wisely.
Check all major CS conferences (VLDB, SIGMOD, EDBT and those focusing on Linked Data - RDF). Check their demo track. Read the papers from years past. How is your tool compared to these efforts?
You must understand that academic criteria is different than industry criteria for what is good or not. The easier way to reject a paper (even a demo paper) is the "infamous" question: "What is the scientific contribution of the paper?" To be published and accepted, you must prove that your work has multiple scientific test-cases and usages. It is not about what is the most excellent work of CS engineering. Otherwise, excellent apps like Photoshop, Worpdpress would get best paper awards.
Another main question you need to answer on your paper is: Why is your tool better than every one's else (you must provide such a comparison => you must be familiar with what similar tools are available). There are multiple RDF tools or graph tools that may handle thousands / million of nodes. Can your tool support such sizes? (I have worked with SVG many - many years ago and at that time, SVG was not scalable for those sizes. So, also keep that in mind).
You must describe your tool completely: Tool Architecture (frameworks used, server architecture), what it can do (screenshots, mini-tutorial), where the tool may be downloaded / demoed, what calculations may be done with your tool etc...
Of course this is not an exhaustive list. They are just hints to show you what you should aim for. Note, there are many CS researchers who would like to work with proficient open-source engineers (like yourself) on various ideas, so if you want to expand yourself into academic publishing, you will find your way. Good luck!!
Yes - for example, in my field, there is one fairly good journal that allows a type of short journal article on new "tools", and I've read more than one PLOS paper on an open-source application. As others have mentioned, there still needs to be some research content - likely a worked motivating example comparing your package to other means of analyzing the same information, preferably an example whose scientific importance is pretty clear to begin with.
But you should absolutely consider it - it's easier to give you credit for using your software if it's linked to a paper.
Depending on the area, some journals and conferences accept "application notes", a specific kind of paper that puts much more weight on that significant open source software has been written. Researchers that use such software must normally cite this publication so may also be high impact journals and articles. Search for the journal with this profile. You still must show in the introduction why your work is important and better than some known, older alternatives.
The alternative "classic" approach is to look if some scientifically new results and conclusions have been obtained, or maybe some new algorithm have been proposed and evaluated, with less care if the newly written code is popular or even usable in practice.
As a user of open source software, I would appreciate the authors of said software producing a paper about it.
Then when I use the software I can cite the paper.
Sure I can cite the software itself, or its manual, or a book about it.
But citing a academic paper looks better, and assuming there is free/easy access to the paper, anyone who doesn't know what the software is, or doesn't feel it is suitable for academical use.
I'm writing a project proposal presently, I cited papers for SciPy, IPython, and several others.
However I had nothing good to cite for Subversion.
I may end up citing the software itself, as I did for Python.
It would be appropriate for you to cite the Subversion book, which is authored by founders and designers of Subversion (and which has been cited hundreds of times according to Scholar).
Cool, thanks.
By my point remains in the general case
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5433 | Keeping track of one's academic record and achievements
Possible Duplicate:
What tools make it easy to maintain (or avoid!) the N versions of your CV?
When writing a CV (applying for an academic position, workshop or a scholarship), it's important to include one's list of publications, conference talks and posters, awards, etc.
Moreover, the list need to be tailored to the respective scope (and with the appropriate fine-graining).
The question is, is there a specific workflow (or software) to keep tracks of one's academic records, so that later it's easy to cherry-pick the relevant stuff?
Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4903/what-tools-make-it-easy-to-maintain-or-avoid-the-n-versions-of-your-cv
@CharlesMorisset I somehow missed that question, and mine should be closed (you are right, it's too similar).
Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Research (also DBLP for computer science) collect a decent amount of one's publications (in particular Google Scholar).
If you are writing your CV in Latex/LyX, I would suggest finding/creating BIBTEX entries for your papers then import the .bib file into your CV.
On my website I keep a list of my academic achievements. This only includes journal publications, official reports, and conference proceedings though. When I need to make a list of my most relevant publications, I take a look at that page. A nice way to tracking your papers and such is to create a Google Scholar Citations page. This automatically looks for your publications and keeps record of the number of citations you receive.
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78404 | What are the benefits for claiming authorship on the arXiv?
When you post an article on the arXiv, it gives the poster a link for co-authors to claim authorship of the paper. I have claimed authorship for most of my articles but some in the beginning of my career were posted by senior collaborators and I have not yet claimed authorship. My name is on the paper, but not in the electronic sense in arXiv's servers. There is also a solo-author paper that arXiv that I submitted but arXiv does not have me registered as the author.
Are there any reasons to try to fix this? What are the benefits to having a complete authorship record on arXiv's servers?
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45617 | Role of positions' geographical diversity in (US) academic career perspectives
I'm curious about the impact of geographical diversity of positions (postdoctoral or junior faculty) on career prospects in academia. In my current job search I see a small number of positions at universities outside the US that potentially fit my research interests and experience. I am wondering whether pursuing these positions would be beneficial to my current long-term goal of returning to an academic position in the US.
What effect does international academic experience have on academic career prospects in the US?
a recent Ph.D. graduate with no significant research experience and publications — Sorry, what? It's (supposed to be) impossible to get a PhD without significant research experience.
Maybe he's being humble. "Significant" being in the eye of the beholder. Maybe he means he doesn't have any journal publications. @AleksandrBlekh, have you thought about applying for a postdoc to build up your publications list?
@JeffE: aparente001 guessed part of it right - I meant lack of peer-reviewed journal publications. Plus, "significant research experience" meant the one beyond Ph.D. program coursework and dissertation research (that is, postdoctoral or industry research experience).
@aparente001: Thank you for kind words :-). See my comment to JeffE. Certainly, I'm planning to apply for some postdoc positions as soon as will finalize the list. My question above mentions that (in addition to junior faculty positions), but in this case I'm curious about the value of getting additional experience abroad (hence, my focus on diversity).
This seems much too broad a question for SE, at least ax it is currently phrased.
@keshlam: I respectfully disagree. All I'm asking is to mention factors and, perhaps, brief comments in that regard (several sentences at most) and to describe potential effect of international academic experience (another several sentences).
What kinds of factors? That word covers a huge range of information.
@keshlam: I have specified what factors I'm looking for. Coverage range ("huge") is irrelevant in this case, as I'm asking about a list with some brief comments. My question could be labeled as too broad, if I was asking for a very detailed analysis of the topic (similar to book, chapter or research paper type of coverage), but that's not what I have asked for.
@AleksandrBlekh I'm sorry, but at least in computer science, if you don't have significant research experience already as a PhD student, including multiple publications and a well-developed individual research agenda (not just "interests"), your chances of getting a useful postdoc position are remote. PhD student research is (or should be) real research, judged by the same criteria as faculty research.
Also, I agree with @keshlam. The phrase "factors" and "general coverage" could mean anything. Are you specifically asking about the likely impact on your long-term academic career? Or are you also including factors related to research independence, teaching expectations, mentoring expectations, language, culture, money, travel, distance from family, dating, child care, religious tolerance, food, politics, etc., etc., etc.?
@JeffE: Yes, I specifically ask only about factors and impact on long-term academic career. I believe that I was pretty clear in this regard when formulating the question.
@JeffE: In regard to your latest comment on research experience, I think that it very much depends on institution, advisors, student's personal circumstances and other factors. For example, my family circumstances were serious enough that prevented me to perform (and publish) research beyond my dissertation research. The latter was the real research, using real data and appropriate quantitative methods. Moreover, "significant" is a relative and subjective term - just because some research is published doesn't make it significant. (to be continued)
@JeffE: (cont'd) Similarly, if a student or researcher for some reason didn't want and didn't have an opportunity to publish their research results, it doesn't imply that their research experience lags behind one of those, who published more. Finally, indeed I do have a research agenda, not only interests. Again, your phrase "well-developed research agenda" asks for clarification (clear criteria) what a relative and subjective term well-developed actually stands for.
I think this is related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17694/is-it-more-difficult-to-score-a-tenure-track-position-in-the-us-when-applying-fr Isn't the Q really will a non-US post-doc hurt my changes for a later tenure track job in the US?
@mkennedy: Thank you for the link. That question is related, but not equivalent to mine. As for your formulation of question, it has emphasis on potential negative effects, while my question is comprehensive, as it asks about any effects, while my personal expectation is more of a positive one (due to, hopefully, appreciation of research cultural diversity in academia, in general, and in its US segment, in particular).
I have significantly edited the question to improve clarity and to remove unnecessary personal detail (which is too specific to your personal situation to make a good question for this site). Please double-check that I have not changed the intended question.
Discussion of what constitutes a "well-developed individual research agenda" is better left for a separate question.
@JeffE: Some removed points might be helpful in guiding those answering the question (i.e., emphasizing factors, effects, perceptions and career advancement elements). However, in general, I'm OK with your version and thank you for your help.
@keshlam: JeffE was kind enough to edit my question. Hopefully, this edition is clearer, match your expectations and will produce more enthusiastic feedback from more people than the original.
@aleksanderblekh, JeffE: much clearer. Still pretty broad, but let's see what can be done with it.
If you are just talking about the geographical role, rather than comparing things like great position at a world renowned foreign university versus a two-bit US institution, then it is true that it can be harder to get a US tenure-track position coming from foreign university. The main reasons are (i) smaller schools are often less willing to fly in overseas applicants for interviews and (ii) (for positions with teaching experience expectations) it's advantageous for candidates to have experience teaching in a system comparable to the American one. See also this recent answer from RoboKaren. Another possible concern is that you get involved in some research niche which is popular, say only in Europe or Asia, but not the US, but this can also happen at US institutions.
That said, you shouldn't take these concerns too seriously if you find a position that you like, and these concerns don't play too much of a role for research universities. However, consider the possibility that you may need to do another postdoc in the US/Canada to improve your chances of getting jobs at smaller schools where this may be an issue.
Addendum: The above was just in answer to the bold question, but not to the issue in the text about whether it is in some way beneficial to go abroad, say strictly for diversity reasons. Here there seems to be negligible benefit, all other factors being equal, as the US already has a diverse amount of resesarch, and one can still learn from and even collaborate with foreign colleagues (at least in many fields) thanks to travel and modern technology.
I appreciate your answer (+1) - you mention interesting points. Certainly, I wouldn't think twice, if offered today a "great position at a world renowned foreign university". But, being realistic, this is very unlikely - I understand that I need to build my research reputation through quality research agenda, meaningful research, publishing and displaying external funding potential. Those are my short-term goals. Just to clarify: US is my home (citizen) and international academic exposure I've asked about is meant to be temporary to build more diverse academic portfolio and enrich experience.
@AleksandrBlekh In that case, I don't think going abroad to specifically diversify your academic experience is that helpful. There are sufficiently many research opportunities in the US for one build an impressive portfolio without having held a position abroad, and there are plenty of opportunities to discuss ideas and learn from foreign colleagues at conferences, etc.
My impression that a clarification is needed was right. Thank you for your updated advice - it makes total sense and actually matches my current preferences. I'm still curious, though, about what other people think on the subject and their rationale - I hope to receive more feedback.
Well, there are a lot of countries (and educational systems and cultures) in the world. So what I am about to say could be completely wrong for some countries.
If you want to end up doing research and teaching, watch out, as regards the teaching part. There are countries that use more of a sink-or-swim approach to university studies than we like to think we take here in the U.S. (I don't mean that to sound bitter -- there are a good number of professors in U.S. institutions who do have a real commitment to teaching.)
For the research side of things, I don't think there is any advantage or disadvantage to post-doccing overseas. The important thing is that you be in a situation that is intellectually stimulating, emotionally supportive, and collaborative, so that you can get some good publications under your belt. So it all boils down to compatibility with the group.
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37034 | How to use lemmas and proofs from another paper?
Suppose that paper A has a lemma called Lemma A, along with its proof.
I want to use this lemma in another paper B. However, in the scope of my paper, I have to change it slightly, but without losing the general idea.
For instance, the original lemma might read as follows:
Lemma A: The intersection of two straight lines in the plane is either empty, a single point, or a straight line.
Suppose I need the following variant in paper B:
Lemma B: The intersection of two planes in 3-space is either empty, a single line, or a plane.
Also, the proofs for both lemmas are very similar.
Therefore, I have two questions:
Can I use the same methodology and same terminology with similar words to prove my own lemmas?
If I can, is citing paper A in my lemma confusing? If I cannot, can I just specify the lemma in paper A and say that this lemma and proof can also be used etc.?
You should certainly cite paper A in any case.
One way this is commonly handled: state your Lemma B.1 and give the complete proof. At the beginning of the proof, write something like "This closely follows the proof of Lemma A.1 from [A]." Now your paper is self-contained and you have given appropriate credit. It is fine if your proof is similar in structure to theirs; in some ways this is better, because a reader who looks at both will more easily be able to see the similarities and differences. But do not simply copy and paste their proof and change the necessary words. Your proof should be your words, even if it is from their ideas.
Or, state your Lemma B.1, but instead of giving a complete proof, say "The proof is very similar to that of Lemma A.1 from [A]". This saves space but will be more annoying to the reader, who in order to check your result will have to find the paper [A] and read through the proof, adapting it to prove B.1 instead of A.1. (The referee may be similarly annoyed.)
Some people would omit the statement of Lemma B.1 altogether, and when they need to use it, would say "By a slight modification of the proof of Lemma A.1 from [A], we have blah blah blah...". This is even more annoying.
Worst of all is to just say "By Lemma A.1 from [A], we have blah blah blah" where Lemma A.1 claims something different from (and not obviously implying) the statement you want.
Would you find it annoying to not restate the proof if the proof is not interesting? This happens to me often when working with programming languages, where there are often proofs that are necessary to do but mostly just handling lots of slightly different cases...
@jakebeal: It's a judgment call. As a reader, it depends on whether I'm reading the proof because I think it will contain interesting ideas, or because I want to check whether it is correct (perhaps because I want to use the lemma in a proof of my own). In the former case, I wouldn't mind if a boring proof is not spelled out, but in the latter case I would.
This is a good answer. I would say that whether to give the proof is always a judgment call and not always a clear decision. Important factors include (i) the length of the argument you'd be revisiting, (ii) the amount of change you're making -- the given (toy) example is a very small change -- and (iii) the audience of the paper. As a reader, I certainly like it when authors err a bit on the side of being self-contained: it is a lot easier to skip the text that is there than insert the text that isn't there. [Added in edit: my use of "judgment call" was independent from Nate's!]
@PeteL.Clark I completely agree with you when it comes to journal papers. For conference papers, I find it a real dilemma, because space limits often mean that including more proof contents means cutting exposition of other parts of the paper.
@jakebeal: In my world, there are (essentially) no conference papers. But, aha: the OP talked about lemmas and proofs and without conscious thought I assumed he was in mathematics. Maybe not [OK, I checked: not!], and it would be good to have an answer which speaks to the non-mathematical community which includes theorems and proofs in their papers.
In other news: you may be amused to learn that I'm now writing up a paper for the one of the few math journals which imposes hard page limits: Comptes Rendus. The whole paper has to fit on six pages! That's tough, and -- you'll love this -- my collaborator and I actually tried to use the journal's style file to see whether their formatting would still fit. This turned out to be a waste of our time: what we found online was not close enough to give us peace of mind. But holy cow, I've spent a lot of time over the past few days trying to save a few lines here and there. What a pain!
@PeteL.Clark Welcome to my world of paper-length optimization. In CS, though, the LaTeX template support is usually excellent and its quite easy to follow formatting.
In your example, those are not equivalent mathematical assertions, and so they are not identical lemmas. What I have done in similar cases is to say something along the lines of:
Lemma X is closely based on Lemma Y in [cite], and follows a similar proof structure.
This way you give appropriate credit to the original source, while still making your new assertion as you need.
Although many people do it, it is bad style and confusing to cite a lemma and restate it in a way that is not equivalent to the original one. I would suggest to state the lemma you need, and, instead of proving the whole lemma, explain in the proof that your lemma is very similar to the lemma A.1 and that the proof can be reused making the changes ... .
If, though, you just steal an idea, it might be better to completely prove your lemma in your version.
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19692 | Numbering Introduction and Conclusion?
In research papers, should Introduction and Conclusion sections be numbered or non-numbered? What does the scientific paper etiquette suggest? Furthermore, in either case, should they appear in the Table of Contents?
If the answer depends on the research field, please elaborate. I'm in electrical engineering, but do occasionally write mathematical papers as well, so those two fields are personally of highest interest.
On a side note, in case someone confuses it with the Introduction section, I am quite sure that the Abstract section should be non-numbered either way.
Nitpick: I don't think etiquette is the mot juste here. Etiquette is about manners.
It's not field-dependent, it's a journal-dependent issue. Some use a format where everything is numbered, some use a format where nothing is numbered, and still others leave it up to the authors to decide.
However, when sections are numbered, everything in the main text should be numbered, including the introduction and conclusions. You don't skip numbering those sections but add numbers for the rest. That doesn't make any sense. (End matter such as acknowledgments and supporting information may be handled separately.)
The best advice is check the style guide for your journal.
If you really want to make sure how things are, just open your journal of preference and see if they are numbered.
However, when sections are numbered, everything should be numbered - not necessarily. in IEEE format, all sections are numbered except Acknowledgements section.
Acknowledgments aren't normally considerEd part of the main text--just as in a book.
It isn't necessarily obvious to newbies whether Acknowledgments are more part of the "main text" than the Introduction or Conclusion. I think the edit clarifies this point :)
Certainly, they are numbered in mathematics and related fields. Why? Because often you state theorems and formulas in Introduction or Conclusions: How would you label these to allow citing them, if their parent (=section) is not numbered?
(With my Copy Editor hat on) I allow only three unnumbered sections: List of notation, Acknowledgements, References. They come in this order (if present) and they are at the very end of the paper.
Nonetheless, as aeismail pointed out, it's field- and journal-dependent.
"How would you label [theorems and formulas in the introduction or conclusions] to allow citing them, if their parent (=section) is not numbered?" Theorem 1, Theorem 2, ... Not every journal includes the section number in theorem numbers.
No, they don't. However, in such case, I wouldn't publish my 60-page article there. I want an article, not a mess.
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8633 | Pumping up my GRE score, or getting some publishing under my belt?
I took an nontraditional track to academia. I went from the professional world, to full time community college educator (media/communications). Now as I plan to go forward, I realize that I NEED a PhD to move on. Problem, my GRE scores is awful and my Masters was a tacticians degree rather than a theoretical one. So I have no publication history.
So in order to get into a decent PhD program (I will have to change fields from Communications to Education since there are no PhD programs in my field in proximity to my tuition reimbursing institution), should I focus on pumping up my GRE score, or getting some publishing under my belt? While the second sounds like a lot more fun, I wonder if a good set of publications would matter if my GRE is abysmal?
Is there any reason you can't do both?
I suppose you mean the GRE general test, as opposed to the subject tests. The general test is easy enough to study part time, and there are openings to take the test almost everyday. Plus, you get to send only the best score now, via "Score Select". So, there shouldn't be a problem doing both at the same time.
IMHO research experience greatly trumps GRE scores. Great GRE scores won't help you get admitted and bad scores won't necessarily cause your application to fail. Good research experience, from my experience applying to grad school twice and speaking to professors, is solid gold.
Bear in mind that during the PhD, you will have to juggle coursework, teaching and keeping up with research in order to find an adviser during the first 1-2 years. In comparison, studying for the GRE while doing research is almost trivial. One trick is to not spend too much time actually studying for the GRE. Instead, get a book like Princeton Review, learn the tricks and game the system.
Tl;dr - Do both at the same time!
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20358 | How should I reference my Github repository with materials for my paper?
I am writing a paper describing some of the research I have done. As part of my work I have developed an open-source library and made it available on Github.
How should I link to it?
Should I cite it in the bibliography or make a footnote with the link to the software?
See this paper (published full text and arXiv version) by Kruse & Agol, they linked their repository on GitHub in the acknowledgments section.
Related: How do you cite a Github repository?
Such resources, especially if they are a supplementary to the paper, i.e. in some sense a part of it, should be referenced in a footnote and not in bibliography.
Do include not only the URL but also a short description; and do try to keep that URL valid - once you publish that link, it's frozen forever.
It also helps to include the opposite citation. In the readme file of that library, include full citation information of your paper. This will allow others to gain extra information about the methods, and also give you citations if/when others build upon your work.
Some publishers also support binary attachments for supplementary information. If they do, you should use it - prepare a package of the current stable version and upload it there. It allows for reproducability, as a specific version is referenced which relates to the actual paper, and not some improvements done in 2020 that change everything; and it also attaches all relevant information together with the paper at the publisher's site, which will stay valid even if that github repository goes away for whatever reason.
Github may disappear in the future, you may close your account. I think it is the journal's job to keep a snapshot of the code for the record, plus a link to the repository for folks to get updates.
This depends. I develop software as a mathematician and in all the papers I have been a a co-author, we have cited the software (it's widely used in our community). I would probably cite the software on your university page, as this would be fairly stable and around, unless you are not tenured, and then on your site, link to the latest version of the library on github (see http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~jan/download.html) as an example. The other option is to write a 'software' paper and find an appropriate journal to publish the library, at which point you can cite that paper from then on.
@Davidmh In an ideal world it might be the journal's job, but I've definitely had code I wanted to share for an article where the journal wasn't going to or couldn't handle archiving it.
In previous papers, I've used something like (source code available at github.com/fomite/brilliantwork) when describing the software methods used.
However Figshare now allows you to directly import a repo from GitHub, which will give you a DOI you can reference as a citation. This also provides a benefit for having a "snapshot" of the repo at the time of publication, for repositories that will continue to be worked on. That, plus the ability for me and other people to cite the repo directly (and thus be able to get some traditional citation metrics to show the impact of the software), is what I'll be doing in the future.
+1 for snapshots; I would say in general, when citing, be very sure you give a version. git provides hashes corresponding to particular commits/versions: That's what I'd include in a citation (having not used Figshare).
@MatthewG Agreed as to the version. The Figshare upload process will actually create an entirely standalone code base that will be frozen in time.
I was going to post the same thing for the same reasons.
An alternative view on Figshare. It doesn't mean that Figshare is bad but one does need to be careful with the fine print when uploading there.
A citation is a reference to a research object. Prior to the DOI, this reference contained the information somebody would need to physically locate the research object, whether it was a book, journal article, or dissertation. Although the jury is still out on how to provide general references to digital research objects, a Git repository contains a canonical reference, the SHA1 hash of the commit.
If you would like to refer to your Git repository in such a way that it is easy to locate in the future, you should provide not only the URL where it is now, but also the short name for the repository, the lead author[s], and the SHA1 hash of the commit that you produced your results with.
Here is an example URL from GitHub that contains the commit: https://github.com/hashdist/hashstack/commit/4c72950a0f6eb9cc1cf63cd640f3e6b82c9ce9c0
I don't recommend uploading your code to Figshare until they've fixed their ability to accept code licenses.
Update 14 May 2014
GitHub and ZENODO have partnered together to upload code for a DOI under a flexible license. Obtaining a DOI for your code should be as simple as following the instructions on the GitHub Guide to Making Your Code Citable. Here's an overview of the instructions:
Choose your repository
Login to ZENODO
Pick the repository you want to archive
Check repository settings
Create a new release
Check everything has worked
Mint a DOI
It's really that easy. There's no current reason not to use this as a default approach for citing your software.
The specifics depend on your field, and I think most areas have very loose guidelines as to what to do in these situations. The only hard-and-fast rule is that you need to get it past your reviewers and your editors, who will tell you if the style is inappropriate. Other than that, the most important thing is that you yourself are happy that the citation is getting your GitHub repo the most visibility possible. Finally, you should consider your paper from the perspective of readers that may want to use and cite your code, and who will naturally look to your writing for how to do that.
In general, I would recommend citing the code in the bibliography, as one more reference. The advantage of this is that your article's references will be listed and indexed separately, and (with luck) this will register as links pointing towards your repo, which will become more of an advantage if more people cite it. Such a citation should have
the name of the programme,
the URL of the repository, and
a clear indication of the version cited and its date.
An example citation is
G. A. Worth, M. H. Beck, A. Jackle, and H.-D. Meyer. The MCTDH Package, Version 8.2, (2000), University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany. H.-D. Meyer, Version 8.3 (2002), Version 8.4 (2007). See http://mctdh.uni-hd.de
You should also describe the code within the text when you first cite the code, and provide a complete enough description within the paper that readers do not need to go read any additional information to continue reading your paper, because it needs to read like a single, coherent piece of work.
Alternatively, you can cite it in a footnote, indicating the name of the code and its location. This would be a good place to include the description if it is brief. Another choice is to do this in the acknowledgements, as giordano points out. However, I think these make your code less discoverable to both humans and search engines.
As I mentioned before, you should mould your citation of the code in the way that you'd like others to cite it. It is also desirable that you include, within the pages describing code online, a description of how you want people to cite the code. Some examples are GAMESS UK, MCTDH and MOLCAS, or the ones in this question. Having such a description will strengthen your position should referees or editors not like your preferred style. You set the terms on which your code gets cited!
Finally, as others have mentioned, you should make sure that the URL you point to is stable, as you will be unable to change the link in the published paper once it goes out. This is a separate question altogether, and there are a number of ways to do this - including supplementary information to the article itself, separate repositories for academic code, and of course GitHub itself - and you should strive for the most stable solution possible. Is it likely that the repository will someday get closed or moved? If so, you should consider alternatives.
In addition to referencing the repository within the paper, you should also make sure that the link between the paper and repository is part of the paper metadata. Specifically, if you are depositing the paper on arXiv, you can use the latest feature that integrates with Papers with Code to record the link between your paper and its implementation.
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19750 | Should academics allow student to submit a possibly flawed paper?
I let a student associated with me (but who is not really my PhD student) submit a paper to a fairly-local meeting (some people do come from abroad). Because I'd been tasked with supporting the student, I let him put my name on the paper and also helped with the presentation, but I found the content unconvincing. However, he was exploring an area that I knew little about and had little interest in, so I'd hoped he'd get reviews & (if accepted) discussion that would give him more guidance than I have been able to.
In fact, no one seemed as sceptical as I was of the work, and it got into the meeting and was presented both in our department and at the meeting with if anything positive comments.
However, yesterday I got an email from a postdoc who was cited in the paper (the student compared himself to the postdoc's work, the meeting's papers are on a website, Google Scholar alerted the postdoc) and was incensed at the paper's low quality and inaccuracies. I think the postdoc is being a bit paranoid, but is broadly right on the technical issues. I have also previously noticed that one of my more-successful colleagues I've been collaborating with recently had a less tolerant attitude towards student publication than I do.
I'm wondering if I should put more effort on quality control. The cost would be possibly stifling a student unnecessarily if I'm wrong, and allowing fewer students to have fewer presentation experiences since I'm already working flat out keeping up with giving feedback on their journal articles & dissertations.
Strongly advising a student against publishing a paper with major technical issues isn't "stifling" the student, it's helping the student avoid a mistake that can significantly harm their career.
Why do people reply in comments instead of answers? Surely that defeats the purpose of stack exchange, which is to allow the community to weigh in on answers as well as questions?
I'm not attempting to answer your question (Should academics allow students to submit...). I only wanted to point out what I believe is a fallacy in the question (the cost would be possibly stifling a student).
@user14470: Short, one-sentence responses are not considered answers in the Stack Exchange format.
I let him put my name on the paper...I found the content unconvincing — What? You were unconvinced by your own content? Or worse: You put your name on a paper without contributing any content?
I'm confused about one thing. Did the paper get accepted? If so, then maybe the conference's standards are also a concern. If not, then how does this postdoc know about it?
@user14470 Weak (i.e. technically correct, but the content is cutting-edge or considered an important topic) or wrong (from inaccurate or sloppy to incorrect)?
Letting a student who is interested in submitting a paper do so if it is not up to your standards is dubious but debatable. Putting your name on a paper you did not contribute to is unethical. Putting your name on a paper you don't even agree with is crazy.
The paper used some of my ideas, and presented a working system, but the analysis and worth of the system are what's in question. Ironically, the postdoc just admitted that the idea if not implementation was great and that + the weak quality has helped him find a new collaborator who wants to fix it.
@JeffE yes it was accepted. I was not certain of the value of the contribution, and trusted review to sort that, but basically the argument is that having a known author and/or institutional affiliation affects the prior on the quality of the work & skews the review process. I've never bought that argument, but am using this question to reconsider it.
@aiesmail I was trying to get ff524 to put the effort into a real answer that could be debated. The fact you can't reference more than one person in a comment shows there isn't meant to be debate here.
@PiotrMigdal the system works, but I suspected (& the postdoc proved) the analysis is wrong and it wasn't really beyond the state of the art.
I'm confused by your phrasing "submit and possibly publish" which seems to suggest that you'd consider submitting something and then decide not to publish it. Why would you submit something without the intention of having it published? Doesn't that just waste the journal and referees' time? If you want to get comments on your work, mail it to colleagues and put it on the ArXiv.
@user14470 I edited the question. Do you like the changes?
If you believe the paper to be flawed, but don't understand it well enough to be sure, one solid option is to tell the student exactly that (and exactly why), and to refer them to a colleague who can answer the question more definitively.
What field are you in? I suspect this makes a difference here. Personally, coming from an artificial intelligence / artificial life background, I would say that when you publish at a "fairly local" meeting it's expected to be preliminary work, and that getting feedback is the primary purpose of presenting it, especially if it's student work. So I would regard this as a case of the system working correctly. But I suspect it rather depends on the norms of your field and the nature of the specific meeting.
In my opinion, since you aren't the supervisor, it's not your role to stop the student from publishing. If you are an expert in the subject of the publication and you don't think it's strong, you should advise them not to publish and explain why, but that's as far as you should go.
However, you "let him put [your] name on the paper" -- a paper which, by your own admission, you don't know much about! Regardless of whether the co-author is a student, and regardless of the quality of the paper, the behavior you're describing is wrong. In my field, it's actually forbidden by at least one of our professional societies:
All the authors listed for a paper . . . must have made a significant contribution to its content.
This is generally construed as meaning you should have done a significant part of the research and a significant part of the writing.
Now, violating this rule for a paper that you don't even have a high opinion of seems not only unethical but foolish.
I realize this is a harsh-sounding answer, but you have posted the question anonymously so I hope you don't mind me being frank.
I agree with the sentiment, but most of the text of this answer does not address the question at all.
@ff524 You're right. But if I ask whether I should do X or Y, and the right answer is to do Z, I hope that someone will tell me so.
I would upvote this, but I don't have sufficient reputation on this account yet. I think I am making an error in agreeing to treat the student like one of my own, and should keep my name off his papers even if that does discourage him. Thanks for being blunt, and I agree that Z is often the issue with an apparent X|Y question.
I haven't said the question is "answered" though yet as there may be more things I haven't thought of.
Whether he is "your own" student is utterly immaterial. Either you contributed to the paper, (therefore) deserve coauthorship, and (therefore) are responsible for its content, or you didn't, you don't, and you aren't.
Standards of authorship are completely different in mathematics vs. the life sciences. This level of involvement would not be totally unusual for a co-author in the life sciences who was the student's mentor, for instance. However, even there, adding your name to the author list makes you (at least partially) responsible for the paper's content. I wouldn't call it "unethical" to add your name in this situation but given your reservations, it seems unwise. A less formal conference or meeting, without published proceedings, might be a better venue for this type of "trial balloon."
@PatrickB., that in some fields unethical behavior is standard does not make it any more ethical.
@Kostya_I That's tautological. Unethical behavior is of course, by definition, unethical. I think most people would agree with the underlying principle that it is unethical to misrepresent your contributions to a paper. However, my point is that what authorship is generally understood to represent does demonstrably differ across fields. Therefore, whether you are in fact misrepresenting your contributions to the paper may depend on what exactly is expected of authors in that field (in the life sciences this will also depend on your position in the authorship list).
@PatrickB. the list of journals adhering to ICMJE guidelines, which explicitly prohibit the last authorship practice you are alluding to, seems to range across all life sciences I can think of. By contrast, I've never seen the practice of authorship based on subordination codified as accepted by any professional body. And yes, if it is generally understood that the king is naked and everybody is just lying, it's still a lie.
@Kostya_I What last-authorship practice exactly do you think I am "alluding to"? It is entirely possible from what the author wrote that they did in fact fulfill those four ICMJE criteria, especially given their clarification below (there is of course not enough information to make an unambiguous determination): they contributed to the study design, revised the paper critically, approved the submission, and recognize that they are accountable for the publication. My point, again, is that those criteria are not uniform across fields.
I think we can distinguish two situations here:
The work is not convincing because it is still preliminary. In this situation, even if the results might prove wrong latter, I would see no objection to send the student to present a talk or a poster about it, as long as the preliminary nature of the work is clearly stated. I might give him the opportunity to meet other researchers, find new ideas or even build collaboration based on these first results.
The work is not convincing because the results are flawed, the protocol is not robust or the techniques might not be adequate. In such situation, as @ff524 said, I would advise not to let the student present the work in public meetings. It will be unproductive both for the student and the advisor (as you experienced).
This assumes you can reliably discriminate the two cases. Preliminary results may be flawed, and you may not have detected that flaw. Is it worth stifling the student until you can invest the time to be certain there are no flaws, or do you engage the academic community in that checking?
@user14470 If you can't invest the time to tell whether there are flaws, you absolutely should not be an author of the paper.
Well, I disagree with that – again, an arbitrarily brilliant paper can have arbitrarily subtle flaws, you invest some time in any paper, but how much for which target audiences.
@user14470 I think as long as you state clearly that the results are preliminary, it is not a problem to share them, even if further experiment prove them wrong. The preliminary sharing might bring some interesting discussions.
@William If you'd put that as an answer instead of a comment I wouldn't have had to add my own (see below).
@user14470 sorry for that... I edited my answer accordingly.
As a mathematician, I had the same first reaction to this question as several other answerers and commenters: It's wrong to be a co-author of a paper that is just someone else's work. But I need to temper that reaction with the fact that other fields have rather different standards. In particular, in some (maybe even all?) of the experimental sciences, it is standard practice for the head of the lab to be a co-author of everything that comes out of that lab, whether or not the head actually did any of the research or even understood the research. As far as I can tell, the rationale for this is that the head of the lab gets the grants that make everybody else's work possible. The question here suggests that this sort of thing might be involved here ("I'd been tasked with supporting the student"), so co-authorship might not be quite as crazy or as unethical as it looks to a mathematician. Even in the experimental sciences, though, the head of the lab is (as far as I know) expected to make sure the work is good (and is held responsible if it is not).
Good answer. It isn't only money though, the money comes from ideas. Lab members benefit from an intellectual atmosphere, direction, a set of literature other lab members have identified as being worth extending, etc. But anyway (as I've clarified in the comments & in an answer I've floated) I did contribute to the paper.
Sorry to break the "don't answer your own question" norm here, but I want to float an answer. First, I did contribute to the paper (suggested direction of research) and the system presented does work. My issue was whether this new system was a real academic contribution, which I left up to the academic process to determine.
Overnight, the postdoc who initially complained a) admitted that the idea was great if not entirely well executed and b) told me he's found a new prestigious collaboration writing a better paper. In my mind, this is how academia is supposed to work. So my proposed answer is "yes". I leave it to you folks to vote up or down.
suggested direction of research — This is not universally regarded as sufficient contribution for coauthorship.
You answer is Academics should allow students to submit a possibly flawed paper because I did it once and it turned out not to be so flawed?
My answer is "students should be allowed to use the review and presentation process the way it's intended to be used, to contribute plausible ideas to the community and let the community correct, improve, or reject them". As to whether even weak students deserve the branding of an academic institution including its faculty, well, students probably suffer as much as institutions from bad admissions decisions, and once in probably deserve a level playing ground to try to prove themselves. But I for one am not letting myself get dragged into this situation again.
My answer is, to what end? What purpose are you serving by allowing such work to be published? The community does not benefit, as the work is subpar and (apparently) flawed. The student does not benefit, as (a) the experience is different from actual publishing with more rigorous review processes and (b) their reputation is tarnished. You receive no benefit for the same reasons.
The only possible benefit I see is that the student gains experience in informal writing and presenting, which they can already gain through group lab meetings without the possible repercussions relating to their reputation. In short, this appears on all fronts to be a pretty bad practice.
The benefit is getting the opinion of more people than are in the lab, especially since it is a new area for us. I now consider (see my floated "answer" / update) that I did get a benefit, since the postdoc is now in a new collaboration, writing a better system AND provided a critique of the student's work that the student couldn't have gotten in the lab & didn't get from the reviewers.
@user14470 I guess that this comes down to how much risk you're willing to take for the possible good outcome. I would venture that the risk here far outweights any possible benefits. Do remember that you still can't observe possible negative reputation effects, and you may never know the full negative effect of this paper.
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100226 | Reusing someone else's code in my own publication
I am about to submit a paper in which one of the algorithms I used is heavily based on the code available on one of the TensowFlow tutorials. In fact, I mostly copied the code from the page and made the necessary modifications for my specific case. I did cite, in the paper, both TensorFlow and the page, and disclosed that the neural net architecture I was using was based on the one on the page. The licensing terms of the code (Apache 2.0) mention that the user is free to build upon the code and redistribute it.
I am not in CS, and am applying the model to a specific problem in my field. However, in copying the code (which I believe will not be disclosed) I am afraid I might be doing academic misconduct. However, on the other hand, if that was the case, using open-source libraries would also be frowned upon, given that the user is essentially copying code.
Will I be committing academic misconduct or anything that is ethically frowned upon in academia by submitting results parts of which were based on copied code?
PS: In response to a comment, I cited TensorFlow and the webpage in the paper, which will be published if accepted, but the code itself (which was heavily based on the code available in the webpage) won't be posted anywhere (as far as I know).
I'm confused. In the first paragraph, you say you cited the page but I the second paragraph you say the copy will not be disclosed. Those seem mutually exclusive to me. Could you elaborate?
You are doing the right thing as long as you clearly cite your sources. In other words, as long as you say that your code is based on someone else's code, and as long as you clearly cite what that "someone else's code" is and where a reader can find it, you are ok.
The fact that the basis for your work is open source does not require you to share your code as well (though that would clearly be in the spirit of open source software). Open source software generally just means that if you give someone else an executable of your implementation using an open source package, that you also need to give them the source code of your implementation. (The details vary based on the license in question, but that's the idea.) As long as you write the code only for yourself, there is no need or requirement to share it with others.
I would recommend very strongly to make your own code open source. It makes your "experimentation" reproducible. IMNSHO every software funded by public research money should be open source.
Note that journals or the terms of your grant may require you to share your code. Plus it is good practice to do so. It can't be too horrible to show other people if you copied most of it from a third party anyway.
If you include other people's work in your paper, you need to reference it.
"Other people's work" includes - but is not exclusive to - the following :
words you're quoting from a lecture, a conversation or other oral context
words you're quoting from a paper, book or other publication
photographs that you include from a paper, book or other source
graphs that you include from a paper, book or other source
source code that you include from a paper, book, Github page or other source
The Apache 2.0 license allows you to legally build upon the code and redistribute it in pretty much any context. Just attribute any borrowed code to the original author(s) either in the comments of your code or as a normal source reference and you should be fine.
Remember that we're all standing on the shoulders of giants. There's nothing wrong with borrowing other people's code if that code is properly licensed (as it is in your case). Just don't pretend it's your own and you'll be fine.
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100742 | What are the cons of studying in a Ph.D. program that takes much time to confer the degree (about 1 year and a half or 2 years, after dissertation)?
Currently, I am in the second year of a Ph.D. program. However, I am really worried about the amount of time Faculty takes to confer the degree, since It could be detrimental to my academic and professional future.
Could you clarify why you think "it could be detrimental to my academic and professional future"?
Tthis is a potentially useful question but I think the answers might be really country or institute dependent.
Admittedly I come from a system (the US) in which the PhD is always conferred at the end of the semester during which it is successfully defended, but....2 years?!? That seems like an unreasonably long time.
Many thanks for your interesting answers. I think It could be detrimental in terms of salary (probably universities pay more if I have the degree). At the same time I think it could be a problem if a want to get a tenure track position or to apply to a postdoc position. However, your answers have helped me to understand different solutions and perspectives. (Excuse for my English. I am a native Spanish speaker)
Many academic positions after graduation are dependent on proof of degree completion, so this could potentially be a problem. The NSF math postdocs, for example, require a signature from the school that you've completed your degree, and some positions explicitly require a copy of your transcript or diploma that indicate your completion of a Ph.D. program. The institution where I completed a postdoc was in this latter category, and would only issue an informal offer (and not an official contract) until they received final documentation of my degree, which in my case took several months to arrive after graduation. One practical problem I faced as a result was difficulty arranging for housing at my postdoc institution; most rental companies want to see their tenant's signed contract as proof of income. I am also aware of tenure track jobs where the contract specified that the tenure clock only started after conferral of a degree. I suspect some institutions would be willing to bend the rules a bit in unusual circumstances, but it certainly could be a problem. (Note that this answer is based on experiences of myself and colleagues in the US. I have no idea how this practice varies in other countries.)
my post doc employer (US) did not require such certification. So it really is employer-dependent.
It's understood that it takes some time from the date the thesis is turned in until the examination, and then again from the examination to the final degree conferral. Consequently, most employers—business, industrial, and academic—who hire Ph.D.'s will be aware of this, and will allow people to start working once they have finished the defense (and sometimes even before then!).
The date of conferral has some impact on when you're eligible to apply for certain programs, but even then, it's usually a window of X years after the conferral date, so you're not going to "lose out" on opportunities just because your faculty takes longer than average. Even in the event where it's after the date of defense, usually schools can issue documentation that the defense took place and was successfully passed.
In which countries is this true?
Once you've passed your PhD, ask your supervisor to write and sign a letter (on headed paper) that says you've passed.* (Explain to your supervisor why you need it.) That letter should be convincing enough to anyone that asks, even though it isn't a formal certificate.
*Selection of the right words is crucial. All statements should be honest.
A letter from your supervisor will not be convincing to (e.g.) many North American universities. For instance, in order to register as a postdoc in Canada I had to submit a copy of my PhD. I know the same is true at many (though certainly not all) universities in the US.
@PeteL.Clark There are many ways to make a letter look convincing. Especially when a supervisor doesn't like bureaucracy. This method mightn't always work, but it should work in many cases. (Thinking of failure cases increases my confidence. E.g., a North America university questions the document's validity, verifies the supervisor's identity, and calls them. The supervisor confirms validity.)
I had the occasion to inquire into the rules at my own university. In order to hire a postdoc, they either have to have their degree or a note from the registrar saying that all the requirements have been fulfilled and the degree will be conferred on such-and-such a date. I have been involved in cases where this forced the postdoc to get the degree earlier than was convenient for them. Again, this is not the case at all North American universities, but it will definitely be a problem in certain cases.
There are of course cases when this won't work. In case of the requirement for "a note from the registrar saying that all the requirements have been fulfilled and the degree will be conferred on such-and-such a date," that seems possible to resolve: A student can draft a note that the supervisor agrees upon, and the supervisor can urge the registrar to sign. Of course, the registrar may refuse. But, it's worth a try.
¡Many thanks for your interesting opinions! You have helped me a lot to analyze possible solutions and cons.
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208896 | What is the difference between 'withdrawn' and 'retracted'?
I think both withdrawal and retraction are done when there is something wrong with the journal article.
What is the difference between them?
This is one example of Latin synonyms for Old English words of Norse or Germanic origin owing to this dual heritage: Value/worth, cow/beef etc.
Withdrawal happens before the article is published, during peer review. Retraction happens after it is published.
By the way withdrawal does not imply there is something wrong with the journal article - it could e.g. mean the authors think the journal is taking too long with peer review, and they'd rather submit elsewhere.
Also, withdrawal does not necessarily mean there is something wrong with the paper. Authors withdraw for all kinds of reasons, including that the journal took too long to assess the paper.
Withdrawn can also mean the authors were unable to comply with some required step for the journal like presentation of the work in person at a conference, or a publication fee.
The distinction may not be always the case, e.g. "Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers".
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32505 | How common are interviews for Computer Science PhD programs?
I am applying for admission to several CS PhD programs (in the US), and I am just wondering how common it is for schools to request interviews with the candidates. I will be out of the country for much of January which seems like a prime time for interviews to take place, so I am wondering if I should start making alternate plans. Thank you!
Extremely uncommon
I understand that interviews are fairly common in other fields and in other countries, but they are rare in computer science in the US. In my experience (student, postdoc, or faculty at five different American CS departments; multiple years on graduate admissions committees; dozens of recommendation letters for CS undergraduates applying to graduate school), very few (if any) American computer science departments include interviews as a standard part of the PhD application process.
There are rare exceptions, though, usually involving prospective advisors calling up applicants directly. The most common reason for a phone interview in my department is to assess their English fluency, especially when the applicant's test scores are borderline, or there seems to be a discrepancy between their test scores and the fluency of their statements. I'd be surprised if this happens more than 10 times a year, and we get 2000 grad applications each year.
When I applied to Berkeley's PhD program, I was already a PhD student at UC Irvine. My future advisor and the director of grad admissions called me to ask why I wanted to move when I seemed to be succeeding in my current program (good advisor, good research progress, and so on). I suspect they also wanted to understand the discrepancy betwen my grad school grades (good) and my undergrad grades (terrible).
In short, as long as there's nothing borderline or non-standard in your application, it's unlikely that you'd need to be available for an interview. And even if someone does want to interview you, they're much more likely to want to do it by phone or skype than in person.
JeffE's experience in this area is much more extensive than mine, so please weight his answer much more heavily than mine.
Thank you! I had suspected as much, but I was confused when I heard friends from other fields had gone through numerous interviews. Greatly appreciate the help.
From what I've seen, some form of interview is not uncommon (and a good sign, since it means you've passed most of the initial filters and are being considered seriously). In such cases as there is an interview, however, it can often be conducted over the phone or internet. Thus, your travel is unlikely to be a major issue as long as you will have good connectivity and be able to receive messages sent to the contact information you provided.
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54812 | How and why would I "claim ownership" of a paper on arXiv?
My colleague has just published a paper on which I am co-author. This is the first paper that has my name on so I am not familiar with the systems yet.
He has received an email from arXiv to confirm his submission and it gave a "paper password". It recommended he forward this to the co-authors so "They may use it to claim ownership."
What does this mean, why would I want to do it and how do I go about it?
By claiming ownership the paper appears in your arXiv account, and you can manage it there (e.g. uploading a new version or adding a journal reference). It also means it will appear in the list of papers associated to your arXiv author identifier, which is especially useful if you have a common name.
You can claim ownership by logging in to your arXiv account (create one first if you don't have one yet), and then click on the "Claim ownerhsip" link. It will ask for the paper ID and the password.
Edit: As Wrzlprmft pointed out in the comments, it will likely also add to your endorsement record, meaning that you are less likely to need to be endorsed for future submissions you make yourself, and will sooner be able to endorse others.
Just for convenience, here’s the “claim ownership” link directly: https://arxiv.org/auth/need-paper-password
Note that the "claim ownership" feature isn't restricted to the authors of the article, and access to articles can be given to other people in some workflows (e.g., the copy editors of epijournals).
For anyone as confused as me: the paper password was sent in the confirmation email to the article uploader. It is not available via the webpage.
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38969 | Getting a dump of arXiv metadata
Prompted by discussion in this post on Meta.MathOverflow.net I got interested in comparing usage of tags from MathOverflow to submissions in the respective disciplines of arXiv. (Vide a similar idea of language popularity, GitHub vs StackOverflow (or one from 2015).) Moreover, as people often use their real names on MO, it may be interesting to check the overlap of mathematicians.
The question is, how to get such data?
There is arXiv API, but for bulk downloads of metadata they recommend Open Archives Initiative (OAI). Yet, as I see, it can query one article at a time, and one needs to know its id. So without knowing arXiv ids beforehand, it turns into a guessing game.
There are some plots in arXiv usage statistics, yet I don't see this exact data.
Also, one can get total submission to math from links in Mathematics -> Article statistics by year, but it misses the splitting into subdisciplines.
Looking at the OAI, it looks like there's also a cap in place to prevent a high amount of leeching (503 after a certain period).
@Compass In any case, do you know what are the relevant queries?
I have been playing with this a little bit, using the Perl package Net::OAI::Harvester. The OAI API does provide a way to download all records (ListRecords), rather than just one at a time (GetRecord). It looks like arXiv will give you 1000 records and then return a 503 asking you to retry after a delay, so it's not to prevent excessive leeching as @Compass says but only to rate limit. Net::OAI::Harvester knows to how to retry (listAllRecords) but not how to delay, so that may need to be done manually.
+1; I've been wondering the same thing. I downloaded the entire database of arXiv articles via the dump on Amazon S3, but I haven't found a simple way to get my hands on the associated metadata. It'd be a big help for the sort of linguistic analyses I've thought of running.
@Mark : you might try asking the question on http://opendata.stackexchange.com . (disclaimer : I'm currently a moderator there)
@Mark See my https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/stared/arxiv_math_metadata_2015022.zip and https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/stared/arxiv_metadata_dump_20150223.zip.
Arxiv metadata and fulltext have been made (more easily) accessible in 08/2020.
https://blogs.cornell.edu/arxiv/2020/08/05/leveraging-machine-learning-to-fuel-new-discoveries-with-the-arxiv-dataset/
https://www.kaggle.com/Cornell-University/arxiv
The full set of PDFs is available for free in the GCS bucket gs://arxiv-dataset or through Google API (json documentation and xml documentation, gsutil). They are grouped into several .tar.gz files in the tarpdfs folder, the complete set is about 1.1TB in size.
So something good is coming out of machine learning at last! (Though I'm a bit surprised to see the PDFs rather than the source codes in the dump. And wow -- the metadata alone is over 4GB??)
My main confusion was not realizing that The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting is a separate protocol, not a subset of arXiv API.
In this case, the relevant queries are ListIdentifiers (10k items per query) and ListRecords (1k items per query). To get just identifiers we need to write:
http://export.arxiv.org/oai2?verb=ListIdentifiers&set=math&metadataPrefix=oai_dc
It results in 10k identifiers in the following form:
<OAI-PMH xmlns="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/ http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/OAI-PMH.xsd">
<responseDate>2015-02-16T19:28:22Z</responseDate>
<request verb="ListIdentifiers" metadataPrefix="oai_dc" set="math">http://export.arxiv.org/oai2</request>
<ListIdentifiers>
<header>
<identifier>oai:arXiv.org:0704.0002</identifier>
<datestamp>2008-12-13</datestamp>
<setSpec>math</setSpec>
</header>
...
<header>
<identifier>oai:arXiv.org:0712.1769</identifier>
<datestamp>2011-06-23</datestamp>
<setSpec>math</setSpec>
</header>
<resumptionToken cursor="0" completeListSize="249546">760571|10001</resumptionToken>
</ListIdentifiers>
</OAI-PMH>
As there are more results, to get next batch we need to specify resumptionToken, in this case:
http://export.arxiv.org/oai2?
verb=ListIdentifiers&resumptionToken=760571|10001
and so on.
Other useful parameters are from and until, e.g. as in
http://export.arxiv.org/oai2?verb=ListIdentifiers&set=math&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&from=2015-01-14&until=2015-01-14
To directly get categories (bear in mind that set=math specifies mathematics, but there are no smaller subsets), one can write:
http://export.arxiv.org/oai2?verb=ListRecords&set=math&from=2015-01-01&until=2015-01-31&metadataPrefix=arXiv
It's important to set metadataPrefix=arXiv, so that subdisciplines will be listed:
<categories>
math-ph cond-mat.other math.MP nlin.CD physics.class-ph
</categories>
EDIT:
I used delay as Nate Eldredge suggested, in my case - 25s. Yet, while trying to get all math (250k items so in 250 queries) it gave error at 70. I did continue it (with even higher delay) but sometime around 110 the query was not longer available.
So, the way to go is in getting smaller chunks - e.g. by month (or for mathematics - at most by year).
When making multiple requests using a resumptionToken, you are required to wait a little while between requests; otherwise you get a 503 error with a Retry-After: header telling you how long to wait. In the tests I have made so far it has always been 20 seconds, so adding an unconditional 20 second delay between requests might do the trick.
This looks good. Here you can see the code we are using to get metadata. It is fetching only on page of it though for now.
Shameless plug: I wrote a generic OAI harvesting tool, that will harvest Arxiv just fine. It's called metha and consists of a few commands:
$ metha-sync https://export.arxiv.org/oai2
This will download all data up to the last full day (it will take a couple of days). The XML API responses are compressed and placed under ~/.cache/metha directory. Metha will use monthly windows by default and a resilient HTTP client to ensure downloads succeed, while not stressing the server. It has been tested in the wild on thousands of OAI endpoints.
After (and during) download, you can inspect (already downloaded) records with:
$ metha-cat https://export.arxiv.org/oai2
For any further processing you will have to use your favorite XML tools.
Update: Additionally to the metha (incremental) harvester, I wrote a small tool called oaicrawl, which does no caching and just fetches records off an OAI endpoint one by one. This create more overhead, as there's an HTTP request for each record but can be useful, if the OAI endpoint does not support selective harvesting (e.g. by date) or is otherwise broken and you are ok with having a best effort data set harvested from the service.
Syntax would be similarly simple:
$ oaicrawl http://export.arxiv.org/oai2 > arxiv.data
Note, that this will concatenate the raw responses from the API and hence won't be valid XML out of the box.
A torrent for a metadata dump "collected from the OAI-PMH API endpoint using the 'metha-sync' tool" is available at: https://archive.org/details/arxiv-bulk-metadata
NB: This dataset contains metadata also for non-math articles.
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13902 | Internship for PhD students
I am a PhD student and I would like to do an internship at an American university or institute. How should I proceed?
Contact the university or institute at which you want to intern, and find out what their requirements are for international students.
If your advisor has contacts at any of the universities you'd like to work at, I would ask him or her to reach out for you. If you are looking to work with a specific faculty member, that is probably the trickiest route, as faculty members often use the summer to travel themselves, and it is rarely worth the hassle to hire an unknown student for the summer, anyway.
If you don't have a networking contact through your advisor or other faculty members at your school, my next suggestion would be to start networking at a conference, or through a professional organization that you are affiliated with (e.g., IEEE, AMS, etc.). Start getting the word out that you are looking to spend a summer at a U.S. school, and see if anyone has suggestions.
If you are looking for a paid internship, you may be at a disadvantage as an international student, and you are probably more likely to find something if you can fund yourself. If that isn't an option, you might also consider looking at internships in industry, as they tend to have more money for summer interns.
If you are in a STEM field, there are lots of options available to you. There are about 20 national laboratories that take students from every level of education as summer students, including international students. Personally, I've interned at Los Alamos National Lab and at Pacific Northwest National Lab. It's generally very applied work, but it's a great atmosphere for students and is also extremely helpful for making connections with potential future employers. I would look up national lab websites and look at their respective research areas, and contact individuals you would be interested in working with.
The internet is your friend -- many companies and government agencies have programs listed on their website, and many of them don't require US citizenship.
Be careful, though—many of the programs at national laboratories do not take international students, which the OP appears to be.
I was at Pacific Northwest last summer, and many of the other interns were international students. International students (as well as international staff) were issued badges that had some access restrictions. The OP may be ineligible for some opportunities, but there are many internationals that do get internships at labs.
It definitely differs between labs. The Office of Science labs (Argonne, PNNL, Oak Ridge, etc.) definitely have a lower threshold than the National Nuclear Security Administration labs (Sandia, Los Alamos, Livermore).
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22075 | Part time industrial work during a mathematics PhD
I am in the second year of my PhD in mathematics and I have recently decided I want to go into industry after I'm finished. I feel like a lot of what I'm learning in the program does not have direct, real-world applications, and I'd like to remedy this problem by getting some work experience while I'm still in graduate school.
I have some programming background (but not as much as a CS grad) and a couple years experience doing simple data analysis programming. I also have a BS in physics. It seems like there should be a place in industry for me somewhere, but I don't know how to go about finding it.
I would like to work part-time, or as a consultant, so that the job won't greatly hinder my progress towards my degree. (Of course, some time will be lost that could have gone to my dissertation, but this is made up for by gaining marketable skills.) I'd like to work in science or in software. I am aware of internships, but it seems like most are either for undergraduate students or engineers.
Can a math grad student work part-time in industry during his PhD? If so, how would one go about finding jobs?
I think your options (in the U.S. anyways) will be limited, since, even if you were to find a good fit, working part-time may not be an option. You might want to consider doing a summer internship instead to get more industry-relevant experience.
Why are you getting a PhD in math if you're concerned about direct, real-world applications?
I think it would be very challenging and unusual to work part-time at a job and be taking graduate classes or doing thesis research.
But it's quite common for graduate students to work full-time (as interns) at government laboratories or in industry during the summer (or at another time of year) for perhaps 3 months. Mathematics students I have known have worked at
Google
Microsoft
US Dept. of Energy labs (Sandia, Los Alamos, Livermore, Oak Ridge, Argonne, etc.)
Oil companies (Schlumberger, Total)
US NSA contractors (cryptography)
US Geological Survey
NOAA
and many other places that I've forgotten. Talk to your advisor and to other faculty in the program. Your university may also have someone who coordinates these things.
I can say that I am currently doing this and it works very well for me, but you have to discuss this with your supervisors.
My consulting work is in optimisation/operations research (part mathematics, part computer science) and directly relevant to my PhD. I use these experiences to motivate my research and I'm convinced it makes me a better researcher.
I work for the company I worked for before starting my PhD, but part-time consultants can be valuable to smaller consulting companies if you have the flexibility to work when they have more jobs, and not work when they don't.
I will second the call to apply for internships: a couple of the interns I worked with at Google last summer were mathematicians who could code, and one or two of us were PhD students.
It should be noted that I'm doing my PhD in Australia, where PhDs nominally take 3 years and teaching/research assistant work is not a condition of any scholarship, so your mileage may vary in other countries.
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23187 | Still waiting for comments on my draft - what to do?
Some weeks ago I completed the first draft a paper. I then decided to approach one of the experts in the field, who is working at the same school as I. She seemed interested and were willing to read the draft. However I sent her the draft ~ 5 weeks ago, and I have not heard from her since then.
I am now wondering if this is normal? Can I send her an e-mail and ask if she has looked at it yet (or is that considered inappropriate?).
I am getting quite stressed about this, the reason being that my advisor expects a draft of a new paper soon, and it would be valuable to have her comments before I talk to my own supervisor (who knows less about the subject I am writing my paper about).
You don't say what field you're in and how long the paper is. Reading a short paper that's mostly text doesn't take long; reading forty pages of dense mathematics can take weeks or even months. Also, why on earth are you writing papers that your own supervisor doesn't know about?
After 5 weeks, I think you can safely assume that she has forgotten about it. You can either accept that you will not hear back from her, or send a polite reminder.
Most people do not mind a friendly reminder about tasks that they have committed to but forgotten about. It is definitely not inappropriate. However, it is of course possible that she simply has no time after all, but then the right thing for her to do is to just tell you.
Thank you, what confuses me is that she seemed interested the first time we met, and encouraged me to contact her if I had more ideas. But maybe she has just forgotten as you say.
Maybe I should add that 4 weeks ago I sent to her a new draft (corrected some errors). I do not know if she got put off by this. Would an friendly reminder still be appropriate?
@Phd Yes, a friendly email every few weeks can hardly be over the top.
ok, thank you! I really appreciate your help.
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15377 | Where to search for conferences and workshops in computer science?
I'm a master student in computer science. I'm still working on my thesis and probably I will publish a paper, however I really have no idea where to look for workshops and conferences. I often hear my supervisor talking about some conferences and workshops and mentioning them, but I get no idea how he knew about them. Is there such a central website or search engine for this?
I'm new in research, never published a paper before.
(1) Ask your advisor. (2) Look at where the papers you cite are published.
I found some decent ones here: http://www.nsays.in
One more that hasn't been mentioned yet: http://confsearch.org/ The nice thing about confsearch is that you can filter by sub-field.
A very good site for CS conferences and journals call for papers and their respective deadlines is A Wiki Calls for Papers.
similar website: http://eventseer.net/
There are lots of different websites and mailing lists for different subjects. Some researchers also maintain webpages of conferences in their area. I mostly learn about conferences through two mailing lists I subscribe to and two researchers' webpages, as well as emails forwarded by my mentor (I'm a postdoc).
Probably the best thing would be to ask your supervisor how he finds conferences. He'll probably know the best sources for your research area.
One fairly general website I know about is www.conference-service.com, but in my area it's far from complete.
I may be biased (since I am working on that project) but I would start looking in the dblp computer science bibliography:
http://dblp.dagstuhl.de
http://dblp.uni-trier.de
http://dblp.org
However, much more important than just searching for "any" conference and workshop in whatever repository is talking to your advisor, colleagues, etc and asking them for their opinion on which venues are most relevant for your specific topic.
Another way of finding relevant venues is just looking at the references in the literature you are working with. If there are some conferences or journals that come up over and over again, then they are probably interesting for you to consider.
Most of the conferences in Computer Science publish proceedings with Springer, IEEE or ACM (even though there are several dozens which self-publish or publish elsewhere).
All three publishers have lists of upcoming conferences:
Springer
LNCS: http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-12-73665-0
CCIS: http://www.springer.com/series/7899
LNBIP: http://www.springer.com/series/7911
IEEE
http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/index.html
ACM
http://www.acm.org/calendar-of-events
Other great resources are mailing lists:
Mailing lists
DBWorld https://research.cs.wisc.edu/dbworld/
AISWorld http://www.aisnet.org/AIS_Lists/publiclists.aspx
ACM SIG-IR list http://www.sigir.org/sigirlist/
ECOOP info list http://web.satd.uma.es/mailman/listinfo/ecoop-info
Beware of conferences which do this just for money and not for disseminating knowledge:
http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
This being said - of course the best way is to ask colleagues working on a topic related to yours - like your supervisors, post-docs from your group etc.
Another very useful site is Conference Partner (myhuiban). The site lists conferences by deadline, and shows useful information such as rankings by 3 different sources, years, views and so on. In each conference page, it also shows the call for papers, acceptance rate (when available), related conferences etc. Note that for some reason, full access requires (free) registration.
Downvoter, care to explain? To make it clear, I'm in no way affiliated with the site I mentioned, and other useful sites were already mentioned in other answers and comments.
I found some decent ones here: http://www.allconferences.com/
I also receive a number of invitations through a number of mailing lists that I subscribe to.
You can also find a number of them through technology publishers like O'Reilly for example: http://strataconf.com/strata2014/public/content/home
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35144 | How should I go about doing meaningful academic outreach as a graduate student?
I am a Hispanic student (senior undergraduate) from a socioeconomically disadvantaged background pursuing a graduate degree in Physics in US (I just finished submitting my applications). I do not know anyone from my neighborhood that attended college, much less pursued an advanced degree, and I find myself abhorred by the educational inequality in the US (and the world) on a daily basis. I've undertaken some personal outreach endeavors thus far, I act as a mentor via email for minority students in K-12 (for example, I send them updates about what projects I'm doing and links that I think are suitable for their age group) and I stay in contact with minority undergraduates in STEM whom find themselves faced with (socioeconomic) obstacles similar to those that I have faced.
My parents were hard workers, but they had little time (or money) to stimulate me intellectually as a child, and they also had no idea what it meant to pursue a PhD in anything besides a medical doctor. Thus, I really only became familiar with the notion of pursuing a career in scientific research when I arrived at college; prior to arriving at college, engineering was my idea of what it meant to be a "scientist", or, to "do science" as a career.
I would say that over the course of the past three years I have become a relatively successful researcher, and in some ways I have made up for lost time, but to this day I can only cringe thinking about where I (or someone in my same shoes) might be today if I had been exposed to science at a younger age.
Does anyone have advice as to how I can begin making a significant impact in scientific outreach as a graduate student? I have a knack for programming, and the majority of my research is computational in nature, so I think I might be well suited for helping individuals learn programming remotely, or something of that effect.
As a data point, ASU launched last year a outreach program with special focus on the Hispanic community and where a good part of the work is being done by PhD students. You may want to look at what they do, and the results they are getting.
Outreach comes in two flavours: creating interest (wow, this science thing is actually cool!), and educating (this is how you program). I think both are necessary, so take your pick (or both).
Also, don't even think of making it a one man effort. I don't advise to do it alone. There will be times where you will be swarmed in work, and then your outreach will just fall out of priority. Instead, team up with undergrads, schools, youth centres... whoever is willing to help you. If your university has something in place, you should probably go for it, as it will probably suit your primary needs the most. If you cannot find anyone, you can always start alone and get people on board along the way, but do make this a priority to ensure continuity.
Story time: when I was an undergrad, I joined the astronomy club at my university and we did a lot of outreach, mostly talks and workshops about different topics. It was a very good starting point, as I met people that have been in the business for some time, and could help me avoid some of the beginners mistakes. To give you an idea of our success, in some years, we (a dozen of undergrads), single handedly organised half of the events for the Science Week at the Physics Department, usually getting fully booked in less than a week since opening the registrations.
My experiences showed that:
Many teachers are overworked, underpaid, and frustrated; and they would take your activities as a way to relax for an hour. A few others are still passionate and will go out of their way to get you in the classroom and make the most of it.
Teenagers are difficult to begin with, but once you break the toughness layer, they have a bunch of interesting ideas. Also, beyond that point there are not many differences between posh and underprivileged schools.
Ideally, all fronts should be covered. This includes schools, family activities, talks for adults, elderly centres, giving teachers ideas... But of course, you don't have to do them all.
Be engaging. Get small groups, if you can. Prefer interaction in person. I wouldn't recommend teaching programming remotely, as it is too easy to ignore it. It would only work with kids that are really interested, but then, there are tons of online resources to learn.
Sometimes, kids behave like mushrooms, and there is nothing you can do about it. Don't let that frustrate you. Don't be impervious to (self) criticism, though.
Talk to professors active in outreach, even if they are out of your expertise. In my university there were a couple of them from the Optics department, that taught me a few nifty low budget experiments.
+1 for everything but "Also, don't even think of making it a one man effort.". I mean, in many cases it is good to have more people. But one can be totally fine with running a site, or giving lectures, or 1-1 mentoring as single person (and it many cases there is an advantage of not needing to wait for, or adhere to, others).
@PiotrMigdal doing anything worth requires continuity. A PhD student cannot commit so much, there are times where other demands take over. Maybe I was a bit strong, and one can definitely start it alone, but to keep it alive, one would need support.
Well, keeping something alive is great. But it's better to start from scratch something worth one's time that continue something not worth it (for various reasons). (Things here are not theory - rather my experience over last ~9 years. Certainly, the best things are ones which I run with others and are now still alive. Yet, most things needs some starting impulse, who will lead and take responsibility. Waiting for others is the best way to forfeit an opportunity.)
"Sometimes, kids behave like mushrooms, and there is nothing you can do about it." How do mushrooms behave?
@FaheemMitha they subsist doing nothing.
Outreach - to start with, once you know something worth sharing (and for sure you do, as you are a PhD student), the biggest thing is your motivation and drive for it.
There are various styles of doing outreach, and for various audiences (of different age, specialization etc).
In some sense its up to your taste to choose topic and the audience. As you are from a disadvantaged group you should know the best what kind of help and stimulation would had benefited you the most.
It's important to look at the "added value" - i.e. how much they benefit from it. (Sometimes a spark of inspiration can be better than concentrating knowledge; but also sometimes a lecture can be cool but provide little long-term value.)
What you can do?
Giving lectures.
Doing workshops.
1-1 mentoring.
Running some blog (but this is less sure, as there is less direct feedback).
In any case, it's mostly practice, practice and practice. You will learn which things work the best, and which - do not. Which things are interesting for the audience, which - not as much as for you.
If you are in programming, it is a good way to start, as it gives them tools they can play with by themselves, and it is beneficial in many different job scenarios.
It's of course good to contact people in your department, who are involved in outreach - very likely they can provide some advice and it may be possible that there are organizations or events you can join (whether run by univ. or something external).
Also, some of my experiences are captured here: An independent camp for high school geeks (some lessons can be used in different settings).
I can completely relate to you. There are plenty of programs out there where you can do some outreach. You can check out Code2040 : http://code2040.org/ . Its a program that helps minorities get their foot in the door in the tech world. It might not be exactly what you had in mind but I would try to network with the coordinators maybe they can give you better advice on your journey. You can also try doing outreach through your local library. I know that some libraries offer tech literacy courses so that maybe good place to start. You can also try to create a non-profit organization for your cause as well.
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17143 | Is there any research on applying Agile/Extreme/Lean methods in academic research?
I've been enjoying quite a lot of literature, all published within the last ten years, on how to handle projects, ideas, development, thinking, and so in with processes like Extreme, Agile, or Lean. I have searched for similar literature on academic research and projects, but I couldn't find anything modern and relevant that links various parts of the research process, such as project management, hardware/software/experiment development, or refactoring of collaborative writing.
Are there any recent publications about applying these methods to academic research?
Some people think the question is too broad. Can you please make it more specific, as it risks being closed.
The question is not focused and is not clear what to answer, Please rewrite it so it remains open and active for answers.
The paper Adapting Scrum to Managing a Research Group by Michael Hicks and Jeffrey S. Foster, describes the experiences of adapting Scrum to running a research group.
For those who don't know about Scrum, wikipedia has the following:
Scrum is an iterative and incremental Agile software development
framework for managing software projects and product or application
development. Its focus is on "a flexible, holistic product development
strategy where a development team works as a unit to reach a common
goal" as opposed to a "traditional, sequential approach". Scrum
enables the creation of self-organizing teams by encouraging
co-location of all team members, and verbal communication among all
team members and disciplines in the project.
A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the
customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often
called requirements churn), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be
easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner. As
such, Scrum adopts an empirical approach—accepting that the problem
cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing
the team's ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging
requirements.
Scrum is built around the idea of a sprint, a short burst of activity. Again, from wikipedia:
A sprint (or iteration) is the basic unit of development in Scrum. The
sprint is a "timeboxed" effort; that is, it is restricted to a
specific duration. The duration is fixed in advance for each
sprint and is normally between one week and one month, although two
weeks is typical.
Each sprint is started by a planning meeting, where the tasks for the
sprint are identified and an estimated commitment for the sprint goal
is made, and ended by a sprint review-and-retrospective meeting,
where the progress is reviewed and lessons for the next sprint are
identified.
Scrum emphasizes working product at the end of the Sprint that is
really "done"; in the case of software, this means a system that is
integrated, fully tested, end-user documented, and potentially
shippable.
The emphasis is thus on highly dynamic, short cycles of work, and interaction between the team
members and the customer to get the right product delivered by rapidly ensuring that the development team is on target.
Now, returning to the paper: it advocates 2 or 3 short meeting per week with the entire research group, rather than infrequent meetings between supervisors and PhD students. In these meetings goals, progress and achievements are reported on frequently. One outcome is that it helped quickly identify when a student was off-track, unmotivated or stuck.
I used the technique for my research group for a while. It was good for the various members to learn about what the others were doing, but as everyone was doing quite different things, in the end it didn't create any synergies I'd hoped for. Now that I am in a different institution and the new research group works on topics that are closer together, I think it could work, but we've decided to use a different approach to our research meetings.
Thanks for this answer. Would you consider adding a few lines explaining "scrum"? Until I saw this answer I had never heard of it. Worse, the idea that there are highly formalized models and/or software for managing interactions with PhD students was also totally unknown to me. (And I have PhD students...) Please help?
@PeteL.Clark: Done (albeit somewhat lazily).
Dave: thanks very much. I admit that I am so clueless that "this is a thing" that I didn't even think to check whether there was a wikipedia article. (Although eventually I would have googled it, of course.)
@PeteL.Clark: It's a neat idea. It works well in small software development teams, I hear, though adapting it to research still needs work. Research does not so easily break up into small chunks and you often get people saying "Same as last week", though of course this could be an indicator of problems.
Generally I find that agile approaches might work for some research project deliverables (e.g., if your project includes the development of a mobile app) but are unlikely to work overall, at least when it comes to academic research. The issue is that a key risk for large research projects is that team members will have divergent ideas about what the project is intended to produce, and agile's frequent meetings focused on the immediate upcoming work are unlikely to help with that.
You also have the issue that many research project team members have other responsibilities, including teaching, coursework and other projects, so it may not be practical or useful to have a team meeting every few days for two reasons. First, you may not be able to find times that everyone is available to meet. Second, because people have multiple responsibilities, work on the project doesn't progess all the time so the cadence of academic research often doesn't match the normal cadence of agile approaches.
While this might be useful as an anecdote, it doesn't really answer the question, which asks for recent research.
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19846 | Differences in student load at liberal arts colleges vs. research universities
Do students at liberal arts universities have 'harder' courses than students at research universities?
Computer Science curricula at large research universities have 5 to 6 courses per semester. The Liberal Arts model dictates roughly 4 courses per semester. If the load on the student is considered to be equivalent, there must be something special to the teaching in the Liberal Arts model.
How is it that a 4 course Liberal Arts semester is as intensive as a 6 course research university semester?
UPDATE: Many of the comments below say the course load I mention above is inaccurate. I have obtained the figures as follows.
The Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium (LACS) has released 3 LACS curricula in response to ACM/IEEE CS curriculum recommendations. The first in 1986 in response to the 1978 recommendation, next in 1996 in response to the 1991 recommendation and the most recent in 2007 in response to the 2001 recommendation. The 4 year course breakdown in all the LACS recommendations is roughly the same:
4 courses per semester
30-35% CS courses, 10% math, 5% science, and the rest, i.e. 50% or more courses on arts, humanities and social sciences.
A typical graduation requirement at a research university is at least 120 credits, which comes to 5 3-credit courses per semester. Many require more than 120 so 6 course semesters are not uncommon.
What country are you specifically talking about?
I am using the generic US Liberal Arts model as a reference.
I don't understand. Are you claiming that most students in computer science at large research universities take 5 or 6 courses per semester? That does not seem accurate: 5 seems a little high and 6 is definitely a stretch.
Yeah, I'm skeptical about the premise here. In my experience, students at both liberal arts colleges and research universities take 4-5 courses per semester. There might be differences in the average number of courses taken, but not by 50%.
Even if those numbers were correct, who ever said the load was considered to be equivalent? Programs at different institutions can vary widely in their requirements.
It's also very difficult to generalize about "large research universities" and "liberal arts colleges" in this way. My undergraduate institution considers itself a liberal arts college, and requires students to average 5.33 3-unit courses per semester in order to graduate in 4 years.
The maximum allowable courseload at my university is 17 hours = 5+2/3 courses per semester. 12 hours = 4 courses per semester is considered full-time. In my experience, most students tend towards the lower end and pick up extra credits either through advanced placement or summer courses, if necessary. Moreover, overall probably less than half of these courses are in CS (or any other one declared major). I wonder where these counterfactual premises are coming from?
The title of this question does not match its content.
"A typical graduation requirement at any U.S. university is at least 120 credits, which comes to 4-5 3-credit or 4-credit courses per semester." (The document you cite in support of your claims about LAC explicitly describes several classes as being 4-credit).
You are making several unfounded assumptions:
That courses are always 3 credits, so that "4 courses per semester" means 12 credits. I have taken courses that were worth 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 credits. Many of the science courses I've taken, including math and computer science courses, have been worth 4 credits. Basic sciences that involve a lecture, lab, and recitation have sometimes been 5 credits.
That most liberal arts colleges follow the LACS recommendations to the letter.
That the LACS recommendations somehow suggest that less than 120 credits are required for graduation. Here is an example of a liberal arts college following the LACS recommendations for CS and requiring 120 credits.
I did half of my undergraduate degree at a liberal arts college and then transferred to a large research university for the other half. There was virtually no difference in my courseload between the two - I took exactly one credit more in my two years in the research university. I just pulled up my transcripts, and this is what I took each semester:
Part 0
I transferred in 30 credits in humanities, etc. from college courses taken while in high school.
Part 1 - Liberal Arts College
16 credits, 4 classes (4, 3, 4, 5)
13 credits, 3 classes (4, 4, 5)
(Summer) 3 credits, 1 class (3)
19 credits, 5 classes (3, 4, 5, 4, 3)
12 credits, 4 classes (3, 3, 4, 2)
Part 2 - Research University
16 credits, 4 classes (4, 4, 4, 4)
19 credits, 5 classes (4, 3, 4, 4, 4)
16 credits, 6 classes (3, 4, 1, 3, 3, 2)
13 credits, 4 classes (4, 3, 3, 3)
(My undergraduate degree was in Electrical Engineering, with a minor in Computer Science.)
Thanks. So what then was the difference between the Liberal Arts College and Research University? Was there a higher proportion of humanities courses at the Liberal Arts college?
@wsaleem Why do you assume there was a difference? The curriculum requirements were very similar at the two schools.
I assume a difference in the CS curricula because of the fundamental difference between the two types of institutions - in teaching vs. research and in depth vs. breadth.
There were differences in things like UG advising, class sizes in science courses, availability of research opportunities, etc. but none as far as curriculum requirements or teachers' expectations.
That is very interesting to me. Was the CS curriculum then an anomaly at your Liberal Arts college, in that it was the same as at a research university? Other commenters have pointed out how Engineering programs at Liberal Arts colleges are anomalies.
The science and engineering majors at the LAC all required more credits for the major than the humanities-type majors. I don't think courseloads were different (120 credits were required for graduation in any case) but humanities majors had more freedom in choosing electives.
@wsaleem: It sounds like you have some broader questions about "What are the differences between a research university and a liberal arts college" that might be better addressed in a separate question.
As with other commenters, I think the premise here is flawed.
I teach at a public liberal arts college which is typical of many. (Certainly our curriculum and requirements are in line with other schools in the COPLAC Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges.)
Our students are required to complete 120 credits to graduate, which over four years averages to 15 credits a semester, or five 3-credit courses. I don't believe there is any serious difference in student course load when compared to large research universities (but maybe someone will prove me wrong).
The main distinction about teaching at a liberal arts college is that the overall curriculum is broader, and students do not focus on specialization as much as integration of diverse subject areas. Instead of taking 70 or 80 credits of (say) computer science, our students take only 40-45, with the other two-thirds of their degree consisting of courses in other areas. In this way, students build a broad, integrated perspective which incorporates their major into a study of the world at large. The focus at liberal arts colleges is to help students become better critical thinkers, decision makers, and problem solvers, rather than becoming subject matter experts in a narrow discipline.
I think you may be overstating the curricular differences between liberal arts colleges and research universities. I teach at a research university, and I just looked up the degree requirements in CS: it is 18 courses or 54 credits. This includes freshman level courses for non-majors that I imagine many CS majors would place out of. In my own department (math) the major requirements are less.
Overall I don't know of any US research university where students are required to take more than 50% of their coursework in the area of their major. As someone who advises undergraduates, I can say that it is fairly common for a student to change majors during their third year, and with careful planning they can probably still graduate in four years. Also, with all due respect to my undergraduate students, very few of them are graduating as "subject matter experts" in any discipline, however narrow.
120 hours is also the requirement for most majors at my research university, although engineering majors are slightly higher (128 to 134). My department's engineering major requires 64 hours of coursework within the major, out of 128 total.
The exception is engineering: my school required 36 classes in four years to graduate, but engineers needed as many as 41 to finish the major and the general requirements. [Twenty-nine classes (70%) were the major and its prerequisites.]
@aeismail: Yes, I agree that engineering is exceptional. In fact, many (most?) US research universities have a "college of arts and sciences". That's what I was describing (and that's where CS lives), and that model is equal to first order to the liberal arts model. If you are studying engineering or architecture or are in a conservatory, things will really be different.
@PeteL.Clark ...and that's sometimes where CS lives. I'd guess a bit more than half of American CS departments are in engineering colleges.
@JeffE: Really? Well, you would know better than I. I tend to think of CS as being recently seceded from mathematics (when I was an undergraduate at University of Chicago, 20 years ago, CS was still formally part of the math department), but that is probably not the case at most places.
Teaching at a Liberal Arts school (in the United States), there is a lot more "teaching" expected. Largely, you do not have TAs for your classes, meaning you not only do all the lecturing, but also the grading and lab work associated with the course. Furthermore, Teachers at Liberal Arts Schools are expected to take a serious interest in the undergraduate body since there usually are no graduate students (hence few TAs).
I am not sure if they are equivalent, and certainly my advisor my research university only teaches 4 classes a year as well. I'd say his teaching load is far less than my professors at the Small Liberal Arts school I attended for undergraduate. That being said, he also has 4 graduate students he advises, which I think end up being a lot more work.
So from a class prospective, teachers at Liberal Arts schools tend to spend more time teaching. But from an advisement perspective, research universities tend to be more intensive. It probably evens out, though I have no first hand experience.
Thanks. My question was from the student's perspective. Is there something special in the way the Liberal Arts student is taught (by prof or by TA) such that her 4-course semester "load" is comparable to that of her research university colleague doing a 6-course semester?
@wsaleem: The average course load is not 6 courses, even at schools like MIT—or in majors like engineering.
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132879 | What are the typical research requirements for an application to lecturer position to be successful?
When someone is applying for a position as a lecture at an average ranking university in Sweden (equivalent to associate professor elsewhere), what is the typical number of research papers and of what quality he is expected to have in order to have a realistic chance of getting the position?
"Lecturer" in the United States is very different from "Lecturer" in the U.K. Can you let us know, preferably by editing or tagging the question, in what country you are applying?
I meant a lecturer position from a European university.
The research track record is only one parameters among many, and it's not the most important one. Even if it was, there are so many differences between different fields, institutions.
Do you think its possible for someone with only a Phd and only one paper at an A* conference (but several papers at A* conference workshops) and teaching/mentoring experience to get a lecturer position in Sweden(its also called associate prof btw)?
In theory everything is possible, it depends how competitive the specific position is. If you can find out information about past similar positions in similar institutions that could give you an indication (also the profile of the accepted candidate). In general I'd say it's likely that these positions are very competitive, with hundreds of applicants, some probably having more experience than you. But it would also depend a lot on your research project and how well it fits with the particular research group.
The skills to teach are more important than a list of papers...
Having had to suffer "good" researchers who proved to be poor at explaining things, then the focus should be on the lecturing ...
The positions seem to list research as the most important requirement. What is the typical number of applicants that you have seen at these positions?
Pick a number greater or equal to zero... Really that is not answerable... some positions may get hundreds of applicants, others one or two... just depends on so many factors : location, subject, salary...
Think about the factors I mentioned and the others... Such as who you may be working with...
Since OP clarified this is in Europe, and based on the comments, this does not seem to be a primarily teaching position.
@BryanKrause Tge OP stated that it was a “lecturing position” unless you know different and it is a research post?
For example in the UK a "lecturer" is what would be called an assistant professor in the US. OP stated in a comment that research was listed as the most important requirement which is consistent with that type of position rather than the "primarily teaching" implication of the title in the US.
I agree "lecturing" vs "lecturer" makes it a bit unclear but I think the former was just a mistake, the title and context suggest lecturer.
I am specifically interested for a lecturer(associate prof) in Sweden.
Edited question to include "Sweden" and "associate prof". Please double-check that I haven't hanged your meaning, and edit the question to clarify if I have.
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18702 | Is it a bad idea to do research with multiple different professors at the same time?
I want to go to graduate school to study computational molecular biology and biochemistry.
During my first three semesters as an undergraduate I finished my distribution requirements and started doing research with one professor. During my fourth semester I started doing research with two more professors (working in computational biophysics and computational linear algebra). My work with two of these three professors has already led to work that will be published soon. I am considering starting research with yet another professor (in statistical genomics).
Is it wise to begin research with yet another professor? I fear that having engaged with too many professors makes my resume read like that of a dilettante rather than a promising computational biologist.
The sooner you learn to express yourself without going to wall-of-text, the better.
I can be concise when necessary, but I typed a ton because I had to go somewhere and didn't have the time to decide which details were irrelevant.
The level of detail is not as much of a problem as the fact that you didn't use paragraphs.
I see your situation as a perfect recipe for burn out. Please, be careful and take care of yourself.
didn't have the time — Huh? StackExchange doesn't impose deadlines. Graduate schools will definitely look down on poor writing.
There comes a point where a person will be spread too thin – that's inevitable. Only you can really say how much you can take on before your workload starts to interfere with your academic goals and achievements.
If you're already doing the work of two students, I'd be cautious about expanding that to three.
I'm spending around 9 hours a day on research right now with ~3 hours in class, 1 hour eating, and 4 hours free time, on week days, and even more free time on weekends
You make it sound like those four hours of free time are being wasted, when they might not be. Perhaps your brain is appreciating that rest more than you know. And I don't see any time allotted for physical fitness; besides being good for your health, fitness can be good for your mind.
If you decide you want to try a third project, you should be honest with yourself, and up front with the sponsoring faculty member from the outset. "I'm already working on two other projects, so, to be honest, this might turn out to be too much for me. But I'd still like to give it a try." Such a disclosure might make it a little harder for you to find someone willing to take you on, but it might help save your reputation if you find yourself in a position where you've bitten off more than you can chew.
I'm not really doing the work of two students, although last semester I definitely was because of my course load. (I also had a job last year which I quit). Thing is, a lot of other students are involved in research along with some kind of clubs, or something.
I guess physical fitness is something I do not pay attention to, but I never have. I could pick it up now or in graduate school I suppose. But other than that my free time is wasted, for reasons I won't go into I'm not having a great time at school outside of academic stuff and I don't have many friends to do things with so I'm bored.
It sounds like a good idea to notify the third guy I have two more projects, I'll do that. After reflecting, four seems ridiculous even to me.
First of all: congratulations and good luck. It seems you are quite enthusiastic about research. That said: be careful not to take too much on your plate, especially initially. Your time schedule seems very stringent which may lead to a burn-out.
I have the feeling that you are too erratic in your current research: there is no overall story to connect the different pieces you are (or plan to be) working on with different professors (computational biophysics, linear algebra, statistical genomics, mathematics, ...). It's true that there is likely some overlap but to do effective research you need to have a single point of focus, which you can tackle from different angles. What is your main focus?
I would say less is more. Having so many different professors in such diverse fields will inevitably hinder you from digging deep in each one. An important part in research is choosing your battles: deciding what to focus on and planning your work/collaborations in a meaningful way. It seems to me that you just want to do everything, which (while commendable!) rarely works out in the long run. You can't do everything, even if you want to.
I haven't figured out what my ultimate research area will be. I know it will be something in computational biology (and definitely not, for instance, computational EVOLUTIONARY biology) but I don't know what yet. The algebra guy I work with actually does research with connections to computational biology which is why I picked him. The other two are of course computational biology projects. The last guy is a numerical analysis professor but he is also interested in applications and a friend said he was great to do research with. Although if I pick three I will likely pick the other three.
I don't think I will burn out, I also took a very heavy course load in high school juggled that with a part time job and playing in a youth orchestra. I guess I am just wired to enjoy working all the time.
But I appreciate your comment and I will probably pick three and not four. If I double the 9 hours I currently spend on research it would be 18 on average which is clearly not realistic even for me who likes working.
Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Your schedule reminds me of my marathon days of thesis writing and of my 24-hour calls on surgery. In both cases I accomplished a lot in the moment, but retained little. College is your first formal exposure to academia. Racing through it could shortchange your longterm foundation. Just as with muscles, you need to alternate periods of stress and relaxation otherwise the adaptation to that stress never occurs.
Publishing one paper doesn't indicate mastery of a field.
Few outstanding scientific issues are definitively solved in one paper. A string of publications on the same topic is more common and, for a CV, more impressive. Someone who can attack the same problem from different angles with different approaches is a promising candidate.
Form an informal committee; don't add to your collection
Instead of being a human ping-pong between PIs, why not ask a few of the professors to guide you in writing papers at the intersection of their interests. Those sound like interesting discussions even if no paper comes from them.
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101368 | How much editing can one ethically accept from one's advisor on a fellowship proposal (e.g. NSF/NDSEG/etc.)
I'm applying for graduate fellowships right now (I am a first-year graduate student in a STEM field), and am preparing to submit the application. My advisor has been helping me out with it for a while, and at one point, he took my draft of my research proposal and made some somewhat significant edits to it. He added several paragraphs, deleted some of my wording, added some sources, and so on. Altogether, at least half of the text in the proposal—a lot of it is figures—has been written or edited by him, while half the text is still mine (and I made the figures and the general outline of the proposal).
For obvious reasons, I'm uncomfortable asking him whether or not his contributions are too substantial (I don't want to say "I think you did too much of it, so I'm going to change it back" or to do so behind his back), but at the same time, I'm cautious about whether or not it's unethical to receive that kind of help on the proposal for my fellowship application, because I'm not sure how these things typically work.
So, is this something that typically happens with these kinds of applications, and is it unethical/immoral on my part to use such a proposal (i.e. something that gives me any kind of unfair advantage)? Or, am I thinking of this too much like a competition that requires solely my efforts for my submission?
Edit I just want to stress that when I say about half the text was written by my advisor, I mean that I initially wrote the paragraphs in question, but they were substantially edited to get the idea across in a better way.
On that note, would it be appropriate for me to further edit his edits? At that point, though, I feel as though I'd be editing it just to avoid acting unethically, not to improve the proposal. Basically, what action would I take in order to ensure I'm not acting unethically here?
You apply for money and your adviser will profit from getting you granted the money, too. He will get some research he is interested. Why shouldn't every adviser support his student in that way?
You should also learn how to write proposals. Not just by writing it, but also to give it the finishing touches and fixing the issues you could not yet identify yourself. That's why its good to get the feedback and support you received from your adviser.
I don't see it unethical at all. It would be problematic if you could not perform the research you describe in your proposal or know it will not work or know someone already did it.
I think you hit the nail n the head with your second paragraph - that is, usually, why parts get re-written...
If this is for an individual fellowship like an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, your advisor's reworking of your proposal sounds over the line. If he had discussed the specifics of the proposal with you at length, you wrote the proposal on your own, and then he made a few followup edits, that would be kosher. But if he actually wrote half the proposal himself, then it seems to me that it would be at the very least misrepresentation to submit it as your own proposal.
Even if this is common in your field, it's not good practice on the part of your advisor. Part of the point of applying for graduate fellowships is to train students to write proposals on their own. Try asking him if you can use his "suggestions" to rewrite the proposal in your own words.
Response to OP edit: Since you say the ideas were yours, that's better that what you initially wrote. But I still believe that your advisor should not be putting pen to paper on your proposal for substantial edits. Your writing is part of your proposal, so it should be yours. This isn't the same thing as applying for a grant--it's more like applying to a program. Your advisor should have discussed his suggestions with you and then you could either take them or not.
Edit: Although I seem to have gotten an equal number of upvotes and downvotes, the downvoters are simply wrong. A GRF (along with the other federal fellowships) is not the same thing as a grant.
In a presentation by the program director, Dr. Gisele Muller-Parker, she said "the GRFP program funds people, not projects."
(source)
Submitting an application which has been extensively rewriten by someone else is misrepresentation.
"Part of the point of applying for graduate fellowships is to train students to write proposals on their own": But the main part is to do research, isn't it?
Training requires feedback, corrections from the adviser is direct feedback in a tight loop. You won't get detailed feedback from funding agencies beside a decision money granted or not.
@usr1234567 That's not actually true about funding agencies, and what the advisor did wasn't feedback, it was substantially rewriting half the proposal.
@MassimoOrtolano The main point is to compete honestly for the fellowship.
The US fellowships the OP mentioned are not "funding" in the sense that the application represents the student and not just the research project. Submitting documents which are substantially someone else's work is unethical, which was the OP's question. I have no doubt that it goes on a lot anyway, but it's still unethical.
Your main goals with the research proposal are i) to convey the message (in this case the aims of your research, contributions and likely future impact) in as clear a manner as possible and ii) to get funded. I see absolutely no issue with your advisor or any other person that you would like to provide feedback to your application, suggesting revisions and changes to your drafts. For me that includes both editing the written text as well as recommendations for the proposed work, expanding scope etc.
Having said that, the application is yours and you are the one who has the final word into what goes and what not. So treat the contributions from your advisor positively but critically and accept the ones that you find improve your funding proposal.
If Person A has an idea and Person B does half of the writeup, that's not feedback, that's co-authorship.
@AytAyt Ghostwriters by definition don't come up with anything novel, but they are often credited as co-writers.
@AytAyt Which means that they should be credited but they sign that right away.
@AytAyt The point here is who did the work. In this context, the writing itself is part of the work.
@ElizabethHenning I completely disagree with you! It is a funding application, if my mother can give me useful feedback, I will also send it to her for review and comments.
If your mother rewrote half of a term paper which you submitted as your own work, your professor would correctly accuse you of academic dishonesty. Some people here seem to believe that substantially rewriting half of something is "editing," but I disagree and so would most professors.
@ElizabethHenning So you are implying that universities do not employ "grant writers" to prepare grant applications for the professors? Or that this is a dishonest practice? How is that any different?
The key point is that the particular fellowships the OP is applying for are not like grants. I explained this above.
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103993 | Affiliation for manuscript publication
If I am among the co-authors of a manuscript which I worked on while I was in a Laboratory during my Erasmus Experience, should I be affiliated only with the Laboratory or also the University I regularly attend?
The easiest way to handle this is to use the "present address" option that most journals offer authors. You would list the laboratory where you did the work as your affiliation in the header, and list the university you regularly attend as your "present address" to show you're not there anymore.
On the other hand, if you continued to work on the paper at your university (for instance, if the research was carried out at the Erasmus lab, but written up after you returned home), then you'd list both as current affiliations.
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107764 | Importance of supervisor support in being accepted for PhD
this may seem like a silly question, as I know every institute is different. However, I was wondering how likely is acceptance to a PhD program when you have a supervisor on your side?
Background: I am applying for an incredible PhD in Ireland. I have very interested supervisors, who loved my proposal and I had two very promising meetings with them, one via Skype and one face to face. They offered me a desk and a new lab to set up, but they informed me it's now down to the academic council. They informed me it’s a formality and there is a high chance of acceptance unless something dramatic happens.
I will add I do have a weak undergraduate degree, but a strong masters which resulted in a publication. I also have worked as a lab technician in Italy and London so have a good bit of experience outside academia.
I may be overthinking a bit as I am waiting for feedback from the college, and starting to feel the nerves.
Welcome! I edited out your thanks at the end of the question--they're supposed to be as direct as possible, and thank you statements are taken by all as implied. :) Your situation sounds promising to me, but others with European experience may have more apt remarks.
Unless you fail to meet the minimum requirements for admission, having an advisor who is willing to support your application and commit the resources to support you as a graduate student is generally sufficient to get admission in Europe (and at many schools in the US). Most of the time, even under “normal” circumstances, the people responsible for admissions will want such a statement of support from someone in the program before an offer is given.
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107770 | Can an applicant's funding offer for PhD programs in the US be taken back and given to someone who's already declined it?
This question pertains to math graduate programs in the US. Suppose a school sent a financial offer (TAship) to a student A and put a student B on the waitlist in the event that A declines the offer. Student A then declined the offer by signing the letter, so the school sent the offer to B.
My question: is it possible that the school will rescind the offer from B if A changed his/her mind later on and decided the take the offer given that
i) B has not yet accepted the offer.
ii) B has already accepted the offer.
iii) The date that A signed the letter to decline was before April 15th.
Note that your question is not really math-specific, but applies to essentially all programs at schools that have adopted the so-called April 15th resolution of the Council of Graduate Schools.
Once a student has turned down an offer of financial assistance and the offer has been given to someone else, it would be exceedingly poor form for a department to "claw back" the offer to give it to someone who has already declined the offer. If the student really wanted to attend—and the department still wanted the student—it could perhaps use a declined offer to get the student, but it couldn't take one that was "in the field" or already accepted to do so.
In general, the student has one chance to accept or decline. Student A could have waited until April 15 to decline the offer but decided to do so early. That decision is essentially irrevocable. It is also impossible for the school to rescind the offer to B once B has accepted, unless there exists cause to do so. (Examples where cause to withdraw a financial offer exists might include if student B fails to graduate or is shown to have made a fradulent application.)
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66723 | What is 'Diamond' Open Access?
I have heard of 'green' (self-archiving in a repository) and 'gold' open access (immediate open access in a journal), but what is 'diamond' open access? How does this differ from green or gold open access?
Diamond open access is like gold, in that the article is immediately open access in the journal, and nobody has to pay to read it. However, in gold open access, the author (or their institution or funding agency) normally has to pay a publication fee to get the article published. In diamond open access, they don't have to pay, so the process is completely free of charges to both authors and readers.
See http://www.jasonmkelly.com/2013/01/27/green-gold-and-diamond-a-short-primer-on-open-access/
You have warmed this librarian's heart with this correct answer. :)
A bit off topic: How, then, does the journal pay its expenses?
Some through in-kind support and donated labor. Some (see e.g. the Open Library for the Humanities) through pass-the-hat support from libraries and relevant university departments. Some grants. Some advertising. Some a mix of the above strategies. There's lots of ways.
You could also phrase it this way: Diamond is like green, but with peer review.
Diamond is gold, but the author (or their institute etc) pays 0.
See also this article by Bob Rosebrugh on "Experience with a
Free Electronic
Journal::Theory and
Applications of Categories", a diamond open access journal: Notices of the AMS, January, 2013. : http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/noti930 ."The word “free” in the title intentionally has two
meanings: free of cost and in a state of liberty. The
thesis of this note is that mathematics journals
should be free and that this can be achieved much
more easily than might be supposed. "
Diamond open accesses are definitely the correct way to do journals. You could argue that there is some cost for editing the journal, but this is essentially peanuts in comparison with the price that what the journal actually costs if you take into account the work of the editors / referees / authors (and which are not paid usually). So if the community already pays 95% (or more) of the journal via this, why not paying the remaining part and hosting simply the journals?
I'll add a Venn diagram defining the different types of access:
Source: Jamie-farquharson - https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21598179 CC BY 4.0. Wikimedia Commons.
A diamond open access journal can be paid for through the Society's membership fees, which include access to the Journal. If journal access is free anyway, you may ask why would people pay membership fees? Because they believe in the mission of the Society, want to support the open access journal, get a discount on annual meetings, and generally support that society and journal.
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1184 | Why does professor prohibit me talking to people?
I'm considering a PhD and asked a professor at my university. I suggested a topic to him that he accepted. I applied and he offered me a position but I didn't accept yet.
Later he changed my project's topic to one that suits his interest. I said I would like to do the original topic that I got accepted with. Then I asked more about the project and it turns out he works in collaboration with another university. They divided the work up between themselves, but what the other university researchers is a lot closer to my personal interest than what he works on.
I asked my professor their contact details, so that I could ask them if I could work with the other university. He explicitly prohibited me from talking to them. He told me I would give bad reputation to him if I contacted them.
I am extremely confused as to why he prevents me talking to people. Even a simply inquiry email is not allowed. So I contacted the other university anyway. They told me that they would be happy to see me but they don't want to poach students from their colleagues.
I keep asking my professor if I could do my original topic with the other university that works on that exact topic that I'd like to do. But he keeps telling me that I either do his topic or I should do my PhD somewhere else.
I am utterly confused now and have no idea what is going on. Can someone please explain?
I'm not clear on your question. What's going on seems simple: your potential advisor feels some ownership of the ideas he suggested, or of you as a student he has found. When he suggested the topic, he was offering you the opportunity to work with him, and he did not intend to offer the topic to you to work on with someone else, even a collaborator of his. Whether this is reasonable depends on what is common in your field. In math in the US, this would be unusual. In other contexts, it may not be so strange.
@Anonymous Mathematician I approached the professor and I suggested the topic. He agreed then later changed it to his own preference. It's in the field of computer science. Why is it wrong for me to work with the other group just because he told me about them?
Hmm, if you suggested the precise topic, then it's pretty weird. (My interpretation of "He told me about a project he works on and that he could potentially supervise me" was that the project was his idea.) Overall, this sounds like an unpleasant situation, so you would probably be better off finding another advisor.
@AnonymousMathematician yes I suggested the topic, and he changed it after accepting it initially. He works on something else, but the other group works on my topic. He told me about the other group, but he says I cannot contact them. Why can't I contact them? He says because that would ruin their collaboration. Why?
It's hard to say, and probably only your professor could give a definitive answer. There may be no good reason. It sounds like you have tried to discuss it with him, without getting a satisfactory answer, and have approached the other group, but they are not willing to do anything without his permission. At this point, it's not clear to me that there's anything you can do except to move on to other options. (Even if this other group agreed to work with you, the same issue might cause trouble again in the future.)
@AnonymousMathematician it's something to do with poaching students. I looked it up and it means "appropriating students by illegal means". It sounds like students are properties and I am somehow owned by my professor at this stage because I talked to him? What is this about?
The idea behind poaching is that it's rude to try to compete with your colleagues or collaborators for a student. This is an important social rule, because it's much harder to work with people if you are afraid they will try to take advantage of this relationship to attract students away from you. You are right that it doesn't really apply here, because you are not yet his student. But your professor seems to be offended by the idea anyway (perhaps he is easily offended), and his collaborators do not want to make him unhappy. This may be unfair, but you probably can't do anything about it.
@AnonymousMathematician Thanks for the explanation. I don't want them to compete for me. I just want to work on the topic of my choice. The other group works on that topic, he doesn't. Why is poaching relevant here? Can he be insecure about not having me? Anyway, something doesn't look right to me here, or I'm missing something really big...
He might be insecure, or really need students, or feel very competitive and hate losing, or have a complicated relationship with these collaborators, or feel an unfair sense of ownership (that you are his discovery), or any number of other possibilities. Ultimately, I doubt you will ever get a satisfactory answer. You might learn more from talking with your professor, but there might not be any good reason. I wouldn't worry too much about this. You've learned a valuable lesson, that this professor is difficult to deal with and perhaps unfair, so now I'd focus on finding another advisor.
@AnonymousMathematician Thank you, I have had many meetings with this professor and also lots of emails. I guess that's how far I can get. I will look for another supervisor. I don't know how to accept your comments, so if you can somehow move this to an answer, I will upvote and accept it :)
My experience is that this kind of things are extremely frequent in academia. The only thing I can tell you is welcome, have a seat, and enjoy the show if you like pain. But in this case, I'd say get the hell out of there.
There are several possibilities for this behaviour.
You're good, he knows that, and the collaboration with the other research group is more formal than you may know (maybe they are in the same funded project because it was the only way to be funded, while the two groups may be in competition). In this case, he doesn't want you to go “behind enemy lines”.
You're not the one he was looking for, he recently discovered that. He is very close with the other group and he don't know how to tell you that you are not a good fit for his group and relatives. So instead, he changed what he said in order to make it unacceptable for you, hoping that you will leave, and that you will also not go to the other group.
He's not reliable, he had a weird idea of what is a student.
By the way, except if you are a recognized genius, this is unlikely that the other team will accept you if they are close to your current advisor and want to stay that way.
In all three cases, only one option: run far away.
This is a red flag. Find someone else to work with.
Easy to say, hard to do. If you start eliminating possible advisors every time something looks weird, you'll end up with no PhD. The flag should be almost black (or very strong red) to stop working with somebody you're already in a relationship with.
I agree with @nibot. Forbidding your student to talk to another researcher about their own ideas because it will make you look bad is not "something looks weird".
Your situation isn't quite clear. Are you deciding whether or not to accept a position, or have you already accepted and are trying to switch projects?
In the former case, if you're getting that kind of pushback from your advisor, then he probably is not going to be the kind of advisor you'll really want to work for in the long run. In which case, you should look for someone else to advise you (in other words, pick "somewhere else.")
On the other hand, if you're already employed by the advisor, your choices are more limited. It sounds lie you're writing from somewhere in the European system (otherwise, you'd be talking about applying to a different department, rather than another research group). The problem is exactly what the other group told you—they can't be seen as poaching a colleague's student. That's a major social faux pas, and would probably make their collaboration impossible to continue in the long run. Therefore, again, you probably won't get to work on the project you want, because you won't be able to move over to the other group.
What I'm asking is why he is prohibiting me talking to people. He offered me a position, but I haven't accepted yet. I have the feeling he is sabotaging me, and thinks that because he offered me a position, he owns me. Actually he didn't even offer me a position formally, only verbally. I don't understanding poaching, as I am noone's item and I am not owned be anyone else. Is this how this goes in the academic world?
There is no logical (or even legal) reason for him to prevent you from contacting people. If that's the way in which he chooses to operate, this is a "red flag." I would never work for an advisor who wants you to work in his group without consulting anyone. It's a sign of an advisor on a power trip—or worse, someone who's terrified of being "scooped," and therefore cuts his students off from the rest of the research world as a result. If I were you, I would avoid accepting this position if it were at all possible.
I don't really see why you are concerned at all! When you apply for PhD admissions, you have can always suggest who you want to work with, based on their and your research interests (you have to like them and they have to like you). I guess my question is how did you get paired up with him in first place and why?
You make it sound like you are stuck with him, but you aren't. Now if he hired you to be on his project (remember this is his project/funding), you are to work for him and do it the way that makes him look good, (he has expectations to meet too and he wants to do a good job and look good to his superiors/sponsors). If you aren't interested in his project (and it clearly looks like you are not), don't west your time or his staying on his team. Approach your program and request to be teamed up with a different adviser and provide your reasons.
I hope you understand that, in most cases in research based universities, you don't get a PhD admission offer unless at least one of the professors in the department you apply to is interested in your research topic. Now it would be unfair of you for a professor to hire you (recommend you for admission) so you can be in his team and then expect him to let you work for someone else. While he doesn't own you, he also feels that you would be an asset to his team upon your admission into the program, otherwise he could've recommended a different candidate whose interest matches his research/project.
The bottom line is however, you should get out there. Approach your department Dean's office and request to be teamed up with a different adviser and explain your reasons. Keep in mind however that in most cases at PhD level, a professor will only agree to work with you/serve as your advisor if he feels that he is familiar with your research interest and that you will be of a great asset to his team. hope that helps. Remember that your tuition weaver and other monetary benefits (monthly stipend, medical insurance, etc) you receive while you are pursuing your PhD studies is covered by the money that is allocated to his project. So it is important that have interest in the work/project he has for you and you are confident you would succeed doing it.
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32704 | Is it possible to acquire a letter of recommendation without meeting face to face?
Of course it is not a good idea, preferably one would meet up with the professor to make the agreement.
In my case, I've talked to the prof for a year, and then went off work for a year, now I need a recommendation letter. In September I emailed him my situation WITH the invitation for a meet up at his office. He told me he is willing to provide a reference, but did not address the meeting up issue.
Now it is close to application deadline and I've yet to received the letter from him despite a few follow ups. I'm worried it is the reason is that I did not meet up with him so he might have forgotten who I was (which is understandable). I will attempt to email him once more with a more urgent tone, perhaps he will respond this time, but should I also invite him again to a meet up or is it too late?
Any profs care to share their ideas?
does 'talked to the prof for a year' mean you have never met at all?
It is even possible to do research and write a paper together without meeting face to face!
I write letters all the time for students I've taught, but whom I haven't seen for a long period. I do ask for specific information:
Tell me what the deadline is!
Include your student number.
Remind me which of my classes you have taken, and when.
How did you distinguish yourself in those classes?
How would you describe yourself? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? I am going to have to answer those questions when I write your reference, so the more details the better. I have to have personal knowledge of anything I write, so remind me of those things I may have forgotten.
What are some of your academic and nonacademic accomplishments that I may not know about?
Tell why you're particularly qualified for the job, educational program, or award you're applying for.
What makes me particularly qualified to write a letter for you? That is, why should the recipient of the letter value it over a letter from someone else?
Include a copy of your application essay.
Put that stuff together, write the professor a note saying, "As the deadline of [whenever it is] is approaching, I thought the following material might help you. Thank you again for agreeing to write a recommendation."
The professor who has that material to hand can complete a letter in a much shorter time than if it all had to be looked up and remembered. People (that would be me) tend to do the easy things before the hard things. Make this one an easy thing!
The complete text of what I ask of students is here: http://ksuweb.kennesaw.edu/faculty/rbrow211/recommendations/index.html
Is it possible to acquire a LOR without having a face to face meet up/agreement?
Yes, of course. It happens all the time. People are not always geographically co-located with their letter writers.
If you are worried your professor might not remember who you are without a face-to-face meeting, then the major concern is whether he will be able to write a strong letter for someone he barely remembers without a visual reminder - not whether you have met to discuss the letter in person.
If you are within driving distance, I would suggest trying to meet the professor at their office hours and show up with a resume and a letter explaining your purpose for whatever you are planning on pursuing. By doing this, you can get in front of them and show urgency in the letter. This is a very common tale, and you are certainly not alone. Be appreciative of the LOR, but also be firm in the need for it. Offering coffee is always an option too.
Hope this helps.
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31468 | What would be considered a "competitive" application for mathematics postdocs in the US?
What are the factors that make an application competitive for postdoc positions in pure mathematics at top tier universities (e.g. MIT, Harvard, Princeton, UC Berkeley, Stanford) in the US?
Clearly, one needs
Good recommendation letters
Interesting research articles
Some teaching/service experience.
In what proportion are the above needed? E.g. how many good articles, how many courses taught, etc. make an application competitive?
Is there any other important factor I haven't mentioned above?
Some additional factors that could play a role: (1) Lab/institute where you did your PhD; (2) Previous personal communication with the potential advisor; (3) Relevance of your work and skill set to the research interests of the potential advisor. In some fields, the advisor often has some project in mind and will be looking for the best person to pursue it.
Teaching experience is going to be irrelevant to a research postdoc. Some research postdocs give the candidate an opportunity to teach, but this is more about giving the postdoc a chance to gain teaching experience than it is about getting a good teacher.
@BrianBorchers: The asker is most interested in research postdocs in mathematics in the US. I think pretty much all such postdocs require teaching. I agree that the candidate's teaching experience will not be of primary importance, but I don't think it is completely irrelevant.
There's no simple answer. In particular, there are no quantitative standards for how many papers you need. For postdoctoral research positions in mathematics at top departments in the U.S., it works roughly like this. (For those from other fields, note that these positions are filled by departmental search committees, not individual professors, and they often involve some light teaching but are focused on research. The postdocs are independent researchers, not under the direction of any professor.)
Teaching experience and the teaching statement don't matter much for these jobs. The department will want to know that you aren't a truly terrible teacher, so you won't raise tons of complaints or create a serious problem if you teach a class, but they won't really care whether you are an excellent teacher or just minimally adequate. (At best that would serve as a tie breaker between otherwise equally impressive candidates.) Just write something sensible and uncontroversial for your teaching statement and don't worry about it much.
Quality matters much more than quantity for research papers, and trying to write more papers at the cost of writing worse papers is generally a bad trade-off. In practice, the typical number of papers varies a little by subfield. In some cases (such as theoretical CS), it would be very unusual to have only one paper, and it had better be amazing if you want to get a job that way; in some other subfields, having half a dozen papers might make people suspicious regarding their quality. To gauge how your application compares, you can try looking at the CVs of people in your area who have recently started the sort of job you'd like, but keep in mind that counting papers won't reveal their quality.
Strong recommendation letters are absolutely crucial, and getting good letters is worth a lot of time and thought as well as preparation in advance, for example by talking with potential letter writers so they are familiar with you and your work long before you apply for jobs. Choose your recommenders carefully, and don't limit yourself only to people at your university.
Are there are any specific considerations for applicants applying from abroad, e.g. UK? What if the applicant doesn't have a position for 2014-2015? Is recent teaching experience necessary?
Many adverts state that "recently" awarded PhDs are preferred. What counts as "recent" here? (These clarifications seem broadly relevant to the OPs question and don't justify their own separate question but apologies if this is not the appropriate place to ask).
@P.Windridge: one year ago is almost certainly recent; ten years ago almost certainly is not. Someone who is finishing a postdoc that they took right after graduating is probably OK. Apart from that, someone who isn't a new graduate has to play it by ear. For an anecdotal example, I was hired in a competitive (top ten) postdoc which I applied to the fall after I graduated and started 15 months after graduating, so it is certainly not necessary to be a new graduate.
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26434 | Can we get a PhD in mathematics without publishing?
Do many universities allow students to get a PhD in mathematics without publishing a paper?
It is typical in the U.S. that mathematics Ph.D. students do not publish anything at all prior to earning a Ph.D., I think even at the elite places. Publication per se is not such a high priority, nor over-literal gauge of accomplishment, as it seems to be in some CompSci and Engineering disciplines (at least in the minds of some people).
That is, to be clear, especially for people who've thought, or been indoctrinated to think, that the measure of the value of something is the prestige of the conference or journal or ... in which it was published, the idea in mathematics still does seem to be that the thesis advisor and thesis committee decide whether the candidate has done sufficient work to earn the degree.
Seems a sane system to me, especially given the acceleration of freneticism elsewhere.
In such cases, if the student is pursuing an academic career, they will try to publish papers based on their thesis research as soon as possible after graduating.
@paul garrett: About your subjective option on the sanity of that system: The issue with that system is that it does not protect against bad committees with low quality standards awarding a PhD to pretty much anybody. Requiring prior publications does help here.
@RobertBuchholz, no, but surely we can gauge the quality of a degree by the quality of the department, in the first place? The reputation of the department? In any case, for the vast majority of math PhD's, waiting for the current two-year-plus turn-around on a first paper or more would make a PhD last 7-8 years instead of 5-6. Also, in my experience, a less astringent writing style is tolerated in math theses than in usual journal publications, which I do also think is a good thing.
... and, in any case, advisors rest their reputation on the theses they sponsor. People don't like to squander that... I've heard this argument of "bad committees giving out cheap theses" before, but I'm not a fan of fundamental mechanisms being determined primarily by wishing to thwart cheaters, etc. Are there convenient examples of cheap theses and bad committees and corrupt advisors? :)
@Gradstudent, sure, exceptional students sometimes do have publications before completing a PhD, nowadays. But it's not required, in the first place. Second, the most common REU-type publications are not going to help anyone get a post-doc at an elite place.
@Gradstudent, ah, thanks!
Yes, it is very common for students to earn a PhD in mathematics without publishing any papers before graduating. Here are a few pieces of context:
I have read a couple research articles that analyzed the Mathematical Review database, which is a very thorough listing of mathematics publications. One such article is "Patterns of Collaboration in Mathematical Research". It states that 42.7% of authors in the database have only one article (likely taken from their thesis) and another 14.6% have only two. I recommend that paper highly for more information on mathematics publishing.
Publication rates in mathematics vary significantly by subfield, because the threshold for the amount of progress needed for a new paper also varies by field. In some subfields, it is common for researchers to publish many (smaller) papers. In others, it can take years to write a single paper. Publication rates also vary by author: some prestigious faculty rarely publish, others are prodigious writers.
My general sense is that publication rates are increasing: mathematicians in general publish more than they used to.
I see much more emphasis on graduate student publication than I did in the past. While the majority of students publish nothing before their PhD, I think the number who do publish is going up. Similarly, there is more emphasis on undergraduate research, and this translates into more publications by undergraduates. In the 1970s, say, publications by undergraduates were much more rare.
The increase in publication is especially true at mid-level schools, e.g. non-elite state schools and some larger non-elite private colleges, which want to raise their research profile and so expect more research than in the past. Historically, say 30 years ago, one might have been able to get tenure with only one or two papers, and teaching was the most important criterion. Now, research is the primary criterion and many of these "aspiring" schools. On the other hand, I had a job interview once with a school that explicitly emphasized they did not expect research - this trend toward more publication is not universal.
There is also a distinction between top students (e.g. those who are competitive for prestigious postdocs and for job offers from R-1 schools) versus typical students (who may be perfectly qualified for academic jobs, but are not competitive for R-1 positions). In my experience, top students often have research collaborations outside their thesis topic before graduation, and often have other publications before graduation. But these students make up a small percentage of PhD recipients overall. Even at prestigious schools, not all PhD students are on track to be competitive for R-1 positions. And publication rates again vary by research subfield.
Mathematics in particular is sometimes used for a "vocational" PhD, because it has always been possible for some to find work in industry (e.g. software or R&D) and government (e.g. the U.S. National Security Agency) with a PhD in mathematics. My colleagues and I often talk about bright researchers who we "lost" to non-academic jobs. For students who do not plan to continue in academia, I think there is a smaller incentive to publish extra papers beyond the PhD before graduating.
Quick comment: I don't think "R-1", whatever it means, is widely understood outside the US. Great answer!
Indeed, would you mind briefly explaining the meaning of "R-1"?
Link is dead but archived here
I think the answer will depend on the country, so let me answer for France.
From what I see, I would say that one is generally allowed to defend one's PhD without having published a paper, but only if the thesis contains the material for at least one international publication. This is judged by the two or three PhD referees and then confirmed by the PhD committee.
Yes, also true for UK. The judgment of referees and committee is obviously vulnerable to political pressure from the leadership of the institution where the student did their work. It is a massive problem.
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49419 | Grounds for complaint? Professor skipping class, inaccurate grading criteria
I am taking a graduate-level summer course and have observed several problems. I would like outside opinion on whether these observations are valid grounds for an official complaint, or whether I am the one being unreasonable.
First, the professor canceled one lecture entirely and cut short another 8 lectures. (There are 18 scheduled lectures of 1 hour, 50 minutes.) In most cases, the early endings were by more than 50%. All told, there were supposed to be 33 hours of lecture, but we received only 24 hours. This is an approximate 27% shortage. All of the lectures are recorded as part of my university's distance education program so there is a trail of indisputable video evidence here.
The professor is also the director of an academic program at the university. His most frequent reason given for the class times being cut short was that his other duties as director created schedule conflicts. Little if any advance notice was given about the canceled or reduced lectures.
In every class I had ever taken, from elementary school through graduate school, if the teacher/professor/lecturer could not attend for any reason, some alternate arrangement like the following was done:
Substitute lecturer
Recovering the lost time through alternatively scheduled class meeting. This "make up" session was recorded and made online to the entire class, so students having conflicts could still watch it.
With student approval, extending the duration of the remaining lectures
However, in these cases, the professor did not do any of those.
I might be willing to understand a 5-10% reduction in received lecture time as part of random noise or "stuff happens", but 27% seems ridiculous to me.
My university's faculty handbook states:
For brief absences, faculty members shall make appropriate
arrangements subject to the review of the chair or dean as requested
and according to University and school policies, so that absences
interfere only minimally with their normal teaching and other
responsibilities.
No arrangements were made in these cases, and 27% seems to me far beyond a "minimal" interference.
I consider this first issue to be the most egregious. It seems like a flagrant dereliction of the professor's job duties. This course for several thousand dollars in tuition. Is it fair to say I have not gotten my money's worth? Would a university ever issue a partial refund in such a case?
Second, the homework assignments were not graded according to the written instructions. For each of the assignment for the course, the professor posted an "instructions" document that said what we were supposed to do.
The first assignment's instructions had language along the lines of "You must implement these visual features...". The second through fourth assignment documents had no language whatsoever about look or feel. The fourth assignment grade is still pending. But I was penalized on the second and third assignments for look/beauty/aesthetic reasons.
Only after I questioned the TAs did they give me a grading rubric that showed how exactly we were to be graded. In most cases, there was a correspondence between the instruction documents and the rubric documents. However, the rubrics had additional criteria relating to aesthetics and beauty that are indisputably absent from the instruction documents. This "beauty" aspect varied between 10-12.5% of the grade. These are the exact words in the grading guidelines: "Grader subjective score of look and feel." Again, this was not documented up front. Only after my assignments were graded did the TAs send this document, and only because I specifically asked for it.
I emailed the professor about this, and his response was: "I thought I made it clear on the first day of class that you were to [make visually pleasing products]". However, assignments 2-4, in direct contrast with the first assignment, had no documented requirement for this. It seems completely nonsensical for an instruction document to be only "partially" complete. We ought to be graded by only what the documentation says, and exactly what it says. Or am I being overly "grubby" by insisting that we only be graded by exactly what the instructions said to do?
Should documentation not trump everything? Is this a valid grounds for making an official dispute/appeal of the grade to the department chair?
The number of hours taught is objective and I think you have a legitimate reason to file a complaint. I am not sure about the look feel issue. Is the class about design of something?
@scaaahu web programming
Another question is what do you want to come out of this? I think you have a legitimate complaint, but whenever you complain about someone or something, its worth thinking about what is likely the likely outcome. I'm not sure what will happen, considering it seems like this professor is senior.
I agree with @Neo. I feel bad about having to give this advice because it shouldn't be an issue. But, before taking any action, you should weight what you'll gain from this vs the possible repercussions. Unfortunately, not everyone can take professional criticism. So think carefully because you might depend on this professor in the future (another class, thesis committee, etc).
@Neo I have no idea what will happen either. I never had a professor just blow off class like this. This is the only class he teaches, and I am not in a thesis program.
You should split the lecture time question from the grading question because the answers are unrelated.
I wish you wouldn't include the name of the university. Since there are probably few graduate courses in the field offered in summer, the faculty member in question might be easily identified. Please consider editing.
Should documentation not trump everything? — In a web programming class?
Edited to remove identifying information. Regardless of their merits, StackExchange is not where you should voice complaints about specific instructors.
@JeffE understood. In a previous question on SE, only after I specifically identified the institution and academic program did I really get helpful answers. Hence the inclusion of that info in this question.
"We ought to be graded by only what the documentation says, and exactly what it says" -- is this your opinion that you're asking whether it's shared or not, or is this what your university's general rules say? I would have thought that if you really were informed, expressed as a rule of the class, that assignments must have property X, that means assignments might be graded in part on X, regardless of whether or not each assignment recapitulates the requirement. If day 1 says "all assignments must be done in Java", and but assignments 2-4 didn't repeat this, should C++ be OK?
What did the other students think and how did it affect them? Did they just shrug and work around this guy as best they could, or will they back up your complaint? Re the unstated grading criteria, do they share your criticism or are you the only person complaining? Did he discuss or allude to the grading in class, after assignments? etc. I agree he sounds like an unreasonable lecturer, but in a senior position. What grade did you get, and what do you think you should have gotten? Is this the difference between D and C, or B and A?
Was all material covered? I went to a lot of lectures that was like "We've blocked off 2 hours, but there's really only an hour's worth of material, the rest is just questions and random banter" - much more common in higher level courses.
Just as good writing style counts when you've been assigned to write essays, it's not surprising that good coding style counts when you write programs. They are presumably trying to get you to write quality answers to these assignments rather than merely asking you to fulfill a contract to the letter. Yes, it would have been better if they explicitly mentioned this. Do you have an idea of what a fair resolution would be?
@corsiKa No, there are topics on the syllabus that did not end up being covered.
@Mark Plotnick Seeking that points deducted due to lack of visual "beauty" be restored.
@smci There are many other students willing to file a complaint. The final exam is tomorrow, so don't know impact on final grade.
One thing I can say, regardless of whether it's right or wrong, is that in the working world you are always being judged on unwritten (or at least not public) requirements. Especially in software, you can spend months on a project and deliver a perfect-to-spec application and have it rejected because "we know that wasn't in the spec, but it's critical to our use of the tool". I'm not saying that's an excuse, but it is something you need to learn to deal with and accept in the course of your career.
@SteveJessop the former. I doubt the university has a policy that goes into that level of detail.
@tony_tiger: At least as far as homework assignments, you do know: did this drop you (and other people) from A to B, or B to D? Also, was this the first year these criteria were used, or was it anecdotally known on the grapevine from previous years' students?
I think we can all agree that missing more than 25% of the lectures is unacceptable (and the excuse that the instructor has other academic commitments is unconvincing to say the least: if I cancelled class every time I had other looming academic commitments, I would be cancelling class a lot more than 27% of the time). This is one of the more serious complaints I can think of bringing against an instructor: literally, you did not get what you paid for and what the university is committed to provide.
Some tips:
1) Your second complaint is so much less serious than your first that I suggest that you totally swallow it for the time being and possibly take it up later if it is still relevant after you are finished pursuing your first complaint. With respect to the second assignment the instructor can say "I mentioned the aesthetics early on in class and I even put it explicitly on the first problem set. If at that point a student doesn't understand that aesthetic considerations are important in web programming then giving them a lower grade on assignments is the best way to drive the point home." And I think that the instructor may have a point there...but anyway, this is all quite debatable compared to the missed classes, which is really not.
2) Your first complaint ought to be taken seriously by everyone who hears it. I think it is overwhelmingly likely that you will hear "We'll look into the matter and ensure that it does not happen in the future." But would such a response be satisfactory to you? I think it probably shouldn't be. So you should think of specific, reasonable suggestions for what can be done. Could you ask for a partial refund? Yes, it is reasonable to ask. It would also be reasonable to ask to be withdrawn from the course (without any penalty or stigma) and get all your money back. I would also consider asking to be withdrawn without penalty from the current course and given free enrollment in the next semester (or during the following summer). Which of these two to ask for depends on your own schedule, your level of interest and commitment in the material, and also whether the same person will be teaching the course the next time around. Note also that these resolutions render moot the grading issue in your homework.
I'm sorry that this happened to you. Good luck.
As a teacher academically nurtured in central Europe, I find it interesting to see that you as a experienced professor find the first issue egregious. Here in the german-speaking area, where universities are typically tuition-free, I can safely say that in many cases teachers don't even know nor care how many hours a course is supposed to be. Honestly, courses being more than 27% shorter in actual teaching time than what it says on the can is extremely usual in both, Austria and Switzerland (likely Germany as well, but can't tell for sure).
If you want to know how it works then - basically, there is sort of an formal or informal understanding what is supposed to be taught in a course, and then the teacher pretty much independently decides on class time that suits this goal. Yes, of course there are formal rules, but they are so loosely correlated with reality that you can spend years at a university without even knowing the formal rules.
@xLeitix, If your scheduled to teach 20 times - in 2x2 lessons - during this fall, your saying it is normal to cancel 5 of these lectures? Without any form of replacement? I've studied in Denmark - which is also tuition free - and I would say this would result in a outcry from the students.
@xLeitix I can confirm for some professors in Czechia (but it is not the norm). But the only full professor I know well enough from Germany is not allowed to go anywhere else when he is teaching. He was a leader of an international project and in some weaks there was no chance for having him for a meating.
@xLeitix Apparently (but not surprisingly) this seems to hold only at public and tuition-free schools. In private universities in Austria, students regularly demand (and get) replacements for missed lessons. (And as a student at a public university, I always was happy if there was one less course I needed to go to.)
I am only going to focus on the lecture issue. There is no question that missing over a quarter of the scheduled lecture time is inappropriate.
The effectiveness of complaining depends on who is doing the teaching. A complaint like this could get cause an adjunct to not be hired again. For tenure track and tenured faculty, the depaetment head MIGHT say something in passing. For a department head, nothing is likely to happen. Complaints like this are not worth a Dean's time.
As for a refund, it is more likely the university will alow you to sit in for free the next time the course is taught.
"Complaints like this are not worth a Dean's time." I'm not completely sure about that. We just went through an accreditation cycle, and something that was emphasized to faculty was "Make sure all classes meet for the full scheduled time." Apparently this was something the accreditors were paying special attention to. (I presume because it is easier to check than more subjective issues of teaching quality.) I think a dean is likely to be very attentive to anything that impacts accreditation.
But I agree that even so, the most likely outcome would be "professor told to be more careful in future" - not necessarily much consolation to the student.
I think engineering accreditation can be even fussier about contact hours than general accreditation is, but this may not apply to web development the same way it could apply to more formal or well established branches of engineering.
It's unlikely that problems with a graduate-level class would have any effect on accreditation, because only undergraduate programs in computer science are accredited in the US.
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133672 | Communicate Author or Publisher for asking detail?
I have trouble finding out an expression in a theorem (click here to the problem)of a paper by Yann Bugeaud (page 12) , and I tried to contact the author through his e-mail but he didn't reply (don't know whether his e-mail is invalid or he ignored intentionally).
I already asked this question on Math Stack Exchange without success. I have also posted it to math overflow, but it seems to me, it will not get much response.
Under the circumstances should I contact the publisher/editor of the paper or is there any other way to get the detail of the paper?
The Math.SE mods are volunteers selected by the community to help maintain the standards of that community. Vague complaints about them are unlikely to be productive or to encourage people to feel like helping you much at all.
Sometimes it takes a bit longer to get useful feedback in user communities, and it might never come at all. Try promoting your question. Have empathy. Good luck
Your question on MathOverflow has multiple upvotes, but no answers. This seems to show that people think it is a good and interesting question, you are just unlucky that no one with the proper expertise and time to spare has come across it to answer it yet. Unfortunately, it is possible that no one knows the answer to the question.
@setholopolus Small correction/suggestion: it suggests that some people think it is a question deserving of a closer look, but at time of writing the comments seem to indicate that the question might be better suited to MSE. (I have not looked at Bugeaud's paper or thought about the question myself)
The editor and publisher will have no special insight into the contents of the paper. The publisher doesn't even have any particular mathematical expertise at all. It is a waste of time to contact either of them.
You speak about "the detail" as if you think that a more detailed version of the proof is out there somewhere, and if you ask the right person they will send it. I think it's more likely that no such version ever exists. The author may never have written another version - or if they did, there's no reason to think it exists anywhere besides their own notes.
Asking on MathOverflow was a good idea, and you can also talk to others in your field who may be familiar with the paper or the techniques involved. But this is more a matter of having them help you figure out what's going on - not a matter of sharing knowledge that already exists.
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80445 | A couple questions regarding graduate studies
I am currently a first year physics undergraduate in a obscure university in a obscure country. My goal is to continue on to obtain a PhD in physics from the best university I possibly can in order to put myself in the best possible network of researchers and academics so I could maximize the quality of my own research. However there are a couple of questions I have.
a) Considering the fact that I've failed my first year at the university and am retaking failed subjects, how is that fact going to affect my prospects of continuing my education (Masters and/or PhD) ?
b) Since it impossible to get research experience as an undergraduate in my country, what can I do to make up for that as an undergraduate?
c) How actually is important undergrad GPA for graduate studies? How are GPA scores interpreted in admissions, meaning what admission officers use them for?
d) Considering that my interests are in theoretical physics, is it really important to be in a high ranking institution, and if so why?
Everything is built from foundation. You failed the first year and are re-taking failed subjects. I think you should get all A's when re-taking those failed subjects before asking question (b) and (c).
Please ask one question per post! Also, I believe some (maybe all?) of these questions have already been asked and answered on this site, use search to find them.
See: How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?, How essential is your GPA for admissions to PhD programs to US universities in Theoretical Physics?, How much will a poor first semester affect my grad school chances?, How handicapped am I in graduate admissions if I graduated from a lower tier university?,
(continued), What does "university ranking" mean for a graduate admissions committee?, How to improve profile for graduate admissions in mathematics, when coming from a country where quality of math education is poor?
Right now you are inspired to study physics. Maybe your interest will continue, maybe not. Time will tell. What I do know is that this is a good time to learn how to manage school anxiety. The skills you learn now will stand you in good stead later if you continue in academia. // Have you figured out why this first year went so badly, and what sorts of changes would help you do better?
In addition to ensuring that you get high grades on your retake (as stated by scaaahu), I would recommend that you get involved with research projects early on and try to get publications out of them-this might compensate for any poor performances in your undergraduate studies. Since you've mentioned this is impossible in your country, perhaps you might want to try and do this abroad during your holidays. Also it might still be possible for you to attend conferences and submit abstracts or posters. It is not the end of the world if you've failed some courses in your first year. In some universities, the first year doesn't count towards your overall GPA. I would advise that you check this with your university.
Generally speaking, the higher the ranking of the university is, the better your career prospects. Of course, if you work with "important people" or highly respected research groups in your field, it might not matter so much.
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8337 | Not enough guidance from advisor
I'm a third year PhD student. I'm not getting much guidance from my adviser. We only meet once a month, and he keeps giving the same general advice. As a consequence of that, we have had to cancel one project since I have no motivation at all for that project.
Now having the new project, things are getting the same. I'm worried about my progress as some of my lab mates are about to graduate. What should I do? I realized my responsibility in driving the project by myself, but most of the time my idea are discarded. Recently when I showed my result, he claims that's garbage without any reasons. What should I do? I'm really thinking of dropping out if situation is not getting better.
"most of the time my ideas are discarded". That in itself is not a sign of a problem, as long as reasons are given, and something is learnt from them. We spend most of our time as researchers coming up with useless ideas. Having said that, saying that results are "garbage" is not useful without explaining why.
possible duplicate of Advisor isn't advising
@Suresh "We spend most of our time as researchers coming up with useless ideas". very nice statement!
"we have had to cancel one project since I have no motivation at all for that project". What exactly is the relation between having a meeting once a month and not being motivated? This to me sounds more like an excuse rather than a good enough reason.
In the third year of your Phd having one meeting a month is not too bad. Your supervisor is assuming that you know your way and at this stage you should be left to figure it out yourself rather than him spoon feeding you. Of course he will still have strong opinions and might say what you have done is not the right way. It might be that he is busy/not happy with you/thinks he has mentioned to you before how you should do it and you are not listening or that you have a problem in your relation that you don't even know of. If for instance you are just not motivated the way you described its not unnatural for your supervisor to not be so happy with you.
Next time you meet him once he rejects your idea ask him for suggestions and guidance on what to do. Ask politely and genuinely, and if he is not forth coming explain that you need help to figure it out. If he says your results are garbage ask him given his freaking awesome powers and knowledge how he would have done the work differently. He is only human and sometimes complementing somebody can go a long way. At all costs try to be more motivated and don't exhibit the behavior you described in the first part of your message. That's not going to do you any good and might be the root cause of all of this pain.
I don't see why you should drop out after investing so much time and effort. It is in the interest of both of you to sort out the situation and no PhD advisor would like to see someone dropping out after three years (at least for their selfish interests).
I'm worried about my progress as some of my lab mates are about to graduate.
I'm really thinking of dropping out if situation is not getting better.
Before you pull the nuclear trigger and drop out, I strongly suggest that you take some time to figure out when you want to graduate and what you have to do to accomplish that goal. Be very specific (e.g., "I will prepare the following work for conference X, which has a submission deadline of Y;" "I will be ready to propose to my committee on Z"). Once you put this on paper, you can go to your advisor and ask him to review it with you, and to make suggestions or provide other guidance. If you can't get your advisor to agree to the plan, at the very least go to another professor (possibly the ombudsman, if there is one) and talk over the plan with him/her. You need something concrete or you could linger forever.
I was lucky in that my advisor forced me to come up with a plan early on (within the first year of working with her), and we came to an agreement on what that plan was going to be. The proposal stage of your eventual PhD work is a similar agreement with your committee. I had a tacit agreement from my advisor that if I met all the goals, I'd be ready to graduate, and I worked hard to make all the deadlines I had set. That in itself was a big motivation, and it worked out.
As far as your projects go, you must be personally invested in getting them done. That's one of the driving factors in every Ph.D, and you (hopefully) have an intellectual desire to work on the project, so I suggest trying to get into the mindset that you really want to find the answer to the questions posed in the project. That's the fun part of being a scientist, after all! :)
Welcome to the PhD world...
Where the advisers have little time for you and your ideas are always bad...
... Until you realize that the PhD is a learning process as well! Learning how to do research, how to be independent, how to have integrity and how to push the boundaries of science by a tiny delta...
In the course of those 3 years I am sure you have learned a lot and have become critic about what you do and what others do as well. That is the first step to understand your work was not all in vain!
Find a hint from your adviser, something he inspires you to do and something you think he is right about! (there has to be something, after-all he is still your adviser after 3 years...).
Use that hint as inspiration (although you don't love the muse) and work on something you believe is good. Your adviser is not the only reviewer of your work, scientific community (those papers we submit) are also an evaluation of our work.
Get inspired from the adviser, evaluate your work through scientific community and have confidence.
If you are want to have this degree You have to motivate you by yourself, too. Just wait hints from supervisor is not enough. You have to work in your research idea and you can request a bit your supervisor by diplomatic way. You write to him email every week and can give to him update reports, what you doing and how is your progress. Of course, you will nee hints. But I must have some own idea about your future thesis and you better have to work on this idea. You can try write paper to conferences. Conference reviewer evaluation is always good impact to researcher. If just you want you can find way and your method how you can handle situation. Just give to your self some time. And please think, what is important for you! If PhD is important you have to move... You must work by yourself, first...
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18046 | What is the typical Legal Structure of a modern College?
I'm very perplexed as to how the terms College and University are archaically used to denote associations of people, but are in modern times being used to denote buildings or realty.
What are standard organizational structures in a legal sense for different Colleges in a US-based Research University??
For example, if the corporation of the University Trustees makes the policies providing for faculty appointments in a College of Arts and also in a College of Education, will these different Colleges typically be like departments in the same corporation, or do they have separate Legal Personalities?
Are the Colleges associations or corporations, or merely administrative units defined by the internal policy of the Trustees to distinguish different collections of offices?
Do the Colleges have members, and if so who are the members? Are all the matriculated members, or just current students? Are the faculty members of the College?
I don't agree with the close votes on this. It's definitely a collection of question, but they are elaborations on the main question: "What are standard organizational...."
This isn't complex for someone who knows the answer. It can be answered simply with a legal definition of some established College. Example: "Microsoft Corporation is a legal person created by the State of Delaware whose corpus consists of the directors and beneficial owners of its stock. It has several wholly owned subsidiary corporations. This is the most popular type of business organization for Fortune 500 firms." Maybe that example is inaccurate, but it answers all the questions corresponding to my question about the colleges in three sentences. I don't see how my question is too broad.
As I understand it, in a typical private U.S. research university the different colleges or schools that make up the university have no legal independence, and they are simply administrative units within the university. (On the other hand, part of the endowment generally consists of restricted gifts, which can only be used in certain ways or by certain departments. This can give the corresponding parts of the university more power or independence in practice than one might otherwise suppose.)
Do the Colleges have members, and if so who are the members? Are all the matriculated members, or just current students? Are the faculty members of the College?
This is entirely a matter of university policy. Current students, staff, and faculty would usually be considered members of their corresponding colleges, but this can vary (and some universities just aren't organized this way in the first place). In practice, this generally doesn't mean very much: it may determine some requirements for students in addition to departmental requirements, it could be listed as an affiliation on your publications (although departments are more common), it might give a few privileges such as building or library access, and it tells you how to fill out university forms, but it's otherwise not a big deal.
I suspect you are correct, but I will hold out a little longer to see if I can get a more definitive answer.
Generally this, where there's a single legal university entity. However occasionally this can be quite complicated with large private universities, and state university systems. For example the Claremont Colleges, or the complex Columbia University, Barnard and Teachers College relationship.
Another example of a complex university structure is Cornell University which has both publically and privately funded components.
Oxford University (constitution) it seems was able to get the Crown to either recognize as or raise into corporations each of the Oxford Colleges. Additionally, the members of these Colleges (example charter), including students and faculty, also appear as individuals in the membership of the corporation of Oxford University. Oxford University as a corporate person seems to be a charter party exercising control over the Colleges, but is not itself a member of those Colleges.
When we get to USA State Universities, there seems to be some oddities where the Uniform Unincorporated Nonprofit Association Act (Ohio's UUNAA) might implicitly turn Administratively created Colleges into William Blackstone Corporations. This is because UUNAA seems to assert that almost any group of people with a voting membership and a succession continuity plan and that isn't forbidden to acquire property will be able in principle to hold that property in mortmain perpetually outside of Probate, just like any regular business corporation. In the USA, these entities would likely be deemed Quasi-Corporations, in part because they probably don't have the same constitutional Due Process rights that a generic corporation would have. Any governance rights which the University Trustees have vested in the faculty via a Union Contract are possibly relevant for determining the legal status of the Colleges.
Since any legal personality for colleges seems unintentional in the University Policies I have read, I am going to assume until further notice that Anonymous Mathematician deserves the Check Mark.
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18933 | Making figure legends for papers in the biological sciences
I'm in the process of writing figure legends but realized I don't actually know what to include or what to exclude. I wrote them based on intuition and tried to copy what I've already seen but I was wondering if anyone had good suggestions or references for making figure legends for papers and reports in the biological sciences.
In general, the figure should contain a title which concisely captures what it's showing: 'Effect of manipulation A on measure B', or 'Level of A influences property of B', or 'B vanishes when A is larger than X', or some such.
After that you would go on describe what the figure shows, as precisely as possible - go panel by panel and say what's on the axes (and in which units), what denotes statistical significance in the image (e.g. gray shaded areas), what the colors mean, that sort of thing. You can also write what the main statistical finding is, using just words (i.e. no p-values or similar).
Those are the basics. However, take into account that some journals allow unsubscribed readers to see the title, abstract and figures of their papers. If this is the case, try to imagine what it's like to be able to read just the abstract and see the figure with legends, and build from there. See if an experienced reader can infer what your specific contribution is from this information only (in fact, many people will anyway just skim over the figures before deciding whether to read the paper). This often means that the figure legend should also include a mini-recap of the experimental setup or specific manipulations next to the finding it depicts, but the exact contents will vary depending on what you're showing.
I would also that you can sometimes point the attention of the reader to a specific part or feature of the figure, e.g. "Nuclear membranes at the bottom of the figure appear to be elongated and distorted".
The chosen answer suggests going through panel by panel and stating what's on each axis and its units or what the colors mean. You shouldn't need to do this: axes labels tell you what is on the axes and that's where the units should go (not in the caption). As for what the colors mean, that's ideally the purpose of a legend.
I have a post about this that goes into more detail about avoiding long-winded, procedural, and uninteresting figure captions.
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1505 | I want to submit a paper to arXiv.org, but I'm not affiliated to an Institute. What can I do?
I have a paper which I'm interested in submitting to arXiv.org.
However, the submission guidelines say an institutional affiliation is required for submission. I've graduated in physics from Unicamp in Brazil, but I didn't follow a scientific career. My current employer doesn't relate to physics.
What do you suggest that I do? Is there a way to submit my paper? Or is there an alternative to arXiv.org?
See also Submitting to arXiv when unaffiliated in Math Overflow.
you can submit to vixra.org and then put them in wikipedia with vixra link to gain visibility :D
If you have no luck, you can always fall back on http://vixra.org/ [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViXra ]
Many papers there look distinctly dubious at the very least, or trivial, as one would expect from an unmoderated repository. But I'm sure some are sound and worthwhile.
Although perhaps not ideal, one advantage is that at least you'll have evidence of when your paper was submitted, in the event of priority disputes. Also, it is handy to give a standard(ish) URL for references.
The guy who founded ViXra and runs it, Phil Gibbs, is a physics graduate himself, and as clever as a tree full of owls. But there's no getting away from the fact that in academia ViXra is generally treated with a fair degree of contempt.
I was reading the about page and I just LOVED it! Thank you!
I'd be very careful with viXra. Fair or not, it has a reputation for containing primarily crackpot work, so it's not something you want associated with your paper unless you firmly believe in the principles behind it (namely that there should be no filters whatsoever).
Whatever you think of the bulk of the content on vixra, posting a paper there will serve to secure priority--assuming of course that the idea is genuinely new and interesting.
In my experience securing priority is not even worth thinking about. Your only goal should be dissemination: you want your paper to be read by the research community. If you succeed, then priority isn't even an issue. If you fail, then it really doesn't matter if you've "secured priority". The best case scenario is sharing credit with whoever independently rediscovers your ideas and succeeds in disseminating them. A more likely outcome is being relegated to a footnote ("some aspects of Smith's work were anticipated in an unpublished manuscript by Jones that was never widely circulated").
Given the amount of crackpot stuff on arXiv, I'm still surprised viXra even exists.
What if I first publish on viXra and next try to publish on arXiv?
I opened a question for that.
I was identified with viXra philosophy, and I'll try it. Maybe I'll put some similar paper on arXiv later, if I get endorsed. Thank's!
I don't see where it says that you must have a institutional affiliation,
Reading comprehension is not my strength.
It also says that you must represent your affiliation correctly. If your current employment is concerned with certain areas of Computer Science or Mathematics (and your paper is in a related area) this will probably count. Otherwise, I'd suggest entering "none", as that is the truth of the matter.
However, I believe that without either an affiliation or a history with arXiv they will expect you to get endorsed before they accept your submissions.
As for finding endorser they write
If you're looking for an endorsement, you can find somebody qualified to endorse by clicking on the link titled "Which of these authors are endorsers?" at the bottom of every abstract.
Now all that is left is for you to convince one of these people that you are serious and competent. Assuming that you were previously affiliated with a institution in the appropriate field you should probably use your contacts there to get in touch with an endorser: they are like to suspect that anyone who contacts them out of the blue is a Not-Very-Serious-Person (tm).
Great! I didn't know about it, thanks! Regarding institutional affiliation, it's on the link I provided, under "Take Responsability": "The following information is also required for submission". The first item is the institutional affiliation, and the second one is (if I got it correctly - did I?) the official number of papers of that Institute.
As of 2019, the linked page no longer mentions affiliations.
You can upload your paper to Zenodo and/or ResearchGate.
Also, unlike arXiv or viXra, Zenodo and/or ResearchGate have the added benefit that assign they can assign a DOI to your paper for free.
Why the downvote?
@Matthias I'm not the downvoter, but this does not really answer the (obsolete) question.
@fqq The OP did ask "Or is there an alternative to arXiv.org?".
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6021 | Rumor mill and math job
After starting the application process this year, I found a wiki page at UC Davis that lists people who have supposedly been shortlisted, invited for interviews, or given offers for faculty positions in mathematics. I am listed in couple of places, and I wonder if this can harm my application. What are the pros and cons of this open source?
I mean this web-site: http://notable.math.ucdavis.edu/wiki/Mathematics_Jobs_Wiki
For reference: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/117889/shortlists-and-job-offers
Ah. Well, it's a wiki, so if you're actually worried, you can take your own name off; the moderators might even agree to keep your name off. But as @user4491 says, the effect of having your name on or off this rumor mill is likely to be minimal.
I can probably agree on the effect on the actual offers, but on the other hand it seems if a name appears shortlisted then other departments may consider to the applicant, in the case they missed something in his application. I am not talking about the final offers, of course...
I am a professor at a top 20 school in mathematics and I have been on our department's hiring committee for the past several years. I can assure you that we take absolutely no notice of the contents of that particular website when making decisions. We consider ourselves competent enough to form our own judgements on any particular candidate. In the past, we have interviewed plenty of people whose name occurs frequently on that list, and plenty of those whose name does not appear at all. Moreover, the accuracy of that website is dubious at best; at my own institution it sometimes lists people who are not at all under consideration, and usually doesn't list people who are - including those who have been given offers. The only time I made any attempt to edit the website was when it claimed that we didn't have any positions available at all (which was false). I suspect that at least on one occasion someone invited themselves to our institution to give a talk and then put their own name on the website as a candidate (they were not). Thus, I suspect that the effect this particular website has on job offers is minimal at most.
What are the pros and cons of this open source?
I see three pros of these types of lists. The first is that it can alert you to jobs that you did not know about. The second is that it can tell you something about where the status of the hiring process is. For example, if the list says an offer has been made and you haven't had an interview, then the odds are not good. The third use is that it gives you an idea of who is getting interviews and offers and with the help of the internet, how your CV stacks up.
The cons are pretty simple in my mind. In fact, each of the pros has a pretty substantial con. First, there are much better ways of finding out about jobs. Second, the list is not accurate; just because the list says an offer was made, doesn't mean it was. Further, I am not sure of the value of knowing that your application was unsuccessful. It seems reasonable to want to know, but I am not sure how it changes ones outlook. Third, there are better ways to figure out what the weak points of your application are.
As for being listed, I don't see any potential for harm.
I'm not sure anyone claims that the Rumor Mill Wiki has any particular value other than satisfying morbid curiosity.
Could it be that it helps departments to reconsider somebodies application, when they see that it was lited many times? In that case big shots will be even in a better position, then they were before. This might reflect negatively on those who are less listed....
@user26565 NO. Search committees simply do not work that way. It just isn't information that is useful.
@StrongBad, is there any law/rule that would prohibit the search committees to look at the rumor mill and decide based on it, e.g., user2013's scenario?
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7781 | Industry certifications as program entrance requirements?
I've noticed several academic programs that require, or accept in lieu of more traditional entrance evaluations, industry credentials for admissions.
Is there a comparative analysis of programs that allow industry licensing/certification versus those that adhere to more traditional entrance requirements like the GRE?
The specific credential that I'm thinking of is the CISSP (1). This certification has been eligible for transfer credit equivalency for some time (2), but I've only recently seen the certification as an admissions requirement (3) for an academic program.
Some data points that I would would be interested in are:
How do examinations, such as GSE/CISSP/CISM/etc, compare to the GRE in terms of overall academic preparedness?
Is there is measurable difference in the comparative difficulty between the different categories of examinations?
If you've taken both types of examination, industry and academic, is one class of examination better or worse for gauging candidates, and why?
Refs:
The Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) is an industry standard credential and certification.
For example: American Public University System (private, for-profit) and Walsh College, MI (private, non-profit)
Capitol College, just one of several examples.
APUS is not a public university system; it is a private, for-profit, online institution. Don't walk. Run.
I didn't say that it was a public institution, it is only mentioned as an example of a college that accepts transfer credit from certification or license... but in either case does that have any impact on the question or potential feedback? I ask out of honest curiosity. The APUS (APU & AMU) is accredited by the 'Higher Learning Commission and a member of the North Central Association', so I'm not sure how the status of public or private is relevant.
The phrase "US education system" in your footnote suggests that APUS is representative of the US education system. It isn't. Also, the word "public" in the name of the institution suggests that the institution is public. It isn't.
Mia Culpa. I was working under the presumption that being a regionally accredited institution would provide an acceptable reference point. Can you recommend any guidelines that might help me identify a 'real' school?
I've also added a reference to Walsh College, a brick and mortar school in MI that offers '[possible] advanced standing credit [12cr hours] in the MSIS [program]'.
To start: if it's listed here, it's probably not worth it.
aeismail, I've already edited in an additional reference to address JeffE's concern. Thank you for the wikipedia reference.
What kind of academic programs are you interested in? If you're asking about graduate programs in computer science, for example, I don't know of any that would accept industry certification in place of GREs, or that would offer academic credit for an industrial certification. (On the other hand, many computer science graduate programs don't bother with GREs, either.)
@JeffE, I'm not sure how your questions could possibly be advancing the discussion but on the assumption that you're not just trolling, please see the OP. The phrase "several academic programs" (although a bit out of context due to recent edits) denotes multiple programs and not a specific one. If you can think of any specific differences between any specific programs that would alter the context or applicability of any given answer please let me know and I'll adjust the question accordingly. Thanks.
@grauwulf: For most academic programs, the honest answer is "Yikes! Take the GRE already!" I'm trying to narrow the question enough to solicit something more helpful.
@JeffE lol. The GRE wasn't a problem for me and I'm already in the program I want to be in. That being said, I found many of my certification examinations to be far more strenuous than any test I've taken at or for school. Back on topic: Now that we have so many different admission 'standards' (GRE/GMAT/Comps/License/etc) there seems to be a growing divide in how programs are structured. I'm just looking for information on that. I may have found the material to answer my own question so if I see no answers from the net by this evening I may be able to answer my own question here.
Can we move some of this to meta. I am not sure if these types of programs are on topic.
Is there a comparative analysis of programs that allow industry
licensing/certification versus those that adhere to more traditional
entrance requirements like the GRE?
I am not aware of a formal analysis of the differences. One could probably divide graduate programs into two camps, with some gray area between. In a really general sense, academic research doesn't prepare you for industry jobs and industry jobs do not prepare you for research. Therefore, the two type of graduate programs are research targeted and industry targeted. I would argue that any program that accepts/requires/weights industry certifications falls into the industry targeted camp. The two camps are so different that trying to compare across them is silly.
As to your other questions
How do examinations, such as GSE/CISSP/CISM/etc, compare to the GRE in
terms of overall academic preparedness?
Is there is measurable difference in the comparative difficulty
between the different categories of examinations?
If you've taken both types of examination, industry and academic, is
one class of examination better or worse for gauging candidates, and
why?
Standardized tests in general are pretty rubbish metrics and that is why most admission committees also request transcripts, essays and recommendations. The GRE is likely marginally better at predicting success in research targeted programs and the industry exams will be marginally better at predicting success in industry targeted programs. As for difficulty, it really depends on the experience of the individual. Is an History exam more or less difficult than a Math exam?
Yes, but it depends on the individual. Individuals with an industry background will likely find the industry tests easier than the GRE, while those following a research based academic career path will likely find the GRE easier than the industry exams.
I've contacted two schools to ask them what their reasoning for one path over the other is, and I'm still waiting to hear back from the industry focused program for more specific details, but I think that your answer is pretty much what I've gleaned so far. I'm going to accept this but I will also add another answer once I have more definitive feedback. Thank you for your response.
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73043 | If I have a low GPA in undergrad, and want to get into top PhD programs, should I do an MS degree or redo my undergrad degree?
I want to get into specifically top schools (in materials science and engineering) because I want to have a decent shot at being a professor.
I am aware that quite a few people have successfully done an MS and went on to top PhD programs, but my concern is that because the MS GPA is so inflated, it won't help me in my case. I already have a first author publication soon to be submitted, so my research experiences have been covered well, and my uGPA of 3.1 is my only weakness. Remember, I am trying to get into top schools, where they get so many applications that they are seeking any reason to throw them out.
Because undergrad GPAs are less inflated, I was thinking that doing a whole another undergrad might be more helpful in letting me demonstrate an improvement academically. In addition, some schools require specifically an undergrad GPA limit, apparently without regards to whether the applicant has an MS degree or not. But at the same time, since I would be repeating the same thing, they might not see it as that much of an improvement.
What do you think?
A second undergrad degree would be a colossal waste of time. Go do a masters degree, get stellar grades, more research experience, and strong letters of recommendation while you're there, and you'll be fine.
Also see How do you get a bad transcript past Ph.D. admissions? and How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?
I was thinking that an MS wasn't such a bad idea, and it would have been what I would have decided to do without hesitation, but the classes are curved higher, and apparently not taken very seriously. From your 2nd link, a reply by JeffE: "In particular, at many universities, classes taken by terminal master's students are easier than the corresponding classes taken by undergraduates".
Then why not do research masters?
You're not going to get into a top PhD program because of amazing masters grades. You'll get into a top PhD program because the additional research you do and glowing letters of recommendation you get during the masters will show that your undergrad grades are irrelevant to your ability to do high quality research. (And also show that by the way, in case you were worried, the grades won't be a problem because you've turned that situation around.)
Research is important, but it's quite well known that GPA is used as a cutoff, so that is why I am concerned. Do you think that the inflated MS GPA won't be much of a problem?
As others have said, getting a second undergrad degree is a waste of time. Don't bother.
The unfortunate truth is that your undergrad GPA may keep you out of top PhD programs even if you have a Master's degree with a perfect GPA and multiple journal publications.
Top engineering graduate programs receive hundreds or even thousands of applicants every year. Despite what others may tell you, they're not looking for an excuse to reject applicants because it keeps their US News rating high. They're looking for excuses to reject because there are far too many applications to judge each one on its merits, and far too many highly qualified applicants to admit them all, and the committee members are faculty who have many other demands on their time and who want sleep occasionally. In some departments, applications are filtered by GPA even before the first human committee member reads them.
By far the best way over that hurdle is to cultivate a champion -- a faculty member who is active and visible in their research community, who will write you glowing letters describing your strong potential for independent research (in personal, technical, and credible detail), and who will call up their colleagues in other departments to tell them to watch for your application. The goal here is to interest someone in your target department enough to rescue your application from knee-jerk rejection and evaluate it on its own merits.
And then your application needs to shine on its own merits. It must provide compelling evidence of your strong potential for independent research. Yes, your graduate GPA is a (small) part of this, but you need to sell yourself primarily as a future researcher, if not a current researcher, not just someone who excels at classes. Moreover, this evidence needs to be stronger than for other applicants with higher undergraduate GPAs. Do not assume that one first-author publication is enough.
All that said... Focusing on research and finding a champion will improve your chances of being admitted to a top program, but they will not guarantee anything. In particular, even with a strong research record and vocal champions, you may still be rejected because of your undergrad GPA. Admissions is best considered a random process; the most you (or anyone) can do is improve your odds.
Incidentally, the same advice goes for your longer-term goal of getting a faculty position. Yes, having a degree from a non-top-10 department makes it harder to get an academic position, but you can work against that disadvantage by developing a killer research portfolio and multiple champions (not just your advisor). Conversely, a PhD from a top-10 department will not guarantee you success on the faculty job market; you also need a killer research portfolio and multiple champions (not just your advisor). Start developing that now.
The idea of a champion is key. Everyone knows someone who punched far above what their resume might have suggested. This works even better if they have active connections at schools you are targeting.
First, let me state that I am currently in a PhD program in a top school in the US. My undergrad GPA was from an engineering program in the top engineering school in my home country. It was 3.65. Compared to others who applied to my PhD program my GPA was probably below average. (Engineering is hard, yo!, and my school graded on a strict curve that permitted only 20% of the class to get A's)
I agree with others who have said that doing another undergraduate degree would be a waste of time. Having said that, you may want to do a post-bac or something similar if you don't want to go the masters route. This will at least allow you to get some more undergrad grades to bring your GPA up and cross the cutoff threshold. I also think that this would be a waste of time though, assuming you have at least the minimum GPA to get past the first review.
The issue with GPA is that many top schools use undergrad GPA to make themselves seem highly selective, and this is a stat that they are judged on in US News and World Report (That's my perception having talked with my program director in my PhD program). They like to have students with high undergrad GPAs, but not every student needs to have a stellar undergrad GPA.
The downside of doing the post-bac is that if you don't get into the program you want, all you have are some extra undergrad classes and a new student loan, and no "network".
Here's my suggestion.
talk with the program directors for the PhD programs you're interested in and ask them what they suggest. They may say that your undergrad GPA is super important, or they may say focus on the GRE and letters of recommendation and your research. They may also tell you if they think your GPA would completely preclude you from consideration.
Assuming the undergrad GPA isn't going to kill your application immediately, consider doing a masters at one of your preferred PhD universities. make sure you crush the GRE, since that's a relevant entry criteria for most schools. This will do a couple of things.
First, it will give you another set of grades, at the university to which you're applying. These grades will mean something and provide easy context for the admissions committee. e.g. if you do classes at Harvard and apply to Harvard, they should know what your Harvard grades mean. If you do classes at USC and apply to Harvard, Harvard may not know what your USC grades mean. e.g. is an A at USC the same as one at Harvard?
Second, it will allow you to become acquainted with professors at your preferred school. This could be the thing that gets you in. If you have someone on the admissions committee who would vouch for you and agrees to be your adviser, you have a much stronger shot of getting in no matter what the rest of your application looks like. If the faculty know you, they are more likely to admit you assuming you're a good student among your peers!
Lastly, if all else fails, when you graduate the masters, you'll have a masters from a good school, and even if you don't get accepted to that school for your PhD, your masters at a good school with good grades will signal to other schools that you are a competitive applicant (again, this presumes your undergrad GPA doesn't torpedo your app before the admissions committee even looks at it.
All this being said, it's still a bit of a crapshoot. I'm in a PhD program at a good school. I teach a class that many of the masters students who want to go on to the PhD program take. The class is regarded as the hardest quantitative class in the school. It's a requirement for the PhD students. Several of the masters students who have done exceptionally well in this class who have applied to the PhD program have been rejected in their PhD application (but ended up at other great schools). Others have been accepted. I'm not sure how much of an influence this class has, but I haven't seen anyone who has done badly in the class get accepted. At the school you apply to, there will probably be one or two classes like this. Typically they are classes you'd have to take in the PhD program if you're accepted anyway. Make sure you take those and do well. This reduces the uncertainty both for you and the faculty about your ability to succeed in the PhD program should you be accepted.
Good luck!
Thank you for your response. Are there any actual post-bac programs for engineering though? I have a hard time finding them, as opposed to MS programs or just retaking undergrad courses as a non-degree seeking student. And the fact that undergrad GPA, not Masters GPA, is being used to calculate rankings seems like another reason to do something that is closer to undergrad.
my GPA was probably below average — I wouldn't take that bet.
and no "network". — If you're going through any degree program without creating a network, you're doing it wrong.
+1 for If you have someone on the admissions committee who would vouch for you and agrees to be your adviser, you have a much stronger shot of getting in no matter what the rest of your application looks like. — This is by far the most important point.
Moreover, it has been indicated by many that yes a solid gpa in a masters degree program and an excellent explanation describing why your undergraduate gpa is low might help in certain circumstances. Research experience is a big plus as well. Not all is dead!
I have an answer for you, but you and other people might not like it.
In my opinion, you would look exceedingly foolish and naïve to re-do your undergraduate program or do another undergraduate program.
Understand, I'm almost 50 years old. Nobody is going to give a damn about your 3.1 GPA if you excel at your master level work. If you get a 3.9 or higher in your master level work, that will look very good. But if you create a phenomenal master paper on top of that, you'll be good-to-go. Don't worry about "the top school". Instead, worry about whether or not it's accredited.
Long ago, one of my professors told me that students are way too worried about their GPAs. This professor was highly respected in the structural engineering field and had written his own textbook on structural analysis.
In my opinion, if you re-do your undergraduate program or complete another undergraduate degree, I'd say you're not exhibiting mature, adult judgment. It would look very amateurish and inexperienced in life.
worry about whether or not it's accredited — "Accredited" is a pretty low bar, especially for someone aiming for an academic position.
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41226 | Leaving academia - what to do with the personal website?
I have a question about "post-academia" personal websites. The question is open-ended and fuzzy because I am not 100% certain with what I would like to do, so I am also looking for suggestions.
Some background first.
I will soon finish my PhD and I will probably leave academia permanently for an industry job (and most likely it will not include any research). Despite leaving academia I am not abandoning my work and my academic credentials. In future (at least in the next 5-10 years) I would like to
brand myself as a professional in the field with an emphasis on my academic contributions (I think that if someone googles my name and as the first result is listed my academic page that can only be positive for my image)
remain open to a potential collaboration with academia (e.g. projects that my company finds interesting; reviewing papers for conferences)
remain open to sporadically co-author papers that are related to my previous research (e.g. someone reads my paper, finds my work interesting enough to ask me to contribute to his future paper, but realises that I am not anymore in academia so gets a wrong impression that I am closed to such offers -> I would like to avoid that).
Now goes the question.
As many academics, I have a personal website with my research interests, projects, publications, and so on. I would like to retain that website, but I have no idea how to design it in the way it is sustainable and not dead for many years to come. I have seen that former researchers leave personal websites on the server of their former departments, but they look quite dead with an obsolete email as contact, old photograph, last update 10 years ago, etc.
But on the other hand, probably I will also not have any new content to fill since I will not be writing papers anymore, and my field is not like architecture where architects have websites with their portfolio even when they work for a large company.
How to design a "post-academic" website in the way it is sustainable? What content to put? Do you have any examples of successful webpages of former researchers?
Edit: I forgot to note that I have a Linkedin profile, but I don't find it as a good replacement for a personal website.
Edit 2: I'd like to make a website that is sustainable irregardless of the job and company I will work for (I expect this to change multiple times in the next 10 years).
You might better know what to fill in your web site after getting accepted for a job. Also, the design of the web page shall be suitable for the position you have. If you are in the medical field, for example, your web site would be professional, strict, not so colourful, etc. If you could specify the field you are in, we would be able to better help you. Additionally, for inspiration, search for some good web sites/portfolios of people in a field similar to yours. ---------- This is not exactly an answer. I would like to post it as a comment, but for some reason, it'd not allow me,
Seems like a reasonable start would be to get a personal domain (like barrylastname.com or something similar), copy the content from your university web page, and set the university web page to redirect to barrylastname. Then you can decide over time how it should evolve.
Is it a technical question (i.e. where to host a website, if not at your univ.) or conceptual (i.e. how to frame its content, etc)?
How about just transfer what's already there to a personal domain and make it primarily a blog with commentary on field-related stuff?
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is specifically about being outside academia.
@DavidRicherby The question is about something that frequently occurs in academia: leaving, and how to handle a particular aspect of that. Why so hasty to close a question? SE isn't running out of storage :D
Put your website on some other hosting than your university.
Write up-to-date status and contact, perhaps with a few words of explanation (e.g. to make it clear that is not only for archival purposes).
When it comes to rest of stuff, they can be the same. (Minding academic data and contact; when it comes to branding - it is a question for Workplace SE and answers will depend on your profession.)
So, just some thoughts:
If you are in a field were you are allowed to show of individual work you did for various employers (or various projects for the same employer)
Make it a portfolio driven website. Like with the blog below you need the discipline to keep it updated, but perfect for freelancers and the like.
If not you have two other options
Make it primarily a contact card, so put your contact details, name and biography up front and centre and 'hide' the more time sensitive details away.
For example, on my own site I have removed all time sensitive things after realizing I wasn't keeping them up to date enough and I have a second 'secret' portfolio I update every time (once every two or three years) I need to share it.
Make it a personal blog discussing things in your area of expertise. If you do this however you have to be sure you will be keeping this up to date with at least a single post per four to six weeks. If you know you won't be able to keep that up, don't do this (as an out of date blog looks kinda bad).
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39017 | Should I quit my PhD - workload, self-esteem and social life
I don't really want a degree. I just want to get married, and have weekends and evenings off, and chill out and play board games, and have nice conversations with friends, and have time to exercise and eat good food, and partake in hobbies, and read books and play computer games and watch movies and write a novel or two. Stuff I used to do as a kid, that I can't do as a grad student.
I like my research, and I like my advisor, but I feel like I work a lot harder than my friends in industry, and I'll be putting my life on hold for at least the next two years, while I'm finishing classes and qualifying exams. Frankly I don't feel like I can survive the next year, and just the thought of staying here for the next few months makes me depressed.
The problem is if I wasn't a PhD student, I'd just be another fat ugly loser with no social status, and nobody would love me or think I was valuable. I wouldn't be taken as seriously when it came time to apply for jobs, and people would think I was stupid or at least not any better than someone with a bachelor's degree. At least now I can apply for internships and get interviews. And because I am a PhD student at a top school, people assume I'm smart, which also helps me find dates, even though I'm obese, wear glasses, and dress poorly. It puts me in a different "league" and if I quit I'd have to go back to dating losers who only want me because they can't find any other girlfriends.
Also if I quit my PhD, I would never be able to come back, and what if my new job ended up sucking, or I couldn't even get a job? I do like my work, and I'm glad I get to do such interesting stuff, I just wish there was less of it.
There is just too much stuff to do, especially since my advisor does not have money and I need to TA while taking classes and doing research. Also I know I am ugly because when I go on websites like OkCupid, my friends get a lot more messages than me. However, I have been getting more messages ever since I joined a PhD program. I have also submitted my picture to rankmyphotos.com and got a very low rating.
By fat I mean I am nearly 200 pounds and my parents always tell me I need to lose weight. I am not tall either.
You are not a fat loser
"I feel like I work a lot harder than my friends in industry" - Maybe you do. Maybe that's not too bad after all. If you learn how to deal with this kind of stressful episodes, this will give you a strong advantage in any carreer you may be into now or later. But maybe you work too much. Maybe you can do something about the workload. Are you really forced/required to work so much? Or is it your own ambition that drives you to strive for the best you can do? Did you talk to your advisor about the workload you feel is too much? Some people also have a hard time when it comes to say "no"...
@Jennifer Dating websites are designed to make money, they fundamentally don't work; neither for men nor for women. Research shows a high correlation between online dating and depression. I would recommend not doing it.
@CaptainCodeman That argument seems ... iffy. Many things are designed to make money, and they still deliver value to their customers. And correlation != causality - especially in that case it seems very plausible that a clientele that would want to make use of online dating also has other problems leading to depression.
If you quit the PhD and do all the things you mention in your first paragraph, you will be more stressed than you were with the PhD. Doing all those things is sold to us as a normal life, but I think the truth is you'll always feel like you're neglecting parts of your life and that there are things you should be doing. Before you decide to quit, consider that maybe the PhD isn't the problem. Maybe this is an anxiety you would experience whatever occupation you choose.
Yeah, what Peter said. It seems like most of your problems have little to do with your PhD and would therefore follow you around in other occupations.
One practical solution I found to lack of exercise while studying for a PhD: I rigged a book stand on the handlebars of a stationary exercise bike. That way, I could get an hour of reading academic papers and an hour of aerobic exercise in one hour of elapsed time.
Random, probably useless suggestion. Consider learning dancing. Dancing is really good exercise, is social, and is fun. This may or may not be a useful suggestion, depending on your location. Dance classes themselves can be fun, though at some point you'll want to venture to actual dances. Consider it. NOTE: this suggestion has nothing to do with academia, but as others have noted, the question isn't really about academia either.
This question has been deemed off topic, but still, it has amassed a lot of up votes. Can anyone with access to bring this up in meta?
@Jennifer some of the things you say are concerning. If you think you may have a depression (or something similar), please, seek professional help. A depression has a 15% chance of going away without therapy. If that were your case, a professional can help you to see your real situation so you can make the best decision for you.
@Davidmh You can bring it to meta; no special access is required (only 5 reputation is needed for meta participation)
@ff524 for some reason, I can't log in. "The request looks suspicious". I brought it up on the main site, but didn't get any answer, and now it is deleted.
@Davidmh I have created such a question on meta: http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1581/what-should-we-do-with-questions-that-are-out-of-scope-but-apparently-of-great-i
I'm not competent to provide an answer but your question hit home with me. I felt the same way; I quit more than 10 years ago, and looking back at it, I'm so glad I did. My case had many caveats that made that decision a whole lot easier so I don't want to imply that it's the right choice for you, but even though I felt like a complete loser when I quit, everything turned out fine. I'd just suggest that, if you do quit, look for jobs with clear paths of progression, because once you're in, your qualifications will mean a whole lot less.
You only need to work less and start changing your lifestyle. Start do things at night. Reward yourself. The reason for working hard is the fact that you enjoy what you are doing. I bet your advisor is happy with your progress as it is now but you keep pushing yourself harder. Do Not. this will end up very bad.
If you did all of those things as a kid, you were a remarkable child prodigy and I envy you. Realistically, and unrelated to your question about whether to continue with a PH. D, you need to take a step back and consider if your expectations are reasonable. There is such a thing as giving yourself too much pressure.
Also, you have a Graduate degree. I know thousands of people who would kill just for that. You are far from a 'fat loser'. In fact, you're already accomplished a great deal. And you CAN go back and finish a degree - you may lose some credit that is no longer accepted, but you can always, always finish a degree in the future.
Learn to accept yourself for who you are. Appreciate your strengths. Understand your values and what is most and least important to you. Accept your weaknesses because everyone has weaknesses, and they can't just be wished away. Don't worry so much about what others think of you - they are probably so self absorbed they don't think of you at all. How will you think of yourself 5, 10 years from now in these various scenarios? What would make you the most proud of yourself? What would position you to maximize your values? Make that your Plan A. And pick a good Plan B, just in case!
The problem seems to be you do not think your actions will have any significant change in your life; you take as hypothesis that you are a fat loser who wear glasses.
That can change! If they bother you, lose the glasses, and start losing weight. If you think of these as unrealistic objectives, then there it is your problem! It seems to me that much of your frustration comes from the fact that you feel helpless.
You can solve the "poorly dressed" problem quite easily. Find help from a friend if necessary and find a style that fits you. That could help you feel more confident about yourself in the future.
It's completely up to you what you do with your life. I spent way too many years in academia, BS, MS, PhD. I am not currently using my PhD, it is practically irrelevant to my career. I thoroughly enjoyed the years I spent getting it, though. It was a struggle, but it instilled discipline and self-reliance in me. Do what you want, but don't lose sight of the fact that everyone in a PhD program has depression and massive self-doubts. The truth is, no place in 'industry' is any picnic, either. It's just a different set of issues and frustrations.
Graduate students have a much higher chance of being depressed than the general population. I highly recommend seeing a professional for the depression. The stress from grad school probably aggravates underlying issues. That said, finishing your PhD gives opportunities your friends in industry won't have without one. I wish I could say academia has less stress as you go on after grad school, but I would be wrong. But industrial work with a PhD is probably better than without one.
I had similar qualms about grad school and concerns about leaving as you do. I didn't want to lose the prestige of having a Ph.D. from the top school in the world for what I was studying. I dropped out. I'm very happy I left; I love the job I have now. Just be honest with yourself about why you want a Ph.D. (wanting more value as a person is not a good reason to stay).
Update: I saw a therapist about this. Turns out I'm bipolar and should probably take medication.
Based on the current state of the meta question, I'm going to vote to close this question again. I'm glad you yourself sought help from a qualified professional, and I sincerely hope things get better for you.
You have got admission from top university. But you can not loose wight !!! You underestimate your self very much.
There can be social, professional and emotional complications to quitting a PhD. For instance it can take a toll on your own self-image - if you have internalized a feeling of failure. It can make other people think you weren't good or smart or strong enough. And it may be a challenge to show that they are wrong without making the hard-working people who endured getting their PhD angry at you for not putting up with the same struggle - kind of questioning their own decision to endure. Those people may turn out to be in the other end interviewing you for job opportunities in the future.
I just stumbled on this question and now I'm intrigued (having been in a similar situation myself). @Jennifer, what did you end up doing?
However a "fat loser" is defined, it is Independent from having a phd degree.
I don't really want a degree.
There are many good reasons to get a PhD. Probably lots of people get say, bachelor's degrees and master's degrees, because they just want a degree, but the number of people who get a PhD just for the sake of getting a degree is (in my opinion) lower (for example, you might want to teach at the university level, see answers here). This is partly because a PhD is in some sense harder and more time-consuming that bachelor's/masters degree, but also that the degree isn't really the point of a PhD, see for example, this answer here by Pete L. Clark. To very briefly summarize, a PhD is a way to 'learn how to learn' and the stuff that you learn is a lot less important than the process of obtaining said knowledge. So your statement that you 'don't really want a degree' worries me a bit. I mean, the degree is not the point, and wanting a PhD is not at all the same as wanting a degree in general. Why did you apply to PhD programs? What was your motivation? What are your goals?
I just want to get married, and have
weekends and evenings off, and chill out and play board games, and
have nice conversations with friends, and have time to exercise and
eat good food, and partake in hobbies, and read books and play
computer games and watch movies and write a novel or two.
Don't we all! Anyway, you know, you can do these things as a graduate student. This is easier/harder depending on your exact circumstances/stage of graduate career, but certainly doable. I recently graduated (with my PhD in mathematics), but in my graduate department on Friday nights a lot of us hung out at the grad student bar and then repaired to the department lounge to play boardgames often to the early hours of the morning. Some of us came in to work over the weekends, but not all of us. Anyway, even while physically in the department, we would visit each other's offices and goof off fairly regularly. Okay, for us goofing off also often involved talking about mathematics, so it wasn't entirely a waste of our time. In any case, chilling out and nice conversations with friends occurred throughout the workweek as well. In the first few years of graduate school, I did a really good job of eating right and reading and such, since my time was a lot more structured, and I was able to plan relatively well. Much of my department were regulars at the gym, and quite a few of us were spotted running on the jogging track (some of us were/are pretty good at this stuff: for example, one of did quite well in the Houston marathon and a current student is doing some awesome Crossfit things these days). During major exams, or thesis-writing, or trying to get a paper out, these things got a bit harder of course. Aside from fitness, many of us did well with hobbies. Some of us were hardcore gamers – we even had an informal Magic the Gathering tournament periodically among the grad students; others enjoyed cooking – the rest of us enjoyed the food they would bring in to share; I enjoyed jigsaw puzzles – for a while we did jigsaws in my office, where others in the dept would drop by to puzzle for a bit when they needed a break from work; one of us was in a band, others in in/formal choirs and such; I and some others were involved to various extents in students organizations; and so on. Some number of us got married while in graduate school (not me personally), and one of the students in my cohort had a child as well. How did we do all this stuff? We had an advantage in being mathematics graduate students, since we are not tied to a lab as our counterparts in the rest of the STEM fields, and we had the advantage of being in a department with supportive faculty (who sometimes joined us for weekly boardgames and graduate student bar hangouts) and awesome fellow students.
The most important part of the above list though, were the awesome fellow students. I was in a small department, so it was natural for us all to hang out together, but perhaps you're in a large department where this is harder. Try to find some fun fellow students. They are possibly feeling much of the same things that you are, and if they are in your department they possibly share your interests. If you don't know too many people (if this is your first or second year in the program), organize something – a movie night at your home, a potluck, or a boardgame night. You might be surprised at how many of your fellow students also want to find someone to chill with.
The second most important thing is time management and prioritization. Figure out what's important to you, and then figure out a way to do it. You might have to be very disciplined and focused during the workday so you can run in the evenings, or play boardgames every weekend. But, if there's one thing I learned in grad school, it's that the number of hours you work is not as important as the quality of work you are getting done. You might end up spending less time overall on work, but if you're happier in general, you will probably do better work in the smaller amount of time. For example, I absolutely need some time every week that I can be at home by myself watching TV, probably with multiple cats napping on me. This might seem like wasted time to the outside observer, but really it's time that I need to recharge so that I can get actual work done at other times. That's just the way I work.
I like my research, and I like my advisor,
That's really great. I mean this sincerely. The opposite is sadly far too common.
but I feel like I work a
lot harder than my friends in industry, and I'll be putting my life on
hold for at least the next two years, while I'm finishing classes and
qualifying exams.
Well, to be frank, it is possible that you are working harder than your contemporaries and that you are putting your life on hold, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing.
Lots of people have lots of life-changing stuff happen in their mid-20s. For example, it seemed to me for a while that everyone that I knew in my age group was getting engaged, married, or having kids. I decided to count in 2013 and here is what I found
51 people I know got married i.e. about 1 wedding per week.
31 people I know got engaged i.e. about 2.5 engagements per month.
19 people I know had a baby i.e. about 1.5 babies per month.
(The count is with multiplicity, that is, if two people I know independently get married, I counted two weddings. There were no twins/multiple births that I'm aware of.) That's pretty intense!
These are all cool people and I wish them all the luck, but I don't want to be getting married and having kids just because all my friends seem to be (I mean, what an odd story to tell your grandkids someday).
Again, yes a PhD is hard work, hard work that doesn't ever get compensated for in any 'real' way. But the point of the PhD is not some eventual reward, the point of the PhD is really just the process of the PhD. Most likely I will never make the same amount of money as my friends with MBAs; they will probably have fancier job titles than me, and depending on where we are in the world, they might get more respect and power as well. But (forgive me) a PhD craves not these things. If you want prestige, power and such things, a PhD is not the right way to go at all.
If you're getting a PhD chances are that you have somewhat different priorities than the average person (which is fine, just as the average person's goals are also just fine). My friends who are younger than me have much more seeming grown-up lives true, but they are on a different track than me, and it doesn't really make sense to compare.
Frankly I don't feel like I can survive the next
year, and just the thought of staying here for the next few months
makes me depressed.
This is concerning. Please consider talking to someone directly. It's great that you asked AC.SE this question, but we are after all strangers on the internet. Talk to someone you know and trust. Your university probably has a counseling center. Talk to your advisor/mentor.
Graduate students are often discouraged and depressed (I was no exception, see here), for example, see this article. The 'usual' discouragement often passes, but it is not uncommon for us to have undiagnosed mental/emotional health issues. A trained professional is a much better person to talk to about these things, and I hope you will consider doing so.
The problem is if I wasn't a PhD student, I'd just be another fat ugly
loser with no social status, and nobody would love me or think I was
valuable.
This seems very unlikely to me. From just this question itself I see that you enjoy reading, and playing boardgames and video games, and enjoy good food and hanging out with friends; from this I see that you have hobbies and interests, and enjoy people. You asked this question, from which I gather that you can be introspective and that you are giving actual sincere thought to what you want to do with your life. This is all from this one question. The poster of this question seems like an interesting person to me.
Some of us are fat and some of us are less than conventionally attractive. Each of these things comes with barriers that one has to overcome. Conventionally attractive folks have their own set of hoops to jump through too. Yes, there do exist people in the world who think 'this person is overweight/stick-thin/different race than me/unattractive/the opposite gender/something else and therefore I do not value them', and those people can go f* themselves. There are enough of the rest of us too though.
I wouldn't be taken as seriously when it came time to apply
for jobs, and people would think I was stupid or at least not any
better than someone with a bachelor's degree.
That's kind of a judgmental statement about people with bachelor's degrees. Anyway, all of this depends on what kinds of jobs you're applying for. There are some jobs where having a PhD would actually hinder you (see here).
At least now I can apply
for internships and get interviews. And because I am a PhD student at
a top school, people assume I'm smart,
This is also a worrying statement. It's possible that I'm misinterpreting your statement, but in case I'm not, please look up imposter syndrome, it's distressingly common in academia; in short, this is a phenomenon where despite much evidence to the contrary, someone is convinced that they do not deserve the success that they have achieved (also see this question).
which also helps me find dates,
even though I'm obese, wear glasses, and dress poorly.
If you think that wearing glasses is hurting your ability to date, you could wear contacts. Similarly you could try to dress better (I recommend the show 'What Not to Wear'), or try to lose weight.
It puts me in a
different "league" and if I quit I'd have to go back to dating losers
who only want me because they can't find any other girlfriends.
The people I know that are single do not all look alike, or dress alike, or all have poor vision. There isn't much that's common to them than the fact that they are single. You seem to be saying that if there were two individuals who were identical in every way except that one is in a PhD program that the grad student version would get more dates – I simply do not buy this. I might be willing to accept that this would be a true of a man, but I absolutely do not buy it for women.
If you think someone is dating you just because they can't find another girlfriend, please dump them. Similarly, if you think someone is dating you just because you are a PhD student, please dump them just as fast.
Also if I quit my PhD, I would never be able to come back,
I know this guy who was a PhD student in my department (mathematics) in the 60s, didn't finish, left with his master's and was teaching in community college. He kept doing math on his own time though, and he came up with something cool, enough that a faculty member he had been in touch with got him back into our program and he eventually got his PhD in 2011. He is an inspiration. (See here for more such stories). So, yeah, I disagree with this statement.
and what if
my new job ended up sucking, or I couldn't even get a job?
Yeah, it's possible. But it's possible that you couldn't get a job with a PhD. Or that the earth is destroyed tomorrow to make way for an interstellar bypass. But worrying about this will not help us in any way.
I do like
my work, and I'm glad I get to do such interesting stuff, I just wish
there was less of it.
You know, reading your question, it really seems to me that it's not that there's too much work, but more that there isn't as much fun non-work in your life right now. I would really suggest trying to build a social circle among your fellow graduate students, not only for having people to do fun things with, but also for people in similar situations to talk to. I know that for me it was really helpful to talk to my fellow students about my doubts and concerns, because we were all in the same boat. It sounds like you are very concerned about dating, so for what it's worth, lots of graduate students I know dated other graduate students.
While on the subject of dating, please consider whether you're giving too much thought to it. It is nice to have a partner that you can talk to, who will support you and care for you when needed, but finding such a person doesn't need to be take over your life. I strongly believe that successful relationships are composed of people that are also happy on their own and in their own skins. Perhaps it might be worthwhile to work on your own happiness for a while before seeking out a partner, particular since when having self-esteem concerns it is very easy to find oneself in abusive and/or unbalanced relationships.
I would also recommend that you give some serious thought to what you value most in your life and what you want to do with it. What are you looking for? What is your dream job? It will probably help to talk to someone directly about such things too. You said that you like your advisor, so they might be a good person to talk to. Most of us that have been through graduate school have dealt with these things to some extent.
Depending on this self-examination, you might decide that a PhD is not for you. This is fine. Or, you might decide to stick with it. This is fine too. With the caveat that you're doing it for the right reasons. Some of us hang on to PhD programs with this notion that 'quitting is bad'. That's a poor reason to stay in a PhD program. On the other hand, if you truly enjoy doing what you're doing, and you want to keep doing it for the rest of your life, that's a great reason to hang in there. If you want to stay in the program so that some hypothetical someone might deign to date you, that's a poor reason to stick around, and also such a person clearly isn't worth your time.
Getting a PhD can be hard work, probably harder work than your contemporaries are doing in industry (I speculate, I've never had a job in the real world). It is rewarding in its own way though, to some people. This isn't a value judgment. Math makes me feel like a complete idiot almost all the time. The remaining 0.01% of the time is pretty good though, and that's enough for me. Mostly this makes me a masochist I think, but that works for me. But it makes perfect sense for it to not work for everyone, and honestly these other folks are probably better adjusted anyway.
Lastly, your last paragraph makes me think that you're worried that you're making irreversible decisions. You're not. If you choose to leave your PhD program now, you can still come back to get a PhD (probably somewhere else). If you started your PhD with the goal of being in the academic world, but decide later that you want to be in industry, you can still do that. If you want to start back from scratch and work in sociology (say), you can still do that too. These things might require some work, but they are all still possible.
Best of luck in your decision-making! I'd like to reiterate, pretty much all of us wanted to quit at some point, and pretty much all of us wondered why we were doing it. You're not alone!
Fantastic answer for anyone doing a PhD.
This is the longest SE answer I dared read to the end. Good Job.
Another example: A friend of mine started Ph.d. in mathematics, left after 2 years with a Masters degree, worked as a programmer in the same city for a couple years, decided he wanted to come back, and is now starting up right where he left off. He got married in the mean time!
@Aru (I speculate, I've never had a job in the real world) You are not alone!
Just wanted to say I thought Aru is a nice person who super-did-not-judge someone clearly having a (few) bad day(s)
I cannot answer your question right now. So, take this as a friendly advice from someone on the Internet. It may be wrong, of course.
I think you should not quit your PhD. Not right now.
There will be time for that, maybe.
But a lot of stuff is going on, and from your message your work is the only thing you seem to like and that gives you self esteem.
So, two thoughts.
Growth mindset. Please don't be fixated that you are like you are and there is no solution to that. You can do many things. You are smart, you can lose weight, you can dress better. These are not easy things, but you can accomplish them. So, maybe, think of eating healthier. Of being a little more careful on your health and body. This alone will make you feel better.
Seek counsel. There are people, more competent and talented than a stranger on the Internet, that can help you. Find one, it's the best way you can spend your money. Counselors are great, they can help you find solutions you thought they were impossible. I used them many times, I never regret it. There's no shame in that, remember.
In my very humble opinion, you need to clear your mind about what are the burdens in your life, then decide if you want to quit your PhD. It may be the problem, it may be not. Good luck Jennifer!
+1 to all this, but especially the suggestion of a counsellor; I found that extremely helpful during my PhD. In case (as I did) you find the practicalities of finding a counsellor at all intimidating, it’s worth knowing that many universities have a counselling service or similar as part of their health services, and can offer counsellors extremely experienced in these sort of situations. Again, good luck with getting through this, and working out what you really want!
I'd like to repeat my comment directed at the OP - You've already accomplished something great if you have a Graduate degree and are a full year into a PH. D. If you're not hearing that from the people around you they are wrong.
"I like my research, and I like my advisor"
You might be surprised how rare these things can be, there's a lot of people in industry who have neither of those things and pretty much feel the same way while also being bored out of their minds 99% of the time.
I can understand your feelings about social status but you're probably overestimating their social effects vs the social effects of your own perception of yourself. You got into a PHD program in a top school, you say people "assume" you're smart as if you don't believe that yourself but it's extremely unlikely you got where you are by being anything other than actually very smart. When you're surrounded by very bright people all the time it's easy to underestimate yourself.
As for your perception of yourself: I've felt the same way and in your shoes I would have regarded any kind reassurance from nice internet people as a simple phatic gesture since it's just what nice people do when someone is feeling crap about themselves but suffice to say, it's important to realise that your own judgement of yourself is probably not 100% reliable and is likely heavily skewed towards the negative.
Personally I found the best way to deal with feeling crap about myself was to pick the things I felt most negative about myself and to try to do at least one thing to improve each each week, feeling like you're not going anywhere can make it worse.
You sound burned out and for that the same generic advice probably applies:
It really really sounds like you may need to sort out your work-life balance a little, better to work 40-50 hours a week and be able to finish than work 80 and burn out half way. If it's crushing you to not be able to write that novel and leaving you unable to do the PHD it's essential that you get time to write the novel. If you feel the PHD is damaging your health then it's essential that you get the time to tend to your own health.
(I feel this is borderline out-of-scope, but I decide to answer this anyway half-expecting the question to be closed soon)
I don't really want a degree. I just want to get married, and have weekends and evenings off, and chill out and play board games, and have nice conversations with friends, and have time to exercise and eat good food, and partake in hobbies, and read books and play computer games and watch movies and write a novel or two. Stuff I used to do as a kid, that I can't do as a grad student.
If that's actually how you feel, this is strike 1 that you should almost certainly quit. However, make sure that you are not falling prey to the "the grass is always greener on the other side" effect. There are plenty of things you also can't do working in industry because you'll have no time. (writing a novel might be one of those things)
I like my research, and I like my advisor, but I feel like I work a lot harder than my friends in industry, and I'll be putting my life on hold for at least the next two years, while I'm finishing classes and qualifying exams. Frankly I don't feel like I can survive the next year, and just the thought of staying here for the next few months makes me depressed.
If you feel you can't survive next year, this is strike 2 that you should get out. But again, make sure that you have make correct assumptions about life on the other side. Many people in industry definitely work at least as hard as I do in academia.
The problem is if I wasn't a PhD student, I'd just be another fat ugly loser with no social status, and nobody would love me or think I was valuable. I wouldn't be taken as seriously when it came time to apply for jobs, and people would think I was stupid or at least not any better than someone with a bachelor's degree. At least now I can apply for internships and get interviews. And because I am a PhD student at a top school, people assume I'm smart, which also helps me find dates, even though I'm obese, wear glasses, and dress poorly. It puts me in a different "league" and if I quit I'd have to go back to dating losers who only want me because they can't find any other girlfriends.
That's a really concerning paragraph, which makes me feel that you maybe want to seek out professional help. You seem to have a habit of putting yourself and others into buckets of "valuable" and "less valuable" people, based on quite superficial distinctions (looks, whether somebody has an advanced degree or not, losers, etc.). As a sidenote, I am close to 100% sure that you don't get more or better dates because you are a grad student, but (if at all) because you feel better about yourself as a grad student. This is strike 1 that you maybe should indeed stay in grad school.
Also if I quit my PhD, I would never be able to come back, and what if my new job ended up sucking, or I couldn't even get a job? I do like my work, and I'm glad I get to do such interesting stuff, I just wish there was less of it.
Is there no way to turn down your workload a bit without giving up grad student status entirely?
I think that if you don't feel like that sometimes in your PhD, it means that you are not doing it "properly". Its a hard thing, specially personally talking. It gets into your life and makes you feel like you can't anymore sometimes.
But cheer up, if it makes it better, everybody doing a PhD feels like that sometimes; it's part of the job. In my university there are several courses every year just for grad students to help us cope with this kind of feelings.
Actually, not long ago a guy came to our uni. He wrote a book (and some Nature papers) called "the 7 secrets of successful PhD students" (http://www.ithinkwell.com.au/). I recommend you look at it. There are 2 main ideas that may help you deal with it, and deal with it happily:
1.- There is more chance you fail kindergarten than grad school. If you make it to the end, you'll pass. So the problem here will be perseverance, if you get there, you'll make it.
2.- Treat it like a job! Go to uni, work (and work hard), but when you get out, its not PhD time anymore. Play video-games, read, go out for a beer (or 7!) and write that novel. Define a strict line between PhD time and free time.
My advice as PhD student. You can. Of course you can. You are not a loser. You definitely can deal with the PhD and the workload. If you are unhappy with your life, change it, and get out of the PhD, but if you like it and it's just workload pressure that makes you feel bad, keep with it, because it's probably going to be worth it.
I do not know the law of your country but, e.g., in Italy is possible suspend the PhD. Ask freely to your supervisor, if he/she is a person, as I hope, that not only observes the professional side of things, but also (and especially) the human, you have chance to find an agreement.
Try to explain, to your supervisor, your situation with this words. And remember: your life is the only and too much important to hear the thoughts of the people who do not believe in you.
Even in the USA, it is possible to take a medical or personal leave of absence. It's best to do this while still in grad school (preferably in the early years) because these leaves become more difficult when you are in the early years of tenure-track.
I want to just address one aspect of the question, which is:
I just want to get married, and have weekends and evenings off, and chill out and play board games, and have nice conversations with friends, and have time to exercise and eat good food, and partake in hobbies, and read books and play computer games and watch movies and write a novel or two. Stuff I used to do as a kid, that I can't do as a grad student.
I did everything on this list on a regular basis while a PhD student in a top-level program. (Except for the married bit, I only did that once.) This is kind of piling on at this point, but if you are in a program in which you need to put in 80-hour work weeks to be successful, you are in the wrong program. There's always going to be other people who work insanely hard, but unless your entire life revolves around an all-encompassing need to be the best scientist of them all, you shouldn't. Work hard during the day, and at the end of it go home and have a life.
Edit: Misread this the first time. I read tons of novels but wrote zero.
If you are miserable, but stick to your situation, seeing other possibilities as even worse, you may be suffering Stockholm syndrome.
Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.
Moreover, one of he key dangers of PhD in academic career in general is that we tie our academic success (grant, paper, fellowship) with sense of own value. Many people are afraid to "give up" (as it hits their sense of identity) even if they would be happy to pursue other options.
See:
Rebecca Schuman, Why Is Academic Rejection So Very Crushing?
Losing out on a job, tenure, or publication can be a unique agony. The cure is not success, it’s compassion.
I cannot recommend on weigthing your choices (on the one hand you like your research, on the other - you would like to have more social life). But don't tie your sense of value to your academic status.
All grad students are miserable, though. The pay is low, the hours are long, there is a lot of pressure. You do it because it is an investment in you. It is like climbing Everest--if you are unable to continue, your chances of survival go way, way down. Nobody is going to rescue your graduate career except you. Syndromes and psychological hooey aside, either determine you are going to do it, whatever the cost, or leave.
It could also be the emotional fallacy of sunken costs or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment
Take advantage of the university facilities to improve your physical condition. That will help with the perception of pressure, improve your social options and self-esteem, and relieve some stress. I started martial arts training 26 years ago with a university club because I needed exercise and the club fit my schedule. Throughout my post-academic career, the practice of martial arts has remained a near-constant.
A PhD is a three-year program. It is transient, finish it. (Corrected per comments below)
The industry is not necessarily less stressful. My careers outside of academia, in more than one industry, have always involved a certain amount of 24x7 work. While academia is not without its stress, the stress of not getting published is not in the same league as the stress of not getting the 2 million dollar bid that your company needs to survive the next six months.
PhD over here is 4 or 5 years of work after completed MSc. Not uncommon with people ending up becoming full professors who have taken 7 or even more years or so completing their PhD.
Even if it were three years, three years when you're 22 is different than three years when you're 50. Besides opportunity cost, people, like your potential employers, place greater emphasis on what you do with those three years earlier than later.
There is already a lot of good advice here, so I'll keep mine short.
It's hard to get into a PhD program, and it's easy to get out. You can quit any time, but it will be very hard to get back into a program if you change your mind later.
It sounds as though you like the work but you don't like the workload.
Instead of just quitting, why not try dialing down your commitment just a little bit first?
You mentioned not being happy about your weight (I assume you are saying you are not happy, and not that you just think other people are not happy). Why don't you set aside some time each day, a half hour or so, and go for a walk? It will improve your health, might improve your self-image, and it will give you time to think. Think of it like a "trial quitting."
During that time, think about what you really want out of life, and whether a PhD will help you get there. Maybe you will decide that it won't, but then you will be making the decision from a calm, thoughtful place, and not from a feeling of being trapped.
If you think you might want the PhD, but that the effort to get it is too much, you should know that every PhD student goes through this (speaking for myself and the people I went to grad school with).
This might be hard to understand while you are in the middle of it, but the truth is that we tend to make things seem more important than they really are. We have high expectations for ourselves, and in a PhD program, it is easy to feed into other's expectations as well and make ourselves miserable. If you can reach an understanding that it is all just expectations - none of it is real - it might help you.
My other advice (after you take daily thinking walks for a week or so) is to talk to your advisor before you quit. He or she might have some ideas of ways that you can make the workload more manageable. Your advisor probably went through a similar crisis, and probably helped many of their former students go through them as well, and so they will probably also be able to give you some advice.
You can quit if you like. Life isn't that bad on the "outside" (I quit my first degree), and if you're good at what you do you can get a job. You'll get much better opportunities if you finish your PhD though. You can get married and have kids and watch movies either way, the question is what will you be doing with your life when you're not doing these things.
It seems to me that you are going through an emotional low period, and you may have self-esteem issues which make it difficult for you to overcome them. Which is quite common. Most PhD students think of quitting at some point. You can talk to your counseling service, they are equipped to help you. (Admittedly sometimes they can be useless, but it's worth having a chat.)
Also if you're upset about being fat, you can get in shape. (It has nothing to do with whether or not you quit your PhD.) I used to be a fat college dropout working in IT with no friends and no girlfriends.. but you make gradual changes and improve. It takes time but it's worth it. Momentum is key, you need to make gradual changes to your lifestyle and as you move forward it becomes easier as you become more motivated. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTuElM6T50w
I'm glad that I finished my PhD.
Why?
Because I had very similar thoughts as you describe them, and (after very hard struggles) managed to grow as a person.
I now have a clearer view on my priorities, and I know where I don't compromise. I make the rules for my life now.
Currently I work as a postdoc and ultimately I determine my workload.
I will not accept any workload that undermines my life quality.
I now communicate this clearly and politely to the head of my lab.
On the other hand, I will spend a considerable amount of time to furthering my career, and will pursue the goals that I chose.
I now communicate this clearly and in a friendly manner to my partner.
The point is that these are all subjective decisions, that know one can answer for me. Having been on the fringe of quitting the program, and going through a process of evaluating all my life decisions, has brought me into a very fortunate position, I find in retrospect.
That's not an answer.
Maybe you are right Cape Code - however, if the question is "should I quit my PhD program" no-one can answer this for another person. However, I came out strengthened from a similar situation, and maybe this perspective is valuable to others.
There are quite a few very nice answers, so I'll just make a minor point.
When I was in grad school, I also sometimes felt I'd fallen into this hole in which I have to work very hard and that if I fail and quit I'd be a disappointment and a failure. It's not the same as in your case but, well, similar. I also considered quitting, and was stuck with my research for long(ish) periods of time.
The reason I'm telling you this is not to moralize and say "Ah, but I managed to pull through and so can you, don't worry be happy". The point is that even after getting the PhD, occasionally in my life I've felt the same way, i.e. I was worried I'm going to end up as a big (non-fat) loser with a PhD, and that people mighty pity me for having let my academic training go to waste and not amounting to anything.
Which is to say, what you're feeling is not really about quitting or keeping up the Ph.D. at all.
And of course: You're not a big fat loser damn it. I could find objective justification to this in your own question, but you really should think about positive things you've done and even if it's not convincing you emotionally, start by making a mental argument for your not really being a loser. Maybe just someone with supposedly-simplistic/childish desires? Probably even not that. Also, read about Impostor Syndrome.
Before making any decisions, it may be worthwhile to see if you can stay with your PhD, doing research with the supervisor you like, while fixing some of the things that cause you problems. You say you do not have any weekends or evenings. This is something i recognize but it may not be all due to your PhD program.
This happens when the work is (or feels) important, ambitions are high, and both your own and your supervisor's expectations are unrealistic. I've had the same problem at two separate jobs. My friend had it worse: he had a job for 3 days a week while in reality he worked full time and quite a few times through the night.
A tell-tale sign is when work and leisure mix in a bad way, like working (because it needs to be done by Monday) while watching television (because you are allowed to take micro-breaks, it's the weekend!).
This can be fixed. Your university maybe has courses and/or counselors to help you with time management. If your workload is insane, it helps to get a clear picture of it, so that your supervisor also understands that a more realistic plan needs to be made. The people i know who are efficient and good at work/life balance: 1) spend time planning their work, that is, prioritizing tasks and writing down how much time each will take 2) stick to their plans 3) communicate plans and any changes in plans with their supervisors, co-workers and/or bosses.
My friend now has a far more responsible job, works full time and he even has the evenings off.
Whenever you feel down, compare what you have achieved in a certain period.
E.g. Were you happy before starting PHD, was your life as beautiful as you think it would be after quitting PHD.
You quit PHD or not, one thing you should always remember,
Always be grateful, never compare yourself with people better then you, but think about people who are in worse situation then yours.
The problem is if I wasn't a PhD student, I'd just be another fat ugly loser with no social status, and nobody would love me or think I was valuable.
That's concerning in two ways.
Proving you're cool to other people is often listed as a bad motivation for doing a PhD — it's not strong enough. Good motivations are closer to "you care about your research" --- and you do! And that's so great — so few people have that!
Thinking of yourself as a loser is a negative attitude which is (to some extent) a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In fact, a PhD might be helpful to prove to yourself your worth. OTOH, you "shouldn't" need to get a PhD to prove to yourself you're worth. I would indeed seek psychological counsel. If you have a good advisor you might also talk to him/her - lots of PhD student have motivation crises.
There are lots of reasons for low self-worth. One which also increases your workload and is probably common among PhD students is perfectionism --- "maintaining standards that are unrealistically high and impossible to attain".
You might regret quitting, especially if that's just due to depression or something else.
Generally, if you enter a PhD, getting a PhD or not is not a question of ability/intelligence, but of motivation - it's not a battle against your topic, but against yourself.
And because I am a PhD student at a top school, people assume I'm smart
What do you think? It sounds like you don't agree (you say "assume"). But you're at a top school, so you might be a victim of impostor syndrome (thinking others overestimated you). I think it's endemic between PhD students.
Also, BTW, if you're working a lot it's probably also because you're at a top school, and research is a career profession — a bit like running for an election, being a top manager, etc. None of those jobs are easy or would take less effort.
For me, realizing this was very scary, since I've avoided such jobs on purpose - but I decided to stick with it, and right now I'm happy I did.
Is your ultimate life goal to be a tenured professor working 60-80 hours a week? If no, then you don't really gain anything by staying in your program.
A lot of the answers provided imply that staying in your program should be the default option. I don't really know if that's how you should approach your decision because it really depends on whether you're committed to the academic life.
The fact that you were smart enough to both get into and do well in a top-tier PhD program and quit when you realized that path wasn't for you will signal to interviewers that you're intelligent and great at cost-benefit analyses, so I wouldn't worry about no longer being able to get interviews if I were you. All else being equal, I would hire someone who quit a PhD program over someone who stuck it out.
To add to the excellent advice posted by many others,
I just want to focus on one particular aspect of your post:
The problem is if I wasn't a PhD student, I'd just be another fat ugly loser with no social status, and nobody would love me or think I was valuable...
I'm obese, wear glasses, and dress poorly.
Question: Why do you feel like a fat loser?
I have felt like a loser at various points in my life.
Mostly, I feel this way when things are going badly
and I feel that they are out of my control.
It seems to me that you feel that
many things in your life are out of your control.
In particular, your obesity seems to be
an extremely discouraging situation.
How do you deal with things that seem out of control?
I found the following so-called Serenity Prayer helpful:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
You have to accept the things that you can't change—such as
who you are today,
the situation you are in—yet
work towards making it better.
In addition,
I would strongly encourage you to find someone whom you can trust
to talk regularly with;
this can be a friend / mentor / religious leader / counselor.
When I was a PhD student and dealing with depression,
it was extremely helpful to see a counselor about once a week.
This was a perk provided free-of-charge
by the student health services at my university,
and was conveniently located a short walk from my office.
Finally, with regard to the issue of obesity,
while I am not an expert in that area,
I empathize with you because
this can be a very frustrating issue for many.
It is just so hard and discouraging.
Worse still, there are so many different viewpoints
about what is the right types of foods to eat,
from veganism to paleo to really crazy ones like the hCG diet (don't try it!).
Personally, I feel that the book
Why We Get Fat
by Gary Taubes
seems to me to be the right scientifically based explanation
as to why many people today in the US are fat.
I would suggest that you do your own research
to find out what is causing you to be obese,
so that you can figure out what you want to do about it.
By doing this, you won't feel like you are a victim to your circumstances
but that you are able to overcome them.
If you can become a healthier person,
this would improve your self-image
and your general sense of well-being.
Good luck! Hang in there!
I would like to point out that 99% of the people out there don't give a darn about your being in a PhD program versus "only" having a bachelor's degree. The only people who care would be employer's looking for a PhD person to fill a specific position and snooty people like you are projecting yourself to be, by thinking that being in a PhD program actually gets people to like you more. At best, being in the PhD program might give you more confidence which is what attracts people.
I will also point out that while you may believe you "work a lot harder than your friends in industry", I can guarantee you that you are almost certainly wrong in that regard. New grads tend to have to work their butts off to get noticed in their early years. They are making money, so they do have more opportunities to have fun experiences than a college student just scraping by, but that doesn't mean they have more time or are under less stress. But I suppose that also depends on the type of job and degree your friends have and their own ambition levels.
With regards to: "I just want to...." and not having time to do it has nothing to do with being in a PhD program. It is what happens when people transition from being a child with no responsibilities to anyone but their self to actually growing up and being a responsible adult where they not only have obligations to their self but to others also. If you think being in a PhD program leaves you no time for the fun stuff you like to do, wait until you get married and have children. You will long for all the free time you have right now in your PhD program.
Finally, part of the reason people prefer to employ people with college degrees is not just because of the education. Many jobs that require a degree can be adequately learned and performed by someone without a degree. One of the key reasons that employers like people with a college degree is that it shows that the person is not a quitter. Almost everyone goes through a phase or phases in their college career where they just want to chuck it all in and quit. Many people do just that. However, those who persevere and finish their degree demonstrates a high degree of willpower and the ability to do what needs to be done whether they want to do it or not. Employers want that kind of person because there will be many times on the job where people will want to chuck it all in and quit. Employers want people who will persevere, not those who quit.
I am of the opinion, you made a commitment to get a PhD. So get the PhD. Don't quit. Quitting easily becomes habit forming. I also think you are falling prey to the grass is greener syndrome.
Apparently I need 125 reputation to vote this down for being a possible danger to mental health… The "you made a commitment so just do it" mentality has its place, but is also potentially dangerous.
I tried to down vote for you Ricky but it wouldn't let me:( I am quite surprised that this post is in the negative, since it is the most truthful and useful response out of all of them. The OP's perception of "everyone else" is so far from the truth and nobody was pointing that out to her until this post. As for your thinking this is "potentially dangerous", did you miss the "this is reality tone" of the first several paragraphs and then the last paragraph starts with "I am of the opinion". Certainly not telling the OP what to do or even saying this is the right choice. That was on purpose.
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108879 | On the market for TT faculty positions, is having my credit frozen a problem with University's background check?
Like many Americans, after last year's Equifax fiasco, I froze my credit with the big three. I'm on the job market, and at least all the Universities in the US do (or will do) a background check on the tenure-track faculty candidates (not sure if schools from other countries do so for international applicants).
So far I was able to get invites for interviews + campus visits, but I'm not sure at what stage the schools will do a background check.
So my questions are:
does the fact that I have my credit frozen impact my chances as a candidate in faculty positions in the US?
what about in other countries, such as Canada, UK, and other EU countries?
If so, what should I do? just lift the freeze now? or will the school contact me if they can't get access and ask me to lift the freeze for them? or will they just reject me outright?
I've never had trouble with the law etc, or even my credits. The only thing is I have been a victim of at least one of these security data breaches in the past couple years, the worst probably being the Equifax fiasco, which prompted me to place the freezes.
Any advice or suggestion appreciated! Thanks!
The situation of freezing your own credit rating(s) yourself, versus having them frozen by other parties, makes all the difference in the world...
I'm on the job market, and at least all the Universities in the US do (or will do) a background check on the tenure-track faculty candidates (not sure if schools from other countries do so for international applicants).
I’m not sure where you heard this, but if by “background check” you mean specifically something that includes a credit check (as your question seems to suggest), I’m pretty sure the statement is false. At my large university where until recently I was a department chair and was closely involved with hiring of several new faculty members, I am not aware of any practice of running credit checks on anyone; if it happened at all, it would be part of the paperwork an incoming faculty member has to go through after already receiving and accepting an offer, so would have no influence on any decision making at the department side. In other words, at least at my university this would not be a concern in connection with your tenure-track application.
Aside from my personal experience, the other reason why I’m pretty sure your assertion is false is that in many US states it is illegal to base hiring decisions on job candidates’ credit history. Thus in those states no sane hiring process would attempt to obtain such information prior to making an offer, and I can’t think of a good reason why it would make sense to obtain it after making an offer either.
Good luck with your job search.
Thanks! this makes me feel much better. It just occurred to me to ask because a family member, upon knowing that I'm on the job market, asked me this very same question. Your answer with the above comments by others assure me that if any check is going to happen, it will happen after they make the decision.
Background checks would be done very close to the time the offer goes out—there's no way a school is going to perform five hundred background checks for a single faculty search.
You're allowed to request a temporary lifting of the freeze for either a specific period of time or a specific party. So you could authorize the credit agencies to lift the freeze for schools at which you're offered an interview. The latter might be the easiest option.
Also note that background checks are performed by the Human Resources department of the administration, not by the faculty committees, who as far as I know never see the results of such checks, because they are not entitled to do so. However, this also means that you're not going to be denied an interview just because the HR department wasn't able to perform the background check. If it actually were an issue in the interview process, the department would contact you and say "we'd like to have an interview, please give us access for a credit check" rather than "forget it, it's not worth the trouble."
thanks for quick reply, is this only for US schools? I'm guessing uni from other countries don't do credit check? (they will obviously still do criminal check)?
I'm pretty sure schools in other countries aren't going to do a US credit check. Maybe include Canadian schools, just to be safe. But in other parts of the world you won't need to worry about this.
@PandaPants I don't know why US universities should be interested in your credits, but I doubt a European university would be interested in checking your US credit. FWIW, I'm almost sure that my university doesn't do a credit check (I even suspect that it could be against the law such a check).
@MassimoOrtolano I know its weird, but as I understand it, it's standard procedure in the US when you apply to jobs (any job, not just in academia), in fact, in the US, in order to do anything important a credit check is almost always involved....
I believe that doing a background check usually requires the applicant to provide their past addresses (age 18 on) so you will know when the check is occurring.
@Dawn thanks for your comment, could you elaborate a bit more? do you mean they will tell you beforehand that they are going to perform a check? my main concern is that the checks are being done without me knowing and when they couldn't get access, they just deny my entire application.
@PandaPants: See my edit above. This should not be something you have to worry about. If they want you, they're not going to let a credit check stop things.
@aeismail thanks! my concern is not so much with getting interviewed or not, I was just wondering what happens afterwards, like when they are ready to make an offer, I'm guessing at that point they probably will want to make sure the candidate is not a criminal on the lam etc. and I was just concerned that credit check in any way influences the decision of making the offer. But I think you are right, if they've already met the candidate + like them and are ready to make an offer, they probably won't let credit check stop them, instead they might reach out and ask for a freeze release. I hope!
When I was hired, they did a background check. It was after the offer but before the contract. It involved me filling out a rather annoying informational form where I had to list all addresses from age 18 on.
These checks are purely for purposes of catching things like criminal convictions in your past. No one cares about your credit history. My recollection is that when background checks have happened to me, it's been after the offer was accepted, so I knew it was happening. It's not really possible to rule out something as impossible, but it would be probably the weirdest hiring issues I had ever heard of for a offer to get scuttled by a credit report. If it makes you feel better, just unfreeze your credit report, but I would rate it considerably below typos in your cover letter as an issue likely to cost you a job.
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30573 | How can I replicate a search strategy described in a publication?
I found a Cochrane Review from 2012. I would like to perform a new search with the same search strategy to see if there are an updates in this topic.
The search strategy is given at the bottom of this post.
Now my questions: Where can I input those keywords? Did they perform every line a whole new search, or are those keywords linked together via one search.
I have access to OVID and read/watched some tutorials but they didn't show me something similar.
The search strategy:
Appendix 1. MEDLINE via OVID search strategy
Molar, Third/
(“third molar*” or “wisdom tooth” or “wisdom teeth” or “3rd molar*” or third-molar).mp.
T ooth, impacted/
((tooth adj5 impact$) or (teeth adj5 impact$)).mp.
T ooth, unerupted/
unerupt$.mp.
1 or 2
3 or 4 or 5 or 6
7 and 8
T ooth extraction/
(extract$ or remov$).mp.
asymptom$.mp.
(symptomless or symptom-free or “symptom free”).mp.
(trouble-free or “trouble free”).mp.
or/10-14
9 and 15
The above subject search was linked to the Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy (CHSSS) for identifying randomised
trials in MEDLINE: sensitivity maximising version (2008 revision) as
referenced in Chapter 6.4.11.1 and detailed in box 6.4.c of the
Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions version
5.1.0 (updated March 2011).
randomized controlled trial.pt.
controlled clinical trial.pt.
randomized.ab.
placebo.ab.
drug therapy.fs.
randomly.ab.
trial.ab.
groups.ab.
or/1-8
exp animals/ not humans.sh.
9 not 10
You should probably take a look at the Cochrane Handbook. What you have are two searches. The first is a search for papers about 3rd molars. The 2nd is the CHSSS and is used to find the RCT studies from the search of the 3rd molars. You need to enter the search items exactly as the history shows since some steps refer to previous steps (e.g., step 9 of the first search refers to steps 7 and 8).
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44920 | What to do if a discussion letter/paper is rejected because it's not an original research article?
A while ago, we read a paper published in a quite credible journal (impact factor around 3), which we believed had a few very basic but significant mistakes in the methods and final results.
The journal's guide for authors mentioned the possibility to submit a discussion ("Discussion: A short commentary (1000-3000 words) discussing an article previously published in XXX."). Together with a colleague, we decided to write a discussion manuscript highlighting the problems of the paper in two pages. We did it twice, actually—one time very polite, and a second time more to the point.
Although each time all of the reviewers agreed on the highlighted problems and one reviewer even recommended publication "as is," both times it was ultimately rejected, because the editor focused on a comment of the reviewer like: "was not general enough", or because "it is more a discussion, and not an original research contribution." (But this was actually exactly what was intended, and fully in agreement with the objective for this type of manuscript in the guide for authors.)
It is OK if a manuscript is rejected (I am a PhD student because I like to learn new things), but it should be rejected for the right reasons. The arguments against the article did not seem to consider properly the submission type, "discussion" instead of "original research article." Furthermore we have the feeling that the editor could be embarrassed to publish a discussion highlighting a paper with such errors that could be recognized by frankly any above-average high school student. (although the paper has been cited quite a number of times, apparently without anyone noticing the mistakes).
It is probably not worth the effort, but it became a matter of principle.
We contacted a few other people (not our friends) in the field for a quick opinion about the manuscript, and they confirmed our impression that it has probably been rejected out of embarrassment. This seems quite a disgrace, but what can one do about it?
Should we publish the manuscript together with the reviewer comments on our group website? Submit the manuscript to a competing journal? Would it make sense to contact the publisher (Elsevier) to complain about the editor in chief?
I should also mention that the writers of the original article are, according to their group website, co-sponsored by a big company which gains obvious advantages from their erroneous findings. Is there maybe an ombudsman to which we could go to?
Have you written to the EIC directly describing the type of article you were trying to submit? What did you cover letter say?
Perhaps you can publish it with another journal (published by a different publisher).
@BillBarth The cover letter was very clear, quoting from the guide for authors about this specific manuscript type, to avoid any misunderstandings. Do the reviewers also receive the cover letter? When we read the review, it seems really like most reviewers and the editor review it as a usual paper (then the commends make sense) ? And not as a discussion (for which the commends don't make sense) I know they are busy people, Is it common for them to skip the cover letter?
@rmounce We are thinking about that, but usually these type of discussion papers/letters are only published in the same journal as the article they are commenting on. I haven't seen any exception on that. But if there are no alternatives it might be worth a try.
Have you been in contact with an editor, or with the editor in chief? If the first, you could escalate to the editor in chief. If not, there is likely little you can do, beyond fleshing your paper out to become a full research article (pointing out the errors in the original article), then submitting it either to this journal, or to a different one. Let the EIC deal with people laughing at his journal.
What are you trying to achieve? If the "paper has such errors that could be recognized by frankly any above average high-school student" how this simplistic 2-page paper is going to help your career? To prove you are an above average high school student (you have a Bsc that proves that anyway). To prove you were right and the other authors were wrong? Why don't you invest your time on writing something original than waste your time on proving a point.
@Alexandros, if there is a paper out there with substantial errors, regardless of OP's characterization, wouldn't you like to see it corrected?
@Sarmes, I don't know if reviewers get the cover letter. Usually not in my review experience. If your cover letter explained that you were writing a discussion, then the editor should not have followed that negative review that was seeking novelty. I would email or call your editor and escalate to the EIC if you've already spoken with the editor.
@BillBarth. Of course. If the OP really wants to just correct the paper, even a blog entry would suffice for that. Making a publication out of this, is not very possible.
@Alexandros, if the journal claims to accept these discussion articles, then it should follow its own guidelines. Also, his blog post is not archival, and a discussion article would be. If it's bad enough, it may lead to a correction or retraction.
@BillBarth the communication was already with the EIC. I didn't really think about the possibility that the reviewer did not get the cover letter. In that case it would all make more sense. Because without cover letter its not clear what kind of manuscript is submitted, and i think these discussion letters/papers are really rare, so there is a big chance the reviewers were not clearly aware of the manuscript type. At the other hand the EIC should have know, but maybe he just read trough the review commends without reading the cover letter again. Or maybe he just didn't like the discussion.
@Alexandros, i get your point, in retrospect i should maybe not have wasted my time. On the other hand its a quite big journal, because of the mistakes the method described the paper is useless and dangerous, and the main results are almost opposite of what it should be. Once found the mistakes are embarrassingly simple but apparently not so easy to find, since people keep citing the article. What it will bring me for my career?... probably nothing. But now it became a bit about the principle that its just not fair, not to correct a paper with mistakes (principles can give a headage i know).
I will write the editor, hoping that it is a misunderstanding but because i suspect that he does not really like the discussion, i was thinking about putting some editors in cc to generate some wind, such that its gets a fair look. If they have a good argument that takes in to consideration the manuscript type i would give up, but until then...
Maybe in my case its a misunderstanding, but in a general case that one has a problem with the EIC there seems no opportiunaty for appeal. He can just ignore his email, I am somewhat disappointing that these things can happen.
Have you tried contacting the authors to hear what they have to say? I would like to hear from someone who found an error in my model. Some journals actually contact the original authors whenever there is a comment on one of their papers (see e.g. Physical Review).
The first step to take, if not already done, is to answer back to the Editor in Chief, politely explaining that the status of your submission (discussion letter) seems to have been overlooked. Stress again, politely, that the policy of the journal allow explicitly such letters, and that it would be better for everyone that they either enforce this policy (and not reject letters on the ground that they are not full research articles) or remove it from the guide to the authors. Given the answer you get, there are several possible follow-ups if your letter keeps being rejected.
You can contact the authors and see what they have to say. In fact, it would be something to be done before any of the propositions below. They may acknowledge the mistake and publish an erratum by themselves, acknowledging you, and this would make things right in the best way. If they do not answer in a satisfactory way, at least they will have been warned and your case will be stronger.
You can appeal to an ethics committee on your field, if one exists, disclosing both your letter explaining the error, the written exchanges you have had with the journal, and the conflict of interest you spotted for the authors of the original paper. Do not make assumption, just present the fact and let the committee judge for itself.
You can try to publish your letter in another journal, in order to make the official record straight. Depending on the existing venues, you may have to add some flesh to your letter and grow it to a full paper, even if short. You are right in your principles, such mistakes should not be let unknown, and a blog post is too personal and too unofficial to make it right. People should get the information on the mistakes you spotted while using the databases usually used in your field.
But, given you are a PhD student, before you take any step I very strongly advise you to ask your advisor (or another senior researcher you can trust) about it. Depending on your field, your situation, the stature of the author the work of who you criticize, you could end up in pretty bad situation if you do not beware. I cannot tell from the information you gave, but you also have to protect yourself, and unfortunately this is not always achieved by doing the right thing.
I agree that contacting the authors before submitting a comment letter is the most diplomatic solution, it gives them the chance to submit an erratum, as you say, and also clearly states the the OP is acting in good faith. It is very easy to interpret a comment letter as an attack, especially if the tone is not right. Making enemies in academia is a bit like shooting yourself in the foot, especially if your field is particularly small.
I like your suggestions. Also the warning for the risk of some sort of revenge. We discussed with our supervisor about this but decided to continue. I ve send the letter today.
@Miguel your responses are itching my brain, you are right it would have been kinder and better to write the authors. Before this all. Ill come back on this. Sorry to flag, fat fingers on a phone
I can understand the editor's decision not to publish your discussion if the mistakes highlighted should have been identified by the reviewers.
However, it does seem out of context to send the discussion of a paper published in a said journal to a different journal of which the first one was published in.
As for a solution, in your stead I would not really know what to do either. If you have a relatively significant connection to authors in your domain via social media (e.g. Twitter, ResearchGate), you could consider uploading your manuscript there.
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16998 | Significance of American Mathematical Monthly Problems in Math Grad School Admissions
I have started solving problems from the American Mathematical Monthly. While I will definitely continue this, I am not sure how much this will help for math graduate school admissions (assuming I submit my solutions and they are recognized by the Monthly). How significant would multiple solutions to Monthly problems be in admissions? What about having the published solution to a problem? One issue is that I don't know how difficult the problems are presumed to be: all I know is that I personally have solved at least one of them!
I'm relieved to see that this question is not, in fact, about what to do if your grad school admissions interview and your period coincide.
@Ana Unless this started discussion of modular arithmetic in the interview, I do not see how that would be math specific.
@Ana I couldn't bear it :) - I changed the title.
It probably depends on the committee members, but I wouldn't expect it to help much.
If you get a really clever solution published, or they publish a problem you submit, that could make a difference. It certainly wouldn't mean as much as a research paper, but it could be viewed as the same sort of thing on a smaller scale.
Otherwise, the potential impact is not large. Solving Monthly problems would be viewed favorably, as evidence of talent and effort, but it's not likely to mean the difference between admission and rejection. (Still, it's worth listing on your CV.)
Yes, list on your CV. Probably it will make no difference, probably it will have no negative impact, and (some small chance) it will have a positive effect.
I agree with the other answer, but just to add another data point:
You might as well list it on your CV, but you shouldn't expect it to help very much.
I did (along with a few others) graduate admissions for the math department at UGA for four years -- and in fact am about to get involved in it again later this week, despite not being on the committee anymore -- and I remember exactly one student who listed it on his CV. It was sort of interesting but not particularly impressive, and if I remember it right we did not admit him in the end. He had a rather distinctive name and, while flipping rapidly through the Monthly problems in the months and years since then, I've noticed that he has submitted several more problems as well. I am starting to wonder what happened to this student...but I wouldn't go so far as to say that I regret the decision we made.
In general I have to say -- and this is a very personal opinion, not a professional one -- that it seems to me that "problems" sections in journals like this are a bit old-fashioned. They do not seem to play a nontrivial role in contemporary mathematical life. I remember having exactly two conversations about Monthly problems:
1) As a first-year graduate student, I did solve a Monthly problem. (This was the one and only Monthly problem that I can remember having thought about for more than five minutes, and I think it is telling that, while I usually have quite a good memory for mathematical minutiae, I remember precisely nothing about the problem.) Rather I remember standing in a mezzanine outside of the mathematics department and telling a fellow student that I had solved a Monthly problem. She politely congratulated me. I asked her whether I should actually submit the solution. She said that she couldn't see why not. I ended up not submitting the solution (thus I can't be completely sure that I correctly solved the problem...and it is telling that I don't care very much!). Okay, that was not my most riveting anecdote.
2) This is slightly more amusing. As a postdoc I remember having lunch with one of my close friends. He told me that he was flipping through the problem section of the Monthly and his eye was caught on a problem that had been proposed...by him. He racked his brains about this and did not succeed in recalling anything about the problem or his submitting it. He did have a friend who was involved with editing the problems section at the time, so he guessed that must have had something to do with it (his friend was very conscientious; it is not plausible that he would have done it as a joke or prank).
I'm not saying that most Monthly problems are easy: on the contrary, I am a relatively experienced, relatively successful research mathematician, and I still sometimes at least pass my eyes over these problems while flipping towards the reviews, and I rarely if ever see one that I think "Oh, surely I could solve that very easily." I'm just not really sure what the point of solving them is: I have plenty of other math problems that I'm trying to solve! It's a little like math contests, only adults can participate too.
To be honest, I think that MathOverflow has significantly overtaken solving Monthly problems as being a minor way for young people to show their talent. There are a small number of undergraduates that I would admit in a heartbeat because I have come to see their brilliance on MO (and to a lesser but still probably sufficient extent, on math.SE). Most of these students are so brilliant that they do not condescend to apply to my graduate program, and I assume that if they did the rest of their application would be so superior that I would not have to spend much time explaining to my colleagues doing the admissions why their performance on math Q&A websites makes me confident that they will be excellent graduate students...but still.
I also think that participation on MO and math.SE is really better than solving problems or doing well in math contests...not better in an absolute sense, but closer to what mathematicians actually do and thus more indicative of academic mathematical career potential (as opposed to raw talent; certain kinds of raw mathematical talent are less useful to a career mathematician than one might think!). Still not that close, of course: the fact that I have a higher reputation on MO than any of several Fields Medalists and other true luminaries that regularly contribute there is ample evidence of that.
For me, more than showing mathematical talent, it would show an extracurricular interest in math, beyond your course work. Of course, things like participation on MO or MSE would also do this. That said, I don't remember ever seeing this on grad school applications in the few times I've been on that committee.
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20542 | Origin of the thesis-degree procedure
It just came to my mind, currently if one wants to obtain an
academic degree one must to do a thesis. This is a widely accepted
method to prove the knowledge of certain academic level, sort to say.
But my questions are, where this method was originated? Which historical
or social circumstances originated it? Is there any philosophical background?
This might also be of interest in HSM.
(note: I have no references for the below, nor am I qualified in the topic)
First of all, the premise of your question isn't quite accurate: certainly in the UK it's very common for undergraduate degrees to have no thesis requirement. But putting that aside:
I think there are parallels with other mediaeval professions, which required proof of skill in order to become a member of a guild (the professional organisation). To be a 'master' of the guild one had to produce a 'masterpiece' (the origin of that word); this has obvious parallels with the idea of a thesis proving that an individual should be admitted to a degree (remember that historically a degree is more like a rank than an award, honour or qualification).
The MA at Oxford and Cambridge is still awarded automatically to those with a BA seven years after the start of the degree, which I believe matches the time someone in a professional guild would take to become a master.
Note also that the modern doctorate is a much more recent invention than the MA.
You're right, question was not bounded correctly. In Mexico there's algo degrees without thesis requirement, but at least to obtain a PhD in sciences I think it's a must (I guess this applies also to other branches of knowledge).
Hey, I just got my Oxbridge MA, I worked very hard for it!! :-)
A bit if history. The history of thesis is intertwined with the history of universities in the 12th and 13th century.. The early history of universities is not clear but with time systems develop on how information/knowledge is taught and discussed. The end (so far) result is what we have today. The written thesis is based on the fact that ideas need to be made more permanent than oral traditions. the advent of printing made wider distribution of copies possible. The first degrees were the baccaulerate and magister artium which corresponded to doctor in certain disciplines.
The thesis was originally what the word describes a thought or thinking that needed defending, which goes backs to Aristotle and Plato. As soon as writing was possible, the idea was to put the ideas down in writing and hence a written thesis was born. One has to remember that teaching early on did not necessarily occur as lectures, it could be mentioning and learned discussions. At the same time knowledge was not as structured and defined as now.
early on the teacher actually wrote the thesis and t was the students job to defend it. So the focus was less on developing knowledge but to defend a thesis with arguments and logic. During the renaissance the thesis in a form we can recognise was developed. These texts were called dissertatio (lat. development, presentation) where as the defence was named disputatio (lat. c. learned argument). From these relatively common beginnings different "cultures" developed which now are reflected in differences between countries in how a thesis is defined and defended.
Much more details can probably be added to this but the core is covered. There is no necessary connection between a degree and a thesis. Certainly not at a bachelor's leverl and it is also possible at a master's level. Differences also exist between disciplines.
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18969 | In a faculty job search, when and how should I reveal my preferences?
I am currently interviewing for tenure-track faculty positions at a number of top departments in my field. Despite getting some very positive feedback about my interviews, I have not yet received any offers. So far I have tried to avoid any "game playing," being very explicit with each department about where and when I am interviewing. Likewise, in follow-up discussions with hosts, I have been careful not to state any strong preferences for one school or another, mentioning that I still have additional places to visit (seems only fair!). I am starting to wonder, however, whether this approach was a mistake, especially given that others in my field are already receiving offers.
The question is, how should I proceed from here? Part of the issue is that I do not fully understand how and when offers are made, which leads to several questions:
Question 1: How often are offers made before the end of the interview period (i.e., before all candidates have been interviewed)?
I know it happens, of course, but how frequently? (E.g., as a percentage of all offers made by the department over a 10-year period.) A related question is
Question 2: If a candidate expresses that a school is her top choice, does it make any difference to the hiring committee?
In fact, can expressing this kind of preference actually hurt a candidate's chances? E.g., perhaps it makes this candidate look like a "sure thing," which frees the department to first make an offer to another, "higher-risk" candidate. In general, when is a good time to express such a preference? Finally,
Question 3: To what extent do different departments talk to each-other?
For instance, is there any mechanism in place to prevent candidates from "falling through the cracks?" E.g., one can easily imagine a situation in which lower-ranked schools don't make a candidate an offer because they expect she will get an offer from a higher-ranked school; subsequently, the higher-ranked schools make her no offer and she is left without a job. Likewise, if I express a preference for school X before visiting school Y, do I risk pissing off my hosts at Y?
Question 4: Do I just need to relax?
I am almost tempted to write an email CC'ing all the department chairs, providing a complete ordering of my preferences... they can duke it out from there. (Or simply tell me that none of them want to hire me!) In general, the whole game-theoretic aspect of this thing makes me a bit queasy. Wish some brilliant economist would design a mechanism that is fair for both departments and candidates alike. Right now, it definitely feels like a buyer's market.
These are good questions, but you might get better answers if you post them separately.
To follow up on what Mangara has written: asking just one question at once is how this site works. What if one person writes a great answer to questions 1-2, and terrible answers to 3-4: how should people vote - up or down? Should you accept, or not? What if question 2 is objectively answerable, but question 3 doesn't have a single right answer - should this question be answered, or closed & deleted? As it stands, this 4-question question is too broad.
I think that in this case, the 4 questions are part of a coherent theme, and are fine as a single unit.
You have good answers to most of your questions, however I have one more thing to add: I am almost tempted to write an email CC'ing all the department chairs, providing a complete ordering of my preferences... they can duke it out from there. Sweet jeebus, don't do this! Don't even joke about doing this! You'll look like a lunatic.
I've served several years on the faculty recruiting committee for my (US, top 10) computer science department, including three years as the chair. Protocols vary significantly between different departments, different searches, and especially different fields, so take my experience as a sample, not as a definitive answer.
Faculty hiring is best thought of as a complex multi-player game of three-dimensional chess, using invisible pieces that occasionally explode, where nobody knows who the other players are or what rules they play by, and nobody wants to reveal too much information.
Question 1: How often are offers made before the end of the interview period (i.e., before all candidates have been interviewed)?
It happens, but normally only when one of the early candidates emerges as an overwhelming favorite, and that candidate has another offer with an inflexible (or already extended) deadline. But nobody wants to be forced into this situation. It's really bad form to interview someone for a position that doesn't exist.
Some universities allow limited gambling with slots. A department might offer a position to candidate A, and then later make a second offer to candidate B for the same slot, under the assumption that at least one of them is likely to say no. If A and B both say yes, then both A and B get jobs. (I've seen this strategy go very "badly", with four low-probability offers made on the same slot, all of which were accepted. Gambling was outlawed for the next n years.)
Question 2: If a candidate expresses that a school is her top choice, does it make any difference to the hiring committee?
Especially at universities that (a) forbid gambling and (b) do not let departments roll unused slots from one year to the next, departments do balance the desirability of various candidates against the estimated probability that they will accept an offer, to minimize the risk of not hiring anyone at all. (This scenario also tends to generate offers with very short and inflexible fuses, sometimes while interviews are still ongoing.)
But just telling us that we are your first choice probably won't help much. We want to believe you, and we appreciate your effort in making that overture, but we don't really believe you, because lots of candidates have said that and then left us at the altar. And even if it's true, you really don't want the rumor that that you prefer us to reach someone else. Best to keep mum until you have actual offers.
On the other hand, evidence that we are your first choice is taken very seriously. For example, if you receive an offer from somewhere else, especially from another top department, telling us in time to make a good-faith counter-offer is certainly better than not telling us until it's too late.
In fact, can expressing this kind of preference actually hurt a candidate's chances?
No.
Question 3: To what extent do different departments talk to each-other?
Not at all. Different departments are competitors; sharing information is counterproductive.
We do, however, gather as much back-channel information as we can, for example by scouring our competitors' web pages to see who they are interviewing and when. Sometimes I do hear rumors of the form "So-and-so is about to get an offer from X", but those rumors almost always trace back to the candidates themselves.
one can easily imagine a situation in which lower-ranked schools don't make a candidate an offer because they expect she will get an offer from a higher-ranked school
Unfortunately, yes, this does happen, although I suspect more often at the interview stage than the offer stage. See "minimize the risk of not hiring anyone at all". Nothing you can do about it. Let it go.
Question 4: Do I just need to relax?
Yes, always. I recommend building up an immunity to iocaine powder.
Interviewing for a position that doesn't exist (warning: humour).
Question 1: How often are offers made before the end of the interview period (i.e., before all candidates have been interviewed)?
I would say "early offers" only occur in exceptional circumstances. Universities have hiring policies and those policies require dotting i's and crossing t's -- paperwork and process -- particularly for tenured or tenure-track positions.
Question 2: If a candidate expresses that a school is her top choice, does it make any difference to the hiring committee?
Let me put it this way: you do not want to express that the school is not your top choice. The hiring committee are looking for a monogamous relationship. Talking about all the other schools you're going on first dates with isn't a great idea.
In fact, can expressing this kind of preference actually hurt a candidate's chances? E.g., perhaps it makes this candidate look like a "sure thing," which frees the department to first make an offer to another, "higher-risk" candidate. In general, when is a good time to express such a preference?
This makes absolutely no sense.
Question 3: To what extent do different departments talk to each-other?
I guess you refer to the US? If so, I don't know but I would imagine there's very little communication on an inter-department level (though people in different departments may informally communicate).
For instance, is there any mechanism in place to prevent candidates from "falling through the cracks?" E.g., one can easily imagine a situation in which lower-ranked schools don't make a candidate an offer because they expect she will get an offer from a higher-ranked school; subsequently, the higher-ranked schools make her no offer and she is left without a job. Likewise, if I express a preference for school X before visiting school Y, do I risk pissing off my hosts at Y?
This again makes no sense. A university is unlikely to avoid offering you a position because you might be "too good for them" or that you might get other offers (in the worst case, it only costs a university a couple of weeks to make an offer for a position that will last many years).
A university may avoid offering you a position if you seem disinterested or if it seemed likely that you were using this position as a short-term stepping-stone to elsewhere.
Different departments are not going to compare notes. They are competing with each other.
Question 4: Do I just need to relax?
Yep. Maybe ease up on the coffee and take up croquet or smoking or something else instead.
Not sure why there's a downvote. Seems like a reasonable set of answers.
@Suresh: It seems reasonable to me, too. But I have two guesses why someone may have downvoted: 1) 'A university is unlikely to avoid offering you a position because you might be "too good for them" or that you might get other offers.' This has come up before, and there apparently are cases where it happens (though I agree with badroit's use of "unlikely" here). 2) The joke about smoking.
@badroit while you are right that there's little formal communication between departments, the informal communications are quite useful and are often used to "glean intent". I will also regularly spy on other departments' colloquium pages to make guesses about who they're interviewing :)
@Suresh "I will also regularly spy on other departments' colloquium" Not only faculty does that - candidates also regularly do that to figure out their competition :)
@Suresh, I'm guessing the downvote refers to advocating smoking. :)
Departments will not pursue a candidate because they think believe the candidate will not accept and I do not think, as @MarkMeckes suggests, that this is unlikely. That said, this question is about the offer going out to candidates who have already interviewed and the "too good" filter is usually applied much earlier. Once a department has a flown a candidate out, they will almost always give their favorite candidate the offer -- even if they think they are less likely to get a yes back.
@BenjaminMakoHill: It appears to me that we agree. badroit and I only suggested that it is unlikely that a department will decide after an interview that a candidate is "too good for them" and therefore not pursue them.
Congratulations for getting as far as you have!
I think badroit's answer is very reasonable. I had two follow ups and elaborations.
Question 2: If a candidate expresses that a school is her top choice, does it make any difference to the hiring committee?
It seems inappropriate, and slightly weird, to tell any school you are interviewing with where in your ranked list of preferences they currently fall. That's true for your top choice, your final backup, and everybody in between. Even if you are sure of your ranking, your preferences might change as you learn more about the programs and the particular offers.
That said, if you are legitimately excited about the possibility of joining a school's faculty, you should express that interest. If you feel like the faculty at the department would be great potential colleagues, say it! If you think they have great resources, say it! If you love the graduate students or the city, say it!
The comparison to dating with the goal of a monogamous relationship is a good one. Cultivating an air of disinterest seems unlikely to help and it's possible to show legitimate interest without being dishonest or leading people on. Everybody understands that you can be excited about one potential match, also excited about other potential matches, and that eventually you will have to make a decision.
Question 4: Do I just need to relax?
Sounds like it. It also sounds like at this point, you've done most of what you can and the next steps are basically out of your control.
Since you brought up the dating comparison, maybe you should had taken it one step further... Telling the school where they rank is like telling a potential date something along the lines "I will go out with you, but only if four other girls refuse me first"....
@NickS the question was about whether the OP should tell the top choice her/his favorite. Although I mentioned it, I should hope its common sense that one would not tell the later choices about where they sit in the ranking.
Yes, but later in the post he also mentions: "I am almost tempted to write an email CC'ing all the department chairs, providing a complete ordering of my preferences..."
@NickS You're right. I hope that was an exaggeration!
There's a saying in writing: "show, don't tell." I think it's a bad idea to make any comparative statements between schools (exception: if you have an offer from one school, immediately contact the others to withdraw your application or say you would prefer an offer from them). It's much better to show how excited you are about a school, by praising them and showing them in the interview that you've done your research.
If the interview's over, then I think it's good to say generic things in your communications with search committees and chairs, like "I'm really excited about the possibility of joining your department," but I wouldn't get more specific than that. Always be honest, but often it's better to not say too much until things work themselves out.
Incidentally, some brilliant mathematicians (with follow-up by economists) did design such a mechanism that is fair for both departments and candidates alike, and won a Nobel Prize for it (or at least the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, whose status as a true Nobel is somewhat debatable). If you would like to know why it will never be implemented in this context, read this comment thread.
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102668 | Why are reports written in the third person passive?
Generally it is considered to be "good practice" to write reports in the third person passive voice for a wide array of academic writing. It is even a requirement of publication in several journals.
However, I have been unable to find any sort of information for "why" this is the way it is. I can't find any studies on the effect of reports written in the passive vs active tenses nor the effect of 3rd vs 1st person.
Could anyone shed any light on why this is the way it is?
First and second person by definition are individuals 'involved' in the activity whereas the third person is someone who is merely an observer of the said activity.
Since reports are always expected to be objective (impersonal) third person passive tense is the most appropriate.
This doesn't really answer my question I'm afraid. It just leads to the reframed question of "Why are reports expected to be written impersonably?".
@JamesHughes What kind of answer do you expect? Of course, you can always go further down the rabbit hole.
Do you have any citations or references for your answer? Right now, your "answer" dominated by your own opinion.
My “opinion” is formed on the basis of inputs from academics I am working with. There may study so to speak of effects as stated in question. But then again, this is something widely agreed upon in the academia. I don’t understand what else is required in the answer.
this is something widely agreed upon in the academia — Not in my field it isn't. Academia varies more than you think it does.
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1239 | Research in "Research Engineering"
from Wikipedia:
Software engineering (SE) is the application of a systematic, disciplined,
quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance
of software, and the study of these approaches.
I was wondering if there is something similar for research, something that we could call Research engineering. I imagine it to be a research field on its own, with students "researching on how to do research". I believe software development has benefited a lot from research in SE. Maybe research could also benefit from Research engineering.
The questions are:
is there some institute or some university department in the world where they work on Research Engineering?
in which faculty you would position such department/institute?
Edited: After getting a couple of good answers, I am still not completely satisfied, so I would like to clarify my question. What I am really interested in is indeed a "software engineering" approach. I am not interested in philosophical or sociological research. In fact, the question I had originally in mind was whether it's possible or not to apply actual software development methodologies to research. In more concrete terms, I am wondering whether anyone has studied the application in research of models similar to the waterfall, or the spiral model, or things like extreme programming, Scrum, etc... (Note: these are just examples, please don't comment to each of them one by one).
Interesting question, and interesting concept.
The name "Research Engineering" biases things a little bit by suggesting an engineering approach. A more neutral name might be "Research Research", i.e., research about research. Your question would itself fall under Research Research Research. Research Research sounds like the academic equivalent of management consulting: outsiders come in with less domain knowledge, but they are supposedly smarter and with broader perspective, so they can offer valuable advice. I'm skeptical that it would be useful, and I don't know of anyone making progress on this, but I can't rule it out in theory.
@AnonymousMathematician: I was indeed suggesting an engineering approach. "Research Research" sounds too meta. And so does "Research Research Research" :P
Perhaps we need a Department of Departmental Name Engineering. On a more serious note, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2539276/ and http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/. They are specific to medical research, but they amount to studying how and why research does or doesn't work.
@AlessandroCosentino An interesting question, but as AM has pointed out, the name (and starting post from describing another discipline) sounds misleading. Could you reformulate it as sth more neutral, e.g. "Research about doing research" + start post with the idea and only then relate it to other field?
Yo dawg I herd you like research...
@PiotrMigdal: I don't want to change the name, because I did mean research Engineering. I guess I should just edit the question and explain better what I mean.
@AlessandroCosentino OK, no I see. You are interested in the micro scale. Some Scientometrics research (eg. Critical mass and the dependency of research quality on group size) are implicitly related, saying that you need a critical number of researchers to make it working smoothly. Other things may be harder to find, as in science it work a lot in apprentice-master mode, with approaches differing from a group to a group.
@PiotrMigdal: I am glad that is clearer now. You can edit this comment to your answer and if nobody else answers, I will accept yours.
@AlessandroCosentino Expanded my answer. Is it the thing you are looking for?
@AlessandroCosentino Just found your question after asking this https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/191638/equivalent-to-agile-software-development-but-for-research I'm interested in the same, but more specifically equivalent to agile software engineering/development. Have you found any interesting resources?
There is plenty of "research on research" (or "science of science").
There are dividid into different fields, e.g.:
Scientometrics - measuring citations, networks of collaborators, relations between topics and other quantities characterizing the scientific output.
Sociology of science - treating science as a activity of groups of people, with its history etc.
For example there is a great book Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact.
Research on collective intelligence, innovation (when, where and how does it happen), etc.
General fields related to education, didactics, teamwork and management.
As you asking about engineering (i.e. how things work in practice), I don't even mention things like philosophy of science. Also, as you see, the answer depends on scale - from an individual, through a group or an institution to a country, the world nowadays or our civilization.
Typically it is done under umbrella of complex systems, complexity, network science, econophysics or data-mining and modeling in sociology. There are institutes doing it, see e.g. the front page of the Santa Fe Institute. Also, there are some projects on it, e.g. QLectives.
ADDED:
As you are interested in the optimization (not only the observation) and on the micro scale: some findings may implicitly give hints, e.g.:
R. Kenna, B. Berche, Critical mass and the dependency of research quality on group size (2010) says that you need a critical number of researchers to make it working smoothly,
B. Jamtveita, E. Jettestuena, J. Mathiesena, Scaling properties of European research units (2009) says that the larger an institute, the higher percentage of administrative workers it has.
Other things may be harder to find, as in science it works a lot in apprentice-master mode, with approaches differing from a group to a group. So it may be not as easy to be serialized (as in different fields, countries, etc. one may need to have different approach); and when you don't a large enough sample, you cannot use quantitive methods in a meaningful way.
Moreover, now we are in the phase preceding formalized studies, as only recently people started to share with the world their soft and subjective findings on that matter, e.g.:
Materials for Nurturing Scientists (a collection) on Uri Alon Lab website (BTW: he is the right person to talk about it, as he promotes such exchange of information on research)
G. Whitesides, Whitesides' Group: Writing a Paper (2004)
J. Gallian, Advice on giving a good powerpoint presentation (2006)
and on things like academia.SE, for a bit of self-reference.
Great answer. In the comments above, I was thinking about research aimed just at improving how research is done, but as you point out, it can be much broader than that.
hi Piotr, thanks for the answer. Interesting, but not quite what I mean. I guess it's my fault, I should have been more detailed in explaining the question. I'll edit it soon.
@AlessandroCosentino Before editing (it is good to clarify a question, but not to change it), what exactly do you have in your mind? If I change 'software' to research in you question, then the answer is on it.
What about research on research on research?
I've never heard of a field dedicated to the study of research methods. There are journals dedicated to advances in methodology (e.g., [1], [2]), but the closest concept I've encountered to a field dedicated to researching research is Thomas Kuhn's classic work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and other similar philosophical works, which discuss how science, as a field, progresses and evolves.
I would guess that the reason for the lack of such a field is such research is part and parcel of the actual work done in the field. In order to study biochemistry, one must understand how to study biochemistry; in order to study mathematics, one must know the types of questions and the methods used to find answers in mathematics. Each field is unique, and each field will find specific methods that will optimally serve the needs of that specific field. While there may be broadly-applicable research techniques, each field will solve the problem of "how to do research" differently, in the way that best suits that field.
Hi eykanal, thanks for the answer and for the comment. Well, you could say the same in software engineering, you could say that methods applicable to, say, Web programming, are different from methods for desktop applications programming. Or that some patterns can only be used when programming in some languages, rather than others. I still believe that in research there are common patterns applicable among all the fields. If we don't know them yet, it might be just because no much research "on how to do research" has been done yet. What do you think?
@Alessandro - You're correct that there are some "universal truths" in research, so to speak. However, those are fairly well understood, without the need for further research. The details, as I described, are left to the individual research fields.
I would be happy to know those "universal truths" :), or even better, to see them somewhere written down. I must disagree with you, though, I think there is too much improvisation in the field and those few known methodology truths are revealed only at some introductory graduate skill seminars for first year grad students.
Check out virtually any course on this list. Many disciplines have their own "Research Methods" course, and that's where they share both research fundamentals and field-specific techniques.
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7428 | How to write abstract for conference when you have no results yet?
This situation is not uncommon; in my case, I have to submit abstract for conference in September by the end of January already. But the problem is I have no results yet. I'm pretty sure that in those 8 months I will get pretty interesting results. But..
How to write smooth abstract without reporting results?
I started something along these lines:
This and this is an important factor ...
However, few studies on this topic have been done ...
In our study, we compare this and this
??
Now the problem comes in point 4, where I should report some results.
How should I go around that?
What formulations should I use?
Shall I speak in present, future, or past tense? The studies are usualy written in past tense like "we analysed, we compared...", but in this case I would tend to present tense.
Thank you for your help. Examples are welcome!
P.S.: this is an interesting discussion however didn't give me actual guidelines of how to write it.
Don't do it. No results means no abstract.
No abstract means missed opportunity; I cannot afford that. I have to present results I'm sure I will have by the time of the conference.
My suggestion is, if you're sure you'll have interesting results, write the reasons why you're sure.
I should point out: if this situation is not uncommon, you should be thinking of January as the deadline and not September. this is very common in CS for example.
I find it fascinating that the "don't do it" and the "I can't afford not to" comments both have many upvotes. This definitely speaks to the pressure to publish at these venues. @DanielE.Shub
heh, I'm in a similar situation --- as a part of interview for a PhD position I am meant to give a talk on a group seminar on what I want to research. Obviously I have no results, only arguments.
@Suresh The situation in CS is different because, although submission deadlines are typically several months before the conference, you have to submit a paper describing your work so the work must be essentially completed at submission time. Here, the question is about merely submitting an abstract for a talk to be given several months in the future.
@Yrogirg No, that's a completely different situation. You're being asked to give a talk about research you plan to do in the future. Tomas is supposed to give a talk about research that he will have done by the time he gives the talk but he has to provide a summary of the talk now, when the work has barely started.
Don't write results you don't have. Neither in the present, past or future tense. Just don't do it. Yet, I agree with you that there are circumstances where you do need to write an abstract on on-going work. For example, many big conferences in my field now ask for abstracts to be submitted up to 10 months in advance of the conference itself! If you are a post-doc staying on a 12-month project, you want to present something but you might not yet know how things will turn out. So, two techniques I propose:
Just write about the methodology, and present your goals in a general way, without “predicting” particular results but insisting on the importance of the topic. That is, emphasize strongly your points #1 and #2, and then describe point #3 as you would your “results”. Things like:
In this particular study, we compare the efficiency of methods A and B on given subsets of a reference database. We use a large number of different criteria for measuring efficiency, including …, … and … We also discuss in detail the implementation of subprocess X in method B, because its has not been specifically optimized in the existing literature.
I know it sounds vague, but that's the best you can achieve honestly, without pretending to know what you expect to find.
Bait and switch: if you have existing results in a closely related study, you can incorporate them as part of your results. Mix this approach with above, so that you have at least a few specific results to list in your point #4. Then, when you will make your presentation, just present your new results alongside the old (some people would remove completely the old results, but that makes it too much of a “bait and switch” for my taste). It is, after all, quite common for people to include newer results in orals/posters that they obtained after the original submission. It is not frowned upon, as long as you keep a decent agreement between the original abstract and the final content.
Thank you. As for point 2. In the link I posted they justify bait-n-switch a lot, arguing that people won't remember. I wouldn't be afraid of that. The problem is that I have only small portion (like 1/8) of final results. I'm afraid that reporting this small subset of results would make it even more apparent that results are missing or cause people to think "..and that's all?"
people won't remember — Careful. The internet remembers.
@JeffE, I agree with being careful, but the internet won't usually join the conference to see the poster or oral presentation.
@silvado nowadays if its a major conference you will be recorded and it will end up on the web. This has happened to me in the past 4 conferences I have presented at so internet is starting to join all conferences...
If you mean 'write abstract, don't write results', that should have been put that way I think.
Inre: Bait and switch. I've seen more than a few people simply get up and say "Things have moved on since I submitted the abstract for this talk, and what I'm really going to talk about is ". The audience understands the problem with abstract deadlines perfectly well.
This is the most useful answer. My final solution was exactly that: not writing about results, just talking about the hypotheses, why they are so much interesting and how this study helps to finally shed light on them! I registered it as a talk, not poster... let's see!
@Tomas: Did it work out as you said?
The challenge with ever-earlier deadlines for conferences (sometimes six months or more in advance of the actual date!) makes planning for a conference a very difficult prospect.
You're left with only a handful of options, none of them particularly appealing:
Submit an abstract on incomplete research, and hope that the work is completed in time for the conference. In this case, you say something like "we will present our work on X, Y, and Z." You make no claims about the findings related to your work in those areas, though. You also try to edit the abstract, as appropriate and if possible, to better reflect the subject material that you will actually present at the conference.
Submit an abstract on already completed work. The advantage is you know you will have the results and you can put together a good presentation. The downside of this is that it means you will be presenting last year's results at this year's conference. If you are in a "hot" field, this can mean ceding significant ground to your competitors if they get just a little bit luckier than you, and they have findings just before a deadline and you don't.
Ultimately, there's no right answer to which option to take. You have to decide this based on what is expected of you in your field, and what impact this will have on you and your career (if you can opt for the safer track, or if you have to go for the higher-risk option). The only thing that you should never do, as I said above, and as other posters have mentioned, is make claims that you have not obtained.
+1 for "no claims about the findings", assuming you mean those that are only wishful thinking at that point
Presumably if you competitors have run and analyzed the experiment at the submission deadline and you haven't haven't run the experiment yet, you have more to worry about than a missed deadline.
You cannot predict the future. You may obtain the results you hope for1. But things can also both go horribly wrong (your laboratory burns down, your samples mysteriously evaporate,...) or extremely interesting - you may happen to measure something beyond your dreams. Let your abstract only tell truths - what your (vague) setup is, what you want to measure and what you expect to happen. But don't pre-claim results when you cannot even foretell their existence for sure. Just be honest - say that you will present the results obtained by them, whatever they may be. I don't like cliffhangers, but they tend to work...
1 But make sure you don't "accidentally" measure only what you expect to be measured!
Short Answer:
Writing something you didn't do as the time of submission is a lie even if you are sure you will have it eventually (I believe uncertainty exists everywhere).
It's simply not your turn this year, target another one or wait for the next year.
Long Answer:
I would speak from Computer Science (CS) perspective.
Submitting an abstract in CS conferences is one of two:
Submitting to the abstracts (short papers) track of the conference.
Submitting an abstract (i.e. 250 words) first then submitting the full paper. For example, these days AI has the big guy submission deadline.
I assume you mean the first case otherwise you will have no time for preparing your results.
Then the missing results is one of two:
Part of the contribution (method)
Evaluation (support) of the contribution (method)
In the first case, I really recommend not to submit at all unless your results are ready. You just do not have something new in this case.
The second case I will be more tolerated about it. In CS, you can play around it by:
In case your missing results are the experiments of your method, you can do initial experiments and believe its the general case. Thus write your abstract based on it.
Illustrate with examples and/or real world scenarios.
+1 for "[it] is a lie even if you are sure", though I wouldn't say don't submit at all - I've heard enough talks at conferences which deviated more or less from the abstract, usually "excused" by e.g. "I'd like to focus more on some results obtained after the abstract's submission", which is fine as long as long as it obviously is an extension of what the abstract promised anyway. It may be annoying that the abstract (which may be published at the proceedings) will not reflect the entirety of the work, but a) there may be a paper submission after the conference and b) you'll publish anyway
I agree that you shouldn't report results you don't have, much of the advice on this thread is sound. I would say don't get too into the literature review either...this doesn't necessarily belong in the abstract. The methodology and reasons why are probably key here.
I too am in this boat (though I realize this is an old thread, I'm sure people like me will come here in the future, just as I did).
What some of the people here don't quite seem to understand are mandatory requirements. I don't have data for my thesis yet at all but I'm required by my program to submit an abstract in a few weeks, and I have to submit the abstract for a grade in my class right now. I have no way to get any results at the present time--it's not an option for all of us. Being in academia and research may require you to write an abstract without results. That's okay. Improvise--we're all here to learn, and you won't succeed without that skill.
Good luck with the abstract! You're right, programs have requirements and expectations that may mean submissions are more like research proposals than final results. Early in grad school I was confused when my advisor expected me to submit even though we didn't have any conclusive results--turns out in that context that just writing up the data and methods we'd used and what we were investigating was what the advisor had in mind. Depending on the field and conference (especially if there are no proceedings, and if there are large poster sessions), the submission may also be successful!
I commented on the original question
Don't do it. No results means no abstract.
While this received many upticks, I have also been told
That sounds incorrect. Any references or related experience?
and that statement also has some upticks. While this is not an answer to "how to write an abstract" it attempts to clarify my comment (but is too long to be another comment). Hopefully it is helpful.
I think there are so many things wrong with writing an abstract without results that it is difficult to explain my thinking. The apparent reason for wanting to write an abstract without any results is
No abstract means missed opportunity; I cannot afford that. I have to present results I'm sure I will have by the time of the conference.
Which has recieved essentially the same number of upticks as my comment not to do it. I disagree with "I cannot afford that". I have never seen or heard of someone being denied tenure or a job because they didn't present at a conference one year. Hiring decisions are never so close that a single conference presentation (no matter how prestigious) sways the decision. I would argue that there are very few upsides to submitting an abstract without results and potentially some downsides.
Submitting an abstract without any results will not get you a place at a highly prestigious conference or a keynote address. It will get you a place at a conference that essentially accepts all abstracts, but not much more than that. In fields that I am familiar with conferences happen at least every 6 months and more often every 3 months. This means that by not submitting now you are merely delaying your presentation by 3-6 months. Therefore the cost of not submitting is a 6 month delay and a slightly different conference that is potentially slightly more prestigious (e.g., with results you might be able to get a talk instead of a poster).
In slow moving fields 6 months is essentially meaningless. In fast moving fields, 6 months is a long time, but in the fast moving fields I am aware of you don't present results until they are about to be published. This means you don't want to submit an abstract of results you don't yet have. Therefore I see very little cost of waiting for the next conference.
So what are the benefits of waiting. Again they are not great. The abstract will actually represent what you are going to talk about. You will likely get put in the correct session. There is a higher chance of getting a talk. If everything goes tits up, you will not have to withdraw. While most people will not remember, some of your close colleagues will and this could hurt future references. Withdrawing also screws over the conference organizers and they will not forget.
There is also the issue of how long do you need to get results. If the abstract was due the day of the conference, presumably you would want to have results before submitting the abstract. What about a week? A month? 6 months? Where is the line?
Finally there is the issue of integrity. While one can write the abstract to make no promises and only state the current truth, this is in fact difficult. If you do this frequently enough you will likely eventually make a statement that is a lie.
In an attempt to answer the question, what about:
We don't have any results yet as it is still N months before the conference. By the time the conference rolls around we are sure we will have something interesting. If not, we will present some old data or just not show up.
The results for my project were not a pretty as expected, but I had months to optimize. Unfortunately the abstract had to be submitted asap. So I added great detail to background and methodology, some vague noises about the results, and ended with "preliminary results are discussed." It wasn't perfect, it sucked actually, but it did the job, and the results are now where they need to be for the conference in the summer.
I realize this feed was originally discussed in January, but figured anyone desperate on Google would see this and maybe see a glimmer of hope.
Here is an example of an abstract with no results that was accepted for a conference source:
Evaluation of genetic susceptibility for non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the InterLymph consortium
The incidence of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) has steadily increased worldwide for many years and is still present after taking into account changing diagnostic patterns and HIV infection rates. Although most other important risk factors have yet to be identified, there is substantial evidence suggesting a relationship with conditions that alter the immune system. A consortium that includes essentially all case-control studies currently being carried out in Europe, North America and Australia has recently been formed (InterLymph) to help stimulate and coordinate etiologic studies of lymphoma. Studies are using the new WHO classification of lymphoproliferative disorders and have comparable questionnaire data for most key lifestyle and environmental exposures. InterLymph will have substantial power to study the main effects of less common SNPs, gene-environment interactions and rare sub-entities. Most studies with complete enrollment plan to carry out genotyping of an initial group of SNPs in genes that play a role in regulating the immune system, including IL1A, IL1RN, IL1B, IL2, IL6, IL10, TNF, LTA, and NOD2. The SNP list will be expanded based on interest and resources over the coming years. A set of DNA samples from 102 ethnically diverse individuals that have been sequenced and analyzed on one or more platforms as part of the SNP500Cancer project (http://snp500cancer.nci.nih.gov) will serve as gold standards. Further, a round-robin of sample exchange will assure genotyping consistency across participating laboratories. Initial results from the analysis of SNPs in the above genes will be presented and analytic issues will be discussed, including an approach that will help evaluate the probability that statistically significant associations are false positive findings.
Just keep it vague and talk about the topic and that results will be presented. Don't make any predictions or guesses. Yes, this makes the abstract a bit more nebulous, but who cares, it is a conference abstract, not a journal abstract. And it's better than lying or predicting.
This is no big deal. Write up the abstract. Go to the conference. Have fun.
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168264 | Is it appropriate for reviewer to offer cooperation on a reviewed paper?
I am currently reviewing a paper for a journal (area of ecology, organism-environment interactions at various spatiotemporal scales, so including macroecology and evolutionary ecology). Now I am doing a second review of this paper (after resubmission). They submitted a valuable manuscript, but they ran into challenges which are quite difficult to solve. In particular, their statistical population models didn't converge properly; the models would need at least 10x, preferably 20x or 50x as much iterations to run, but they are very slow - taking 2 weeks to run already. I already investigated a bit and found an approach which would make the models run 1000x faster - this would solve the issue. I don't think this approach has been used yet (currently investigating this).
I am about to give them very detailed instructions on how to implement this approach in their models. I am not an experienced reviewer (this is my first paper to review), but (1) I think this is a bit beyond the usual work done by the reviewers? It is also possible that this work will be very challenging for them, since not every biologist is skilled with models and it's much easier for me since I am a specialist in development of new population models. So, (2) is it appropriate for me to offer them cooperation on their paper, with the possibility of becoming a co-author? (3) Should I ask for co-authorship for this? Or, is it better to just contribute and wait if they offer co-authorship to me? If this happens then the editor would probably need to find another reviewer instead of me for the next revision, because of conflicts of interest.
(The review is currently double blinded, so I don't know their names, but I signed the first review and offered my email already, so they know mine.)
"I am about to give them very detailed instructions on how to implement this approach in their models."
This imply that you are suggesting them to use an unpublished, untested method? It means then they are already using state-of-art techniques: they are doing nothing wrong, and a reviewer must find what's wrong. If you can, you can provide a reference and a quick walk-through. If you cannot ... you are adding the need of review for their paper: a review about the work done AND about the methodology
@EarlGrey unpublished yes but not untested; it's not difficult to test if the new method works, they can either compare the model results with the original slower model (on a smaller dataset), or compare the results on generated dataset. The wrong part is that their models have not achieved convergence and that is by my opinion not acceptable for publication.
Ok, much clearer now. Then you are on track: finding what is wrong, then suggesting a way to correct it. Do not write an extensive guide, see the good answer you have been given.
Regarding suggesting you being a co-author: you are doing it honestly, but it can be read as blackmailing. Double-blind reviews are done exactly to judge the work done only, without inferring who is doing what and who can influence it.
Complete agreement with nabla's answer. Personal story: still in postdoc my paper is rejected. The journal sends me a referee report that says "Your paper will be rejected, but I like it. Here are some suggestions for improvement." Follow 10 pages of a complete rewrite. Anonymous. Wow. I submit elsewhere. I receive an email by a famous professor: "I'm the guy who reviewed the paper the first time and I'm at it again. Small world. But this time it's good enough." Published. Later we co-wrote. But that prof was super generous and had nothing to lose. Don't give away too much for free. It's work.
"The review is currently double blinded" - not anymore it's not! Unless the editor (hopefully) removed your identifying information before forwarding the report.
Since this is your first review, you probably ought to keep the following in mind:
It is not the job of the referee to fix the paper, it is the job of the referee to provide grounds for the editor to decide whether to accept or reject it. Presumably you have research of your own, and while it is no doubt very kind of you to offer very detailed instructions for how to carry out a new analysis, this is ultimately not what you are tasked to do.
What you can do in your review (which is to be addressed to the editor), is to point out that their current analysis has a flaw, and whether or not you think the paper is publishable with this flaw. If not, then you can suggest that the authors (and not you!) revise the paper using a better method. Here you can give a comment stating your suggestion, and point them to a reference.
And to answer your question concretely: No, it is not appropriate. It would place you in a double role, where the authors might feel pressured into accepting you, to have their paper accepted. If you are very keen on publishing your method under your own name (provided that it is, in fact, novel), you have to wait until their paper is published, and then write a paper of your own. Note that you cannot use privileged information obtained as a referee.
Finally, don't sign your reviews. I would hope that the editor removed your signature. If you don't like giving blind reviews, you should abstain from accepting them, and provide reviews on open platforms which allows this. Like it or not, blind reviews is the name of the game.
Excellent advice. Take it.
They don't have a version of their paper on a preprint server somwhere? If so, you could use that as a starting point for your own work without needing to wait. You could have even contacted them based on that, but this is now spoiled as you signed your review.
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1018 | A major journal in my field is published by Elsevier. How can we move the field to a less objectionable, more open publisher?
Many people complain about Elsevier and over eight thousand are boycotting it, but actual solutions seem hard to find for certain fields- I'm thinking of research areas for which an Elsevier journal is very important and funds are not available to subsidize an open-access journal.
How can we move an Elsevier-dependent research community to a less objectionable, more open publisher?
I'll post a partial possible answer myself; I'm asking because I think we need more/better answers than mine.
Maybe a right answer to this question could be a community wiki with journals sorted by fields, where we first put the elsevier journal, and then people post equivalent alternatives?
You seem to be referring to a strategy of encouraging support of existing alternative journals. That'll be very good for certain situations, and so the list you imagine indeed should be started somewhere, but above I was thinking of Elsevier journals that are central to a particular research community, so that it's unlikely most researchers will leave it without a concerted effort and broad agreement by the community- hence the partial answer I give below. As for the community wiki idea, I don't know stackexchange well enough to have good judgment about that- maybe you're right.
A specific example in theoretical biology.
We've now started an information resource for journals thinking about making the jump to open access - psyOA.org
As a publisher who has launched an OA journal and seen what it takes to do so, I see the biggest problem for starting any journal being lack of an Impact Factor (IF). I've polled authors at ECVP and about 90% said IF is what determined where they submitted. Everyone knows why this is, so why don't academics turn inward and try to undermine this reliance on IFs? Doing so would insert true competition into the journals market. Maybe academics have tried to do this, though I've never read of any real substantial attempts. I could be wrong. The second problem after IF and before funding is loyalty. Ed board members are often tied to multiple journals and in those first few years you really need those big names on your board to commission for the journal. Big names often care more about another journal or just don't care.
You need a publisher, be it nonprofit or profit, that can put in the work to promote the journal and help commission. Financially, OA journals are very easy to start. Subscription journals require more financial backing, which perhaps could be gotten through grants if you don't want to be tied to a commercial publisher. The answer is long and requires lots of discussion and more important, commitment.
Thanks for this- I agree completely with the need to reduce the reliance on impact factor. Unfortunately, as long as IF is the only widely-recognized measure that is perceived to be correlated with journal quality, research administrators and bureaucrats and grant reviewers will continue to judge us by it. Some people are working to address this by developing alternative metrics. Try #altmetrics on twitter, and total-impact.org for one example. Of course, the only real way to judge research is to read the paper, but no-one has time for that :)
Alex
First one must assess whether researchers in the area agree that the community should leave Elsevier. If there isn't strong support for leaving Elsevier, then any move is likely to fail, as it will probably involve a new venture (such as a new journal) requiring the support of many, many researchers in the area, perhaps as authors, editors, or readers pressuring their university to subscribe to the new journal. If the research community is not supportive, this may because they have very good reasons or it may be out of ignorance / lack of imagination of the alternatives.
Discussion of the possibilities in your researcher community serves to explore the options, educate, and potentially build support. You may be able to start a discussion of the issues on mailing lists, social media, or run a conference symposium/satellite related to this topic.
If there is community support, there are a few possibilities for actually making the move. In most (all?) cases, Elsevier owns the journal and its name, therefore one cannot simply switch publishers and keep the same journal name. As a work-around, moves have occurred when all or most of the members of editorial boards of Elsevier journals resigned and started a new journal, usually issuing an open letter explaining their action and encouraging the community to submit to and subscribe to the new journal.
A new journal can use the traditional subscription model or be open access.
With a subscription model, one can use a traditional publisher- a non-profit university press may be less objectionable than Elsevier or one of the other mega-profitable corporate publishers. I have started a list of possible publishers. To get started with a new publisher, one must convince them that they will make enough from subscriptions for the new journal to be worth their while. This may be difficult, as new journals are frequently risky. It takes a few years for a journal to receive an impact factor, and may also take years to be indexed by the major databases, and many authors will only submit to journals that have already achieved these things.
An open-access journal can use the author-pays model, in which case a large publisher can provide all the traditional services (manuscript submission software system and reviewing workflow management, layout, copyediting, production, webhosting, accounting, exporting to databases, DOI registration, proper metadata, etc.) or it can be run on a shoestring, with academics handling everything perhaps with a few administrative staff. For research communities willing to submit all their manuscripts in LateX, this is quite feasible but for communities that demand layout (figures and text arranged to fit a standard page appearance and possibly typesetting) be done, this is more labor-intensive.
Several open-source software tools assist in publishing journals. Open Journal Systems is most like a traditional journal publishing platform but I hear it may be difficult for academics to use. Annotum is based on Wordpress and I believe it works by having authors write their manuscript directly in its software, so that it can guarantee that the paper will look exactly as you expect it (WYSIWYG). It is used by PLoS Currents and other journals. All of these tools could probably use more skilled programmmers contributing to the project.
I am only a researcher, not a publisher, so perhaps not everything I have written here is correct. I think we researchers are in particular need of estimates of the person-hours needed to publish and manage a journal by various methods, so that a research community considering a move can budget appropriately / be comfortable knowing what they're getting into.
"for communities that demand layout (figures and text arranged to fit a standard page appearance and possibly typesetting) be done, this is more labor-intensive" — Um. LaTeX can do that. That's what LaTeX is for. It's not even that hard.
Unfortunately you won't be able to get most scientists, e.g. in biomedicine, to use LaTeX. It may be easy for you and for math/CS/physics types, but not for your average doctor/psychologist/biologist. Many have never used any scripting or markup, e.g. html, in their lives, and are not willing to try it.
"Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this."
Thanks for the Lyx tip- if it is very robust, then it should be suitable for some traditionally-not-LaTeX researcher communities! Although I'm sure there's some, probably including the author communities I'm involved in, that will say they absolutely positively need Word's Track Changes feature or something.
@user107 I assume you never really used Microsoft Word.
Open Journal Systems (OJS) is pretty straightforward to setup if you have an already-existing web server with PHP and database support; that's all it needs.
It occurs to me that in our field (vision science), Journal of Vision already is an open access alternative to Vision Research. I haven't noticed a big difference in quality or acceptance rates between the two journals, they publish at a similar rate (JoV=270, VR=252 articles in 2011) and their impact factors are within 0.5 of each other. Also, around a third of the VR editorial board are also on the JoV board, and Denis Levi is about to transition from VR editor in chief to JoV editor in chief. Given these similarities, I guess the fact that the whole field hasn't abandoned VR suggests that people still feel there is a place for it. Or, from the other perspective, the success of JoV shows that lots of people wanted an open access alternative, and it's great that they now have one. {reposted from Google+}
Journal of Vision is open access but charges a fee. Many of those who prefer it to the alternatives may nonetheless not submit to it due to lack of funding. Therefore it's hard to conclude anything from the continued success of other journals. It is more valid to compare two subscription journals, e.g. VR and Perception, one of which is published by Elsevier and one not. Again however, there is a major confound- the VR impact factor is lower, and many authors feel they must publish in the higher-impact journal to win grants or a permanent job.
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37453 | Getting a job in industrial math with only a Masters?
Is it possible to get a job in industrial mathematics with a Masters in math but no work experience and no PhD. Or would one be limited to only nonresearch industrial math jobs?
How about the type of jobs listed here: http://www.siam.org/careers/thinking/solve.php
?
Would you please explain what's on your mind about a "job in industrial mathematics" and "nonresearch industrial math jobs"?
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it’s about a non-academical career.
The link in your question lists many possible job opportunites of what applied mathematicians have. They all look exciting to me (and possibly you) and they are useful to human society.
However, you probably will have some difficulties when you apply for those jobs. There are two things you don't have yet: Math knowledge in depth (you don't have PhD in Math) and domain knowledge (you have no work experience).
For example, How might disease spread in populated areas in the event of a bioterrorism incident, and how would it be contained?. Do you have enough Virology background to devise algorithms to simulate this? Do you have enough Math knowledge to solve the math problems behind the algorithms?
Another example, How can you allocate an investment among various financial instruments to meet a risk/reward trade-off?. How much do you know about Finance? How much do you know about quantitive finance mathematics?
You need to have at least one of them, either math in depth or domain expertise. Without either one of them, the best you can do is a research assistant or simply a programmer (to implement the algorithms other scientists and mathematicians devise).
My advice to you: either pursue a PhD in Applied Math or a masters degree in an area that suits your most interest.
Students with master's degrees an applied mathematics (and statistics, OR, actuarial science, mathematical finance, etc.) often find work in industry doing applied mathematics, but this work is not typically "research" of the sort that results in publications in research journals. If you want to do publishable research, then complete a PhD.
PhDs are usually preferred for research jobs, since a PhD is literally 3-5 years of training how to do research. However, if you did research during your Masters, you might be considered.
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96462 | If I order GRE score reports before my Subject GRE score is available, will schools receive it?
I am planning to send both General and Subject GRE scores to some universities using the "order additional score reports" option. My subject GRE score is not available yet. It would take twenty more days. After selecting both of my GRE scores, it shows that one test score is being sent. I want to know if my subject GRE score will also be sent once it becomes available or do I have to spend $27 again just to send the subject GRE score to those universities?
Have you asked the GRE people?
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79162 | Which areas have the most competition for tenure-track positions?
Being a professor in a general interest department, students from diverse backgrounds and aspirations come to me for career advice. A good number of them aspire to professors but unless they're in my own discipline I'm very hesitant to say anything. But I think it would be good to have an approximation for various fields as an advisor. For example, I know that securing a tenure-track position in CS is not as competitive as a tenure-track position in math. I assume the competition is brutal for history/literature/philosophy etc. Is there an approximate rule of thumb that I could use to advise the students?
What on earth is a "general interest department"?
I do not know of any datasets that would empirically answer your entire question. However, several different datasources may provide insight into your question. First, the NSF has survey and reports that may help. These provide insight into overall employment:
The NSF Conducts a post-graduate survey for Science and Engineering. Data in here may be insightful to what happens to students post graduation.
The NSF includes funding rates in their annual report. Check out the appendices.
Also, this Inside Higher Ed has a table of job placements by broad fields.
I would add the following caveats to this data and other data you may use to answer your questions. In some fields most PhDs go the academy. But in others, most PhD holders go to industry or government jobs. Additionally, not all university jobs are the same (e.g., small school versus R1). I would highlight this difference to your students as well.
Finally, I would suggest checking out salaries for different departments. Many state schools make this public (or newspapers in their state though public data requests; e.g., the Texas Tribune's listing for the state of Texas). Presumably, departments that pay more have more trouble attracting and retaining faculty.
Edit to clarify the last sentence: Engineering and physics can be closely related disciplines. However, there is a much larger job market for engineers outside of universities. Therefore, one might expect universities to pay their faculty more to account for competition from the private sector. At the University of Texas, the median salary for the Department of Physics was $105,536. The median salary for the Department of Electrical Engineering was $118,143. Following the links, there are even better break downs of the data by position (e.g., professor vs postdoc). Comparatively, the Department of English had a median salary of $84,839.
Without speaking to the University Leadership, I can only speculate as to why some departments pay better. My guess would be the higher paying departments have more difficult recruiting and retaining because the private sector has more jobs, pays better, and often requires fewer hours.
I would also add a personal anecdote about competition for tenure track jobs. My own PhD is in Environmental Toxicology. Most of the people I knew in grad school (both at my school and others) went on to work for industry, consulting firms, or the government in roughly that order. Few went onto universities, but those that did only needed a short (1-2 year postdoc). Conversely, my friends who are ecologists often need 5-10 year postdocs to get university jobs. This is because the ecologists have much greater competition for their tenure track jobs.
Surely that last sentence needs fixing.
@DanielR.Collins : If the department has a problem, but needs staff, they may very well pay above the going rate to get the staff they need.
@DanielR.Collins No. I clarified my answer, but stand by it. Some departments pay better because they face more competition from industry and/or government. You're a mathematician. Do applied mathematicians or pure mathematician have more trouble finding work? My guess is that pure mathematicians have more trouble finding work.
I see. Perhaps the particular sentence could be clarified as "Departments that pay more due so as a result of competitive pressure" or somesuch.
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1744 | Citing sources of problems in assignments
This question was raised by Dave Clarke here.
When a textbook author approaches a topic in a novel way or presents a particularly interesting example, I believe that a teacher who creates lecture notes using this novel approach or interesting example would be doing the right thing to cite the originator of the approach or the example. Similarly, whenever I copy a clever (and clearly unique) problem from a textbook and give it as a question in an exam or an assignment, I try my best to indicate (in the exam or assignment paper itself) the source of the original problem.
Does anyone know of any written document indicating whether or not it is considered unethical to copy a published problem and put it in an exam or an assignment without citing it?
I don't know about ethics, but what you try to do can be impractical if the original author includes solutions. I guess offering the credits after students have to hand in exercises would work, then.
Problems are much the same as jokes. And similarly, sometimes it's difficult to track the origin.
I'd like to thank all those who submitted answers. I have found them useful and have upvoted them all.
I'm a textbook author. I agree that it's hard to formulate a cut-and-dried answer to your question. One criterion to consider: If a colleague would compliment you on a copied problem or question because it was particularly clever or insightful, you should probably consider a citation. Stated differently, if you're getting academic credit (even if informal) for the contribution, cite the source.
Too subjective, just cite source to all problems in your notes/book. Better safe than sorry.
I think it's considered more of a courtesy rather than a requirement to credit someone who has developed a problem, provided that there is no new technical content introduced in the problem. On the other hand, however, if one is to use a problem in a problem set or examination completely unchanged, then some citation of the original source is certainly recommendable, as otherwise one is guilty of a copyright violation.
I'd think the question of citation and copyright violation are somewhat orthogonal to each other. Unless dictated by licensing terms (e.g. Creative Commons), copyright violations are still copyright violations even if you cite your source.
I agree with the other comment, and would also point out that copyright often allows you to use small portions (e.g., one chapter, or a handful of exercises) for teaching purposes.
Does anyone know of any written document indicating whether or not it
is considered unethical to copy a published problem and put it in an
exam or an assignment without citing it?
I know of no document that addresses examinations and assignments directly but reusing someone else's words or ideas is plagiarism. It doesn't matter the source, purpose, or intent. For teaching materials I think there is a little leeway in that plagiarism may be unintentional. I am sure that some the examples I use in my teaching ,that I think are my ideas, are in fact someone else's.
I am trying to give a point of view different from what some of the answers.
Citation is generally associated with new, clever or original creations. But sometimes it is very hard to know the origin. What if the author him/herself does not cite some examples or questions taken from someone else. How do you know they had the original idea? Often questions are borrowed modified and then presented. Should we take the credit for them or not? We learn some techniques of setting good and relevant problems from someone else and then we create new ones. Should we cite them?
What I mean to say is that it may not be practical and possible and even clear if we need to cite and I agree this may not always be the case. I guess that is why none of us has come across any such documents and guidelines.
This is a thorny issue. It comes down to copyright and license, and, particularly, what is and isn't copyrightable. If the problem is not copyrightable, then you can do whatever you wish. If the problem is copyrightable, you should assume it is copyrighted, which means you can't use it unless you have a licence to do so. The only way you are guarantee that you have a licence is to use that book in your course. If you require your students to purchase the book, then they are purchasing the license to use all of that content. You can then use the same content with them. Even providing a reference is not good enough if the material is copyrighted, and you don't have the licence.
If the problem is fundamental or factual, then it's probably not copyrightable unless there is something peculiar about the wording. Thrse questions can be complex. For example, the following would not be copyrightable:
What is the derivative of x3 + 4x?
What is the major product of the reaction between calcium carbonate and sulfuric acid?
Write the time-independent wavefunction for the electron in a ground state hydrogen atom. Then, provide the eigenvalues for this wavefunction with the kinetic energy operator.
Draw a simple set of supply and demand curves for a generic free market for a manufactured product. Describe or draw the effects of each of the following changes on the market: 1) discovery of a cheaper method of production, 2) closing of a plant, 3) government enforcement of a maximum price.
I'm having trouble coming up with a question that is copyrightable. Feel free to add one to my answer.
A complex problem that involves an extended set-up would probably be copyrighted. On the other hand, the underlying idea is not copyrighted, and could be used without any concerns about violations. It's the specific expression that's copyrighted.
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42764 | How to list online publications (e.g. blog posting, etc.)?
I am updating my CV. As for my own publications, I have the usual sections:
Journal articles
Book chapters
Conference proceedings
I would also like to include the articles I have posted on different blogs.
The question is: which heading would you use for such electronic articles? They are not really conventional, peer-reviewed articles, so frankly I don't see fair to include them under the "Journal articles" section.
I saw some people use "Other publications", but I would like to be more specific.
See also: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11195/can-something-published-on-arxiv-or-optimization-online-org-be-mentioned-in-my-c?newreg=a5f0ba18ae3d47e98cee73b0ac1f7ea9
Just keep it under a relevant label to make it sure that you don't pretend to have more peer-reviewed publications.
E.g. "Blog posts", or as I do: "Popular science and education-related articles (selected)".
If there are many, be sure to select only the most important/relevant ones.
I have a section called "Other public output". (And my articles section is "Peer Reviewed Articles.")
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21033 | After a PhD in biotechnology/engineering - more opportunities in industry or a postdoc positions?
Currently, my fiancee are both currently pursuing our PhD's in bioengineering and materials science and engineering, respectively, at the same university. She wants to eventually have an industrial research position and I want to do a post-doc with the intention becoming a professor. We are ~3 years away from needing to have the serious version of this conversation, but which route of the two would be the bottleneck in our eventual decision? Are there more industrial jobs available than post-doc positions? Are there any other dual-academic-career couples out there with advice for us? I hope the content of this question is appropriate for this stackexchange. Thanks so much.
I am in a similar fix, would love to see some nice advice!! :):)
On the "positive" side, the world as we know it could not exist in 3 years. It's good to plan ahead and to have a strategy for life, if you keep in mind that in several years there are several things that can change: a) the wold, b) your mind, c) (very specially) the opportunities.
I just want to point out that the answer will vary depending on field. For instance in biology, there aren't many industry opportunities unless you want to leave biology totally. My impression is that things are very different for engineering (and even for non-biology sciences)
In some universities, if one member of a couple is given a position, the other will have better chances of getting a position, so the couples don't split. If there is collaboration between a company and a university, it could help.
I don't know much about bioengineering and materials sciences. In my area (CS) there are many more industrial positions available than academic positions.
However, industrial positions often tend be clustered in regions, and there might not be too many academic jobs in those regions (or they might be very highly competitive).
Sadly though, I suspect that basing your decisions on where you might do a postdoc is a problem, because a postdoc itself is a temporary position, and so you're really only deferring the real problem. One argument would be that if postdocs in your area take a while (say 3-4 years vs 1-2), then you might as well operate as if that were the permanent job, and then reevaluate after your time is done and you're on the academic job market.
Good luck: two-body problems are tricky, and when one partner is on the academic track it gets even trickier.
Ah, thanks for your insights. I was under the impression that usually post-docs are "usually" offered professor positions.
@tquarton Post-docs are considered more likely to be offered a given open, available position than other applicants - but in general most institutions are not hiring on the same timeline as your average length of postdoc. So if you have a postdoc of 1-4 years and your university only hires professors in that field every 5-20 years, you can see how this heightened opportunity to be chosen might be an utterly moot point.
I don't know about your area: as @BrianDHall says there's a huge imbalance between number of postdocs and number of faculty slots in that area. and even if there's a vacancy it's by no means a given (or even close to it) that the in-house candidate will be preferred.
First of all I would like to mention that I am a PhD student in a Bio-Engineering department and this answer contains information about the issue from that perspective.
When I have started to my PhD I was thinking of pursuing an academic career in my field and would like to conduct research on tissue engineering. Then I saw that there is no straight way to this career. The first thing that disappointed me was that the field that I would like to improve myself was a the field of expertise of anyone in my institution. Due to lack of experts on that field in the institution I couldn't study on that field. If you ask why I didn't try to find an another institution, I can only tell that there are not many institutions in the country that have that sub-field of Bio-Engineering. I then choose to studied a very different field than my original intent and now I am close to the graduation.
I am looking to industrial jobs and also to the post-doc positions and I can tell that there are more post-doc positions for our field than industrial jobs. The problem is that those post-doc positions almost always require publications in Nature, Science etc. so it is very competitive. I wish you and your fiancee could find the place that you can fit. Me and my fiancee are not successful at finding it yet, but I have not lost hope.
Thanks for sharing Umut, I wish you and your fiance the best as well.
I am in a similar situation @tquarton. I'm a BME phd and my fiancee is a medical student. 2 comments that i don't think have been made about the academic route.
I've been told, and seen a few times already, that post-docs in our field are actually less likely to make the jump to assistant professor at their current school. The reasoning I've heard is that your colleagues making the decisions are often unconvinced of how important your research is to the field since they cannot possibly stay up to date on your niche, so they expect that you should be able to find jobs at other universities to "prove it"... If you do get external position offers, I think you are more likely to bargain for a 'raise' at your current location. I say this because I am in a similar situation and I tell my fiancee that I expect my post-doc will not be my final landing spot, which is important for our future planning.
also, it is common, if one of you is especially talented or lucky for that matter, that universities will accept you as a couple. This is a nice situation when it happens, and I've seen it once at both locations i've been so far in my career.
I'm very interested in this question, and this is my perception so far (4th year phd). If one or both of you are willing to take an industrial job, this will certainly increase your chances. Good luck! :)
The main advice that I have on this topic is that it can be difficult to return to academia after a stint in commercial enterprise (i.e. "industry"). There are exceptions -- some people do publish from commercial positions, or otherwise develop some exceptional expertise that gives them opportunities as academic researchers. My impression is that returning to academia is easier for engineers than for basic science researchers (such as biologists, like myself).
The flip side is that if you want to go into industry, you might as well get started ASAP, unless you think your post-doc project will make you an attractive candidate for companies.
So at least for biology, my understanding is that if you shouldn't leave academia until you are sure that you want to. This is especially important for biologists, since there aren't very many "biology" jobs outside of academia, so leaving academia often means leaving biology.
I think you might have misunderstood the motivation for the question. She doesn't want to go PhD->Industry->Academia. The concern was geared towards which of our two distinct paths would be the limiting factor in eventually settling in the same place together. Thanks for your answer though!
I shouldn't answer prior to having coffee.
Haha, no problem.
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24232 | Should I put my not-yet-submitted work on my web page?
I am planning on submitting a paper to a journal. Is it acceptable and advisable to upload it to my web page for public consumption, in the mean time?
Many of the questions and answers with the preprint tag are relevant here. Do these answer your question?
Depends on your field. In math and theoretical computer science, sure. In chemistry, absolutely not.
@JeffE: What's so special about chemistry?
See http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10284/what-are-the-reasons-for-journals-to-reject-any-manuscript-that-has-already-been
I varies with fields and journals.
Some journals do allows posting preprints on one's webpage, or on a preprint server.
Some not, but they don't care. (And some academicians do put their papers on their websites, even if it is against rules.)
Some don't allow and do care, so putting the preprint on your webpage may disqualify you from publishing this work.
(If it fits your discipline, why not using http://arxiv.org/?)
I don't use arxiv.org because one has to be invited, and I am an independent researcher with no contacts aside from my old adviser.
@horsehair Try asking your advisor, or authors of papers you cite.
One does not have to be invited to ArXiv. One has to be endorsed. There's a difference, and the latter often means just convincing one person, not many.
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25976 | Asking for data as a student - ease the pain
I'm a bioinformatics bachelor graduate. The group I'm currently working for does not produce its own data. So I often have to search the literature for available data sets. Luckily, tons of interesting data is now freely accessible over the web - which is really great.
However, sometimes data is mentioned in the paper, but not published or the download links do not work anymore.
I noticed that asking other groups for data can be really painful. I usually do not get a reply on my first email to the corresponding author. It does not seem to matter how many details I provide in that email about whom I am working for, what I am intending to do with their data, etc. Putting my supervisor in CC does not seem to help either.
The solution is very simple: After a week or so I ask my supervisor to forward my mail to the authors. The next day I usually have a very polite email with the data attached in my mailbox.
This is annoying in many ways: Firstly, I am waiting quite some time for the data. Moreover, I have to ask my supervisor to write emails for me, which is wasting both his and my time.
I'm quite surprised that some (many?) researchers apparently tend to ignore requests from students.
I'm wondering if this is a common problem and I'm looking for advice about how I can improve my emails to increase the chances of getting a reply.
I'm quite surprised that some (many?) researchers apparently tend to ignore requests from students. — Why are you surprised by this?
@cel Asking for anything that people are not legally required to do sometimes needs social or political power. You have found a way to accomplish your goal, so, what is the problem? If you are afraid of your advisor's time, write e-mail for him (or maybe it is not a big deal for your advisor anyway).
@JeffE Do you advocate that it is good that for a given content of an e-mail people should be judged based on their position in hierarchy?
I advocate that it is understandable that people reply to other people they actually know before they reply to random strangers.
@JeffE I can understand your point that people might not want to share data with some random student. But I really don't understand why someone would ignore the request of a student of fixing a broken link to data.
There are similar questions on this site for students requiring source code, such as What action to take when questions regarding a published paper are ignored by its author?. In your case you need data but as you have already seen yourself, sharing data is hardly a volunteer action.
Sharing data is a form of collaboration and collaboration needs equal (or almost equal parties). You benefit from taking the data but how does the other party benefit? You will probably say that the other side will increase his citations but how you guarantee that you will actually get something published if you are just a graduate student at his beginning? When your professor contacts them, two things are guaranteed: a) The confidentiality of the data b) The fair use of the data, including citation. When you contact them, none of these two conditions apply.
Second, many times graduate students just collect data without a clear understanding of what to do with it. It is easier to send a dozen emails to request all sorts of data than actually getting job done on the ones you have. You said it yourself:
...tons of interesting data is now freely accessible over the web
So, why do you need extra data, when there are already many available datasets for you to use? Have you already published something with the freely available data? Have you even compiled a similar dataset? Would you actually share your dataset if you had one? If the answer to most of these questions is NO, then these are the things you must focus on and not waiting to get another dataset for the sake of it.
Also since collaboration requires equal partnership, you will see that these things get easier when you have established yourself, even as a junior researcher. If you have some good publications (using the freely available datasets or the ones that your professor got for you), then when you request additional data (on a polite email introducing yourself and leading to your homepage and google scholar profile), you will not get ignored, because the dataset holder will know two things: a) That you know your craft and his dataset will be used in a fair way (citation included) b) That you may collaborate in the future, so saying NO to you is not beneficial to him. Until then, I do not think there is anything much you can do than using your professor. But since this has already happened more than once (and there are many freely available datasets), I doubt you really need all these datasets you are collecting.
Hi Alexandros,
Thanks for your answer. Please don't think of our work as randomly mining datasets for gems and publishing the results. We are trying to answer very specific questions and therefore are looking for datasets from various experiments that we can use for validation and hypothesis testing.
It's not like we can just use any dataset, but we're searching the literature for specific data sets for each problem we have. Of course not every dataset will suit. Often you see during the analysis that some question just cannot be answered with the data you have, or your hypothesis is wrong.
From the publication alone it's almost impossible to jugde how useful this data might be. People do not tend to mention limitations or biases in their papers.
I see your point about fair data use. But I don't understand why that would make someone think about stop sharing the data. For me asking for data is not about collaboration, but about understanding and testing the hypotheses they made in their paper. And ideally, I should have access to all data that is used in some figure to see if their claims are right.
@cel "...I should have access to all data that is used in some figure to see if their claims are right". No, this is wrong. Their work has already passed peer-review. You are not their reviewer, nor do they have to prove anything specifically to you.
But in my opinion that's not what science is supposed to be. Things are not right just because you found some other scientist who believes you. If you published your hypothesis you should expect that the scientific community would like to check your results as well.
But that's more philosophically than helping in this argument, I guess.
@Alexandros If the data is from already published papers, then asking for it is not collaboration (similarly as citing others is not collaboration).
@PiotrMigdal You can cite someone without his help. Giving you his data requires effort. Also without his data you might not have a paper. Even if he implicitly agrees to not include him as a co-author he still deserves a mention in the acknowledgements section. As such, this is still some form of collaboration.
Collecting the data in the first place was probably neither free or easy. A good scientific paper should describe the experiment so well, that believing the hypothesis by reading the paper is possible. If you would like to have further evidence, you should do a replication study and collect new data yourself. This is much better for science than analysing the same dataset twice.
@Alexandros If there is a paper based on this data, it should had been already be made public. And we need to insist on it. ("Also without his data you might not have a paper" -> "Without a theorem you have no paper.") If it is new data, I agree wholeheartedly. (And in any case acknowledgement is deserved.)
@mmh No. Without dataset it is not possible to test if the method was correct. Yes, it is time consuming and expensive, as any other part of research. I can say as well that "I have a proof that X, but I am not sharing details, because it is long, technical and I want to write a few more papers on it." It is not bad science. It is not even science.
I think I was not clear enough. When publishing the proof of X, you share the details about the data to the degree that replication of the whole experiment is possible. For example, say I study the Alzheimer's disease. I scan 100 people with MRI. Cost is ~50000€. When I publish the first paper, I give a sufficient description of the data. I don't give away the original dataset, because I can't afford giving away 50000€ for the first one who asks. I rather explore the dataset further myself. If you think my methods are bad, you should do a replication study, OR write a letter to the editor.
@mmh I have no tools to check whether you methods are bad. I am just saying that studies that were not made as much reproducible don't push science forward (as far as they could). Sadly, I am aware that the current academic system rewarding only papers is suboptimal. At least, if there is embargo period to write a few papers, do you intend to publish (i.e. make public) the data one day (I guess you don't need to pay for doing so).
You could read the methods section from my paper. The costs for publishing the data would be: 1) Because it is possible to recognize and individual from an MRI, I would need to anonymize the images and the associated metadata, 2) I would need to ask permission from an ethical committee, 3) I would need a significant amount of disk space for hosting the data. I'd say the overall cost is > 1k€. Anyway, I do agree with you that there would be benefits from open data. However, it does not come for free.
And another argument for science becoming more open source. @Alexandros: Your argument against sharing data supposes there is no reproducibility crisis in science.
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10100 | Using a software screenshot in a paper
When writing a paper which, as an aside, talks about the design of a user interface on a particular piece of software, can one insert a (correctly labeled and referenced) screenshot of the software to help readers understand - or does that cause copyright issues?
For example, I wouldn't use a photo unless I held the copyright, or a diagram - but I'm unsure of the legal position of a screenshot...
If you're displaying the screenshot as part of a paper on user interface, the use of the screenshot will almost certainly fall under "fair use." Make sure you cite the software properly, and you should be all set.
If there are restrictions, you can always ask for permission to include the screenshot in your paper!
To add to @aeismail's comment: And people who develop software are usually very happy when someone reuses their work and give them appropriate citations.
The answer, like many copyright questions, is complicated.
First, the images of the software interface is almost certainly copyrighted. As a result, the exclusive rights to reproduce images of the applicatoin lie with the copyright holder (i.e., the creator of the software.
However, as another answer has suggested, the use of a single screenshot of an application should almost certainly qualify as Fair Use under US copyright law or something similar and analogous under other systems. In other words, it's a small and relative inconsequential reproduction that you can do without having to ask for permission.
However, fair use is notoriously tricky and subjective. there is a multi-prong balancing test at the heart of fair use that is complicated and that makes it hard to know for sure whether a use if fair or not. As a result, many journals are risk averse and will systematically block many types of "probably fair" uses. I've had difficult conversations with production staff members and editors about the use of software screenshots before.
I would say go ahead and try to have the conversation with your journal editor or production staff. The worst thing they can do is ask you to take it out. This, of course, is what you would do preemptively now if you choose not to include it in the first place.
Are there harder criteria of what accounts for fair use? For example, when taking a screenshot of an image you created in an image editor or of a graph of a function whose formula you gave to a function plotter, in either case the possibility to share the visual output is essential for the usefulness of the software; and while the program was essential for the output, other programs would have achieved the exact same output (think of plotting a constant function) given your input, which thus is the essential contribution here.
Definitely, but one major issue will be resolution. A screen shot will typically yield a very low resoluton image which for most journals will be too low (recommendations are ypically 300 dpi in the final published figure size, which is usually impossible to achieve with screenshots. I would therefore recommend to make use of any possibility to zoom the window and then make a screen shot of the window as large as possible on the screen. If you are designing your user interface as you state in the question you could consider making a mock-up of the interface that is identical in every respect but which is based on higher resolution graphics, vectorized or bitmap based. Since you have access to all the original graphics elemnts this should not be difficult.
I disagree. Screenshots should be printed at normal screen resolution, so that they look as much as possible like the screen.
I've found that including screenshots in papers at normal screen resolution works fine in a two-column format, simply because a figure in that format is pretty small to begin with, and because screen resolutions are decent these days. The one caveat I have is that text can be unreadable unless the program has the ability to increase the font size.
As a former professional printer, I highly recommend printing out that page with screenshot from your doc or PDF on a regular printer and see how it looks. On an iMac with a 1920x1080 desktop resolution, the 300dpi equivalent of a full screenshot is a crisp 6.4 x 3.6 inch image. If one has access to Photoshop this is achieved by Image->Image Size, untick "Resample Image", then set resolution to 300. The resulting dimensions is the non-resampled image size at press-quality resolution.
Generally yes, you're allowed to use screenshots that you create yourself.
Depending on the publisher, they might ask for copyright approvals on the screenshots.
I believe that, as long as you yourself created the screenshot, you're the owner of it (just as if you take a photograph of something, you hold the copyright, not the creator of whatever you're photographing), but this is still, I believe, a legal grey area.
As mentioned, be sure that you provide a proper citation to the software.
This answer is not generally correct: Depending on the jurisdiction, the publishing of photos of copyrighted works of art, for example, can be highly problematic for the photographer.
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108096 | Why are oral tests and exams not common in American educational systems?
My family originates from Russia but I only have experience with American academia. My parents constantly describe oral exams whereupon a student is required to choose one of many cards that have a certain amount of questions on them and then after some time preparing be able to answer the question verbally to the professor, who can then ask follow up questions.
In my mind, this offers numerous benefits; it's much harder to cheat this system as you have to verbalise your answer so copying is not an option, verbalisation is shown to help with memory's retention, because you don't know what topic the teacher/professor will follow up with you have to more deeply to impress the professor, and many more.
The drawbacks seem limited to me; more people standing around waiting to do the exam isn't great, nor is the fact that this will be a bit more subjective to the teacher/professor.
Is there some specific reason as to why this isn't done?
Note orals exams are common in grad school in the US.
@DanielHatton: what does the literature say about validity and reliability of written (text-type and multiple choice) exams?
An oral exam takes me about 30 minutes (including preparation and discussion afterwards). I have about 110 students in my class. Doing an oral exam for that class would take me about 55 hours. This is not the only class I teach. I teach about 5 classes per semester. In order to avoid some of the subjectivity my department requires that an additional staff member is present. So implementing this for my courses would take about 55*5*2=550 person hours. That is just not practical (not to mention that my colleagues won't thank me for the additional work I give them as they have to sit in for these exams).
I know how long an oral exam takes because I do use it sometimes, but for practical reasons I can only do that for a small number of courses and I have to justify why this is necessary to my colleagues.
For comparison, how long does it take you to grade a short answer exam generally? I feel like it would take a similar amount of time as administering an oral exam which would then be graded. Also, how do you choose when you do an oral exam versus a written one?
If I'm reasonably efficient about it, a 2 hour written short answer exam takes me about 5 minutes per student to grade. Even that would be impractical if I had 500 students.
Coming from a Russian academic system, I've seen oral exams organized for a cohort of 100 students. It required around 10 instructors, so that each instructor had to listen to 10 students, which is doable in 5 hours. A great deal of subjectivity was inherent to those exams, alas.
@Mettle Alexander Woo's assessment sounds about right. For most answers you can quickly see whether they are right or wrong without reading the entire answer. This may be dissapointing to students that all those carefully crafted sentences aren't read, but there is a limit to what we can do. Another option is to use multiple choice. Those can be scanned automatically, so that is just a matter of bringing the stack of answers to the appropriate department and wait till they email the results. Designing a good mulitple choice exam is however a lot of work, so that only works for large classes.
@svavil I've seen oral exams organized for a cohort of 100 students. It required around 10 instructors... which is doable in 5 hours — In my department, each of those 10 instructors would be teaching their own cohort of 100-400 students, so doing what you describe fairly would require 100-200 hours, or roughly a continuous week without sleep.
@JeffE In fact, I have classes ranging from 50 to 120 students and I usually dedicate a couple of weeks to oral exams (8 to 20 students per day, depending on the class: for some classes I do a 20 min oral exam, for others up to 45 min - 1 hour).
As others have pointed out, oral exams take a lot of time.
I'm not familiar with the US education system, but I'm in a country where, from the elementary school to the university, verbal tests and oral exams are quite common, and I've administered oral exams for about 20 years (with a duration from 20 min to 1 hour, depending on the class). I'll thus try to outline what factors, apart from tradition, allow to administer oral exams in a manageable way.
The most significant factor is probably the structure of courses and exams. In my country, there are usually several exam sessions in a year and students can take an exam in any one of those sessions. And, frequently, for very small courses, professors allow students to take the exam whenever they wish along the year. This means that if you have a course of, say, 100 students, 50 will probably take the exam at the first session, 30 at the second and 10-15 at the third session and the rest along the year (of course, at each session there's also a bit of backlog).
Second, for many courses, there are both a written and oral tests. Those who don't pass the written test are not admitted to the oral test and fail the exam. This means that of 50 students that try the exam at the first session, maybe only 20-40 pass the exam (in the past, just 10 would not have been uncommon), and this further limits the number of oral exams that you have to deliver each session.
Third, there is a certain freedom on how to administer the exams. Some professors will thus make the oral test optional: students who decide to not take the oral test cannot get a top grade (e.g. they can get a B, or equivalent, at most). And, usually, it is remarked that the oral exam can also worsen the grade. This, again, allows to further reduce the number of oral exams (in my experience, only about 10% of the students try the oral exam if it's optional).
In addition to the above points, there is also the acceptance of the stress of the oral exam and the subjectivity, or perceived fairness, of the evaluation (and a few comments here show that this is a controversial point, probably worth of a different question).
Very interesting. Based on your comment to another answer, another important factor seems to be that you're asking questions of varying difficulty, in order to challenge the students and understand how far they can go. Thus, it seems like oral exams can give professors a better idea of students' abilities at the top end, especially if written tests are more aimed at distinguishing passing from failing or if many students score near 100%.
The schedule is a big difference, then. In the US system, a course typically lasts one semester (15 weeks), and final exams occur right after the end of the semester, usually all within 1-2 weeks. A permanent course grade must be assigned very shortly after that, so there is no way for a student to take the exam at a later date. And there aren't large blocks of unscheduled time during the final exam period, so it would be impractical to schedule all oral exams in that short period even if it weren't an excessive amount of work.
How can students who take the exam 1/3 of the way through the class be adequately graded for the content that they haven't covered? Or is it only over the first third of the material? Do the students who take it at the final session get tested on the whole of the material or only the final third (to make a comparable breadth)?
@guifa I don't understand your question: the exam is taken at the end of the class, not 1/3 of the way. There are no intermediate terms. And students get tested on the whole of the material.
You said multiple exam sessions... how far apart are these sessions? To me, the general understanding of exam session is a period of only a few hours, so I assumed you meant a week in January, a week in March, a week in June, especially as you said some professors allow the exam to be taken at any point in the year.
@guifa There are several exam sessions in which the students can take the whole exam, not just a part of it. And if they fail in one session, they can retake the exam in any later session. If one has many students, an exam session can last for a couple of weeks. In my university we have a total of four exam sessions along the year: two exam sessions at the end of the classes, separated by two-three weeks, one in September and one in February.
@MassimoOrtolano What happens if one course requires another course as a prerequisite, but the student hasn't yet taken the exam because they scheduled in February? If they go ahead and take the next course, if they fail do they need to wait until the next year to retake?
@guifa Prerequisites are checked only for attendance, so you can take the exams in whatever order you wish. Of course, if you take them in the wrong order, you'll probably have a higher chance of failing.
I am going to speak solely from personal experience as a student in Russia going through 5 oral exams right now. In my university, the lecturer is usually just one of about 10 professors from the department in the lecture hall where we take the exam. These people most of the time have drastically different views on how you should explain one concept or another and what level of understanding deserves an A. This brings me to my main point - grades which are given during such an oral exam simply are not equal to the knowledge of a particular student. I have many friends who didn't deserve their grades and many who deserved much better. This, unfortunately, means that your luck, charisma, and sometimes your looks/gender determine your GPA and consecutively your further education.
Another aspect not mentioned (I am not sure if this is made concrete somewhere) is that oral exams do put students on the spot (they are in now way anonymous). This opens up the universities of being sued, if a student feels uncomfortable.
Even worse, a student could accuse the professor of some bad behavior in this situation, as a retaliation of a poor grade.
Grading a written exam can be done together with the TAs, and it is easy to get a second opinion, and spread the grading over several people, thus reducing the grounds for a student accusing a teacher for treating them unfairly.
I actually did that once, as a TA in basic computer science for CS majors. 90ish students, 10-15mins each group of 3 students, it took me the best part of two weeks, including days from 7am to 9pm.
I was only able to do it because I had a lot of "free" time as a TA (MS student, but I didn't have any courses of my own and my work was ahead of schedule).
NEVER AGAIN
Why? Because it takes an insane amount of man-hours (even if you do in parallel) and it doesn't inform you of anything you don't know already. After a while, it is fairly easy to spot the good students, the lazy but good, and the bad students. In that specific course, the marks for that oral exam were remarkably similar to the ones of a regular written exam I applied two months later.
Unless you want to see how the student behaves when "put on the spot", it serves no purpose.
I don't think I understand the setup you had. The numbers you give should only have resulted in 7.5 active hours of exams, so it is not clear what took all the time.
The scheduling was not necessarily optimal (unused gaps between groups), sometimes it took more time per student, etc. I might have misremembered some parts, I'm sure of the number of students (default 2 groups of 45) and the weeks (the events are still on my calendar) but it was in 2007...
Cheating can be a problem with oral exams just as much as with a written exam. The issue is foreknowledge of the questions, rather than the ability to verbalize the answers. So you’d be dependent on having a large stack of questions, which leads to a question of fairness. If you randomly select questions to answer, how are you sure that students across the class are getting roughly equal difficulty in the questions they’re supposed to answer. All of this has to go into the preparation time for the exam.
And none of this deals with the enormous time constraints of administering the exam to a large number of students in a class. While I have done such exams when I had 15 or 20 students in a co-taught class, I would never even consider doing it for a lecture course of 50 or more students.
It's 20 years that I routinely administer oral exams (actually, first a written exam and then the oral part, with classes of up to 100 students), and I have to disagree with this answer. First, you really don't need a large pool of questions because there are concepts that are difficult to master and explain even if you know already the question. Second, you really don't want to be fair in oral exams, that is, you want to challenge more, with the most difficult questions, those who can aim to top grades. Of course, in the assessment, you will take into account the difficulty of the question.
you really don't want to be fair in oral exams — What?! This strikes me as blatantly unethical. Yes, I really do want to be fair in exams, no matter how they're given.
@JeffE I beg to differ in the interpretation of fair: for me, fair means that to higher grades you get more difficult challenges, not that everybody gets the same type of questions. Otherwise, you have grade inflation.
@JeffE This seems to be a cultural difference between the US and Europe, in my limited experience. In the US it would be outrageous to ask different students different questions, but it sounds relatively commonplace in some other countries.
@StellaBiderman: Just to clarify: What Massimo is probably talking about and what I am familiar with is roughly as follows: Each candidate first gets a basic question from the same selection of questions and depending on the answer, they get either get further questions to weed out mistakes in their answer or proceed with a more advanced question. Every candidate is treated the same way, but it is interactive (which is one of the advantages of an oral exam). I have seen failed exams which ended at high-school level, whereas good exams ended at current research – for the same course.
And to further clarify: “Fair” doesn’t mean “identical questions” but “identical protocol for assessment” — everyone has the same opportunity for the same grades, and similar responses to similar questions yield similar outcomes. I would consider the protocol @Wrzlprmft describes to be completely fair, assuming there’s a neutral protocol for when to shift the difficulty up or down.
@Wrzlprmft I appreciate the further clarification, and stand by the comment that many people in the US would be outraged by this.
@JeffE Wrzlprmft's description is correct, but there's really no "protocol" (whatever you mean by that), as there is no protocol for many things of life: one improvises according to their experience, and sometimes an oral exam can take unexpected directions.
@StellaBiderman Wrzlprmft's description is correct, but in twenty years of teaching I've never heard anyone being outraged by this or complaining about my unfairness.
@StellaBiderman This year for the first time I had a bunch (6-8) of students from the US, for an exchange program. They were 3rd year students in the US and my class is in the 2nd year here. None of them passed the class, which was for them much more difficult than expected, but my impression is that they also had a culture shock about the exam. One day, when two of them came to review the exam papers, we were about to start the oral exams. I then suggested them to listen to a few oral exams, to understand how they wor,k because it would have been useful if they planned to retake the exam.
And when I told them that they could listen because oral exams in Italy are public, that is, anyone — even the layman from the street — can listen to oral exams, they were clearly shocked.
@StellaBiderman When I had to do oral exams in Germany, everybody received the same set of “starting” questions to look over before the exam starts. The issue is what the progression should be to identify how well the student understands what’s going on. But even the oral exams I had in the US didn’t “follow a script” beyond providing the initial topics for the discussion.
@MassimoOrtolano, in some countries public oral exams would violate privacy regulations. What is the situation in Italy these days with regard to the General Data Protection Regulation?
@JW I'm not a lawyer, but it's probably possible to have public oral exams fully compliant with the GDPR. Every university I know of has a data protection officer and documents addressing exams and GDPR, but there doesn't seem to be any specific limitation for oral exams (that I could find, at least). Second, I have a practical attitude: the day in which regulations will make it too difficult to do my job the way I think it's best, then I'll happily stop teaching.
@JW I do not know the Italian system but what I have seen in other European countries is that oral exams are public but the grades are not. Oral exams being public even seems to be a legal requirement in some of these countries.
@JW Typically in Italy the student can require the exam to be private (I do not know if this is a law or just a custom). Basically no one does though - the exam being public is seen as a guarantee for the student that the professor won't be blatantly unfair (there are plenty of witnesses after all). Moreover a lot of university activities are open to the general public (for example, lectures) and there's a general sense that this is how things should be - even grades being private is a relatively recent development.
I'm teaching in the US system and, because of the pandemic, I started using oral online exams for my midterm and final exams. I find I can get an A/B/C/D/F decision on a grade within about 5 minutes, and a more nuanced grade within 10. This is approximately the same time as I spend grading traditional written exams (I'm a slow grader).
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108775 | What if your reviewer told you need to cite author A and Author A is you?
It is common practice in my field to remove self-citations completely in a manuscript for consideration. Even if you use neutral language like: “Author A said XYZ” (with Author A being myself), it is frowned upon. One of my senior colleagues was telling us she got a review that said she needed to read more works of Author A and cite Author A more and her not mentioning her shows a distinct lack of the literature! (She is Author A.)
This is quite an amusing situation but while it is under revise and resubmit still, she is considering withdrawing it and submitting elsewhere because saying “Hey, I am Author A and I think I know my own work quite well” wouldn’t really cut it, right? How would you respond to this largely negative review without compromising anonymity? Or would you just let the editors know?
Did the paper cite relevant work from A? If so, I would correspond with the editors - they make the final decision, not the reviewer.
Yes, a common problem. One of my postdocs once wrote a paper and, for double-blind review, meticulously elided any ever so slight reference that we could be the authors, but cited ourselves in a subdued way as if we were a 3rd party. The reviewers were furious about us not giving properly emphatic credit to us. It's nice to have reviewers so committed on our behalf, but, on the other hand, the paper was rejected. We were not sure whether we should laugh or cry.
This is a legitimate question for the editor, as it is impossible to solve this just between you and the reviewer. For the editor this is one of the "nicer" problems, as there is no one to blame. It is also an easy one to solve: (s)he can just ignore all remarks by the reviewer on this topic. Remember, reviewers only give advise, the editor is the one who decides.
@CaptainEmacs ouch!
This problem seems to be the result of citations becoming a sort of currency. Originally, they were only there to help the reader, so there was no reason to avoid self-citation. It still seems counter-productive to do so.
This seems like evidence that it's a bad policy! In my field of computer science it is standard to include third person self-citations in double-blind submissions.
@Thomas Which does not help, see my comment above.
@CaptainEmacs I don't see why third person self-citations would be problematic. Just cite your work like you would anyone else's.
@Thomas Yes, that's what we did. But obviously not emphatically enough :-)
If it's a wide practice in your field to remove self-citations at the submission stage, and a well-known practice, then reviewers should be aware that the conscious omission of author A should be a sign that author A might be an author of the work under consideration. This suggests that the reviewer may not be aware of the convention—perhaps it was written by someone relatively new to your field.
I would just proceed by incorporating the comments, and explaining to the editor why you broke with convention.
This seems really strange, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t one be expected to self cite in the field they work in? In any case, if the reviewer requests it, why not break convention? What field is this?
This might not be @aeismail 's field but in my field (social sciences), several of the top journals make it explicit that self citations must be removed (but can be added later when the reviews come back and if it is good to be published)
You did your part to remove self-citations when you submitted. The reviewer is demanding you address it. This is a catch-22. The only other advice is to ask the editor how to respond to this.
And maybe the reviewer hasn’t submitted to the journal and doesn’t know the policy?
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109266 | After PhD, no support from PhD supervisor
I am writing here to get good advice for my career. I completed my PhD in Mathematics last year. I was quite happy after my PhD that I have gained a PhD degree, but I don't have any idea what I could do with this degree. Normally people apply for postdocs after doing PhD to become more independent and gain more exposure to research in their field. However, what can they do if their supervisor does not support them to apply for postdoc positions? What if their supervisor says "you are not an independent researcher, so I don't think you could really sell yourself as an independent researcher?"
I am stuck in my career after having lots of negative feedback from my PhD supervisor, who always says not to apply anywhere, and just stay here (my country) and integrate yourself with your colleagues. How could someone stop you or discourage you to apply anywhere else in the world?
One of the biggest and toughest situations for me is the field I had chosen for doing PhD has no funding all around the world and I can hardly find postdocs in my field. And even if I find an advertisement of a post relevant to my field, my supervisor discourages me from applying by saying that that is not exactly relevant to the field (topic) in which you had done your PhD. It's so weird to me that is it necessary to have the same topic for a postdoc to apply in which a person had his PhD? Can't we slightly change our research topic relevant to the field (same background).
The main problem is to apply for any postdoc we need a strong reference letter from our PhD supervisor. What can people do if they doesn't know what their supervisor writes about them in the reference letter? I spent four years in my PhD and not once did I did realise that my PhD supervisor is unhappy with my work. But now when I am back in my country on completion of my PhD my PhD supervisor has negative thoughts about me that I can't sell myself as an independent researcher, I will need guidance and direction.
And he is probably true, because most of my work in my PhD was done by him. And he never let me be independent throughout my PhD. I don't even know how people find topic of research/problem to work on and how do they find techniques to attach on the problem. I had been given a problem with my supervisor and direction as well. I had done all the coding by myself advised by my supervisor and later analysing results and proving those results was done by him. In the end of my PhD when I was writing my research paper I put his name on it where he said no to me and writing paper solely with my name only.
Currently, I am a lecturer in my country. However, to survive in an academia I have to publish papers and supervise master's students. However, I am not feeling myself independent in research, due to the reason I am applying for some postdoc positions, where I have no support from my PhD supervisor. What should I do at this point? Should I leave academia? Should I go to industry? To join an industry what skills I do need to have? How can I make myself a perfect candidate?
I am really stuck in my career without having any support from my PhD supervisor after PhD. I am looking for some really good suggestions for my career. I shall really be grateful.
For questions on industry, try workplace.SE. For your academic career: why don't you apply for somewhat related postdoc positions and see what happens? You don't have to listen to your advisor anymore. Become independent.
I applied for some postdoc positions but I have a doubt on my supervisor's reference letter who probably not writing good about me. I always got rejection where ever I applied.
I am a lecturer in Pakistan.
This sounds tough, but congratulations on making it through your PhD! To understand exactly what your advisor's judgment means (and what his recommendation is likely to say), it may help to know how others from your program or with your advisor have fared. Does this professor just encourage them to stay as lecturers locally? (Is this how this professor got started?) Or has he encouraged some students to seek postdocs internationally?
His previous PhD student faced a tough time too while doing PhD with him. But the student was clever and he collaborated all his work with his second supervisor. But I came to know all this thing near completion of my PhD where the things was not in my hand and I had to complete my PhD in his supervision.
most of my work in my PhD was done by him — Oh, no. That was a serious mistake, both by you and by your advisor.
To answer the question about career advice:
I think that math is a particular hard field for folk to really find their place in, if pursuing a long-term career: there is less research money than in some other technical disciplines, and since math is a required "core" subject at many colleges and universities, it can make the teaching feel less satisfying to many instructors.
My advice: Go get a job outside of academia where you make money or make or difference. I'm currently a data scientist at healthcare system (I studied PDEs), and there are tons of industries that seriously reward mathematically competent people that can do good work. Many don't even care if you're an "original researcher".
Just as a short, anecdotal list: I have math-oriented, Ph.D. acquaintances at banks evaluating small business loans, in the petroleum industry building geological models, at social media companies doing research, at nonprofits working on high impact projects, in civil service creating policy, at logistics companies at the cutting edge of operations research, at consulting companies doing who knows what... the list goes on. None of them did their Ph.D. in the specific discipline that they're working on now.
Towards making yourself a good candidate: It's hard to give blanket advice, as it really varies based on industry, company, and sometimes group. I suggest that you start applying to jobs that look interesting. Just the act of applying will focus your mind on the sorts of experiences, connections, and skills that you may want to make yourself more attractive as a prospective employee.
If you can't get letters from your ex-supervisor, try to get letters from your collaborators.
Welcome to Academia SE! Your answer may be getting downvoted because it is so short, and while it doesn't address the entire (overly broad, and highly situation-specific) question, your answer suggests a practical strategy.
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461 | Publishing a creative, important result – does it create any real finance opportunities (jobs, etc.)
I often fantasize that when I will get my work to successful end, then I will have new possibilities open – and that maybe I will even receive scientific job offers. The work is obtaining new important results in computational sciences.
But then I get to the ground, think that giving someone job is rather a necessity for the employer – and not an act of appreciation or even not an act of support. Then, my results are important and useful, so someone may need them. However, the results can be understood, used and further developed by some other scientist. So it will not be necessarily me, who will get the job.
One related example that comes to my mind is Stephen Wolfram, who is independent because he is earning money himself. So he was not appreciated by someone, instead he won his share in software market.
Sadly, there is not a strict correlation between doing good science and being financially successful. It is entirely possible to do "creative, important work" and still not be well rewarded for it. For instance, one could have published these results in an obscure journal that very few people will read. Or, as another example, the researcher might be a poor "salesman," unable to convince readers and fellow scientists of the merit of his work.
In general, you need a combination of both networking and technical skills to forge a successful career as a researcher: the contacts will help you get interviews for jobs; your technical knowledge will get you the job.
The part about convincing readers and fellow scientists reminds me many life situations, where e.g. some people easily influence a group to move to some place (e.g. a cafeteria) and others struggle and struggle and nothing happens.
When I worked for HP (in the storage area network division), much of the published research articles were for things that it still took several years to bring to market. Generally, it was about 5 years between the first papers and the time a product made it to market. Even things used everywhere - SQL - took 9 years to go from research paper (Codd's paper was in 1969) to first commercial product (Relational [now called Oracle] was released in 1978) with several large companies (including IBM) trying to bring a product to market. In software development, academic research runs 5 to 30+ years ahead of in-the-field practices.
As for Wolfram, I don't think he's a good model to emulate, as he fits the model of a crank more than the model I would attribute to a good scientist. Despite that, I bought his book and use his software.
Another example I can think of where creative important results don't translate to success is Long Term Capital Management. Founded by 2 Nobel Prize winners in economics, it was the first massive Wall Street bailout in the 1990s after the Russian financial crisis resulted in Soviet/Russian bonds going belly up. One of the founders was the Scholes in the Black-Scholes model, which is one of the most important equations in finanace.
Discovering something great and/or important takes a different set of skills than bringing that discovery to market.
aeismail's response is on target, and just to extend it a bit more, you will find few researchers who make money directly from their research. All your work is owned by the university and patents you file are owned by the university.
That being said, it is fairly common for a researcher to found his or her own company based on their work. There are numerous examples of this, but just to give two examples from my own experience:
Psychology Software Tools, the company behind E-Prime, a popular psychology paradigm programming language, is owned by Dr. Walter Schneider, a psychology professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
Computational Diagnostics, Inc., a company offering neurological monitoring services, is run by Dr. Robert Sclabassi (recently retired), who has numerous publications in the field of EEG signal processing.
Aside from creating a startup, some professors will consult externally for a fee. Anecdotally, depending on how well-connected the professor is, I know a number of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who did consulting work on the side.
Often, if researchers have business acumen and interest, they will follow one of these two paths.
It should be pointed out that many universities and corporations will engage in profit sharing on patents and other intellectual property.
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189215 | Literature research: Are IEEE and ACM covered in Scopus?
We performed a systematic literature review using the three databases Scopus, ACM Digital Library, and IEEE Xplore. Comment from one reviewer was that Scopus contains the other two databases, and thus searching ACM and IEEE is redundant. Our results do not indicate that Scopus covers the two databases.
Question: Does Scopus cover the ACM Digital Library and IEEE Xplore databases?
The empirical search results suggest that it is not sufficient to search in Scopus and get all results from ACM and IEEE also in Scopus. However, there are at least two things that could be partially responsible for the empirical results not always helping here: (a) The time lag in updating the indexes (when and how often are the ACM and IEEE databases integrated into the Scopus database?) and the search methodology (in ACM, full text is apparently searched by default (instead of abstract, title and keywords), we got more articles in ACM than in Scopus, but could not attribute this to the search methodology. However, we cannot exclude errors on our part here.
Furthermore, there are systematic literature reviews in well-ranked journals that search all three databases, among others, e.g.:
Johnson, D., Deterding, S., Kuhn, K.-A., Staneva, A., Stoyanov, S., & Hides, L. (2016). Gamification for health and wellbeing: A systematic review of the literature. Internet Interventions, 6, 89–106.
Our search for "official information" found the Scopus Content Coverage Guide 1. Here IEEE is mentioned as indexed, ACM does not appear, but there is a rather large "Other" block of 60%.
Seems fairly easy to test: Did your Scopus searches yield articles in ACM or IEEE journals?
Do you mean to ask if there are journals or conferences indexed in the IEEE and ACM databases but not Scopus? If your results do not indicate so, can't you just point out a few results that can be found directly through IEEE and ACM but not through Scopus?
Thank you for your comments! I added further information to the question for clarification.
When you say IEEE do you mean IEEE Xplore? And by ACM do you mean the ACM Digital Library or the ACM Guide to Computing Literature? Please be precise with the exact name of the database, or else there is no possibility of getting an accurate answer.
Scopus has a complete source title list you can download at the bottom of this page ("Download the Source title list").
If I filter for IEEE the column Publisher imprints grouped to main Publisher, I find 350 results (distinct journals/transactions indexed in Scopus).
The IEEE website, hwoever, speaks of 393 journals (see here, left-side menu). It thus raises the suspicion that not all IEEE journals are indexed in Scopus (probably 43 are missing).
Most likely the newer media are not indexed.
Some examples I found not to be in Scopus' source title list:
IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (since 2020)
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory (since 2020)
IEEE Open Journal of Signal Processing (since 2020)
IEEE Transactions on Signal and Power Integrity (started in 2022)
It is likely that there will be similar patterns with regards to ACM.
In my opinion, it is highly unlikely that Scopus covers everything in IEEE Xplore and ACM Digital Library. To know precisely, you will need to look for the documentation on each of the three sources (Scopus, IEEE Xplore, and ACM Digital Library) to find the exact full lists of their coverage and then compare these lists. Given that these are three independent database sources and they are constantly adding (and to a lesser extent, removing) sources independently of each other, I think the chances that the three of them would perfectly overlap are close to zero.
On a side note, just in case you are not aware, Scopus is fundamentally different in nature from IEEE Xplore and ACM Digital Library. IEEE Xplore and ACM Digital Library are full-text databases that archive the full texts of most of the articles in their databases. However, Scopus is an abstract database. That means that it does not archive full texts directly. Rather, it only archives abstracts (along with titles and keywords, of course). For full-text access, Scopus links directly to your institution's library with all the databases that your institution has subscribed to. If your institution has full-text access to the article, then Scopus will link to it. But if your institution does not have full-text access to the article, then Scopus cannot provide it, either.
In this way, Scopus is analogous not to the ACM Digital Library (nor to IEEE Xplore) but to the ACM Guide to Computing Literature which works similarly as an abstract database. Since this is also an ACM source, it is most likely that the ACM Guide to Computing Literature fully contains everything in the ACM Digital Library and a lot more. Although it probably does not overlap 100% with IEEE Xplore (because IEEE is independent from ACM), I would guess that it probably overlaps better than Scopus because its research domain is closer. So, if you want to search in just one place, I think the ACM Guide to Computing Literature might be your best source.
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40637 | Showing figures from a paper in presentation
I'm giving a talk summarizing someone else's paper and I'd like to show some figures from their paper during my presentation. It's an informal talk to fellow students and a few professors at my school. Would it okay to just have a PDF of their paper up on the screen showing the figures needed? Should I obtain permission before I do this?
Do you mean a published paper, as in a journal? If so then yeah there's absolutely no problem showing it directly. If you want to pull figures from it and put them in your talk, just make it clear where they're from.
I've personally seen this done in talks all the time, just make sure you leave a footnote referencing the work.
In my field, mathematical physics, I've seen many presentations with figures from papers, and it's perfectly acceptable to do so providing you reference the work either at the end on a separate slide or as a footnote.
If the figure does not consist of data collected by the authors, but rather, for example, the graph of a function, then you could of course plot it yourself and include your own figure. There would be no need for citation.
"There would be no need for citation" - Except if you need to cite the function itself :-) Nice answer!
@darthbith Yes, I considered that, but generally functions themselves aren't cited. Rather, if there is a result about a particular function, then that may merit citation.
The thesis writing guide of Tampere University of Technology (Thesis Writing Guide at Tampere University of Technology, p. 35. March 2014.) says the following about using figures from other sources in your thesis. As the theses are published, I believe the following applies also to presentations:
If a table or figure is cited from another volume [i.e. published paper], the in-text
citation is placed in the caption or the heading of the table. The
full reference is listed at the end of your thesis.
and
If you edit a figure or table taken from another source, for example,
to ensure that colours, terms and notations match the rest of your
thesis, you add ”adapted from [15]” to the citation.
These recommendations are legal at least in Finland. Even though we have quite similar copyright system with the other western countries, your local system might differ.
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129742 | How can a miscitation in google scholar be corrected?
I discovered that the journal article Ten Migrant Returnees Ilongos, Mindanao Vignettes and the Memory of Nation published by the Philippine Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (PJSSH) which I authored is now authored by a certain H.V Banez. See Links below
http://pjssh.com.ph/index.php/PJSSH/article/view/169/72?fbclid=IwAR0Z0ZfdW9-StIjclUD7KRCvuICQr0BUmXug3aqsV0-NuC0Ge5ZWUFg-bGg
http://pjssh.com.ph/index.php/PJSSH/issue/view/30?fbclid=IwAR0HJ5sD0YPAI5CQXj3co3pLquyxX145-zMTd9CDUo9GKPYwg7RWjPcu6Yc
https://scholar.google.com.ph/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Ma+Arve+Banez&oq=
See https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/106764/64
We don’t run google - you need to contact them.
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145820 | My professor is not teaching his online course himself, but uses publicly available videos instead. Is this appropriate?
I'm taking a graduate course online this semester, and have noticed a few things:
Professor has assigned us a mid-term, a final, and a research paper as the coursework for the class. These are the only grades we will receive this semester from this course.
Each week, he assigns us a chapter to read, and around 8-9 hours of videos that are supposed to serve as supplementary instruction.
The videos are publicly posted YouTube videos from the textbook author, Coursera, and other online courses.
He has not provided any of his own material for this course. No PowerPoints, no lectures, no notes, no study guide. Nothing of his own work.
At no point in the course description, or anything provided before registration did he indicate that the course would be structured like this.
Is it an issue that we're essentially taking an uncredited Coursera course for a grade and graduate credits?
But, as far as I can tell, it's not uncredited. Your complaint seems to be that the professor hasn't provided any original material. Are you a doctoral student or a master's student? In either case, and especially the latter, it is up to you to identify the new material.
Sorry, misused the term there. What I meant is uncredited in terms of copyright, not course credit. Neither the professor who made the videos nor Coursera itself are being properly attributed as the organization teaching the course. And while I am a Masters student, it seems reasonable to expect the professor to give us more guidance than just throwing a textbook at us and make a few YouTube playlists.
Whether or not you think this is unethical you certainly have reason to complain that the professor isn't doing a good job of teaching the course. You can and should make that clear in any course evaluations that you fill out.
Are the mid-terms and finals the work of your professor?
What do you mean by "no study guide"? Point 2 seems to describe exactly a study guide.
"Each week, he assigns us a chapter to read" But I thought you said he wasn't teaching.
Is this a course which was originally planned to be online, or a face-to-face course that was abruptly moved online due to the COVID-19 outbreak?
If the professor is available for discussion and questions, this may be a flipped course, which is highly appropriate for the grad level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom
The question is unclear, as it is tagged with COVID-19 but does not mention if the course was planned as online or forced there.
Does any course info or pre-registration provide any material besides the substantive content? I've never seen anything list the format.
Might pay to notify coursera to see what they think.
I would bet that YouTube is far better at delivering videos than any platform that your university has cobbled together in the last few weeks.
Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/97843/our-instructor-threw-together-freely-available-youtube-videos-and-wikipedia-arti
@TerryLoring The Covid-19 and Coronavirus tags were not added by the Question asker but by subsequent editors (who, by the way, I think acted inappropriately) and seems to have been a complete assumption on their part.
@neutralParadox -- there are a lot of questions in the comments -- consider editing your post to address some of them.
As of now, the OP has made no mention of Covid-19, so I have removed the Covid-19 tag. The OP can add the tag if they want to. To the other users, please do not add the tag if the OP has not mentioned that the question is related to Covid-19.
I had a lecturer that behaved in the same way 20 or so years ago (before online teaching). He gave us book chapter references and some problems to solve. He had one of us present a short summary of the material on the blackboard each week (he sat in the audience and made minimal comments)
My personal opinion, which is nothing more than that, is that yes, this professor's behavior is possibly inappropriate. Flipped classrooms can be a wonderful thing, but then instructors can hold online discussions, "virtual office hours", moderate discussion forums over the Internet, or otherwise engage with their classes. If your professor is doing that, then great! -- take advantage of it.
That said, with the COVID-19 outbreak everyone is in very unfamiliar territory. In principle you could complain to a department administrator, but your issue is likely to be ignored. And keep in mind that other obligations may have ramped up significantly -- for example, your professor might be at home all day, with small children whose daycare just closed.
One possible course of action might be to suggest other course activities to your professor. For example, would you like to participate in an online discussion forum, moderated by the professor, where the videos are discussed? Have "virtual office hours" at fixed times via videoconference, where you can ask questions and listen to others' questions? Pick something you'd like to see, and ask if your professor if he would mind doing it.
Could you perhaps include an explanation on (when and) why, in your opinion, this professor's behavior is possibly inappropriate?
@a.t. It sounds as if the professor is basically not interacting with the class at all. If that is the case, then I take issue with his behavior. "Interacting" can be creating original material, assigning and providing detailed feedback on homework, hosting discussions via videoconference, actively moderating discussion forums... there are a ton of options. But if the professor has mostly just said "Go learn this material on your own", then why should a student pay tuition for that?
Thank you for your elaboration! For completeness: In that case the student could, for example, decide to pay for the certificate that, many believe, assures, or increases the likelihood, of a minimum of some level of quality of the enjoyed education. Or the student could, decide to pay for the tuition because they, or people whom they think they might depend on in the future, (e.g. when getting a job), think a professor (often) selects/composes/creates information that is required to complete a course, successfully. Or because other (online) platforms do not compose information that well.
@a.t. then the tuition fees should be reduced. Charging $10000 per year for a certificate and nothing more is extremely inappropriate, to avoid using stronger/more controversial words. Especially if the professor's decision to "not teach, not be available for questions, basically not do their job" happens after the tuition fees have been paid.
no, it isn't inappropiate.
If your instructor is available for questions, comments and discussions, then you can learn a great deal this way, potentially.
I recommend that you try to do just that. If, after at least ten days of really trying, you have difficulties, or find yourself concerned that you may not be properly prepared for courses that build on the one you're currently taking, then I recommend that you reach out to a department administrator. Present it as a problem you are having, not as a problem your instructor is having. However, do lay out in as neutral a tone as possible, a description of the current course format, and if your instructor has been unresponsive to questions, do include that information. Draft the email and sleep on it. The next day be brutal and remove any trace of whining or complaining. Just state the problem as a problem you are having.
Hopefully you will not have a problem.
Happy studying!
The mid-term will also serve as a good guidance on the accuracy of his material. If he gives you a test where material was not covered, then it is a problem. If it is covered, then it isn't a problem.
Your question is stated as "is it an issue". In this form I believe the right answer is "no, there are no issues". In some fundamental subjects like calculus or linear algebra I don't even expect for an average teacher to prepare "own" materials that would be different from more or less standard textbooks (after all, this is the purpose of textbooks -- to serve as standard teaching/learning materials). Next, I don't see any principal differences between "a textbook" and "a coursera course".
I understand you might dislike this way of organizing a course, but that's a completely different matter. At the end of the day I think you should be more concerned with acquiring appropriate knowledge rather than pondering on teachers' attitude. I believe Coursera provides decent content, so you should be happy (given that your submissions are properly evaluated and graded, and you receive appropriate guidance and feedback).
What you've described sounds like a very standard online class. The only thing missing is some kind of method for direct communication with the professor. Usually this would be accomplished through discussion boards although there are other options, e.g. live sessions via Zoom or WebEx. If the professor has included something like that to allow you to ask questions and get immediate feedback then I don't see anything out of the ordinary here.
Indeed: Personal access to a teacher's help is in my opinion the essential extra you get from a course you signed up for (and, I assume, pay for) personally; as opposed to simply studying on your own, potentially using the same online resources.
There doesn't seem to be any contravention of norms or flouting of rules here. Professors are not bound to create original content; they are required to obtain appropriate permissions while using existing material. That does not seem to be the case here.
It may be argued that this isn't an ideal way to teach, but I assure you, you will find enough people to argue on both sides (on this site as well). Pedagogical instruction is far from being homogeneous, and every teacher has a different way of going about it. I would suggest approaching it with an open mind, actively engaging with the resources suggested (including the professor/teaching assistants) doing the assessments to the best of your ability.
After doing so, you will be able to identify specific problem areas, which can then be highlighted in whatever means your institution allows (feedback forms, direct interaction, mediated interaction, dropping the course etc.)
With points #1, #2, and #3, he/she outlined the topics of the course including checkpoints to grade the participants' ability to apply the techniques the course is about. Depending on the field and level of instruction, he / she may think there is no need to create original material in the sense of «the instructor created new slides», and reasons may include
there already is sufficient material made accessible by others (e.g., textbooks, the Coursera sites you mention), as well as
he / she assumes participants of his / her course advanced this much that they are able to identify additional ressources by themself of in exchange e.g. with other attendees. The actual learning is not that you hear an instructor literarally reading slides, nor the mere writing on the green board. It is about you familiarizing with the topic.
Especially under current constraints, he / she possibly intended to apply the concept of flipped classroom where participants of a class attend the lectures to discuss and clarify their questions during the self-study instead of «only» listening to a monologue.
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57678 | What are some good ways to keep students coming to lectures?
Having taught calculus for several semesters, I've noticed that the number of students attending lectures are gradually declining (especially for the 9am session). I would not be worried if they have learned the material by themselves so don't see the need of coming; However looking at their exam scores I concluded that a lot of them are not doing so well in the class when they miss lectures.
So what are some good ways to keep students coming to lectures?
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2567 | API, EULA, and scraping for Google Scholar
I love Google Scholar as my go-to place to search for papers. Some features like "forward-citations" and their nice-ish autogenerated bibtex are life savers. However, sometimes I (and others) wish we could write scripts to help us:
Google Scholar with Matlab
Automatically building a database of forward and backward citations
However, Google Scholar does not provide an API, their robots.txt disallows scrapers on most pages of interest (for instance the cited-by results are not suppose to be accessed by bots), and if you try to make many requests (as a bot would) you will get an CAPTCHA.
Last year they used to have a EULA that said:
You shall not, and shall not allow any third party to: ...
(i) directly or indirectly generate queries, or impressions of or clicks on Results, through any automated, deceptive, fraudulent or other invalid means (including, but not limited to, click spam, robots, macro programs, and Internet agents);
...
(l) "crawl", "spider", index or in any non-transitory manner store or cache information obtained from the Service (including, but not limited to, Results, or any part, copy or derivative thereof);
Some Google services like custom search (for which I could find a EULA) still state this in section 1.4, but the link in the SO answer is now dead and I have not been able to find a new EULA for Scholar. From anecdotal evidence, I know that you can get in a decent amount of trouble of you try to circumvent Google's efforts to prevent scraping of Scholar.
Is there an official source where I could look up Scholar's terms of service? Or does the new unified ToS Google unveiled mean that I should be looking for the terms elsewhere? Is scraping still disallowed?
Publish or Perish uses Google Scholar, so somehow they should be able to "directly or indirectly generate queries".
@AlexanderSerebrenik I don't know how Publish or Perish uses Google Scholar, but I know how Mendley uses it: they require you to click a button for each individual search of Google Scholar. If they automatically did the Google Scholar meta-data search for each paper when you import a folder-full then they would violate the old Scholar EULA. That is why they make you click for each query: if each query is accompanied by a click and not part of some script or loop then it is in compliance with the old EULA. Does Publish or Perish do something different?
I think that they do exactly as you describe...
Not too sure if you are looking for this.
See One policy, one Google experience released by Google
On March 1, 2012, we changed our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
We got rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and
replaced them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read. The
new policy and terms cover multiple products and features, reflecting
our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience
across Google.
That means all of the Google services have the same ToS, which is available here : Google Terms of Service
Here's a quote from that page
Don’t misuse our Services. For example, don’t interfere with our
Services or try to access them using a method other than the interface
and the instructions that we provide.
The page is still available, but no longer contains that constraint AFAICS.
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109835 | How do I ask a professor to recommend me to another professor to hire me as a teaching assistant?
I have been admitted into a college in the US for a master's program. I am applying for TA positions under various professors because TAs get tuition benefits.
One of the professors who taught me as an undergrad (Prof. X) knows a professor in the department where I will be studying (Prof. Y). How do I ask Prof. X to recommend me to Prof. Y?
Before asking for the letter of recommendation, you should ask your new department how TA positions are handled in your new program: you'll want to know
does Prof. Y even need TA's—not all courses get TA's assigned;
who is responsible for deciding who will TA which course;
when the decisions will be made.
If you find that Prof. Y needs a TA and that you'd be capable of doing the assignment, then you can approach Prof. X and ask if he'd be willing to recommend you to Prof. Y as a potential TA candidate.
Perhaps you should just apply to prof y and just mention prof x - prof y will ask their own questions as they wish.
I guess the first question you should be asking yourself is: "is this a sincere recommendation"? What are your personal characteristics/skills that make you a suitable student for the TA position? That is a similar dilemma you will face if you join the corporate job market in the future. If you had interesting achievements in Prof X's course, and you stood out for whatever reason, I think it is perfectly valid to state your desire to have a recommendation.
If you are going to aggregate a hell lot of value for Prof Y, he will be truly glad that Prof X suggested your name, pointing out the characteristics he previously observed.
On the other hand, if you do not feel like you have much of a track record to justify a recommendation, I guess the best approach might be to directly contact Professor Y and state your interest. Remember to put yourself in the shoes of your boss-to-be: Professors usually have hectic routines, and they will love you forever if you are able to make them forget the operational, boring activities of the courses. They will have extra time to plan their lectures and produce scientific output.
tl;dr: "Ask yourself: what are the characteristics that will make me super useful to Prof Y? If you do not have them yet, what does it take to learn them?"
If, after this exercise, you would recommend yourself, go for it, ask for the recommendation!
Good Luck!
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110952 | How can I tell if a website is safe for conference registration?
I am registering for a conference in Canada but the payment link has a weird name like yizhifubj and the website is Chinese.
Is that normal? Are there any guidelines for determining if a registration website is “safe”?
No. It is not safe.
you mean it is a scam? it is used for an ieee sponsored conference
It seems safe. Why do you doubt it is? A quick google search reveals several conferences that use the site.
because its name and because google chrome marked the payment page as unsafe because of the https i think
So, no reasons really.
Have you asked the conference organizers?
@Roland "A quick google search reveals several conferences that use the site."
@Roland Hmm... You are right. Let me ask random people on the internet instead.
Naive question: does "yizhifubj" spell something in Chinese?
@NateEldredge "Yizhifu" = prepaid. "bj" = probably Beijing. The website www.yizhifubj.com redirects to PayEase.
The conference behind is called “International Conference on Mechanical Design and Engineering”, Beijing, China. Surprisingly the conference itself is listed in the nature directory of academic event and the papers should get published in a journal with the ISSN 17426588. That means, the situation is a bit unclear.
ICMV 2020 which is published by SPIE also uses this payment gateway.
You will not be able to get a definitive answer on this unless you contact the conference organisers. Certainly the registration mechanism is - by modern western standards - backwards - and you are right to ring alarm bells and take extreme caution as it could well be a scam
That said, @GlenPierce answer is not the final word - and there are significant elements which indicate that the site itself is credible - these include
The actual payment IS done over HTTPS, and the certificate ties in with the domain name. Of-course, this does not mean much, except that the domain has not been compromised.
The domain names associated with the site have been registered many years
The site purports to relate to academic.net - and, indeed, when you go to the academic.net website, the payment system does, indeed link to this domain name. It is also relevant that most of conferences they have listed are held in China.
If you log onto the site, and change the meeting ID, it lists different headers for different ID's - that means that if the site has been hacked, its been hacked for a while, and there is a "non-trivial" amount of coding behind this - and yet Google have not flagged it as untrustworthy.
My inclination is to believe that this is more a case of incompetence then likely fraud (and this level of competency is not that uncommon in the parts of Asia I've been exposed to) - but I would still not register this site without confirmation from the organizer that it is legit.
It's definitively unsafe, it uses http, rather than https
Even if the actual payment is done over HTTPS, the pattern where an initial HTTP page redirects to a HTTPS one is still considered a questionable security practice by today's standards. The reason is that an attacker can rewrite the pages served over HTTP to point to a different malicious HTTPS page.
Not safe at all.
Http instead of https, never enter any information of any kind into an http site.
The mere fact that it's over http is such a huge flag that almost nothing else matters.
Wierd name. Weird names are evidence of unsafe sites. They probably keep getting blacklisted so need to create hundreds of sites to keep ahead of people writing reviews of their scams, blocking them from searches, etc.
Not a professional page. The layout and overall page design is poor. Real sites hire professional designers.
The payment gateway itself is over http. If your bank's ATM deposit drawer was a shelf that anyone could just walk up to and steal from, would you deposit your money via that ATM?
Even if these conference organizers are legit, they are not competent. This conference won't be good. People who are worth meeting won't attend simply because of this website problem. If they can't build a simple registration website, what else have they screwed up?
This is good advice in general, but none of it really resolves whether or not this is the real conference website. Academic conference organizers rarely have the budget to hire professional designers and so things are often done by someone who just barely knows what they're doing. Obviously the "safe" approach is to say "don't use it", but if it's real, then for OP that means not being able to go to the conference, which can have a career impact. People don't always have the luxury of only being able to do that which is safe.
Real sites hire professional designers --- LOL I wish. It simply doesn't work that way in my part of academia, though. Small conferences and workshops have home-made sites and registration systems, ranging from home-made php, to Google forms or "send us an e-mail to confirm".
I very much doubt that money sent through this website will actually result in actually attending a conference. The payment gateway itself isn't even over http. If this is not a scam, it's such a massive security vulnerability that everyone who goes though it will be compromised. Skip this conference.
As to your last paragraph, I can say from experience that there is very little correlation between website design competence and scientific quality of the conference. I don't know anything about this particular conference, but I certainly wouldn't make the judgment on that basis. And there are many cases where a conference is important enough to me that I would gladly risk credit card fraud in order to attend (after all, the credit card company would typically eat any losses, not me).
Actually, the payment is made in another site through HTPS. Look: https://pay.yizhifubj.com/customer/i18n/i18n_input_card_new.jsp
That site is http, not https.
@GlenPierce https://ibb.co/m0B2DT
Well, I was trying to apply to a Chinese university and this portal showed up. Just like you, I got suspicious over the URL. The URL of the webpage where you require to enter your card details consisted of "https". This made it easier to go forward but I still had some doubts. I needed to apply for the university, whatever it was. The amount was 120USD. I processed and the payment was successful. The university received the amount and the application portal showed the status "Payment Successful". I was relieved. This is for all those people who encounter that weird-looking payment portal.
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111178 | Want to go to grad school but I lack expected coursework
I am, or was, a math major in a big state university, and just graduated this year and I am taking a gap year. I finished my undergrad in three years and took some extra math courses. I also have one-year independent research experience with an Honors Thesis and a research award by the math department. The upper division courses that I have are : Linear Algebra, Analysis I&II, Adv Applied, ODE, PDE, Prob, Stats, Stochastics (All A's). some of them are in grad level. I also have an independent study on Fourier Analysis with Stien's book. As for the Application, I will have two very strong letters. Just haven't taken the GRE yet.
I understand that relatively good grad schools take the courses that students took seriously. And my problem is mainly about this.
However, every school's webpage that I looked at prefers students who also took Algebra and Topology, which I did not take for some reasons. But I am trying to learn Algebra with Artin's book and some more analysis with Stien's books myself in the gap year. Can someone please tell me just how much disadvantages would this bring me, and would what I am doing help with the admission process.
I am getting mixed messages about this. Some people say that I am pretty much locked out of top 50 schools, my professors could not really answer this, and my friends said it is not a big deal. I am very confused now. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Thanks a lot.
Not a mathematician. But, being "locked out of top-50 schools" when you have a research award and top grades in grad courses seems manifestly wrong. I would just mention your self-study of the deficient coursework in your SOP.
I’m honestly surprised your university let you graduate without taking Algebra and Topology, especially since you got honors.
It sounds like you have an excellent background in applied math, but are applying to pure math programs. Lacking courses in abstract algebra and real analysis is going to be a handicap in that context. Have you thought about applying to an applied math program?
to answer Charles' question. Yes, I did consider applied math program. In fact, If my profile is determined to be too weak for pure, then I will go for applied.
I have never been on an admissions committee and can’t really speak to if it’s actually disqualifying or not. However, even if we operate under the assumption that it is disqualifying that doesn’t mean you can’t go to graduate school, it means you can’t go to graduate school this year. You can enroll as a non-degree student in the university of your choice and take the necessary courses. This may be expensive or difficult depending on the country / situation, but if you really do need the courses it’s an option available to you. I know several people in the US who have done this in math and math-adjacent fields, more commonly for a MS degree but also for a PhD.
Thanks, Stella. That is what I am trying to do. I am trying to get a job in the university I just graduated, so the tuition would be very cheap
To be honest, I wouldn't worry a lot about what "some people say." Locked out is a pretty strong statement. I think you have a gap in your education, but you have filled that with other, also valuable, things.
I think that any reasonable admissions process will raise an eyebrow and look at what you have to offer overall. They may suggest a plan for filling the gap.
You are also well placed for applied programs by the way, if that is your interest and the reason that you took the courses that you did.
But when you apply, stress what you can do and have done, not your "weakness".
However, the best answer to this question is from someone in the admissions process (or a department head) at one or two of the universities you'd like to apply to. Likely they are willing (eager) to spend a bit of time with a prospective grad student.
My own history probably isn't relevant now (too far in the past), but I had only a very simple Intro to Topology as an undergraduate, but it became one of my top subjects in grad school. Likewise the first graduate course in Analysis (Measure Theory) was completely different from my undergrad experience. I loved it. Best. Thing. Ever. You can think. You can do math. No problem.
However, it will serve you well to try to fill what ever gaps you think you have. I would think that if you feel you lack in both Algebra and Topology that you work first on one, then the other, rather than getting too much on your plate at once.
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152325 | How to report a misconduct in methods in an article published by a top journal anonymously?
I found a potential wrong application of machine learning validation methods in one paper recently published in Nature Energy, which is the best energy journal (>50 impact factors). The authors used k-fold cross validation over a forecasting model on gasoline demand under COVID-19 with Google mobility time-series data and the COVID-19 data. They claimed they don't have over-fitting issue, as both training and testing cases reach R-square above 0.8. That should be wrong, as time-series validation should be considered instead of K-fold cross validation. It would be cheating to use K-fold in this case. Please correct me if I am wrong.
I reached the editor, and there is further evaluation ongoing since then. However, the editor does not promise to take the proper editorial action since I am not willing to disclose my personal information. Is that true? Could anyone make suggestion on this? How to report this misconduct in a correct way if I want to remain anonymous? Thanks a lot for your advice!
Is what true?
How do you know this is misconduct? That is, an intentional effort to deceive.
Perhaps the technical aspect could be queried (with neutral phrasing) over on Cross Validated.
Why not try PubPeer?
(Note: not a hard-core statistics person) Looking at descriptions of k-fold and time series, I don't see why one could not apply the k-fold methodology to a time series - one just has to partition the data appropriately. You would really need to rigorously support any accusation of "misconduct".
@Buffy I suppose you are trying to be helpful? But I think it is clear enough they are asking whether that is a normal valid response, and whether it is usual for editors to not take action without OP providing personal info.
"Misconduct" is not an appropriate term in this scenario. Misconduct is very serious and could ruin careers. But the more important question I have is are those authors known to you? I hope this whole episode is not coming out of some sort of rivalry. If you do not know them then why not send the authors an email seeking clarification? Check if they are replying you and then figure out the next steps.
See also the question https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/157911/80985
Two things here:
Firstly, if you want people to take you seriously, you really should use your real name. I quote:
Use your real name.
Not using your real name indicates that you are trying to avoid suffering any potential negative consequence of your claim being incorrect. Using your real name indicates that you are sure enough to be ready to suffer potential negative professional consequences if you are mistaken, so you can be taken more seriously. If you are not completely sure about your claim do not waste her time.
If you must be anonymous I don't think you have many good options. Some (many?) people simply aren't going to take you seriously. You would have to convince someone who is willing to use their real name to do the convincing for you.
Secondly, there is an important difference between misconduct and an error. An error is simply an error. It is a mistake, it isn't intentional, it can be corrected. Misconduct goes much further and claims that the authors intentionally attempted to deceive their readers. You deal with both differently. With errors, you do one thing. With misconduct, you do something else. Your description of the problem sounds like an error, not misconduct. Do remember that a misconduct allegation is more serious than an error. Everyone makes mistakes, but misconduct can lead to job terminations or awarded degrees being rescinded.
Based on your description you aren't alleging misconduct, you are alleging a mistake. Be clear which one you're alleging because they are different things. Confusing something like this does not bode well for being taken seriously either.
I don't think it is that simple. People are afraid of repercussions, not simply of tarnishing their own reputation by making a mistake.
In contrast to what the others have said, I believe there are reasons to want to be anonymous when reporting misconduct.
However, what you describe is not misconduct, but just bad interpretations of their data. Many, many papers use incorrect methods, or faulty interpretations. As long as this is not a deliberate attempt to mislead, it wouldn't be classed as misconduct.
While I understand that pointing out flaws in other peoples work is scary, particularly if they are more powerful than you, I think there is less of a case for anonymity. Of course in peer review you are often anonymous to the author, but you are not anonymous to the editor and it is understandable for the editor to want to understand who you are to judge who to believe - you or the author.
I won't comment at all on the validity of your criticism, because that is off-topic for Academia.SE. I'll only answer the more general question, though I will assume that the conduct is not really misconduct (as mentioned in a comment) but rather an argument about proper statistical approaches.
If you're not willing to attach your name to criticism, you put little weight behind it.
I'm not sure this choice rises quite to the level of a retraction, which would be done through the editor. A letter to the editor may be appropriate, which could be published in the journal (often after inviting a response from the original authors). If so, I'd suggest you convince a co-author to write the letter with you, preferably someone with a stable position (tenure), both to give it more credence and to give you a bit of protection (and also to verify your concerns).
These days, there is an alternative venue through social media where you may be able to raise an issue anonymously, but unless you already have a strong following it's probably difficult to get it picked up. Perhaps you could contact someone in the field who has a history of calling out errors in statistical approaches - I won't recommend anyone specifically but there are several blogs and Twitter accounts devoted to exactly this.
"If you're not willing to attach your name to criticism, you put little weight behind it." Why? If an error is identified, it is identified. It is an error. Regardless of whether it was John, Mary or someone else who first identified it.
@AndrésE.Caicedo I didn't say it makes it not an error, I said it puts little weight behind it. In this case you have N=? authors putting their stamp of approval on the paper, plus probably 2-3 peer reviewers, all who have given their names to the editor. The editor may not be an expert on this particular statistical issue, and OP seems to be making a pretty serious allegation yet won't even put their name on it (and they are sufficiently unsure to ask here). For them, it's something like 6 voices they trust vs one they don't know.
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152384 | How valuable are research assistant positions to an academic CV in the humanities?
A bit of background: I just completed my MA at a large Canadian university, and I will be starting my PhD in Sociology in the fall (at the same large Canadian university). Over the course of my 2-year MA, I worked as a teaching assistant (TA) both years, and also held 6 different research assistant positions with different faculty and projects.
For my PhD, about 30% of my total funding is tied to a guaranteed TAship for the next 4 years, so I will be working as a TA no matter what. As the summer progresses, I've started to receive offers for new research assistant positions in the fall from faculty in my department and other affiliated departments. Currently, I have 3 offers. They're all very part-time (a few hours a week each, tops), so I could theoretically accept all of them from a time-management perspective. I held 3 positions simultaneously in addition to my TAship in my MA and did not find it overwhelming, nor did it compromise my academic work in any way.
Before accepting, however, I've been trying to calculate the cost-benefit analysis. The extra money is definitely nice, but I have enough funding that I could survive without it, although my finances would be tight. Overall, how valuable this experience would be to my career is a bigger factor than the money.
With all that in mind, is accepting as many research assistant positions as I can manage (without compromising my other work) a reasonable career decision in terms of what future hiring committees (in the humanities) would likely be looking for? Again, I'm in the Canadian context, and my understanding is that most positions are seeking a solid mix of both teaching and research experience here.
Does the reputation/prestige of the faculty members I am working for matter in this case? (The way it would for an advisor?)
I recognize that one of the other major factors is whether or not taking all of these positions would compromise my ability to publish, but the flip side of that is that it's not entirely uncommon in my field for research assistants - especially at the PhD level - to end up co-authoring papers with the faculty they work for, so it may actually open up more doors for publication. I have two small/less-prestigious publications accepted so far (an interview with a senior scholar in a journal, and a chapter in an edited book), and I'm working on two others currently that will be submitted to peer-reviewed journals, so I'm in okay shape as far as publications go relative to where I am timing-wise in my career.
Sorry if that's too much context, just trying to be thorough!
This question is very similar and might be of interest: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/134440/is-ta-ing-worth-the-opportunity-cost-of-having-more-time-for-research
Usually the value of these small RA positions is not money, but getting your name on papers and being in a good position to launch new projects alongside the faculty member.
I'm a faculty member in a Canadian university who hires a lot of RAs (and who has sat on hiring committees), so I can speak to this.
In general, you need to really watch the balance you take on. The extra money is great, of course, and if you need the funds you ultimately should take these positions - the hourly rate is good.
In terms of CV building: some RA work is great, especially if it can dovetail with your research project (i.e. accumulating knowledge for your field) and if you can get a publication as a co-author. Others may involve more clerical work. The important thing is that the RA position in and of itself is not a real addition to your CV when it comes to hiring, but the effects of it can be: a publication, skills, or having a faculty member who can write a positive letter of reference.
The reputation or prestige of the faculty member would I think only really matter if they wrote you a letter of reference or co-authored with you.
The value of these types of RA positions lies in the connections and research experience (seeing up close how a successful faculty member puts together high-impact papers, learning skills).
You should select RA positions based on whether the position is likely to position you well for relationships with high-productivity scholars in your area. These can then lead to mentorship relationships and joint research in the future.
In addition to looking at the faculty publication record, you could talk to past RAs. Some faculty use RAs as a stepping stone to joint work, and some just burn through RAs on grunt work tasks. You obviously want the former, not the latter.
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443 | Selecting journal reviewers through cover letter
I was planning to use mdpi.com to submit a paper to "Entropy" journal. The journal perfectly matches the area that my paper covers. However, they require a cover letter to five reviewers selected by myself:
http://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/instructions
Coverletter: Check in your cover letter whether you supplied at least 5 referees. Check if the English corrections are done before submission.
Is this the standard procedure? Can you propose other similar journal? I am getting afraid that receiving feedback is not an easy task, and I can wander with the paper for a year or so.
I agree. It is done.
I would advise suggesting reviewers, or offering to do so, even when you are not required to. I've been in situations where the editor left my manuscript aside for a few months, only to ask me for suggestions when I contacted him or her wondering about the state of my paper.
I wouldn't say that a journal asking for reviewers is "standard" practice, but it is by no means rare. For instance, nearly all ACS journals require that the paper submitter provide the names of between three and six potential referees. Other journals that I've submitted to, including J. Chem. Phys. and the Physical Review series do not require referee lists of any kind.
It should be noted that the choice of referees is entirely discretionary on the part of the editor. The editor is free to pick from any or all of the names on your list—or none of them, if it's an area the editor knows well enough to assign referees independently.
Typically journals with broader scope, or those for interdisciplinary subjects, will be more likely to ask for referee suggestions. In all likelihood this will speed up the refereeing process, as otherwise the editors may send your manuscript out to whom they thought to be good fit to review your paper, only to get a letter back 3 weeks later saying that your paper is outside of his or her expertise. For field specific journals this is much less of a worry.
I've encountered this before - as aeismail has said, it might not be "standard" practice (implying most journals do it) but its certainly at the very least common.
This is often intended to provide focus and speed for journal editors to get papers out. Finding appropriate reviewers is a long and tedious task, and if editor's come to rely too much on "their" expert reviewers, they're likely to burn them out. The approach of recommending peer-reviewers gives you, the author - and presumably an expert in your field - an opportunity to weight in on who is qualified to review your paper, while avoiding people who would have to abstain due to a conflict of interest, or who you feel might not judge your paper fairly.
Essentially, you should be considering people in your specific field who aren't your direct collaborators, but who might be disposed to look on you and your work in a positive or at least neutral light - avoiding people who don't like you, or who think "Paper Topic is a waste of time and research dollars, and should never be published".
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8845 | Sources of information about postdoctoral/PhD grants and funding
We are a research group in Spain. For first year postdocs and PhDs from other european countries that want to come to our lab, there is no support for spanish ministry of science. Therefore we wonder where can we find information about such funding from any other country in the world.
This is a good idea, but I fear that the directory would be quite large and quickly go out of date. We have a department that produces an online directory of all the funding opportunities available at all levels, across all departments. It covers everything from travel grants to multi-million euro EU projects. There are many many opportunities. Maintaining such a list across countries would be difficult.
could we acccess your online directory?
Unfortunately, it is only accessible to staff and only in Dutch.
it is to our advantage to avoid encouraging competition — [citation needed]
As a PhD student trying to find a good postdoc position it's in my interest to help you find funding for places. These links may help as they all currently have open calls for projects/fellowship funding:
Google Awards http://research.google.com/university/relations/research_awards.html
Marie-Curie Actions http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/
ERCIM https://fellowship.ercim.eu/
Please let me know if you manage to get some funding ;)
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16730 | What to do when you get a grant and move to another institution
My general question is; let's say that you are PI and apply individually or jointly with other research groups to a grant, and you get it. After some months, you move to another institution; can you generally "move" all the money and resources you were awarded with or should you abandon them?
The question goes for H2020 projects or any other national or international funding schemes (NIH, NSF, UK, etc)
And in particular this goes for H2020 projects.
This happened to a colleague of mine for FP7, I assume H2020 will be pretty much the same. Essentially, you have two options:
(1) Find a proxy to formally finish the project on your behalf. That is, find somebody at your current institution with a high enough status that he is allowed to take over the project without much administrative quabbles (e.g., a senior professor), and formally hand over the project to him when you leave. You will of course still do the actual work - the handover is just a formality. Of course this requires a significant amount of trust and goodwill (on both sides), so you better be good friends with the person that proxies for you. As long as you both are at the same institution, the administrative effort of this solution is not too high.
(2) Officially transfer the project to your new institution. This requires an amendment of your DOW (description of work), and the sanctus of your new institution, all partners of the project, and the european commission (i.e., of the PO and the responsible lawyers on EC side). This will take long - expect the entire process to take possibly a year or so. Additionally, there is a chance that some negotiations between you, your old institution, and your new institution are required (e.g., to answer the question to what percentage the overheads should be transferred to the new institution). H2020 proposals are good money for universities, and you should not expect your old institution to let go of such a project easily.
Edit: Clearly, option 2 is only available if your new institution is also eligible for H2020 funding.
What is allowed depends on a number of factors. For example the funding agency may not allow you to move the grant. This is especially true if it is an international move or if the grant requires a resource that is not available at the new institution. It also depends on your current institution. They may not allow you to take equipment that was previously purchased on the grant with you. You new institution may also not allow you to bring the grant over if it does not provide sufficient overhead. If the time remaining on the grant is short, the two institutions may decide to not formally transfer the grant and work off of a sub contract instead. That said, generally for non-international moves you will be allowed to bring over the unspent money.
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133843 | Optimal configuration of a research group
In most of the European Universities I know, research groups are created from the equivalent of Assistant Professors and the Principal Investigator is voted in some sort of election, where there are elections every 2/4 years. In groups with such profile I have usually seen that scientific output is low and that most of these members are not really motivated to do research and are only affiliated to these groups for CV and promotion purposes. But this is of course my personal experience, I do not state this is always like this. From the other side I know other groups that are created from scratch from somebody with a very good CV, who has a vision and ambition, and who gets all research group members not from Department colleagues but from funding he/she attracts. All group research lines are derived from her/his experience and CV and scientific output in this case and according to my experience, tends to be high. Based on your personal experience or factual evidences, what is the most optimal configuration for a new research group, the former or the latter or do you think there are other different configurations?
If you figure out all combinations for research groups then there are examples of all of them being successful - can’t see there being any one solution for this.
I think that what the research group for promotion purposes is not optimal and than the group around a PI with track is one of the best ones
I've worked at several European universities, and I've never seen or heard of the first type of system you describe. Could you specify where this is used?
@silvado I think such systems are used when you need a research group for grant reasons. So everyone wants to do their own (albeit slightly related) thing, but you only get the grant if you have a "research group"; might be split between different institutes or even different universities and people only meet once or twice a year.
@Dirk what do you mean “for grand reasons”?
Sorry, I mean for a grant, that was a typo.^^ So someone gives you money to do research, and you want to have it look good to them, so you form a research group, at least on paper (and CVs).
Ok now, yes that is what I wanted to say
Given the way you framed the question, the answer is obvious. In other words, you have set up a straw man for us to knock down. That is not a good question. So can you tell us why you are asking this question? What is the real underlying question you want to ask us, or is this just a rant?
sorry if the question was not clear. These are the two schemes I know for research groups. For me the latter is the optimal one. But I want to know if someone knows other more optimal configurations for research groups. If that is not clear just tell me and I will rewrite the question.
[citations needed]
@lux about what ?
Pretty much every claim you make (scientific output is usually low, members are not motivated to do research etc. Based on what evidence?)
I have rewritten the question in order to explain that the two groups are based on what I have seen and not scientific bibliography (although such might exist)
What is a "research group" in your perception? And why wouldn't the individual teams in the first model (assistant professor + staff") be functionally equivalent to the groups in the second model?
My impression is that staff, which is overbooked with teaching, will have in most of the cases no time at all for research, or they will be very limited. But this is my impression and I might be wrong at all. My main question is if apart from these two kind of groups you think there are other better configurations
If you want to maximize the output, impact and success of a research group you have to increase the synergetic potential of the staff, set up good research questions, acquire funding etc.
The PI can be a genius, but if he is unable to identify good researchers for his team, researchers with complementary abilities and lead a team, then he will underperform. Extreme cases of such PI's are savants/prodigies (e.g. autism syndrome) with limited social skills.
There are nowadays companies who "rent" savants or people with special abilities in math/informatics to other companies to solve distinct problems, but taking care of the social integration and well-being of them by setting the right boundary conditions for such jobs. This is not very different in research groups, you often have persons with very special personality, interests and social/cognitive abilities.
The optimal configuration of your group will always depend on what the research group is investigating and what the existing team is looking like. You don't want to have only alpha-males on ship if you set up a team to fly to mars.
There are even studies what kind of staff number is ideal in distinct scientific fields, a particle physics group has from theoreticians to experimentalists up to technical employees a very different structure in comparison to english literature.
The question is rather how do you develop from the current group structure to a better one, going from zero directly to the best one is only possible in a hypothetical perfect world with unlimited funding :-)
Thanks @user847982 for your very insightful answer. I agree with your view and like your sentence "You don't want to have only alpha-males on ship if you set up a team to fly to mars.", which explains perfectly your point. Regarding "There are even studies what kind of staff number is ideal ..." can you add some references?
@Opentheway see here for example https://psychology.stackexchange.com/q/10/9423
I assume you are basing this on European model, so in my experience the groups based around some common interests are the strongest one because they have a vision that can lead group. Usually these are friends or couples, that succeed to attract funding making multidisciplinary team. In such a team everyone knows each roles and they keep each other back by making sure people are represented in publications in terms of authorship equally. I would suggest you to take a look on Research Gate lab profiles where you can see how members of particular lab are connected and what grants or projects they menage. In my opinion it is the best way to discover dynamic of a group and internal structure. Second things are Center of Excellences, they are now because of HORISONT2020 becoming more popular and are highly hierarchical. However primordial idea for their creation was done trough application of group or consortium of reaserchers and scientist, in there you can observe same things as in your question, however structure is maintained highly hierarchical. In my opinion best way to organise research group is around "friends and family" because you need to trust people in order to follow through with your agenda. I'm not saying that groups that are based around one person are bad, but due to increasing emphasis in academia on teaching, management and bureaucracy, alone PI in current European funding scheme structure can not survive.
Thanks for your answer @SSimon. Regarding your answer, the two group types I described are based on what I have seen with my own eyes in different European countries, and what I have read or understood from non-EU countries. Of course for the latter my opinion might be very biased or invalid. The "family and friends" group is a very interesting configuration that I will add to the list and which I have never seen (unfortunately for me). I think that when it works it can be very strong. But from the other side and according to my experience sometimes working with friends can be problematic ..
.. I mean problematic because when they do not follow deadlines and do not want to work, you do not want to remember them about that since you do not want fo lose your friendship. What do you think about this?
@open the way Actually, academic power couples are quite famous in Europe. Well when you get grant everyone is doing on their own part,it doesn't mean you actually work together. That is why you have students and hire reaserchers:^), being part of some group so called academic clik. Most effective workers are your students and postdocs. Others on possition will tend not to work so much.
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58883 | How to get information about new citations in Google Scholar without making profile public
Once per week I check my Google Scholar profile and I can see my citations count is increased. I would like to know, to which papers/works my increase in the number of citations is related to. How can I know this without making my profile public?
Help about a specific product/service isn't considered OT?
Out of curiosity, why do you not want to make your Scholar profile public? You don't need to provide a picture, a web address, or a public email address, and your name is already on your papers.
I created a Google Scholar account so that my research is visible. I wonder why someone would need to hide that.
A not-so-portable-and-possibly-glitchy-idea might be to create a little program that scans your Google Scholar page every so often and checks for which citation counts have gone up. You can then search for papers that cite those papers in particular (rather than having to search for all of your papers).
yes, that is the best option, how would one do that?
You can set an alert on "New citations to my articles" and receive this information by email.
Yes. But I do not want to make my profile public. Is it there any other way?
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150747 | How to use more than 8 boolean operators in ScienceDirect advanced search?
The advanced search in the ScienceDirect database seems to be limited to 8 boolean operators at max. This number of operators might not be sufficient, especially when applying a search string within a systematic literature review that is valid for other databases, e.g., ACM DL or IEEE Xplore DL which are capable of accepting search strings holding more boolean operators.
What are strategies to apply a search string with more than 8 boolean operators to the ScienceDirect database?
Please post the exact error message you received so that people might be able to help you.
@Tripartio "Use fewer boolean connectors (max 8 per field)"
Split it into two (or more) separate queries and combine the results.
Talk to a research librarian at your institution.
If the error message explicitly says that the system only supports max 8 per field, then you should follow the advice of @Louic.
@Louic is there any tool to find the distinct results from the search results obtained from multiple queries?
A reference manager?
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37574 | What research has examined the cost in time and money of conference attendance?
I am looking for surveys/studies that quantify the time and money academics spent on conferences/symposia/workshops/etc by both organizers and attendees. Specifically, I'm interested in both academic and institutional costs related to conference, travelling, and administrative tasks related to travel. (In my experience the overwhelming majority of expenses are covered by employer/grant/etc anyways.)
I am most interested in the field of computer science, and academics affiliated to US institutions.
Please clarify who spent the time and money? Organizers or attendees? And also the field?
@scaaahu I am interested in both.
@scaaahu I am also interested in comparing different fields but I specified one in the question. Basically my interest is in assessing time and money spent on conferences in academia, but circumventing to one field and one country is already a good start.
You might want to search around for the budgets for particular conferences which sometimes give you a breakdown of number of attendees, country, and other information you might find useful from past years.
What counts as time spent on a conference? Presumably you include time spent attending the conference or travelling. What about reviewing papers? Preparing slides? Writing the papers?
@AnonymousMathematician Conference, travelling, and administrative tasks related to travel.
By "money academics spent on conferences", do you mean money those academics spent personally, or money that was spent by their employer, or both?
@O.R.Mapper Both but I have mostly interested by money that was spent by their employer. In my experience most (> 90%) expenses are covered by employer/grant/etc.
@FranckDernoncourt I've added your clarifications to the body of the question.
I published a paper:
Anderson, L., & Anderson, T. (2009). Online professional development conferences: An effective, economical and eco-friendly option Canadian Journal of Learning Technology, 35(2).
in which we calculated the costs (transportation, hotels, meals etc.) in dollars and in Carbon costs using a medium sized conference in the UK.
We were interested in showing the HUGE cost and carbon savings if the conference was held online and used this data in our book on Virtual Conferences.
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121546 | I'm in a religious country, and my religious supervisor is praying. What should I do?
My supervisor and all his other doctoral students are practicing religious, while I am not, I am "non-religious".
We never discuss religion together, but sometimes they all leave to pray together, and leave me alone, which makes me uncomfortable.
Surely, if they knew I'm "non-religious," it would annoy them.
How do I react to a situation in which they all go to pray except me?
Do you think I have to open this debate with them, and close it once and for all?
Should I pretend to be like them, pray with them?
EDIT: I am in a predominantly Muslim country, MENA (Middle East and North Africa), and not being Muslim is not very welcomed in general. For example, eating during the month of Ramadan is not legal, and can be a source of physical or mental violence in the street. So even if my supervisor is kind enough as well as his other doctoral students, they will be disappointed if they know my situation.
If you don't go pray with them, how did they not figure out yet that you are not religious? Do they think you pray alone at a different time?
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
There are situations in which you need to be sensitive to others and they should extend the same courtesy to you. However, there are some places in which religious feeling is so strong as to overcome such sentiment. It can be dangerous in many ways (academic, physical,...) to disagree with religious "consensus" in such places. There are some colleges in the US, in fact, in which this is a problem.
However, to "fake" being a member of a religion is equally dangerous, so you need to be careful. I don't know what people's assumptions about you are. But if they are aware that you aren't a member/adherent of the dominant faith you are probably best advised not to participate. If they are not aware and are making assumptions that you are just an apostate then it can be very dangerous.
If your professor has an open enough attitude you can speak with him/her for advice. But the first rule is to be safe. If you are in a place in which you are required to be a "believer" and you are not, you should work to find a more compatible place. Religious sentiment is often other-than-rational.
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
I grew up in a Muslim-majority country. Do's and don'ts:
Do show respect for the religion. That means avoid doing things like comment on how inconvenient it must be to pray five times a day, don't offer non-halal food, don't invite people to lunch during Ramadan, etc.
Do do as they do, if possible and not inconvenient. For example if you take lunch together, order/pack something halal. Unless you have special dietary requirements that require you to eat pork, don't eat pork when with others.
Do dress conservatively. If your institution has a dress code, follow that. If you're female, you can usually refuse to wear the hijab if it makes you uncomfortable (depends on country however), but still dress conservatively - e.g. don't wear something sleeveless, and wear hemlines that go below the knee (this rules out wearing shorts in public).
Don't pretend to be Muslim. You can't fake it. Learning how to pray in the religion takes time; the chant is nontrivial as well.
Don't pretend to be Muslim #2: just as important, once you identify as Muslim you could be bound to obey a different set of laws. Sharia criminalizes things which are fine in contemporary Western culture, such as homosexuality. If you're homosexual but identify as Muslim, you could bring the religious police on your head.
Don't pretend to be Muslim #3: in some countries, if people believe you are Muslim, it can cause you a lot of inconvenience. It doesn't take much to become associated with the religion (extreme historical example, less extreme modern example), and once you become associated, it can be really hard to leave the religion. Potential problems you could face go up to death. In the meantime it's not just you that's affected: in many countries, there are restrictions on Muslim persons marrying a non-Muslim; plus any child born to a Muslim is automatically a Muslim.
Exception: if you were originally a Muslim but no longer believe in the religion, you don't have good options. The above advice will still bring the religious police onto you, because you're now an apostate. You would either have to pretend to be Muslim (at least you should know how to pray) or leave the country and work elsewhere.
tl; dr: Leave religious people to practice their religion and don't criticize them for it. They should do the same to you.
"any child born to a Muslim is automatically a Muslim" that's very broken. The newborn isn't any religion yet (except perhaps deist which appears to be the natural state of man). Even the LDS has a very good idea of what age of majority means.
@Joshua you sure? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wong_Ah_Kiu this implies that the Malaysian authorities considered her to be Muslim simply because she was born to Muslim parents.
The Malaysian authorities are simply wrong, and the fact they intend to behave as though it is true is why it's broken.
@Joshua for practical purposes, "any child born to a Muslim is automatically a Muslim" is true enough. Right or wrong, child can be treated as a muslim with all the risks that goes with it, and warning about it is OK.
@Joshua: Theologically, they may be wrong, but legally, they get to define what’s right. To be irreproachably clear, one could say “any child born to people legally considered a Muslim, is legally considered a Muslim”.
100% agree on the not faking part, which is a terrible idea for many reasons, but on the point of law, doesn't one have to sincerely recite the shahada before two Muslim witnesses for a valid conversion to occur?
In all honesty, the first two of these are excellent advice regardless of the religious tension in the room.
Your answer is useful because it helps to ensure OP's safety. Still, it boils down to "be tolerant towards religious intolerance". :-/
@aidanh010 sorry for not responding earlier. I'm not an expert on Islamic regulations, but I added a link to Sol Hacheul about being accused of having converted.
I also spent a few years in a MENA country in an academic environment. As you say, eating food/drinking water in public during Ramadan was illegal, as were certain standards of dress, however my experience over the years was that this did not in any way mean that the individuals I lived and worked with (including those who were practicing Muslims) were by default unaccepting of my non-religiousness. I am curious why you say
Surely, if they know I'm "non religious" it will annoy them.
and
So even if my supervisor is kind enough as well as his other doctoral student, but they will be disappointed if he know my situation.
Perhaps you have more reason for believing these than you have included in your question, however, in my personal experience, none of my Muslim friends/co-workers ever expected me to conform to their religion. I certainly never pretended to be Muslim, and like other answers, suggest that you do not do this as this is likely to make the situation more awkward ('I converted to fit in' is probably not the best answer to give to an observant member of any religion).
My advice is that perhaps this does not need to a bigger issue than any other lifestyle difference that you might have with your co-workers, and not to read too deeply into it (as in assuming they have some kind of expectation of you), unless they give you reason for it. Government polices do not necessarily reflect individual expectations. By all means, if you feel unhealthy pressure or feel unsafe, don't stay. Otherwise, similar situations where there is a difference in lifestyle/culture between members of the group occur all the time.
Perhaps another group you join might go out regularly for coffee/alcohol when you are unable to join for dietary/religious reasons, or in another group everyone else has kids, so leaves early, or do play-dates on the weekend. But in such situations, the activity you have to miss out on is surely not the only way to build rapport/respect within your group and strengthen your relationship with your supervisor. So if there is no actual pressure for you to have the same religious beliefs, try to decide if you're bothered by their religious belief. If not, then focus your energy on finding some other topic/hobby that you have in common. If both you and they are respectful of differences, there may be no debate to 'open'.
I totally agree with you, if you are a foreigner and you work with them, even if you are not religious it will not create any problem, it will be okay.. Here for example the tourists can eat during Ramadan, and the restorants are open for them .. but not to the citizen of the country
It depends on which country you are talking about in the middle east. I'm from Iran and I would say not participating in religious practices is really common among young people and if somebody attends those religious practices will be mocked heavily. For the rest of my answer, I assume you are living somewhere maybe in the Arabic countries of the middle east. Also, my answer is not really depends on your relationship with the ones that have strict religious beliefs (it means you can replace your supervisor or his students with anybody else like your friends, family, etc.). Also, I assume you are a Muslim by birth (it means you are Muslim cause your mother and father are Muslims) and then you changed your mind based on your personal thoughts.
You mentioned that all of them will pray at the pray time but you don't join them, and some people here suggested that it may implicitly implies that you are not a believer and if they didn't tell you something until now, it's quite OK in their opinion. Unfortunately: It's not true!. It means at the best they just think you may have a good religious reason (e.g. had sex last night and didn't wash your body) and because of that good religious reason you can't join them. Or, for whatever reason you prefer to pray privately.
The main key point is: Did ever your supervisor or his students tell you why you don't participate in their religious practices?
It is a really serious problem if you are Muslim by birth and when you grew up you changed your mind to not to be a religious person. In fact, in Islam beliefs, it's not like you can change your mind after sometime and they welcome you and wish you good luck with your personal thoughts and ideas! It could cost you your life (seriously!). But as far as I know, their rule is that if somebody don't believe in Islam or for whatever reason changed his/her mind to not follow Islam's rules, you would be safe as long as you don't express your ideas in any way to the public and your society. This means if your supervisor or his students asked you about why you don't participate in their religious practices? You need to have a really unimportant or common reason for it and not saying I don't believe in your beliefs! I mean you should say I'm a practitioner certainly but for some reason like being sick at the moment, I could not attend those practices with you. Otherwise, if you want to express your true beliefs that you don't believe in Islam, it will lead to a lengthy discussion with them about why you don't do it and they will try to convince you and if you don't accept their ideas it makes the problem bigger and bigger. So, for every time just bring a fake reason and move on, or better idea is: to not to be there when they are practicing their religion. Also, Buffy suggested you to change your location. Honestly, it is not really easy to relocate to somewhere else when you are from middle east and it may be your long-term goal rather than a short-time answer to your question and your situation that you are trying to deal with it.
Great answer, from someone who know "exactly" how religion is a in our countries ..you said everything! Thank you @Alone Programmer
Exactly! it happens with me many times.
They already know you are not an observant Muslim. If they thought you were one, they would have invited you to go with them. If you actually were one, you would have asked where to go for prayers at the first prayer time on your first day there.
They seem to have accepted you do not pray at the Muslim prayer times, and have no problem leaving you without putting any pressure on you to join them, which is what you would be trying to get in any conversation about the matter. On the other hand, they feel a deep obligation to pray at certain times, and I assume you do not want to try to stop that.
This seems like an "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." situation. You already have everything you could possibly gain from a conversation about the matter. On the other hand, discussing religion at work is always high risk.
~Note: I am an American, and while I studied at a largely international college with large populations of all major religions, my answer may not accurately reflect cultural expectations in other countries.~
First of all, I do not think that you should pretend to be religious if you are not. It sounds like it would be quite uncomfortable for you, and could lead to many negative feelings if they found out that you had been lying.
Instead, it sounds like you should have a conversation with your professor. It is not reasonable to ask him or other students to refrain from praying. However, it seems like your biggest concern is that it feels awkward and you do not want them to judge you for being non-religious. The easiest way to deal with this is to tell your professor about your concerns and ask honestly if he is bothered by it.
Tell him that you have noticed that he and the other students go pray together and that you have felt uncomfortable by being the only one who does not because you worry that he could be annoyed or feel disrespected by your lack of participation. He will likely say that it does not bother him that you are not religious, although he may be curious as to why you are not if that is the norm.
At the end of the day, if he is uncomfortable having a non-religious student, he may not be a good fit for you. Knowing that will allow you to decide what to do next. It may be possible to change advisors or it may not, but you won't lose anything by having a polite and honest conversation.
Thank you for your answer, as you said, the main thing is to be honest with yourself and with others, but I think It's not to me to open a this discussion, but if they want to discuss someday I will be honest.
I am in the U.S., obviously a very different culture.
The way I think things OUGHT to work is this: If these people you work with have different religious beliefs than you and so periodically go off and pray or do whatever related to their religion, they should not pressure you to participate or penalize you in any way for not participating, and likewise you should not pressure them to not do this. They have the right to practice their religion, and you have the right to practice yours or not practice any.
I don't see why this should be any different than any other difference of interests. Suppose I worked with a group of people who, say, all loved to eat Italian food, and I don't like Italian food, and periodically they all go to lunch together at an Italian restaurant. It would be rude for them to pressure me to eat Italian food just because they like it. But it would be even more rude for me to say they shouldn't eat Italian food because I don't like it, or to complain that I am left out because I don't share their taste in food.
I think you should just accept that you don't share this particular interest with your co-workers and that this inevitably means that you will not share certain activities with them. I'd say, so what?
Although I agree with the sentiment expressed in this answer, I don't think it's very helpful to the OP to express the wish that everybody in the world should just get along with everybody regardless of personal beliefs, which is essentially what you're saying, but not the reality everywhere. In particular, the impact of religion on life is vastly greater than the impact of food preferences.
I'm sorry if I was unclear. My relevant point is not that EVERYONE should be tolerant of other's religious beliefs. I'd say that's true but as you say, the OP can't make that happen. What I'm trying to say is that HE should be tolerant of other's religious beliefs. If others want to practice a religion that he does not share, he can politely not participate. There is no reason for him to complain or turn it into a battle. Just politely say "have a good time" or whatever is appropriate when they leave.
Belated afterthought: Yes, obviously religion is more important than food preference. I was trying to make an analogy comparing something important to something trivial, maybe that didn't come off clearly. And the flip side to my comment is how tolerant they are of him. If knowing that he is not a devout Muslim leads them to actively hate him, that's another issue from what I was trying to address.
how do I react to a situation in which they all go to pray except me?
Do you think I have to open this debate with them, and close it once
and for all? Should I to pretend to be like them, pray with them?
It is up to you. If you feel encouraged to accompany them, then you can tell them to inform you, and tell them that you want to accompany them. Otherwise you should not go even if they invite you, you should tell them not to invite you as you do not prefer to.
Religion is something personal. Even in Muslim countries, no one can force you to pray.
In my opinion you should not open debate about this unless if you are interested about knowing more about what they are doing.
Your supervisor has certain rules and regulations to evaluate you. None of them can be praying. Even in the most religious countries. So you should not worry.
And no, you should not pretend to be like them and pray like them. If you do this, you are wasting your time. Your prayers should have meaning to you, and should make you feel better. If this is not the case, no one need it from you.
"Even in Muslim countries, no one can force you to pray." Are you sure?!
Yes I'm pretty sure and I'm talking from my own experience. No one will drag people from their offices to pray. It is true that in some countries shops are obliged to close in prayers times. But even with this, workers are totally free not to pray and stay inside the shops if they like and they consider it an official break. This is in shops and public places that deal with customers. But closed offices like corporates or universities are different and they are not required to close. It is totally one's own will to pray or not.
You are Muslim by birth or you are talking about your experience as a non-Muslim foreigner which resided in a Muslim country for a while? It really makes a difference.
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3690 | What is IRDAM Journal?
I was reading Clinical Chemistry Guide to Scientific Writing Series. One of the articles is titled: “If an IRDAM Journal Is What You Choose, Then Sequential Results Are What You Use”.
I have encountered this term in this site also. Can anybody explain this term?
A Google search asks ”Did you mean: IRDA Journal”
In the article I linked, it is explained as "Introduction, Results, Discussion, and Methods". I understand its meaning as this readily. What I would like to know following points.
Which type of journal articles are suitable for this style?
Which branches of academic endorse its usage?
Are there any other such styles exists?
Are there any other abbreviations exists?
finally but not least, why should I follow this type of sequence?
If you look at this article, you can see that IRDAM is an acronym for Introduction, Results, Discussion, and Methods. IRDAM is a style/format of presenting results in publications.
Quote from the article:
The IRDAM format requires a substantial change in how the Results
section is organized. Because the methods are listed at the end of the
paper, or online, the reader is not exposed to details of the
experimental protocols and methods before the results are presented.
See also,
The format used by many high-impact basic research journals, such as
Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of
Clinical Investigation, and Journal of Cell Biology, is arranged so
that the Results section immediately follows the Introduction. The
Methods section is placed at the end, or it may even be published as a
supplemental data file.
I’ll just comment to say that I love this IRDAM format (but I didn't know of the acronym)… It makes papers so much more readable to the non-expert, while retaining all the information needed.
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36578 | Do people actually buy research articles?
Research articles are often priced at 20-40 USD. I know that typically a researcher's institution subscribes to myriads of journals, and that some research articles are accessible online for free either legally or illegally, but I am curious to know some numbers that would help quantify how many / often individuals buy research articles, and how much money journals make from this source of income.
I am not looking for guesses or opinions, but actual numbers.
Companies that perform research usually do not subscribe but purchase individual articles. this is of course not individuals doing private purchases but will in some fields make up a large portion of the single article sales.
I bought a research article when I was a postdoc. I was collaborating (via email) with a Spanish mathematician, and we found a paper that from its title sounded like it might overlap with our work. I was sufficiently worried that at the time, $25 was worth some peace of mind. This is a sad story: not about the article itself (there was little content in it of any kind) but that I could be that young and desperate. Nowadays I would on principle spend more than $25 of my time getting the article freely. But what you do even once probably happens a non-negligible percentage of the time...
I bought one obscure paper. When refereeing a paper for a conference that had a very tight and strict deadline, that obscure paper turned out to be absolutely necessary, and I didn't have enough time left and couldn't wait until my university's library could loan it from another library.
I would like to add to this a request for the results to be broken down by discipline, if possible. I'm sure the data would be dramatically different between, for example, mathematics and medicine.
@YuichiroFujiwara: Why didn’t you ask the publisher (or conference organiser) for giving you access to that article? Whenever I reviewed something so far, the publisher offered me access to journal articles for purposes of the review and I would also consider it the publisher’s responsibility to organise access to articles not included in this.
@Wrzlprmft I wish I could. But I really didn't have time. The authors claimed a "theorem" which I didn't think could be true. But they gave a sketch of a proof, so I tried to reconstruct the complete proof from it, prove it in my own way, etc., all to no avail. I asked my friends, and search the literature if there is something useful, too. And about 12 hours or so before the deadline, I finally stumbled on this obscure paper whose abstract claims to contain the key result I needed to mathematically disprove the authors' claim.
I work in an R&D department as an engineer. I have a personal IEEE digital library account (US$40/month, 25 articles) which serves most of my needs. However, I still find that I buy about 2-3 articles per month. Note that when you shell out real physical cash for a article, you are far more selective about what you read. That's an enormous change from when I was in academia.
I am student and I recently bought my first article. It cost $20 and is about a subject related to my thesis.
I happened to buy a few articles in the past. I bought a special issue of the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society I've wanted to keep because the topic was of particular interest to me and at the time there was no internet access to the content. I also bought an article once when I was in hurry and didn't have the time to wait for the interlibrary loan.
I once bought a thesis.
I tried digging through the 2013 annual report of Elsevier. Under "Revenue" (page 111) they list both "subscriptions" and "transactional" - but the latter include not only reprints, but also books etc.
As you can see, even if we lump books and reprints together, it is still less than subscriptions.
To get a more complete answer you may have to ask them directly.
This is great (+1). However, to allow for speculation, does Elsevier have a large book segment (a la Springer) or do they fully concentrate on research material?
@xLeitix from http://www.elsevier.com/about/at-a-glance "almost 2200 journals and over 25,000 book titles". I would call that a large book segment.
While I can't give actual firm numbers, I know that two (non-academic) consumers of academic articles are law firms and pharmaceutical/life science companies. One of my former classmates worked as a research assistant for a law firm that handles biotech and patent cases, and I recall having a conversation with him where he said they easily spend $20-30,000/year on articles, with the exact amount depending on the cases they see and how much background information they need. These costs are wrapped up in the general legal fees charged. From my own experience, I worked briefly for a life science startup, and we would purchase around $600-1,000 in articles a year (although we tried obtaining articles through academic collaborations as much as possible).
Some University Libraries will also buy/rent individual articles for their faculty and students when they do not think a subscription is worth the money.
Speaking as a librarian, very rarely - only if it's urgent and can't be obtained in a useful way through ILL. The cost of journal article purchase is usually three or four times an ILL fee.
More generally...
I ran some numbers on this for JSTOR in 2011, based on their public filings - it's hard to be sure, but the answers were "very little". In 2008, 0.35% of their income came from pay-per-view, and based on the quoted average, this came to something like seven or eight thousand articles/year.
It later transpired that themselves suggested around twenty thousand a year, but the numbers for this didn't quite add up, as the per-view price would be substantially lower than expected, so either a lot of material was somehow discounted or only the cheapest articles were being purchased. However we sliced the numbers, the easy answer was "not enough to really be significant". JSTOR have, to their credit, substantially widened public access since then, so these numbers will probably have dropped further.
An order of magnitude estimate for the revenue a publisher might get from these direct purchases is "several thousand dollars per month". For a publisher as large as Elsevier it might reach the low six figures per month. Given that Elsevier's revenue is in the billions, this is literally a rounding error.
Source: I used to work in academic publishing.
This begs the question of "Why do they bother?".
Presumably it must still be worth the costs of offering the service.
@Flyto I didn't work in the e-publishing department but I suppose that once you put the articles online (which you have to do anyway), it's very easy to offer it for sale as well. Unlike print copies, selling an electronic copy of the article barely costs anything, so why not.
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29233 | Reference on the time it takes for a source code used for a research article to be released
Is there any research/study/survey/... that looked at how much time it takes for the authors of a research article to release the source code? Ideally I'm looking for an approximation distribution.
This question is a follow-up of Reference on availability of source code used in computer science research articles?
Are you asking about how much time the authors typically invest in preparing the code, or about how much time passes between when the article is ready and when the research code is ready? Either way, there is a lot of potential ambiguity here.
@DavidKetcheson I'm asking how much time passes between when the article is ready and when the research code is ready. What else should I clarify?
What do you mean by "ready"? When a preprint is posted to arXiv? When the manuscript is submitted? Accepted? Electronically published? Print published? And what do you mean by releasing the code -- especially in the case that it is developed in a publicly accessible repository?
@DavidKetcheson Ready = made available online. I'm fine with other definitions too (since there haven't been that many answers so far…). Releasing the code = make the code that was used for the paper publicly available.
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29640 | Do tenured professors work less or more than non-trenured professors?
Is there any research/study/survey/... that looked at how much time tenured professors work in comparison with non-trenured professors?
I am especially interested in the field of computer science (machine learning) in the US.
So far I have only found a small-scale study (survey of 30 professors from the same university):
I'm looking for some more exhaustive surveys.
It's also going to be interesting to see if this is broken down between hard and soft money positions.
The National Center for Education Statistics in the United States surveys faculty of post-secondary institutions (see the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty page for information on methodology). The most recently available data is from their 2004 survey, with 26,110 respondents across the United States.
According to this survey, tenured faculty worked 53.3 hours a week on average, and tenure-track untenured faculty worked 53.7 hours a week:
The NCES allows you to create custom tables from this dataset using the PowerStats tool on their website. (You have to create an account to use the tool.) This is a valuable tool if you're interested in exploring these and other statistics.
For example, here's the same data broken down by rank, with the percentiles for average hours worked per week:
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69521 | How can I create a DOI for a paper that was uploaded to arXiv but not published somewhere else?
I wonder whether there is any way to create a DOI for a paper that was uploaded to arXiv but not published somewhere else, and have the DOI points to the arXiv URL (e.g., not pointing to some researchgate page). While there are reasons that arXiv does not provide DOIs (Why does arxiv.org not assign DOIs?), I prefer to use the same identifiers for all my research papers.
The faq page is https://www.doi.org/faq.html and it is the first question there.
@Dirk Thanks, is there a RA that does what the question is asking?
Something being in an FAQ somewhere doesn't mean it's off-topic. For one, the FAQ does not open for me at the moment, so it's not even a universal source. Voted to reopen.
@Dirk: I would consider the answer from the FAQ incomplete - using RAs is not the only way of generating and using DOIs. Some open science repositories, such as Zenodo and figshare, provide these services for free and directly (that is, without need to interact with the RAs).
@AleksandrBlekh - no, the FAQ is correct. Ultimately, figshare etc issue dois via a RA - though as this is back-end infrastructure, it's pretty invisible to the end user. They're not operating outside that system.
@Andrew note the difference between "incomplete" and "incorrect". The FAQ is correct, but if you say A (only RAs issue dois from IDF's point of view), you have to say B (there are third parties that do this for you).
@yo': Thank you for expanding on exactly my point (+1).
@Andrew: As yo' emphasized the issue, I hope you agree with my statement now.
arXiv now provides DOIs: https://blog.arxiv.org/2022/02/17/new-arxiv-articles-are-now-automatically-assigned-dois/
@GoodDeeds thanks, you are welcome to post your comment as an answer
Ultimately, no, you can't. There's no infrastructure to say "I want to get a single DOI for XYZ arbitrary url".
DOIs for most scholarly publications are issued through CrossRef. CrossRef do not assign DOIs directly, but delegate this to members or their agents. Members, who are usually publishers, pay a fee to the central consortium, and agree to issue DOIs based on a fixed set of rules.
As you can see from these rules, the general sense of membership is "organisations issuing DOIs for stuff they control". While there isn't an explicit prohibition against assigning DOIs to third-party material (which surprised me!), point 4 comes pretty close:
Members have an obligation to maintain the metadata and URLs associated with all registered DOIs.
There is also a general prohibition of 'duplicative' works including preprints:
Crossref only registers DOIs for Definitive Works (or Versions of Record, if not formally published) but not for Duplicative Works, as defined in the Crossref Glossary. This means that only original scholarly material, for which there is no actual DOI at the time of submission, and no expected duplication in future, is admissible for Crossref DOI registration. Crossref does not permit multiple DOIs to be assigned to certain closely related versions of a work, and hence does not support assignment of DOIs to Pre-prints or Post-prints of Definitive Works or to the Personal Version or a Self-archived Copy of a Definitive Work. For the same reasons, materials for which DOI duplication can be reasonably anticipated, such as an Authors Original Draft of a work being prepared for publication, are not admissible for Crossref DOI registration.
Putting those together, it seems likely that CrossRef's terms would prevent a member agreeing to issue a DOI for a (potentially duplicative) work hosted somewhere out of their control.
So, could you get a DOI from someone else, outside of CrossRef? Probably not. DOIs are only issued through a number of central registration authorities (eg CrossRef, DataCite). These have fairly well-defined areas of activity (eg DataCite won't issue DOIs for publications) and, to the best of my knowledge, none offer a "DOI for an arbitrary URL" service.
Thanks! List of DOI Registration Agencies: https://www.doi.org/registration_agencies.html ; Explanation of the roles of Registration Agencies vs Registrants: https://www.doi.org/doi_handbook/8_Registration_Agencies.html . I also haven't run across any registrant offering some "DOI for an arbitrary URL" service yet. Out of curiosity, where did you see that DOIs for most scholarly publications are issued through CrossRef? I don't know how to know which Registration Agency was used to issue a given DOI.
(I found the answer to my question: the RA is in the DOI metadata, e.g. https://api.crossref.org/v1/works/http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/(sici)1099-1573(200003)14:2%3C118::aid-ptr493%3E3.3.co;2-g is CrossRef)
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87363 | What is a typical retirement pension plan for professors in the United States?
I have read some posts regarding academic salaries such as
In which countries are academic salaries published? but none about retirement pension plans.
What is a typical retirement pension plan for professors in the United States?
I assume there might be some significant differences between public and private universities. Research/study/survey that tried to quantify it on a larger sample is welcome.
I've never heard of an actual academic pension plan in the US. A private retirement investment savings account (401K or similar) seems to be the status quo.
Background info on 401(k) and similar retirement plans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_plans_in_the_United_States#Defined_contribution_plans
@David Really? They are standard around where I am, generally all the state universities are in the same program (and often with other state workers).
Many use 403(b) plans
@guifa Ah, OK. I do know of some pension plans when professors at public universities are incorporated into a larger public employee pension plan, such as State of Illinois and State of California.
This varies widely from state to state, and dependent on many other factors. Certainly there is no uniform national structure, standard, etc. As in some comments/answers, in some cases pensions are state-controlled, and thus can be bait-and-switch operated and modified after-the-fact. In some cases, which may seem better or worse depending on the political climate, pensions are essentially equivalent to private pensions, with varying contributions from "the employer"... but/and the state cannot so easily manipulate that money.
AFAIK, all pensions are calculated basically the same, and I'll use Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia as examples since I'm familiar with them. In the public system, these are often pooled between all universities and colleges and often with the K-12 system or all public employees.
You have three variables: the eligible salary, the number of years worked, and the multiplier.
The eligible salary is calculated through a variety of methods, but tends to be the average of the highest X years of work over the last Y years. For example, in Alabama, it's the average of the highest 3 years of the last 10 years. In Tennessee, it's the average of the highest consecutive 5 years. In Georgia, it's the average of the two highest consecutive years.
The multiplier is probably the single most important variable, though. My father, for instance, worked in Alabama, with a 2.0125 multiple. Let's say for instance his eligible salary was 100k to make the math easy. If he retired with 10 years of service, he would receive ~20k per year. With 20 years of service, ~40k, etc. For me in Tennessee, my multiplier is only 1.5. If when I retire I have an eligible salary of 100k, with 10 years of service, I'll only make 15k. With 40 years, I'll make 50k. (Yeah, my dad got a much better deal, and that's before we talk about the DROP program). Georgia, for reference, has a 2.0 multiplier.
A minor difference thing to consider are time to vesting (Tennessee is only 5, but Alabama and Georgia are 10), but over an entire career, those don't make much of a difference for overall payout.
Because the ways to calculate the eligible salaries (highest two years really helps folks in departments with rotating chairs), I'm not sure how well one can generalize about the pensions. One thing for sure is that they tend to be quite decent since you also collect social security benefits. Anecdotally, for instance, between his pension with 30 years worked, social security and differing retirement tax rules, my dad takes home more now than when he worked. Plus in academia we tend to be able to work well into old age which really boosts our pension income.
Based on what I've read, private pension funds work the same way, just with ever so slightly different variables.
In some states, there are public retirement/pension plans that the university will contribute to on your behalf as a state employee, but there are differences across states. For instance, I used to work at a university in FL and selecting the teacher's retirement fund in Florida was optional. In Alabama, where I am now, it is mandatory.
If a university is a non-profit, they will often offer a 403b or 457b plan, but contributions from the university vary. These work similar to a 401k plan at corporations.
Just remember that state governments control a lot of the retirement plan options in many states and can change after you take a job. When I took my job in FL, the university contributed 13% of my salary to my 403b without a match requirement. The state government changed a year after I started the job and reduced the employer contribution AND required a mandatory match (talk about bait and switch!). I'm in Alabama now and participate in the mandatory state retirement plan (which I must contribute to), but also take the option of an additional 403b. So, it's all different, but you often have multiple options at a single university.
As mentioned in some of the other answers, this depends on the state you're in. In Texas, when I started as a postdoc in 2002, I had the once-in-a-lifetime option of either going with the state Teacher's Retirement System, which is defined benefit plan similar to the ones discussed by @guifa in one of the other answers; or going with a 401(k) into which I would pay 6.75% of my salary and the state matches that with 6.5% (now 6.65%). Given that the terms of the state-run system are subject to what the state legislature feel like doing, I went with the latter. It also has the great advantage that you do not lose your benefits if you later switch to a university in a different state.
Colorado has a similar system, except that that there was no choice for university professors to join a state-run system -- only the 401(k). In Colorado, you contribute 8% and the state 11%, which sounds more generous than TX, but the situation is in fact more complicated because, for difficult historical reasons, Colorado does not participate in the Social Security System for its state employees, and so I will not get Social Security benefits for my time here.
In both cases, my universities offered the option of contributing to a 403(b) in addition to the 401(k), but the university did not match anything there.
My public university in Colorado actually offers the obscure 401(a) instead of 401(k), not sure if yours is the same. The main difference is that a 401(a) is mandatory - you don't get to choose how much to contribute.
Interesting. I have to say that I didn't look too carefully -- everyone who doesn't max out the match is not paying attention, so the question of how much to contribute has only a single, useful answer. (Also, hi neighbor!)
In the U.S., preparing for retirement is often quite different now from how it was 30 or more years ago.
Now, many workplaces, including a lot of universities, have pushed the responsibility to the employee.
I will describe my spouse's plan, in a large university, where my spouse started working in 2000.
The university contributes 10% of my spouse's salary to a retirement investment. A nonprofit financial service called TIAA (Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association) receives the funds every pay period and invests the money. But it is up to the employee to instruct TIAA how to invest it. TIAA has a bunch of different options to choose from, which are kind of like mutual funds -- different mixes of types of investments. The basic ingredients are stocks, bonds and real estate funds.
My spouse can put additional money into the retirement investment if desired. Up to 10% of the annual salary can be invested per year, as pre-tax dollars (i.e. not subject to income tax). That's the thing called "501 K."
If you want to learn more about how it works, you can look at the TIAA website, and you can also call them up.
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153432 | Contacting promotor and assistant/supervisor in regards to master's thesis after weeks of radio silence
I am a master student and currently finishing my master's thesis.
Ever since the beginning of COVID I have been experiencing depression and anxiety. This resulted in not being able to work as hard as needed on my thesis and led to a few delays of intermediary (but not compulsary) deadlines during this year. At the beginning of summer, my promotor, assistant and me made a raw time schedule to make sure I would be able to finish and hand in my thesis before the deadline.
About three weeks ago, I was supposed to send them a mail with my progress but due to the lack thereof and a multitude of anxiety attacks, I convinced myself it would be better to wait to send an email until I have something to show for. This anxiety related situation dragged out and now, with two weeks to go until the final deadline, I have most of my thesis written, except for the discussion of some results of my experiments (which I partly still have to create), and which is the most important chapter of my thesis.
My intent is to send an email on Monday, but I have no idea on how to address the situation. In my mind, they, my promotor and assistant, probably think I have given up on making the deadline of my thesis. I basically went radio silent for a couple of weeks and the guilt is eating me up. In addition, I don't even know if it is still possible to do the amount of work that is still needed to complete my experiments as I have not started my last one yet.
Could anyone give me some insight on how to handle my situation? Thank you.
Related, not duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/151426/68109
In my experience, this situation is pretty common, so even if the advisor/promoter aren't happy about it, they likely have dealt with this situation before. I think you can let your guilt go for now. The best course of action is simply to acknowledge the lateness without dwelling on it, and try and resume normal communications going forward. I think you know your mistake here, but it is always better to send an e-mail with an update when you hit a deadline, even if you don't have "enough" progress to show. Your advisor likely wants to help, but they might feel like they don't know where to start if they haven't heard from you.
A simple statement such as: "I apologize for the tardiness of this e-mail, I know we had originally discussed a deadline nearly a month ago. Due to the pandemic situation, I have not been able to make progress on my thesis as quickly as expected. Here is my current progress. [description]. My plan for the next few weeks is as follows...." If you have concrete suggestions for how they can help, I would put them in your e-mail. Otherwise, let them take the ball from there on how to support you going forward.
In the meantime, if your situation allows you to access mental health support services, I think they would be useful in helping you find more healthy coping strategies in the future.
"this situation is pretty common", and I imagine that unlike Freddy, many students probably don't care enough to apologize for their tardiness.
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409 | Good source for pre PhD level papers/dissertations in Mathematics
I am looking for a good source to get my hands on some pre PhD level maths papers/dissertations, because I want to get a better feeling what is expected. (i.e. BSc and MSc Dissertations)
My department is unfortunately not at liberty to make MSc Dissertations available for copyright reasons, so I am stuck with asking individual people. In order to get a good overview I'd really like to get my hands on a much bigger selection of papers though, so I'm looking for a good online sources.
Your best source of such information would be to look for electronic repositories that are at least partially "open." The openThesis repository offers one such source, and you might find some information on sites like academia.edu.
An alternate source would be to look at individual school's repositories. For instance, MIT's DSpace offers copies of many recent MIT thesis and dissertations, which can be previewed by anyone, although you need to be a member of the MIT community in order to be able to download and print documents from the site.
A quick Google search for "partial fulfillment master science mathematics" finds hundreds of MS theses in several branches of mathematics.
I'm now a PhD candidate mathematician, working towards understanding what really constitutes a paper as well. If you are considering going after a math PhD, I recommend finding an area you're interested in, finding papers in that field, and backtracking enough until you understand what's going on. I think math is very-well suited to this style of behavior.
For example, I'm interested in number theory, and I've recently been hearing a lot about automorphic forms and multiple Dirichlet Series. So I find this paper by Dr. Hoffstein. Some of it is understandable, some of it isn't. Going through it, I isolate 3 potential sources that might help me understand - the first references are frequently on background material, and here he references Selberg's work. Conveniently, my institution has access to electronic archives of his work, so that's great. It also references an Analytic Number Theory textbook by Iwaniec. Finally, I realize that this is largely built on this previous paper, with Dr. Hoffstein as one of the authors, from years before.
And then I can rinse, wash, and repeat. In this way, I both get an idea of what papers are like, how far removed they are from current material, and how advanced the math that goes into them are. A key aspect of this idea is that it's easier to go after particular research papers, theses, and dissertations than it is to find whole repositories that you can go through. So perhaps you should try a similar approach, suited to your interests.
As always, a good place to start is the arxiv.
On the other hand, it sounds like you're preparing to write a bachelors thesis, and that's of a different calibre. I suspect that your school has its own standards, and the best way to prepare for that is to simply do your best and ask your advisor lots of questions along the way. Ultimately, your school can't demand from an undergrad much more than it prepares you for (a vast difference from the life of overgrads, in my opinion).
As a last note, Harvey Mudd has a large archive of their undergrad math senior's theses here, and they might be what you're looking for if you don't like my previous idea.
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26153 | Benefit of Putnam exam
I am generally interested what are the benefits of Putnam (from both students and Professors' point of view), apart from the fact it is fun (for some) to solve difficult maths problem. I recently read a post on here that a good Putnam score would aid PhD application. If someone would elaborate on this a little, it'd be great.
Maybe the reason the Putnam is in the US has to do with our capitalist values, or some difference in our college cultures? The Olympiad is international, there is some national pride involved, whereas the Putnam is not. (When I was in high school in the US, I never heard anything about the IMO.) Also, at least in some East Asian countries, exam competitions probably viewed differently because of the entrance exam culture.
@VahidShirbisheh this is at University level? interesting.
@Kimball: in the days of Communism, there were many more similar mathematical competitions in Communist countries. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with capitalism.
@PeterShor: That's interesting, though it makes sense. I was thinking our "capitalist values" might have something to do with motivating competition among individuals. However I suppose in any country competitions were a good way for governments to identity talented individuals. I wonder if some of these competitions were related to the Cold War and the like.
The genuine benefits I think all fall in the category of "distinguishing oneself" ... from other applicants to grad school, for example... much as with the IMO (Int'l Math Olympiad).
That is, an otherwise merely-very-good record (out of 100s?!?) can distinguish itself from others by a pretty-darn-good Putnam score. What does it "really" mean? Well, maybe not so much about higher-level mathematics, but the "exclusivity" of "having pretty darn good Putnam score" is undeniable. It's a thing that can be capsulized and "explained" to the public in PR, whereas it's harder to popularly explain progress or work in genuine mathematics (without severe distortions...)
Even at beginning-undergrad levels, kids who do at-all-well on the Putnam get substantial recognition within their math dept, often are treated more forgivingly of other quirks or inconsistent performances in routine coursework. (Given the stodginess of much of the routine undergrad curriculum, this is a good thing, since it is completely reasonable to not quite be able to consistently comply with the apparent requirements...)
The flip side is that there's a hazard here, as in all contest-math, that the quick gratification (if one receives it...) may make long-term study and research look less rewarding in comparison. In happy cases, one can "warm" to more prolonged projects, and more-delayed gratification. But quick contest-things like Putnam can be encouraging, and are noticeable pluses on a CV or grad school application. Just should not be over-interpreted.
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15201 | How to describe the relation between a course instructor to his teaching assistant?
How do you describe the relation between a course instructor to his teaching assistant? Is he the "teaching supervisor" to his TA? This is encountered during PhD application. Thanks!
I think the answer is between supervisor and mentor.
I agree that "mentor" is a terrible choice (never use "mentor" like it's a job title). I would usually write something like "TA for course MATH XYZ, taught by A. Nobody." If the professor actually provided some kind of training or something, you can discuss that, but otherwise phrase things in terms of your relationship to the course, not the professor.
@user14449: I wouldn't be so quick to say that a professor wouldn't mentor his teaching assistants with respect to honing their teaching skills. Also, the question is asking for another word to describe "the professor for whom I served as a teaching assistant." While scaaahu's answer isn't 100% correct, it's not completely wrong, either.
It sounds like the question is that you need to fill in the "In what context have you known the applicant" box on a PhD recommendation letter.
If this is the case, then, for this particular point, I would not list "research supervisor," since this is clearly a teaching situation. However, "student" also doesn't make any sense. So, if there's no specific option which clearly satisfies this, I would check off the "other" box, fill in "teaching supervisor," and then explain the relationship clearly in the text of the recommendation letter itself.
"I was her teaching assistant" also works.
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15203 | What would you call the temporary advisor assigned after enrolment?
What would you call the temporary advisor assigned to a PhD student upon enrolment, who is in charge of the student until the student finds his/her research advisor? "temporary advisor", or "course advisor", or ...? Thanks!
Their first name.
@JeffE: In application to other PhD programs.
In the program where I currently work, we call such advisors "academic advisors," which makes the distinction with the "research advisor" or "thesis advisor" fairly obvious.
I'd imagine the particular terminology varies from one department to another. I've heard that called a "provisional" advisor. In my department you start with a "provisional committee" of two people. The provisional advisor is assigned based on the student's research interests, so often they wind up being the "real" advisor too, later on.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:48.824417 | 2013-12-30T05:33:27 | {
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