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61853 | Where to advertise PhD positions without paying a fee?
We have several opening in our group working in the field of computer science and electrical engineering (more specifically digital system design). We put an advertisement in our webpage and also another in the university portal. But we don't have applicants yet. I was looking for some websites to advertise the positions. I found that most of these websites (e.g. researchgate) ask for money. Do you know any website for advertising phd positions for free?
There are some field-specific websites, but they often charge a listing fee. If some money can be found to pay for the listing fee(s), and the site gets a wide exposure, it is absolutely worth advertising. You'll get more high quality applicants to choose from, and the cost of the advert is usually trivial in comparison to the cost of supporting a PhD student for 3+ years. If your positions are unpaid, it might be inappropriate or forbidden to advertise on job websites.
I frequently get announcements from different mailing lists of projects and departments. Send it to your colleagues and ask them to forward it to interested parties.
@Ronald I modified the question according to your suggestion.
If you add the exact fields of electrical engineering you might get more specific answers. For example, if it involves power systems / smart grids, then I would suggest to post on PowerGlobe mailing list.
@electrique I added the exact field
Euraxess may be an option. Its openings are quite heterogeneous (sciences and humanities). Despite the name, it is not restricted to European countries.
There are other free scholarship aggregators like scholarship-positions.com. If you search academia.stackexchange you may be able to find others.
Also, you may be able to find reddit channels associated to your area. At least in computer science it is not uncommon to see such openings posted there.
Another option is trying to locate a google group where other labs in your field post their openings.
@ncasas has given a good answer. Two additional options are
Mailing lists - some disciplines/areas of expertise use these to advertise. For instance, I have frequently seen PhD and research positions advertised on the AIS mailing list, a mailing list used amongst information systems research, and on the an SEM mailing list, a mailing list used by researcher who use structural equation modelling in their research. If you can find either type of mailing list (i.e., related to your discipline, or your areas of expertise) then those would be good places to advertise.
Internal mailing lists. I occasionally hear about positions from my supervisor or others in the school who receive emails from others who ask them to advertise positions within the school. If you have contacts in good universities who may have graduating students who might be interested in your positions, then you could probably pursue this option.
You could also use:
Social media - like twitter or specific groups on facebook
Blogs - if there are some scientific blogs about your discipline/area you could write an email to an author and ask him/her if he/she could post this advertisement
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114629 | Are reviewers required to check for originality?
Suppose a person writes a research paper without doing a complete literature survey, and sends it to a peer-reviewed journal. Assume that the results in question have been obtained before by someone else. Is it mandatory for journal editors to check the novelty? If not and if the editors also don't know about the pre-existence of this research, then who is liable for the aftermath?
Depends on whether the authors deliberately stole someone else's ideas. In mathematics, concepts are rediscovered many years later. This doesn't mean the authors stole the ideas. They just didn't know that another author had the same ideas before. For example, it's written in a different language. You can also ask a similar question: if the ideas existed in a different language, and you didn't know about it because you can't read said language, who is liable if you publish the ideas?
There are examples of people in application fields "discovering" and publishing (in highly-regarded journals) well-known mathematical techniques, decades or centuries after the original mathematical publication. As far as I know there is no real "aftermath" to these publications.
It happens in engineering as well. Nobody reads 50-year-old books on engineering for insight, and of course they don't include any computer-based methods (and they probably aren't on the internet either). So people write papers about this wonderful "new" insight they just discovered...
Bear in mind that almost no literature survey is "complete" in the sense of having read all previously published works which might have introduced a concept or idea. While access has been increasing for the past few centuries, so has the number of papers which would need to be read.
Who is liable for the aftermath? The author, and only the author.
As I see it, the reviewers and editors don't have an obligation to redo the literature search. However, the reviewer should be someone who is sufficiently familiar with the topic that they would be reasonably likely to know about relevant prior work, and should be able to identify serious omissions in the literature search. A reviewer who doesn't have that level of expertise should not be assigned, and if assigned should probably decline to review the paper.
Of course, if the reviewer does know about prior work that duplicates the paper under review, then they should require the authors to cite it, and evaluate the paper based on its novel contributions only, if any (or as an independent simultaneous discovery, if the timing makes that a possibility).
Final responsibility for the content of the paper always rests with the authors alone. However, if the paper is accepted and later found to be a rediscovery, a common course of action is to print an "acknowledgement of priority", a short note citing the previous paper and acknowledging that it was first. Typically it wouldn't be retracted. (Of course this only applies if the editors believe the paper is really an honest independent rediscovery; if it is plagiarism then it should be retracted.)
+1, with emphasis on the fact that "duplicate" work can imply parallel work and not necessarily plagiarism. The works need not actually "seem" to be alike to duplicate results. Good reviewers know the field, but aren't infallible.
There are around 20,000 papers added to Pubmed each week. Even my narrow field adds 230 a week. Being able to know all the relevant literature for a paper is impossible. Thus it is not a question of whether the current work missed anything from the literature review, but how important are the things that are almost certainly missing.
Part of the job of a reviewer is to be familier with a field and to know whether there are any glaring omissions in the review. Anything in any of the interdisciplinary journals or the fields top in-house journals. They might do a quick search to see if anything blindingly obvious jumps out that the happened not to know about. But no one can be certain that something important hasn't been missed.
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29111 | How can I migrate a library from Calibre to Zotero?
I've got a well organized Calibre library, but due to full text PDF search, web clipping and basic bibliography management, I decided to move to Zotero.
I can import .bib records easily, but is there a way to have them linked with corresponding PDFs?
You could possibly ask this at http://tex.stackexchange.com if it is on-topic for them
I thought about that first, but was afraid of the very same beurocracy: strictly speaking, this isn't more tex than academia :) Will try nextdoor anyway.
@gman I really don't think this would be on topic at TeX. I don't see any reason it should be off topic here, given that software questions are not inherently off topic
@JustinasDūdėnas note that cross posting is not allowed on SE, so if you want to post this on TeX (though I wouldn't recommend it), delete it here first.
Are you asking about migrating PDFs from Calibre specifically, or just adding PDF files to Zotero records? If the latter, there's this
I think this is on topic -- it is about software that is used by many academics.
Is there any way you can get a link to the PDFs exported from Calibre? If so, it's almost certainly possible to import it into Zotero
Discussion here suggests that you can export a Calibre catalog as BibTeX
click the arrow next to convert books and create a catalog in bibtex format.
...
(you have to select at least 3 [books])
You can then import the BibTeX into Zotero. Whether that transfers PDFs, comments, and tags depends on the ability of Calibre to export that metadata (all of it is supported by BibTeX).
A thread on Zotero forums indicates that Calibre may sometimes assign "silly dates", so you may want to look over your library after import.
I have identified the origin of these silly publication dates (Jan. 1st, year 101): that's the metadata I have in my calibre database for some e-books, probably a default value assigned by calibre when a specific date isn't available in the imported document and designed to stand out when sorted in ascending or descending order.
Alternatively, if you want Zotero to try and find the metadata for your books, you can just drag and drop the PDFs into Zotero and use the Retrieve Metadata function to look up metadata. May even want to combine both approaches and merge duplicates at the end (by selecting the best metadata from both software).
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120434 | Why should I write a good undergraduate thesis?
I am nearing the end of a semester-long bachelor thesis in computer science. My supervisor suggested I set aside the last month (around 20 working days) for actually writing the thesis document. As such, I have begun this period now.
Why is a thesis important?
Given limited time, I am confused as to why I need to write a good thesis. I am not against writing it, I just want to understand why a good thesis is important so that I can optimize my time accordingly and focus on the important sections.
For instance, if I were writing a paper for a conference, my goal would be to convince potential reviewers (as well as the research community in general) about the merit of my proposed ideas and their novel contributions. As such, I know the intended audience and the intended message for such a paper. Along these lines, who is the intended audience and what is the intended message for a bachelor thesis? Firstly, I doubt many would be interested in reading a bachelor thesis, so this confuses me when I think about who I am writing this thesis for. Secondly, should I consider the intended message as convincing the reader of my ideas, in which case the thesis essentially becomes a long research paper?
I am dealing with these questions because I've found that I can write better and more persuasive matter when I think from the reader's point of view with a clear message to convey to him/her. But currently, I am neither clear about the audience nor about the point to make with my thesis.
I spoke to my supervisor about this. He said the thesis document is a report of all the research activities I did during the time allotted for it, which includes all experiments irrespective of their results. In contrast, a research paper focuses on one method which worked very well. With this in mind, one could say that the intent of my thesis is to inform, so that all experiments (with positive or negative results) serve as some kind of knowledge contribution to the research community. However, this still leaves the question of who the reader is, what should I assume about them, etc.
Which sections are the most important in my thesis?
Part of the reason for asking the former question is to obtain an answer for this question. Which sections are the most important in a thesis and why? From my understanding, the sections which stand out (like the abstract, introduction and conclusion) are the most important as they're the most likely to be read by potential thesis examiners, peers, etc.
Is there any other section that I should especially focus on?
Welcome to Academia.SE. I'm afraid questions about undergraduate matters are considered off-topic here, so your question is not well-suited to this site.
@JessicaB I had read the scope mentioned here, where only questions about undergraduate admissions and undergraduate life (examples indicated extra-curricular life) were considered off-topic. Moreover, I found the bachelor tag, which is why it never occurred to me that my question could be off-topic. Please correct me if I'm misinformed :)
@JessicaB: Please also remember this. (And even with the old convoluted rules, this question would have been on-topic, since it does translate to master’s theses.)
The real problem is that this is ten questions, not one.
Somehow lost in all the comments and answers (but maybe I've missed it) is anything about what I would have thought was the most important reason for doing this, namely learning how to effectively write technical/scientific exposition. Whether you go directly into industry or continue in academics, you're going to have to write about what you and others have done (e.g. grant applications, a summary of your company's team's work on some recent project, papers for publication, performance reviews of people under you in which you have to describe their work, etc.).
Just came across this quote: '“Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. ... As one college president said, ‘A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.’ If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the host of Heaven and earth will have to pause and say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.'” Martin Luther King Jr.
The audience
The correct, but somewhat cynical answer is that the main audience for a thesis or dissertation is the examiners. They'll have to grade it (or at least sign off on it), so you want to convince them to give you the grade you want. The next audience you'll want to target is actually yourself.
Some years from now you'll have forgotten some of the details. You can try to track them down again, but if you've written stuff down in a format that's helpful to you it's going to be a lot quicker and less painful. Basically, if you write the document well it can be a great reference. (I admittedly haven't opened my bachelor thesis many times, but I looked something up in my Masters thesis just yesterday.) Sometimes the thesis can also be useful for students doing their projects on the same topic, in the same research group, etc.
The other big point is that writing the thesis is supposed to be practice for future writing of e.g. dissertations or papers.
What sections are most important?
From the practice angle, all of them. To convince your examiners, probably introduction, results and conclusions - but different people will have different priorities. However, it's a case where you have a few people who are supposed to read your thesis, so an excellent abstract is less important than in a research paper. Basically, you want to show that you understand the field, and have done good work.
I recently finished a Bachelor's thesis in physics, and the faculty I asked for advice generally agreed with what has been said: that your target audience is the examiners and yourself. While correct, I know that I found that a bit demoralizing--this was a project I'd been working on four years and cared a lot about, and writing about it for a group of professors who just wanted to get through it as quickly as possible seemed like a let down--so I took some advice for my adviser and wrote it for a future incoming student in the lab (whether such a student is ever likely to read my thesis or not didn't really matter). Basically, I wrote for myself four years ago, before I joined the lab, discussing everything I'd learned about the project and how the lab worked and explaining all of the nuances of our research that I'd learned the hard way, as well as of course discussing the results of my research project, suggestions for future work, etc. Imagining an actually interested audience who could learn something from my work made the process a lot less painful, and I think it also made my thesis significantly better, because it forced me to actually take the time to explain why I did each step of the project and the theoretical backing behind the experiment, rather than assuming that my audience had prior knowledge of these topics. (I worried a lot that I included too many "intro-level" details about my project, but all of my evaluators actually gave positive feedback on that.)
So, the point I wanted to make here is, yes, your adviser/evaluators are your "actual" audience, but if that seems intimidating or unhelpful to you, you can always imagine a different audience to give your work more of a purpose. As others have said, the main purpose is to show that you have done significant work, learned scientific thinking, and can explain it all clearly, and that should come through regardless of who you have in your head as your audience.
You don't say what program you are enrolled in, but I am going to answer this from a sciences point of view. Undoubtedly much of this will also apply to other subjects.
The final year research project is often the culmination of the entire degree program. Within such a module you are expected to demonstrate that you can behave, think, write and perform like a scientist. In contrast to other modules, where the aim is to demonstrate that you can learn, understand and apply the knowledge that others have accumulated, here you must demonstrate that you can generate your own knowledge and approach the world with a "scientific" frame of mind.
In the ideal world, all undergraduates would have exciting, well-designed thesis topics, which, if correctly executed at a level that can be expected from an undergraduate, would produce interesting conclusions irrespective of which way the results turn out. We do not live in this world. Thus, in an undergraduate project, you must be able to demonstrate the required attributes, even if not everything you did (or anything you did) produced exciting results.
I do not think it is cynical to suggest that the target audience for your thesis is the person marking it (be that your supervisor or some other examiner). The purpose is to convince said person that you can use your assigned topic to show your ability to think, act and write like a professional scientist. Convince them that you can set your topic and your results in the relevant existing knowledge, that you understand the design of the experiments, that you understand the limitations of the data collected, if things didn't work that you either understand why they didn't, OR have strong ideas for how you might investigate the causes of the failures and that you understand what your results say about your original topic.
The way you do this is by writing a document that looks like the sort of document a professional scientist might write (or more accurately, the platonic ideal of a professional scientist might write).
Let me suggest that the audience consists of two people. Your advisor and yourself. Your advisor is an important part of the audience since he will grade it and (hopefully) give you feedback on both the content and the writing.
You are part of the audience since at the point you are in academia, you simply need the practice of technical writing and carefully organizing your thoughts and arguments.
However, some things you say imply that this is more of an "experience report" than a true thesis, and that may be the core of your dilemma.
Research is a plunge into the unknown. Sometimes we find that what we thought was true turns out to be false. That is knowledge, just the same as learning that it was true. Of course, you need to provide the evidence that leads you to your final conclusion in either case. But no research is a "failure" unless it is carried out improperly or carelessly.
But the advice to lay out what you have learned in a coherent way is good advice. Write for your advisor. Write for yourself. Maybe more will come of it, but that is all that is needed at this level.
The convincing part should be done by the research, the text should only be a clear representation of that. If you have a result, then I may find that convincing because you told my how you got there and I found that approach convincing. I should not find that result convincing because you said that in a certain way. The text is important because it should be clear, but the convincing is not done by the text. For example, be sparing with adjectives: you give the evidence, the reader decides for her or himself whether that is strong evidence (or not).
When I grade a bachelor thesis I don't value the abstract. The introduction and conclusion play very specific roles. The introduction poses the research question, the conclusion answers the research question. I do grade those parts, but I pretty much ignore the rest. Most of the grading happens in between. I need to see a clear line, which typically helped a lot if you follow the standard format in your discipline. Maybe you are allowed to deviate from that, but experience tells us that that almost always ends in a disaster. If some part is weaker, then that will cost you.
As an undergraduate in a science field, it is unlikely that you've produced anything publishable, but you can always look into undergraduate or other smaller journals/conferences as a venue. If you think you have a publishable core (and I'm guessing this is likely why you're here), consider taking the time to write it in a way that you think might be publishable, but communicate your intention to do this with your professor upfront. Ideally, if your goal was to produce something publishable, your advisor should have known this from the start, but hey, we all are where we all are. I will never advise against trying to publish your undergraduate thesis (it's what I did in a history field), but just know it will take many hours of editing, adding, and improving to make it happen.
If you have no interest in publishing it, then write it up the way that will be most useful to you in the future or the way that will make it the most fun to write. Either way will let you highlight the things you are proud of/enjoyed doing and get through the boring stuff quickly. If you go this route, have fun with it. Create a unique acrostic with section headings, try out a unique way of organizing everything, add in a running joke, or do whatever you want to make the paper a fun reference to look back on.
It's 50/50 that this is your only undergraduate paper you'll ever read again, so whatever you decide just do something that will make the memory of writing it happy and not just a thing you did begrudgingly.
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111399 | Hesitation about writing a paper
The situation maybe a little bit unusual, and I am asking for your opinion.
I have taught an undergraduate course on differential geometry of curves and surfaces last Fall semester. One of the students in my class, whom I think is really bright, told me that he found the proof of a certain well known theorem is a little bit hard to understand. We had some discussion on it, but I was quite busy so I wasn't paying too much attention on it, so we didn't get any good conclusion.
Recently I was revising my lecture notes and I was reminded of his question. Then he and I found that no fewer than three books (two textbooks and a research monograph) give wrong proofs of that theorem. We are quite satisfied with what we found, and his question was settled. Then he asked whether we should write a paper on this issue and submit it to some undergraduate research journal, like Involve. At first I didn't think it was a good idea because finding a mistake of a proof of a theorem in three books isn't really a big deal, and I told him we could send an email to the authors of those books about the mistakes. But then I think his idea might not be as bad as it seems to be because, essentially, when an undergrad can find some mistakes in well-known textbooks that (it seems to me that) nobody can find, it means something to me. My concern is I don't know even if we are talking about an undergraduate research journal, do the editors think it's certainly not worth a try or the opposite?
On the math side of that theorem, those three books use the same techniques but with different assumptions (or you may want to call simplifications). However, the proof in each of those books have different mathematical mistakes (i.e., not just some simple typos). So far we only found one textbook which gives a correct proof. The other books which contain a correct proof of this theorem are either too sketchy/wordy or those books are research monographs.
Since I have no experience on writing a paper based on the "discovery" of this nature, any comment is welcome. On one hand I think it's something to an undergrad student and on the other hand, I am not sure about what the editors think.
Thank you.
How about a venue like the Monthly or College Math. Journal?
Given that a correct and satisfactory proof exists in the literature, you would not be providing "research results" per se, so a full research article probably is not worth writing at this stage, unless you can devise a more elegant or straightforward or otherwise "improved" proof.
If you are unable to provide that, it would certainly be appropriate to comment on the difficulty of correctly proving the theorem, and do a "comparative" study in the form of a letter to indicate the challenges and make them known to a wider audience.
But, as you said, it's certainly a matter worth talking about—it really is a question about the appropriate "form" of writing your results up.
Yes, you are right. I think myself and thr student should think about how to improve the present correct proof. Then it sounds more publishable.
Generally, writing a paper about some kind of a discovery is not a bad idea.
However, are you sure (as in: really, really sure) that:
the proofs in question are wrong;
you have a correct proof?
Pointing "they are wrong" with a finger is not the best behaviour, even less so if you have little credibility (i.e., you are a student). If you can produce a fail-safe proof of that theorem, then why not. I have seen some papers with titles "A bla bli blup proof of foo biz baz theorem".
It might be that your course professor is the best person to approach first. (And I also highly recommend to do so.) It takes some experience to judge if an idea is valid and fruitful or not. Said professor might also be able to discern that you all are wrong and book authors are correct with little to no image damage to you.
Update: If you think your discovery is fail-proof, then aim for the publication by any means (with or without) the professor.
Don't fear being an undergrad.
Kolmogorov (you'd heard this name, I am sure) had at some time a hypothesis that multiplication of two n-sized inputs in on Big-Omega of n^2, i.e. that it is impossible to multiply faster than O(n^2). He mentioned it in a seminar. He was a world-known name then already. A week later an undergrad student showed him a proof that it is possible to do so faster.
While the actual story of the publication is also quite fun and breath-taking, you can research it yourself. I'd just mention, that we all know this student by this method, the Karatsuba multiplication.
First of all thank you for your comment. However, I am the course instructor involved in this rather than the student.
OP is the professor, not the student.
Moreover, our point is while there is at least one textbook whose proof of that theorem is correct, what we wanted to point out is there are some textbook proofs are wrong.
@index theory: Oh, I am sorry. I should read the questions with a greater attention to detail. Is the proof the student is suggesting new and correct?
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97604 | How do I benchmark research if there is no previous work against which I can compare it?
I'm working on a paper that there is no previous paper for it to distinguish. its an old tool like ant colony optimization that is used on a new approach. I have sent the paper to a journal and they have said it doesn't have a good benchmark.
Please clarify the question; is your paper about an old software that you adapted to use in a new problem?
yes more or less @MFornari
A benchmark is a standard or reference that will allow other authors compare their algorithms with yours. If the problem is known and other papers were published to solve it, follow the lead and compare your algorithm with them using the same parameters. If there are no other paper solving the problem, look for similar problems and check how they are described by certain variables.
The most basic parameter is the problem size, ie how many instances your problem has to deal with. For sorting algorithms, it is the number of items to sort. Usually, we start with quantities that could be easily handled in memory, increase to the limits of available memory, up to numbers that will need disk to store all items.
The second parameter is distribution. Are all instances equally probable and distributed along the possible spectrum? For sorting algorithms, if the set of items is partially sorted or totally random will impact the performance. In my thesis, I worked with geographical objects like cities, which are concentrated in some areas that were difficult to process, and other areas totally empty that could be easily recognized and discarded as not interesting.
Each problem might have multiple parameters, some are important, others are irrelevant. Your work is to identify them and choose values that are realistic and could show the strengths and weakness for different algorithms, not only yours.
Another set of parameters, very common when comparing software, is related to hardware, like the number of processors, total memory, network speed, etc...
Hope it helps, without reading your paper is hard to be specific.
my paper is about using ant colony optimization to find path like players and choose path like them. ant colony basically is used to find nearest path. so I'm using same tool on new application or approach. it works in way palyers add fromone to path instead of bots or ... in my tests it works but there is no same work
@virtouso Are you saying that no papers have approached that problem before in any way?
@TobiasKildetoft at least I couldn't find any thing on ieee Elsevier ....
@virtouso Then it seems like a bigger problem than finding an appropriate benchmark might be to justify why the problem is even worth looking at in the first place.
@TobiasKildetoft so can you tell me how can I include all of these to make paper be accepted? I just explained it in my paper but they mentioned a problem as: there is no good benchmark or enhancement
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95376 | How do US Ph.D. applicants without research experience convince admissions committees that they are interested in a particular field?
My question is mainly for mathematics Ph.D. application in the United States. However, the answers from any other field (or other countries) where undergraduate/master research doesn't play a critical role in admission are also welcomed (by "critical" I mean if one has no research experience, then the chance of acceptance is small).
As we know, in mathematics or theoretical physics, a solid background in some areas (like algebraic geometry) need several years to lay down and some applicants may not have research experience in the area they are interested in.
Suppose the main reason that applicants want to apply to school A is that the math department of school A has a strong algebraic geometry group, but they have no research experience in it. How would they convince the graduate committee that they are truly interested in algebraic geometry in the statement of purpose?
Please note under some circumstances it is important to convince the graduate committee that one is really interested in a particular field. For instance, if they had changed interest from another field, say analysis to algebraic geometry or they are transferring from one school to another to pursue a Ph.D. degree in algebraic geometry, or the department to which they are applying has only a narrow range of research focuses (some elite private schools, for example).
To put in another way, for an applicant without research experience in a certain field, what kind of experiences/characteristics could make the graduate committee believe that they are really interested in this field?
Well, why does the applicant believe that s/he is truly interested in algebraic geometry? This must be based on something.
I think it makes a difference here whether this is in a US-style system, where the applicant would have only a bachelor's degree, or a European-style system, where they already have a masters. Can you clarify?
I have also added some details to emphasize the importance of convincing the graduate committee of one's interest focus under some circumstances.
Possible duplicate of https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/38237/929
Is this really an issue for U.S. graduate math programs? My experience may be a bit dated (1980s through early 1990s), but I knew VERY FEW beginning graduate students in math who had any kind of research experience beyond maybe giving a talk at a local MAA section meeting or an undergraduate honors project that may have gotten published in something like the Pi Mu Epsilon Journal. And targeting a specific field seemed utterly unnecessary. Demonstrated evidence of ability and interest, mainly as conveyed in letters of recommendation, is --- or at least used to be --- of primary importance.
I would have thought that in general the time allotted for a PhD is too short (3 - 4 years full time) to spend too much of that learning the basics of your field to the level of being able to produce original research. Not forgetting that most PhD students start publishing heavily during their candidature, so that really you would be expected to be producing publishable papers within the first 18 months to two years. I can't imagine any mathematical academic taking on a PhD candidate who didn't already show some expertise in the field - maybe a few papers already; certainly previous studies in the discipline. (There may be some exceptions, but I imagine they'd be rare.) If you had read a little about algebraic geometry and wanted to research into it, you would in many cases be recommended to enrol in a few postgraduate courses first - pretty much to test your ability and expertise - before enrolling in a PhD. Also, supervisors aren't going to teach you the area - although you may be recommended some background reading - they are just wanting to encourage your research, and also of course to get their name on your papers.
If this is in the US, nearly all mathematics PhD programs take five to six years and have at least a year of required coursework before beginning research.
@ElizabethHenning: Agreed - the description in this answer seems to be completely different from the US system. Alasdair, I see your profile says Australia - is this in reference to the Australian system? I've asked the OP to clarify what system they are looking at.
Worth noting that this is basically how things work in Europe too. Depending on where you are, you might have some research experience in a field from a Bachelor thesis, the much more experience from a Master thesis, and generally you'd stay within that field for your PhD, though you don't need to have publications at this point, but it's certainly not unheard of.
The short length of the PhD is indeed a serious problem for some of my colleagues in Europe (particularly in the UK, where there is an actual hard deadline). Colleagues doing research that requires a large amount of background find it difficult to recruit PhD students that are likely to be successful. The result is either substandard dissertations, sometimes with the hope that the student will develop further during postdocs, or subfields where almost all the researchers do their PhDs in the US.
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154040 | How often to cite / back-up claims?
Good morning all,
I have recently embarked on an MSc programme in CompSci, on which the first module is Critical Reading/Writing. So far, I have written two "introductory" paper assessments. As I was writing them, I found that my text read somewhat "monotonous", and I felt that not only every claim should be backed-up by a citation, but literally every instance of an assertion. For example:
"Smith writes that all Electrofuzzies are vulnerable to extreme
cold[1]. Jones contests Smith's recent study on thermal vulnerability
of Electrofuzzies in [2] and finds they can tolerate up to absolute zero just fine. This paper argues that it's not enough to simply test for
cold-resistance; one should also test for extreme heat to obtain a
more general picture"
In the above purely-fictitious text (well, perhaps Electrofuzzies actually exist - I don't really know), the first two sentences try to illustrate what I meant by "monotonous" - just fact after fact with no eloquent linkage. The last sentence "It's not enough ...", tries to illustrate that I fear that every time I wax assertive in a paper, I need to back it up.
Questions
Would this then not just turn my paper into one large symbolic link to others' work?
How much freedom of expression should I give myself, assuming that I'm not an authoritative source on Electrofuzzies or literally anything in CompSci at the academic level?
Should I literally cite/reference at every opportunity, if not?
Thank you for any advice!
Have you asked your instructor? Their opinion is what matters. Did you get instructions?
What do you mean by "every time I wax assertive"? And what by citing at any opportunity?
I do not know the details of your course, but I see no problem with your example text.
Two things bother me about your example text, but neither is what you're asking about. (1) Shouldn't "up to absolute zero" be "down to absolute zero"? (2) "This paper" could mean (and I think is intended to mean) the paper in which this example text appears, or it could mean the paper [2] that was just mentioned. I'd write either "The present paper argues" or (preferably in my view but anathema to some folks) "We argue".
@AndreasBlass - Good points. I wrote it in haste, but yes - both of your niggles hold weight; thanks! %"henning -- reinstate Monica", I mean every time I assert something myself, or give my own opinion - or should I write papers like an academic "router", simply vectoring off to other papers? %Anonymous Physicist - You are right; I should, but they have many other students to help, and are not super responsive (I did get instructions, but my question relates not to any one assignment; rather, to a fundamental misunderstanding I believe I have). Thanks all, for your replies.
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48169 | Is it good to only read the high-rated journals as a starting PhD student?
I just started my PhD in computer science (first year) and I enjoy reading the high-rated journals related to my field. It is true that I find them, sometimes, complicated (in some sense) and I cannot continue the reading. The reason why I like reading such journals is that (1) there are many beautiful ideas, (2) solid works and (3) I would like to submit to these journals in the future.
I think, however, that this strategy is not quite good as a junior (student). May be I should read other conference papers and journals.
Can you please suggest some useful advice.
Conference papers contain more cutting edge material than journals in Computer Science.
it really depends on why are you are reading. to keep afloat of new developments in your field? then skimming through top journals is probably the way to go. to get a deep understanding of your particular research topic? then you cannot restrict yourself to just a few high-ranking journals. maybe the piece of information that you really need is hidden in some obscure technical report. it is impossible to answer your question until you clarify your motivation.
I've never been one to sit down and read a journal edition cover to cover. I think you're better off skimming titles and abstracts for articles that pique your interest. You should do this for conference proceedings too. You can't attend every talk at a conference, nor should you really expect yourself to read every article.
At some point you will need to narrow your interest to something pretty specific in order to develop a dissertation. You will also need to develop depth and historical perspective on your chosen topic. You should probably spend as much, if not more, time reading interesting individual articles and all their important references (and so on!) as you should trying to read whole journal editions or entire conference proceedings. There's value in a depth-oriented approach to reading articles.
I find that there's a pruning strategy of sorts that keeps you out of stuff that's not interesting. Sometimes randomly selected articles can be worthwhile, but there's lots of stuff out there that will be boring to you. Using a good article as a guide and reading some of its references can be much more productive.
The gold standard is indeed these kind of journals. I always tell my students: you are what you read :) This is because we learn by osmosis. You need to learn what is 'solid work', how to do technical writing, the vocab, and the most important ideas in your field. The latter is critical. If a reviewer finds that you missed a seminal work, your paper will be rejected.
In CS there are top conferences too, so do read them as well. If you are in networking then SIGCOMM and MOBICOM have very nicely written papers and usually nice ideas.
It is important not to discount lower tier venues. They may contain interesting ideas that may spark a wild fire. In other words, read them for ideas and conduct your research as per the gold standard.
I disagree with the first sentence. The gokd standard in CS (if there is one) is in high-quality conferences. Journals are secondary.
@JeffE Gold-standards for novelty, maybe, but certainly not for quality (meaning correctness and presentation).
The value of reading high-ranking journals in your field is that it will give you a somewhat broad view of what leading researchers in your field consider to be "good" and "important" research.
However, this "breadth-first" approach will not help you very much in your own research, including getting your own papers published.
Instead, I suggest you pursue a "depth-first" approach where you find "seminal" papers in the sub-fields that interest you the most, and then read all the important papers that cite those seminal papers, especially papers that argue against the seminal/foundational papers. In this way, you learn about the scientific discourse involved in any particular line of research.
You can find seminal papers several ways. Sometimes, they are highly cited. Other times, they are the focus of special issues of journals or special conferences. Sometimes, they aren't highly cited (i.e. do not have a high number of citations themselves), but they are cited or used in a few critical papers which in turn led to a significant line of research.
With this sort of analysis, you will learn the skill of evaluating papers not in isolation but in the context of a whole line of research, including research by detractors.
I advocate the "depth-first" approach to support your own research because in your dissertation you will need to take a position through your thesis statement(s) on a few research question(s). For this purpose, it is of little value to know all the latest research in the best journals. Instead, you need to know all (or most) of the research in one or a couple of lines of research, and especially the gaps in that research which you intend to fill with your dissertation.
To be honest there are some serious issues with the really "high-level" journals (namely nature and science). It is seemingly the case that the editors of said journals have a designated "hot topic" which they find to be of interest. A symptom of this drive is that the reproducibility of the experiments described in such articles suffers, (as evinced by e.g. that guy from Bell Labs a few years ago who was doing some seemingly phenomenal stuff with magnets). With this said, the acceptance of a topic in such a journal is usually indicative of the problem being of great interest. Depending on your intended field I would narrow down your search to journals which are more myopic as due to the breadth covered by such high-level journals searches in smaller journals I find tend to be more fruitful (as in I have to parse fewer abstracts/titles for something of interest).
I think interpreting "high level" as "Nature or Science" is a mistake. It seems clear that the OP means top specialized journals in computer science.
To be more direct: Nature and Science are not high-rated journals in computer science.
The comments here point toward a broader issue. To find out which journals are the important ones in your field, you should not rely on citation counts or similar rankings. Rather, you should ask your adviser and other faculty in your area. Also, it is likely that you will not get information directly in the form "journal X is important"; more often, the information will be "you should read paper Y." After this has happened for a lot of Y's, you'll have a sense of the importance of journals, just by seeing where those Y's were published.
I found/find that reading 'high rated' journals is a good place to start when investigating a research topic. Not only do they provide a solid grounding in contemporary 'advancements' in your field but they also have the potential to provide a huge resource by way of the reference section. Perusing reference material to which the author/s refer and upon which they preface their research can [over a number of journals] provide a listing of relevant and seminal works that minimises possibly of missing something important.
I also agree with the above comments re: scanning abstracts/titles etc. but would also urge you to seek out journals by particular (reputable) authors/researchers who are in your field and who will more than likely have written journals that could provide some insight into how their research evolved.
Reading and educating yourself as a new PhD student is required to improve your skills to, eventually, write something similar to what you are reading now. If you feel that the level of the papers you read is too high and you cannot follow it, then it is a good starting point to define the areas where you need to improve (given that you are reading in THE related work to your topic). After defining these areas, it is your task now to start working on it by attending lectures offered by your university, MOOCs, reading books, etc.
You can also participate in cs.stackexchange or similar platforms that are related to your research, start reading the related questions, asking questions, and even answering questions.
You can test this with two or three papers that you like most, but you are not able to follow, then you can come back again to these papers and test how you improve.
Starting PhD is always not easy in CS, do not lose your enthusiasm and try always to improve your self.
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81518 | I'm feeling discouraged after getting tenure; should I quit?
A few months ago, and seven years after I obtained my PhD, I finally got tenure. Hence I have a permanent position in academia.
After a few months in this new position, I find myself thinking of quitting academia. I do not know if this is because of my new status but I am quite discouraged and not motivated to do research. Meanwhile, it seems that I now face even more teaching, more administration and more research pressure than before.
Have you passed through a similar phase, and if so could you describe your experience? I wonder if all these thoughts are caused by the transition from being a postdoc/assistant professor to being an associate professor, but I do not know.
I'm sure there are important things to ponder and ask about your situation, but right now, there's nothing that helpful strangers on the internet can answer here.
Just to lift the somewhat depressing mood induced by this question: CONGRATULATIONS!!! Whether you quit now or not, it's an awesome achievement and you should be proud of it.
I think there is a broad and useful question here. It's the faculty version of our most upvoted question. I've tried to make it clearer.
You have been working for many years, as a PhD student and a non-tenurred academic, towards the goal of becoming a tenured professor. Achieving a major life goal can leave you feeling a bit flat for a while. Relax. Savor your achievement. Give it time. If you can, take a sabbatical. Even if that is not possible, take a good vacation at the next opportunity.
You might look into counseling; many universities have a confidential employee counseling program. It can be helpful to sort through what's going on, with more depth than a post on the internet. This isn't to say "stay" or "go", but you might get a better sense of what the issues are, how to make a decision, and how to make the best of whatever decision you make. It's a pretty sure bet that the counselor will have helped many of your colleagues with very similar concerns.
Can you elaborate on "research pressure"? They can't really fire you now for low research productivity, so what other sorts of pressure are you experiencing?
Dear Nate: essentially I am the new guy at the place and many people from the faculty are putting on my shoulders many of their responsibility. That's essentially the point
It's enormously empowering the first time you piss off a chair or a dean after you get tenure. Don't make it a habit but you do need to do it when you need to for self-protection.
Sounds like it's time for a sabbatical?
@David - Or a lateral move (to another institution)?
Have you passed through a similar phase — Oh, yes. Well, maybe not passed through; that would suggest the phase is actually over.
Vaguely related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTrlcEpLVnI
Many faculty get post-tenure blues. There are several causes:
Burnout: You've been running at full speed for almost 30 years (k-12; college; grad school; post-docs; tenure track). Your brain needs a rest. It's perfectly acceptable for you to take a break. Many faculty have post-tenure slumps.
Survivor's guilt: Many of your grad peers didn't get jobs, you might have seen other faculty not make tenure. The tenuring process can seem capricious. You've just been through the sausage machine and you didn't like what you saw.
Imposter syndrome: Related to the above, you can't quite believe that you made it and you're doubting yourself. Were you really qualified to make it? Maybe there was a mistake in your file that they might catch?
Fear of commitment: You look at the other tenured faculty and are deathly afraid that you're now committed to be with them for the next 30 years. Oh god, what have you done. Your dreams of leaving academia and opening a bookstore-cafe by the waters of Lake Michigan are maybe just that, dreams.
Fresh fish: At many places, newly tenured faculty are fresh fish for burdensome committee assignments. e.g.: No one really wants to be the MA grad advisor but it has to be filled by a senior faculty member, thus the 'new guy' gets it. Some senior colleagues may actually tell you that you "owe" them because they "gave" you tenure. Bollycocks. You earned your tenure. You owe no one. Just try to remember the 'just say no' skills that you had as junior faculty and wriggle out of any and all commitments until you can figure out which ones you can tolerate.
Peter Principle: The Peter Principle ("people rise to their level of incompetence") is often misunderstood. It's not that you are incompetent, it's that you've been competent in one domain but promoted to a higher domain than where you've shown competence. Associate and full professors often have to do much more administrative work and intrauniversity politics than assistant/untenured faculty. When you're tenured, work becomes less fun and more bureaucratic. And you wondered why your senior faculty were all sourpusses. Key to your sanity here is to remain in domains that you're passionate about (teaching, basic research, etc.) and enter into new domains only on your own terms. For example, if the provost wants you to be chair of XYZ onerous committee, then you need $x research funds or to go to y conference or get z course relief (h/t to J and Captain Emacs).
Paradise Syndrome also known as the dog who actually caught the car syndrome. You've been working so hard for so many years for something you finally achieved and suddenly you don't know what to do with it. You have to come up with new life goals and purpose for living (thx Pharap).
The most important thing to remember is that they can't fire you without serious cause. Take a break, say no, piss some people off by not taking on work. Let your brain stretch. Go kayaking. Work on your bucket list. And then after that, try to remember what made you so passionate about your field.
Finally, if you really, really, really want to quit and you can't take sabbatical or get a grant to buy you out for a semester then: take an unpaid leave. The provost should be willing to work with you - if not, you can use FMLA or sick leave if you can get your doctor to agree you need time off. It's better than quitting as it leaves you with your Plan A when you recover.
Yes, pick some crazy topic you didn't dare to touch before. Have fun!
Good description at the end of the many possible stages between contentment and outright quitting. And just to be clear to the OP, "you're now committed to be with them for the next 30 years" is not factually true (tenure is a one-way commitment), although that doesn't mean you might not feel that way.
Good point Greg, especially since many of us switched jobs as tenured faculty. Will edit that.
I think you left out one critical point - hating the job you didn't sign up for. This is Captain Kirk syndrome - promoted to Admiral but really just wanted to be a Captain. Tenured faculty are largely managers - you're relegated to writing grant proposals, proofing papers, dealing with bureaucracy, and managing your students and postdocs, all of whom now get to do the "fun" part of actually getting their hands dirty with the real research. Some of the malaise can come from missing that part of the job and not getting to do nearly as much of it as you'd like.
@J... Excellent point, well observed. It's a variant of Peter's principle - rising up to the level where the work stops being fun :-)
@CaptainEmacs Yeah, it's not quite the Peter Principle since most academics are actually quite good at managing a research group by that point in their career - it just may not be as satisfying as the core research activities themselves. I know people who have remained postdocs even until late in their career for just this reason.
Perhaps also a bit of Paradise Syndrome?
It's hard to give concrete advice here because this is a very personal thing. First: It is quite common to feel empty when such a major goal have been achieved and probably you are left with no further major professional goals now. But face it: You don't need major goals in your life - smaller goals also work fine.
If you lost motivation to do research, I can recommend to try to enjoy doing science for the next time, and not focusing on the outcome too much. As a tenured academic it is one of your privileges to follow your scientific interests and not to worry about the outcome from the beginning. Pick simple problems, and think about them in simple ways. Also, talk to other people about your field and be interested in their work. This will give you insight in other areas but also new perspectives on questions you may already have.
Lastly, and to prove that you are not alone, here is another guy that felt the same. Although I usually don't like it to quote the famous guys on such problems, but it's written well and carries some good advice (but following it will probably not always lead to a Nobel prize as in this story):
Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing – it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. […] I'd invent things and play with things for my own entertainment.
So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.
Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.
I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate – two to one. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, "Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it's two to one?"
I don't remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one.
[…]
I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there's the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was "playing" – working, really – with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things.
It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.
From "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman", by Richard Feynman
Just my two cents (I need to find a new introductory statement): I think it would be best to not necessarily quit, but reevaluate what it is that you are interested in doing at this point in your life.
Be it more research, being a more hands on/helpful professor, or heck, even shaking up the status quo at your institution (as there are a lot of aspects of campus structure that could use some shaking up, no matter the institution :P)
Find a new goal, now that you have attained one that takes a LOT of effort, time, and struggle.
I often find once I achieve a goal I become disheartened and demotivated.
I guess you were hoping for this for some time and now you have lost that. Could be a life is about the journey rather than the destination situation.
Maybe find a new goal.
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119342 | How should I avoid being in the shadow of my PhD advisor after I have my own faculty position?
I would like to receive some feedback from the community about the following situation.
I have a permanent position as associate professor in an institution for some years now (3). This institution is the one I did my PhD 10 years ago, and in particular I am in the same department as my PhD advisor (who is a Full Professor).
Despite having my own research line independent of the one of my PhD advisor (namely, I have my own research problems, projects, collaborators, etc), the truth is that I also continue working with her, and being sincere I trust that my contribution on works is as important as her contribution. I am advising PhD students on different topics, I have my own national research project, etc.
I know that this should not bother me too much, but the truth is that at the end the person who receives the recognition of our work is her. Here by recognition I mean invitations to conferences, seminars, being in committees and things like this. I also know that being on an early stage is not the same as being a well-stablished professor, but when this happens on a regular basis, it makes me start to feel bad. Just to give an example, in the last year I have not been invited to give any seminars abroad, while she has been invited to present our work at least 3 times.
It has come to a point where I believe that having worked as crazy to get this position in a university in the city I wanted to live (because this one of the main reasons I picked this position... I love the city and most important, it solved the 2 body problem), it comes with the problem that I will always be 'the student of *' in the eyes of everybody, even if I obtain significant breakthroughs on my own. I trust that this will affect, for instance, if I want to become a full professor some day soon.
The question is the following: how to act when you have tried hard (and in part having been successful) to be (researchally speaking) independent of your PhD advisor, but in the eyes of almost everybody you are still her student? If this situation is rephrased saying that we are in the same institution then it explains a little what I was explaining in the previous paragraphs.
So, I would really appreciate advice from the community. I find it a little radical to stop collaborating scientifically with her (in part because there is no one around working on this area!), but as time goes by it seems to me that the best option is to start working alone on this common area, or some similar solution...
The general question may be: how to act when you have tried hard (and in part having been successful) to be (researchally speaking) independent of your PhD advisor, but on the eyes of almost everybody you are still her student? If this situation is rephrased saying that we are in the same institution then it explains a little what I was explaining...
Important information is missing: who is the corresponding author on your shared papers?
Forgot to say that: we are pure mathematicians, which means that we sign the papers in alphabetical order. So no distinction between authors
The corresponding author does not have to be the same as the first name alphabetically. What @DoruConstantin is asking is who your papers state is the person to direct correspondance to.
I do not know exactly the difference: the research is funded by my research grant (I am PI). Some of the works had been managed by her (dealing with journal, etc), and some others directly by me
and just to clarify more: some of the works I am the person to be contacted, and some others is she
I think there is a useful question in here, but the title needs to be changed and most of the specific details in the body should be removed. It may be easier to close this and ask a new question that is clear and short. @Gaussian-Matter if you are okay with me drastically revising your question then I could try to trim and clarify it.
@DavidKetcheson: please! go ahead! I will be happy with any revision of the text which could be more general and of more interest to the community!
Are you including your ex-advisor on all the research & papers you produce? Even ones that are from your own direct line of research? If so, don’t...
@SolarMike: definitely not: I have 2 research lines, one of them completely independent of my advisor (now my 2nd phd student will finish on this topic). My first line (the one in which I did my phd) I have something 40% with my ex-advisor and 60% without her
It's probably too late to heavily edit the question as it now has a few detailed answers. I did edit the title to actually be a question.
How long do you expect your former advisor to be active? Maybe the problem resolves automatically in a few years...
@OBu: she is 61. I have thought on your way of argue, but maybe I would become really upset before she retires...
I find a little radical to stop collaborating scientifically with her (in part because there is no one around working on this area!), but as the time goes by it seems to me that the best option is to start working alone on this common area, or some similar solution...
There is some truth to the often-heard advise that one should stop regularly collaborating with one's PhD advisor after getting a PhD. I would argue this is doubly the case when you and your advisor work at the same place. To the outside world, you will always appear to be the "junior" in your collaboration, independently of who does how much work, who has had which ideas, or who is where in the paper author list.
My impression is that in the career stage that you are in, you should prioritize collaborations where you are the most senior person in the team, or where you are at least not overshadowed by somebody much more famous than you. Work on papers with your students, or with other people in a similar or earlier career stage than you. Avoid collaborations where you do all the work and some other eminent figure in the community (your advisor or some other senior professor) could be seen as the strategic brains behind the work.
I think that's a very useful advise :-)
I think the key point here, is not to work independently on the same topic, but to have a sufficiently different topic that no one would consider inviting her to talk about it. And then invest heavily in that line of investigation. You can still keep your collaboration going as a side project, but don't ever expect to be recognised for it and balance your priorities accordingly.
Here is a somewhat radical suggestion that my apply or not, depending on personalities. If your mentor/collaborator is anywhere near retirement this may be especially useful. It is a bit risky (or not) depending on her attitudes and place in the profession.
But you could, perhaps, just start a conversation with her letting her know that you think your career "needs a boost" and ask if she can help you get to the next level. Many people will respond positively to this, in fact. My personal attitude is that I am happiest when I fall into the shadow of one of my former students. After all, our job is to advance the state of the art, not only through our own work, but by teaching students to do the same.
If she thinks enough of you and of the work you both are doing, she will want it to continue after she leaves the scene and you are probably a good vehicle for carrying it forward.
But small steps are to make sure that you go to those conferences with her and become personally known in the community. Find a way to be the presenter of your joint work. Find a way to be the corresponding author on papers so you get contacted by committee chairs and editors.
Don't ignore the other answers here, of course. Work that you do alone or with other collaborators will help distinguish you from your former advisor. But it is a long process. Your early-career tag on the question says a lot. With ten years in the saddle you have a long way to ride and your former advisor won't be a riding companion for the whole way. But take advantage of your association while you can, rather than trying to sever it. Make her the champion of your career advancement if at all possible.
I'm afraid I have to downvote this. First, it's unlikely that OP could become an associate professor without an independent research reputation. More importantly, neither OP nor their advisor has much control over how people ascribe credit to their joint work. The advisor will always be more senior; OP will always be more junior, and first/corresponding-authorship won't change that. The only sure way to really get out from under your advisor's shadow is to develop a research record that does not involve your advisor at all.
@JeffE, you are welcome to downvote, of course, but I have counterexamples to your statements. Long term collaborations, though not at the same university. Giving up a mentor seems counterproductive to and advancing career. BTW, thanks for giving the reason for the vote, too few people here are courteous enough to do that. Cheers.
Your counterexamples miss one key feature: OP is in the same department as ther advisor. It’s easier to get credit for joint work with remote collaborators from your local peers. But I’ve seen tenure cases threatened over this issue, even when the candidate’s advisor was far away. Finally, working independently does not require “giving up a mentor”. Mentorship and collaboration are different.
@JeffE, I agree with your first point. The same department is a complication to be sure. I disagree with your last point, however, There was an implication of "turning your back" on the professor implied in some of what is on this page. I think that should be avoided.
@JeffE It depends strongly on the personality of the people involved. I saw many senior scientits who made room for others and e.g. when beeing asked to hold an invited talk declined and pointed to "the really interesting person". But yes, this is not always the case, but if it's the case, it is the basis for a getrat cooperation and team work.
I had those people for one field of my reasearch (but in other fields I had the opposite as well), and I pushed several PhD students of mine this way.
I believe the infallible way towards academic recognition is being clearly responsible for major breakthroughs in your field. Probably you have put yourself where you are, by consistently directing the spotlights to your senior author(s). Making someone else honorary first/corresponding author, as well as letting them present your work sure "gives face" to peers and shows reverence. If you got where you are because of such acts of "loyalty" then stopping it will quickly generate conflicts.
But unfortunately there's no other way around this: publish independent research (meaning the best you can produce), stand where you belong, present your work directly. No more special thanks at the end to honorary seniors. Discuss that openly with your ex-advisor, who may feel betrayed.
And by all means, do not expect nor induce some student to give you the face you've given your advisor as in the shape of some karmic payback. This is not a cycle.
Hmmm. Major breakthroughs are pretty rare in nearly every field. You can be a success with much less.
@Buffy Only time will testify whether anything was major or not, but we can always aim for significant questions in the short term. In my field I feel like major steps are actually quite trivial, but perhaps I am biased.
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65925 | Are there any data repositories commonly used in conjunction with arXiv?
I will soon be posting an article to arXiv, and I have supplementary data that is approximately 800MB in size, which I would like to make available somewhere. Are there any data repositories that are commonly used in conjunction with arXiv?
Much of this question has been addressed in How do I get a DOI for a dataset?
There are a couple of relevant options for this sort of thing. These include:
Figshare
Zenodo
Dryad
Dataverse
GitHub
Bitbucket
They each have a bunch of advantages and disadvantages, and they satisfy different use cases to different degrees, so have a good look and decide which one is the best fit for your needs.
Another option, especially if the data will be updated frequently, might be a personal Github account.
If the data will be updated frequently and it then yeah, a GitHub repo can be a good choice, though they recommend each repo be kept under 1GB, which leaves little leeway if the OP wants to make any sort of significant changes to the data. On the other hand, for more moderate repo sizes, GitHub is an attractive choice if you'll be making changes but want good referenceability to previous versions, since specific versions can be given DOIs through Zenodo by simply setting them as releases.
That said, I've made this post community wiki so anyone with additional resources is welcome to edit them in.
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73264 | Why are PhD salaries so low?
In many European countries, PhD salaries are incredibly low if compared with industry salaries. In my field, computer science, a young programmer can gain in one in one year what a PhD student gains during all the PhD. Which are the practical reasons of this?
Some possibilities:
Money: university have not enough money to pay higher salaries to PhD students. I don't think this is the cause of the low PhD salaries, as given a budget for a project, the PhD students are hired in function of the budget.
PhD is not considered a job. This, in my opinion, is wrong. PhD actually is a full time job, that requires skills that in many cases (for instance in computer science) will be highly paid in the industry. Projects faced during the PhD are often more complex than homologous industrial projects. The real fact is that a PhD student often (but not always) doesn't produce revenues; but this is true also for professors, for people who take care of the cleaning of the university, and for all the staff of a university, that receive a higher salary then PhDs.
PhD students are the weakest group of the academia. Nobody, when salaries are decided, says "PhDs should gain more!", because, when salaries are decided, actually they don't have any voice.
Supply and demand?
I don't know the situation in Europe, but in the US it's definitely "money".
@AndyPutman is it, though? I am sure Caltech can get enough funding to pay competitive salaries to its PhD students, but since they will get them anyway, they can pay crap, and hire a load more of them.
Regarding #3, Stockholm University recently declared that the first salary for PhD students was indeed too low and raised it 70%, and other universities in Sweden did the same. Sometimes, there is someone looking after us!
There are plenty of people employed at universities who make less than a graduate student in a technical field (graduate students in the humanities may be the first that come to mind, but you really should look around beyond them as well -say, the department assistents). My stipend was enough to live on and save some. And I got a degree out of it with a clear path to higher earnings.
You should really discuss a location here, as in many places in Europe PhD student salaries are actually quite ok - and I certainly know no place where "a young programmer can gain in one in one year what a PhD student gains during all the PhD". In most places where PhD salaries are low (say, Italy), regular salaries are also bad.
Who do you expect to pay for their work, and why do you expect that those people would pay more than they have to in order to receive the same services?
I don't think you understand university budgets very well if you think that universities (even wealthy ones) could easily dramatically increase their graduate student stipends. It would require a huge amount of money. And in the hard sciences and engineering (which seem from your other questions to be your main interests), graduate student stipends are mostly paid for out of grant money, so universities have even less control over them.
Because professors make so little.
this is one of the reason I decided to work in the industries after my Master Degree
@StrongBad: There are a lot more graduate students than professors. For instance, at my current institution (Notre Dame), there are 1610 PhD students and 885 tenure-stream faculty. Giving all of the graduate students say a $20,000 raise would cost an enormous amount of money (and lots of them are paid through grants, which are definitely a shrinking source of money). And lots of places have an even more dramatic graduate student to faculty member ratio.
@AndyPutman my point was giving PhD students a 20k raise would mean they would make more than post docs. Giving a post doc a 20k raise means they would make about the same as assistant professors.
The question really needs more focus, as you are asking for a comparison of apples, oranges and even bananas here. There is no thing like a typical PhD salary in Europe, it depends a lot on the country and discipline we are talking about.
For instance, in Germany, a doctoral researcher in engineering typically gets TVL-E13, which is almost 44 k€ in the first year and raises above 51 k€ in the third year. This is still below industry average, but not significantly. On the other hand, in the sciences, you typically end up with 1/2 E13 position, in the humanities sometimes even just 1/4 – it is a question of supply and demand.
Personally, I just thought it was a great deal that I didn't have to pay for my PhD.
Are you including tuition in your perception of the total? In the US, that can be a lot.
@AndyPutman, your argument about the budget of a university is not justifiable: if someone doesn't have enough money to hire many people, he/she has two options: (1) hire fewer people that he/she can afford to pay according to the candidates' skill-levels, or (2) still hire many people but pay them less. The second option is viable in high-supply-low-demand scenario, but you are still exploiting the needy people here.
How much do you think they should be paid?
Also the close is awful. There's a question on the site about why all academic salaries are too low, that's not too broad, but if you ask about why a subset of academic salaries is too low, then it becomes too broad? Come on, mods.
I can only speak for mathematics, but a lot of the comments above seem to presume that certain aspects/skillsets/roles of PhD students are more-or-less universal across disciplines and countries which is, in my view not the case. In my variant of mathematics, PhD students are primarily students, being trained. Whether they should get proper and more substantial remuneration for their work as teaching assistants is another matter
@Superbest IMO, that's an argument for closing the other question, as much as for reopening this one...
This is the question (http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16293/why-is-college-tuition-high-but-academic-salaries-low/16302#16302) @Superbest may be referring to. I don't understand how one question is broader than the other either.
@john Yup, I deleted my comment since I decided to write an answer (with that link), and, well...
@YemonChoi, the point is to understand the reason for different treatments to two fairly similar questions.
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
@WBT: Depends, again, a lot on the actual country, but in most European countries (including the relatively well-paying Germany, Austria, Sweden/Norway/Finland, Switzerland) there is no tuition.
And in some EU countries, you don't have a wage at all, or you have just a scholarship. So poor wages are still better than no wages. // So I could only agree with you, that PhDs are not understood like workers, but like students. At least in the Czech Republic. That's why only about 30 % of Czech PhDes complete their program in the assigned period of time. From my perspective most of them drop their carer because of work, they have to find to cover their expenses and then they realize, they have a good job so why suffer in Ph.D. and have no free time? Program so they drop it.
They aren't that low. For example, here in Finland:
a typical salary for a PhD student: 2400–3000 e/month
a typical salary in the industry for someone who just got their MSc degree: 3500 e/month.
Finnish PhD stipends put French ones to shame. My data point: 1600 gross (1350 take-home which is taxed later in the year) in one of the most expensive cities in the world. But I know that we are already lucky compared to other European countries...
@lafemmecosmique sure. In the Czech Republic, the average salary of a Ph.D. would be 435 e/month, while the average salary is almost 1800 e/M. I can see France's average salary is about 2587 e/m.
PhD-students are students, advanced students but students none the less. It is a classic form of vocational education: learning on the job. It is a form of long practicum, and they get a stipent or a "wage" that fits that position. When they finish, they will get a diploma.
No, this depends a lot on the local system. In Germany, they are called "doctoral researchers" and DFG insists on this term because they are not students. You need a Master's degree to start your PhD and are officially employed at your university according to that degree (with the respective rights and duties). In Austria, the situation is similar.
@Daniel ...and yet it's common practice to give students the same contract as a postdoc but with only 75% paid hours (or even 66% and occasionally 50%), on the rationale that the other 25% is for their thesis.
I feel like this beats around the bush. PhD students work an incredibly high-skilled and demanding job and yet are paid much less than they could get in industry. Whether they are technically students or not does not serious address why this discrepancy exists.
I really disagree with this thinking. Not all the bells and whistles and fancy paper in the world will change the fact that you are taking an adult in their late 20s, who has a degree and qualifications enough for a pretty good career, and busying him full time for 4-10 years, where his main activity is supposed to be research work, and the small hope of being supported by his parents is destroyed in that he is required to relocate. It's one of those things that walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and wears a big hat saying "goose" and gets inexplicably half the salary it should.
@MaartenBuis, do you think if the universities (say in the USA) really start charging fees from their Ph.D. students, there will be so many Ph.D. students?! How many of them would actually be fees-paying Ph.D. students?!
PhD students work hard, but they are not yet fully capable researchers.I don't mind that PhD students take that much longer and make too many mistakes I need to correct; that is part of the learning experience. Having PhD students is part of my teaching job, which I enjoy greatly, but it is costing me time not saving me time. This attitude safes a lot of frustration with me and the students: What they are doing does not have to be perfect yet. We will make it perfect, and in the process they will learn more about doing research.
People in the industry also need years of practice to become fully capable professionals. Junior professionals are far from being independent, but they are still treated as professionals. If someone has published a first-author paper (or equivalent), they are obviously capable of doing research and no longer students.
Yes, and only in special cases, where there is a great shortage of people with specific skills, are they paid like full professionals. The normal case is that they are paid less, just as with PhD-students. My economics training ( a long time ago) tells me that if people are paid more than their productivity, then the market is in disequilibrium.
The market is also in disequilibrium when a PhD student publishing several first-author papers per year is paid like an undergraduate intern. The academia is a bureaucracy, where individual productivity has very little effect on compensation.
The fact that they published a paper does not proof they did so efficiently. Again I am not saying PhD students are bad, only that they have a lot to learn.
PhD students are paid in more then just the money they get directly. They're also able to take highly technical classes, have direct access to some of the best minds in their field, get sent to international conferences, and gain free vocational research training. All of this is normally covered by their university.
You could argue that PhDs help produce research and that benefits their school. But learning how to do research is the entire point of the PhD and they benefit from publications as much as their university does, if not more.
The fact that you can get paid enough money to live comfortably on top of all of the these benefits is amazing and, the the best of my knowledge, not found anywhere else. How many places do you know who would pay you to sit around and train for 3-7 years knowing that you will leave as soon as you're decently competent?
Which is almost certainly more fun than building CRUD app backends at foocorp, even if less lucrative.
I know right? I don't understand what the OP is complaining about -- no one does a PhD for the money.
I like this answer. Getting a PhD doesn't seem to pay much, but if you think of it in terms of most of your salary is going immediately back into paying for tuition (which is typically covered), suddenly the amount of money PhD students receive seems to be much larger.
@Kevin Tuition fees are rarely that high in Europe.
The disparity in pay in the computer science industry specifically, compared to PhD research, is because there is currently a massive deficit of experienced software developers in the computer science industry.
The higher industry salaries are designed to get qualified candidates and keep them there, to deliver on projects. No developer means no work means no money.
I would wager that PhD students do not play musical chairs. In the industry, turnover is a very real problem.
plus one for pointing out that compsci is a bit of an outlier compared to most fields.
Do you have numbers for pay in comp sci in some countries?
@Kimball only from the US, but I believe Master's in CS would be around $75K to $80K right now as a starting salary.
Mainly because it's not just a job. Although I do see it gaining recognition as one: we do produce a lot of an institution's research. You are still in training (even in postdocs), this isn't just hierarchy, it's degree-inflation.
A PhD is also an Education, an investment in your future, arguably increasing your future job prospects:
work opportunities abroad (conference, postdocs)
greater independence in your work than a less qualified job
job security (e.g., tenure-track)
potentially higher salary post-PhD (depending on job market)
Our stipend in comparably lower in Aus/NZ than EU but it usually also includes a tuition fees waiver. The contribution of international PhD students at our university is also recognised by only charging domestic fees during the first 3 years, even if they aren't eligible for a stipend.
Think of a PhD on a stipend like a job with lower pay but some perks: a huge emphasis on training, free education, conference opportunities, tax-free income.
My main piece of advice to those considering a PhD course is do it while you're early in your career. Some people do fantastic things coming back after experience in industry or education but it's logistically easier to go straight into it from study. A stipend is more income than most undergraduates live on and it's fairly comfortable when that's your standard of living (e.g., renting a flat, public transport). If you've become used to a high income (e.g., mortgaged your own house, had children, or taken personal loans), PhD study (even part-time) can be a lot more financially stressful.
If we compare academia and industry, I think there is a keyword for the big salary differences, responsibility.
I once asked a PhD student, why he did not want to take a better paid industry job and he answered he had nightmares about firemen-work. Like his code would make a big mess in production and he had to clean up. It really depends on what kind of work day you want. A delayed research paper affects nobody but your self, but a bug in a code can delay a whole plant.
And as an MSc in industry, your work has a purpose to make higher values for the company so there is definitely more weights on the shoulders for an industry engineer compared to a PhD student.
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96440 | How should the CV for the application of a pure math PhD applicant be structured?
I currently have four sections:
Education
Academic and research experiences
Honors and Awards
Work and Volunteer Experience
I have the following questions:
Should I include a section which gives a detailed account for the advanced math courses I have taken?
Should I elaborate on 3 and 4, or do I just list my awards and experience in those sections without explaining anything?
Should I include my research interest and standardized test scores in my CV?
I don't think a "detailed account" is necessary for anything that's a standard part of the math curriculum: a simple list would suffice. (Note that this would also apply to any other discipline with a "standard" curriculum, such as chemistry or physics!)
I would not include research interest and test scores, as they may be "restrictive" and turn off potential readers. (Test scores, if needed, must be provided in a more official way than just a CV listing, so you might as well leave it off.)
As for honors and awards and experience, I'd include specific information if it is relevant to your career aims; otherwise, a simple listing suffices.
Not even for PhD courses I have taken?
For PhD courses taken, this will likely be clear from your college transcript(s) and should be mentioned in at least one of your letters of recommendation. You can also mention the courses in your statement of interest (or cover letter, or personal statement, or whatever it's now called), which I did when I applied to math PhD programs in the 1980s. FWIW, I didn't make a CV (things may have been different then), but if I had, I would have had almost nothing to put for #2 (reading courses?), #3 (Putnam exam rank?), and #4 (fast food, restaurant cook, paper grader, data entry, farm work, etc.?).
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104013 | Two figures are redrawn and merged into one. Are reproduction permissions required in this case?
I have two questions regarding writing of survey papers
Firstly, if one of the technical papers reviewed has a number of figures. Take for example: Figure 4 is "Data model" and Figure 8 is "Mechanism structure". In the survey paper is it enough modification (for a waver of official permission) to merge these two into one figure and cite. Say, Figure X: Data model and Mechanism Structure adapted from [ref]?
Secondly, in the case when author A proposes "Data model" and "mechanism structure" in paper [30] and [35] i.e four entirely different diagrams. Is it sufficient as modification (for a waver for official permission) if in a survey, all four combined in one figure.
Thanks in advance
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because we have no idea about the content of the paper, and this is a problem that must be solved by the authors.
Someone out there could have some knowledge that might benefit millions of people in the future. For instance, a link etc. It is not sufficient for any author to solely depend on the answers here, but may be they get some guidance. Furthermote, publications have general ethics that one could always inquire about. If you need more clarifications you could ask. Besides, the question could be edited by anyone capable of doing so. I think practical questions should not be down-voted
I believe this is not a matter of knowledge, but matter of principals and perspective. And those things are unfortunately not global.
At least we know what are those principles and what should be put to perspective. Then, which channels are best referred to. May be someone is there that would prevent such questions from being asked again by giving clear insights on such matters
This is very much a legal question that depends on jurisdiction and on the creative or intellectual added-value provided by the author who builds on the original materials (in this case you, the OP). The latter is impossible to assess without seeing the originals and modifications, and the answer would thus depend on individual factors. Voting to close.
This is quite specific to what you've done. If you've just dropped the four images as-is into a,b,c and d subfigures then yes. The more modifications you make, the less likely you will need permission. If in doubt, ask your university librarian, publisher or an IP lawyer for specialist advice. Or, as I suggested on your previous question (https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/103942/do-i-need-an-explicit-permission-to-publish-someone-else-s-table-in-another-pape), it's usually so easy to obtain permission that you might as well just do so.
Combining other people's published figures to create a new figure does not allow you to waive requests for permission to reproduce a figure. Each individual component is someone else's intellectual property, and they have the right to be credited for the work. Note that many journals have simple mechanisms for requests to reproduce, and usually it's just a matter of asking for the necessary permission.
Simply redrawing someone else's figures for a part (a) and (b)-type figure does not spare you from requesting permissions. If you have completely redrawn and combined figures (for example, to illustrate how the two figures are more closely connected than in the originals), then you are creating a new intellectual contribution. You need to cite the original work that you've adapted, but you would not be reproducing the figures, and therefore would most likely not need to secure reproduction permissions.
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94725 | What is the proper "subject" for an email in which I want to ask a question about a paper from its author?
I want to ask a question regarding an issue in a paper I recently read. The author of the paper is an academic who may receive lots of emails daily.
I want to choose a proper subject for my email that is as short as possible. I have come with these ideas for the subject:
question
question?
a question about your paper
a question about paper xxx
Are there any better suggestions that are in common usage? I want my email to be formal and polite to persuade him to read and answer my question.
A question about "title". Or just: "Title". Why is this something that needs asking? There is no secret magic set of words.
"question" and "question?" are, in almost all cases, not a helpful subject line for any email.
If this is a recent paper you might get better results by naming the conference/journal: E.G. "Your ABCD2017 paper"
Carefully proofread the email before sending it too, as you're misusing some words here (e.g. witch and audible). The pronoun "I" is always capitalised in English, as is the first letter of any sentence. (I think a grammatically correct email is more likely to get a response.)
@Co3O4 When I see "attention grabbing" adjectives in email subjects, my first reaction is "spam".
I do this from time to time to call an author's attention to a salient Stack Exchange question and encourage them to answer, with good success. The subject lines I choose are short and use key technical terms found within the paper in question. Then you have like the first half of the first sentence in the body to reassure them you are not a crank and your message is worth reading. Put your effort there.
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99799 | How do I tell a professor who tells me he'll send in a recommendation but doesn't that I don't need his letter anymore?
My professor agreed to give me a LOR. However, despite many reminders, he has yet to send it in. I called him up a week before the deadline and he was annoyed at this. I then considered asking someone else but he emailed me asking me for supplementary documents. Again there has been radio silence from his side after that. Now, the deadline has passed. I think professors can still send in LORs and I’ve asked another professor to write a LOR for me after explaining my situation. My question is do I email my earlier reference to tell him I don't need his LOR anymore? How do I word this email? Should I show my indignation at being taken for a ride?
I'd suggest avoiding anything that could cause conflict, and anything that feels like you are wanting to vent. It will have been extremely frustrating for you, but telling the professor that will do no real good and risks creating enemies where they are not needed.
If you feel you wish to contact them, it might be worth sending a quick email to thank them for helping you with this, and apologising that it is no longer needed (you do not need to say why, or that the deadline has passed - you are just avoiding them wasting their time writing the letter now). It may seem odd to apologise when you have done nothing wrong, but from their perspective - you have just badgered them repeatedly/added stress to their life and are now saying it was for nothing. It is not saying you were in the wrong, it is just maintaining a relationship with them.
If you don't care for them at all and don't see a bad relationship with them causing you any problems in the future (note: I've found I'm still in touch with most of my old professors, or people who know them/worked with them, in some form or another) - just don't say anything.
It might feel like they owe you an apology, or that they should recognise how they stressed you out - but that's really just for personal feel-good. It doesn't help your professional career at all to chase that.
If you don't feel angry at your professor, you could drop them a note once the firm deadline has passed, so that they avoid wasting time on writing a letter that's not needed anymore, or they don't feel bad about never having gotten around to doing it. I could imagine doing this with some colleagues whom I know are very busy.
In this case you could write something like "Dear professor, I'm writing back about the letter of recommendation that I originally requested from you on [date]. You had agreed to write this letter, but I have not received it. I just wanted to let you know that the deadline for submitting letters has passed, so it doesn't make sense for you to work on this anymore. Instead, I have asked [other prof] to write a letter explaining the situation."
If you will be working with this professor again and would like to set a boundary, you could add something like "It felt stressful for me to make this alternate arrangement without having a response from you about the original letter. In the future, it would be really helpful if you could respond more quickly to email about this kind of matters." Or something like this, although that's hard to word.
On the other hand, if you feel indignation at your professor, as seems to be the case, then I don't understand the purpose of sending a further email at all. What good would it achieve? If the letter of recommendation arrives at some later time, you can simply explain that the deadline has passed so you can't use it, but thanks nevertheless.
Thanks for your feedback! Please note I am not suggesting being "snarky" or "chastising", I just suggested pointing out politely and nonviolently what you would like from them in the future. I agree that this only makes sense if you expect to continue working with the person (it's probably not worth it otherwise), but in this case it may be worth it. I agree it's tricky, and may not be possible depending on circumstances, but it can also be useful to make the working relationship smoother in the future. I'd say it depends on the current relationship between the op and their professor.
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90322 | Should I resign if my research advisor verbally abuses me?
Summary: Supervisor is verbally abusive on a regular basis. He may be trying to sabotage me by delaying the annual report on which my funding depends. Should I quit or stick it out?
Details:
I enrolled in the Mathematics department at a local university in June of last year. Now, I'm not a highly talented person, I'm average at best. So I haven't done any groundbreaking work in the past year, and what makes it worse is that due a problem of mismanagement, most of the time they do not have access to any of the online journals, so it's very difficult to do research work and yet my supervisor demands that I attend every day and stay from 11 am to 5 pm at least.
I managed to come up with a few theories along with proofs and examples. As I have a government-funded fellowship, now it's time to send them the annual progress report and, suddenly, my supervisor says he won't prepare my report unless I have communicated a paper to some journal.
First, he said that to prepare a paper, one must take at least a month to arrange one's findings in a proper order, take care of the minor details, make the best possible presentation etc. and that's understandable.
Then, when he is expected to make the report—that is, last Friday—he suddenly ordered me to get the paper ready by Monday! I just learnt LaTeX so it took some time—two sleepless nights—but I finished anyway. Now comes the decorative parts like Introduction to the paper, sectionwise introduction, abstract, etc. I have never done these things before but I wrote what I could. Now my primary education was in my native language and my English is not really high-quality.
Now starts the problems. I'll give a list:
He yelled at me because my typing is not up to the mark, I made quite a few typing errors. My English is so poor that makes him want to vomit!!!
He wrote a few lines for the introduction while saying I'm insulting him by making him do this.
He should not have accepted me as his scholar since he could tell from my signature(!!) that I was not worth it.
Regarding the typing errors, he questioned the authenticity of the certificates/transcripts of my previous degrees (implying I constituted some sort of fraud to get those).
Not only am I a bad student and a disgrace to his reputation(?), he also finds my mannerisms, the way I talk and dress and behave quite disgusting. This is another reason he regrets accepting my application. What does this even mean?
His good student 'K' wants to work in the field I am working now. Great news. But how did he break it to me? "Have you seen her transcripts from high school? or college? And look at you, you'll never be anywhere close to her. You'll never be like her." I don't know if there is a decent way of saying this but he was screaming like crazy. Why would I even want to be like her?
Brags about how many students he has rejected over the years but he is now 'trapped' with me. When I or anyone else forced him to accept my application is not known to me though.
Keeps threatening to write letters to the authorities so they will terminate my fellowship.
Someone called his cell phone and he said 'I'm stuck with the crazy one' loud enough so I could hear. Another professor from another department came to visit him. He pointed at me and said 'Can this one be deported to your department somehow? I can't handle this anymore, just insufferable.'
Says I'm becoming like his another callous student "Fat J." Right, the teacher has codenamed an overweight student Fat J. Sounds funny? He must have codenamed me too.
I got my master's degree from a top ranked university of this country and the one I'm in now doesn't even come in the first 50. But according to him, that university has a good reputation (God only knows why, because they have no good faculty members and their syllabus and exams are designed so students get high marks). I know nothing, I've learnt nothing, I should be ashamed (of what exactly?) and it's his university that gives a proper education but got only bad reputation; so from now on, he will accept students from his university only. (Who's stopping him anyway?)
He should have invested this time in other fellows instead of wasting it with me, that would get some real work done.
And so on and so on......
Now all of this may not look offensive but his tone and wordings, the degrading language he was using, it was unbelievable from a teacher. It doesn't sound like a teacher is scolding his student but like he has personal issues with me. This has been going on for the last 4 days. He called me in his office and screams these things at me for 2-3 hours in a row. I just keep my head down and listen quietly.
Recap: First of all, he demands me to do a one-month job in 7 days. Then my efforts are not appreciated. If he has so much problem with me, if he wants me gone and appoint his good student K then he can just fire me officially on the grounds of unsatisfactory academic performance. Why is he doing this instead then? Is it possible that he is releasing some personal frustrations on me?
While other professors are giving their fellows' first-year reports consisting details of topics they've studied, seminars, lectures attended without having any papers published/accepted/communicated, my guide is pulling off so much drama. Is he doing this on purpose? This way my annual report gets postponed for an indefinite time period and I lose my fellowship so I have no way but to leave.
And all the work I've had to do on his behalf, from typing his letters, arranging his files, typing the entire syllabus of the department, to writing question papers for 10 different subjects in hand. While he can't even provide with access to any of the international journals.
Questions: In such situation should I give resignation before this abuse takes its toll on my nerves? Or is this typical behaviour of research advisors especially during paper preparation due to stress? Although I'm the one in stress because whatever little work has been done is done entirely by me not one bit by him and then I've to put up with this.
I was starting to like the subject but now just the thought of having to see his face and listen to that voice is keeping me awake at night. Should I quit before he harasses me some more or is it perfectly normal behaviour and I should learn to get used to it?
Pardon me for this very long post about my personal experience. If you can take a little time to go through it, then please give me advice.
I'd recommend you try to edit the wall of text down to the core cause-and-effect, and try to add spaces after punctuation. As it currently stands, many readers may be scared off by the sheer amount of text.
That being said, from your description of things, run, don't walk, for the nearest exit.
@tonysdg, you beat me to JeffE's favourite phrase. OP, this sounds like a terrible situation. Get out as fast as you can.
@astronat: I'll admit, I stole it :)
Honestly, this is the kind of story that prevents some of us from ever even attempting a PhD.
What country are you in? In the U.S., it is discrimination (and illegal) to harass a student with a name focused on the person's weight. // Please check in regularly with a department administrator. You need that progress report. But it's okay if it comes from the department, not the advisor. // Once the progress report has been submitted, find another advisor, and perhaps a different department.
@DanielR.Collins It is very far from the normal PhD experience.
@PatriciaShanahan: I don't know, my sample of close friends who got a PhD all described their experience as something like, "You just have to eat crap until your advisor decides to release you from slavery".
Is there some Faculty-level body to which you can take your concerns? In various Canadian universities this would be the College of Graduate Studies; in many UK universities there should be a Faculty level co-ordinator of postgraduate research student experience. I agree with all the other commenters who have recognised that this behaviour from a PhD advisor is completely unprofessional
all of this may not look offensive < hell damn, it does!
This seems really a depressing experience. "While he can't even provide with access to any of the international journals" How can he even do that? In most places, you have access to them through the library. Anyways, he seems to have serious issues, yet if you run away now, you may have a problem to secure a scholarship or a good place. Fighting back a little through university pathways, as many of these seem to be against proper conduct, is maybe your best interest.
I'm tempted to think that this is a South Asian country. I've gotten my Ph.D. from India, and this sounds quite familiar to some of my friends' experiences.
You should certainly not put up with your advisor's egregiously inappropriate behavior in the long term. The only question is: given that you cannot complete your degree under this horrible advisor, what do you want to do? Unfortunately academia does not reward people who resign immediately under almost any circumstance, so you should only do so if you really are ready to terminate -- or at least, interrupt for a substantial period of time -- your academic plans and career.
If so: yes, this sure sounds like a case where resigning immediately is appropriate. I would also urge you to speak to other faculty members and administrators in the department and the university so they know why you are doing this.
If not: unfortunately you need to bide your time and find a more graceful exit strategy. I would begin by sounding out other faculty members in your department to see if any is willing to take over advising you. (Let me say though that your description makes your entire department sound like a real mess. Still, it would be good if you could stay for long enough to gain admission to a better department.) If not, I would reach out to contacts at your former department(s) to see if you could come back -- not necessarily to get a PhD, but at least to stay in academia while you plan your next move. If you really want to stay in academia and can't find anywhere else to go: this is a very tough situation. I would consider speaking to the department head, graduate coordinator or some other administrative figure -- but someone for which you have reason to believe will be sympathetic -- explain how unbearable your current situation is, and see if they have any ideas. Unfortunately the kind of department/university where a faculty member can behave like your advisor is more likely to be the kind of department/university where other faculty and administrators are unable or unwilling to intervene usefully on behalf of the students.
I'm really sorry for the way you've been treated. It is wholly unacceptable. Good luck.
I would definitely suggest working towards a transition to another advisor in the department if at all possible, as suggested here, before quitting altogether (unless you decide not to pursue graduate education). Also note that, OP, if you have represented everything accurately, this is beyond incredibly poor behavior and at some point the people in charge of your department need to be made aware of it. At major US institutions there may also be other resources for you outside of your department, I'm less sure about anywhere else.
My supervisor is the HoD now.And yes, this whole department is meesed up,if only I knew before taking admission.None will say one word against him neither would anybody take over me.The faculty are like one close unit.As it stands now, if I resign now,my academic career is over. I'll have to find some clerical or desk job. But that would be better ,I now think ,than this sort of abuse.
@BryanKrause: I represented things accurately and there is more. He was really nice,kind and helpful in the initial days. I don't know what suddenly happened. He is HoD and all in all of the dept. transition is not possible.I had seen teachers who got angry if fellows made mistakes,one who fired a 'demotivated' fellow in a short notice but this sort of degrading meaningless insults coming from a teacher reminds me of the high school bullies.
@user80631 Do you know if this behavior is new behavior? Or do others expect it as well? If it's a general pattern (even with nice times in between) I doubt you are the only victim, and other people in the department may feel the same way as you. If it's new behavior, it's always possible there is actually something happening medically, which isn't in any way your responsibility to deal with but there could be colleagues who recognize the change.
If I leave now, I'm pretty sure he'll spread rumours about me that I could not handle Ph.D or God knows what and make me look bad.
@BryanKrause : This new behaviour is only for me. I have to spend much time in or around his office. His behaviour is perfectly normal with all the staff and fellow professors. But with me, he is a different person. I even spoke with another student,did not tell him all these, just ask if he is the angry type. Well turns out he is known to be the nice guy.
@BryanKrause : Although this nice guy never misses any chance to pick on someone or the other for fun but he usually keeps it light with loud laughs. Now that I think of it, I should have guessed his bully-like nature from that.
if I resign now,my academic career is over -- [citation needed]
@JeffE : Well I can still apply for teaching jobs at schools or colleges,in fact, that's what people here do after Ph.D, but due to current political situations in my country( pardon me for not revealing my country's name), that'll take another 2-3 years to just get appointed. If I could get some research work done by that time that'd be useful otherwise totally wasted time.
This is most definitely not normal, and if people in this department think it is, they are wrong. He may not be happy with you - this happens - but then his criticism has to be specific and constructive, or at least not personal, if he thinks it is unrecoverable.
It may be that he is under pressure himself, possibly through ill planning or other mistakes of his own, and having to handle a supervisee which does not operate at (justifiably or unjustifiably) expected levels of performance puts additional stress on them that they just happen to take out on you.
One indicator for this theory is that they took on a new role - this role may stress them out significantly, so that their self-control has gone. I am making this analysis not to defend or excuse them, but to give you a perspective where this may come from. This may make it easier for you to understand how to proceed; it would be a good idea to transfer to someone else.
All in all, however, you deserve, like anybody else, to be treated with a minimum of modicum and respect, no matter how well you perform, and this is clearly not happening.
TL;DR: it's not you, it's him.
I assume that the best is to try to talk to the student ombudsman/representative about this. Most likely the faculty knows about this issue with this person (this is not unheard of in academia), and while they maybe can't change him, they probably can make sure that you can switch advisers without big problems. However, try to go step-by step here in case that they are stubborn.
Don't bet on legal paths since that will take long and give the faculty all of the incentive to deny the problem.
I'm in academia and have worked with many students from many departments, and, sadly, have heard of these types of inexcusable behaviors before. To the degree that you've described only maybe 1-2 in 20 years. However, my response is always the same because, as Daniel Collins said above, "You just have to eat crap until your advisor decides to release you from slavery". The only thing that differs is the amount a crap & the years of servitude, Lol. That sounds like 4-5th year students. :)
That's extreme, of course, but there's a lot of truth in it. No matter what your technical/legal rights are (many mentioned above), I've never even heard of anyone using them (obviously, this doesn't mean that many people haven't). The main reason is that the unstated "contract" between a student & advisor is that they basically treat you however they want, but they will help you get published and hook you up with good jobs/postdocs, etc. Most of the time, the advisor honors this "contract."
Since yours is not honoring this contract, you could file a complaint, etc. Before doing that though, I'd consider some important questions:
How big of a name is he in the field? That is, how far does his power (contacts) reach? If he's big enough (and you think he'll honor your "contract" in the end), I'd think long & hard before taking any official steps.
Will anyone else in the dept. be willing and ABLE to advise you (i.e., how specified is your research? Is he the only one who knows enough about your research interest?)?
If no one CAN be your advisor, are you willing to change your research topic to fit with another prof's?
If you decide to leave the math dept., where else could you go? What other depts. would allow you to research your current (or similar) topic? What other profs have the knowledge & interests that fit with yours? Would they be able to give you funding?
Would you be happy studying something besides math?
Would it be better to change universities altogether?
This is too long, sorry, but I'd strongly caution you to have something set (acceptance, funding) before saying/doing anything that your advisor might hear about because he sounds like the type of vindictive psycho that would go all out to punish you. And if you're in the US on a student visa, you can't count on having time to get something going before you're out of status.
Remember that many students make similar changes; it can be done. Just be cautious & smart about how you do it. Good luck!
You just have to eat crap until your advisor decides to release you from slavery ... the unstated "contract" between a student & advisor is that they basically treat you however they want -- No no no no a thousand times no. Graduate students are not slaves. A faculty position doesn't magically grant anyone the right to be emotionally abusive. "Hooking you up" with a good job/postdoc does not excuse subhuman behavior. Life is too short to negotiate with bullies. Just get out.
First off, if you are a woman and the adviser is a man, then you're in a problem that is only recently being revealed as more prevalent (your post and language suggests that you're a man, but I wanted to get that question out of the way, because it would lead to the simplest stereotype of the problem).
Record these interactions if he shouts at you or insults you. There are plenty of cellphone apps that can record audio; just set your phone to record before you walk into their office, shove the phone in your pocket (upside-down, so the microphone points upward to get a better recording), and make sure it save it afterwards. You probably won't ever need to show someone the recording, but it helps to know that you have it. And you can show someone the recording in a private and off-the-record way, in a way that lets them understand what you deal with.
Your task is to look for another adviser. If there are conferences that you can go to, then maybe you can do so, even if it's only to observe, network, or ask researchers some questions about their work. If anyone asks about your situation, you can honestly explain it as "my adviser is currently overburdened and cannot work with advisees like either of us anticipated." That doesn't really blame him, and it will probably sound nice and reasonable to anyone else.
Also, as you need some editing help, feel free to message me and send me a few paragraphs of intro, conclusion, or the less knowledge-intensive stuff. Poor english in research papers is one of my pet peeves, but it only bugs me in published papers; this editing and review process is the period when it can be fixed, and I'm happy to help improve the clarity of the literature. I can help you rewrite a few paragraphs towards english fluency (no credit or acknowledgement requested, and you shouldn't thank "that guy on StackExchange" anyway). If the advisor still complains about those, that will help you affirm that the adviser has some personal issue, and it's not your fault. And I can give you a 2nd opinion on the readability of your english, which many native english authors are bad at. I am a harsh reader and editor, but I'm like that because I have ADHD and I need a paper to be clear and well-presented so that I can follow it. Crazy grammar leads me astray and it takes me three times as long to read a poorly written paper than a well written one. I don't see any glaring errors in your post, but your post is written conversationally rather than academically. (I've not published anything yet myself; as I'm still working on that research, so I would only say I'm qualified to edit by virtue of being a native english speaker and pedantic).
As the subject is my personal pet peeve, if I was an adviser then I would have the student work with another student who may not be as experienced but who is fluent in english and a serious student. Both students would benefit from that, and the junior student could get some acknowledgement or credit if they put in a lot of time or helped over several drafts. That's what the younger grad students are for. And no matter what, if I were the adviser I'd always personally double-check the first few sentences of the abstract, intro, conclusion, and whichever section starts the real content of the paper. Those are the fluffiest and most academically boring parts, but they are the parts that will set the reader's first impression.
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94527 | Do graduate students go home for the summer?
Is it common or something usual for students to sometimes go home for the summer?
Isn't this normal? International students go home to see their family, save $ (instead of paying rent over the summer), holiday, etc.
I am a bit perplex about this question. Maybe it is a USA thing or there is something you are not saying. I'm in Australia. Our students can go back whenever they want. If they leave for an extended period of time, then it could be due to family or financial issues.
Welcome to the site. It is usually best to choose a title that gives someone an understanding of what the question is about, instead of something generic or vague. I edited the title but please feel free to edit it further if you prefer something else.
@ProfSantaClaus: "Isn't this normal?" - depends. From convrersations with American friends, I have gathered that at (some?) U.S. universities, the concept of a "summer break" appears to be a lot more pronounced than e.g. in my place (Germany), seeing that my friends' campus partly shuts down, there's no-one around, students clear their dorm rooms and get new ones after the break, etc. Hence, there may well be regional differences for what international students do during summer.
No. When you join academia you renounce everything you care about and sacrifice yourself on the altar of science.
It's not clear how this is a practical, answerable question based on an actual problem that you face. Why does it matter?
As some answers have pointed out, there are many variations on what grad students do in the summer. Even if you consider only those grad students who want to use the summer productively, working on their research with their advisers, it makes a big difference what field they are in. If they need to do experiments in the adviser's lab, then they have to stay put. But students in, for example, mathematics, can do their research anywhere (including at home) and set up regular meetings with their advisers via skype. (Even if students stay put, advisers might be traveling during the summer.)
It would be very unusual for an international PhD student to leave for more than a month to visit family, at least within the sciences. Students are paid during the summer. Leaving for the whole summer would likely entail giving up the pay, which many students cannot afford.
Some international students do not leave at all for financial reasons, or for fear they will not be able to re-enter the United States.
This is totally different from undergraduates, who usually leave the university during the summer.
Although many RA's are on year-round contracts, most TA's are on 9 month contracts and often are not offered a TA contract for the summer.
@BrianBorchers in my experience in science departments in the US all PhD students had summer RAs. The available RA positions were never filled up. Of course this might not be true at poorer universities. International students without funding can usually be paid more if they work near their universities than if they work in their home countries.
My department (computer science) provides very few TA positions during the summer. A lot of students seek internships.
I have seen a wide variety of decisions about the use of the summer break from classes, both in the case of students from the US and those from abroad. It really runs the gamut. Examples:
One friend couldn't afford the air fare to visit his home town, during his entire PhD. This was very stressful for him.
One friend made his good-byes in May and came back in late August married, with his wife accompanying him.
Some students visit family for part of the summer.
Me: when I needed the money I worked as a secretary in a temp agency over the summer. Otherwise I enjoyed the break from TA'ing, which allowed me to immerse myself in my exam prep or my project.
It's a very individual decision. I don't think one should decide about summer plans based on what other people do.
International students do visit their home country. I have seen several Ph.D. students spend their entire summer in their home country. However, it completely depends on the student. From my perspective, I think it is a bad idea to waste your three months by going back to your home country. Either you should do an internship or you should continue your research with your adviser. I explained the reasons in the following paragraph:
1) If you choose to do an internship at the industry, it will help you in various ways. The experience in the industry will help you to finalize your career goal. You will get the chance to experience the industry work culture, you will get a chance to work with some industry leaders and it will be a valuable experience for you during your degree. The experience eventually helps students to get a job after your degree in the industry. If the student performs well, they even get a return offer. I have seen multiple cases where the student landed a job after their internship. If the student decides to go to academia, even then the industry experience is valuable. Moreover, the internship helps a student significantly monetarily. Generally, the companies pay the same salaries of a full-time employee to an intern and the amount is pretty high for a graduate student.
2) If you are a PhD student and do not want to go to an internship, then it is better to work on your research with your adviser. Eventually, you have to finish your thesis, so it is better to utilize your time. Generally, the advisers have funds to support their students in summer. So, if you get paid then it is better to work on your research during summer. If you do not get paid, still it is better to research then going back home.
3) If you are a masters student and do not get an internship, then it is better to find some positions in research labs and work with a professor. Sometimes, professors look for masters students and hire them for small research. Any academic work can be added to your resume and eventually help you to get a job later.
If you are a masters student and do not get an internship/works to do in summer, then you can go back home to save some money.
@Ponponhollamon, yes I am from US. People leaving for the summer is not a common phenomenon. I have hardly seen graduate students leaving for the summer. In my four years of graduate studies, I have hardly seen four to five people who did that and that did not end up well for them. Some of them left the program after some time, others did not have any job after their graduation. It's my personal experience, you might find different perspective on that.
I think it also matters what you plan to do after graduation. If you are not planning on academia and plan to work in home country, then targeting internships in home country would allow you to both use the summer wisely and see family.
I am a Canadian working on my PhD in the US. I was able to get a job in a clinic at home that does very similar research to my lab in the US and was therefore able to go home for June - mid August. I would say if you can do something like this where you stay productive over the summer, then yes it it okay to go home for the summer. But grad students do not typically get the summer off like in undergrad... grad school is a year-round job.
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108477 | How do I request feedback on my paper?
I have written this paper and I would like to ask, via email, from some professors in other universities to give me feedback. How is the best way to write such a request? First, what should I write in the email subject box? Then, how do I write the body of email?
Related: What are the strategies for getting feedback on articles?
Professors are busy people. If you send a random professor with whom you've never had any contact a paper and ask him or her to review it and provide feedback, odds are that you will never hear back from them, because they will ignore the request.
If you want a better response, you will need to cultivate a relationship with the faculty members over a period of time.
If you are new in research career and hasn't had enough relationship to be welcomed to ask for feedback, then your manuscript will likely be perceived to have low quality by busy people. In my experience you should ask it on a forum (Stack Exchange or Reddit), because your level is perfectly suited to ask there. In general, a quality post is not a wall-length post with a question "what do you think", but a post clearly explains an entanglement you found, because who can see that are indeed serious with it.
In my observation, Stack Exchange is best to ask for solution, Reddit is best for giving solution.
Would the user who raised the Low Quality Post flag explain why this is low quality except a few typos?
I didn't flag this, though my guess would be the perception that it didn't answer the question. The question appears to be about how to get feedback on a manuscript while this answer's more about how to get questions answered.
Was that how this answer was intended? I mean it sounds like this answer's saying that Stack Exchange is a good place to get feedback on a manuscript.
@scaaahu can I see which posts of mine are flagged by what reasons?
@Nat yes, because your manuscript will be perceived to has low quality by the busy people?
@Ooker https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/62585
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44061 | How good do I actually have to be to get into a top graduate program from an average undergraduate program?
So, this is a question that I do not know much about. I might get called on not having done a ton of research on graduate school, but I am really curious about this. I am an undergraduate student of mathematics and I am certainly planning on pursuing a graduate degree. I have looked at the top schools of math and they are certainly what one would expect: MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc.
My issue is this: Academically, I was a late bloomer. I did not take high school seriously because it was annoying and elementary. Where I grew up, my school did not offer much in terms of AP classes or other opportunities. So, the only thing I excelled at naturally was math classes. Of course, they were extremely easy and required almost no effort on my part, which is what made me leery in terms of taking college level classes. I figured that I was good at high school classes because they are simple, but college level will be a different story.
I was wrong. In university, the gap was wider. Once I became adjusted, I actually enjoyed mathematics because it was so much more abstract and complex. This caused me to do rather large amounts of independent research in graduate level topics (topology, analytic number theory, analysis, etc). My only issue is that I am not in a competitive environment, really. The students are not top-notch, and don't share the same drive that I have. This is why I feel like being at the top of the class is not really an accomplishment, since I am not doing anything that any undergraduate at MIT, Harvard, Yale, etc, couldn't do.
My question that I pose here is this:
How good do I really need to be?
I have a passion for mathematics and for the most part, I seem to be talented at it. In terms of GPA, I have maintained a 4.0 with little effort just because I typically have already covered the material in the class on my own. However, there is a voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me that I only stand out because I am at a school that is not top tier, ivy league.
What does a graduate student at a top tier school look like? In my mind, I see someone that has been publishing papers since their teens, and was at the level I'm at now coming out of high school (I am a rising senior at the moment). Is this true? Am I being realistic? I am concerned because I would love to apply to some of these schools (and to get in is my dream!) but I honestly don't even know what level I am at in comparison to the rest of their applicants. I would hate to get shot down almost instantly because I am a joke in their eyes.
Sorry if this was a bit of a ramble. The question boils down to the title really, the rest is just elaboration for those that are interested. Thanks!
... ivy league. — Don't worry about which athletic conference the school's sports teams play in.
Is the question how good at math I have to be, or how good does my application need to look? Either way, it is unlikely to be appropriate here. Also what is a "rather large amount of independent research in graduate level topics "? Does that mean you have papers in decent journals? Does that mean you have looked at grad level textbooks?
@PVAL No, I don't have papers, and that is what I am concerned about. I have been given the opportunity to take graduate classes offered at my university because of performance in lower level courses. In terms of reading, that is where my skill lies. I have read a huge volume of books by authors like Lanczos, Kolmogorov, Fomin, etc (older authors since their books are cheap).
And the question boils down to: HOW do I get in? What will help me more: Academics/Grades or proof of well roundedness/involvement/how good my application is.
Why not see for yourself? I guess it's too late to do an exchange semester, but you could join a summer school or go somewhere as a visiting scholar. This would give you a good idea of your peers (generally only motivated students bother with summer schools), adds to your credentials, and potentially you could meet a professor, whose lab you might be interested in. Personal contact goes a long way.
Some related questions you may find useful: 1) What does it take to get into top math PhD programs?, 2) Does rigor/thoroughness of undergraduate program matter (for graduate/PhD applications)?, 3) Path to a good grad school?, (cont'd)
What advice would you give students applying for graduate school in mathematics?, and 5) Improving my PhD application for math programs
"there is a voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me that I only stand out because I am at a school that is not top tier, ivy league."
As JeffE would say, Do not listen to the Impostor Syndrome!
For what it's worth, I'm in a very similar situation (top student at what I perceive to be a not-so-great school, didn't get serious in my studies until 2nd year of undergrad, technical field (CS), no papers published). I applied to just 7 schools (sloppy, I know) and got into a top-tier public, which is no Ivy League, but still a stellar department and school. So yes, it's definitely possible to get into a top 10 school with that profile, though I don't know how likely it is, since everyone else rejected me.
The very very rare people who have been publishing since their teens (yes, they do exist) all imagine other people winning the Putnam in elementary school. Someday a precocious fourth-grader will win the Putnam; no doubt she'll worry about someone else winning the Fields Medal while still in the womb.
From what you have said about yourself, I think you're very well prepared for graduate school at a very good institution. There are always a few incredibly bright, very young mathematicians that fit the image you have in your mind of students at top tier universities. I know of a few myself. However a very large number of math graduate students are much like you (and I).
I had a very strong affinity for math as a young child but grew up in one of the worst academic environments in the US. A highly nontrivial amount of students in my area didn't graduate high school, even fewer went to college and fewer then even went to universities that were not the crappy local universities. I lucked out because one of the best high schools in the nation was in my area yet I didn't feel very challenged and more or less coasted along and didn't try. Ended up with a GPA of about 3.0 at the time of graduation. I even spectacularly failed statistics with a 40 or so from lack of effort.
Undergrad rolled around. I flourished in the environment: took lots of math classes, took plenty of courses outside my degree to broaden my horizon, did lots of research, but like you I was a big fish in a small pond. I felt similar to you - that I only looked good in comparison to all of the others. I almost had a 4.0 in math and had a 3.8 overall with a couple of years of research under my belt. When it came time for grad school applications, I cast a bit of a wide net, but got rejected from a lot of universities. (This was largely my fault since I seemed to mess something up on every application. Having not really done undergraduate applications, I was a bit overwhelmed and scatterbrained.) I actually got into my top choice university which surprised me a lot.
When I started my master's, I did notice that there was a bit of a gulf between me and the other students once I got there. My undergraduate institution didn't have nearly the course selection or resources that the other students had. However in terms of math capability, I was at least middle of the pack; so while I had a bit of a learning curve and some growing pains, I think I ended up being one of the stronger master's students because I fully dedicated myself and didn't give up. I did spend a ridiculous amount of time in my office the first semester, though. I went to school around 9:30 in the morning and went home at midnight many days.
For all of it, I grew incredibly and am doing quite well in my PhD program. Coursework is a cinch now, research is going well and I'm writing up a couple of papers which I hope to submit in the not-too-distant future. With your background and love for mathematics, I think you'll be in a much better position than I was in terms of applications. Your GPA is better, you seem much more fluent in many areas of mathematics and are much more mathematically mature. The biggest factor in determining your success (outside of pure genius - which is incredibly uncommon, even amongst mathematicians!) is your unwillingness to give up. Even if you're slightly weaker than some of your future fellow graduate students right now, once you get there, all of those disparities will quickly melt away if you put in the time and effort. Where you came from does not have to dictate where you end up. You are more than your past if you allow yourself to be.
Here is some general off-topic advice regarding grad school since you seem to be lacking in advising: just because you want to go to a top tier university and get in to one does not mean you should necessarily go. For undergrad, this is not the case; if you get into MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc. and have the financial means, you should definitely go as it is a great opportunity and can directly impact your future. At the graduate level, things are so much more nuanced. (For example, the reputation of the university doesn't directly dictate your future success provided that you put in 100%. In the internet age, it is much easier to do really meaningful research and network with top researchers at any respected university since you have access to all of the information you want.)
When you apply, you are not applying to the university more than you are applying to a professor (or professors) or at least this is the philosophy I think one should have. You should have an idea of what kind of things you want to pursue for research and you should look to those people who do research in that direction. I don't mean to say that you need to know exactly the project you want to do but have a rough idea of the field you are interested in, say commutative algebra or functional analysis or harmonic analysis. If you apply to a university in which no one really pursues what interests you, you're going to be without a future advisor or you'll have to settle for second best. Applying to a graduate program just because of prestige doesn't guarantee success or happiness. Granted, at the top universities, this tends not to be an issue as they have very broad reach but it is something to be wary about. Just because it is a great university or great department does not mean it is a great fit for you.
There are also other factors to consider when applying to schools: Could you deal with the super competitive atmosphere (or alternatively the extremely laid back atmosphere)? Could you stand to live there for four to six years, e.g. if you're from a very hot climate, could you survive the very harsh winters in upstate NY or if you're from upstate NY, could you handle a Texas summer? If you cannot see yourself being happy with (or tolerating) a lot of these extra-academic aspects of where you are, you might want to reconsider.
A PhD is very demanding and can be soul-crushing at times. You'll often run into really difficult road blocks in coursework or research and if everything else in your life makes you miserable as well, you're going to have a really bad time. Your mental health is very important. You will be pushed to the extreme at times and in many ways throughout your PhD and your environment shouldn't amplify this. If you're having a tough time in research, the weather is absolutely miserable and you cannot stand your fellow graduates for whatever reason, your mental wellness might take a turn for the worst. I have seen this happen first hand and it is really unfortunate. These are not things academic advisors often tell students who wish to do graduate school because they are easy to overlook, but it is something to keep in mind. Hopefully this has been helpful.
This is a great comment. I honestly did not think about the extra-academic aspects such as weather. I really do hate the cold, and it seems like all of the top 10 schools are northern! And I like your perspective on applying to schools for some professor. I have not done enough research on this, since my books are all pretty old (Dover is cheap!) and I honestly have no idea who the big shots in mathematics are nowadays. I will definitely look into this, because I think you are very right about the importance of that.
+1 for the last two paragraphs. those are certainly valid for other fields, too.
well I'm an MIT pure math PhD. I published my first paper when I was 27 : a couple of years after getting the PhD! Very few people has published anything before their PhD and their first paper generally was from their thesis.
If you have actually done some original research, write it up and get some advice from a professor at your school regarding publishing it. Being published is a massive help in grad school applications.
My general rule is only do a maths phd if you have a calling for it. It sounds like you do. I treated most of Grad School like a job -- go in around 9, take a break for lunch, go home around 6pm. Work hard during those hours. Enjoy your evenings and weekends.
High quality institutions do help your career so apply and if you get in, go and visit. If you don't like the atmosphere, go elsewhere. Certainly when I was at MIT the atmosphere was collegial rather than competitive.
_Being published is a massive help in grad school applications. _ - Would you say this applies to patents too? aren't they a kind of "publication"?. Obviously we would not be talking about mathematics (a patent in mathematics, that would be interesting), but engineering.
Thank you for commenting. It is nice to hear something from someone that is actually in a spot that I am yearning for, and this has made me feel much better about the situation.
Let me offer some perspective from an admissions point of view. What's important, for graduate studies, is your preparation, talent, motivation and work ethic. How will a committee assess this? If you go through a bunch of advanced courses with all A's from a top school, unless something is really wrong with your application, you'll get into a top school because the admissions people know the quality of the program you went through.
The main problem with coming from a small/unknown school (and I also did myself, so I'm sympathetic) is that it is harder to evaluate your preparation and talent, so to get into top programs there needs to be something in your application to gauge you against other applicants. Being able to do this is also helpful for personally knowing how you stack up with students coming out of top schools. Here are some suggestions:
Even if you're not at a great school, you probably have some professors who got their PhDs from top schools. They will have a sense of how you compare to students from top schools. Consequently, they will be able to give you informed advice about what kind of schools you should apply to, and be able to write in their recommendation letters things like "Rellek is comparable to the better students I've known at at Ivy League Institute, Inc." Note: recommendation letters are particularly important when you come from an unknown school.
If you've done things like summer programs with students from all over, your experience there can help gauge you against other students. (So it's natural to ask someone from one of these programs for a letter.)
If you've written research papers or typed up notes on advanced topics, you can make them available (say on a personal webpage), so interested committee members have the option of taking a look.
Consider applying to some backup schools and/or master's programs as backups. After a master's at a good school, you will be easy to compare with top students around the country.
As a final comment, it's true that to get into Harvard or Princeton, you should to be exceptional (or really lucky), but you merely need to be good and show promise to get into a top 10 school. I remember I was surprised when I found out most grad students I met at top 10 schools weren't "superstars" (some are, of course, but that's not par for the course).
If you state on your letter of purpose what you have stated here, it will be regarded highly, because the admissions officer will see the passion that you have, and that has more relevance than anything.
Opportunity doesn’t knock. If it knocks, it knocks on the inside.
You.... are opportunity… You create it
And...You are what you believe.
That is what sets you apart, and, that is what
you need to let these Ivy League admissions people know.
That is what I did...
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:48.836510 | 2015-04-22T23:26:44 | {
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67249 | Does taking an academic job in Asia or Africa make it difficult to get a job in the US or Europe later?
Many in this community know of the struggle of finding a job in tertiary education after completing a PhD.
However, there are many options available for people who are willing to work overseas in exotic locations in Asia, Africa, and the other developing areas of the world.
I am wondering if working overseas would be detrimental to someone's career. Is it hard to get back into the States/Europe after spending a few years teaching and writing in the developing world? How do search committees view someone who has been away in order to find employment? Let's say the person asking has a PhD in education.
What kind of US/European institution are you wanting to come back to? And what kind of overseas institution are you going to? Some of the best unis in the world are "overseas" in Asia.
Well, I never said it was me. But let's say you just want to find a full-time job at a four year college. Let's also say that we are coming from a developing nation in Southeast Asia that is not a high ranking but a rather low ranking place for education
It really depends on the reputation of the particular institution, department, etc. There are numerous universities with good reputations in developing countries, and presumably many more I have never heard of.
This question reads very oddly due to the assumption of a "US/Europe" reader and "other". Suggest rewording to clarify where the asker is based at present, and where you're thinking of going (oddly enough, "rest of world" is not homogeneous).
If you go to top schools overseas, you should be fine. You can always explain your decision by saying that you needed to travel, help developing countries, explore opportunities. In my field, many Chinese schools have very high-tech requirements in their labs! My old school (not in China) has unlimited funding! So, research wise, it might be a good idea to travel for a year or two to establish a good working relationship with labs and schools.
Many of the professors (engineering) I know will go to the Gulf region and work in Dubai/Kuwait for a sabbatical year or even as a visiting professor (1-3 years) because of the good pay (can get up to 140-160k), benefits (paid housing, car, air tickets, schooling etc), no taxes, less stress (no need to write proposals or get funding).
As long as you keep your contacts in the US/Europe "happy", you should be fine. I know some professors will hold international conferences and put their colleagues on committees! I know some will hold 1-2 days seminars/workshops and invite their previous department chair as a keynote speaker or lecturer for crash-courses (they make easy money out of this).
It's not a career killer, but it can make things more difficult. If you are looking for research-oriented jobs, and are doing high-quality research, it should not make a difference (except in cases where your area is only popular in other countries). What the other answers fail to mention, is that it can be a significant disadvantage applying to smaller/more teaching-oriented schools (e.g., most liberal arts colleges) from overseas. Here are a few reasons:
Flying you in for interviews is more expensive.
Being able to teach well in the US system is important, and overseas applications tend to provide less evidence for this.
Many schools want to find candidates who specifically want to be at that institution, or at least are not likely to leave. International applicants need to convince committees not just they want to move to the US, but would be happy at that specific school.
At least in my field, we are over-saturated with good domestic candidates, so search committees can afford to throw out applications for small concerns, like ones I mentioned above.
This is not to say it's impossible, it's just a somewhat harder. In my field, where postdocs are common, my general advice to people who want permanent jobs in the US is to try to do their last postdoc in the US (or at least apply to US postdocs as a backup when applying for tenure-track positions).
I did a PhD in philosophy and am currently working in Japan at a university. The majority of my teaching is in English -- and about English -- rather than philosophy.
I'd say there's several things to think about:
(1) How well does your discipline translate to other countries. (Your specific example of education translates well on the theory side and very poorly on the teaching methodologies side [at least in Japan]. My field on the other hand is not done in the same way in Japan as compared to the English-speaking world).
(2) Are your language skills up for the task in these exotic locations? (The claims of certain nations to English speakers in universities are exaggerated or the degree of preparedness for university level work may be exaggerated -- that's why the opportunities are sitting there for the taking. The offers aren't at Peking University of Seoul National University).
(3) Do you have the networking skills or publications to get back to your own country or target country after being abroad? (I continue to publish in English in philosophy, but my teaching time is primarily used teaching English).
(4) Will you be able to get relevant teaching reviews? While Japanese law claims that they have a teaching review system for university courses, in practice, they don't. In other words, I have no plausible teaching reviews except for the ones that I personally conduct in my classes (via google forms). I think this negatively impacts my ability to return to the US.
Exotic is not necessarily bad. You may stand out because of that, but that could be an advantage. If we talk about a low ranking place, you'll need to show that you helped that community, and that you maintained a reasonable publication record. The hard part will be maintaining your network in the region where you want to return.
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64358 | How can I keep up with all the important advances in fields related to mine?
Being updated with new ideas in many research fields is impossible, seen the diversity of research topics and the strong relations that exists between them. Most of the researchers in the world, are needing to interact with many fields and to be up to date with the trending ideas in each one of them.
Example: if one researcher is specialized in remote-sensing. Being up to date in this field is possible with some effort. But, this field is related to many other fields ( computer vision, image processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence..). Any new idea in any of these fields could directly impact remote sensing as well. The problem is that this researcher cannot cope with the high speed changes that occurs in these fields.
This example is applicable to many cases as well. And many of you are facing the same situation.
I am in the beginning of my PhD, my thesis interact with many research fields. I have to summarizes the trending ideas in many fields to conclude the state of the art of my thesis. Following the traditional method by accessing the literature of each field may out passes the goal of my thesis.
I want to know if there is a mean to know the trending research ideas in one research topic and the statistics related to them that are gaining some interest.
Is there any mean to track advancement in a research field?
First you should answer a different question: what problem are you trying to solve through trending tools? Discover what is hot so you can jump on it? Well, if it is trending, it is already too late. Find new ideas of interest to you? Well, an automated tool has no idea what will happen to catch your fancy or dovetail with what is going on in your head. Read broadly in journals in your field(s), go to conferences, brainstorm with colleagues. Automated tools can help with very focused questions, and even then there will be caveats.
There is no easy way:
First step would be to talk to your advisor.
Second step would be to look at recent issues of the main journals in your field.
Third step would be to attend some of the main conferences in your field, listen to the talks and talk to the people.
After that you make up your mind what your opinion the trending issues are, and repeat steps 1 and 2 (and maybe 3) to try to confirm that.
Some people said that there is some online visual tool that track in a visual manner the main tags that are gaining interest in any field. Is it true?
What do you think about the tools provided by elsevier: https://www.elsevier.com/research-intelligence . Did you try them.
those tools may help, but beware what goes into those tools. e.g. is elsevier only tracking stuff hapening in its own journals or does the algorithm favor publications in its own journals... In the end there is no supstitute for doing the work yourself.
I'd hardly say it is easy, or even possible, in any field to keep up with mounds of new research.
However, I find it best to narrow down your area of research as much as possible. Find a few niches within your field, and become an expert on those; I have found that much easier to keep up with. Anything outside of that is usually useless toe anyway.
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21104 | Searching a pdf journal paper for mathematical symbols
When skimming through a long mathematical paper (in pdf format), I often find a mathematical symbol (often in greek and with subscripts/superscripts) that was defined previously somewhere else within the paper. Of course, it's not always easy to find where the parameter was defined, so I resort to using the FIND tool. However, simply copy and pasting the symbol to the FIND tool doesn't seem to work well, since the symbol cannot be copied exactly.
Is there a better way to perform an automated search a PDF document for a particular mathematical symbol if I don't have the original latex file? Especially ones with subscripts and superscripts?
What PDF viewer are you using? Using Evince, searching for symbols seems to work without any problems.
@Senex: I'm currently using Adobe Reader. I've tried Evince, but it doesn't seem to work well to search symbols with subscripts and superscripts. Anytime I try to copy such a symbol, it doesn't paste exactly in the FIND tool.
OK, I see the problem with superscripts AND subscripts (with only one -- either a superscript or a subscript -- Evince seems to work by copying and pasting the symbol and deleting the space between the symbol and the sub/superscript that gets added during copying and pasting).
I search for '?', papers seldom have many questions. The precision is bad, but the recall is good, in my experience.
Are the equations not numbered?
This can be a tricky one, and you can sometimes have similar issues with accented and greek letters. If you cannot find words that have been hyphenated to break a line, in my experience this is reader-dependent and Adobe Reader has never given me problems.
Some PDFs just were not generated with the proper character mappings, so they will never be searchable with the affected characters. With regards to the format of superscripts and subscripts, the PDF will be searchable with them in the same format that they appear when you copy-paste out of the document. With other special characters, if you cannot copy-paste them, you cannot search for them.
If you urge everyone using LaTeX to do \usepackage{cmap}\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}, those packages should solve most problems. Notably, cmap makes math characters (such as the integral sign) searchable.
Unfortunately, as far as I know there is no way to "repair" a PDF that is not properly searchable, unless you re-create a fixed version from the source.
If it were searchable, then simply copy-pasting from the PDF file should work, right?
@Paul Yes, it's a bi-directional thing. If you can search for it, you can copy-paste it. If you cannot search for it, you cannot copy-paste it.
It is possible to "repair" a PDF that is not properly searchable, for example by running it through OCR. Acrobat's own OCR won't run on a non-image PDF, but some other OCR packages will.
If your paper has been posted to the arXiv, go to the paper's page (here's one of mine), click on "Other formats" and "download source". Assuming the authors submitted the LaTeX Source to the arXiv, you'll get a tarball with the LaTeX source, which should be a lot more searchable. (Yes, I do this for large enough papers where I expect to do a lot of searching.)
Interesting solution
I found a trick tonight trying to search for all instances of L_ij^* in a PDF. The regular search function didn't recognize the superscript asterisk, only regular asterisks. I am using Acrobat Reader DC version 2015.20.20042...hopefully it works for other versions. Here are the instructions:
Choose a string of words immediately next to an instance of the sought-after symbol in your PDF document. Do ctrl-F. In the Find window that opens, click the arrow next to the text box and select the full reader search from the list. Enter the string of words in the search window of the full reader search. The character you will need to use for a search shows up in the results window. You can click on the bolded/underlined instance in the results and your curser will be placed on the symbol in your PDF document.
In my case, it was the Å character that represented the superscript asterisk (*). Next, I opened a blank Word document and then chose Insert – Symbol - Advanced Symbol …. I then looked for Å (regular shortcuts, keyboard strokes, etc. for this symbol didn't work for me), inserted it into my Word document then copy and pasted the Å from the Word document into the Acrobat advanced search window and hit Search.
It found all instances of superscript *! Again, you can click on the result and your curser will be taken to that symbol in your PDF document.
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205820 | Is it okay to ask and discuss about questions which come in exams which come in German univerisities?
I am partaking in some exams provided by German universities. Would it be okay if I were to discuss the questions after the exam online, e.g., by posting on the appropriate Stack Exchange? There were no rules written against it, but I heard datenschutz (data privacy law) is quite strict in Germany, hence my question.
This (Academia) would not be the forum for it in any case. And, the rules, if any, wouldn't be SE rules, but university rules. Ask them how widely you can discuss "old" questions.
I am aware of all that, I am asking this to people who study there, what their experience with this was
"There were no rules written against it" - this depends, if you intend to repost exams online, this could violate copyright (see e.g. https://www.bmbf.de/bmbf/shareddocs/kurzmeldungen/de/was-forschende-und-lehrende-wissen-sollten.html#:~:text=Ja.,in%20der%20Regel%20urheberrechtlich%20geschützt.)
Germany is a big place, and different universities might also have different policies. But you would probably need to ask whoever wrote the exam in question for permission, as with other course materials.
Note also that this has nothing to do with Datenschutz. Datenschutz best translates as data privacy and is about handling personal information about people. It doesn't say anything about university exam questions.
Adding to @coffee_into_plots answer, Germany is not only big, but education is organized on a federal level, not on country level. So there are more differences than you might think from one federal state to the other.
When I was a student in Germany, the student organization in each department had a room full of folders in which students had deposited notes about memorializing exam questions after the exam was over. At the time (1993-1998), the system required a good number of oral exams, so there were no written exam questions to rely on, but people were diligent writing out what they had been asked, and it was fantastic to prep for your own exams. It was universally done, and I see no reason why this system can not also work if these questions are put on websites.
While it is correct that ultimately the university (or department or course) rules count, I think this is a legitimate and answerable question for academia.sx: it is about German academic culture. Voted to reopen.
There are three reasons why it may not be okay:
Copyright: If you are copying the text of the question instead of just describing it, this would be a copyright violation. Same goes for posting photographs, screenshots of the question or sketches therein.
Special Rules: It could be that you agree not to share the contents of the exam by any means by enrolling or writing the exam. This should be easy to find out by checking all rules you agreed to. FWIW, we had such a rule for online exams during the pandemic, but only for three hours after the exam (this was to account for students receiving time extensions).
Even if not against any law or rule, the author may be angry anyway. My experience with the German academic system is that teachers expect all exams to be public knowledge amongst the students at their university as soon as they are written. I do not expect my students to request permission (even as a courtesy) to discuss an exam I posed, as long as they respect copyright and the exam is truly over. However, there are almost certainly some excentric professors out there who consider discussing their questions inappropriate, even if it breaks no law or rules.
but I heard datenschutz is quite strict in Germany, hence my question.
Datenschutz is the protection of personal data. It has no bearing on the tasks of an exam, as they are not personal data.
You probably mean 'eccentric', not 'excentric'.
"It could be that you agree not to share the contents of the exam by any means by enrolling or writing the exam." It would be interesting whether such a rule (beyond the very harmless three hours example you mentioned) would have any chance to stand in court. This seems to intervene with the students' constitutional right to freely choose their profession. I wouldn't bet a dime on the university winning such a case. Another question is how such a rule could actually be enforced - what if a student simply breaks the rule after the exam?
@Anyon: AFAICT, excentric is just an excentric spelling of eccentric.
@JochenGlueck: This seems to intervene with the students' constitutional right to freely choose their profession. – I don’t think see how being “forced” to agree to a non-disclosure clause would qualify as a restriction of this freedom. Essentially any job that fundamentally is about working with humans (educator, nurse, therapist) will involve some sort of training with humans, which in turn will probably come with some non-disclosure agreement. Similar, you have to accept lab rules in many experimental fields.
@Wrzlprmft In the sense of "off-center", yes. The meaning of strange and unusual, when applied to a person, is only listed under 'eccentric' in the English dictionaries I've consulted. Of course, the etymology involves the prefix 'ex', and this is preserved in many other European languages.
@JochenGlueck: Another question is how such a rule could actually be enforced - what if a student simply breaks the rule after the exam? – You would probably somehow tie this to the examination rules. Examination rules in turn are public regulations and thus interfering with the regular operation of exams is as an administrative offence (Ordnungswidrigkeit) which can lead to a fine. On top, interfering with exams can usually be punished like cheating for students in the programme. (Mind, however, that I do consider such a rule bad, but not due to unconstitutionality or unenforceability.)
@Wrzlprmft: Hmm, I spent quite a while searching but couldn't find a court judgement for a case close to the one we're discussing. There seems to be a general concensus that article 12 of the German constitution affects exam regulations, but the details seem non-trivial (at least for me). I'm having difficulties to follow your examples, though: these are cases where the restrictions have their rationale in the subject being tested (and the first example also involves conflicting basic rights of other people). That's not the case for a rule not to discuss the exam questions with anyone.
Regarding "Ordnungswidrigkeiten": it seems to be more complictated than that: according to § 3 OWiG "Ordnungswidrigkeiten" have to be defined by law. I checked for the federal state NRW: according to § 63(5) of the Hochschulgesetz NRW, cheating (more precisely: "Täuschung über Prüfungsleistungen") counts as "Ordnungswidrigkeit", but other types of interfering with exams are not listed there.
Regardless of what the law says, it is generally a bad idea to anger a person who has power over you.
@JochenGlueck: I'm having difficulties to follow your examples – I guess, my main point regarding constitutionality is this: Universities can impose all sorts of rules regarding studies and exams as long as complying with them is not a burden, restricts who can study, etc. I don’t see how a non-disclosure clause does this. Also, I think you can probably argue against students not being allowed to discuss the exam at all, since it would preclude them from taking legal actions against bad questions, but revealing the questions online is a different thing.
@JochenGlueck: cheating (more precisely: "Täuschung über Prüfungsleistungen") counts as "Ordnungswidrigkeit", but other types of interfering with exams are not listed there. – Not exactly. Violating any rule that concerns cheating can lead to fine; so it’s not only cheating per se. A typical example would be an outsider who helps a student to cheat or who interrupts an exam, forcing a repetition. As the only reason to keep exams secret is as an anti-cheating measure (no matter how that actually works out), it would be captured by this.
@Wrzlprmft: "Not exactly. Violating any rule that concerns cheating can lead to fine; so it’s not only cheating per se." Fair enough. This leaves the question whether the discussion of exam questions after the exam can be considered relevant for cheating (in future exams). I tried again to search online for such a case that was treated in court, but I could not find anything.
I'd like to add to the reasons against, that OP may talk to the professor about this and chances are that they find them quite open to this. At least my experience as student was that professors even encouraged exam question collections. Oh, and I once had an interview weekend for a scholarship, where one interviewer specifically checked (with a weird question where the answer would be easily known for those who had been talking about the interview but not to anyone who didn't expect that question) whether we were talking about what questions they asked. (If anyone wonders: talking was good)
@Wrzlprmft: I can see how restricting speech about a passed exam may be considered an undue burden to the student. And how restricting to find out what exactly to expect in an exam can also be considered an undue burden. Undue also in the sense that the German academic system has found exam procedures that are not hampered by knowledge of old exams. (And maybe also keeping in mind that for official exams such as the driver's license theory the pool of questions is publicly available and meant to be used for learning).
The health care scenarios IMHO are not good examples here, since privacy requirements there are nothing one signs like an NDA (which is a contract), they are legal requirements and thus at a thoroughly different level. I guess one has to sign that one is aware of them like one signs that one is aware of the anti-corruption laws - but they need to be kept anyways, signature or not.
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167934 | Patent vs Research paper for a top university admission?
I am working as software developer in a company. I had filed one patent and published one research paper. I want to apply for Master's in a top university (like NUS at Singapore or German universities) next year. I am working on some new IOT projects and deep learning ideas. What is more beneficial to get admission in Master's at a top university:
A Patent or a research paper on an idea/project?
This is not an exclusive or, but order matters: you could go for the patent first, and then publish a paper as well.
The best answer, I think, given so little information, is "it depends". But for things of equal quality (however that might be measured) a paper might hold a bit more weight, given that academia is more about ideas (papers) than products (patents). The specific university department, however, might have its own ideas about the balance.
There is also some controversy about software patents, that you are probably aware of.
But it is quality and innovation that will be the important consideration for most.
A patent won't matter to many universities or degrees, but to technical ones of course it might be quite impressive, particularly if it turns out to be a key innovation for a relevant sector. Assuming patents matter at all, there is no one answer to your question. But there are many factors to consider:
Having more than one kind of contribution, showing flexibility is often good, so well done so far. I mention this here for others who might not already have one each.
Now that you do have one of each, you should look at quality, not just quantity. How good of a paper? Where was it published? How many authors are on the patent? You might see a way to strengthen your credentials in one of those areas.
What kind of degree programme are you trying to get into? Could another paper or another patent illuminate more or different of your relevant strengths to that programme than your previous output?
Finally, don't forget that your present employer can matter a lot, not only if you don't get into the programmes you want, but also for letters of reference. So if it seems like a coin flip to you, ask your boss which they would prefer you to work on.
Both are good ways of showing your talents and productivity. However, something to keep in mind is that a patent often takes 2-4 years to get approved from the time a patent application is submitted. Until then, it is just an application, and difficult if not impossible for academic departments looking at your CV to evaluate (more so than an academic preprint, the analogous thing in the context of journal publications).
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95834 | How do I justify dropping out of a Ph.D. program in my personal statement?
I am in a Ph.D. program for the past year and a half and I am very disappointed by the level of work, the agenda, and the graduate school. I want to apply for a new Ph.D. and have told to my professor that I will drop out in May, so that he has time to replace me. My question is how can I justify my dropping out correctly to the professors I want to contact to start a Ph.D. with, or in the personal statement of the applications.
Just give them the reasons you stopped. If they think your reasons are good they might even consider your choice as positive instead of negative - but as usual everything depends on the person you are dealing with.
@louic This should be an answer.
This is actually quite common and many people change schools and even disciplines. So, it might be a good idea to be open about it.
As DotPi said, this is pretty common. If your adviser is willing to write you a letter that corroborates your version of the story (one that shows your leaving as a mutually beneficial decision, because you want to study a different topic or at a different place, etc.) then just be upfront about it. It helps to be specific and talk about how this new institution will work where the previous one didn't: is there faculty there studying the questions you want to work on, or is it at the appropriate level that you want to achieve, etc.
Just give them the reasons you stopped. If they think your reasons are good they might even consider your choice as positive instead of negative - but as usual everything depends on the person you are dealing with.
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95274 | As a PhD student, can my name be included in a research grant to protect my ideas?
My ex-colleague (let's call her C) in the Lab is now a faculty member at a university. We have collaborated before in our work. Our works are similar in the methodology but different in the topic. In other words, in her dissertation, she used method X to solve a problem in topic Y. In my work, I will use a variation of X to solve topic Z.
C is now planning to write a research grant proposal about my topic and she asked me to help her in preparing for the proposal. C and my advisor (her ex-advisor) will be the PIs in the proposal. I asked C to include my name (as PI or any other way) because this is my work and I have already a published paper about it but C said that only faculty members can be included. But I feel that if I'm not included in the proposal in any way, my work will be stolen because C tries to get her students in her university to work on my idea.
If the funding is approved, I am afraid that they might hire someone else to work on my idea and then probably I won't be the first author anymore or maybe not included in the publication at all because both of them know my idea very well.
I'm new to the funding stuff so please help me. I might be overthinking about it.
What do you mean by "include your name"? In what capacity? Are you saying you want to be a PI?
as PI or any other way just to save my work and idea
Where are you? What kind of grant is it? In many cases, it's true that a PhD student cannot be a PI and cannot be included in the list of participants to the grant, and that only faculties and technical staff can.
In Italy and I do not know which kind of grant it is.
Usually, at least for common grants in Italy, only permanent personnel can be listed as participant because it's only them that can contribute to the labour cost. If you ask them which grant they're applying to, you can easily find the instructions and check for yourself, but I have no reason to think that they are doing anything troublesome. When I was a PhD student I certainly participated in writing at least 4-5 grants.
You are worried that
they might hire someone else to work on my idea and then probably I won't be the first author anymore or maybe not included in the publication at all because both of them know my idea very well
But that can happen regardless of whether your name is mentioned in the proposal, and regardless of whether you even help to participate in the proposal.
You also mentioned that you already published a paper about this work. Anybody who wants to build on your published work can, including C, your advisor, and other people you don't even know.
Having your name on the proposal doesn't affect whether others can work on your idea (with or without your involvement), so it wouldn't resolve the issues you are worried about.
However, since C and your advisor asked if you would be willing to help with the proposal, you have an opening to talk to them about who would carry out the work if it is funded, and what your involvement would be. I suggest you initiate a conversation about this. Discuss with them how this proposal relates to your current and planned work, and who will be involved in carrying out the work in the proposal (if it is funded). (As suggested in glauc's answer.)
You should only collaborate on proposals with people you trust. I don't know a definite way of protecting an idea in realities of academia, apart of some engineering disciplines, maybe. So you are right that after the proposal is written and submitted, only PI's will have control on how the project will be executed.
I never heard of people asking their PhD students to help them work on their proposals, unless these PhD students were then included as postdocs on the project. Otherwise, I can't see, what's in it for you. It is not your contractual obligation or academic duty as PhD student to help your professor write their applications. The same is true for your ex-colleagues and other members of academia.
You could politely ask your colleague to clarify in which role are you invited to collaborate on the proposal.
When I was a PhD student, I certainly helped writing grant proposals, as many other students did. I don't see anything wrong in this -- and it can be actually instructive -- if the grant is for a group project in which also the student is involved.
Like @Massimo I also help with grant proposals as a PhD student. There are benefits to me: (1) I get experience writing them, (2) it's instructive to see how to develop and "sell" a research idea for a proposal - makes a difference in how I think about research, (3) when I am on job market my letter writers can talk about how I contributed to proposals that brought in $X, and (4) now we have lots of funding for my project, to carry out my ideas.
Colleagues, feel free to downvote, but I personally disapprove an expectation that students should work for "experience" without being properly acknowledged for this. For @ff524 (1) and (2) led to (3) and (4), but for many others it did not.
@DmitrySavostyanov My contributions to the proposals I worked on were acknowledged, and I made them without any expectation that I had to. But with "I can't see what's in it for you" you suggest that there are no other benefits to working on proposals as a grad student, and with "I never heard of people asking their PhD students to help them work on their proposals" you imply that this is abnormal. I don't think either of those are true in the general case. (It might be more true in some fields than others.)
Data point: in pure math it is unheard of (by me, anyway) for students to be involved in the writing of faculty grant proposals. But actually in pure math the student is usually not directly "contributing" to the advisor's research program. Anyway, while Dmitry's claim is far too categorical, I think there is something to it: in some academic fields "faculty member" = "PI" and said person spends most of their time applying for grants, while the actual work is carried out by subordinates. In such a case, it is easy to see how asking the subordinates to write the grant could be exploitative.
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98417 | Investigation of Academic Misconduct
I'm not sure what to tag this question as, and I don't know if it should be on Law.SE.
If someone is being investigated for academic misconduct:
accused of taking photos of tests and sharing it online, which is explicitly disallowed by the professor
and during that investigation, there is no evidence of the tests on the person's cell/camera,
but there is evidence of other crimes (completely unrelated to the university) on their cell/camera (e.g., video of this person bullying a child),
can the university/investigators take any action?
I think no, because the investigators were only to investigate academic misconduct and nothing else. But also yes, because they have evidence of improper behaviour.
To my legal noob sense of justice, it makes no difference at all whether they were investigating a different incident originally. If they happen over another matter, especially one that is more serious than what they actually investigated, why would they not take appropriate action? In the case of a crime this would be alerting the police.
Why would a student give you access to their cell phone?
Not giving access would lead to more suspicion (and more rigourous investigation in other aspects)
University personnel will investigate whether the rules and norms of the university are being upheld. If an actual crime is suspected of having been committed, then in most cases they will contact the police or other authorities either in place of investigating or in parallel to their own investigation. For certain crimes they are legally obligated to do so.
I think no because the investigators were only to investigate academic misconduct and nothing else
Just because they are only there to investigate academic misconduct does not mean that they cannot report nonacademic misconduct to someone else. If they found evidence of a literal crime, I don't know why they couldn't report it to the police. (I'm not sure exactly what "Bullying a child" means, but if e.g. this included physical or sexual abuse I would certainly expect them to report it to the authorities.)
I think you are asking whether there is any covenant of confidentiality when you turn over your phone to them. That's a legal question and I'm not a lawyer, but unless explicitly agreed upon in advance I don't know why there would be. If your partner accuses you of cheating on them, you deny it, and they say, "Well then show me your phone," and upon searching your phone they find a video of you stealing a car, then your partner can certainly report you to the police even though that was not what they were expecting to find. To my mind, having your phone searched by university personnel is more like having it searched by your partner than by the police. In particular, university personnel cannot compel you to turn over your phone to them. They can ask you to, and there might be negative consequences for you if you don't (just like with your partner), but that's not the same thing at all.
Furthermore: as far as I know, university personnel may act on information they find on your phone that is unrelated to the academic honesty issue in question but otherwise violates the university's code of conduct. For instance if they found a video of you making racial slurs at a campus event, then that's not illegal but is (I hope) against their code of conduct, and so far as I know they could act on that. However I do not know exactly where to draw the line. For instance, if in an internet dating app you use language that would be disrespectful and inappropriate in university discourse, then presumably that is not their concern...but if that language involved another university official it might become more their concern, perhaps. I'm really not sure.
Let me say finally that I've heard a few times on this site from students who have had their phones searched by university officials, but as a university official (faculty member) that's something that I have never done and would not think to do in almost any situation. For instance, if during an exam I saw a student looking at their phone, then I would call attention to it, have them put their cell phone away, and pursue an academic honesty case against them. But I would not ask to see their phone: since I tell students before the exam starts what they can and can't have out during the exam (in particular, no phones), looking at their phone during the exam is cheating no matter what, and the implication that they are breaking the rules to gain an unfair advantage is more than plausible whether I see what's on the phone or not. (And what am I going to do, scream at the student to drop their phone immediately and run over to apprehend it before they can close an app? This seems silly at best.) I wonder though whether in other parts of the world academic culture is different: in the United States (and Canada; I spent 2.5 years as a postdoc there) at least, the idea that people do not have to casually turn over their personal property is quite strong.
Exactly --- IANAL, but if you pressured a student into letting you search their phone, you may be in greater trouble yourself when the police becomes involved.
But the student who refuses to give you the phone will always claim “i was only checking the time “ or some such feeble excuse : I stick with it’s against the rules and goes to the exam board...
@Roland: That's also why most examination regulations in Germany rule cell phone use inadmissible, and you can automatically be flunked if you're caught with a cell phone during an examination.
@PeteLClark: Things get tricky if the issues are actually criminal in nature—particularly for the OP's example of bullying, since "mandated reporting" may come into play.
@aeismail: I agree, hence the "For certain crimes they are legally obligated to do so." in my answer.
@PeteL.Clark: Good answer (+1), but note that some confidentiality expectations/restrictions are often implied from circumstance, and almost certainly would be when handing over a phone for an academic investigation. The more likely legal position is that confidentiality expectations would be implied in the absence of explicit terms overriding them.
A few basic legal points that apply in every jurisdiction I know of (within the Anglosphere countries):
University powers and expectation of confidentiality: As a student, your relationship to the university is contractual. The university derives its investigative powers from its contractual relationship with you. Aside from cases of campus police who have actual police powers (which exist at a few larger universities), the standard investigative powers of university staff are based solely on your contractual relationship to the university.
University personnel cannot compel you to turn over your phone or other personal property during their investigation; they may make an inference from your failure to do so, but they do not have the power to confiscate your property.
If you give your phone to the university for an investigation, there would be an implied expectation of confidentiality with respect to the material on your phone and you would have some legal rights in relation to that expectation of confidentiality. If the university discloses information it shouldn't, you may have a cause of action for breach of confidence, breach of contract, etc.
Inadvertent discovery of alternative (non-criminal) rule breach: If the university inadvertently comes across material that shows a different type of breach of their rules (that is not a crime) than the one they are investigating, this would give rise to a complicated argument over the proper scope of expectation of confidentiality when the phone was made available to them. You could mount an argument for breach of confidence in this circumstance; depending on the facts and circumstances it might or might not succeed. There is a complex set of case law on the proper scope of confidentiality in cases where an investigative body obtains information and inadvertently discovers other issues. This situation would require careful legal analysis and the result would probably depend on the specifics.
Inadvertent discovery of a crime: If the university comes across material that shows an activity that is a crime in the course of their investigation, they can certainly report this to the police. Aside from some special cases such as lawyer-client privilege, religious-confessionals, etc., there is generally no legal recognition of any confidentiality restriction that can prevent a person from disclosing evidence of a crime to the police and other relevant government investigative bodies. In particular, if you have possession of a person's phone then you are legally entitled to report matieral on that phone that is evidence of a crime. This is such a broad power that it even applies even if you have possession of the phone illegally --- e.g., if a thief steals your phone and finds child-abuse material on it, there is no confidentiality restriction preventing them from reporting this to the police and then acting as a witness against you in a resulting prosecution.
Admissibility of evidence of a crime: If university personnel were to find evidence of a crime on the phone then prima facie that would be admissible evidence in a resulting criminal prosecution. The only thing that might cause the evidence to be inadmissible is if the defendant could show that the discovery of the evidence came about through some unlawful search that can be considered to be an action of the government itself, such that it is considered to be "fruit of the poisoned tree". This could potentially occur in cases where campus police with actual police powers unlawfully obtain evidence from a phone.
This probably depends where you are but in the U.S.:
1) You are probably obligated to report crimes involving a minor as most U.S. university employees are mandatory reporters (I don't know the ins and outs of this though and maybe there's some variation regarding procedures).
2) From a legal perspective (i.e. if you were a cop or other law official), yes. I'm not sure how not being one changes things.
In the U.S., evidence one was not searching for is still considered legal if it was encountered during the legal execution of one's duties. E.g. If a police officer has a warrant to search a house for a fugitive and that officer opens a closet door to find bricks of cocaine, the home owner can be charged with possession and the cocaine would constitute legal evidence even though it was not what the cop was looking for. (The caveat being that if said officer found evidence of illegal activity in a place it would be unreasonable to search for a fugitive - say a hatbox - that evidence would be thrown out in court. This is the landmark supreme court case Mapp v. Ohio)
3) From a moral perspective, I think the university/investigators are obligated to take some action. If the student voluntary handed over their phone I don't see how you would be in the wrong. It's one thing if you explicitly said you'd fail them if they didn't hand the phone over but I imagine they willingly handed it over to avoid more drama. It would be very weird if a U.S. college student didn't know they had the legal right to not give you their cell phone.
Why don't you just contact your university's legal department?
"It would be very weird if a U.S. college student didn't know they had the legal right to not give you their cell phone" - when someone is severely frightened, they may not think rationally.
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96976 | My name on transcript has no surname. Should I list it as a "former name" when applying for universities in U.S.A. and Canada?
I'm in the process of applying to graduate schools in U.S.A. and Canada as an international student and run into this issue:
The name displayed on my passport and national ID consists of first name, middle name, and family name. However, on my transcript, my family name is not shown. I presume that this makes a difference.
Some of the universities' registration page has fields for former name(s) listed on previous records/certificates. Should I indicate the name on my transcript in the former name fields since it lacks the family name while the one on my passport has my family name?
In addition, should I make an affidavit letter to state that the name on the passport and the transcript belong to me?
About on how I ended with only my first name and middle name on my transcript:
In my country, as far as I know, the way the name is put on every academic record must be the same as the one on those preceding them. Also, it's usual here to write the only the given name in full and either omit the surname or make an initial of it if the space permits since many ethnic groups here do not actually use family names. I have many friends at college who did not use their surnames for their records. Back to academic records, my name has been written without a surname in academic records since elementary school, when my dad did the application process.
There is a very similar question (I am not sure it's a duplicate) on our site. I have only one name shown in my ID card. How do I write my name (surname) in research paper or article?. Please read it to see if it answers your question.
The situation is almost the same regarding naming issues. However, the objective is kind of different. So, the method of solving the problem might be different as the administration process may be different as well.
Did you ask the administration/international office at one of the institutes where you are applying? They might have had this situation before, whereas here it is less likely anyone has been in the same situation, or has solved a case like this.
I did and I'm still waiting for their reply.
This just in. Their reply regarding the name is very brief and only says that I have use my name as written on ID issued by the government (e.g.: passport). Nothing else. Looks like on their end it would not be a problem. I don't know if this solves my problem. Do you think it's prudent if I still proceed with making an affidavit letter anyway in case needed?
It sounds like the forms you have been provided already give a sufficient means of clarifying, particularly you indicate the form is specifically meant to link a current full name to an alternative shown on formal records. While the university may have been thinking about different cases, like names changing via marriage, it fits your situation as well.
I would suspect getting an affidavit or other formal attestation is not necessary: if they are not asking for it in the other cases where a name does not match, they should not expect it for your case either.
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120 | Usefulness of prior industry experience before entering grad school?
What impact does prior industry experience (2+ years in a non-trivial functional role in any established organization) lend to the profile of someone who is entering grad school for a Ph.D.? In my case, it's Computer Science, but I expect the question to be applicable to other areas as well.
Do admission committees look upon it as a bonus point, seeing that the applicant has managed real-world responsibilities successfully in the past, thereby improving the chances of acquiring funding (in terms of TA/RA)?
More importantly, does it help the candidate during (and post Ph.D.), when looking for research internships/post-docs?
In both cases, assuming the position the applicant held is in a completely different area from their research, what other factors become important in the both the above cases? Is it the difficulty of projects the candidate undertook (which, frankly, very few people outside the organization are equipped to judge), or the level of success (promotions, accolades acquired during the stint in industry) that matter, or are there other parameters as well?
Also, in case it is deemed that such a profile offer limited/no advantage to the grad student, it would be nice to know why that may be the case - after all, most (if not all!) organizations are run for profit, and they would tend to have very little use for someone who is not productive or capable of learning.
As someone who sits on an admissions committee, this isn't idle speculation, but it is a personal perspective. I agree with the other responders that industrial experience probably isn't of much interest to an admissions committee, unless you get a strong letter of recommendation from a supervisor who can make a convincing case for admission to the graduate program.
The issue is that while you are in industry, unless you're in a position where your actively doing things related to your graduate school education, your knowledge of the "basics" is atrophying, so it will actually be somewhat more difficult to get back up to speed for the coursework typically required for a PhD program. The longer you're in industry, the harder it typically is to play catchup.
That said, industrial experience may be of interest to an individual professor within a department, and would certainly help with employment following the PhD program.
I sit on graduate admissions committees (in computer science, in the US), and I spent 4 years in industry before going to grad school. I agree with others: Industry experience per se is not particularly attractive, unless it's directly related to your proposed area of study. (Industry experience may be more attractive in more applied areas of CS; I'm a theoretician.)
But it depends on what you do while you're in industry. Admissions committees are looking primarily for strong evidence of research potential — raw "wattage", intellectual maturity, independence, initiative, creativity, attention to detail, eagerness to fight with hard problems, and most importantly, real results. Recommendation letters that specifically address those qualities, whether from academia or from industry, will increase your chances of admission. If you just sit in your cubicle and competently produce the code that your manager asks for, not so much.
My industry experience was a point in my favor during my academic job hunt, but only a minor one.
Industry experience cannot hurt. While it may not help in every case, in many it will. One of the things PhD application committees consider is their mix of students. In my experience (in Computer Science) a typical PhD program consists of students of many ages from many backgrounds. A good program has a diverse mix, including those with "real world" experience. So I bet it helps.
Industry experience will often hinder you, because it is a signal (a reliable signal in most situations) that you are not up-to-date with the cutting edge of research; and that your academic skills have atrophied.
Expect to work much harder in the time up to application, and at interview, in getting up-to-date in the field, and demonstrating that you are up to date.
This will vary by subject: for maths, it's often going to be a deal-breaker, as the analytic skills tend to atrophy very very quickly, and also tend to diminish with age. For more engineering-type subjects, it might be easier, particularly if you have been doing cutting-edge industrial research. Nevertheless, your academic skills may be rusty, and the people deciding on your admissions will expect that they are.
You may also be going in without a (recent) publication record; that can impair the funding position of the institute to which you're applying, so you may have to offer something a little bit extra to compensate for this.
Your industrial experience may well bring value to your future department: but you may or may not get any recognition of that at the time of your application.
(I write as someone who entered academia after ~20 years industrial experience.)
I don't think that having industry experience is going to help with a PhD application unless you have actually worked on the project that you want to do your PhD in. It's certainly not going to help if you worked in a completely different area. Also note that PhD students don't usually apply for funding. I'm farily certain that the answer to your first point is "no" in almost all cases.
That said, I believe it would be more help when looking for internships or a (non-academic) job after finishing the PhD. Again it depends what exactly it is you've done and what you're applying to do.
Working at a company and doing PhD-level research are two (very) different things (unless you're doing industrial research) and being good at one doesn't imply that you're equally good at the other.
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23268 | How long should it take to read a paper?
I am wondering how long it usually takes to read a research article. I can see that the answer depends on:
The knowledge and intelligence of the reader
The field of research
The journal
The individual paper
So I am particularly interested in how long a PhD student or a young post-doc would take to get through a molecular or systems biology paper published in journals like Nature, Science, Cell, PLoS and PNAS. We can focus on papers of typical complexity for the journal, and ignore those that are exceptionally easy to read or exceptionally complex.
On multiple occasions I have been able to skim an 8 page, 5 figure paper in as little as 10-15 minutes. From this I could glean enough information to follow and even participate in a class or journal club discussion (though there would be a lot of asking question like "how exactly did they do this/explain this in the paper? I didn't read very carefully").
However, when a paper is very important (for example I want to use a variation of their methods for my own project) I feel the need to read it much more carefully. It seems worthwhile to closely look at even very trivial things, such as description of standard procedures like cell culture in the methods, exactly how much of each chemical was used for simple, routine reactions, close examination of control experiments from the supplement, what papers the paper has referenced to justify their work, and even what commercial systems were used and from which company, and whether the paper actually followed the protocol in the manual and so on. After putting this much effort, I also feel like I should take notes. This produces a heavily highlighted and annotated paper plus about 4 pages of notes.
All of this takes a lot of time. Occasionally it could take me a few days to work my way through a very important paper (for instance, if their method is unfamiliar to me and I will be adapting it for my own research, or if I want to draw conclusions by reanalyzing their data).
My question is, is this typical? How long do you usually take to read a paper? Should I start putting effort into teaching myself to read faster, or should I just accept it and make time by scheduling other activities to accomodate paper reading?
I can imagine an "incremental" strategy for reading at arbitrary depth. For instance, you could read the paper several times, each time reading more carefully, like so:
Read only the title, parts of the abstract, and look at the pictures.
Read abstract more carefully, look at title headingfs of results section.
Quickly skim the results section to look for main point of the paper.
Scan introduction and discussion, read results carefully to understand obvious limitations of their conclusions.
Carefully read all sections, including methodology, to make a comprehensive list of all assumptions made and all potential issues with the research.
Carefully go through all supplements, look at raw data if any and consult the other papers cited as justification to contextualize the research.
Logically, I see the merit of something like this, but I haven't tried it for the "dense" readings I've talked about above. The reason is that I'm not sure how I can take notes effectively when I do something like the above. It may also be harder to motivate myself to re-read a paper I've already skimmed, because I've given away the punchline to myself and the novelty factor is gone.
I've also written an answer on Mathematics@SE, which I think might be relevant to this question.
Note that I am not asking how to read a paper. This has been addressed in several previous questions already. I am only asking how long it should take a typical junior scientist to read one, so I can benchmark myself and see if I am slower or faster than is usual.
This isn't my field, but I think there is likely to be such wide variation that it is hard to define a "typical junior scientist" or a "paper of typical complexity". Certainly that would be the case in my field (mathematics). There's also the question of how carefully you want to read the paper, which also has wide variation but is hard to quantify. I can understand why you ask this question, but unfortunately I think it will be very difficult to answer.
@NateEldredge True, but it would still be helpful if I got an answer like "I usually take this much time, and it tends to vary from this much to this much most of the time, the longest I took was this much and it took that long for these reasons, if you take longer than this much for this kind of reading then you may be taking too long".
It should take as long as it takes. Some papers can be read in an hour; others take years.
@JeffE Years!? Perhaps you're referring to the 50-page review paper that's been sitting half-read in my Mendeley library for three months... ;)
Keshav wrote some note on this entitled How to Read a Paper.
You are in a multidisciplinary field, that complicates things enormously. When I read a bioinformatics paper, I usually skip the methods section because I don't have the knowledge to really understand the difference of using one buffer or the other. You may skip the more "mathy" part and retain the meat of the conclusions, that is what actually interests you.
As you have alluded to, there are many ways to "read" a paper and the first question to straighten out is for what type of information are you reading a specific paper. A beginner's mistake is to believe you need to read from the first to the last letter of everything you find. This way you never get anywhere and it is the beginning of the learning curve for undergraduates.
If you are surveying a field, you skim through by reading the titles first of all just to spot the ones of interest. This reading takes much less time than to actually find the title. Once you are past this you may take on the abstracts to weed out the ones that sounded right but were off topic. This will take a few minutes per paper. The next step is to read the parts that are of interest to you. Are your summarizing a field then conclusions and the discussion may be what you focus on. Maybe your summarizing methodology then those chapters are of interest. In any case, you will read parts of the paper that are mostly relevant to what you are trying to find out. This may take a on the order of hours, sometimes less per paper.
Sometimes you need to spend time on papers to understand the nitty gritty details. I spent 4 days reading three papers to understand the details. I needed to write down equations and try to see the missing steps between the paper equations to understand the derivations etc. This type of reading is not what you normally do but it certainly happens.
So in the end, what you will learn through your PhD is to hone your skills to be able to focus on the details you really need from any paper. It is rare that one reads one paper at a time, usually it is a collection of papers and one often has to return to check on details that you either have forgotten, or may have missed, or, in fact, the author has missed. The need to go into the smallest detail of a paper depends on what you need to get out of the paper and with time (continuing through your professional life) you will improve on these skills through additional reading.
Though not an expert in reading journals, I would like to provide my point of view. Actually the answer for the question can be made from different perspectives.
We read journal articles for multiple reasons:
Present in a journal club
Attend a journal club
Search for a protocol
Search for a reference
curiosity about some novelty in the article
In each of these situations the way you read the article would be different along with the time taken to read the article. If I am looking for a particular protocol, lets say, genotyping a polymorphism, I will scan the abstract for the polymorphism name and then I will head straight to the methods to see the genotyping procedure. So this could be as quick as a 30 second search, provided you know for what and where to look.
Lets say, I am looking for data about the prevalence of a particular disease in a specific population. So again, I will scan the abstract for the disease name and the methodology, will head straight to the tables to seen the number of participants diseased out of the total cohort, which also could be a 30 second search provided I know where to look.
Lets say I am attending a journal club and I have the article with me. I will read the abstract, then the conclusion, then glance the tables and figures, then will see the techniques they used just to make sure I know about the techniques before I attend the journal club. It will not be always feasible for the presenter to explain in detail about the techniques in the presentation. This should take around 10 minutes plus the time you spend on search unknown techniques.
Lastly, If am going to present an article in journal club, surely I will be reading the article again and again till I have a thorough understanding for my presentation. Every time I read, I will find a new information in the article. Here the time required will be based on your familiarity with the field and the complexity of the article. It could be hours or days. So according to me its the knowledge about the structure of the journal in your field of expertise matters, than the time taken to read the article.
The time factor depends on what is your objective is from reading the article.
First of all, thank you for your excellent answer. A Scientific Journal usually does not contemplate a physical meeting, rather than a Scientific Conference. When you say "Attend a journal club", what do you mean? To be on the journal list of members?
So this IS my field, but I can obviously only answer for me.
The first thing to say is that this is going to change a lot during your career, and different people will take different amounts of time to reach various milestones.
Assuming we are not taking about a "quick skim", I'd say I now take about an hour to read you average Mol/Sys bio paper. This would be well enough to lead an informal discussion of it (which is how we do our journal clubs), if not quite present a full stand-at-the-front and deliver journal club.
When I started my PhD (17 years ago), reading to the same level would take me a full day. I guess when I started my postdoc it was somewhere in between. Maybe 2-3 hours.
Obviously, if its a paper I need to know back-to-front, inside out, and be able to disect every possible problem or highlight, then its going to take me longer, but I probably wouldn't do that all at once. I'd probably do my 1-hour read, and then come back to particular bits, as and when needed.
Because of my dylexia and dyspraxia, I've never been much of a skimmer. I think this was a benefit when I was a PhD/postdoc, as I was always more aware of the subtleties of papers, and all of the caveats, and methodological quirks of the papers in my field. Now I am faculty, its a real problem, as I just can't keep up with everything I need to be aware of. So different career stages also require different strategies.
Firstly, I agree with the first response, that , in very well written terms the question has pointed out tthe diverse ways to attack a diligently written paper. In fact I would define a typical paper to be read as a slight variation of the same.
I usually let the first read be to grasp the salient points from the paper, and also define:
whether i need it as ateast a typical paper for my future work
if the paper needs to be stored in memory and needs to be noted and annotated.
If the paper does not satisfy the above, it is as good as read.
If the paper satisfies any of these two conditions or both, I would prefer, rather than assigning a long private time for it to be read ( which I have found can absorb as much time as i have) to tackle as under
reread it on the flip side of another paper i am conversant with , in a similar area ( I always have more than one paper to tackle)
reread tougher sections, important sections separately in 20 minute capsules and be sure to carry the conversant science of the paper ( I work in the Finance area and handle complex modelling etc, but I find it also works for any complex management/strategy/organization/communication construct)
Set down a one hour-90 minute window to annotate all the sections and write out the notes for further dissemination or review
Let me know your thoughts on the strategy
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48811 | How to keep track of attendance and student-submitted excuses for absences?
I will be teaching an introductory class, in which attendance is important, with approximately 60 students in 3 sections. I'd like to have a system that:
Enables me to quickly mark whether a student is present.
Allows students to see their own attendance record but not other students'.
Lets students provide information about their absences.
For small classes, students email me (or I email them) for information about absences, but it would be overwhelming with this many students.
A single Google spreadsheet would be great for data entry, and students could use comments to annotate their absences, but it wouldn't protect students' privacy.
Any suggestions (besides not tracking attendance)? My school provides Google Apps and Blackboard, although I'm willing to use other solutions.
UPDATE: I know a hack that would work in Blackboard would be to create a fake assignment for each day (attending class) and enter attendance information (0 or 1) there. This is not ideal because (1) entering data into Blackboard is slower than putting it into a spreadsheet, (2) it would bloat the grade listings seen by the students, and (3) I don't think students could add a comment to the "grade" (the excuse).
There is a similar question, but it does not address how to incorporate excuses/explanations, which, to me, is the tricky part.
"in which attendance is important" -- why? What do you or your students gain from enforcing that?
@Raphael It could be, for instance, that there are departmental/university wide policies on automatic failures due to absences. There are very real reasons for attendance policies in classes like band/choir/theatre where if half the class skips out, the other half can't adequately have the expected class (trying properly doing a choir rehearsal with only a random third of the choir every day). If you have an attendance policy, but don't take roll... you're opening yourself up to students disputing any reduction you give them for non-attendance
@guifa My question was about enforcing attendance, not enforcing an attendance policy. Of course, if you have one you've got to implement it. I think you shouldn't have one, though.
@Raphael Your comment is off-topic. This forum is not for unsolicited advice.
Voting to reopen. This question differs from the "duplicate" one due to the need to handle student excuses for being absent.
@MadJack Concur; I also see that this question aims to make the information available back to students, which is much more difficult than just tracking within a group of instructors.
@espertus I don't follow. It seems to me that the point of your question (and many others on this site) is getting (subjective or experience-driven) advice.
I don't think that attendance of the lectures is so important. It may vary for the students. When I was an undergraduate student, I have had top grades and even maximum without going to one of the lectures. I had considered that after studying at home for 3 hours I would be more advanced than after 3-4 courses. However, in some cases for some subjects, attendance is crucial.
@Raphael I'm sorry for not noticing your question until now. The reason that I objected to your comment was that I was soliciting opinions on technology on recording absences, not on whether I should be recording absences.
There is a sort of a solution using Google Apps, but it's ugly and it's still very much imperfect (more on that at the bottom).
You could create a master spreadsheet (that for the sake of example has the internal ID of "masterSheet") that looks like this:
A B C D E F
1| Name | 9/1 | 9/1 Comment | 9/2 | 9/2 Comment | etc.
2| Student A | | | | |
3| Student B | | | | |
4| Student C | | | | |
Then you'll create another spreadsheet for Student A:
A B C
1| Date | Attendance Grade | Comment/Excuse
2| 9/1 | =IMPORTRANGE("masterSheet","B2") |
3| 9/2 | =IMPORTRANGE("masterSheet","D2") |
3| etc. | =IMPORTRANGE("masterSheet","X2") |
You'll then make columns A and B (as well as cell C1) uneditable except by you. You don't necessarily need to type in the IMPORTRANGE() stuff manually, and you do it formulaicly much easier if you have both the master and student spreadsheets go in the same order (although it's possible either way).
Initially, the student will just see
A B C
1| Date | Attendance Grade | Comment/Excuse
2| 9/1 | |
3| 9/2 | |
3| etc. | |
As you put in their attendance grades for each day, it will show up automatically in theirs, but they won't be able to edit it if you properly protect the range. Now, for their comments. You'll do the exact same thing, but in reverse, and you'll get:
A B C D E F
1| Name | 9/1 | 9/1 Comment | 9/2 | 9/2 Comment | etc.
2| Student A | | =IMPORTRANGE("studentA","C2") | | =IMPORTRANGE("studentA","C3") |
3| Student B | | =IMPORTRANGE("studentB","C2") | | =IMPORTRANGE("studentB","C3") |
4| Student C | | =IMPORTRANGE("studentC","C2") | | =IMPORTRANGE("studentC","C3") |
If a student enters in a comment in their spreadsheet, it will show up on yours.
Now, a few comments about this:
It's ugly. It's awful. But it basically does what you want. But there's also a security consideration that will greatly reduce its efficacy to be effectively useless. Besides the fact that a student could get access to your original spreadsheet by using IMPORTRANGE() on their comment field, Google Apps requires a user to have viewing or editing privileges to the document referenced by IMPORTRANGE(). There are many ways ways to obfuscate, but it will only ever be obfuscation, and not real security.
What you should do from my experience
Just use Blackboard. It does NOT take that long to take roll with it. It is a spreadsheet. On day one of the semester, I take five minutes and create a column for each day of class, and then don't have to worry about it again (and if you're teaching the same classes, ideally they're on the same schedule and you can either merge the course or clone the course so you only do it once for all three). Then each day I just hit in 5,enter,0,enter,5,enter,5,enter,5,enter,0,enter (5 is fully present in my personal system, 0 is absent).
All the attendance columns get pushed to the bottom of the student's view (the right of the instructor's view) by using Grade Center -> Manage -> Column Organization.
For students to contact you, make it clear they must use a standard subject line that can be caught and filtered in your e-mail program into a specific e-mail excuse box. If I accidentally marked them as absent and they weren't, or if they had an excuse, they are instructed to e-mail me using a subject line CC'd to themselves that begins "Attendance:" and that gets filtered into an attendance folder for that semester (you may want them to also add in a section, if you don't have merged courses) where I can then deal with it. At the end of the semester, I have students verify that I properly tended to any necessary changes in attendance grades and then the one or two mistakes (if any) can be fixed then.
I regularly deal with 120 students a semester (4 sections x 30 students) and have had no problems with this set up.
Unless you have an attendance-specific module in Blackboard that provides the functionality you want, you are going to have problems finding anything that is FERPA-compliant or that is not going to be a giant PITA to use.
Thank you. Out of curiosity, do they remember to use the special subject line?
@espertus For the most part, yeah. I tell them anything that doesn't follow it is filtered automatically into the trash (maybe when I'm an older grouchier academic, I'll actually have it do that...). If they don't and it flows into your normal mailbox, it's up to you whether you want to deal with it and manually move it to that mailbox since your syllabus would have told them otherwise or just trash it.
I think I'll also ask them to cc their TA, whose responsibility it will be to update the Blackboard record from Disappeared to Acknowledged.
For a multi-section course with this many students, you really should make use of a Learning Management System (Blackboard in your case) for an online gradebook and attendance tracking system that allows students to see their grades and attendance records. My experience is with Canvas and Moodle rather than Blackboard, so I won't attempt to answer this question in detail, but I'm sure that Blackboard should be able to do this.
At another level, you'll need to record who actually shows up each day. You can enter the information by hand, or you might consider using an audience response system ("clicker") and have the students check themselves in. For large lecture courses this works very well.
A possible downside to using clickers for attendance: if a student who intends on being absent gives their clicker to a friend in the class and the friend checks them in. I don't know how problematic this is in practice, though.
Thank you. We aren't using clickers, although we are using computers they have to sign in to, so I might be able to use those. Blackboard does not provide the desired functionality.
@MadJack Some of my colleagues have caught students doing that. That's cheating, and with a sufficiently robust punishment (e.g. the threat of an F in the course) it's easy enough to stop. I've never had any problems with it in my classes.
@espertus you can simply make an assignment for each day "attend class" and then either award 0 points or 100 points depending on whether or not the student showed up that day.
I neglected to say that I don't consider entering data into Blackboard to a lightweight task. It's also ugly to create a column in the grades for each day.
Whether using clickers or a mere sign-in sheet, I typically give the class a few minutes (to allow for stragglers), and then at a convenient take-a-breath point, double-check the number of registered clickers/signatures against the number of heads actually present. If they don't match we have A Very Serious Situation that I will bring class to a halt to address (since they do, indeed, invariably believe it's No Big Deal to sign in for others).
If necessary, ask those with clickers to hold them above their heads as they answer a trivial question, to confirm that no one is holding up two or more, and then check the record later to see which in-class remote was not triggered for that question. That person is, as Richelieu would say, TOAST.
(Alas, this is obviously impractical for auditorium-sized sections, in which the issue usually needs to be addressed the most often. In those, I augment the clickers with signature sheets every once in a while so that I can scan for identical handwriting on consecutive names. Not perfect, but a start.)
And what is stopping a cheater from showing his clicker with his right hand and holding the extra one on his left, under the table?
(For that matter. what prevents a cheater from implementing a clicker-spoofer app on their cell phone to simulate ten of their friends?)
@Davidmh, I would do this only for the smaller classrooms, where I've got clear line of sight (<20 feet) to all students. In an auditorium, there would indeed be no point to trying it. (I'd also be asking them to keep their other hand on the desk, just in case, since oh yes they do indeed love to keep an extra smartphone concealed in the lap.)
@JeffE, I am highly interested in the spoofing apps you described; any names to look into? To combat it, I would still rely on the head-count (again, why it'll never work in a large auditorium). Should I get 30 responses in a room of 20, I would immediately bring the class to a halt and pass around a roll sheet. Those not actually present have been revealed to have used a friend to "sign the roll" for them, in a class in which participation is a (tiny) part of the grade. Thus, they have just falsified the academic record of the class in order to achieve a higher grade. ACADEMIC FRAUD.
In one auditorium course, I brought in a cheating case the roll sheets that showed that the "good" student whose tests bore evidence of copying (identical arithmetic mistakes only at the same 3 moments) by the "weak" students had been signing them in (her handwriting) for weeks. Very unlikely they had ever been present at all. Before the Academic Council, the effort to obscure their absence was viewed by the (otherwise skeptical) faculty as genuine evidence of intent on her part (not just that she was unwittingly spied upon), and all were given an F.
She later came to my office and tearfully admitted, "I think my friends took advantage of me."
If you have only 30 students, you really don't need clickers. If you have 400 (as I will next semester), then one student impersonating ten is undetectable noise. No, I don't know of any spoofing apps/devices, but I don't know of any reason that a bright, motivated student couldn't build one, so I assume they must exist.
Aha. Found one.
Ha...love the immediate re-response follow-up. Yeah, if we think a student has thought up some new method of chicanery, it probably won't take us very long to find one. #Rule11 Oh, the effort they will go to just to avoid a 10am class. Thanks, @JeffE!
BTW, FWIW, my purpose in a smallish class using clickers is twofold: to keep them engaged more actively (after watching too many come to class and sleep to get around the school's attendance requirements), and because my own attendance-taking capabilities are often inhibited by my difficulty recognizing faces (even extended family members, at times). If you're really active, I might remember, but it helps just to have a bit of a paper-trail backup.
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81290 | Which review recommendation should I give to maximize the likelihood that a manuscript is rejected?
DISCLAIMER: As some readers have found the following question and prior title (How to best kill a manuscript as peer reviewer) outrageously unethical, I want to clarify that, by asking this question, I was simply and constructively trying to be provocative, not suggesting any means to hijack the peer review process.
I often peer review manuscripts for scholarly journals. In the most typical scenario, the editor asks me a quality appraisal and a priority appraisal.
For quality, the typical recommendations can be (mutually exclusive): accept as is, minor revision, major revision, and reject.
For priority, the typical alternatives can be (mutually exclusive): top priority, mid priority, low priority.
My experience and perspective is that most manuscripts do not deserve a rejection, as they most often have some merits, at least in the field of pragmatic cardiovascular research, where most works are only incrementally original.
If my will is to try to "kill the manuscript", i.e. maximize the likelihood it is eventually rejected because I find it unsuitable for that specific journal, but still finding it has some incremental value, I simply recommend minor or major revisions, but give low or very low priority.
Is this sound and appropriate? Am I wrong in this approach?
Note: Votes on questions should reflect whether a question is on-topic, well-posed, etc.; not agreement or disagreement with the idea reflected in the question.
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. (Comments can't be moved to chat more than once, so future chatter can only be deleted instead.)
@ff524 I seem to recall that there was a way to migrate a whole chat room into another. I forgot the specifics, but definitely recall doing it once or twice to merge multiple migrated-to-chat discussions. You may want to ask in TL.
@FedericoPoloni I find this new title to be very unclear. Also, it does not seem to match the question body very well.
@Raphael I know it's not perfect. Feel free to edit it if you have a better suggestion. Did you find the previous title clearer?
@FedericoPoloni I think the previous title was harsh but at least fostered discussion. This one is a bit cooled down.
The question body says "my will is to...maximize the likelihood it is eventually rejected". The title has NOTHING to do with that! I've changed the title by simply quoting the key line of the body, so now they agree.
I'm trying to understand the reasons for the harsh judgement of the OP reflected in many of the answers and comments. My reading of the question is that the OP feels uncomfortable recommending "reject" for sound, original, but not groundbreaking research, and is asking what the "best" course of action is when the submission is not sufficiently groundbreaking for the journal to which it has been submitted. (I believe others have interpreted the question as "What is the surest way to kill a manuscript?", which, to my mind, is not assuming good faith on the part of the OP.)
My brief answer is that one should recommend "reject", but should state in the report that the research is solid and original, and would be suitable for publication in a different journal. The reviewer might even make suggestions as to suitable publication venues.
The problem seems to be that the reviewer is being asked to assess quality factors including methodological soundness, originality, and clarity of the written report on scale of "accept as is", "accept with minor revisions", "resubmit with major revisions", and "reject", which do not form a scale of quality at all, but, rather, are recommendations as to course of action. I agree with (my interpretation of) the OP that "reject" is not an accurate quality assessment for research that is correct and original, although it might be the correct course of action for a particular journal. Thus it might seem that the only option left to a reviewer who does not want to send the wrong message regarding quality is to use the priority scale as a way to send the desired message regarding recommended course of action. As I state in the previous paragraph, however, one may escape from the straightjacket provided by the checkboxes on the reporting form by spelling out one's recommendation in the text of the report.
There is no way to assume good faith for the statement: "If my will is to try to "kill the manuscript", i.e. maximize the likelihood it is eventually rejected because I find it unsuitable for that specific journal...." The reviewer's job is not to "maximize the likelihood" of eventual anything. The reviewer's job is to recommend a course of action and give his/her reasons for that recommendation. Doing something else is inevitably in bad faith.
While I'm broadly in agreement with the other answers and with Wildcard's comment here, I think there is also room for the interpretation that `killing the manuscript' is just a loose, rather dysphemistic, phrase for what the OP proposes to do. Perhaps the OP is reluctant to simply recommend rejection, and seeks a more diplomatic verdict that achieves the same effect. As I say, I agree with the the consensus expressed in the other answers, but also agree with this answer that the implied judgement of the OP is perhaps harsh.
Then again, I haven't noticed the OP going out of his way to clear up misunderstandings...
@Wildcard: I think one can assume good faith. I don't see how a reviewer who chooses "reject" can be characterized as doing anything other than trying to "maximize the likelihood" that the manuscript will be rejected. This particular OP, however, appears to feel that, due to its overloading as a quality assessment, "reject" is not appropriate for many manuscripts, even when rejection would be his recommended course of action for that manuscript in that particular journal.
@ShaneORourke: the OP has made a couple of edits, adding "because I find it unsuitable for that specific journal", "where most works are only incrementally original", and "but still finding it has some incremental value", all of which, to me, suggest trying to do right by the authors of the submitted manuscript, rather than the opposite.
@WillOrrick, which just wastes everyone's time. In the field of dating there's even a phrase for this behavior: to lead someone on. "I don't want to turn her down for another date (even though I have no slightest interest in this person myself) because she would be a good match for someone...." It's not a nice thing, whether deliberately malicious or unintentionally cruel. However, I get where you are coming from. I just strongly disagree.
@WillOrrick Thanks for the careful answer. I think we are on the same page...
Is this sound and appropriate?
No. Your job as a reviewer is not to choose which manuscripts are accepted or rejected. Your job is to advise the editor as to the merits and the flaws of the manuscript, and then let the editor decide the fate of the manuscript.
Thus, you should give the manuscript the ratings that most accurately reflect your perception of it, not the ratings that you think will get it "killed".
I think that there is an underlying misunderstanding
I don't think I misunderstood the first version of your question, and my answer still applies. It is not up to the reviewer to maximize the likelihood of any particular outcome; just tell the editor what you think of the manuscript, and leave the rest to the editor.
This means that if you are asked by the editor to recommend an overall decision, you should recommend an overall decision. If asked by the editor to recommend a decision based on quality and specifically excluding the priority, novelty, and usefulness of contribution, then you should do exactly that. (If you aren't clear on what factors should be included your quality recommendation, ask the editor.) If you believe that a manuscript should be rejected from a given journal because its contribution is incremental, you can indicate as much in the part of the review where you're asked to assess the manuscript's originality and/or in a separate comment to the editor.
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
If your intention is to "kill" the manuscript, you should give a reject recommendation. Rejecting does not mean there are no merits to the manuscript. In fact, I would guess that most manuscripts are rejected because the journal is not a good fit, or the results are not strong enough for the journal, but might be appropriate for a lower tier or more specialised journal.
Of course you can and should discuss the merits of the manuscript in your report, as well as suggestions you think would improve the paper, even if your recommendation is to reject. It is then up to the editor to make the final decision.
In my opinion, you should only give a "revisions" recommendation if you will likely accept the manuscript after the requested revisions are made. Purposefully setting the bar for these revisions too high because your original intent is to "kill" the manuscript for that journal seems disingenuous to me.
It does not “seem” disingenuous, it outright is. Recommending “revisions” means: “I, as a reviewer, recommend the publication of this manuscript once these following revisions have been made”. If the revised manuscript then comes around and you fail to honour this promise, you’ve effectively lied to the authors (and the editor), and led them on a merry goose chase that, in many cases, has taken months and costs thousands of pounds in research money. Recommending revisions when you have no intention of accepting them amounts to theft of time and money, and is therefore deeply unethical.
@Konrad: Nice riff on "Nay, it is. I know not 'seems'."
There is no "kill the manuscript" in a reviewer's job description.
If the reviewer thinks the manuscript is unoriginal or flawed (e.g. technically), that's what they should say in their review. They can recommend it to be rejected for the given journal.
However, the way the question is put sounds as if the reviewer may want to try to manipulate the editor, and if they do, they arrogate to themselves a role which they do not have.
Their job is to identify whether the paper is sound, original, (and possibly) fitting to the journal, according to their best knowledge and in good faith. A scientist thinking in terms of "killing manuscripts" effectively excludes themselves from the pool of available reviewers, hands down.
Could not agree more........Kill the manuscript........seriously, this is the most egregiously unethical thing I have read on SE so far. And what surprises me most, is it's not done through an anonymous posting, almost as if OP is proud of his actions >.<
@NZKshatriya Indeed, you nailed it. I almost thought this was a trolling attempt, but then came to the conclusion it was probably a seriously intended question.
I would have thought that "questions" such as these would be disallowed, especially here in Academia.
@NZKshatriya Questions like these should not be disallowed because the history of academia is full of unethical or borderline ethical practices and we should be able to give suitable answers pointing out the problems.
@MassimoOrtolano If the question was intended to be seriously asked, which we assume here, then answering it will give someone with complete lack of "natural intuition" concerning what is appropriate the opportunity to re-gauge their code of conduct. Some people may have grown up in less than ideal research cultures and need to learn what constitutes good/acceptable practice.
@CaptainEmacs In fact, I agree with you, as per my comment above ;-)
@MassimoOrtolano Yes, I should have added Shatriya to the addressee list, but I had to choose. I wanted to reinforce your point, thanks for the support!
Your strategy may have the effect of killing the paper more broadly than you intend. Suppose the paper has both merits and flaws, but is not suitable for the journal for which you are reviewing.
Suppose you recommended "reject" with discussion of what is good about the paper and what could be improved, and maybe where it would be a better fit. If the editor accepts your recommendation the authors can immediately get on with making revisions taking into account your comments, and submitting it to another journal.
Now suppose you recommend revisions, with no intention of ultimately accepting the paper, and the editor accepts your recommendation. The authors are going to waste elapsed time, personal time, and energy on trying to get it into the current journal. It may take more than one round before they realize they are not going to be able to satisfy you and move on to a different venue. That delay and wasted effort could reduce the chances of the paper being published as authors move on to other research.
The question suggests that you have the whole procedure of reviewing wrong, so it's not sound nor appropriate.
Rejection or major or minor revisions answer to what revisions the manuscript might need or it has inherent flaws that cannot be amended with reasonable modifications. In any case, you have to justify your recommendation (and thankfully there are other reviewers also). So, if you recommend minor revision for a manuscript that should be rejected in your opinion, then you are a bad reviewer. The same if you accept a manuscript that should be revised or rejected.
Another recommendation that you are often asked is the priority. This asks for something completely different. Usually it refers to the novelty or the significance of the results.
Thus, it's possible for a manuscript to be acceptable but of low priority. This would normally lead it to another journal. Although it sounds contradictory, there might be a manuscript with very important or high impact subject or results, but with some experimental flaws that makes it worth for a rejection. Wouldn't you "kill" it? (there are some famous retractions when flaws or manipulations were later discovered)
It's true that our recommendations as reviewers are accepted often as they are from the editor... unless the reviewers disagree. In that case, the editor has to make their own opinion and then it's your validity as a reviewer that is on stake.
I think there is some linguistic confusion in some posts here. Deciding is not the same as recommending, and English language nicely gives different words for the two activities, viz “decide” and “recommend”. A reviewer makes a decision what to recommend to the editor; the editor makes a decision what to do with the manuscript.
As for my own opinion on the question itself, it seems a bit unfortunate to accept the responsibility of being a reviewer—which is a responsibility not just to the editor and to the journal but to the entire scholarly community—but then to try to game the system for whatever personal reason you might have. Regardless of your recommendation, if you think a paper has some merits, say that in your review, thereby making that part of the data which your review content constitutes. If you do not think a recommendation of “reject” will get a paper rejected, maybe you should discuss that with the editor.
Answers and comments here jumping at your throat have to do with the publishing culture in computer science and maths (what most users of this site do), which differs significantly from the one in biology or medicine. I think your question is not optimally phrased, but if curating for quality is your ultimate goal, I applaud that intent. Quality curation is a critical aspect of academic publishing and there generally is too little of it.
How to best kill a manuscript
Unfortunately, you can't.
Authors almost never resolve themselves to ditch a manuscript because that's very frustrating, and that would mean a shorter bibliography. You can be instrumental in its rejection from the journal you review for, but it's simply going to pop-up in the review queue of another less reputable journal.
How can I maximize the likelihood it is eventually rejected because I find it unsuitable for that specific journal.
By recommending rejection exactly for that reason. Write a review pointing out what you think should be improved in the paper, that's the service you're asked to do to the authors, and tell the editor you think the paper's contribution is too modest to warrant publication in that journal.
If you want to have more decision power in that process, you should become an editor yourself. But that is not something you typically decide on your own. If a community values your curating abilities, then you might get that job.
I'm in math and I think your answer is perfectly applicable there too. It's totally reasonable for a reviewer in any field to want low-quality work not to be published. And as you say, the one and only ethical way to approach that goal that is to write a review suggesting rejection and explaining your reasons, and hope the editor is convinced. The question seems to be suggesting "strategic" methods, whereby some other kind of report might actually lead to a higher probability of rejection, and I feel that is inappropriate.
@NateEldredge I agree that one should not look for "strategic" ways of having papers rejected. I mentioned maths and CS because it seems these fields have more a "publish everything" kind of culture, at least that's what I gathered from my experience on this site.
I don't think I agree that math has a "publish everything" kind of culture, at least if by "publish" you mean "publish in a journal that the mainstream math research community regards as legitimate." (Maybe that's part of the issue? I would be willing to believe that there are more authors of math papers who are really not members of the community of research mathematicians than there are authors of medical papers who really are not members of the community of medical researchers.)...
...For instance I have a couple of papers that I submitted several times for publication, without success, and eventually I tired of the effort of trying to find a reputable home for them. When these papers are rejected, the referees and the editor did not identify any flaws and did not claim that there was no novelty, just that the results were not significant enough to be published. In fact I think that in some branches of math at least, "routine" or "incremental" work is really frowned upon, and in order to get published anywhere reputable, a paper should contain at least one "new idea."
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48059 | Is it possible to support oneself as a lifelong graduate student?
I don't care much for being rich. I don't mind a modest life if I can just do research in the field I love.
Thus I am curious to know if it is possible to make a living just by studying. (Suppose I could hypothetically get funding for every Master or PhD program). Is there an age limit or a limit to the number of PhD degrees that I could get? Are there any other reasons that prevent this?
if you "hypothetically" could get funding, yes. but that is a huge if, a completely unrealistic hypothesis.
I wonder if you make the same mistake I made when I was young, I thought that studying and doing research was the same thing. You can make a living doing research, studying not so much.
@henning Even with funding, a university is fairly unlikely to admit somebody to study a second PhD and it would be hard to find an advisor. For a third PhD, it would be virtually impossible.
Or you can live on welfare...on a recent trip to the UK it also appears that it is effectively possible to go to school constantly and live off of government loans without needing to ever repay them, and with forgiveness after 10 years. Just talking to a few family members who'd been through the UK system, I wasn't able to find out how this loophole was closed. Perhaps there is a class of perpetual students in the UK.
Step 1: realize that collecting PhDs is a fairly useless endeavour. Having 1 proves you can do research, having multiple proves little more. After obtaining a PhD in a field you like you would have to move to another one to get another PhD (or, you know, do what most people do and start a postdoc in the field you like).
In short, no - at some point you're going to actually have to get a job. Sad but true - the academic party bus eventually grinds to a stop. You can drag it out as long as you possibly can, if that's what you think you want, but perhaps you need to step back and ask yourself why this seems like an attractive option. Are you unduly concerned about going out into "the real world"? A lack of interest in/fear of change? Happy with what's familiar/don't want to do anything different? Perhaps talking it over with a counselor could provide some valuable insights.
@DavidRicherby, Why is it hard to get a second PhD? Aren't there university courses for adults? And aren't there also many people who switch fields?
@yters Do you have any evidence that it's possible to get loans for second and subsequent bachelor's degrees in the UK? I've never heard of such a thing happening.
@Pacerier A PhD is a university course for adults! A second PhD has very little value and is absolutely not required to change fields. PhDs consume significant resources: most universities and academics would rather use those resources to get somebody a first PhD, not to get somebody a second PhD that they don't need.
@DavidRicherby, not quite sure how it works, but my understanding is an acquaintance is working on her second degree in midwifery using government loans, after already getting a first degree in linguistics.
@yters It's possible that the distinction there is that a degree in midwifery is training for a specific occupation in a way that a degree in, say, mathematics or philosophy isn't.
@DavidRicherby, Oops, "adult" is the wrong word... What I meant is, aren't there PhD courses for "older people"? E.g. someone who retired at 35 and then started pursuing a PhD after retirement. Or someone who decided after 5 years that his current PhD subject is not something he want to do for his life and then switch.
@Pacerier The early retirement case sounds like somebody doing their first PhD. Nothing I said was about age: it was about getting multiple PhDs. Somebody who decides 5 years into their PhD that they don't like it should probably either buckle down and finish it or try to adapt the project to something they're more interested in. But, again, if they quit that PhD and start a second, that's not a case of somebody getting multiple PhDs. (Though I imagine most sources of funding would be very wary of somebody who'd quit one PhD asking for money to start another.)
@DavidRicherby, Ic. So the only people with multiple Phds are those that come from uber rich families (since they can simply pay themselves)?
@Pacerier People just don't do multiple PhDs. It's not how the system works. As I said, a PhD student requires a large commitment of resources from the university. Universities and, in particular, advisors don't commit those resources just so that people can collect PhDs as a hobby.
Why would you want to get multiple PhD degrees when the first one is all you need to do research for life? Much of the point of the degree is a certification of your ability to do independent research. After you've done that, you can get a job where you do research all day long! Many people get a professor's job where there are other duties, but plenty of people get jobs doing just research at government labs or non-teaching academic departments (like me!).
I didn't know that, and this is maybe what I was looking for! thanks (Is not so clear to me in how scientists manage to keep doing researches after they get their a-kind-of-degree and I thought they just do many PhDs)
No, not at all. We write grant proposals to government agencies which fund research like NSF and NIH. We use that money to pay salaries of researchers to do the proposed projects.
when the first one is all you need to do research for life? — In fact, you don't even need the first one.
@JeffE, yeah, but it increases the odds in most fields somewhat.
@JeffE Same as how one doesn't strictly need a college degree to get a job, but in some fields it increases the odds considerably.
@Bill Barth If you don't mind me asking, what field is your PhD in and what kind of research are you doing right now? People always say it is not worth doing PhD unless you want to stay at university.
@N0ir, I finished my PhD in Aerospace Engineering at UT Austin in 2004. I work for TACC also at UT. I have a managerial and research role leading a group of ~20 PhDs supporting our HPC user community and doing research. Clearly many jobs in the US have a PhD as a requirement and aren't in academia: pharma industry research, national labs, computer industry research, etc.
@BillBarth, You might be able to find a job that allows you to do research that you like, but the real problem is not everyone is as lucky to live in the U.S. where the government pays for research.
@Pacerier, yes, sure, but many people who will read this do live in the US, EU, Japan, and other regions or countries with governments that do pay for research. The question is not "can everyone" or even "can I" but "if it is possible" to do so. And the answer to that question is clearly "Yes!" In addition, many of my staff are international folks who have competed against strong pools of candidates to join our team from abroad, so it is also possible to move internationally to pursue a research lifestyle. If you are good at research and willing to move, there are lots of opportunities.
Another point is that many PhD programs (in the U.S., for sure) will not admit people who already have a PhD, no matter that it was/is in a different topic, etc., with or without funding.
And, these days, in the U.S., funding for graduate study in many subjects is shrinking, for many reasons. While it is illegal to discriminate based on age in the U.S., I think most PhD programs gauge their own success significantly by how well their graduates do in the academic (or other) professional spheres, and effectively promising to not participate would most likely kill chances of funding... Certainly does not help.
That is, in general consonance with the other answers, getting a PhD is just an initial step toward being an independent scholar (if not necessarily a commodified "researcher" in the grant-getting sense, etc). These programs are aimed at people who are intellectually/technically slightly immature (whatever their chronological age), and who do some sort of apprenticeship. If you think about it that way, an itinerant endless-apprentice is not what people want, because they want to have apprentices become "journeymen", in the archaic but useful sense.
independent scholar vs. commodified researcher -- that is an interesting distinction.
@henning, "Independent scholar"? Whatever is an "independent scholar" all about? What do they do?
@Pacerier, "independent" in the sense of not being an "intellectually dependent" student/apprentice to a more experienced person. No implication was intended about "financial independence".
@paulgarrett, Ic, so the distinction is not between "independent scholar" vs. "commodified researcher" because one could be both.
@Pacerier, yes, once could have become "independent" of one's thesis advisor, and do genuine research, without necessarily having written grant proposals and gotten federal funding (thinking about the U.S.)
@paulgarrett, Actually most of these "independent scholars" are "commodified researchers". Just look at the number of Phds Google (and friends) are hiring these days.
Is there a limit of age in studing? Is there a limit of numbers of PhD that I could get?
No, but realistically there is a limit for how many years / PhDs you will find funding agencies and advisors who put up with you. Funding agencies / universities do not give out stipends just for fun - once it becomes obvious that you are really just studying everything without ever taking the next career step, nobody will be particularly thrilled to invest time, energy, and money into teaching you something that you actually don't plan to ever put to use.
I'm not saying that I'm not interested in use what I lear, or doing it just for fun, but more like improving my knodledge by working doing researches. I wouldn't like to study in some thesis that I know it will never be usefull. Thanks for the answer!, when you put like this, sounds more obvious, sorry, maybe my problem is thinking that just in school someone can improve his knodledge...
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152319 | Can a co-author prevent me from submitting our joint paper to any journal except the one he prefers?
I‘ve been told (by a PI who is a co-author of the paper) that I cannot submit a jointly authored paper to any journal in my field except Frontiers because anything else is “politically incorrect” or “too slow”.
We have a new method developed with a colleague in a different (more quantitative) field, the results are new, answer an open question and are replicated in two languages.
I found out this week that the PI saying we cannot submit to a regular journal has just had another paper accepted on part of the same topic at a good journal in our field. The findings we have in this paper go against the findings of the paper he wrote five years ago with that group (and I’m guessing maybe against this paper then too, but I have not read this paper).
Is there anything I can do?
At the moment, I have suggested PLOS One as a better alternative to Frontiers, but honestly this is just such a waste - the results are really cool, it took us a year and travelling to get them, and they come from a really good interdisciplinary collaboration. I’m really angry and upset about this - I’m in the third year of a postdoc with no publications, and we finished this data collection over two years ago. Do I have to accept the decision of the PI even though I am first-author and the decision has explicitly not been made on the content, quality or potential readership of our paper?
Note: The paper isn’t a particularly confrontational paper: it just presents previous conflicting results and then shows how the new method is more sensitive and so validates most previous experimental results whilst showing that the theoretical implications people were drawing from them. I‘m sure it’s solid, and I know the co-authors think so too - we had checks worked into the method, replicated it in two languages and again in one of the languages. This type of paper is usually published in a good discipline-specific journal (and it is very rare to have data like this in our field). Both professors are retiring - one already is and wants to use the data in a course he’s teaching - the other retires soon, and is very politically engaged (I have been told to turn down invited talks because they would have involved plane travel). The question is whether as first-author I have any say in where the paper goes.
Wait - you're writing a paper on a topic similar to one your PI has just had accepted and you haven't even read that paper? That seems like a very deep level of dysfunction. Anyways, post docs are typically quite brief - why are you still in the same one after 3 years?
It’s a four year contract
It’s weird he didn’t tell us he was writing that paper isn’t it?
Does the PI genuinely stand behind the research? You say the results "go against two decades of previous research", including one of his own previous papers. Does he now believe that these results are wrong?
I think he does - a lot of those studies contradicted each other, and the method we have resolve those contradictions by using a different comparison. The paper he wrote had one experiment that worked (we have replicated that one), and one that was a null result - we found significant effects with different materials. The paper drew a conclusion from the null result in comparison to the experiment with significant results, and the results we have now show that that comparison doesn’t hold, and so the conclusion doesn’t hold. The central topic was a different one though
But this is a good point - do you think it’s not just what he’s saying about political correctness? I specifically asked him if it was ok to argue against his paper and he said of course, and agreed with the points we made
I very much do not understand the "political correctness" argument. Maybe this is meant to be about open access? But I would not call that "political correctness". Unfortunately, without your advisor's own explanation I'm guessing that guessing is all we can do for you on that point.
@Nworb If possible, I'd recommend asking someone whom you trust, who knows (or has at least heard of) your PI, and who is broadly familiar with the subject matter. Your Ph.D. advisor, for example (if you have a good relationship with them). Your situation seems too particular to be able to give good advice here.
In comments to an answer OP says the PI is a co-author of the paper in question. That's critically important information and should be edited into the question.
Something’s not right. If indeed you have a new method in a different field, how can this go against a paper written 5 years ago, and why would someone see this as undermining a 5yr-old result valid for a different field?
Is the PI your supervisor? I'm confused as to why you refer to him as "a PI"; the more relevant questions are whether he is a co-author (apparently yes) and whether he is your supervisor.
@DavidKetcheson No, he’s not my supervisor, I have a PhD. He is the PI of the project I am employed on, and is a co-author on this paper. The main idea of the project he is PI of didn’t work, and we did this as a side project with a student (who is a co-author but not in academia).
@Nworb The question is who´s the boss in your shop. The title "PI" does not come with disciplinary power.
@Karl It’s a humanities project. The two PIs are both professors in different fields. I’m on a fixed term four year contract. This PI has not helped with analysis and not written any of the paper. He’s repeatedly stalled publication (first by saying we needed to run more experiments, then saying we had to publish open access, then saying discipline specific journals take too long, now by not okaying the manuscript before he left for holiday).
For non-academics who come here from the HNQ section: Frontiers is a highly controversial publisher of scientific journals. They previously appeared on Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory publishers and their journals have been criticized for accepting too many low quality papers with fundamental errors. They have even removed editors from their journal for rejecting too many papers.
For “politically incorrect “ and “too slow” read peer reviewed. I’m afraid you might have to write off your entire post doc as a bust and start again. If you do a thorough review of your PIs works you may find serious issues with the quality and possibly accusations of academic fraud. To insist on a single journal is suspicious and fir that journal to be one that has previously been accused of predatory publishing is a big red flag.
Jointly authored papers require permission from all authors. If he is a co-author and you can't convince him, then you are pretty much stuck. Editors will expect it.
And fighting with your PI is probably not the wisest career move.
It is a different story if the PI isn't one of the authors, but that only applies to the first point above, not the second. The "we" in your question wasn't completely clear about who is included.
It may not be too strong to say that a good letter of recommendation from your PI is one of the most valuable things you get out of a post doc. It lets you move on and get away from improper behavior. Winning a battle, but losing a war is sub-optimal.
So you would accept your PI telling you that none of your papers can be submitted to any field-specific journal? Isn’t this harassment?
@Nworb, if he is co-author then you need to - or convince him. If not, then you are setting up a fight that you might win at the expense of your job and career. Tough working with someone unreasonable, but if they have the power and are willing to use it....
Yes - the PI is an author. I also didn’t mean submitting it somewhere without his permission. I mean is a PI allowed to stop a postdoc submitting any paper to a field specific journal because it is „politically incorrect“?
If you are asking about the ethical issue, then likely no. But that doesn't get you out of your dilemma.
@Buffy What you say is right but at the same time makes me fume. I hate when people exploit others for their own objectives. Very likely that this PI has some arrangement with an editor of Frontier. The politicians and salesmen have been ruining academia.
@kosmos, yes, it makes me angry too. But taking a long view and protecting your future career is sometimes a necessary response. There are many such situations described on this site.
I'd suggest you analyze your options in a more strategic way rather than going heads-on against the PI:
First, is there a way to clarify things with the PI, maybe reach some kind of compromise? Ask them to clarify exactly what they mean by "politically incorrect" or "too slow". They might actually have reasonable conditions, in which case you could try to find a good journal which suits both of you.
If this doesn't work, you need to identify exactly the obstacle. Normally the PI should tell you, but apparently this might involve this other paper that they published. If so, is there a way to smooth things up? Maybe by re-writing some parts of your paper in some kind of diplomatic way, like acknowledging previous findings and presenting the present work as a contribution which goes beyond them, as opposed to bluntly confronting them. Scientific progress often involves healthy debate of ideas, it shouldn't involve conflict of egos.
You mentioned another colleague and also "a good interdisciplinary collaboration", so it seems that the work involves multiple co-authors right? Where do these co-authors stand on the issue? Could they be convinced to support your cause? Would some of them be in a better position than you to convince the PI, or at least to put a bit of pressure on them? If the work is really good, I would expect the other colleagues to also be eager to publish it in a good journal. And if your PI is blocking the paper for selfish reasons, their position is going to be weak in front of the other colleagues.
Thanks, this is the type of advice I was looking for. It sounds like you‘re agreeing that the PI decides where the paper goes, even if it’s clear that they’re not basing the decision on the paper?
I was thinking in the same lines. If you could talk to the other collaborator and arrange a discussion on this topic it could solve your problem.
@Nworb it's not the PI who decides, it's all the co-authors who have to decide together. There needs to be a consensus, but this can give you an advantage if the PI is obstructing publication against all the other co-authors. But as I said it's important to understand precisely what is their problem in order to find a solution they can agree to.
@Nworb: In some jurisdictions, where there is a situation like yours (multiple people have joint copyright, and all but one agree on something), it is possible to go to court for an injunction that forces the "lone holdout" to consent to the others, provided you get a judge to agree that the lone holdout is maliciously preventing a benefit for all participants. That brings you back to the question raised on the other answer, though about being strategic about whether you would rather win the battle or the war: do you think it is a good idea to sue the person whose LoR will likely significantly
… decide how the next phase(s) of your career go(es)?
Here the resolution/answer:
I spoke to the second PI/co-author alone. He agreed that he thought the data were excellent, and suggested he speak to the other co-author alone, recommending I choose which journal to submit to. This was definitely the right move.
Unfortunately, it turned out that there was a different motive: the first PI wanted to switch to a different project and so needed to show that he had one publication out from our project. He gave comments on the paper to change straight away although on holiday, and I was told that he would not accept any discipline-specific journal because they would not be out in time for his application.
I replied again to the second PI saying this was not right, and he apologised for the situation again and said the first PI would not change his mind so I would have to choose whether to make a formal complaint or accept the compromise of journal (not Frontiers but not a discipline-specific journal). I’ve accepted the compromise of journal.
Essentially: I spoke to the second PI alone, he agreed I could decide where to submit and agreed with what I had suggested, he spoke to the first PI, the first PI changed his position from Frontiers but wouldn’t accept a discipline-specific journal. We are proceeding with this. The next step would have been to make a formal complaint.
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1228 | How will this departmental restructuring plan affect students and faculty?
I am an undergraduate Computer Engineering student at the University of Florida. In response to recent budget cuts to higher education in Florida, my department (Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering, CISE) could be undergoing some restructuring, namely the following:
All of the Computer Engineering Degree programs, BS, MS and PhD, would be moved from the Computer & Information Science and Engineering Dept. to the Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. along with most of the advising staff.
Roughly half of the faculty would be offered the opportunity to move to Electrical/Computer Eng. (ECE), Biomedical Eng. (BME), or Industrial/Systems Eng. (ISE).
Staff positions in CISE which are currently supporting research and graduate programs would be eliminated.
The activities currently covered by TAs would be reassigned to faculty and the TA budget for CISE would be eliminated.
Any faculty member who wishes to stay in CISE may do so, but with a revised assignment focused on teaching and advising.
(click here for additional information)
The Dean of our college claims that eliminating research and TA support within the CISE department will have no effect on the quality of the education future students will receive. She also claims that existing research in the department will be unaffected, except that it will be moved to ECE, BME, or ISE.
As an undergrad, I don't feel qualified to challenge these claims. Therefore, I would like to hear your opinions:
Will the quality of education in the CISE department be the same after this restructuring?
Can software-oriented research take place in a department which, until now, has concentrated solely on hardware/electronics?
Since only half of the faculty will be moved to a research department, half must remain in CISE and focus solely on teaching (with no TA support). Do you think these professors will remain at UF given the circumstances?
Will the teaching-only CISE department be able to attract quality professors? Top students?
Will employers value a UF CISE degree as much as they do now? [thanks for pointing this one out JeffE]
Faculty and graduate students in the department know exactly how these changes will affect them (and they aren't pleased!), however many of the undergrads are a bit uncertain. I (and the rest of us undergrads) would really appreciate any wisdom to help clear things up. Thanks in advance!
Similar question on http://www.quora.com/Computer-Science-Education/What-are-the-long-term-effects-of-The-University-Of-Florida-to-shutting-down-its-CS-school
One of my former PhD students works in the CISE department at UF, so my opinion is not exactly objective. But here it is:
Will the quality of education in the CISE department be the same after this restructuring? Absolutely not. Teaching computer science well requires serious manpower. Unless CS courses are limited to a very small number of students, which seems incredibly unlikely for a flagship state university, educational quality will plummet. The near-certain increase in faculty teaching loads only makes this worse. If nothing else, with less individual attention on students and more automated grading, cheating will increase dramatically. (Also, in the longer term, educational quality will suffer because the instructors are not themselves active researchers. Computer science changes fast; if the faculty aren't leading that change, they'll fall behind. Obviously. But in the short run, the removal of TA support is a much bigger issue.)
Can [CS] research take place in [an ECE] department? Maybe, but probably not at existing levels. If faculty treat the incoming CISE faculty as anything less than full-fledged intellectual peers who should be judged by the standards of their own research communities (as opposed to ECE community standards), then no. Most recent CS-EE mergers have failed for precisely this reason. This has far less to do with the distinction between "software" and "hardware" than cultural differences about intellectual values, publication standards (conferences vs. journals), funding, intellectual property, entrepreneurship, and the like.
Do you think [teaching] professors will remain at UF given the circumstances? I expect some faculty will stay, either because they prefer teaching anyway (or even support the restructuring), or because they have eternal constraints that make moving impossible, or because they are close enough to retirement that they're willing hold their nose for a few years, or perhaps because their recent research records are not strong enough for them to land a tenure-track position in a comparable department. But I would expect most CISE faculty—including the research faculty forced into other departments—to leave at their earliest opportunity.
Will the teaching-only CISE department be able to attract quality professors? Not as easily, and not as long as the current political players are in power. Setting aside the common assumption that quality is correlated strongly with active research, I expect most strong teaching faculty would have trouble accepting a position from a college with such blatant disregard for academic freedom and shared governance.
Top students? Undergrads, yes, although probably in smaller numbers. Because UF is a flagship state school, it attracts a significant fraction of the top high school graduates in the state (at least by STEM standards). The number of such incoming students is unlikely to change very much, but many of those students who would have studied computer science will go into other majors instead. Graduate students, probably not, for the same reasons as faculty.
And one question you didn't ask:
Will employers value a UF CISE degree as much as they do now? I doubt the restructuring would have a significant effect on the job prospects of current CISE majors, except possibly if some of the software companies who've recently announced plans to open offices in Gainesville change their mind. But if the quality of education (and the strength of incoming majors) suffer as I expect they will, then a UF CISE degree will be less valuable than it is now, even for the best students.
The flagship state university where I work has attempted a few similar restructuring efforts, and currently faces similarly severe budgetary constraints. Some of the resructuring attempts were successful (for example, our Theoretical and Applied Mechanics department was recently merged into Mechanical Engineering); others were not (for example, our Nuclear Engineering Department survived a proposed closure). In the years leading up to the TAM closure, a significant majority of the TAM faculty moved or retired. Although TAM survives as a degree program within our MSE department, it attracts considerably fewer students and faculty than it did as an independent department.
Awesome answer! Now do you have any idea how I can convince the Dean of all this?? :)
My impression is that the dean honestly doesn't care. I think the existing replies from the Computing Research Association, the former director of CISE at NSF, and so on already make a solid case. Now, maybe if you could convince Disney to chime in....
She's been using other universities as examples to support her plan, but you mentioned that most recent CE-EE mergers have failed. Could you provide some examples?
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173 | How important are my grades to the rest of my PhD career?
Speaking to the faculty in my program, I've noticed that they seem to evaluate themselves and others using two criterion: (1) publication quality and quantity, and (2) ability to obtain grant money. No one discusses grades or performance in graduate school classes. Even when potential faculty candidates come around, this doesn't seem to be emphasized at all. What role do grades play in my PhD career?
Grades don't matter, sources say.
As far as your research stature is concerned, grades would matter least of all, below other non-academic stuff as your soft-skills, your personality etc. There are a number of reasons for this:
No one cares about your GPA once you are a researcher! While it certainly looks nice to have a stellar GPA, it's the work that you do and where you publish that would matter. Look up some resumes of notable faculty in your field - how many even list their MS/BS grades?
I might even say that your adviser would not be too happy if you have a 4.0 GPA - as it means you are spending time on perfecting your grades which is more profitably spent on research! I actually have read this on a faculty/university webpage - would post the link once I dig it up. EDIT: Haven't found the faculty website link yet, but here's a couple from an established source, phdcomics - enjoy!
PS: I'm actually waiting for JeffE to comment on this: His credentials are such that I'm not even qualified to state them, and he himself claims that he had the lowest undergraduate GPA amongst any professor he's ever met!
EDIT: I'm talking about grades in subjects that you have to take as part of requirements of grad school - you would be expected to master the subjects that are directly required in your Ph.D research thesis, so your adviser would expect great grades in them naturally!
tl;dr - They don't matter (as long as you clear all your subjects!)
I agree with almost everything you wrote. My undergrad grades changed from embarrassing burden to amusing trivia the moment I became a PhD student. I don't even think it's important to get "great grades" in classes directly related to your work. Master the material, yes, but that's not the same thing.
Could anyone clarify how "master the material" and "getting good grades" are not the same thing? In my experience, it is extremely easy to mistakenly think that you've mastered something without actually being tested.
@Heisenberg - It is quite easy to get top grades but NOT master the material, by simply 'studying for the test'.
Ah, but tests in graduate schools aren't the template type.
@Heisenberg, yes, inevitably, exams are templates, but just at a slightly more sophisticated level. Also, the notion of "master the material" is itself dubious at a sophisticated level. It's simply that all those supposedly well-defined school-work notions cease having quite the same sense...
To be a bit blithe about it, grades matter until they don't. When you are a PhD student, the grades will matter until after you've completed your "qualification" process, in whatever form that takes. If you do well on the exams, then your grades don't matter much; if you're "on the bubble," you might be helped by solid performance in your graduate coursework.
Where grades continue to matter are:
if you decide to apply for a graduate fellowship, in which case review committees will usually want to see evidence of strong academic performance at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
when you apply for jobs, as employers will similarly want to see evidence that you took coursework somewhat seriously. (Some employers may—wrongly, in my view—have GPA cutoffs for graduate students!)
Just to note one place where they do matter: they may help you find a willing advisor. I am not inclined to take on students who don't do outstanding work in the first-year graduate course that I teach. On the other hand, students who are at the top of the class may find faculty trying to attract them.
This is true—when the decision on advising is made following admission to the program.
In some graduate schools I've been to (I've worked at a few and tried working on a masters at one), a C lands you on probation, and a second C gets you dismissed. Other than this, you're correct, they're irrelevant as the important measures involve funding and publishing.
Generally, the requirement is that you have to maintain a grade of B+ on average - a C would definitely get you in trouble! I was talking about the futility of aiming for straight A's in breadth subjects...
I currently direct a graduate program and as others have said, grades are most important while you're in a graduate program when decisions about funding are being made. C's may get you dismissed, and B's could lead to no funding in programs where funding is limited to a handful of students. If you are in a terminal MA program and applying to PhD programs, grades matter. After graduation and when you're on the job market, grades won't matter as much as your dissertation, publications and recommendations. The way that grades would matter then would be what they say about your professors' estimation of your work and whether they are likely to write you strong rec. letters. In short - if you get anything below an A, talk to the professor about what you could have done to do better and strive to get there.
I will actually take a strong opinion that my subpar grades from undergrad and graduate school are a large factor in why my PhD is going to take a long time. As David Ketcheson mentioned, quality grades and GRE scores are important denominators for Graduate fellowships. So far the NSF, NIH, and DOE have all denied me fellowships because I have a lowish GPA according to my reviews.
That being said, once you are an established researcher with a paper track record, the grades really shouldn't matter asides being a bragging point.
I think this claim might be a bit sketchy, since it isn't my experience that (the very tiny minority of) PhD students who get these external fellowships finish substantially faster than the department average. Do these agencies have data that show their fellows beat department averages in time to graduation?
Straight A's didn't get me into trouble with my advisor. My committee didn't care either.
I was always told there are three grades in grad school: excellent (A), adequate (B), and failing (C).
It depends, but what I have seen so far (w.r.t. Computer Science PhD perspective) is a bit different than other opinions in this post.
I am doing PhD (Computer Science) in the US (at a mediocre school) and most of my cohorts (not most, actually all of them) have a very decent GPA (like 3.9+ out of 4.0), even couple of them have perfect 4.0/4.0 and a very few of them are publishing pretty much good level of research works.
Moreover, most of my faculty members in my school have similar credentials (good grade, good research background, and most of them are from top notch schools like UMD, UPenn, UMich, VTech) -- although my school ranks 60+ in the nation (according to US News, in CS specialization).
Even PhD students in my department who did summer research intern in big companies like google, IBM, Microsoft are also equipped with a good GPA. Even some of them have no publication at all !!, even after being a PhD student for more than 2 years. You will be surprised to know that one of them is currently working as a research intern position at google with no research paper at all, he has been a PhD student for last 2.5 years !! Moreover, if you are from a good school, things will be lot easier.
So, what I see, situation is totally opposite in US. Here Pedigree > GPA > publications.
I used to be the "odd one out", I had a decent publication record (published 4 conference papers during my masters (from a top school outside US) and 2 more in my 1st year of PhD here), but I settled with a low grade (3.2+), compared to others it is actually a "bad". Moreover, the venues that I have published my research works are considered to be quite decent in my field (two of the venues are in the top 20 lists in Microsoft academic search ranking, even I got one best student paper award there. In the US, keeping up both research works and regular course load is quite challenging, at least for me.
Such situation compelled me to focus more on the grades and to start practicing problems from sites like "careercup" to land a job in industry -- that's what others are doing here, and this is a totally disappointing and frustrating experience for me.
I had to cut my time on research as much as possible, now just doing a minimal possible work to maintain my supervisor's "happiness threshold level". Here, landing an academic job is harder than in industries -- unless you are a "rock star" researcher -- and this is the reality. Being a mediocre researcher (like me) from a mediocre school does not count much, neither in industry nor academia.
Last but not the least, I am an international student deceived by the so called delusion of "the land of opportunity".
But it's not an either/or thing. The good grades and lack of papers are unrelated facts (except to the extent that focusing on good grades leaves you LESS time for research). While I see that you're frustrated in your current position, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
I guess my point is clear. Do not always believe what your professors say (after seeing the fact that the professor has a 4.0/4.0 GPA in his PhD course load) -- like "grades don't matter, so do your work". I am pretty much convinced that it matters the most (at least if you are doing PhD in US) -- and lets hope that other countries have better situation. So, ditch your research and start practicing matrix multiplication problem from your linear algebra text book.
I flagged your question because at first glance, your answer seems like an answer but then presents itself more as a rant. Some more coherence would be appreciated.
How do you know what your professor's grades were? I have no idea what grades my colleagues got, except that they were higher than mine.
@JeffE that's what I've heard from the supervisor, during a lunch, if my memory serves well.
@Shion In my own experience, industry seems to care more about grades than research papers. I kind of believe what ramgorur said. Many employees in industry with only BS degree don't know how to perform matrix multiplication. The companies would have to hire PhD students to do it when they need to.
It sounds like you should move to a stronger department. The experience you describe is fairly typical for very strong students in weak departments. The only reason to emphasize grades over research in a research degree program is to avoid being embarrassed by its research record. Get a glowing recommendation letter from your advisor if you can, get strong recommendation letters from external colleagues (like the ones who gave you the best student paper award), and move up.
Assuming the situation there is as you perceive it, perhaps your department's choice to hire faculty on the basis of grades is not uncorrelated with its low research output. This is not a choice that is made universally.
I am getting the impression that this frustration is directed less at "grades vs. research" and is more a reflection about "What did I hope to gain out of doing a Ph.D?"
I am a Ph.D. student in my second year of research. I hold two MBA's and a bachelors degree. Each of my GPA's raised a bit in the course of my academic career (3.52 - 4.0). I am currently on the President's lists for Capella University. I do not think it matters to most. It certainly feels good to place a 4.0 in my application to teach at universities but I doubt it does much for my selection. The larger impact is what differences can you make. I have saught after a reputation to help develop peoples motivation towards academics, so a strong GPA helps prove that I know how to provide good advice on study habits to help others navigate through Bloom's Taxonomy. I would say, simply do your best! If you are in a Ph.D. program, you pretty much have a focused goal, and all the other crap is noise. Do your best, clear your classes, and focus on what is most important to you, not on what you think others will expect of you. Remember, Doctoral Students only account for less than 2% of America's population so take that into consideration when concerning yourself of what people will think of you. Be brave, take chances and have fun with your studies. You may lose points for being late, may lose points for a paper being too long, or perhaps you explored something not related to the assignment but got a lot out of it, don't stress about a perfect grade. A perfect GPA means nothing if you didn't maximize the opportunity to learn.
You may need good grades during the first two years of your PhD (the time you would be doing your MS, if you applied to a separate MS program) for the reasons listed above: fellowships, in case you decide to drop out and get a industry job, etc.
After two years in a PhD program, worrying about your GPA is a complete waste of time. I've yet to see any research university even ask for a transcript of your graduate classwork. Some research positions in industry might require a transcript and take into account your GPA, but I don't think this (misguided) practice is common.
What's true for certain is that if you're spending late nights and long hours polishing that final project in a class totally unrelated to your research area, so that you will get an A+ instead of an A -- please stop. You are hurting your career.
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3044 | Is it ok to have paragraphs that have only one sentence in a formal paper?
Or, is it a good practice?
I found most papers that I read are "block by block": they have paragraphs that are not so long, and not so short. Is it a convention? Should I mimic that?
What do you say about a paper with (disputably) only one sentence? http://fermatslibrary.com/s/shortest-paper-ever-published-in-a-serious-math-journal-john-conway-alexander-soifer
If the result reads like a newspaper, I would say, no, it's not alright.
If it reads like Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, then you are probably doing something right.
Unless you are an exceptional writer, my advice is to follow the accepted conventions of your field, which probably includes block paragraphs.
A longer paragraph allows one to build up an idea and explore it more thoroughly. The first sentence introduces the idea. Subsequent sentences explore it in more detail. There should be a logical connection between sentences, and sentences should ideally vary in length. Developing good style is matter of practice and reflection. And there is more to good style than the length of a paragraph.
i agree with this: any institution provides workshops on "how to write a paper", and they essentially stress the basic point of "each paragraph should be ecologically to the point: one idea, no repetitions, and, if applicable, referenced to existing work". This makes an interesting read on the topic
The Wikipedia article on paragraph says a para could contain one or more sentences. The very purpose of grouping content into paragraphs is to organise similar thoughts into one unit. Too many small or one-sentence paragraphs will affect the cohesiveness of your content.
But a one-sentence para may be fine at the end of a section in a paper if it adequately summarises the content within. (Like this, perhaps!)
The parenthetical makes your one sentence paragraph two sentences.
One sentence paragraph tend to result from flaws in the flow of the writing.
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3700 | Reproducing figures in blog/SE posts
Sometimes when I am writing a review blog post (or an answer on SE), it is convenient to include a figure from the original paper. Some journals (say PNAS) have policies that explicitly allow non-commercial reproduction of figures:
Anyone may, without requesting permission, use original figures or tables published in PNAS for noncommercial and educational use (i.e., in a review article, in a book that is not for sale) provided that the original source and the applicable copyright notice are cited.
Others, however, seem to explicitly disallow this, of note is the Nature Publishing Group. Today, I had to fill in an online form on RightsLink in order to ensure I could use a figure in my post. I didn't have to pay anything, and the rights were granted instantly after completing the form, but it was still a hassle. The biggest hassle is having to go to each journal's website to check their policies. Hence the questions:
Is there a general law like fair-use that allows me to place figures from published papers inside blog posts for non-commercial commentary/review purposes?
What if your blog has ads that generate revenue, is the use of the figures no longer non-commercial? What about SE that generates revenue but not for the poster?
Is there any extra etiquette one should keep in mind for including figures in blog posts?
Some thoughts on this issue:
First, the fair use doctrine is tricky. Assuming you're not ready to hire a lawyer, play it safe. If you're not sure, ask for permission. If you're asked to remove something, do it.
There has been some noise a few years back on the topic of blogging and reuse of scientific figures. See here, there and there for some links to that affair. The conclusion I would draw is, again: play it safe.
In at least some jurisdictions (France is one), having ads on your web will mean your blog is considered a commercial publication. Asserting fair use for commercial works is typically harder, though this distinction tends to diminish (here).
Attribute figures (source + link). Always. It's just good manners.
I'll finish by a general observation related to copyright law in academia, as I see it (at least around me): people tend to just do stuff, and then play dumb if they get caught (which rarely happens). Lots of researchers knowingly put up (without authorization) PDF files of their papers on their website, and say “I'll just remove them if I am asked too”.
Laws regarding fair use and copyright vary significantly by country.
I also write a blog, and sometimes I also tend to pull images from papers or bookstores.
I do not monetize in my blog, so I'm safe there, and as far as I remember, the current state of the law is that you receive a cease and desist before anything else can happen, so the worst that can happen is that you get a slap in the hand, for the case of the USA.
Now, other countries like Japan just passed really strict laws, where you are not allowed to host anything that is not copyrighted or you face 10 years in prison (no Cease and Desist).
So be sure to see where your blog is hosted, and whether you are hosting anything at all.
One suggestion I tend to follow is to publish things from Arxiv and Wikipedia, which are both for free use.
Things from Wikipedia are indeed licensed for re-use (under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license, specifically), but this is not true for the arXiv. I.e., hosting your own copy of an arXiv paper or taking figures from it is no different legally from any other paper. Authors of arXiv papers may be more likely to be open to this, but it's still polite to ask.
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115267 | Is my irrelevant field of work experience a negative when applying for higher studies?
I am currently working in TCS as an Oracle analyst. I did my bachelor's of engineering in Mechanical Engineering in 2017. Now I want to pursue my Master's in the same field. I am planning to apply to universities in Germany. Will my two years of working experience in IT sector affect my admission?
If you are applying to schools in Germany, your work experience is largely irrelevant whether or not it is in the discipline you want to study at the master's level. This is because the prerequisites for master's study at German universities is generally an equivalent bachelor's degree at the undergraduate level. However, if your bachelor's degree was not completed at a German university, you will have to petition to have your degree recognized as "equivalent" before being allowed to enroll.
There are some exceptions for "international" programs and special master's programs that do not require a specific degree program but their requirements and procedures must be investigated on a case-by-case basis.
Do I need to present a Letter of recommendation from my work manager if the irrelevant work experience doesn't count for admission process?
You only need to provide documents the university explicitly requires for admission. If they didn’t ask for it don’t include it.
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104205 | Ethics of experimenting on students without telling them
This question is prompted by two very similar examples reported online: this one (also on Twitter) and this one. In both, teachers introduce aspects of the political system described in the 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four to a classroom in which they are (or will shortly be) studying the novel, as an aid to understanding the issues it raises. Essentially, the teachers ask students to secretly or publicly report on the behaviour of other students, introduce points systems and punishments, etc.
In both cases, as far as I can tell, the students are unaware that the experiment is going on, and it's more of an exercise than an experiment; its purpose is not to gather any data or test a hypothesis.
My question is: from a legal and an ethical review standpoint, what would a lecturer typically need to do before introducing these sorts of activities into their class, in the way described above, as part of a learning exercise?
I am not asking for personal advice here, I'm just interested in how this sort of thing would be assessed by a typical ethical review panel. I work at a research institute where we do have a very well-defined ethical review process but only for animal studies; we don't do research involving human subjects. Furthermore, several of the steps we would normally be expected to provide (sample size, etc) do not actually apply here since the purpose is not actually research, it is teaching "pretending" to be research: the experiment does not need to generate any meaningful data to fulfil its purpose (unless you redesigned it as a study of the effectiveness of this method in raising understanding of certain issues).
Several of the comments on Twitter noted that this would probably be considered unethical as described; the participants have not consented to be involved, for example. Does the fact that the 'experiment' is not (scientifically) actually an experiment make any difference? Lastly, these experiments sound like they are high-school environments; does the answer change depending on whether the students concerned are above or below 18?
Somewhat related: Ethics of conducting research on a class.
I'm looking for answers that identify what the key factors would be in this general situation, so this question is intentionally light on specifics; if you think I need to add more detail to the hypothetical situation to make this answerable, please be specific about what those details should be.
This sounds like a famous novel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_(novel)
From your second link, the last paragraph seems to be interesting about whether the reading skills have dropped due to all the social media... I tend to agree with that...
I'm not in a field that uses human subjects, but my impression has been that IRBs regulate research only (loosely defined as "that which will eventually be published in a research journal/conference") and have no role at all in overseeing teaching per se. There's no formal ethics pre-review for teaching that I've ever heard of,
There is, of course, a difference between performing an experiment on students and teaching them a lesson. Taken to an extreme, you could also be questioning a teacher trying out a new curriculum technique - there the students actually are part of an experiment...
@henning actually I initially assumed it was a reference to the Stanford Prison Experiment, but I have now discovered it's basically identical to the (real) 1967 exercise called The Third Wave, which resulted in the film The Wave, which resulted in the novel The Wave. So it's based on the experiment that the film the novel was based on, was based on. :)
What do you do, when you get something reported, which puts you in a real dilemma? You may be obliged to report something to authorities or similar after you got the report from a student. You may not want to be in such a complicated situation. Or you get reported something really intimate you never wanted to know. Its not only the students, you will get yourself into a difficult position depending on how serious the students take part in your experiment.
Whoever does this may start something that they are unable to stop. Don't. Unless they are prepared to expose their students to potentially life-changing (not in a good way) and irreversible experiences.
Virtually every modern university has an ethics procedure for experiments conducted on human subjects. If an academic wants to conduct an experiment on students (especially one that involves deception) they would generally need to put in a proposal to their university ethics board. This would disclose the details of the proposed experiment, and the nature of any deception of subjects, and the university would make a decision as to whether or not to allow the experiment to proceed.
Experiments involving deception of subjects are often approved (many psychological experiments are of this kind), but it is usual to require that the subjects be "debriefed" after the experiment, to disclose to them the deception they were subjected to, and how the experiment worked. In cases where the deception is likely to be distressing to the subjects, or the gains from the experiment are minor, the ethics board might decide not to allow the experiment to proceed, or might require it to be altered in some way.
Now, with regard to the particular situation described in the Atlantic article, this does not appear to be an academic experiment at all; it is an extended High School class exercise that uses some mild deception to illustrate the world of the book through mimicking aspects of it in the conduct of the classroom. Students are subjected to some overbearing actions by the teacher to give them a small taste of totalitarianism. Nothing described in the article would be unlawful, since at worst it involves cases of nasty looks, overbearing control, or dressing down a dissenter.
High Schools generally do not have formal ethics panels like the universities, since they do not conduct academic research. It is likely that there is significant teacher discretion on how to conduct classes, but this would be subject to oversight by the school principal. In this case I think it is unlikely that the exercise would have been subjected to any preliminary scrutiny of the kind that would occur in a university ethics application. Obviously students would be free to object to this teaching exercise and take the matter up with the school principal, but this does not appear to be a case of experimentation that would go to an ethics board.
The basic ethical question at play here is: is it okay to be overbearing and mildly bullying to your students in order to give them a genuine taste of what totalitarianism is like. Personally, I see no problem with the exercise, since the likely distress to students is mild in comparison to the value of the learning experience, and the students are made aware of the deception after the exercise is completed, so that they can discuss it in relation to the book. Others may disagree, but to me it sounds like a very creative and useful teaching exercise, and the teacher doesn't take it too far. I think it is quite brilliant, and I would happily enrol my own children in this class!
This is a good answer as far as it goes (+1), but it would be useful to highlight whether there are any activities that might reasonably form part of this sort of exercise that would in fact be illegal or result in disciplinary action (e.g. discrimination against a minority, collection of personal data, etc). I can easily see someone deciding to try this in their classroom but modifying it slightly, and I wonder how easy it would be to do so in a way that gets you in trouble.
I think it is unlikely that discrimination per se would be unlawful in this context, so long as the discrimination is used as a teaching tool to allow the participants to experience and see the discrimination that occurs under the system that is being taught. The relevant question would be: does the occurrence of discrimination in the exercise constitute discrimination in regard to the quality of educational service being provided to students, or does it merely assist all students in understanding the nature of the system being taught.
Short answer: You have to make sure no one cries. If you create an environment that results or reasonably could be expected to result in emotional hurt, then you've been unethical.
At university, there will be a "human subjects" review of some sort. Anyone writing a grant or proposal for anything will have to be passed by this review. I've never done experiments on human subjects, but every grant I've received required an additional piece of paper which stated that there were no human subjects involved (in my math research.)
In your case, as you say, it's not really an experiment, but a teaching technique. I don't know what to say about this, exactly, but I would not be surprised to find that the human subjects panel or office or whatever also oversees such things. No doubt you have to be careful.
Story from 1970: I was in 5th grade in a small town in Nebraska which had a teachers college. Every master's of ed candidate at the college had to do something for a thesis and often this was some sort of experiment on a classroom full of students. Lucky us; those of us in town were the handiest subjects for all these theses. As I moved through the Kearney, Nebraska school system, I was the subject of 4 or 5 experiments each year. We were video-taped, quizzed, surveyed, lied to, etc., on a regular basis.
In 5th grade, my teachers along with some master's candidate thought it would be instructive if they did the "Blue-eyed /Brown-eyed" thing to us. They announced one morning that a newspaper article stated, scientifically, that brown-eyed children were smarter than blue-eyed children. Then then segregated us and the smart kids, not needing so much instruction, got to play games and have snacks. While the inferior kids had to do extra math work sheets, you know, because they needed the extra practice, being so dumb and all.
Of course this was supposed to teach the (100% white) children about racial discrimination and how bad it hurt one's feelings. We had girls in tears by the end of the day. The next day, there were some red-faced daddies with their fists cocked at the school. "You make my daughter cry; I break your ribs." I tell this story to illustrate the ethical problem.
I don't think the situation would be much different with college freshlings. If you hurt their feelings too much, Daddy is likely to visit you. Set aside whether the human subjects panel approved of your experiment or whether there are legal remedies.
"I would not be surprised to find that the human subjects panel or office or whatever also oversees such things." Hm. I would be very surprised.
@NateEldredge Yeah, I don't really know. But, I know universities. Probably it's not on paper that the HSP oversees such things, but if trouble arises, they may well be put in charge of it, for the nonce.
Well, for instance, I've been involved in some educational research. If, as part of an educational study, I want to give my class a calculus quiz and write a paper about how they did, that requires IRB approval, informed consent from the students, and a way for them to opt out. If I want to give them that very same quiz to assess their learning, for the purposes of evaluating my own teaching, no approval or consent is required, and I can make it mandatory.
"If you hurt their feelings too much, Daddy is likely to visit you." seems to be a really bad moral to get out of what you've said. "Emotionally manipulating people, especially children, has the ability to do harm to the people involved" seems like a much better moral (as your "short answer" seems to say).
@StellaBiderman I'm trying to make things concrete. I'm flatly against situational ethics. One can get wound up in one's own nonsense too easily. Let's bring it down to earth: You hurt kid, parent get angry, parent is justified.
@B.Goddard I see. It came off as a flippant "immature millennials will run off to their parents" kind of comment. Tone on the internet is hard :/ If you edit the post, I'll upvote it.
@StellaBiderman People who talk about "tone" are just projecting. Try putting the best, instead of the worst construction on what you read. And you can keep your upvote.
@B.Goddard I'm sorry for misinterpreting what you said. Whether or not you are willing to credit it, there are many things that go into how people understand and interpret statements besides the words used.
I would also point out that the "nobody cries" standard is not necessarily upheld by traditional teaching either - you should see our department after a calculus exam :-)
If I were a teacher
@NateEldredge "Nobody cries" was not put forth as a standard for anything except judging your experiments. I keep an empty box of Kleenex on my desk, because I'm so heartless. If someone cries because they bombed your exam, then it was a good exam. If someone cries because you tricked them, then you've probably been unethical.
@StellaBiderman And yet you used only the words and then put the worst construction you could on them. My exact complaint about your comment was that you were NOT using the "many things." You're the one not "crediting" it.
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34833 | Software to create repositories of students' software projects
I want to be able to store the software projects my students submit so I can catch plagiarism. Some students copy work from previous years and it would be really helpful if I could find a way to store all projects so I could compare.
My university currently uses moodle but I can't find a way to create a project repository to detect plagiarism. (We do have the JPlag detection system but that only works for projects submitted under one particular group (assignment)).
Any ideas?
I and my university have used Moss by Stanford (http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/) - I'm not sure of its effectiveness to detect slight modifications, but it seems to be the standard of most university CS programs.
I've been trying to get registered with MOSS but i haven't received any replies.. Is there a group @Ryan that i could post to? Thank you.
Really? I was able to register with them a while ago before. Maybe do they have a support email?
@Ryan I used my official email and it worked, though they've said that moss is open for any email now.
I and my university have used MOSS (Measure of Software Similarity) by Stanford (theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss) - I'm not sure of its effectiveness to detect slight modifications, but it seems to be the standard of most university CS programs.
Have been using a Plagiarism plugin integrated on Moodle Server. This plugin integrates with assignment, forum and workshop activities in Moodle to check user-submitted content for plagiarism provided by UniCheck Course faculty can view the complete plagiarism report, including plagiarism within the class. Plagiarism score/Report can be also shown to students (Optional).
A software program can be coded in multiple ways, which renders plagiarism softwares impossible to detect similar projects/files. Students often change the variables, method names, comments, etc.
In case somebody simply copies a project without a single modification, It can be detected by jPlag. But in case of slight modifications, it is impossible for such softwares to detect plagiarism. Maybe in future AI can prove this whole thing possible.
My question really is about being able to build a repository for projects and then use that to check for plagiarism. What JPlag offers to the best of my knowledge is detecting plagiarism in one group. I'm looking for something like turnitin for source code where it checks against old work too and stores it.
You know nothing about how software works. Everything you've said in your answer is wrong: -1
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114713 | Dr. ‹First Name›: a good nickname or a "professional cancer"?
Is the informal Dr. ‹first name› something a starting academic should avoid?
As my father was Dr. ‹my last name›, I have, since receiving my PhD, cultivated Dr. ‹my first name›. A senior colleague recently advised me to stop: she called this unprofessional, and suggested that over time it would be a significant drain on my academic career. She went so far as to label this kind of informality a "professional cancer".
Context: I am an engineer and social scientist based in the USA, but I work with colleagues in Europe and Asia regularly.
While I feel that is hyperbole, I have discussed this with several trusted advisers. The responses have been polarized. Concerns raised include sacrificing respect, confusing personal branding (I have a memorable last name), and making more formal colleagues uncomfortable. Is this a real mistake I'm in the process of making? Is this a simple age division issue? Might the informal name actually be a benefit?
Which country? Which context? To me personally it seems extremely strange.
A country tag might be helpful as in many countries using the Dr prefix is very formal and most people just go by first names.
I tried to write up an answer, but I can not continue unless you explain to us why you want to be addressed as "Dr." at all (instead of just using your regular first or last name).
Let me echo and amplify the earlier comments: this is a purely cultural question. As such it cannot be answered adequately without knowing more about in which part of academic culture you reside: please include information about your geographic area, subject area and kind of institution (e.g. liberal arts colleges in the US will be less formal than many research universities).
It's your name. You get to choose but it can cause some confusion. I had professors and colleagues who went by Dr. [first-name] in casual settings but Dr. [last-name] in professional settings. And I can't even remember one fellow's last name right now - fantastic guy, super smart - Dr. Lew (short for Lewis but again, I don't remember his last name.) In the end it's your work, your style, and your ethics that define you - not your name.
I've just got my PhD and I never heard "Dr. <last name>" in person. This is totally culture dependent.
Please include your area of study. In my area of the US, it is extremely common for doctors who often (or exclusively) work with children to have Dr. even embroidered on their white coat.
The only context in which I can imagine "Dr FirstName" being used in Poland without sounding weird would be in in the context of physicians (or dentists, or vets), not necessarily holdoing a doctoral title. For academics, it would seem really weird.
Dr. Firstname makes me think of The Simpsons character Dr. Nick, the world's least competent physician. Wikipedia: Dr. Nick is an inept quack physician, and a satire of incompetent medical professionals.
It's your identity, you do you. If you own it, a unique choice can make you stand out. If you worry about what other people think, it's a potential weakness. It's more about how you perceive yourself and carry yourself than any cultural standard.
Just use your middle name initial, and that's it. Even a past US President did that (just a joke, of course)
Context now included above. That said, I'm very interested in the international differences...
Listen to your senior colleague, especially if she's on the promotion and tenure committee.
Context and community matter, as others have mentioned. The only time I've heard a doctor introduce themselves as "Dr. " is at the children's hospital where my daughter stayed. Even then, the doctors would use their last name with the parents, but their first name with the children.
Personally I quite like Dr. Firstname. It isn't just informal, but the jarring unexpectedness of it actually serves to actively make fun of pompousness and formality. In a settling like within your research group, it does this while subtly reminding people of your standing: you get to have it both ways. As people have said, in this way it works similarly to being Dr. LastInitial.
Couple of things to add though:
Nicknames are best when they are chosen by the others rather than somthing you christen yourself.
To follow on from that their is subtly in when a nick name should be used and when it shouldn't. People who work in my lab and use a nickname. People who are my colleagues within my department can use them, when talking to others of the same or similar rank. I wouldn't expect people to introduce me in a formal setting (e.g. introducing a seminar) to use it, unless they were very close friends and were making an intentional, but friendly, dig at me.
I feel comfortable dispensing with formality, because my gender, class , ethnicity and elite education mean that I've never found it difficult to get people to show me respect, whatever name is used. By asking others to be informal with you, you are making it hard for those that need the formal strictures to get people to acknowledge their achievements and respect their position. I am reminded of Susan Harlan's poem "My First Name". Where Dr. Firstname sits in the Firstname vs. Dr. Lastname discussion, I don't know.
Extra points for citing a good poem I had not previously read.
Going by "Dr. FirstName" is just confusing. If people aren't familiar with you, they will think it is your last name. If they do know you, it doesn't seem more casual, just odd.
It depends on the context and culture, but in the US it is standard to go by either "Dr. LastName" or just "FirstName." Like Solar Mike mentioned, a shortened form like "Dr. Initial" is sometimes used for students to refer to you.
My wife is a vet in the US, and the norm in that culture seems to be "Dr. ". I've never heard any of her colleagues call her "Dr. " (though some of the owners do).
Culure is everything here: I once headed a team of bilingual German-English speakers. When the spoke to me in English I was invariably called "First Name" but if they were speaking to me in German they could not bring themselves to be so informal, it had to be "title surname".
As an engineer working in Japan in both Japanese and English I second @JeremyC's comment. This is entirely culture. The safe default may be what the OP is really looking for here -- that would be "Dr. [Last Name]", cross culturally, at least as pertains to professional address. Unless the OP's father was profoundly influential it doesn't matter; and if he was maybe the mixup is a useful lever anyway. Meh.
One of my friends chose to have students call him "Dr. R" (R was the initial of his first name) - he had a huge amount of respect from the students and his colleagues : personally, it's not the name that garners respect, but the attitude, character and spirit of the person.
Do what feels right for you - respect is earned and not necessarily based on a title alone - IMHO...
I have some colleagues whose family name is almost never pronounced correctly by many nationalities (with students from over 90 different countries this is normal for us...), then some easy form of Dr and first name or initial is very common with no detriment to respect.
I have such an unpronounceable last name. I choose to let them call me first name instead of Dr. first name. The reason is that there are clear rules here (Germany) on the correct use of the Dr. title, and Dr. first name is unequivocally incorrect. It would cause more confusion then it is worth. Once you use the title you enter a formal mode of communication, and then those formal rules are important. Unless absolutely necessary I just avoid the formal by using just my first name.
@MaartenBuis “Buis” is unpronounceable in Germany? Yikes.
@aeismail ui is one sound in Dutch is pronounced as /œy̯/ That sound does not exist in German. My wife tried quite hard, but when we married she chose not to take my name, with the argument that she would like to be able to pronounce her own name. I thought that that was a valid argument.
I have a doctorate. Well into our marriage right after my wife got hers our daughter happened to answer the telephone when a caller asked to speak to "Dr. Bolker". Without missing a beat she asked "which one?" Now she and her brother are Drs. Bolker too and no one mixes us up.
Don't worry about sharing both the title and the name with your father.
My cousin and his wife live with my (now elderly) aunt. Letters addressed to Dr J Bonner have obviously reached the correct house - but who should open it?
What is the point of the story about your daughter? I cannot find a connection to the question?
@user111388 I thought it tangentially related - two doctors in the family with the same name need not be a problem - and perhaps interesting to other readers here (some seem to think so).
In the middle east and some other parts of Asia, it is standard to address someone this way (title + first (given) name), including in academia.
Would that be in places where the first name is the family name?
@Clearer No, I really mean the given name. I haven't lived in places where the first name is the family name, so I can't speak to that.
In the Middle East, many people don't properly have last names as understood by East Asians or Westerners. Their treatment of laqab is totally different and can't even be generalized over to their treatment of their own names in English.
Also, this only applies for some values of 'Middle East': Israelis, Turks, and Persians have last names and use them with the title 'Dr' in English.
There are multiple contexts in academia and what is suitable for one context doesn’t necessarily work for others.
For students, there’s great variation in what faculty prefer to be called - from first name only, to title only, to title and first name, to title and last name, etc. And this will differ between students in a large lecture class, in a seminar, grad students, lab students etc.
What faculty call each other in departmental faculty meetings may differ what faculty call each other in faculty senate meetings, etc
What faculty call each at academic meetings also varies greatly
If I were you, I’d feel free to ask students to call me Dr. Firstname as is your preference but to also keep this compartmentalized and go with the cultural norm in other settings.
I assume your Senior colleague is a member of your department. If so, you should follow this senior colleague’s advice. The norms of the department should supersede personal preferences, unless your personal preferences are strongly held. In this case, it seems like if you are ambivalent. Following the department norms will avoid confusion for students and others.
In my experience in the UK it feels odd to use the "Dr" in an academic setting at all. Nearly everybody has a doctorate, so rather than brag about it we just use names.
It works fine for Dr. Phil [McGraw]
and Dr. Laura [Schlesslinger]
Granted, these are media personalities, which fits a different generalized culture than traditional professional academic respect. Still, this shows that such names can potentially work.
It seems that some people will reject the movement to support common usage of first names. However, that will primarily be people of the currently older generation, so as they age out, the long term impact on your career will be lessened. The proper polite thing to do in society is to call people by the name which they prefer. You are welcome to determine your own preference. But, you should then be prepared to stick with whatever you choose, especially for as long as you keep your current employer. Even down the road, if you change the name you go by, worlds can collide and my experience (as I have gone by multiple names) indicates that this can cause a bit of occasional confusion.
Where I currently work, my department has multiple instructors, exactly half of them being older gentlemen, who just go by their first name, and a younger instructor who goes by a title and a last name. The students just go by whatever they are told to go by, and are fine with it.
I would find it very weird to call myself "Dr. $FIRSTNAME". As the reason for your choice seems to be to avoid confusion with your father's name, how about using "Dr. I. $LASTNAME", where I. is the initial of your firstname. Over time, this would be your trademark of sorts; people who know the difference between you and your father will immediately know who is who; and people who don't know you or your father will at least guess with a high likelihood that you have done that due to a name clash, and not due to some (in)formal/casual issue.
I think we can agree that Dr. $FIRSTNAME is a nicer way to express the variable... ;)
As all answers here suggest, you're going against the generally accepted and more importantly, generally expected way of doing this kind of thing. I and many other would expect Dr. Bla to indicate that Bla is your last name. There is also a somewhat universal, culturally independent link to expected and shown respect between last and first name usage.
If you don't want to be confused with your father, well, append a "Jr.", although you will forever live in the shadow of "Sr."
As an alternative, add a middle initial and always use that. Of course this only realistically will be possible in written communication. When speaking in person it'll all just be Dr. Bla. You being confused with your father will only increase your networking potential (unless he's an idiot who you do not want to be confused with, which you do not seem to imply at all).
To me, personally, this sounds very weird, and probably unprofessional.
As many note, this may be very culturally affected. I am Belgian (although, I work now in Germany, which seems much more formal, when speaking German, but much less so when speaking English, which I mostly do at work).
For me, using the doctor title seems very formal. I would almost never introduce myself as Dr. [Whatever], unless perhaps in a professional setting when speaking with people I haven't met before, and even then rarely. The doctor title seems much more formal than just the last name. I would rather introduce me as Mr. [Lastname] than Dr. [Lastname].
So the combination of Dr. and the first name, seems like a very odd combination of very formal and informal. Which is why it is weird.
Edit: It seems weird because why would you want to use the doctor title if you want to be informal?
It seems also unprofessional (and possibly bad branding), because Dr. [Firstname] makes me think of the likes of Dr. Phil or others. Those who use their first name to seem casual and friendly to the public, but still want to assert their authority by using the doctor title. Typically using it to overstate their expertise for the benefit of making money by selling products or promoting unscientific claims they believe in.
Title FirstName is certainly more informal than Title LastName. I don't know if it would be "professional cancer" for a doctor, though. I would say stick with Title LastName.
Depends where. In Brazil, Dr. FirstName is completely normal (the norm, matter of fact...)
@Fábio Dias, oh yes, it was very confusing for me as a German :)
There is no reason why you need to be referred to in the same way in every context. Some are naturally more formal than others and your relationship with some people is more formal than with others. One of the highly respected people I know is "Uncle Bob". I was often Dr. B. But my department chair would naturally be more formal and I wouldn't write any papers with that moniker as author.
Informality can often be good with students. But even then, not in all cases. If you need to admonish students and are normally referred to informally, using your complete name and list of titles can put the student on notice that they need to pay attention.
Of course, if you are in a very formal academic culture, you need to be more formal. Israel, for example tends to be quite informal, but I assume not in all contexts. Their prime minister is known by a nickname, for example. Germany, historically, was the opposite.
I would suggest, however, that for a young academic, building a career, being a bit more formal in public is probably the better way.
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99981 | Accidentally addressed lecturer as Mrs instead of Ms
I accidentally addressed my lecturer as Mrs instead of Ms in an email.
Should I send a follow-up email explaining it was a typo or should I leave it be?
Since requested multiple times in comments: The lecturer does not hold a doctorate or any other academic titles. She also did not specify how she prefers to be addressed before.
I once adressed an important person as "Dead Mr. X" rather "Dear Mr. X"...
@peterh Did you correct it afterwards?
Yes, I wrote a mail on the spot. "Sorry I wanted to write DeaR!". I had luck, he laughed.
I've accidentally called teachers and professors mum/dad on various occasions. Although slightly different it only ended with some embarrassment my side and a laugh between both of us.
@TheLethalCoder I used "granma" several times. The look of astonishment on the teacher face was priceless, even tho I was too embarrassed to enjoy it :)
Most of the professors I've had as instructors and those I've worked with really wouldn't care that much, they are far more focused on their research and teaching. If they do care, they'll say something and then you just own the mistake ("my mistake" should be enough) and move on.
Just for context, I think you need to tell us if this is a Professor of something like business or engineering, or one of the more shall we say 'progressive' fields like social work or education...
Well, at least you didn't call her "Madame" or "Dowager".
@FábioDias - when I was in the 6th grade I accidently called my teacher - who I really liked and she like me - "Grandma". She slapped me! We were both surprised! (And she was quite upset she had slapped me too.) Well, if this had been the 80s or later my parents would have sued her and the school for as much money as we could shake out of them. But in the 60s, not knowing any better, we - and she - just laughed it off.
There are worse typos you could make. Ever signed off an email with "kind retards"?
I had been emailing with an overseas employer. Both me and a friend were hired. There was one email that I sent in both our names, with the signed contracts. I had mistakenly ended that email with "Kind retards, MyName and FriendsName".
@DawoodibnKareem: I have made all kind of mistakes (calling a teacher "mom" or "dad" many times, etc.). The one you mention is priceless, people came into my office to check if I was fine when I was roaring with laughter. Now I need to add this to my spell checker...
I came here thinking that the OP had somehow sent their professor an email referring to said professor by the wrong gender. By comparison, the difference between mrs and ms seems almost inconsequential :D
We need more information. Where are you, and what field? Does the professor have a doctorate? Has she given any indication in the past on how she prefers to be addressed? Lacking this knowledge and based on my experience in US universities: unless she is unusually picky about such things, using "Mrs." once instead of "Ms." is probably not an issue. If she has a doctorate and you aren't on a first name basis, you should use "Dr. X" or "Prof. X"; "Mrs." instead of "Dr." could be taken as a slight.
I don't understand. Is this really something worth stressing over in academia specifically or is this really just a general thing .. and in that case is it even really a thing then?
I once replied to someone important asking "How are you?", with "fine than you" instead of "fine thank you"
@DawoodibnKareem Dammit, I had to shut my door after laughing too long and loud at that. We're a quiet floor, dang it!
the death penalty
In the Netherlands, the standard is not to distinguish between "Ms" and "Mrs". All adult women are addressed as "Mrs" (even when communicating in English)
Mrs??? omg triggered
I have heard from women (in mathematics departments, in the US) that they prefer not to be addressed as Ms or Mrs.
The issue is that some students address their male professors as "Dr." or "Professor" but their female professors as "Ms." or "Mrs." Perhaps you don't do this, but I would still recommend "Dr." or "Professor" unless your professor encourages otherwise.
Indeed, I know of one female professor who tells students that she is happy to be called "Dr. X" or "Professor X", and happier still to be addressed by her first name, but requests that her students avoid "Ms" or "Mrs".
It should also be added that this in the US, and cultural practices may be different elsewhere.
I don't think it's necessary to send a follow-up e-mail, but since you are worried about it, I think it would be perfectly polite to write something very brief like "p.s. How do you prefer to be addressed? Is Dr. X better?"
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
Leave it be; just be certain to be exactly correct in future messages. If she has a doctorate, she's "Dr. Familyname" in the U.S. and many other places. If she has academic rank, she's "Professor Familyname."
In most universities in the U.S., the title "Professor" is acceptable even for those without doctorate or academic rank.
This. Also, if you have a habit of writing Mrs., add an auto-correct to fix it. It's antiquated and while there are some people who might be mildly offended by your omitting it or using something non-specific (e.g. Ms) in its place, the reverse mistake you made is a lot more offensive.
Regarding Mrs., please see my comment above. (For whatever it's worth: I have never met a female academic who is offended, however mildly, at being called Ms. rather than Mrs.)
Agreed. In fact, the question is probably mistitled; it should read: Accidentally addressed professor as Mrs instead of Dr – especially on this Exchange.
Is it not weird to use "Dr." when addressing a professor? It seems about half as bad as using "Mr." to me -- making it a point that you don't recognize their professorship.
@Mehrdad Probably not. I think you can be excused for not checking somebody's exact academic position, whereas you normally assume people have a doctorate. Moreover, in the States, people use 'professor' even for people without doctorates, so you might argue that using this fails to recognise a doctorate. Students used 'professor' to me when I was - and they knew I was - a graduate student. So did one copy shop after I told them not to use 'Dr' on the course reader because I wasn't - they used 'Professor' instead. Which wasn't what I'd had in mind.
@Mehrdad It depends on the school--at my alma mater, we said "Professor" but at my sister's they say "Dr" and we all mean the same respect.
Whisper words of wisdom!
I'm a little surprised at all these references to "firstname" and "lastname". In some cultures the family name comes first. It is clearer to refer to "given name" (the name your parents gave you) and "family name" (the name your parents share). See Personal Name - Wikipedia.
@NickGammon You are correct. I'll change it.
Leave it be. Don't overthink it. Chances are that she didn't even notice. And if she did, it's highly unlikely that she'll hold a grudge if you correctly address her in future communication.
As others have pointed out, there is no consensus on what is the best way to address someone in professional communication. While many people prefer something as informal as "Hi {firstname}" (this includes people with a PhD or other academic title), others may be a lot more oldfashioned and consider that impolite. If you really feel insecure about how to address a person, it's therefore always better to ask him or her in person before you send your first mail.
Still, in my experience, there's a big discrepancy between how we're taught to communicate when we're young and how we end up communicating professionally once we're actually out there working 40+ hours a week in a real job that requires us to communicate with multiple people on different continents throughout the day. In the real world, people tend to be much less formal (and more focused on getting things done) than we're taught to be as youngsters. This includes professors and other academic staff. So as I said in the beginning : don't overthink it.
This cartoon captures it pretty well :
I have been seen academia in two countries: India and Netherlands.
In Netherlands, most professors are super busy and they really know that such a mistake was typo. In such cases, if you send an additional mail it just is one more mail for them to read. (They will still not be angry at you for doing so) Thus, you don't have to explain such a typo and correct yourself next time.
In India, almost most professors are busy. Above solution applies. But there are a few professors who take it personally and get offended if you do not address them 'Dr.'
(P.S: In both of the above countries, there is high probability that you might get to work with a professor whom you can address "Dear First_name,")
first name??? not last name?
Yes. My professor addresses me "Dear Ram" and address my email back as "Dear First name" and after a while emails become just chats without formal texts in it.
I can confirm that as a Dutch academic, I would be very confused if someone were to say Dear Jansen (as that combines informal and formal) as opposed to Dear Bas.
@BasJansen but Bas is your name
Even in the US, (in my experience with engineering departments at least), it's quite common to be on a first name basis with your advisor.
@SSimon My initial comment (above) was as an answer to your 'first name??? not last name?' statement, which to me suggested that you were surprised that someone would use the 'Dear First_name' option as this answer suggested.
yes, I never know in EU is common to call a professor by name @BasJansen I always thought it is not polite.
@SSimon Not all of the EU, but some parts. Working in Scandinavian academia, I would also never dream of addressing a professor I know by their title and last name—they would think I was angry at them or something. Meanwhile, just south of the border in Germany, I’ve known students who would go out to a bar with their teachers and have beers with them and still call them “Dr. Last_name”.
@JanusBahsJacquet - My experience in Scandinavia and Germany match your description.
Don't worry about it. Most professors are both hardened in many senses by the stress in their everyday job and also have lots of duties so they can't let such silly things bother them. There is a fair chance he has not even seen your email if it did not have a course name in the subject line.
Upvoted for creative use of the word "he".
In Academia a professional title should be used as the primary form of address. Perhaps I am in the minority of people that had instructors without PhD. If your professor has PhD, then the mistake (according to etiquette of the majority) was not calling her "Doctor" or "Professor". For that, I personally would correct and apologize as it really can be received by the Professor as a significant lack of respect, and since that was not your intent then an apology is appropriate.
Likewise, non-PhD instructors should not be called "Professor" because that is a title one earns through their PhD completion and then progressing up the academic ranks, so is disrespecting of the Professors that have earned that title and rank.
Here is a list of academic ranks by country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_ranks
This has good info for addressing non-PhD instructors:
How to address an academic without a PhD
For non-PhD instructors, I'd follow general business etiquette such as this: https://www.thebalance.com/when-to-use-miss-mrs-or-ms-3514830
Unless of course the instructor has instructed or voiced another preference.
If a Professor has said it is acceptable to call by first name, I would only do that in private one-on-one. If the Professor has said it is permitted in a class setting, I would do so as long as there are no peers or superiors of the Professor present.
I think a professor is a professor and can be addressed as such regardless of whether they have a PhD. The title one earns through a PhD is Doctor.
non-PhD instructors should not be called "Professor" — This obviously varies by country and/or field. In the US, it is definitely appropriate to address instructors as "professor", regardless of their formal academic rank or academic history.
It does depend on the country and local customs. In Australia the primary form of address is more likely to be their first name, even if you haven't met them before.
JeffE and @PatriciaShanahan, in the US yes, but not in central Europe. In my country a professor can be addressed as such only after being given the formal full professor title by the president of the republic after being approved by the university. And grammar school teachers, but that is a different kind of "professor", not aplicable to universities. And never first name, that is unthinkable (maybe some young TA).
At a US community college there can definitely be professors and even department chairs without PhDs.
Yes, things vary by country and culture. In the US, "Professor" is a fairly high rank in a University.
Further to @DavePhD's point, I sometimes volunteer with a community college robotics group. The professor in charge does not have a PhD, and will not answer to "Doctor X". He does answer to "Mr X", "Professor X" and his given name. Most students use "Professor X". As a community volunteer, I'm "Patricia" not "Dr. Shanahan".
Apologize briefly - next time.
Next time you have a reason to send her an email, add a sentence saying "I noticed that in my last email I mistyped 'Mr. X' instead of 'Mrs. X'; please accept my apology."
Also note that both honorifics may be wrong as @Anonymous suggests.
I cannot imagine she paid any attention to it, unless she should, by rights, be addressed as "Dr" or "Professor". I wouldn't bring it up. However, if it's really bothering you, or if she's already explicitly asked you (individually or as a group) to call her "Ms", you can briefly apologize the next time you see her. "Oh, by the way, I'm sorry I called you 'Mrs' in an email the other day. I know you prefer 'Ms' and I didn't realize until after I'd sent it."
Also, just as a data point, I prefer "Ms" even when using my husband's last name because I was raised according to some now-outdated social guidelines. One of those guidelines is that a woman is "Mrs [husband's first name] [husband's last name]", because "Mrs [woman's first name] [husband's last name]" is only used once he's dead.
As you say, referring to John Smith's wife Jane as "Mrs John Smith" rather than "Mrs Jane Smith" tends to come across as very old fashioned. Today, some women find it rather offensive and I wouldn't recommend people use it.
@ZeroTheHero "Ms" was a thing back in the 70s and 80s, taking the place of both "Miss" and "Mrs." It doesn't imply that the person is still a child, and is not pejorative; in fact, back in the 80s I was on more than one occasion aggressively corrected to "Ms" by women whom I had addressed as "Mrs." I don't know whether it's still being used much nowadays. But the issue it sought to correct I see as a valid one: there's no reason that women should be characterized as married or not married by their form of address, while the same doesn't hold for men.
@ZeroTheHero You are mistaken "Miss" (and technically "Master" for boys) is for children. That's what British Airways used to call them, when they still had their unaccompanied minors programme (until about 2 years ago). "Miss" for unmarried women is still in use the the UK, but NOT in academia. Just don't.
One advantage of a doctorate is that it avoids the whole Miss/Mrs/Ms issue.
@DavidRicherby, no doubt. I'd never hold anyone to it, nor would I ask them to observe it. But deep down, whenever I see my name written as "Mrs. [kmc] [Doe]", it gives me the tiniest sensation of the creeps, lol. Thanks, Mom.
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132366 | Questions about authorship rank and academic politics
Disclaimer! I am a first year CS/Applied math master student so I do understand very little in how academia works. I am trying to fix it before I go into PhD.
I have discovered a scientist who works in the field I am interested in. This scientists is very successful career-wise. The scientists finished a prestigious university and had stays in very good places. Now the scientists is an assistant prof in a high-ranking US university.
However, literally >90 % of his papers were written in co-authorship (as a rule, not the first nor the last author) with other more experienced researcher who we recognized as leaders in the fields. In fact, the only solo paper the scientist has is ones thesis! All PhD students so far have been also co-advised.
I have very little research experience but it seems to me that coming up with a good idea one can further develop is the trickiest part. Implementation (or, sometimes, even writing down actual proofs) is a technical work. I guess that the coauthorship was earned for some implementation work. It seems to me that there are much more people capable of / actually doing these technical work both in academia and in industry who do not get such recognition as the aforementioned scientist.
I may be envy but I find very little proofs of that scientist actual skills. Instead I have a feeling that the scientist makes very wise political decisions or is good as self-advertising.
Also I did very limited empirical studies and found that researchers who have highly-cited solo papers tend to have higher (4K +) citation counts then those who have almost exclusively co-authored papers.
My question is many-fold:
is what I have described normal? Update. Is it normal to have almost exclusively co-authored papers?
what should I do to mimic that behavior. It does not seem to be noble at all but apparently this is how successful academia people work.
Are indeed funding and promotions based on citation counts? If this is not the case, how those researchers without solo papers are assessed?
Is it true that those researcher who has successful solo papers are much better supervisors?
Update. I am talking here about theoretical research in CS/Applied Math. I guess in other fields there are many more opportunities for equally valuable contributions of many sides.
Co-authorship is more common in many academic fields when compared to solo authorship.
IMO, ideas are cheap. Work long enough (and not even that long) on a problem / field, and you'll have dozens of idea to try every month. The hard part is going through the work of implementing them, see if they work, if not why not (and how long do I want to spend trying to figure it out, vs trying something else). There is no point in time when you have an idea and say "Ah, perfect, I solved the problem, now just need to code it up and I'm done".
I should point out one of the most famous of co-authors in math: Paul Erdős. Erdős never won a fields medal or even wrote a seminal paper as a solo author. What he did do was "wander" around to different universities and help people solve problems. He was an extremely prolific writer (over 1500 published manuscripts) and is considered one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. The ultimate mathematical Renaissance man who could seemingly work on any problem. I think you would have quite a bit of difficulty in arguing that because Erdős never wrote a classical mathematics paper as a solo author, he was not a tremendous mathematician. (Though to be fair, in the past decade, his paper "On Random Graphs" can now be considered a classical work of mathematics. It just took 50 years for the work to become highly applicable).
I relate this story because having lots of co-authors does not necessarily mean having bad skills. Now I am not saying your professor is the second coming of Paul Erdős (I can't think of anyone currently in academia who can claim that mantle) but they might have other skills you are not giving them their due credit for.
Never underestimate the power of being able to organize a group of smart people and get them to work together on the same problem.
To answer your questions specifically-
It's neither normal or not normal. Tenure positions are rare enough that there are certain metrics that are highly predicative (e.g. individuals who are ahead of the publication curve for their field tend to get hired in tenure positions) but there is no conclusive metric. Individually, there is enough variance within each position that you cannot really say.
Collaborate! Having only solo author publications is probably not wise (unless you are in a field that is big on monographs). Having a variety of publications where you are first author, second author, and a middling author show your ability to collaborate and be a team player.
Yes, clout does increase likelihood of getting accepted. Being a big wig with 10,000 citations at an elite university means you are more likely to get a grant than someone with a handful of publications from an R2. But to be fair, the qualities that led that person to be a big wig probably translate into their writing and research caliber as well.
I have never seen any research or evidence that suggests that.
+1 And to answer the question "how those researchers without solo papers are assessed?" — They are assessed crudely by counting their publications, and more effectively by actually reading their papers, just like researchers with solo papers.
I don't think Erdos is a good example here. Yes, he famously had lots of collaborators, but he also wrote over 400 solo papers.
I think you are misinterpreting the data. What you seem to think of as "wise political decisions" is really just collaboration. Collaboration is a good thing in general. I'm not sure why you think that the leaders of the field would put up with someone just "hanging onto their coattails". I think they would probably resent that implication.
My suggestion is that you give up trying to "stand above everyone" and find some people who are as good as you are and start to share ideas and start some collaborations. If you wind up in a place that has a small faculty, then having already established a circle of collaborators will help your career greatly.
The person (maybe people) you open with have good positions because they were judged to have good potential. Their "citation counts" and all of that were just evidence of that potential. Their vast network of collaborators was likewise.
As you say, you are in a field in which insight is (all) important, but also rare. Sharing ideas can help. Hoarding doesn't.
Their "citation counts" and all of that were just evidence of that potential.
I see here a little bit of a "chicken or the egg problem". If citations come exclusively from co-authred papers, how do we know about the potential?
Again, it may that I am biased and envy. However, imagine the following. There is a bright student who gets good grades. He gets a chance to do an internship in a good team under the supervision of the leader of the field. The student gets some work done say implements some algorithms or helps to write the paper. He becomes a co-author. Yet what was done is totally comparable with home assignments which do not even require being creative.
@GlossyRetirement Why don't you try working solo and see how far you get? (this is not meant sarcastically, it will really answer your question in by far most cases)
I've tried and find it super hard. In fact I had written several "papers" which are unpublished because the progress I had was meager. So I guess that the answer is that these people do collaborative research because it is easier?
Not "easier". Just more productive. Don't expect to be an expert at something having only just begun the journey. There are many steps to be taken.
I risk to go off tangent here. I am currently working with a prof. I disagree with him on the direction my internship should take. My attempt to gently change his mind has failed. Now I have to choices: either just carry on with his plan, "collaborating" and not spoiling my relations with him despite what I consider is the right thing to do. Or I can escalate the issue a little bit by making him actually have a discussion with me and thus risking not "being judged as having a good potential".
Now, obviously the prof is much more experienced than I am. Before I started the internship with him this prof had enormous authority in my eyes. Now I find him my less "cool". Citations counts were one of the reasons I though he was a very good researcher. But now I questions my prior because his cited papers were co-authored with people who are more "successful" (at least , if judged by the citation counts) then he is.
All collaboration requires compromise. On the other hand, actual collaboration doesn't mean bowing to authority; if you have concerns, you absolutely should discuss them with your collaborator, openly, honestly, and respectfully. This will improve your relationship with him far more than either silent deference or open defiance. (But note well: ultimately deferring to experience after good-faith discussion is not the same thing as bowing to authority.)
I'm not sure what part of theoretical CS you're considering. In the parts I'm familiar with, co-authored papers are very much the norm, and author lists are alphabetical, so there's no significance in being first or last author. Other areas use other author-ordering criteria but co-authored papers still seem to be the most common case.
Citation counts differ dramatically between areas. For example, I have just finished a 50-page (co-authored) paper that cites about 25 other papers. In contrast, a seminar announcement on our departmental mailing list linked to a 14-page paper in another area of CS that cited more than 80 papers (or, should I say a 9-page paper with a five-page bibliography?). If that paper is typical of its field, citation counts must be much higher there than in my area. Perhaps your citations-vs-single author comparison is comparing a field where a typical paper has one author and cites a lot with a field where a typical paper has several authors and cites less.
There are plenty of universities where co-advisorship of PhD theses is common. Think of it as a sort of insurance policy in case the student doesn't get along with one of their advisors, coupled with two heads being better than one. It's not a reflection on either advisor's skills as an advisor.
I guess that the coauthorship was earned for some implementation work. [...]
I may be envy but I find very little proofs of that scientist actual skills. Instead I have a feeling that the scientist makes very wise political decisions or is good as self-advertising.
Wow, you're spectacularly dismissive. From reading your question, I get the impression that you believe that scientific publication is primarily to prove how awesome the author is, that co-authorship must necessarily dilute that awesomeness, and that the only reason to bring on a co-author is to get them to do the boring parts. That's not how it works. Furthermore, unless you're reading papers that explicitly state what the contribution of each author was, your guesses of who did what are exactly that: guesses, and guesses based on almost no information. Don't condemn people based only on your baseless guesses.
c) Are indeed funding and promotions based on citation counts? If this is not the case, how those researchers without solo papers are assessed?
No. Not applicable.
d) Is it true that those researcher who has successful solo papers are much better supervisors?
Why would it be? They seem completely unrelated concepts, to me. If I had to guess, I'd guess that the researcher with many co-authors is better at working with other people, so is better at working with students. Doesn't that make more sense?
I am talking here about theoretical research in CS/Applied Math. I guess in other fields there are many more opportunities for equally valuable contributions of many sides.
Your guesses about theoretical CS aren't something that I, a theoretical computer scientist, recognize as a description of my field.
co-authored papers are very much the norm,
I am not questioning this. I am asking more about a researcher having only such papers.
Citation counts differ dramatically between areas
I am comparing counts in the same field. Moreover, I have seen the same authors listed in direct (X, Y) and in the reversed order (Y,X).
scientific publication is primarily to prove how awesome the author is,
sure, but isn't this part very important career-wise? If not that then what?
guesses, and guesses based on almost no information Agree.
@GlossyRetirement Can you find researchers in your field with single-author papers? What's the ratio between such researchers and those with no single-author papers?
@GlossyRetirement When co-authored papers are completely normal, having only co-authored papers is also pretty normal. I don't understand why you think there's something wrong with co-authored papers. Let me be absolutely clear: co-authoring is not an indication of any kind of inadequacy. Career-wise, doing high-quality research is what matters, and collaborative research is fine. You're not going to get somebody looks good who consistently contributes almost nothing to papers, because people will only work with them once, and it's hard to keep finding new collaborators.
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20441 | How do I pick good keywords for literature alerts?
F'x has made a very informative post here about staying up to date with current research.
My question concerns the "publication alert" part of it. To be clear: I am asking about setting up an online service, such NCBI PubMed, to send you a notification (for instance, email) whenever a paper matching certain search criteria is published.
The objective is to get a decent number of notifications, but not so many that you are swamped and unable to actually pay attention to them. Also, the notifications that you do get should be prioritized the most important papers.
The biggest problem I am having is coming up with effective keywords. If I try to make myself come up with general keywords (such as those that might be given in the article's own "keywords" section), it seems that I end up with keywords so general that I would get thousands of notifications every week.
Alternatively, I could try to come up with very specific keywords, but how do I select those? What if they are too specific, and an important paper gets published without using my particular obscure keyword?
Surely people are not born with a natural talent for thinking of good keywords. So how can I train this skill?
Furthermore, is there a systematic method to deduce good keywords given a body of "gold standard" relevant literature? (I mean things such as statistical analysis of the text)
I know that it can be worthwhile to focus on certain "big player" authors. But if in a field with thousands of authors (eg. cancer), how does a new researcher map out who is important and who is not? Furthermore, the biggest players are probably PIs of huge labs, who already publish a very large volume of papers, so we are again at odds with the "not too many notifications" problem.
Another possibility is looking at citation metrics to identify the most important papers, as Google Scholar does. But clearly, this is not effective for new papers - who will cite a paper published last week?
Google Scholar gives me automated updates, which it says are based on my citations profile. I wonder if you can sign up for automated updates based on, say, your search history, or of a set of papers you select.
Here is Google's page about Scholar Updates: http://googlescholar.blogspot.com/2012/08/scholar-updates-making-new-connections.html
You have quite a few questions here: (1) how to choose keywords effectively in Google Scholar, (2) how to deduce keywords given a corpus of literature, (3) how to map out important researchers in a field. This question is generally relevant, this one is relevant for (1).
One of the biggest problems is that there are, in fact, waaay to many relevant papers coming out; that's because there are lots of articles published each month in many different fields.
The approach I found most useful was threefold:
Set up author-specific alerts for the big names in your field. Read both those articles and the citations. They know the literature and will cite stuff you should be familiar with.
Set up alerts to see when someone cites a seminal paper. In my research, there were certain seminal papers that everyone participating in my tiny subfield would always quote. Find those and set up alerts when someone cites that.
Read the most popular article(s) of the month (most downloaded/shared/read in your journal of choice) to stay on top of interesting stuff that's going on.
+1 for "when someone cites a seminal paper" - very good idea I hadn't thought of.
@Superbest actually that's in the Fx post you were referring to.
@Bitwise - I didn't even realize that was there. Now I feel like I copied (albeit without knowing). Sorry, F'x...
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65868 | Why do some instructors care so much about attendance?
It seems that in higher education, some instructors either do not care at all whether students attend, and others care minimally (often resulting in a 1-5% attendance grade or tie-breaker rule).
However there are also many instructors who seem to feel very, very strongly about attendance, and take it upon themselves to enforce this in various ways.
For instance, I was shocked by a recent question claiming that 15% of the grade would be lost for missing 2 lectures - according to the question author, the class meets so frequently that this would constitute missing less than 3% of the lectures! While this seems like an extreme case, it seems like it's not uncommon to find professors who may deduct 10% or so for missing a small fraction of lectures.
Why are these professors so preoccupied with making students attend? If attendance is so crucial to doing well in the class, wouldn't the students who don't attend do poorly in the exams anyway? Why additionally punish those students who did not attend, but did well regardless?
Students who don't attend but still do well challenge the professor's EGO.
@BenVoigt; As in my answer, I think a bigger problem is students who don't attend because they think they can still do well, but turn out to be mistaken. This challenges the institution's retention rate.
"If attendance is so crucial to doing well in the class, wouldn't the students who don't attend do poorly in the exams anyway? " - Yes. And so an "attendance required" policy is at least mildly effective at reducing absences and increasing pass rates, which is something many instructors consider desirable. (Especially in e.g. the context of a community college, vs an elite institution.)
"Professors ego": totally off - I do not mind if students are away from my class, although I work hard to make it informative and interesting. However, I do mind if students complain about difficulty of material, bad marks, etc. and they haven't attended. They have been forgoing some essential component of the course, and it's someone's else fault?
It's just another way to trouble the students.
@CaptainEmacs -- I don't even care too much about the bad marks and griping. I care more if the habitually absent show up to office hours asking for an explanation for something they would understand if they went to class.
@BenVoigt It has little to do with the instructor's ego and more to do with students that don't bother attending lecture and show up in the office hours immediately prior to an exam expecting the prof to spoon-feed the material to them.
"If attendance is so crucial to doing well in the class, wouldn't the students who don't attend do poorly in the exams anyway?" Maybe, maybe not. There are some things that can't be measured well on exams, and if the professor makes an effort to teach those things in class, what else can they do?
@BenV - In the (hopefully extreme) case of the brilliant student who is unfortunately stuck in the lecture hall of a mediocre professor who does little more than read the bullets off his slides or parrot the book, you may have a point. However, when I see empty chairs in my classroom, more often than not, the absent students are lazy idlers rather than savants. They rarely crack open the book they paid good money for, and don't seem to mind forfeiting the education they are paying for, either, for the sake of a little extra sleep or a bit more video game time. Egos run in both directions.
@ff524 This makes less sense now with lecture recordings available. I used to listen to recordings only and did well in many subjects despite not attending a single class physically for those subjects.
There was a relevant question at Professor only teaches what is already in textbook. Should I quit going to the lectures? which may provide some insight.
@J.R.: Sure, and I do not mean to suggest that all professors who care about attendance are doing so for egotistical reasons. Merely the ones who do so by explicitly reducing the course grade for absence, when there are so many better ways to engage students and get them into class.
@CaptainEmacs: By your own statement "I do not mind if students are away from my class" you are not in the group of professors my comment concerns.
In our experience here it is very unlikely for any student who regularly attends the lecture to fail the exam, even if they are not putting more effort into it. Just a case of "subliminal learning" I guess. I survived two lectures I did not like by doing the exercise sheets for one of them while passively listening to the other. I passed both, without having the feeling that I put extra effort in either.
FWIW, at my (German) CS-department, there is not a single course with forced attendance. (Exercise sessions are different sometimes, if rarely.) This is a question of (learning) culture: do you expect your students to be mature enough (before or after they graduate)?
That 3% figure is closer to 5% if one takes into account schools that are based on the quarter system. Also if the student was taking a foreign language class, I can understand that kind of requirement. Students who take a beginner level foreign language class because they already know that particular language are wasting everybody's time. It's a good idea to dissuade such students from taking your course in the first place (even if by the end of the course, you don't end up enforcing the lowering of their grade).
And finally, a foreign language is also a good example of a subject where you can do very well during the final written exam, but be absolutely horrible when it comes to understanding and conversing in that particular language. Another good example is a physical education class. When I took a course on resistance training (weight lifting), the course had such a long waiting list of students wanting to get in, it made sense that the instructor wanted to dissuade the students who took that class less seriously from wanting to enroll in it.
As a rule of thumb, the stricter the attendance rule the more worthless the class.
I don't take attendance, but it really chaps me when a student doesn't come to class and then expects me to reteach 4 weeks of material to them in office hours. That's a no from me dawg.
I don't take attendance. Unfortunately, students who want to drop my course after the official deadline need my permission, and on that web form I have to say when the student last participated in the class. Sometimes I can make a good guess on the basis of homework or exams, but other times I (briefly) wish I had taken attendance.
One theory is that it serves as additional motivation for students to attend class, which in turn helps increase their success in the course. It gives them a short-term incentive to do something which is hopefully also in their long-term best interest.
If attendance is so crucial to doing well in the class, wouldn't the students who don't attend do poorly in the exams anyway?
In many cases the instructor has found from experience that this is true. But the student (who has less experience) may not be as convinced.
Consider a student who wakes up in the morning and doesn't feel like going to class. In a class with no explicit attendance requirement, the student may rationalize: "I will just study harder tomorrow to learn the material that I missed, and I'll still be able to do well on the exam, so skipping class will have no consequences." But they overestimate their ability to do that, and end up not learning it as well. Or tomorrow they put off the studying until the next day, and so on, and fall behind. As an eventual result, they do not do well on the exam.
In a class with an attendance requirement, the student knows for sure that not attending class will have negative consequences. The biggest consequence (failing the exam) is very likely but not guaranteed, and the student may not be able to impartially evaluate just how likely it is. But loss of attendance points is guaranteed. So the student cannot pretend that skipping class is harmless. Thus the student is more likely to actually attend, which is in their long-term best interest anyway.
Hopefully, the ultimate result is that a higher percentage of students are able to meet the standards of the class. The flip side is that some students who have good attendance but poor performance otherwise may get better grades than they "deserve", but the instructor may feel that this tradeoff is justified.
You don't need to penalize poor attendance explicitly, you just need to make the explanation clear. Putting something in the syllabus about "There are no points assigned to attendance, because there don't need to be. Exam scores always reveal those who skip class." might get the message across even more convincingly. Also, the student in the other class is getting 91% on exams despite blowing through the professor's missed class limit, and on my calendars, the semester's only half over. So clearly attendance isn't so essential as the professor is thinking.
In the end, you could also give easy points for attendance (which will get most students coming to class) without harming those who ARE able to learn in other ways, by including attendance in an overall grade, but giving the option of using the final exam score as the final course grade instead of the overall grade.
@BenVoigt: If you say "always" then every student will know this is a lie. Obviously there are students who never attend and do fine on exams. If you say "usually" then it is quite possible that an improbable number of students will think they can be the exceptions. See the Dunning-Krueger effect.
@BenVoigt: In my opinion, giving the option of using the final exam as the final course grade is a HUGE Dunning-Krueger trap. Students can say "I'm smart, why waste my time going to class? I'll just study in the last week and do great on the final, and then none of the other stuff I missed will matter." And more often than not, they'll be wrong.
For those, there should be the opportunity to test out. I've met a bare handful of people who would bet on the exam only after being out of school; all my classmates would rather have taken the easier points throughout the semester than have that much riding on the final (especially on a comprehensive final); however the final-replaces-all provides a last chance at redemption and takes away any chance to complain about homeworks being too long or attendance being worth too much.
And honestly, Dunning-Kruger should only be a factor for students who haven't met prerequisites, and the professor does a disservice to the other students if he tailors the course for those lacking the groundwork.
@BenVoigt: Your views differ from my experience in a number of respects. But ultimately this comment thread isn't the place for a thorough debate, and I am afraid we may just have to agree to disagree. Feel free to have the last word.
I'll just close by saying that I think other methods for encouraging attendance (covered in some very interesting questions on this site) such as making lectures more interesting, more audience participation, etc. are much better than marking off points for absences.
It's hard for students to know how good your lectures are if they don't show up, though. :-)
Should the teacher really care about how well his "barely-students" perform? If you want to give a warning, make a test early on. If you don't, well... the student can just take the class (or semester, or year...) again. Either they learn from their mistake, or they don't. I'm just thinking of how much time and effort is wasted rearing people who should already be adults, in theory. Sure, it is an extra incentive - but is it really worth it?
@Luaan: It's a fair philosophical question: is the purpose of a university to deliver education only to those already strongly motivated to participate in it, or is it appropriate to encourage or gently coerce participation by students who might not do so on their own? I'll just say that in US academia, the rates of retention and timely graduation are generally viewed as an important measure of quality for an institution. Thus if a student doesn't pass a class, it reflects poorly on the student but also on the institution, program, and instructor.
@Luaan: When evaluating instructors, institutions definitely look at the rate at which students pass or fail their courses. Therefore, yes, instructors do have an incentive to care about how well all students perform, even those you might classify as "barely students". (Of course, there are competing incentives to maintain academic standards.) You could argue that such incentives should not exist, but the fact is that they do.
That's a great point if we assume a private educational system (just for simplicity, not politics). On one side, people want to buy education at an institution that has a high retention rate and short graduation period. On the other side, companies want people with quality education as cheap as possible. Within the quality constraints, retention and short education are a benefit for both parties, and quality becomes a balancing act between making things easier and attracting enough students, and giving companies enough value for their money when hiring your graduate. Business as any other.
This is a non-reason assuming you want to educate mature, self-regulated learners. If class attendance is essential, we have to trust and require that students will figure that out. Extrinsic pressure does not help the long game.
Even though these are terrible reasons, I think this is probably the rationale that a lot of professors use, so +1 for that.
Great answer. The idea that the point of classes is to satisfy the requirements is a damaging and pervasive one. The point of classes is to help the students learn (yes, this is hard to define exactly). Tests, projects, attendance policies, and other requirements are there to help motivate students to learn. The instructor's job is to decide which requirements to impose, based on his or her experience, but all are fair game.
Given how much education costs at least in the US (both public and private), wouldn't you say anyone enrolled in a US university is already strongly motivated ipso facto?
Also, I selected this answer because I think it most directly addresses the misapprehension in my question: That students can be trusted to act rationally with regards to attendance, and that forcing students to attend regardless whether they think it's necessary CAN ultimately be beneficial.
Lots of people in this thread assuming that the point of taking a class is to pass the exam, rather than to gain the education on offer in the class, where the exam is just one of the means this education is provided.
This is coddling and, in this case, detrimental to learning, itself, which is not limited to course material. Yes, it's true that it can potentially hurt student retention rates for universities. If, however, students don't learn to create their own fail safes and always expect some organization to do it for them; this in no way fosters academic independence.
Let me start off by saying that it is very unlikely that attendance requirement is purely to protect the professor's ego, as one comment suggested. Any serious educator would understand that the goal of education is not so that the students become increasingly reliant upon the education system. Rather, the goal is to produce students that are increasingly independent, critical, and confident in their own reasoning. If I were a professor, I would be glad that the student can succeed without my help, rather than the other way around. To punish a student for being able to succeed without the help of lectures is simply contradictory to the goal of education.
With that being said, here are some more plausible reasons:
The class is discussion based. This is quite straightforward: if you
don't attend the class, then you do not learn. The in-class learning
experience cannot be compensated by self-study, and exams may not be
an ideal measure of such experience.
The class meets very infrequently. There are certain classes that meet only once per week. Missing one class means missing a significant amount of work. A related example is science lab requirement. In my undergrad institute missing one lab (without advanced notice) means that you automatically fail the class.
The lectures contain information not otherwise (easily) available. This is more relevant for higher-level classes, where there are no standard textbook and the way the professor teaches the material may be unique. The professor may want to make sure that students attend lectures to get the information they need.
Culture. In some culture regular attendance is associated with deference to the system and/or the lecturer.
One finally note: contrary to what OP stated in the question, it is my personal experience (in the US) that very few professors would deduct a significant amount of points due to a lack of attendance. Instead the focus, if there is any, is usually on participation of class activity (which, of course, can only be fulfilled if you attend the class). What OP have described seems like rare exceptions rather than the rule.
Regarding 4: Is there a culture where class attendance in university is almost always enforced? I also thought that one might view the class grade as a measure of not just knowledge but also discipline. However this cannot be the case if there is no way to look at one's transcript and tell which A's are "attendance withstanding" and which are "in spite of [in]attendance".
@Superbest This seems to be an example: http://baylorlariat.com/2013/12/03/editorial-attendance-policies-can-be-too-strict/
Also to #1, if you don't come to class, you may be injuring your classmates' learning experience, so a punitive penalty is apt. In the extreme, consider a performance/studio class like theater, choir, or band, but the idea applies for foreign language as well and many courses that use flipped classroom instructional strategies. If only half the band shows up, what's the point of even having class? @Superbest at my undergrad, you could tell the difference. A, B, C, D, or F you attended. An FA (Failure due to absences — 2 weeks missed) you didn't attend.
Is there a difference between "Stroking Someone's Ego" and "Deference"?
@Aron: there is a difference. Stroking someone's ego is purely personal to them, whereas deference acknowledges the standing of the university as a whole, by ostentatiously showing respect to its representatives, the faculty members. Showing deference usually has the effect of stroking the egos of those same people, but it additionally has a purpose to do with the whole institution (and perhaps wider structures/hierarchies: consult your local sociologist for details!).
@SteveJessop sounds like you are saying one is stroking your professor and the other is stroking a building. Other than that everything else seems to be window dressing.
@Aron: if you like, but anyway that is sufficient difference to constitute a different motive in the minds of the people whose "preoccupations" the question is about. Perhaps they are less reductionist than you about what a "university" actually is (they think it is not only a building), but even if they're wrong about what a university is, "my students should ostentatiously show respect for the institution" is different from (albeit in some cases a superset of) "my students should ostentatiously show respect to me".
@guifa: This may well be true in the cases you describe, but in many others the opposite is true: a student who does not want to attend the class, forced to attend it, might impair the learning (and teaching!) experience for everyone else, by being disruptive or otherwise just uninterested in the class.
@tomasz generally, peer pressure takes care of that. I can honestly say that while I've had many a student not show up and fail, not do group projects, not hand in assignments — that is, the whole gamut of non-participation—, I've only once ever had someone actively disrupt my classroom (and it was so severe, security had to be called). Students who attend are normally peer-pressured into participating, but attendance is really just a proxy. If non participatory but present, they should be similarly downgraded
@guifa: I'm not talking about severe, active disruption. Even merely sitting there with a dead stare, or reading a book can be bad, as they make it hard to get feedback. Peer pressure won't likely prevent people from quietly talking (I don't think it should), but if you force people to attend, they are more likely to spend lectures talking about completely unrelated matters (including with students who would have paid more attention otherwise).
@guifa: Varies by institution? Where I am I had active "saboteurs" (disruptive, snide comments, making fun of other students for asking sincere questions, calling security for removal) maybe once a semester as long as I allegedly held the attendance requirement. Once I released that, the problem almost entirely went away (literally).
I'd add #5) "they track because they are being tracked"? They get graded too... low attendance reflects badly? And #6) Rumuneration. Aren't some schools remunerated based on head count... low headcount affects the balance sheets.
These are all non-reasons assuming you want to educate mature, self-regulated learners. If class attendance is essential, we have to trust and require that students will figure that out. Extrinsic pressure does not help the long game.
@Raphael, I'm not sure if your assumption holds. Some see their role as more than just educating a student on the particular subject. Whether this is considered valid or invalid, I cannot find much fault in a Professor who wants to help his students become mature and self-regulating.
@MichaelJ. Sure, I'm all for that. But forcing them will (on average) not do that. They will yield to the pressure, of course, but release it and they will go back to before. You have to allow them to fail first and then learn -- that's only human. (I'm fully aware that most education systems do not incentivize allowing failure. That's part of the problem.) And yes, we tried that.
Points 1-3 seem irrelevant if the student actually learns or already knows the content. #1 would be relevant if it harmed other students; #2 if this was the only way of demonstrating to the teacher that you knew the content (as opposed to having a final exam or handing in reports).
@raphael citation needed
@Jeff Personal experience. I'm quite sure there's a study somewhere, though. (I can summarily recommend the work by Linda Nilson.)
It has been my experience that only two types of classes ever assign a significant amount of points to attendance. Classes that can easily be passed without attending. ( ie Music 101 ) where test are multiple choice straight from assigned reading. Or classes that are so difficult, professors are willing to do anything to keep from failing 95% of students or where they have to pass at least 40% on curve and they prefer that 40% actually know something. My general rule when at college was to immediately drop any class with an attendance policy that wasn't of the later type.
You said "...the goal is to produce students that are increasingly independent, critical, and confident in their own reasoning." While true at one time, in the era of microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, speech codes, and censorship, it doesn't seem to be the goal these days. Today it seems to be "Think as independently as you would like but you have to agree with us on thousands of issues without giving it any critical thought or open discourse at all. If you to dare think differently than we do, you will be shunned, targeted, harassed, bullied, mocked, insulted and expelled."
@AmaniKilumanga If the already know the content, then why are they taking the class in the first place?
@IanSudbery I don't know. Could be a required credit or something?
So here are some observations from my perspective: I teach at a large, urban, community college. We are open admissions (no starting prerequisites) and the students have many challenges (graduation rate 15-20% in the university at large; ~25% for our own college). I'm very much an outlier in that I'm one of the few faculty who don't want to be tracking attendance closely. I'm constantly trying to understand why other faculty are so adamant about this; and frankly I have yet to receive a super-coherent account of it. But some bits and pieces that I get at times:
Students may be so weak that they are subject to the Dunning-Kruger effect; they have no idea how in trouble they are, or what it takes to remediate their weaknesses. Perhaps they are not in a position to make a rational choice about their academics, and at this point need some enforced guidance in that regard, esp. in a linked-knowledge STEM discipline. (To me, this is the strongest argument, the one that allows me to at least entertain the thought once in a while.)
There may be a legacy/cultural aspect; for example, at our school we are given paper rosters with calendars marked out on them for each class, with the direction to mark it a certain way for attendance every day. I've never seen a contractual/handbook requirement that we do this, but the paperwork says so, and they are required documents to be filed at the end of the semester.
There may be institutional reporting metrics at stake. For example, if a student misses 4 classes (course meets twice a week), then the college lets us drop them from the course, and my department quasi-mandates that we do so. I think part of the reason is that the student then counts as an "unannounced withdrawal", which makes our "failure" statistics look better (to very high-pressure stakeholders higher up in the university administration).
Some instructors may do this to make the course easier. I've heard at least once that an instructor in another department had, say, a 70% grade component based on attendance. That is: a student is not required to perform any work whatsoever; as long as they are physically present, they can pass the class (and thus relieve some amount of pressure on the instructor, I presume).
"Remember, the attendance rosters are legal documents. Years ago there was a student accused of a crime. They were proven innocent because of their being marked in class that day, which counted as an alibi." (I've heard this lore multiple times.)
"Attendance is important to reporting for financial aid; we must confirm that students are attending for certain financial aid requirements." (About 75% of our students get federal/state grants?)
"Don't you think attendance is important? Don't you want students to succeed?"
"I've heard this lore multiple times." Allow me to dispell some of the ambiguity, so this might possibly be a bit more traceable. I've had college president Ron Price tell his faculty, in a faculty meeting that I attended (as a member of his faculty), that he experienced that at his school. I believe he said he did so at the Lancaster (California) location of Charter College, so that would have placed the event at November 2010 - May 2012. (I'm not suggesting that this is the only case where a student was crafty enough to accomplish this technique, but am providing about just 1 instance)
@TOOGAM: Hmm. When I've heard it, the implication has been at our institution (and also further back then those years?). To me it has the scent of urban myth. At any rate, it seems like a highly suspect/inefficient reason for documenting class attendance every day (i.e., taking time out of class to be parole-officers-in-waiting).
Any college granting 70%(!!) grade component based on attendance should instantly lose its accreditation. What was the name of that institution and department please? It's basically farming us the taxpayer and rewarding warm bodies with a pass for showing up. (Would it graduate a chicken which passed the course? if not, on what basis? I would enroll my chicken and appeal, just to prove the point.)
@smci (I'm guessing your comment is based on the 4th bullet point, not my comment which provides such details.) Before jumping to that conclusion so quickly, I think it prudent to consider: what course is it? I remember taking some classes ("physical education", choir, maybe drama, maybe "college study skills" where key criteria involved things like in-class performance and demonstrations of positive attitude. I wouldn't want to blindly instantly remove accreditation for an entire college without knowing more details.
@smci e.g., Whatcom Community College, "Preparation for the SAT" course, CMSVC 085T -- as I recall, getting a "Pass" only required attending something like 3 out of 7 classes. At the start of class 2, they took attendance, and then said (to all those who were present), "If you were here last week, the only thing you're required to do, to pass, is to attend one class out of the next 5 weeks." This is an old example (Spring 1995), but I just present it as an example of the diversity of requirements that can exist. Use those requested institution/dept names as desired
@DanielR.Collins I wouldn't call the case I'm citing as an "urban myth"; at least not from my perspective, because the person who gave me the info (whom I cited for you) was directly involved. So this isn't one of those myths that completely lacks any reasonable amount of trace-ability.
@TOOGAM but he clearly said '70% for attendance' not 'for participation'. 'Attendance' simply means showing up: whether sober/high/sleepy/unprepared. If he really meant 'for participation' he should have said that, I agree there are a few courses where that could be justifiable.
@djechlin: I mean academically weak, as in "unskilled" and "incompetent" per the language of Dunning-Kruger's papers: link, link
@djechlin That's not some super technical term. If you perform poorly in an area, then you're weak in that area. There's nothing to criticize here.
@djechlin He pretty much did. They're weak in the area of being students, so they are weak students.
@djechlin, I think this is completely unambiguous, the thought that this might have used the (as I consider it, archaic) meaning of weak as in "of weak character" didn't occur to me, and re-reading it I still can't see how anyone could come to that conclusion: "Weak student" is a phrase every academic I know uses weekly.
Why are these professors so preoccupied with making students attend? If attendance is so crucial to doing well in the class, wouldn't the students who don't attend do poorly in the exams anyway?
I am an instructor who sometimes makes attendance or participation part of the grade. There are several reasons for this (many of which already appear in other answers). The main ones are:
I'm at a large state school where most of my students are under-prepared for the class academically (these are math classes and officially meeting the prereqs is very different from knowing the prereqs), and need all the instructional help they can get.
Most of the students are taking the class as a requirement, not because they want to be there. In addition, many of the students are not super responsible, and benefit from psychological incentives to attend class and keep up with the material. (The Dunning-Kruger effect is also a concern here.)
The material is cumulative so getting behind makes it harder to catch up, especially for weak students.
We face a lot of pressure from the university to ensure most students do not do poorly in their classes. In effect, we are blamed for not keeping our students on track. It's not a matter of, "it's the students' problem, not mine" if they don't pass.
The complete content of a 15-week course cannot be assessed in a few hours of exams throughout the semester. I want my students to learn and understand more than what's on the exams.
Why additionally punish those students who did not attend, but did well regardless?
The point is not to punish students who did not attend, but to motivate students to attend to give them opportunities to do well in class. In my experience, very few students who skip most classes do well on the exams. Personally, I don't usually make attendance worth a lot (except in classes where in-class work/discussion is a crucial part of the class) and I make my grading policy flexible, so I can bump people up for doing well on the final exam, say. This way, poor attendance, or doing poorly at the beginning of the course does not ruin the student's final grade.
In other words, your job is giving students tools, not tests - it's worth very little if they pass the tests but learn to use no new tools. That said, would you allow a student to be absent if he demonstrated sufficient skill in advance?
@Luaan Probably---in practice, students don't ask. Anyway, my attendance policies are not so draconian as in the other question. Usually you get 1 attendance point per class, so missing a couple classes is no big deal. (OTOH, if the student knows everything in the class before hand, they are in the wrong class.)
Those are also great points :) Though with some classes, we had no option to have a class accepted without actually taking the class - ithose were exceptions, though.
Great explanation. Dunning Kruger is recurrent theme here, and indeed, nobody would care about good students who can pass with excellent grades without attending. However, most think they can, while the reality is exactly the opposite.
Just my 2 cents from being a student at a CSU. I don't know what subject/level of classes you teach, but from my experience, the only classes I was ever required to go to for attendance were for GE's. And as a high performing student being forced to attend lecture was very annoying, as I really had no need to be there. Thus I would simply read, play games on my phone/computer, watch videos, or do homework for other classes at the back of the class. You can force me to be there, but don't expect me to like it, and if you try to force me to pay attention, don't expect that to go well.
Completely agree (I am a lecturer also). Very good students will do well in spite of my performance, and bad students will have bad results no matter what I do. What I have to try to do is that all the others students (who are normally the majority) do well. And for them, attendance requirements do help, even when they think they won't. (And by the way, @ChrisWhite comment should be printed big and set in the banner of the site).
Disclosure: I am a lecturer, and I do care about attendance, however I have only limited experience. I don't enforce attendance, because I don't have leverage to do so (at least not in a way that would not upset students to the point which will hurt my chances further career). But I would very like to follow the example of the professor you mention.
There are several reasons, why the lecturers care about the attendance.
1) Dunning-Kruger effect. Often many students, who are enrolled in a class, are totally unaware of difficulty of a course, appear at introductory class (which is usually less difficult) and start skipping others. Then they start getting a clue in the middle of the semester, when they appear at the lectures, and their only experience is that they do not understand anything (so, then they deduce, the lecturer has to be responsible, since they should understand anything and any time). Because of that experience, they then skip the rest of the lectures and get a blow when they are unable to solve a single task in an exam. Finally, more often than not, they still think that it is not their fault, and if the university grades their staff based on students' feedback, it really becomes a problem of a lecturer.
So, forcing them to start attending at the beginning of the semester may avoid this problem.
2) Insufficient support of the university for keeping the standards from sinking to the bottom. Nobody would care about Dunning Kruger, if a lecturer could flunk everyone who does not satisfy the minimum standard at the test. At many universities you probably cannot grade 80% of the class negative, and then expect to retain your position. Sad but true. It is probably worse in for-profit institutions. So if there is some minimum, yet unspoken target of how many students should be graded with positive grades, then a lecturer will try to ensure that at least this many actually attend the lectures and have chance to pass the exam, so the lecturer can fulfill HIS unofficial quota of how many students must pass.
Not much to do with ego, but a lot to do with experience. Really no problem for me if people do not attend and do well, but then it means that they did not need to take the class anyway.
Well, the simple correct answer is probably this: answers vary. There are multiple instructors, and with them there may be multiple reasons.
When I was a college instructor, I was told that the college had made certain promises about what the college would do, which included having students physically on the premises for a certain number of hours. Students who did not show up were hurting the percentages that the college needed to keep high in order to fulfill its obligations.
Edit: adding this paragraph, since I suspect this might not be easily implied by everyone. Checking attendance and following up with non-attenders, even of a single class session, may be an expected requirement of the job. For me, they were. Class sessions were 4+ hours long each, and instructors were even expected to try calling students' cell phones during the first class break, if they didn't attend. Different instructors, like many types of employees, had different levels of how much they may have fulfilled an individual requirement. Still, this simply demonstrates that "pressure from above"/administration may be one reason that may influence some instructors. Attendance was not directly graded (due to some government-related regulation), but there were requirements about how attendance would negatively impact grades under the category of class participation, and attendance could also affect the final grade by impacting additional grade percentages such as in-class quizzes. Some details may have been simply encouraged at some times, while being requirements at other times, and the simple way to be compliant was to just be strict (resulting in this being a significant requirement on students). Even in an institution that doesn't have as strictly enforced policies, there may still be requirements, or suggestions (which might be received as requirements), that might have influence on some instructors. (These influences may come from a certain college president, or department head.) Such influence might impact many years down the road, even after the instructor is no longer under the same supervisor.
Another reason is that students who don't show up are, well, not attending. This means that they are basically one step away from dropping out. (The only step away from being a drop out is not what they do, but how often they are doing it.)
Another reason is that a key purpose of the college education system is to provide the students with the preparation that they will be needing. As I've read this site, I've learned more and more that the precise goals may vary a bit between different institutions, particularly those that describe themselves as "research institutions" vs. those that describe themselves as "career preparation"/"technical colleges". Maybe some have some more philosophical/altruistic goals rather than corporate culture. Regardless, an element that is likely to be quite common is to want people to be successful in the organizations that they join after college. Most organizations do not want people to be failing to meet attendance requirements. If students can be exposed to a certain level of expected discipline, such as an official demand of attendance, that may result in certain character building that may serve them well after graduation.
Some argue that final exams would have their grades harmed by students who aren't learning, and so we can just rely on the final exams as a useful, accurate way of measuring knowledge. The counter-argument is that a student who skips classes may be a good test taker, and may effectively manage to demonstrate knowledge, while not managing to successfully demonstrate the discipline of needing to meet requirements other than just knowledge. Some employers don't treat the diploma only as a demonstration of accumulated knowledge and understanding of related principles. Instead, they treat the diploma as a demonstration of students being able to meet whatever requirements were placed on the student, which may involve some life skills (like scheduling) and not just accumulating certain pieces of "head knowledge". The educational institutions (or individual faculty members within educational institutions) may be choosing to cooperate with such methods.
Again, I refer back to my initial paragraph. These are simply some reasons, and one or more of them might be part or all of the reasoning that gets used by some instructors, while other instructors may have their own different reasons. So consider these various arguments as just being a sample, and not as the single clear-cut absolutely-right universal answer that everyone, everywhere, is actually using.
One reason for requiring attendance is for international student visa eligibility.
In the United States, students on F-1 or M-1 student visas must maintain full-time student status in order to stay "in status", i.e. keep their visas valid. Note the emphasis below on attending classes, passing classes, and taking a full course of study (i.e. being a full-time student taking a normal semester's worth of credit hours).
While studying in the United States, both F and M students must:
Attend and pass all your classes. If school is too difficult, speak with your DSO [designated school official] immediately.
If you believe that you will be unable to complete your program by the end date listed on your Form I-20, talk with your DSO about requesting a possible program extension.
You must take a full course of study each term; if you cannot study full-time, contact your DSO immediately.
Do not drop a class without first speaking with your DSO.
In the UK, if the university takes on some responsibility to ensure they are in attendance, it is easier for them to sponsor students for their visa.
You can just sign their paper no matter whether they attended. (Which is technically not okay, but a common solution around bureaucratic BS.)
It's not usually wise to play games with la migra / State Department / Homeland Security bureaucracies in the US. They go after people who they think disrespect them.
Particularly in the early years of university, students are overwhelmed by the freedom of university compared to high school. They can be late, skip classes, even miss the odd assignment, and nobody will take them aside and scold them for it. On top of that, there are parties somewhere every day, and a wealth of social events.
Many people who were A students in high school get overwhelmed by the change in university, and end up not succeeding.
Some professors want to ease this transition, by taking away an element of choice, or at least reminding students that there's a reason to go to class, even if it's not mandatory.
Sure, there are students who will succeed without going to class, and students who will fail even if they do go to class. But many professors weigh this, and see it as worthwhile to "waste" class on these people, which has really very little harm, if it results in others succeeding where they otherwise would not.
At the end of the day, it is very unlikely that someone will fail because they attended class, but far more likely they will fail because they did not.
"which has really very little harm" -- actively wasting time of your best students, maybe even annoying them to the point of disliking the material is "little harm"? I disagree.
@Raphael It's not a waste of their time. Even the best students will still learn in class. Furthermore, in an active learning environment, they will be able to help others learn, which is a win for everyone. The strong student will get stronger by answering questions from others, and finding different ways of explaining the same concept. Plus, sometimes the way material is presented in class is not the same as the book, and the strong student who misses class would have no idea how to fill in that resulting gap in knowledge.
I see a lot of answers here about ensuring that students don't fail, that professors are adhering to university strictures, or that professors don't want to be inundated with idiotic questions from students who skipped class and then ask basic questions that were covered. All of those have merit and may be true, but they are not the reason that I assign a high proportion of my course grade to attendance and participation.
I am an assistant professor at an R1 in the USA. I teach political science. Attendance and participation are weighted very heavily in my class because one of the core skills I focus on teaching is critical thinking. I don't give tests or quizzes. Rather, students are graded on their in-class participation (which demonstrates mastery of the assigned readings and the ability to engage the ideas in those readings) and several written assignments designed to prepare students for policy-oriented jobs "in the real world."
Moreover, while I understand that some people view college courses as simply a means to an end, that is neither my philosophy in teaching nor my goal in providing a class. To my view, class meetings are precisely when the real learning and work gets done. I organize my class so that midterm and final written assignments are an application of the knowledge and skills we covered in class. It is the exchange of ideas in real-time between students and professor that I care about the most. A student who wants to simply write some assignments and submit them without coming to my class misunderstands completely the purpose of my class.
When people treat class attendance as a nuisance, they overlook the important epistemological benefits of being in a classroom setting where questions can be asked in real-time and students can challenge one another and the professor. There's a dynamic element that is lost. This may be different in other fields - I wouldn't know.
How do you grade in-class participation when university classes often have hundreds of students in them? Do you just mark tutorial/practical participation, since they're smaller classes of 20-30 students?
Some instructors do actually care very much about attendance. Others may seem to, but I don't know that they have a personal belief in the importance of attendance as much as they intend to follow the rules set by various college administrators.
While the following too-long story is very much anecdotal, I would like to suggest with the moral to this story that while many instructors are "preoccupied with making students attend," they do not themselves "feel very, very strongly about attendance" despite presenting a front that suggests that they do feel this way. With so many good answers already I'd normally just pass this question by, and this approach is somewhat strange I admit (downvote bait?), but this issue has some personal importance to me.
When I began co-teaching as a graduate student, our English department
had a rule that missing more than three classes would result in
automatic failure in that class. The English department was the only
department with this rule in place from what I understand.
I had studied English as an undergraduate student at the same
university, and the rule had been explained to me in every English
course I had, at least on the syllabus and often vociferously by the instructor. I missed more than three
classes a few times, and would receive warnings, and wouldn't miss any
more, but also wouldn't get kicked.
One of the two professors that I "co-taught" under, who showed me the
ropes in the beginning, was new to the university and the policy, and
I always thought that he was somewhat iron-fisted due to the fact that
he failed several students for missing a 4th day. It bothered me, but
I didn't say anything at the time because I had a rather cowardly
mortal terror of any direct superior at that point in my life and had
been warned by professors as an undergrad that one is very much
supposed to enforce the three-absences-or-less attendance rule.
The next semester, as I began teaching on my own, we ran into each
other and he said:
Why didn't you tell me that nobody actually enforces the attendance
rule?!
When he was enforcing the rule in the presence of the violators he seemed
adamant, even angry, and he seemed to think he was justified in enforcing it; he acted the part of the stereotypical lawful-good paladin, not sadistic but self-righteous. I thought that he
actually felt "very, very strongly about attendance" as you put it.
He
didn't; he was just enforcing policies put in place by administrators
who didn't care about the life-wrecking consequences of policies they themselves wouldn't have to explain face-to-face, who hadn't
even made exceptions for classes that met three times a week vs. two. And he did so with an expression on his face that brooked no argument, but apparently not because he was actually angry; it was a stony, defensive expression, expecting hostility and confrontation.
I taught my final two semesters on my own, and I didn't bother anyone
about attendance, ever, and aside from a few students who failed
themselves out of college through other means everyone kept showing
up, even without the threat of the giant stick of doom.
A. Some profs are evaluated by their management by student
performance. Non-attendance is not good for performance.
B.1. Most all profs are rightly annoyed by students who ask questions
about topics covered in the missed class. This wastes the prof's as
well as the other students' time.
B.2. as in B.1, but during the prof's office hours. It wastes the
prof's time as well as other students waiting outside the prof's
office. 15% seems a bit severe, but whatever it takes to get
recalcitrant students to put on some clothes to get to class...
In Poland, almost 90% professors I've met required attendance on their class (only 2 lectures can be missed and only with good excuse).
I think the main reason behind this behavior was that they often presented expanded material (that wasn't included on the slides or docs) which was required on exams. Some of the professors doesn't provide any materials at all, so without own notes (or copies from others) You just don't have any sources of knowledge to learn from.
Very often lecture topics was really difficult and there was even no sources to learn from in the Internet.
You give a good reason why forced attendance is unnecessary as long as you make the facts clear from the start.
I used to be an assistant professor, and occasionally would have an attendance requirement. The reasons for having such a requirement are as follow:
Students whose attendance is paid for by the military must attend
lectures.
Student athletes must attend lectures to maintain their eligibility, and if applicable scholarships.
In full courses, students who don't attend are dropped so students who can attend may join the course.
The course has a heavy group-work or active component that requires the student to be present. In such a course, a student who chooses not to attend may hurt the educational outcomes of their classmates.
In some cases the student may not be prepared to take the course, for whatever reason, and should drop as soon as possible. If I track their attendance I may have been able to suggest to them that they should drop in time to get at least a partial tuition refund.
Students who do not come to class, for whatever reason, have poorer educational outcomes on average than students who do come to class. Frankly, it's in the interest of a student to come to the class they've paid for.
On a strictly personal note, I don't care to be a convenient excuse. Students who habitually skip class tend to blame their instructors for poor grades, even though their grades are poorer in large part because they pissed away the opportunity that they, or someone else, paid for.
Regarding 1 (and 2 which is very similar): Doesn't the military have a better way of tracking that, other than hoping a professor will decide to take attendance? Or do you mean that it is specifically the military that compels you (through university management) to have the attendance policy? In that case, do they ask you to track attendance only for the military students, or did the university reach "everyone has to attend" as a compromise to avoid special treatment for them?
@Superbest When I was teaching I was routinely queried about military and athletic students. However, in the interest of fair handed treatment I treated all my students the same where reasonable. Depending on the school, and in some cases, the state attendance tracking may be mandatory. There are also issues for public institutions wanting to be sure that the resources they expend on higher education are well spent. In answer to your question, the military demands that the university track attendance through some sort of process that demands the instructor take attendance.
That's interesting know, I didn't think they were strict about that. Thanks for the explanation!
You give valid reasons for tracking attendance and reacting with reporting resp. reorganizations to absent students. However, I fail to see how they support making attendance mandatory for passing.
At the end of the day if students do poorly, it comes back on the instructor. The fact of the matter is that the average student who shows derives greater benefit from the course. Since the instructor's job is to help the students learn, getting the students to class is part of it. Making it beneficial in a grade sense to attend may motivate people to get to class. Finally, some states require attendance to be part of the grading scheme since the state expects the people benefitting from tax dollars to actually go to class.
Honestly, it's just about making our lives easier. If you never come to class, we expect you'll eventually have a panicking moment where you realize you're far behind, and you need personal help from us to get back on track. Everyone can avoid this unfortunate situation if we just make attendance mandatory. On the other hand, actually keeping track of attendance is a huge hassle, so some of us would prefer not to manage all that. I personally don't take attendance, but I do feel sad when students don't attend. I just don't feel it's my place to police and penalize adult behavior.
At least here in Switzerland there's one more reason (nobody mentioned yet...). The attendance is part of the credits you get for the course. Each point equals roughly 30 hours of work. Some courses have only small exams, then the actual attendance is an important part of these 30 hours. If you don't show up, you didn't do the work expected for that certain number of credit points.
However, I don't care that much as a TA here. Only people regularly being absent are reported. Generally I think they're old enough to know, how to pass their exams.
Being there is not per se work (on that course), so this thinking is clearly broken. (Their fault, of course, not yours.)
@Raphael : I would rather contradict here: You are supposed to be working along like asking questions, discussing, taking notes, etc. Some courses are even evaluated based on your notes (by e.g. writing a journal about what you learnt there). Attending a class is work in my eyes.
You're supposed to, yes. In any case, workload by credit represents all kinds of work, some of them attendance and some of them not. Checking some parts and not others is weird. In the end, the credits say, "this student passed that course which we think takes the average student so many hours to pass with an average grade" (at least that's the EU definition) but not "this student spend this many hours on that topic".
@Raphael : That's absolutely correct. I was always a student who had a very easy time learning my material. So in average I probably worked less than 15 hours for 1 credit (sometimes far less than that) while others had a really hard time making it at all. But the theoretical background is: The attendance is part of the workload for the credits, so you simply have to be there to get those credits.
@PatricHartmann I second this. In the EU-wide system of grading (not sure whether Switzerland is a part of the system) the credits are given for a) attending b) doing your homework c) taking the exam. A lot of professors do not take this seriously, since the students would be upset (they expect that if you take exam you are done), but actually the credit system was designed in that way.
@xmp125a : To an extend, though very confined, it also brings a certain fairness back to the system. Attendance is possible for everyone, whether a good learner or not. However, there is still much to be done outside the lectures where the actual imbalance of the system lies.
My experience is mostly in mathematics, where there often aren't (even at the undergrad level) regular problem sets or exams. Professors want some indication that a student has covered and understood the material, and classroom attendance is a decent proxy for it. I've never run into a math or science class (as opposed to humanities ones as an undergrad) that formally had an attendance component, but it's not like students could skip literally every lecture and still expect an A. I've seen professors try other method of grading with varying degrees of success: having students rotate in writing up and distributing notes to the class, having students do a bit of research and give a brief presentation at the end of the class on a related topic, etc. After a point, though, students are assumed to be there because they want to be there, and they're responsible for handling their own education.
That having been said, as a student, I never found classroom lectures particularly helpful. (I'm distinguishing ordinary lecture-based classes room things like colloquia or random topics classes, which don't have textbooks and are designed to be more participatory). I learned better from textbooks or papers, rarely had questions to ask the professor during the classes themselves (whether because I had more involved questions to ask over email or because I could work out the answer myself), and didn't enjoy the classes (as opposed to the material in them).
@BenCrowell: Also in the US. Your profile lists your area of expertise as nuclear physics. I'm not a physicist myself, but the physics I has studied (mostly high-energy particle physics) did have regular problem sets at every level, for whatever that's worth.
Your experience is definitely... anomalous. I've never heard of that situation (no regular problem sets or exams) in any U.S. undergraduate math program.
" indication that a student has covered and understood the material, and classroom attendance is a decent proxy for it" -- not at all! Being there and doing something completely unrelated to the course is incredibly common. If you want to test coverage and understanding, you have to explicitly test for that.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:48.857695 | 2016-03-29T01:41:30 | {
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41920 | Does posting a paper on an online forum establish priority?
I have finished writing a paper and am a high school student. Since I'm sure this has no chance of being accepted to arxiv, I want to simply post it on a public forum. (This also has meaning for me because the forum helped me develop in the field where I wrote this paper, and I have friends there.)
My question is: Even if this is a not-that-important paper, imagine hypothetically that someone more prominent (ok, this is highly unrealistic, but just imagine) steals the main result of my paper and publishes it in a renowned journal, or at least somewhere more prestigious than a forum. Would he get credit for the discovery? This seems unlikely since the date I posted it on the forum will show that I came up with it before him.
Note: Although I don't wish to name the exact forum I'm talking about, it's similar to Physics Forums.
arXiv is not peer-reviewed, and papers don't need to be "accepted" - you just need to have an account.
@LuboAntonov: Sorry, on second thoughts I meant I don't want to publish on arxiv because I don't have anyone to endorse me and want to publish it on that forum anyway. Any advice?
Out of two words, pick one: publish, forum. Posting your thoughts on a web forum is not publishing in the academic sense of the word.
@virmaior: Ok, but my question was whether it was a safe thing to do. Or does the fact that it is not officially "publishing" mean that someone else can "publish" (officially) at any time after and end up with priority?
Stealing ideas no matter where they occur is called "plagiarism". Depending on the meaning of the word "can" in question, the answer is either yes someone can take you idea (i.e. plagiarize it) if you post it AND no, it does not matter that this is not a publication as to whether or not they can call "dibbs" on the idea and then claim it was their original idea in the academic world. Because they would be plagiarizing... (if your question is about something outside of academia, I don't have the ability to answer it here).
@virmaior: Thanks, that definitely answers my question, as I wanted to know if posting it in an online forum means I get priority.
If somebody copies your text, then the fact that you posted this text publicly and earlier on the internet (in a location you can't feasibly control, so it won't look like you faked the historical record) will prove that they plagiarized.
It's a little trickier if somebody in inspired by your idea and writes their own paper that doesn't cite yours, since there's no way to distinguish this from independently coming up with the same idea. It would be unethical to do this, but it could in principle happen. If you pointed out your prior posting, you would deserve to at least share the credit. However, people might still downplay your contribution. "Sure, there was an earlier internet posting outlining the basic idea, but it wasn't nearly as well developed and nobody noticed it since it was posted somewhere obscure. The real scientific breakthrough occurred when the idea was independently rediscovered, properly understood and worked out, and disseminated to the research community." You could end up as a footnote, which is still credit but a sort of grudging credit.
I don't expect this will cause any problems. It's not worrisome unless your ideal is attractive enough to seem worth stealing, while remaining obscure enough that someone could hope to get away with it. The biggest barrier to intellectual theft is publicity: once enough people know about your idea, anyone who claims to have found it independently will get shot down by someone saying "You may not have known about this, but that's just your own ignorance, since the rest of us know Awesome Academist came up with this idea in 2015. You should pay more attention to the internet."
Furthermore, if your idea really stays obscure enough that someone could get away with stealing it, then your posting evidently didn't have much impact on the community and you arguably deserve only a footnote's worth of credit. (People deserve some credit for reaching the goal first, but more credit if they make a bigger contribution by circulating their ideas and influencing the research community.)
I doubt you need to worry about theft, but trying to publish your paper formally could help address this possibility by putting your work before a broader audience. Anything worth stealing is worth publishing in the first place, so if theft worries you then you should consider publication.
Thank for for this excellent reply! You've given me a lot to think about (especially the last sentence).
@AwesomeAcademist The advice typically given here to people in your situation is that you pass your paper onto someone more senior in the field who you trust. This person can give you feedback on whether it is worth publishing or e.g. endorse you so you can post it on the arXiv.
The only problem I see is with this:
This seems unlikely since the date I posted it on the forum will show that I came up with it before him.
Hypothetically, someone in the future could easily argue that the date shown on the forum post has been faked - it would be even easier for them to argue this if you're friends with the person/people running the forum.
So you need to get some kind of trusted-above-reproach third party to provide an unimpeachable confirmation of the date that you posted it.
One way to do this would be using the Internet Archive's 'Wayback Machine'
http://archive.org/web/
Save Page Now
Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.
Only available for sites that allow crawlers.
As it says, it'll only work with sites that allow the IA web-crawler, so test it first with some other page from the same forum, and then once you know it's working post the paper and then get the IA to capture it. That'll prove the date on which you posted it.
Another way to do it would be to get a notary public to certify a document showing the paper, e.g. a printout of the forum post.
(I should add that my knowledge of this kind of thing is based on IP law e.g. patents/copyright rather than academic publication, but still, priority is priority).
There are "trusted timestamp services" which use a combination of digital signing and included a timestamp with the document, as a cryptographically strong method of asserting that something existed unmodified at a particular date/time. Some of these services are free. So long as the services private key is never compromised, their public key can be used to verify the authenticity of the timestamp signature. Some of these services are free.
The only doubt that one might cast on the legitimacy of such a signature, is whether you somehow coerced the signing authority to falsify the date. So usually you want the service to be run somewhere that anti-fraud laws/regulations would give them credibility.
How much this would stand up in a court of law would probably involve expert witnesses that understand the process and can try and explain it to someone in a court of law.
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103369 | Advisor going over and unhelpfully modifying my presentation structure and slides
At our institute, PhD students carry out presentations on the advance of their projects once a year. The presentations are "internal" in the sense that only undergrads, PhD students and professors of our institute may attend.
I am about to carry out my second such presentation corresponding to my second year progress. For my first presentation (one year ago), my advisor asked for my presentation and called me into his office one day before the presentation and went over it, changing it in a non-trivial way, i.e. deleting slides, changing titles, content, etc. I found most corrections counterproductive or superficial at best. In the end I did not include all corrections, just enough to keep him/her happy.
I was quite frustrated and stressed since the overall tone was "this is terrible", "we are way behind in our project", "this is bad". After the presentation I got very good feedback from professors and colleagues (my advisor is not a professor). Once he saw the feedback, he changed his mind from "this is bad" to "good work, good presentation".
This has also happened a couple of times with other internal presentations at our institute. I am pretty sure this will happen again in the next days.
My questions are:
Is it common for advisors to carry out extensive and minute corrections on the presentation structure and slides of its PhD students?
What is the best way to communicate that I will not follow corrections with which I do not agree?
Or, are PhD students obligated to follow the commands of the advisor?
my advisor is not a professor Would you please explain what's his job title? Research Scientist? Or something else?
@scaaahu I guess he could be called a Research Scientist. I do not know the details, but he has a permanent position. If you are familiar with the German system, he/she is habilitiert, but has no Professorship.
I just changed non-trivially the slides of my student for a seminar that is due in three days. Bad things happen, it's mostly bad timing.
@Keine: You’re referring to a Privat-Dozent? In any case, this has no bearing on the nature of the answer.
@aeismail I agree. I was just clarifying what someone asked.
@scaaahu in the UK, Lecturers teach and supervise projects, but they are not called Professors.
There are simple technical solutions that allow you to avoid unpleasant discussions if you want. Prepare your presentations in LaTeX or export them to pdf format, but do not give your supervisor the source code or editable ppt version. Or simply print the handout for your supervisor and present the talk orally. Collect feedback in a form of comments written over the text. Then go through suggestions and decide, which to take on board and implement, and which not.
I have done that. He/she just asks for the editable version.
The best way to affect change is to provide a logical reason for your advisor not to make changes directly:
I have to deliver the talk based on these slides. If I don’t know what changes you’ve made, it will be very difficult for me to adjust my talk, particularly if you delete or rearrange slides. Would it be possible for you to give me some suggestions for improvements instead of making the changes yourself?
It’s exactly for that reason that I don’t mess with my students’ slides unless they ask me to edit them, and even then I prefer to provide suggestions except for trivial edits like misspellings and formatting.
Short version: take control, don't give work to be corrected if you do not want it to, but this depends on your advisor so you can try and involve someone else and get a feel for your group.
Long version: I'm afraid the answers depend on your group and its politics. However...
Is it common for advisors to carry out extensive and minute
corrections on the presentation structure and slides of its PhD
students?
It is common for - some - advisors to do this. Often, but neither exclusively nor universally, newer advisors (from my observations) take a more micromanaging approach and may even correct their own corrections.
What is the best way to communicate that I will not follow corrections
with which I do not agree?
Whatever you say runs the risk of your advisor being difficult, but sometimes difficulties have to be overcome.
Your options are, depending on the context,
1) To not give them the presentation in the first place, stating you want to become more independent, this would be the option I would take and then if they disagree you can discuss why.
2) If you want feedback, then you need to get to the point where you are telling your advisor what to do, what is it that they could help clarify? Instead of handing over the presentation to them, you could have a meeting and point out "is this right? How should I say this?" etcetera. This is just as relevant for writing papers.
3) If they demand you give the presentation and make many changes, then you can ignore them or explain you will "take them into account", this will likely annoy them, but again, if your advisor is difficult you may have no choice.
In general, I think you need your advisor to step back...
Or, are PhD students obligated to follow the commands of the advisor?
In principle, it is your PhD. In practice, some advisors are too involved and others are not involved enough. If your advisor is, as it sounds, overly aggressive then one thing you can do is try and involve a coadvisor, someone older who may even be your advisor's mentor. If they are involved in meetings then they may guide your advisor and calm them down. In terms of what is "obligated", technically nothing, but your group might have particularly authoritarian norms, you should discuss with others in your group and get someone else involved if it is an ongoing problem.
Concerning your first question, "Is it common for advisers to carry out extensive and minute corrections ...?": I believe what I do with my students is rather common, at least in mathematics. I don't directly correct anything in their TeX files, but I make comments, either orally during a discussion or in writing on a printout of their document. The comments are of three general sorts. First and most important, correcting any factual errors in what they've written. Second, expository suggestions (e.g., you should define this term because some of the audience might not know it, or you should reverse the order of these two items). Third, correcting typos. I expect (and I believe this expectation has always been met) that the first and third sorts of comments, the corrections, will be incorporated in the document. Comments of the second sort are for the student to think about; some students will do whatever I suggested, and others will do something else (or do nothing) with these comments.
As for "extensive", that depends on what the student wrote; some students need a lot more corrections than others. As for "minute", I do correct whatever typos I notice, and those corrections would usually be minute. Sometimes, though not often, corrections of the first sort might also be minute (e.g., the student wrote "for every real number" where it should be "for every non-zero real number).
I had a PI who did this. I just stopped telling them when I had a presentation and removed the opportunity for them to meddle. I guess this isn't possible for you as they know this talk is coming up!
If they insist on going through it again, you can calmly point out that: you got good feedback from your peers and senior scientists last time; and that, while you appreciate your supervisor helping you, you don't agree with all of their suggestions and will be guided by your own judgement (as that worked well last time).
This is potentially problematic. The relationship, that seems OK for now, could become toxic if the advisor wants to be told about presentation. Moreover, in some fields, like mine, presentations outside the department are coauthored, so you need to show them to your coauthor.
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45225 | Can I submit a non-research "article" on ArXiv?
Can a generic article be published on arXiv? For example, can I publish an article on "Introduction to Linear Algebra," or does it have to be an innovative research paper or preprint?
If not, are there any journals (e.g., open access) that accept "articles" as papers?
The OP seems to be asking about expositions of material taught in basic undergraduate classes, for which the answer is no. Some expositions of research-oriented topics are acceptable, as discussed in the question @NateEldredge links to.
See Is it possible to upload expository papers to arXiv? .
I have seen linear algebra notes on the arXiv, and also notes on other undergraduate-ish subjects (including some pretty good ones, e.g., http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.6946 and http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.0585 ). I absolutely don't mind them, and I don't think others do (although I would suggest using github for course notes due to the possibility of frequent corrections and updates). Expository papers for nonstandard material definitely fit well on the arXiv, and there are several; e.g., almost every chapter of the Tamari Memorial Festschrift has been posted on the arXiv.
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43094 | Do Indian journals represent the quality of Indian universities?
Since I published my first paper in a well-respected journal I receive approx. one time per month an invitation to journals such as Global Journal of Engineering Science and Research Management and International Journal of Engineering Sciences and Management Research.
Interestingly, all those "journals" are from India. Furthermore it is obvious that they are only interested in charging you money for publishing your paper: for instance, the "peer-review" process lasts just 2 days, so in fact they publish all the stuff they receive for money.
Nevertheless, since the Editorial Boards of these Journals also consist of Prof. and Dr. from India and most articles are also from people from India (sometimes also Dr.) I am interested if these journals represent the quality of the Indian education system?
Note that it's not unusual for scam journals to just pick random scholars to list as editors, without even asking their permission. So the people listed are not necessarily involved in the journal, or even aware of its existence.
Scammers appear in all nations, I'm afraid. In addition to the Indian predatory publishers, I receive lots of spam from Chinese, German, and American predatory publishers, plus I'm sure from many other nations that just aren't coming to mind. Just as I wouldn't judge American scholarship from the spam I get from American publishers, or from the diploma mills that operate there, so I would not judge Indian scholarship by the fraudsters of India. It's just a large nation with an open society and a good information infrastructure, and so a certain fraction of scammers are to be expected.
Now, there are other aspects of the Indian school system which merit concern, but the publishing scams should not be the basis for any opinion that you hold.
It's also worth noticing that scam journals are often not actually based in the countries they say they are.
This answer is a bit too politically correct in my opinion. You can note that there is a high concentration of fake journals, and thus fake science in India (including from established scholars, and in institution where reporting fraud is associated with retaliation) without judging all scholars from this country.
@CapeCode The problem is that the cost of setting up a fake journal and spamming for it is so low, I don't think there's much signal there. If you look at Beall's list are you actually certain there is a disproportionate representation from India?
He does report a high concentration of fake publishers in Hyderabad and India in general.
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65362 | Why include a table of figures?
Many postgraduate theses include as part of their front matter a List of Figures and a List of Tables, plus lists of various other special environments. Many institutions, including my own, directly require the inclusion of at least those two Lists at the front of the thesis.
However, I have never really understood why a thesis should have those two environments at all; they've mostly just been yet another page to scroll past on the way to the meat of the thesis.
On the other hand, if you have a print copy of the document, I generally find it much easier to flip through the pages, since graphics tend to stick out, and more so if you have a general idea of where the figure is (such as having a figure identifier that gives the chapter) or what it looks like (as when looking for a figure one has seen previously).
What use cases are lists of figures or tables meant to serve? In what situations are they meant to be useful? Do they still work, or are they simply an artifact of pre-pdf days?
If you only have a few, distinctive, images, then flicking is fine. But if you have thirty visually-similar organisational charts, as with a book I read yesterday, and you want to find a specific one, it breaks down fast...
When I refer back to a thesis to find a piece of information, I find the lists of tables and figures to be extremely useful. I often have a general idea of what I am looking for. Turning that general idea into a simple text search that does not yield hundreds of hits is difficult. By reading the short captions in the list of figures, I can generally find the figure I want.
To clarify, this is both with printed and on-screen versions? If the former, isn't thumbing through the thesis looking for a specific graphic easier? Are you looking for a figure you have seen in a previous reading of the thesis, or are you hoping that the thesis will contain a figure with a specific piece of information? If the latter, isn't scrolling and looking at the graphics themselves easier?
@E.P. I would rather skim a list of figures that is a couple of pages long than flip through a thesis page by page (either paper or electronic). In my field a PhD thesis is usually 200-500 pages long and might have 50 figures. I use lists of figures both when I am looking for something I have seen before and when I am looking for something new.
You appear to start from an assumption of reading on screen. If some actually wants to read a thesis (as opposed to looking something up in it) there's a fair chance they're working on paper. An examiner for example. A list of figures/list of tableswill help them track down some of the important material quickly.
If someone has a paper copy, good lists are really useful, but xcost a couple of pages
If someone has a PDF copy, the list costs them nothing. A few bytes of data, and there's no need to scroll past it as any decently-produced thesis PDF will allow you to click on the headings (or "Contents") in any decent PDF reader.
So even with primarily electronic distribution (which is an optimisitic assumption) these lists will benefit some of your readers, including some important ones.
I found them quite useful when checking the print copies -- text was easy to spot-check, but ensuring that the figures came out right was important.
When I go through a thesis (especially a voluminous one) I tend to look for comparison and performance graphs; some of which are not always in the results and discussion section. I feel that the list of figures are pretty much helpful in this aspect.
It's a good point that some basic results may be included in a section describing how to analyse them. These figures can say a lot about a thesis.
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61494 | The title of a book is different in the catalogue and on the cover. How do I cite it?
I would like to cite a chapter from a book which is listed in the catalogue as Attosecond and XUV Spectroscopy: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy (Wiley, 2014, edited by Thomas Schultz and Marc Vrakking), found here at the Wiley site and here on Amazon. I'm somewhat confused about how exactly to cite this book, since if you look at the cover...
... the title is different. To add to the confusion,
the book is listed under the catalogue title (Spectroscopy) in multiple library catalogues and most google search results,
but not everywhere, including WorldCat and several Wiley pages;
the citing articles on Google Scholar are split about 50/50 on both (with Google Scholar correctly recognizing both forms as citations to the same resource!),
some of them even switching sides;
the title page has the same title as the cover; and
each book chapter has a footer with the cover title (Physics).
My question is: how do I cite this book? Given that pretty much every rule of libraryness seems to have melted down, do I just choose whatever I find sexier and forget about it all?
To really confuse people: there could be two competing books with those two titles...
Not with the same editors and publication year, though. Either choice is pretty unambiguous.
List both. The official title is whatever is on the book, no matter what (so even including any typos and stuff). Still, it makes sense to mention the problem:
Thomas Schultz and Marc Vrakking (eds). Attosecond and XUV Physics: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy [also known as "Attosecond and XUV Spectroscopy: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy"]. Wiley, 2014, 624pp. ISBN: 978-3-527-41124-5.
Bear in mind that the title is the one listed inside (on the first sheet of paper), not on the cover (thanks Andrew for pointing this). Also, I would include the ISBN in this case, even if you don't include it for other book references. Either in a standard way as shown above, or in a note like the following; remember that rules for providing auxiliary information are quite loose and you can twist them to your needs:
Thomas Schultz and Marc Vrakking (eds). Attosecond and XUV Physics: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy. Wiley, 2014, 624pp. [also known as: "Attosecond and XUV Spectroscopy: Ultrafast Dynamics and Spectroscopy". ISBN: 978-3-527-41124-5.]
Ah ok, well, yes, citations of chapters are very big. Nothing to worry about. Sorry for my strong response in the previous comment, I was really scared by the thought.
"whatever is on the book" is correct, but you should mention the one enormous caveat: it's the title page, not the cover, that defines this. Covers can have all sorts of extraneous (or missing) text on them and you should always defer to the title page if in doubt.
Pick one, preferably the one that is listed on publishers own lists. The important thing is that the ISBN number is right and anyone who might be interesting in getting to the referred material can adequate do so with the given information.
In case it wasn't clear from the question, the publisher's lists are inconsistent. I'm not using a citation style with ISBNs - it is not used in the physical sciences as far as I'm aware.
@E.P. I would be for an exception with the ISBN in this case, I'll update my answer to reflect this.
Any one will do.
The main aspect behind citations is to make the reference reachable to the readers. If both citations indicate the same content then you may use any one you feel content with (and stick to it for uniformity).
And for the very reason you say, both titles should be listed, not any single one of them. Giving more information is the way to make the reference reachable.
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2717 | What to do if asked to write a letter of recommendation for a weak candidate?
How should a professor proceed when a student or colleague asks for a letter of recommendation and the professor does not have a high opinion of that person?
In short: Just say no.
At the risk of putting anyone on the defensive (I don't mean to); when would the answer ever not be "say no"? The letter writer would be doing the student/colleague a huge disservice by writing a weak letter but letting their expectation remain that they have a strong recommendation.
@JohnMoeller I asked because this answer suggested that some people think differently.
Fair enough. I suppose that you could say, "I'll write you a recommendation, but it will have to be somewhat weak."
Although it may be quite awkward, it is certainly acceptable to tell the student/colleague that you do not feel you can write a strong LoR for them, and to suggest that they ask someone else. This may seem rude or even unkind, but it's much better for the student/colleague in the long run than a lukewarm or poor letter.
In fact, in some cases students don't understand that they should get the best letters possible, or that it's not all perfunctory.
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603 | Looking for sources of online graduate-level education
Can anyone suggest sources of online graduate-level education, as well as some criticism of them? Both free and paid are valid. I'm familiar with these sources:
Academic Earth
MIT OpenCourseWare
Kahn Academy
NYU Open Education
and I'm curious to know what other resources are available.
Cloud you be more specific? Currently the question is way, way to broad.
Do you mean free online graduate education? Lots of universities have online MS programs that charge tuition.
@JeffE Free and paid.
Oy. Okay, in what field(s)? Computer science? Economics? Nursing? Russian history? Can you at least narrow it down a little?
Also, do you want criticism of specific venues for online graduate education, or do you want criticism of online education in general? (Please don't say "both"!) And criticisms about what aspects—educational quality, reputation, intellectual depth/rigor, schedule flexibility, access to faculty, expected economic payoff, or what? (Please don't say "all of the above"!)
@JeffE Haha, the worst part is that i'm curious in all the aspects you suggested.
Then this is a bad question; I'm voting to close it. Please consult the [faq], especially the line "If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.", and ask something more focused.
At the graduate level there is less and less 'standardized' material like in undergrad. You might take a few introductory graduate courses that are pretty similar across universities, but then you tend to take very specialized courses (at least in my experiences with fields like math, computer science, and physics; and my answer should be taken as only relevant to those fields). Further, the number one skill you are suppose to learn in grad school seems to be independence.
If some specialized course is not offered at your university then the standard procedure is to look for good lecture notes on the websites of experts in that field. These experts usually teach relevant graduate level courses and post their lecture notes online. In fact, some of these lecture note become rather famous:
What Lecture Notes (in theoretical computer science) Should Everyone Read?
Then you have to do what every graduate student has to do, and that is to motivate and teach yourself with the guidance of those lecture notes (and maybe Q&A sites like SE or emails to the relevant experts). Some tricks to make this is easier is to form groups with other graduate students and learn the material together through regular meetings and discussions.
I've found many interesting & diverse lectures in the Education section of Apple's podcast directory (I can't verify that link at work, I hope it's correct). While most are undergraduate, some are taught at a higher level, and they're a good resource for when you need to learn a new discipline in grad school.
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7389 | Valuing one field more than another
As my field, Computer Science (CS), has many sub-areas and specializations. I found myself having a not-so-good impression about different areas within CS. For example, I see working on Software Engineering as a waste of time while working on Artificial Intelligence (AI) is much more worthing an investigation.
This is not a field-specific question, I wish hearing whether this exists on other fields as well. Is it common in academia for individuals to find some subfields of a more broader research area more interesting and relevant than others? Relatedly, how does one avoid thinking that way?
On a somewhat related note, my research went from "soft science" to "hard science" just by changing department. I think both terms are used in a slightly derogatory way.
Just because you think it is worthless, does not make it so. My own experience is that this kind of thoughts stem more from personal predjudice and interest than from objective fact.
This is actually a good thing (TM). If you don't feel that way about your field, then is it really your field?
Although there is a difference between loving your own field, and disliking others. I think it is possible to love what you like to do without being condescending about what other people like to do.
Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0la5DBtOVNI
Just like the grass is always greener on the other side, it is somewhat usual for people to think that their particular area of expertise is somewhat more valuable than others. I have seen it in all fields I have heard of…
And it's not restricted to academic life: I'm sure the cardiac surgeon feels that his work is so much more important than that of the family physician, while the later thinks that he's the one tasked with stopping epidemics and diagnosing the important stuff to save lives.
But I'm sure you already knew that… so, what is your question exactly?
Edit: how does one avoid thinking that way?
The most difficult part, for me, in thinking objectively about other fields is to be able to correctly identifying the challenges they face. I find that it is altogether too easy to think “hey, that's a trivial optimization problem” or “know that they know the compound formula, I wonder why it takes them so long to synthesize it”. Better overall understanding of other fields helps a lot avoid this way of thinking. It takes a lot of effort to acquire such a broad general knowledge: reading, listening to conferences outside your area of expertise, chatting with colleagues, …
I think the "How does one avoid thinking that way?" part is key.
It's important to distinguish "what I find interesting" from "what someone finds interesting" from "what I think is important" from "what is important to others".
It is perfectly acceptable to find other fields uninteresting - that's just the nature of subjectivity and personal preference. Or more poetically, "vive la difference".
It is less acceptable to go from "I personally find this area boring" to "this area is boring". At that point, as others have suggested, you need to understand why others in the field find it interesting. Ask them ! Put yourself in their shoes. (I will often say, "I'm glad someone is working in area X and I'm glad it's not me" :).
The harder prejudice to avoid, at least for me, is not "this field is boring" but "work in this field is poor science, even on its own terms".
@JeffE: but that is already a more objective statement. Just to note, in some fields, the nature of the tackled problem is such (at the current state of the art), that we do not have a good grasp on its context (yet). Work on such problems then often seems to be "substandard craft". Compare e.g., early research on knowledge representation with hard stuff produced later on. And the same goes for e.g., image recognition, etc.
The same thing happens in many different fields, mathematics, physics, etc... Many in academia criticize computational scientists like myself as too interdisciplinary (i.e. we are jack of all trades, but masters of none).
I think it naturally emerges from the competitive nature of academia these days. We're all competing for precious resources, such as funding, tenure track positions, prestige and attention, etc. To be competitive, we must assert that our work is more worthwhile than others. In the face of criticism and competition, people of the same field sometimes are tempted to assert their worth by belittling the value of other fields.
There's no better way to avoid doing this than to distance yourself from others who engage in the "we're better than them" attitude. Unfortunately, it can be difficult if you're already surrounded by people with this mentality already. In which case, it might be worthwhile to just get out of your comfort zone and attend research seminars and presentations in completely unrelated fields. Sometimes, if you surround yourself with others who value a topic that you don't, you can learn how to appreciate it in ways you've never thought of before.
Is valuing one field over another is a common behavior in academia?
The other answers clearly answer yes. There can be subjective reasons to such an observation (e.g., a cardiologist could feel more superior to a gastroenterolog), but there might be also an objective part to the observation (as you example goes, the results produced in software engineering are somewhat shakier than those in graph theory).
How does one avoid thinking that way?
Besides an excellent point by other answer saying "you should try to better understand the challenges of the other field", I also argue that you should better understand the dynamics of scientific pursuit in general.
Kuhn, in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions argues that scientific work in any given field has three phases. The first, pre-paradigm and subsequent transition to normal science are relevant for this answer:
The first phase, which exists only once, is the pre-paradigm phase, in which there is no consensus on any particular theory, though the research being carried out can be considered scientific in nature. This phase is characterized by several incompatible and incomplete theories. If the actors in the pre-paradigm community eventually gravitate to one of these conceptual frameworks and ultimately to a widespread consensus on the appropriate choice of methods, terminology and on the kinds of experiment that are likely to contribute to increased insights, then the second phase, normal science, begins, in which puzzles are solved within the context of the dominant paradigm. Etc.
Often we observe somewhat substandard results and works in fields which clearly fall into the category of those still being in the pre-paradigm phase. Your specific question is relevant to this due to the fact, that whole of computer science is still a young field and many problems we are solving are new, often vague, or ill defined, etc. This is is especially the case for the fields and communities tackling applications of applied-mathematics-style computer science to real-world applications, i.e., software engineering. Your reference to software engineering is clearly the case here, large parts of artificial intelligence fall into this category as well, and I am sure other fields and subfields too.
Even if you find yourself working in a "soft" field, it does not necessarily mean the niche community is not tackling a sound problem (though sometimes it is the case, but you need to look very carefully into it). Sometimes working on such can be even more demanding/challenging/satisfying than routinely solving puzzles in the normal-science context.
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5838 | Should a reviewer critique language and text copy-paste issues?
While reviewing research papers, I often find that the author's English is not very good. Considering that English is not everyone's native language, I understand their difficulties, and I recognize that they struggle (using dictionaries and translators) to get their work published at all.
That being said, I sometimes find papers that have contain English that is frankly terrible, with a few select fragments in pristine, almost Shakespearean English, using words that sometimes I didn't even know existed. When this happens, a quick Google search will occasionally reveal that these fragments are copy-pasted fragments from textbooks.
What should I do in these cases? I feel that being too harsh might come of as being mean, but I would really like to emphasize that the practice is very bad for the scientific community.
This reminds me for asking whether native English scientists have an advantage over non-English ones.
@seteropere I think in general there is no problem with not being a native speaker when the student reaches a certein level. A good set of brains is much harder to acquire than polishing the language of a paper.
At my university, we call copy-past issues "plagiarism"!
As Mikael said, copying and pasting from a textbook (or any other source), unless it's properly quoted and cited, is plagiarism. Now, it's possible that this varies a bit between fields and between cultures, but generally speaking, plagiarism is one of the most serious academic offenses, probably a step below outright fabrication of results. Well-respected tenured professors at major universities have lost their jobs and had their careers destroyed by a single instance of plagiarism. The point is, this is a very big no-no and you should treat it accordingly. You should definitely notify the editor, and see how they would like you to deal with it. I don't know exactly how that process works, whether the editor will just handle the paper themselves and let you know that your review will no longer be necessary, or whether they'll ask you to finish your review anyway and state your objections in it.
In the latter case, I would write an unequivocal recommendation against publishing the paper because of the plagiarism. Personally, I would be inclined not to even look at the scientific content of any such paper, although that may not work out in practice. But anyway, just pointing out the plagiarized parts and recommending against publication, in and of itself, is not mean. Just don't get carried away and start attacking the author. You could apply the same principle that is used at Stack Exchange, namely that it's about the behavior, not the person.
If you put aside the plagiarism, there is also the issue of sloppy English that you mentioned. In my experience, (nearly?) all reputable journals require papers to use proper spelling and grammar for standard English, or something reasonably close to it. Usually, the instructions for authors will advise non-native speakers of English to get a native speaker to check the paper for grammatical errors before submission. So it's reasonable for you to point out any such errors that you come across. Now, grammatical errors don't have to condemn a paper to oblivion the way plagiarism might, but if the grammar is bad enough, I would think it reasonable to recommend against publication in its current state. If the underlying ideas are sound, and otherwise qualified for publication, then you could recommend that the authors edit the paper to improve the grammar and resubmit it.
I consider the demand to get a native speaker to check the paper for grammatical errors before submission unreasonable. I am no English native speaker, and who might I ask such a thing ? The two native English speaker in my department would be overwhelmed if we all asked this.
(continued) For expensive commercial journals, the proper way to go would be for the journal to offer help with language during the copyediting. Up to some point, native English speakers should accept some sloppy language in exchange for the research being written in their language. The only way I can see to solve completely the language problem would be for everyone to write in her language, and have a huge amount of translators to exchange between languages. This seems not reasonable either.
With a little effort you can find plenty of people who could clean up your English. You might have to pay them but it would be the same for me if I wrote in French. What kind of image do you want to present of yourself?
I suppose it doesn't have to be literally a native speaker, but someone with a sufficient level of English competency to proofread the paper. "Native speaker" in my answer should be taken to refer to the person's reading and writing ability and not necessarily whether they actually have been using English from birth.
This is plagiarism. You should at the VERY least point this out to the editor and suggest (s)he insist the authors get language, translation or copyediting assistance if they can't write their paper themselves.
In the couple of cases that I have found plagiarism (and that is what has happened here). I always contact the editor directly telling him/her what I have found and that I no longer feel comfortable writing a review. This then puts the burden on the editor to make a decision of how to deal with it.
I understand exactly what you are going through. I have seen it happen many times before. In some culture it is extremely common for students to think that it is acceptable to plagiarize in this way. However, in my experience, even when students think it is acceptable, they still know it is wrong.
You should call it out for what it is: Plagiarism. In my experience, some students only wake up to the impact of plagiarism when they are shocked into it. I've had students call me mean (and much, much worse) but I've never had a student say that I was unjustified in calling their plagiarism out. They knew what they were doing and they got caught.
I also explained to them how to "right their ship" so this did not cause future problems. In my school, the punishment is quite lenient for plagiarism - just fail (no removal, no academic probation, etc.). But, it is still expected that it is called out when it is found.
I would see two situations here:
The English is so bad that you cannot properly review the paper. If you suspect that there is merit in the paper, suggest getting the language polished and encourage to resubmit. Otherwise reject the paper.
You can follow the story, and provide an in depth review. Just reply as you would normally, and mention polishing the language as one of the additional remarks.
Just copying without reference is just plagiarism, and should lead to rejection of the paper.
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50 | Am I reading enough of the scientific literature? Should I read for breadth or depth?
Ever since starting graduate school I've tried to make scientific reading a part of my daily ritual; I track pages read using Beeminder, and the graph doesn't lie. It keeps me honest.
I aim to closely read and summarize 5 pages per day and skim a few other abstracts besides that. I spend about half my time looking at data and figures which doesn't contribute to my daily "page count." When I'm reading about a new topic these five pages can take several hours, but on topics I have more background in five pages might only take an hour per day.
I guess since everybody defines "read" in a different way it's hard to get an objective answer about how much reading is enough. How much people read seems like a bit of a sensitive topic among real-life colleagues because everyone has a bit of anxiety that they aren't reading enough. But for those further along in their academic path, I'd like to hear how you approached the literature early in your graduate school career and what you think is a sufficient amount.
I guess this all distills down into two main topics:
When deciding what to read each day, should I focus on depth or breadth?
Is five pages of close reading per day enough? I know it doesn't sound like much, but it takes significant mental energy to meet that goal. And consistently reading 5 pages per day adds up to a lot over time.
Edited to add: I mostly read about petrology, volcanology, structural geology, and tectonics if that makes a difference. By "page" I mean "page of text" so if I'm reading a structural geology paper with lots of maps and figures I discount for those and a "ten page" paper becomes a 5 page paper for my purposes.
I have a blog post about how to sift the literature that you may find relevant: http://scienceinthesands.blogspot.com/2011/10/searching-scientific-literature.html
+1 for "consistently reading 5 pages per day adds up to a lot over time." To quote Benjamin Disraeli: "The secret of success is constancy of purpose."
I'm doing this as well for the past few months. In addition, I'm keeping a track of what I read on my website and on citeulike, so that I can participate in discussions with the knowledge gained and cite papers when required to do so.
My experience is almost exclusively with mathematics papers, and applies little or not at all to other fields.
Much of eykanal's post applies to math as well, but one big difference is that math papers are much more varied in their structure, not having an actual experiment to tie them together. A good paper will generally explain its organization in the introduction, however.
One point worth emphasizing is that reading a paper from front to back, trying to understand everything at each step, is usually inefficient. The most common instance is that a paper often starts with definitions which may be hard to make sense of without understanding the theorems they're used in. It's generally more effective to skim the paper several times, trying to understand more and more with each pass.
Relatedly, you'll eventually pick up the skill of picking out the most interesting ideas from a paper without reading the whole thing. Early on, though, it's probably better to read things carefully; it's very easy to fool yourself into thinking you've understood something.
As to your main question, about breadth versus depth, your first priority has to be depth, because that's what you'll ultimately need to be able to do your own research and get your degree. But if you're learning enough to do that, you want as much breadth as possible. It actually gets harder and harder to learn completely new things as you get on in your career, even when there may be direct benefits to your research to do doing so. Laying the foundations of a broad understanding of your field while in graduate school will pay off later.
"...reading a paper from front to back, trying to understand everything at each step, is usually inefficient." +1 for that sentence alone! It took me years to realize that they author didn't write that paper so I could solve my problem, they wrote it to tell me how they solved their problem. Find the part that's relevant to your problem.
+1 for "as much breadth as possible." Especially in sciences, knowing more about the instrumentation (e.g. radar) and underlying physics (e.g. viscous fluids) can greatly inform your research. This can set you aside by giving you better insight into expected behavior and disparities between actual and expected observations.
This post refers to research in the STEM fields, and may not be applicable to other research topics.
One of my biggest epiphanies in research came when I learned how to read a paper. Reading scientific publications is completely different from reading literature or news. At the beginning of your research career, you can expect to spend a full day (if not more) reading through a single 8-page paper. Some tips follow:
Most papers are divided into "Intro", "Methods", "Results", "Discussion". These are roughly broken down as follows:
Intro - Read this for background. There will be nothing "new" in this section. You will find it very useful to read the intro section to as many papers as you can get your hands on. While you do this, you will become fairly depressed that so much research has already been done, and you will wonder what you can do to add to the field. Speak with your advisor, he has many good ideas.
Methods - This will take you a VERY long time to read initially, because they go into ridiculous detail. They do this so that you, the researcher reading and interested in replicating their results, can do so. If you don't understand everything here at first, don't worry. NOTE: If you finish reading the methods section and still want to know how something worked, email the author! This is research; the guy who wrote the paper is likely another grad student/postdoc like you. He'd love to hear from you.
Results - This is the meat of the paper. Read this very carefully to find out what they found. Between this section and the methods section you will determine what went right, what went wrong, what is new, and what they should have done that they didn't that you can now research and publish and become a superstar.
When you cite a paper, you will be citing from this section. If you find yourself citing a paper based on something in the Intro, you're just citing another citation.
Discussion - This is the author's thoughts on what the results mean. Take note of this; the author is using his or her expertise to interpret the results. If you disagree with something he or she says here, and you can back up your findings, more power to you.
Most accomplished researchers don't actually read papers; they just read figures. A good paper will be completely in the figures. (This is particularly true in some biological sciences fields, less so elsewhere.)
Take notes on the papers you read. Keep those notes. My method was to keep my notes in a 3-ring binder, put a little post-it tab with the author's name, and then put the paper in there as well with the notes, so each "tab" is my notes and the paper. You will read hundreds of papers during your academic career. You will want to remember what you've read.
This is a very arduous process, and the learning curve is steep. Don't be discouraged! Reading papers is a skill, and the more you read the more proficient at understanding them you'll become.
Note that this doesn't apply to all the STEM fields. Mathematics papers, for instance, re structured quite differently.
Good point. Could you post an answer about how to best read a math paper? I'd be interested in your answer.
Excellent post. To avoid the feeling that “everything has already been done” it can oftentimes be good to first identify your problem, to think about it, see what you can formulate yourself and then when you’ve made some progress with it, then go to the literature and see what other people have said. You may well find that you’ve done something different from what they’ve done.
You forgot the References section! It's the original Wikipedia. Combined with good skimming, you can get a good understanding of the hows and whys of the Methods section more efficiently this way than by thorough reading alone. And always read the rest of the papers from the group or person on that topic! There is often a bigger story to be told through their cumulative successes and failures approaching the problem than through a report on any one of them alone.
This is about my experience in computer engineering
I found that reading for breadth was the more important approach. The area of research I was interested in was pretty fluffly and ill-defined (I thought I could make a difference by organizing it better), so that many relevant articles were categorized in totally different areas. This meant I had to have a hummingbird approach: flittering around, but drilling down when I found an important vein of data. I also kept a journal where I'd put a citation and a very brief summary of the article, so that I could come back and say "I think I read something about this last September" and then go look in an older journal. Today, I'd have my own wiki at home to keep track of this. I used to have my own "library" of PDFs that I got through university access, but that removable hard drive was stolen.
Is five pages of close reading per day enough?
If you can stay consistently at 5 pages (or 1 article) every day, you will end up far ahead of other people who study only in spurts.
At the beginning read anything and everything (and take notes). You should always be reading something and writing something. The hardest part for most students in the sciences to get past is embracing the unknown.
You will probably feel the need to understand everything, right from the start. Unless you are exceptional, you probably will have to read the important papers several times. You are looking to develop a broad-scale understanding of your field. To know where your research fits in, you have to develop an understanding of where your field in. This takes time.
As time goes on, you'll pick and choose more carefully the papers you read closely. Often you can get the idea from just the abstract. If it sounds promising, then read on.
I'll chime in with a quite different opinion (or maybe a related opinion phrased in a different way), which grew out of advising/supervising PhD students and post-docs: reading for depth is a job requirement, but reading for breadth is what will make you stand out.
As a PhD student, you are required to read in depth the papers that directly pertain to your particular subfield. A PhD is the process of becoming an expert in your discipline, and you cannot do that without mastering the minute details of it, which you will only learn by reading in depth the papers published (and attending conferences, asking questions, etc.).
However, though becoming an expert is what gets you your PhD, if you want to continue further in research (whether academic or R&D), you will need to be able to show a quick understanding of new problems, to make connections between concepts in various areas of research, and propose creative solutions to the problems you have identified. This requires a casual knowledge of a large variety of fields, which will be only acquired by reading a large breadth of topics.
The best ever comment about "breadth vs depth" I have heard!
I agree with Henry about breadth vs. depth. You'll ultimately be judged on depth, so that has to be your first priority. However, breadth is quite valuable too. Many breakthroughs have come by applying standard techniques from one area to a new area.
The $.02 I want to add is that not all reading is created equal. Particularly when you're learning a new topic, well-written exposition is invaluable (in large part because it's so rare). As you progress, you'll develop a better intuition for what's worth reading. But when you're early in your career, I strongly encourage you to ask your adviser (or more senior students) which papers and books you should be reading. Personally, I've slogged through many manuscripts mired in myopia before encountering enlightened, engaging exposition. ...and that has made all the difference.
+1 for "slogging through manuscripts mired in myopia". Beginners often tend to think that when they don't understand, it must that they just aren't smart enough, when the reality is that poorly written papers are hard to read no matter how smart you are!
I personally think one should read both for breadth and depth. Read all sort of literature around your field, and a few outside your field. One can only come up with good ideas having a good general knowledge of science. When it comes to your own research area papers should be read carefully and critically to understand what is being done, how it is being done and if the interpretations and methods made and used really show that. As my PhD supervisor used to say, read atleast two papers a day even if you are busy with experiments. This gets easier as you go. For me in the first year it used to take a lot to time to read a paper. Towards the end, I was looking at the abstract, results/figures...if needed methods, and where confused check the discussion quickly to see how the authors explained their results. After a while, you rarely need to read the intro in your own field unless you want a refresher.
I have some points to mention on this:
1. Read papers relevant to your research:
I mean, you will know slowly which conferences publish results in your interest area and which do you find relevant, so choose papers from top conferences or journals because those set the benchmarks
2. Datasets in paper convey a lot
Browse in the result section of the papers and you will notice that the datasets on which the algorithm are tested should suit your requirement. For example: I am working on outdoor dataset and I see a paper showing results from indoor dataset, there are 99% chances of me dropping that paper.
3. Use abstract as filter
I think this point is self explanatory
4. Scheduling your reading - difficult
There may be a week where you will end up reading a lot of papers and there will be times where reading even one paper will not be possible.
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2105 | How to make a concise dissertation defence in Math department
I am a math student in the US preparing for an hour long defense of my thesis. I am assuming that the dissertation committee has already read my dissertation by the time of my defense.
Any advice for preparing and giving the dissertation defense talk?
What balance between presenting subtle parts of the proofs and a clear big picture of the results obtained should I aim for?
Would it be more interesting for the committee to hear me explaining more technical parts of the proofs rather then the statements of the main theorems obtained?
What did your advisor suggest? (You did ask your advisor, didn't you?)
I don't think there is a meaningful answer to this question that is helpful across all US math departments and advisors. There is too much variation in what is expected. You need to find out what your committee expects.
That said, if I had to answer without knowing your department or committee, I would recommend trying to focus on the big picture but making sure that you spend most of your time explaining your contribution to that big picture. That's certainly what you'll want to do for job talks, which you're presumably also giving around now.
If the committee is concerned about your understanding of the technical parts of the proofs, they can ask you in the closed exam following the public talk.
Two general suggestions which can overrule anything else I'm going to say: Ask your advisor about the talk! Practice your presentation with your advisor, if that's alright with them.
In general, you should not give details of proofs unless pressed; even then, you should be careful. Proving real theorems in talks (even thesis defenses) is hard, time consuming, and generally of minimal benefit to the audience. You should instead try to give the general picture of what you've done.
Some other good resources for communicating math are:
http://www.ams.org/notices/200709/tx070901136p.pdf
http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/workshops/gcoll.pdf
Neither are specifically about the thesis defense, but are general resources for math talks. I've found them both helpful at various points.
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44852 | What do I do if there is an error in a figure in my not-yet-defended thesis?
I submitted my thesis some days ago and I am currently preparing for viva. I have found an error in a figure which is a summary of four other figures. In fact, by means of Excel I did calculations and made a mistake regarding some numbers. I have prepared a new file with corrections but I confess that I am scared.
Anyone has experienced such a situation or may give any tip about what to do.
Thank you very much indeed
Contact your advisor immediately. Include the corrections.
If the discussion in the viva turns to the error, be honest about it. If it turns to that figure, I would raise it proactively. I'd also have a corrected copy with me if possible.
In the U.S. (and in engineering) it is common for the thesis committee to ask you to make certain corrections to your thesis before it is published (this usually happens at the end of your defence meeting). An error of the sort you mentioned should not matter at all, unless it has a significant impact on the fundamental contributions of your thesis.
Speak to your mentor. However, I see no reason to panic or to be scared, if the mistake doesn't influence some fundamental contribution of the thesis. I've found numerous cases where mistakes in the thesis were found years after the defense, even with considerable impact (one extreme case de facto made ~60% of the thesis obsolete aka wrong).
If the thesis is completely printed/prepared/submitted, I guess that the mentor won't insist on repeating the process.
Again, this is not a great issue, if the error is not of fundamental nature (e.g you base your thesis that the actual value of pi is 4, but somehow you miraculously discover now that you were of by 0.8584).
I sent corrections to my mentor and I am waiting for his advice. It influences two numbers (mean values of four other values) the figure infuences also some wording in the text explaiing the figure but not some fundamental contribution of the thesis
Don't keep it a secret, but don't walk in and start apologising for it either.
If the discussion in the viva turns to the error, be honest about it. If it turns to that figure, I would raise it proactively. I'd also have a corrected copy with me if possible. There's no such thing as a perfect thesis (including when the final copy goes to the library) so make use of the opportunity to fix everything you can. I found nonsense (but not as bad as misleading) wording in my readthrough the night before the viva, as well as typos, none changing the outcome but some in equations. I brought a list and mentioned it at the end of the viva, and they were accepted as needing fixing with the corrections.
Thank you very much guys. It is encouraging. I will take into account what you wrote all of you. My mentor said bear it in mind if you are asked say you identified the mistake.
In fact, before finding these issues, I decided to bring a file of corrections with me to the viva. Thank you guys again
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44916 | How can I find journals in my field that do not charge author fees?
I am in search of an algorithms journal that does not ask for publication fee.
It doesn't matter to me whether it is an open-access journal or not.
I have been searching for journals with no publication charges journal for a while, but have been unable to find any such journals.
Are there any resources that can help me locate journals that do not charge authors publication fees?
Could you specify if your algorithm paper is applied to a particular discipline e.g. molecular biology or is it pure theory / a mathematically-focused algorithm paper?
What do you mean? Most journals (algorithms included) have no publication fee if your article will only be available through subscription. E.g., look on ACM, Springer journals and you will find many.
@Alexandros not such a silly question IMO. Many subscription access journals still levy 'page charges' to authors, particularly for long papers e.g. IEEE fees http://www.ieee.org/advertisement/2012vpcopc.pdf
@rmounce I never used the term silly. I do not know about IEEE but ACM and Springer journal I know of are free.
@Alexandros this 2013 survey seems to indicate that 55% of Springer journals levy 'colour' charges for colour figures: http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Wellcome-survey-of-colour-and-page-charges-v-02.pdf ACM not included in that survey
@DUDE_MXP: I have substantially edited the title and content of the question, because in its original form, it is asking for a list of journals, which is considered an off-topic "shopping" question. Asking for how to find no-fee journals in general, however, would be on topic.
Can you please specify field more precisely? Most computer science journals do not charge fees, so I am guessing you mean some other field?
My algorithm is a bit graph theory based.To be precise its based on maze generation algorithm.
I don't know what subject maze generation falls under, but most graph theory journals I know do not charge author fees.
Legitimate algorithms journals do not charge publication fees. Those IEEE page charges are voluntary, which in this context is a synonym for fictional. (Some legit journals do charge fees for open access, but that's not the same thing.)
You can use websites like DOAJ.org to search for relevant open access journals that do not charge publication fees.
This example query for 'algorithms' reveals 40 such cost-free open access journals, some of which may be relevant to you, depending on what exact type of algorithm you're publishing.
Using this I found The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics & Image Processing Online (IPOL Journal) which both look like reputable, high-quality, publication-fee-free, algorithm-relevant journals to me.
Some of the information is a little out of date though, for instance the journal Algorithms (MDPI) I think now charges 300 CHF (Swiss Francs) although initially it was free, in the past.
Many MDPI journals were no-fee for their first couple of years and have since begun charging - I think this is now standard practice for them.
It's standard practice for most new open access journals - it makes sense IMO: new journals by definition don't have a journal impact factor (you need at least 2 years of citation data), so to some authors it is more of a 'risk' to publish there, so they need to do something to entice authors in the first couple of years before they get an impact factor.
As far as I can tell, MDPI Algorithms is a write-only journal.
Harsh. Google Scholar seems to think differently: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Delaunay%20Meshing%20of%20Piecewise%20Smooth%20Complexes%20without%20Expensive%20Predicates (although, perhaps all the 29 citations didn't read the paper?) ;)
Thanks the DOAJ link helped me and I found a free journal for my paper.
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20827 | What is the rationale for having references before the article text?
Certain journals (for example, Optics Express) place the references of papers in between the abstract and the article text:
How common is this practice? Is there some specific design reason for this? As a casual reader, I find it disconcerting and annoying, and tend to see it as another barrier between googling the paper and actually getting at the text. However, I understand there may be other workflows for which this is useful. Can anyone point out possible justifications for this practice?
Maybe the example given is not the best one: since it's an erratum and it quotes only the article needing amendment, it might look like an exception and not a rule for the journal (while looking at the journal one indeed finds articles with a long list of references right after the abstract).
I have found a better example; please see the updated question.
Usually the article consists of three or four parts. Introduction, main text which is your original research and conclusion. There may also be an appendix.
So, usually most of the citations are from the introduction because you mainly talk about the prevosly done researches there. So, when I read the introduction I have to constantly go back and forth to check the citations, but if the citations are located nearby the introduction, it is more convenient.
I read sceintific articles a lot and I can say that this is not a common practice in physics. I can't talk about the articles in other fields.
especially considering the article uses the "number system/stye" for citations. It's hard to keep track or who author "13" or "23", etc. is.
@SoilSciGuy That is standard practice in large stretches os physics (and definitely in atomic, molecular and optical physics), and references are almost uniformly at the end (which is not to say that there isn't typically a lot of shuffling over between introduction and references).
It's standard practice in a lot of journals, that doesn't mean it's the best practice.
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193328 | Are there any papers where two (or more) authors share the same full name?
Because of reasons, I'm curious to know whether there are any simple examples of papers where two or more authors have the same full name.
(To be clear: I am only interested in exact full-name matches. Instances where authors share a last name are so common as to be completely unremarkable, and instances where the first name matches but additional initials distinguish the authors are also reasonably common and not what I'm looking for.)
Does anybody have any particular pointers that can be useful?
A bit in jest, but see Another article that makes bibliometric analysis a bit harder in the 2015 SIGBOVIK proceedings.
I would imagine there's a parent-child pair out there with the same name that have collaborated.
I'm on a paper with two other Peter Green's, however we do have different middle names and we put our middle initials on the paper.
an obvious situation where this could happen is a wife and husband team where the wife has taken the name of the husband, and both spouses share a the same first name, for instance Mrs Michele Spaghetti (from a country where Michele is feminine) married to Mr. Michele Spaghetti (of Italian ancestry).
@PeterGreen Which one is you though
Here's an example with co-first authors who share the same name:
Fan Zhang, Fan Zhang, Liyu Huang, Dan Zeng, Casiana Vera Cruz, Zhikang Li & Yongli Zhou "Comparative proteomic analysis reveals novel insights into the interaction between rice and Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae." BMC Plant Biology 20, 563 (2020).
From physics I can only think of papers where two authors share initials and last name, but don't have the full name written out. An example, though perhaps not so simple, is this one from the ATLAS collaboration. Its author list includes two instances each of "A. Gabrielli", "B. Li", "M. Liu", "B. Martin", "C. Meyer", "J. Meyer", "T. Mueller", "C. Schmitt", "S. Tanaka", "P. D. Thompson", "C. Wang", "H. Wang", "J. Wang", "H. Yang", "J. Yu", and "S. Zimmermann".
Looks like the journal website can't handle that example either. For all authors clicking on the name shows the affiliation, except for the second Fan Zhang.
"Fan Zhang and Fan Zhang contributed equally to this work." That's ironic
Well, at least the handling of the citation_author meta tags on the html source looks more rational than in the example linked in the question. But the problem with the affiliation popup is really quite something.
Isn't this why Knuth tries to credit authors in their native script? A lot of information is lost in pinyin.
Q: Is there a paper where two authors have the same name? A: Here is a paper with 16 pairs of authors having the same names.
@Stef The ATLAS paper is kinda cheating but it gives us a nice estimation of how frequently we expect it to occur, both in names written in English and those with a native Latin spelling.
Interestingly, it is possible that Fan Zhang and Fan Zhang don't, in fact, share the same name. That is, the tones (not represented in the paper author list) may not be the same (and tones are as important as vowels in Chinese). Furthermore, even if the tones were also the same, the characters may also be different. An interesting situation, nonetheless!
Why does the ATLAS paper abstract quote the amount of data in inverse femtobytes???
@user253751 That is rather off-topic, but the unit used in the paper is inverse femtobarn.
@2ndQuantized Yes this is the annoying thing with being a Chinese academic, they may actually have different names but they look the same when rendered into the Latin alphabet.
A recent example:
Otto , P., & Otto , P. (2022). Impact of Academic Authorship Characteristics on Article Citations. REVSTAT-Statistical Journal, 20(4), 427–447. https://doi.org/10.57805/revstat.v20i4.382
which includes the following footnote:
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first published article where both authors share their surname and given name, while working at the same university. Thus, the two authors are largely indistinguishable, which highlights the importance of individual author identifiers like ORCID.
ORCID always makes me laugh. "What's your orc id?" "Me Grimtooth!"
They do not share the full name, only the last name:
Michalis Faloutsos, Petros Faloutsos, Christos Faloutsos: On power-law relationships of the Internet topology ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, Volume 29, Issue 4O,ct. 1999, pp 251–262
What is also amusing, is that the "Faloutsos" last name is extremely rare in Greece. According to this they are siblings.
This was pretty clear from the original phrasing of the question, but I've made it as explicit as I can in an edit. I am not interested in anything other than full-name matching.
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1020 | What is a fair metric for assessing the citation impact of journals across disciplines?
To quote Thomsons "a journal's Impact factor
is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations to the source items published in that journal during the previous two years."
I assume that disciplines vary in
average number of citations per paper: Disciplines with fewer citations per paper will appear to have less impact.
citation half-life: Longer half-lives means under-estimation of impact relative to journals with shorter half-lives. The Wikipedia article on impact factors summarises a study that found that "the percentage of total citations occurring in the first two years after publication varies highly among disciplines from 1-3 percent in the mathematical and physical sciences to 5-8 percent in the biological sciences." (Nierop, 2009).
Google Scholar uses the five year h-index. See this listing of top ranked journals with various psychology related keywords in their title. The five year h-index indicates the number of papers with an equivalent number of citations. E.g., a value of 20 indicates that 20 articles published in the last five years have received 20 or more citations.
However, while the h-index might reduce the issue of different citation half-lives, it does not resolve it. And it does not address the issue of differential citation patterns across disciplines.
Question
What index provides both a reliable and unbiased assessment of the citation based impact of a journal when comparisons are being performed across disciplines?
Reference
Erjen van Nierop (2009). "Why do statistics journals have low impact factors?". Statistica Neerlandica 63 (1): 52–62. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9574.2008.00408.x.
Defining field boundaries is an extremely difficult problem. There is some cool work on this via statistical properties of random walks that makes nice definitions, here. I recommend taking a look around that site. A naive metric might be: classify journals into their fields and then assign each a ranking p, meaning the journal is in top p% of its field by some standard metric (say eigenfactor, since I link to that site). Note that the website claims eigenfactor and article influence scores adjust for different fields, already.
@ArtemKaznatcheev That sounds reasonable, and I imagine that discipline specific rankings is a common approach. My first thought was simply to think of a metric that is less influenced by citation half-life and discipline specific citation patterns.
The reason why I asked it here is because this is a real issue in some psychology departments where research output is being compared with academic output from other fields such as the biomedical sciences. But I'd be happy for the question to be migrated to academia.SE if it was preferred.
I raised the question of migration in chat.
There is no such index.
Publication and citation standards vary significantly between disciplines and even sub-disciplines. Without direct, deep knowledge of the standards in each community, it is simply impossible to compare impact of a journal in field X with the impact of a journal in field Y. (Eigenfactor's extraordinary claims to the contrary require extraordinary evidence, which they don't provide.)
Moreover, it's not clear why you should even try. Any judgement about the relative importance of Journal of X versus Journal of Y necessarily requires a prior judgement about the relative importance of field X versus field Y. HC SVNT DRACONES.
And Thompson's is evil, to boot :)
More importantly, at least within computer science, they're simply incompetent.
Here's an informal and difficult to quantify one: does it suffice to have a publication in this journal to get tenured? Or, in a reverse manner, can one get tenured without having published in a journal like this?
In economics, you will get tenure in most reasonable places for publications in Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, or Econometrica.
In statistics, these would be Annals of Statistics, Annals of Applied Statistics, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B Methodology, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and Biometrika.
These are the fields I am closely familiar with. I can imagine that in most natural sciences, a publication in Nature or Science would boost your chances quite a bit. Finance has a system of ranking journals, with a handful of highly coveted journals designated as A-journals.
Getting reliable statistics along these lines is of course impossible. If Google were a little smarter, it would scan the CVs of those tenured and untenured (those who moved to another university after the typical period of 5-6-7 years), grab their publication records, and see what the journals are that those who got tenured had published in that untenured hadn't.
The CWTS SNIP factor controls for differing disciplinary citation rates and speed. See http://www.journalindicators.com It is also shown in Scopus
Moving from comments:
Defining field boundaries is an extremely difficult problem. Once those boundaries are defined (or as they are being defined) it is also difficult to judge which field individual journals belong to. The technical problem is one of "community-structure" or cluster detection, and is a big problem in computer science.
For the specific case of journals and citations, there is some cool work on this via statistical properties of random walks that makes nice definitions using the map-equation. However, these statistical methods sometimes produce oddities (I think I remember seeing Phys. Rev. Letters being classified as Chemistry based on the stats). It also doesn't always produce the fine-gaining desired, for instance eigenfactor seems to not have a Cognitive Science category, just a general Psychology category.
In general, I recommend taking a look around eigenfactor. Note that the website claims eigenfactor and article influence scores adjust for different fields, already (take a look at point #4). I am not sure how accurate this claim is, but I personally find their metric more reliable (not to mention more accessible!) than ISI Web of Science. I also think their approach is more developed than the freshly-pressed Google Scholar journal rankings based on h5-index. However, I would love to see eigenfactor and Google Scholar together.
If you are unsatisfied with eigenfactor's rankings, then a naive metric might be: classify journals into their fields and then assign each a ranking p, meaning the journal is in top p% of its field by some standard metric. This should give you a rough idea.
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2546 | What are some proven methods for keeping track of research and programming in a lab notebook format?
Are there any proven methods for keeping a computer science lab notebook? What sort of stuff goes into a CS lab notebook, and what notation is used? Are there any reliable ELN methods, preferably integrating with Git?
I want to keep a lab notebook that helps me keep a running narrative of my research as well as my programming, in the same way you would keep a natural science lab notebook. It would be handy to be able to write down what I'm doing as I'm programming, then when a bug mysteriously appears in the software, I can see the last time the software was working, see where the bug started, then read the running narrative in between to help figure out what is causing it.
What's a “lab notebook”? I'm unfamiliar with this terminology. Is this something you write as a researcher? Or as a student? Is that lab as in doing experiments, or as in a class? Is this something you need to do for some legal purpose (say, related to patent claims), or for a teaching institution, or for yourself?
I think this is a duplicate of http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1085/software-app-for-electronic-research-notebooks. Several interesting answers over there.
I don't do CS specifically, but I do research in computational/mathematical Epidemiology, which similarly lacks a clear format for a "lab notebook" and where the electronic tools designed for something like chemistry and biology doesn't necessarily suit.
Honestly, I've tried a number of systems. A private Wiki, a variety of other electronic systems, etc. And when it came down to it, I went back to a traditional paper notebook.
I've ended up with a bound paper notebook where I keep notes about experiments and simulations being run, thoughts on direction for the project, and the occasional printout of results taped inside. This has, for me, worked far better than electronic systems.
I might have to try this out. I really hate taping things in to a notebook, so I'll probably just keep anything printed in a separate folder and refer to them as Attachment 1, etc. I like to keep track of my thought process, and I was considering using Wordpress with a live blogging plugin, but I think I'll have to resort to paper. I like drawing diagrams, and Wordpress doesn't really support that.
@NickAnderegg TiddlyWiki may be interesting for both of you. It resides in a single HTML file and can easily be carried around on a thumbdrive (or hosted on a webserver, obviously). Thus, it may be closer to a classic notebook than a hosted Wiki.
I use Jupyter Notebooks as my (almost) all-in-one research environment. Jupyter is a locally-hosted webapp designed primarily to write code in a convenient interface in a web browser. The native language is Python, but there are kernels for many languages. Jupyter also supports writing text with Markdown and MathJax inline with your code. The notebooks can be exported as HTML, PDFs, slides, Markdown, .rst, or .tex files (especially useful when drafting papers for journals/conferences that provide a .cls file!). And because a notebook is stored as a plaintext JSON file, it's VCS friendly.
The next iteration, JupyterLab, is currently in the late-stages of development and is in beta.
Are you affiliated with JupyterLab?
I'm not affiliated.
In contrast, back in my postdoc we referred to the Jupyter Notebook we were using as "The Wall of Madness", and I found it wholey unsuited for lab notebook use.
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24162 | Is it okay to inquire about the status of a paper when the online submission system shows no update three months after submission?
Around 3 months ago, I submitted a paper to a Math journal for peer-review through an online submission system. The same day I received in my e-mail an acknowledgement saying that the paper had been received.
The problem is that the status of the paper on the online submission system is still "Manuscript submitted".
I think this means that the paper has not even been assigned to an editor yet (once this happens, the editor will probably start looking for reviewers), but as far as I know submissions are assigned to editors within a few weeks (I once submitted a paper to another journal and when an editor had been assigned, the status on the online system changed to "Editor handles" or something like that).
I know that publishing is a long and complicated process and I'm not trying to rush anybody, but sometimes manuscripts are lost in the system. In fact, this has once happened to me, so I just want to make sure that the paper was not lost in the system.
Should I send an e-mail asking for the status of the paper?
PS: I think that, at the time of submitting the paper, I didn't choose any specific editor to submit the paper to.
A short, polite email asking about the status of the paper would not be remiss after three months without any additional information.
Yes, you should send a quick email asking for an update. In my experience, every electronic manuscript submission/tracking system seem to be different. Even different journals from the same publisher who use a unified log in system, seem to have tweaks to what you see. I think that after one month at any one stage, with the exception of "under review", it is perfectly reasonable, and probably desirable, to ask for a status update. The time a manuscript spend "under review" is often very field, and even journal, specific and can range from days to 12+ months.
When sending an email, be polite and explain that you just want to make sure that you do not need to do anything at the current stage. In all likelihood the status update will be no more informative than "we are working on it" (i.e., they haven't lost it), but that is informative.
♦ I already sent an email (through the journal's online system) several days ago. How long should I wait for a response? Is it possible that things go slower during this time of the year?
When this has happened to me, I was told to look at the journal's list of editors that are in the appropriate subject area, and contact them directly to see if they would accept the task. You may have to do something similar. Ask Nicely! It will also help if you have colleagues in common so that you can strike up some conversation and get them interested.
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112285 | How can I fill in the missing background I need to be a good computer scientist?
I'm doing my PhD in computer science and I'm almost finished (maybe one more year).
In fact, my background was engineering, but in my MS study I got interested in CS and took courses about "pattern recognition", and "distributed AI" and "robotics" so I tried to continue that line in my PhD which is about machine learning and data analysis.
I tried to become an expert (in a PhD level) in my topic of PhD as I read a lot of papers and got focused on one topic, but here and there I see my colleagues (same discipline) are talking about methods and principles that I'm not familiar with.
The fact is that I want to continue in this field as a post-doc and even more, but I feel a gap in my background, and I'm wondering how I can fill it? For example, should I take online courses related to commonly taught materials in a bachelor/master CS program?
"For example, should I take online courses related to commonly taught materials in a bachelor/master CS program?" : IMHO, that will be a waste of time, you'll subscribe, think about it for a week, and then forget about it because you'll be busy doing other (more critical) stuff. To me, the best way to learn at your level is to teach: if you can find a post-doc with some teaching duties, that would fill some gaps and corresponds to your job description, so that you'll have an insensitive to do it, and to do it properly. And don't worry, you'll learn faster than your students when the time come.
Let me give you a bit of perspective, as well as assurance. In mathematics it is no longer possible for a person to be knowledgeable in every aspect of the art. That possibility ended early in the 20th century. Henry Poincaré is often given as the last person who was conversant in everything mathematical. Math has evolved a huge amount in the interim. So, even Poincaré didn't know all that we now know about math.
In any field there is a tendency toward specialization. Research normally requires this. Over time, being a good researcher requires less and less of the whole both because of expansion of the field and the much narrower needs of a specific sub-topic.
While it is good to know a lot and your goal of expanding your horizon is a good one, don't be discouraged if others, especially other researchers have different ideas, use different tools, and especially utilize different thought patterns than you do.
Probably the most effective means, given that you like your research area and that it rewards you properly, is to branch out from there, studying similar things that you don't explicitly need, but which might come in handy. But rather than focus on the details of the related topics, pay special attention to whether the thought patterns you hear discussed are somewhat different from your own. Think Different was a slogan (Apple Inc.), but it has a deeper meaning.
Another way to expand your horizon from a given base is to study something very different from what you know, but to which your current knowledge might be applied.
I don't know of CS has reached the stage yet where you can't know everything, but I suspect we are pretty close to the boundary. You can have a broad education, and you should. You can also go deep into one or a few areas, as you also should. But there is (likely) too much there to do it all.
Modern Academia tends to reward specialists, as I'm sure you are already aware.
"I don't know of CS has reached the stage yet where you can't know everything" I can guarantee you it did, a pretty long time ago already.
@Clément, If I were naming names, I'd think Edsger Dijkstra may have been the last "polymath" in CS, though Don Knuth might be another candidate (Don is alive, of course, hence my hedging the bet). Quantum Computing made the game harder, of course.
In 1970, when I was a young programmer, I thought that if I studied hard enough I could learn a substantial proportion of what there is to know about computing. Almost 50 years later, I am still learning, but the field has grown far faster than I can study it. Even in the narrow field of programming languages, I have programmed in a smaller percentage of them than in the 1970's.
@PatriciaShanahan, it would be good to think that our learning is superlinear (in some sense), but the expansion of the field is exponential. Even if the exponent is small... But synergy implies we have a bigger and bigger playground. Growing faster than anyone can explore.
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70929 | How do professors view a student who has good grades but always asks stupid questions?
I am planning to apply for Ph.D programs in mathematics in U.S. and I am thinking about which professors I should ask for letters of recommendations from. In order to get "strong" letters, I need to determine which professors believe I am really strong.
Although I do well in most of my classes (I am always trying to get full marks on my homework and tests), I do have a "bad" habit of asking stupid questions frequently. I can see from the faces of professors that they dislike students who always ask stupid questions, while welcoming students to ask questions. (If you are a professor and don't think this is the case, please let me know...I really appreciate it.) I feel like professors prefer the questions that will make them have a better understanding about the subject instead of the questions that they will waste their time on.
What do professors think of a student who has good grades but always asks stupid questions? Should I expect good letters from them? Or I should go to the professors whom I seldom ask questions (but still do well in their classes)?
"There is no stupid question but stupid answer"... this dear Einstein. What do you think is a stupid question ?
@GautierC I define a stupid question to be a question which is so easy that a professor believes that a student should think of it by himself instead of asking it.
then why are you asking those questions ?
@GautierC Because I don't think those question are easy to me when I ask (but turn out to be easy when they answer).
then first of all, you have to work on yourself. Everytime you want to ask for something, think a bit about it, write it down and go to see the teacher after the course to ask him about what you REALLY are not able to answer. I know it is not the question, but it is still the main problem ^^
is it wrong in US to ask for recommandation letters, even if you think the teacher don't think high of yourself ? I mean, you just have to show the most relevant ...
I am not really sure whether the professor thinks high of myself or not. Because if I were the professor, I wouldn't care about the stupid questions asked by the student and I would measure him mainly by his ranking of grades in my class. I believe that a student is still excellent in this case even if he asks stupid questions.
Human relations are as much important as notation is some cases, especially for recommandation letter. Anyway, why do you not try to ask him what he thinks about you ? It's not like it is impossible to speak with this teacher, right ?
If there are students like that, I would certainly start questioning my assessment techniques. If a student clearly demonstrates a complete lack of understanding when asking a question and still does well in my exams, then there is a problem with my exams.
@GautierC This will be another questions that I want to post here...Can I first ask how the professors think of me before I ask them to write letters? Letters of recommendation are supposed to be confidential, right?
@BurakUlgut or a problem with the student ^^
@TiWen in your position, I would go to see the teacher, explaining to him the problem clearly, and that's all. I mean, it's a teacher, it's not a random guy, more than giving you courses, his task is also to help you if needed. Being honest is the best way to deal with a problem, especially since it's because you think about your future and about yourself.
@BurakUlgut I don't think that is always the case. In most times, a student who ask stupid questions still does better than most of the students in your class. Because at least this student dare to ask and is able to ask. If a student can't digest at least half of the materials covered in your class, he may not ask any questions.
and "half of the materials" is just conservatively estimated. If I don't get 80% of the materials covered in class, I dare not to ask either.
Are you turning in the recommendation letters or do they submit them on your behalf? If you are the proxy just request several professors write letters and only submit those that you find flattering.
Only the professor? We hated people in faculty that just made up stupid questions to lick the boots of the professors, and there were quite a few of them. A few professors also clearly did not like it.
They will think you are dilligent and stupid.
I have great tolerance for "stupid questions" by students and try always to answer them (if possible) by taking an unexpected angle, even for simple ones. The reason for that is that, as a student, I was able to sometimes ask a series of seemingly stupid questions of things taken for granted but never properly explained/looked into in detail (this may quite have annoyed the profs and TAs), and then, at certain moments produce a one-liner when the prof and everybody else was stuck and stumped. This clearly confused people. So, if your questions really help you to better understand, go ahead.
Students often have a highly distorted perception of themselves with respect to the feelings of their professors. The differential in both power and experience between student and professor is just so large that it's quite common for a student to confuse the very distinct attributes of professorial attitude, personal affection, and intellectual respect.
As such, I would suggest that you really don't know what your professors think of you until you ask them. Maybe you are reading them correctly, but maybe not: many professors are quite pleased to have a student who carefully advocates to improve their understanding of material, even if they might wish to be getting on with the lecture in the moment.
My recommendation is to tell the professor you're thinking of applying to Ph.D. programs and ask them something like:
Do you think that you would be able to write a strong letter of recommendation for me?
The "strong" is important here, because that's what will get you the honest opinion of whether the professor thinks well of you or not, and you don't want letters that are not strong.
Oh ...I have just posted the question in yellow on this community~~~but in a more sensitive way...
@TiWen I'll put a linked answer there.
Although I do well in most of my classes, I do have a "bad" habit of asking stupid questions frequently. I can see from the faces of professors that they dislike students who always ask stupid questions while welcome students to ask questions. (If you are a professor and don't think this is the case, please let me know...)
I don't think you've provided enough context to really say for sure whether or not your questions would be annoying.
Here's what I'd need to know: Does the professor (or the syllabus) say that you should read from the textbook before you come to class? If so, do you read the book as assigned?
If you constantly interrupted me with a barrage of questions that indicated you hadn't done the assigned reading, then my face might also show some of the consternation that you claim you see.
How do professors think of a student who has good grades but always asks stupid questions?
Generally speaking, I like it when students ask questions. It shows me they are engaged. It shows me they are interested in learning the material. It helps provide feedback when I haven't explained something clearly. Quite often, the one student who is brave enough to speak up is asking for help that other students probably need and appreciate.
That said, though, there are times where there can be too much of a good thing. If one student's questions are so frequent and incessant that it becomes distracting for everyone, that might be viewed negatively. But that's perhaps more of a timing issue than a "stupid question" issue.
None of my professors write in syllabuses that students should read from the textbook before they come to class(we may be required to read the book after class).
Ti Wen, your professors may omit the point that students should read before coming to class because they consider it painfully and completely obvious. :)
Don't forget off-topic questions. I suppose these are less likely in math but I remember in economics classes that dealt with things that were remotely political there'd be one person that wanted to turn the class into a debate on the topic du jour
J.R.: regarding your last two paragraphs, and also @Dean MacGregor's comment, the following was written by a student in my linear algebra class: "The instructor was very kind and patient with students who spoke out of turn and reacted heroically to questions that were asked which I found to be far off topic and confusing".
First, even if your questions annoy your prof intensely, you may still get a good letter. And conversely even if your questions demonstrate your commitment to learning and are actually welcomed, you may not get a good letter. So the only way to know is to ask,
Do you think you can recommend me strongly for [whatever] in a letter?
And if they say no, don't push them because they are telling you it wouldn't be a positive letter.
Now let's tackle those questions. There are so many reasons why I might make a small face when a student asks a question. Imagine we're doing non-university level material and I say "there are five vowel letters in English: A, E, I, O, and U." Up pops your hand and you ask:
isn't that 4? No, it's not 4, you've interrupted me for no reason. It's 5, right? Now where were we?
What about A? I said A, that was the first one. Oh, sorry, wasn't listening
What's a vowel? Either that's what this whole lecture is about or it's in the material I asked you to read before class, or I just covered that on the three previous slides but you were zoned out, or in some other way, a person who doesn't know what a vowel is shouldn't be trying to find out by interrupting a list of them to ask
In [some other language] there are 7! Fascinating, but not interruption-worthy. Thanks for sharing.
What about Y? I was just breathing in to explain Y, it's a little more complicated. On this one my annoyance is just that you've broken my rhythm, it's actually a fine question and leads to my next point, so I need to relax and keep going
Think about the questions you tend to ask. Are they the first kind, where you are correcting or contradicting the prof, pointing out an error, when there is no error, you made a mistake? Try not to do that. Are they overly broad, or do they show that you came to class unprepared? Try not to do that. Are you just randomly sharing your thoughts in the middle of someone else's sentence? That's not a question. Do that only in discussion parts of class. But do keep in mind, there are questions that irritate me that don't make me feel less about you or not recommend you. They are just a little annoying.
But if your question is none of these, it's you genuinely seeking clarification on something you just heard and don't understand, then you're probably doing fine. You can always approach the prof after class and ask if your questions are ok. That will clear things up for you, I'm sure.
"Are you only counting letters as vowels for some reason?"
While jakebeal's answer is good for what you should do, I'll expound on your titular question:
How do professors think of a student who has good grades but always asks stupid questions?
First, there are a couple of things you could mean here by "always": you're incessantly asking stupid questions or all (or most) of your questions seem stupid to you in retrospect. J.R.'s answer addresses the first, so I'll ignore that aspect except to say you can always ask your professor outside of class if you are asking too many questions during class.
Second, I ask "stupid questions" all the time also, though I don't vocalize most of them, just some of them. I think this is normal for researchers, and it's especially common when you're thinking about something for the first time, or thinking about something in a new way, and trying to understand something in a short amount of time, such as a class meeting. So just because a question has an easy answer, doesn't mean it's sounds stupid to a teacher. It may or may not, so as the other answers say, you may not be able to accurately judge a professor's opinion of your questions without explicit feedback.
However, if these questions are coming long after you should have learned the material (e.g., asking something that's obvious from high school algebra in an advanced math class, or only now asking something that was crucial for understanding what's been going on in the class for the past 10 weeks), then probably the professor will think you don't understand the material as well as you should.
Finally, I get lots of students in math classes who ask lots of questions that make me think they don't understand what's going on very well at all, but then surprise me by doing great on the assignments and exams. This sort of thing seems to be what you're concerned about (though may in fact not be the case). Without knowing anything more specific, generally my impression is they're good students, though probably they didn't have a strong background coming in and/or they're not exceedingly quick. By not quick, I don't mean they're not smart or that they wouldn't do well in grad school--you can be quick and smart or slow and smart. While thinking quickly can be impressive, I view thinking deeply as more important.
I would generally be able to write a good letter of recommendation for such a person, though I would probably be writing different things from "Ti has one of the fastest minds I've ever known."
I think this is a good answer, although any student reading this answer should know that faculty will vary. I am someone who didn't have a strong background and typically asked a lot of questions in class. I once had a faculty member become upset with me for asking too many questions. I then went and asked each of my other professors (current and past) how they felt about my questions. Other professors said that they liked my questions, and a few noted that I was one of their favorite students because of my questions.
Speaking as a professor, the problem may not be "stupid" questions but rather "too many" questions. When a student interrupts the flow of a lecture, it can be annoying, but when it is the same student that interrupts the flow on a frequent basis, the dismay you recognize is not because the question is stupid but rather that others do not appreciate the frequent interruptions.
So yes, ask frankly if a strong letter would be proffered.
And, perhaps, take some of your questions to office hours.
another old cranky lecturer
Agreed. I had a student like this who was always derailing the lectures but was very good. If he had asked me for a letter I would probably have said "I would rather not write you a letter, but if you can't find anyone else, let me know." Of course, I would not have written anything negative if I did end up having to write one.
I find that if a student is brave enough to ask a question, there will likely be at least one other student that has the same query but lacks the confidence to ask. Also, I am not perfect, sometimes I may assume some prior knowledge that not all students have. In these instances, I always welcome questions.
If I am at a part of the lecture where I feel a question will be distracting, I simply acknowledge the raised hand and make it clear I will come back to it (I make sure I do come back to it).
The only times I would ever find questions irritating would be if the student had missed a previous session and failed to catch up (my notes are always posted on the VLE so there is never any excuse for this) or if they regularly failed to complete their prescribed reading. I would hope that a student would deal with any queries arising from their preparation before they turned up for class but there are always some who will leave it until the last minute!
If asked to provide a letter of recommendation, I consider academic performance, potential, attendance and punctuality, in that order. These are all things that a student can control. I would never base a reference on a student's personality. That would be unfair.
Incidentally, I asked tons of questions as an undergraduate and one of my lecturers gave me a job!
You are right! There's a saying A sensible question is half knowledge.
Stupid questions exist. There is the occasional student who often asks those. Do not be that student!
Fortunately, most questions are not stupid. For most questions, a significant, silent fraction of the class appreciates that the question is asked. (How do I know? Several ways. For instance, when a question requires a long answer, before answering, I will sometimes gauge interest by inviting all interested students to show their hands. More often than not, several students will want the answer.)
Also, if the instructor is teaching the course in question for the first time, sometimes students who are not otherwise troublemakers ask questions merely to slow the lecture down, because the lecturer is inadvertently covering too much material too fast. Such questions represent valuable feedback.
Occasionally you get a student who just probably isn't smart enough to pass the course. If you politely invite that student to bring his or her questions to office, that student usually gets the hint and stops stalling the lecture with questions his or her classmates don't care about. The student may or may not then come to office, but that's for the student to decide.
The problem student is the student who asks questions because he or she likes attention. Every class of a certain size seems to have one or two of those. The classmates usually don't like that student, either.
All you can do with a student who asks questions because he or she likes attention is (a) call on other students first whenever possible, (b) give the troublemaker curt answers and smoothly move on with the lecture without inviting further discussion, or (c) in the final need, affect for a while not to see the student's raised hand. Unfortunately, most such students won't take the hint. Oh, well.
Fortunately, most questions asked are worth answering, or at least worth respectful deferral, in my experience. Moreover, depending on an instructor's lecturing style, good questions (which often arise) really help a lecture to move along. Some of the best questions come when the instructor has briefly glanced upon some point the instructor thinks is obvious but the students don't. The instructor needs to know that.
It is simple. Tell the professor you're thinking of applying to Ph.D and ask his opinion. If he suggesting Yes, you can go for and ask.
Welcome to SE! This is the beginning of a good answer, but you could elaborate a lot more, especially since you don't address the core question the OP is asking. Just asking the Prof may be good advice, but it is so general as to be unhelpful in this specific circumstance. It is rather like someone asking "How do I drive on ice?" and you answer "Very carefully. Be sure not to have accidents." Try expanding this answer to meet the specific question that is being asked, and this will likely get and upvote.
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118158 | Why do most mathematics PhD programs in United States have rigid qualifying and breadth requirements for every PhD student?
For a long time, I have been confused about the purpose of having (roughly the same) qualifying requirements and breadth (course) requirements for every mathematics PhD student (in many, if not most, mathematics departments in the United States).
I have heard that European math gradaute programs do not have such rigid requirements. In U.S., although many math PhD students only start with an undergraduate degree and they do need a lot of training in graduate math, there are still a lot of students who come with a master's degree and that is the reason I add the qualification "everyone". I am just asking why we need (roughly) the same requirements for everybody in a program instead of having tailored requirements for individual PhD students, especially for those who have already taken graduate level classes, had their confirmed interests, and even written a Master level thesis in mathematics.
In response to the comments below, I will add some parts that I deleted earlier back.
An example: many programs, such as Stanford and Ohio State, require students to take qualifying examinations in real analysis and algebra. (Some programs require exams only in real analysis and algebra, despite having strong research groups in other fields like topology.) Why are real analysis and algebra both necessary for everybody? Does an algebraic geometer have to be so familar with abstract measure theory? Does a topologist have to be so skilled in using the "Big Three" theorems of Banach spaces? Does an applied mathematician have to know Galois theory so well? Moreover, the real research is quite different from exams. The statements of problems are usually not well formulated, there is no specific time limits, the techniques can be convoluted, etc.
Taking courses are not the only way of learning things in a PhD program. PhD students can learn a subject on their own or through student reading seminars. I am not denying the necessity of taking classes for certain students (especially those who come with undergraduate degrees)---that is why I added the qualification "everyone".
This seems more of a rant than a question - perhaps you could focus it down? One counter-argument would be to ask how many incoming graduate students really know their area of interest if they have not been broadly exposed to the field?
@JonCuster Sure, just removed most part of it
@JonCuster My focus is the last sentence.
"studies have shown that the best training for any activity is that activity"... Sometimes general studies do not apply to mathematics... And by sometimes, I mean most of the times...Also, while students think about this as taking unnecessary courses, when you become researcher you'll be happy that you did.. And this is not just for background information, often an idea from one area can be succesfully used in another...
To answer your last question, in North America many students get the first glimpse at true research in mathematics during their PhD. Also, they often discover that the area they thought will be interesting may not be the best fit for them...
@NickS I am not asking why a graduate student have to learn things from different fields...I am just asking why math departments in U.S. have such rigid course requirement. A PhD student doesn't have to take classes to learn things.(from the parts I removed...)
@NickS I agree that "in North America many students get the first glimpse at true research in mathematics during their PhD". But at the same time, there are also many students who have already had lots of glimpses of true research before they enter PhD programs.
(1) an incoming PhD student is not yet a PhD student ready for quality individual learning. (2) Glimpses of research areas are not a good foundation for future work or for picking a focus area.
@JonCuster In respond to (1), I feel like I have to add the things I deleted back. My point is that incoming PhD students who have already had their interest don't have the freedom of taking courses of their interest. Does an algebra geometer have to be so familiar with abstract measure theory? Does a topologist have to be so skilled in using "Big Three" theorems of Banach spaces? Does an applied mathematician have to know Galois theory so well?
@JonCuster For (2), that was just a response to NickS's comments. But Again, I am not questioning the necessity of learning different things. I am questioning the restrictions on course choosing for the incoming PhD students.
Yes, I believe there are some things every mathematician should have seen no matter the field. And IMO measure theory is one of them. The second, and bigger issue IMO is that an incoming PhD student who already had their interest settled only saw a small glimpse of that field. When the incoming student starts doing research in that field it suddenly looks different, and you'd be surprise how many want to change field at that moment. Also, I know many students who were settled on a field until they took some courses in a different field and found it fascinating...
At the end of the day, by seeing a variety of courses a student can make an informed decision, and most of the time that is better than just picking and sticking blindly with the first choice you made, a choice made even before truly knowing what research in that field is.
@NickS Yes, students need to a variety of courses, but some incoming PhD students have already seen a variety of courses in their undergraduate/masters program. Why do such students have to repeat?
@NickS I agree that measure theory is one of those things every mathematician should have seen no matter the field, but I don't believe everyone has to be strong enough in measure theory to pass a challenging exam in it. I am more inclined to believe everyone has to be strong enough to pass a test in cohomology... That is why I only question the "requirement".
One should keep in mind that in Europe, most PhD students already have a master's in mathematics. In my MSc+BSc I had courses on all the topics that you mention. You might be able to skip one or two of them, but certainly not much more. And I think that I followed a fairly typical program for European standards. So I don't think the situation in the US and Europe is so different in the end.
@PieterNaaijkens In U.S., many incoming PhD students also have a master's in mathematics. The situation is different when it comes to those in U.S. who have to repeat things that are unnecessary for them...
"Repeat" is a rather incorrect word here. The truth is that graduate programs in the US are of hugely varying standard, and a student who earned an A in the Commutative Algebra course I occasionally teach in the graduate program here almost certainly does not know Commutative Algebra well enough by the standards of U. Wisconsin, never mind MIT.
@AlexanderWoo Yes he may be not and when he gets accepted into PhD programs in U. Wisconsin or MIT, it would be better for him to take comm. algebra again if he is interest in algebraic geometry but he shouldn't have to if he is interested in applied math. But what if a student in your school is already strong enough in comm, algebra to meet the standard of, say Oregon State (no offend to anyone...), does s/he have to take comm algebra again when he go to the PhD program there?
@NoOne: Your PhD is not just your dissertation, and it is granted by the university and the department based on your knowledge of mathematics as well as your research. (For one thing, a PhD should certify that you are qualified to teach every undergraduate course with a reasonable amount of time for preparation.) It is entirely reasonable for the Wisconsin faculty to decide that every one of their PhD graduates should know algebra up to their standards, no matter what their research area is.
@AlexanderWoo Finally someone tries to address the core of the issue---taking classes and passing exams are not just means to help one do good research and get a math PhD, but also the part of goals of a math PhD. Still, i don't see to the development of graduate students, why it is reasonable for the Wisconsin faculty to decide that every one of their PhD graduates should know algebra up to their standards
@NoOne - because it is reasonable for Wisconsin faculty to agree that the standards at my university are inadequate - (in other words, to implicitly believe as a group that my university should not be granting the degrees that it does)
@NoOne: "Does an applied mathematician have to know Galois theory so well?" The theory of error-correcting codes makes use of Galois theory (e.g. BCH codes), so even some electrical engineers need to know Galois theory. This is precisely the idea behind breadth requirements - that certain fundamental ideas (Galois theory contains some fundamental idea) are sometimes applicable far from the contexts in which they arose.
So far as I've seen, in the U.S., the "required" aspects of most graduate programs are really very minimalistic and elementary. So it misrepresents the situation to refer to them as "rigid", since they're so minimal. And it misrepresents the situation as well to refer to those minimal bits as somehow clearly un-necessary for ... "non-specialists"?
I'd claim that these basic requirements are just to inculcate awareness of the various basics. Again, minimalist.
Further, some places have choices or other requirements. E.g., many require some complex analysis. We in MN do, as well as some algebraic topology and differential geometry... although students who want to style themselves as "applied" can manage to avoid quite a bit of this, by doing some "math modelling" and "numerical analysis" coursework.
True, in principle people can mostly learn whatever they want outside of formal courses, and I myself prefer that, because the artificial schedule of MWF classes, etc., does not fit my personal rhythms. But for some people, manifestly, this is easier than self-study. Also, I've been told by many grad students that it's easier to avoid self-deception/delusion in a more formal classroom setting. Ok.
And, of course, some people arrive in grad school being vastly over-confident of their own scholarship, as well as the significance of their "prior research experience". To make decisions based on very-incomplete information would be unfortunate.
And, of course, classes and exams are a very artificial, caricatured version of mathematics... which I think is best appreciated as not being really a "school subject" at all. Nevertheless, it is not easy to construct viable alternatives. Here in MN, anyone who really has already picked up a bit of competence in the basic subjects can "test out", by exam, and not have to take those courses. Many do. We do not try to test "mastery", but only "(at least) minimal competence".
Yes, having been involved in grad studies throughout my 35+ years here, I have often seen students complain about the alleged burdens of our "requirements". Mostly, that convinces me that they're sufficiently unaware so that they appreciate neither the minimality of our requirements, nor the universal utility of the ideas. :) But I understand that "requirements" are often viewed as "obstacles to getting on with research". I do claim that this represents a substantive misunderstanding of what's going on...
EDIT: as for a further question implied by, or suggested by, comments... although of course inertia plays some role, faculty in every grad program "require" things of grad students (regardless of eventual "specialty") after substantial consideration. Not whimsically. Indeed, exercise of such judgement is very important. The possible fact that entering grad students (arguably in possession of very little information about what they'll need later, etc.) may disagree or resent "requirements" will not deter faculty from requiring what they consider wise, based on decades of experience.
A related question, that of requiring reading competence in French and/or German, etc., has a substantially different answer. E.g., while I do still encourage my own students to learn at least French (to read Sem. Bourb. at least), and maybe German (Hecke, Siegel, ...), our program as a whole is ever-reducing these requirements, since, indeed, a greater and greater fraction of contemporary mathematics is written in English. Not all!!! I have always regretted that I didn't learn enough Russian to be able to read mathematics in it... Sure, one can "get by" being substantially illiterate, but it is quite often useful to be less illiterate! :) This applies also to awareness of the rest of mathematics, outside one's tiny bailiwick ... however large it may seem in a myopic view! :)
Although included in your answer, perhaps it's worth being more explicit. At many (probably a strong "most") non-top U.S. universities, MANY more students are accepted into the program than will finish, and the Ph.D. exams are used to weed out students from the Ph.D. program for the/a Masters program. From this 9 June 2016 answer of mine: When I passed the qualifying exams, there were 15 people taking the exams and only 5 passed, (continued)
and this does not include several other people who decided to bail and not take the exams after some experience in graduate level courses (and the realization they would likely not pass the exams). Of those 10 who did not pass the exams (given in August), I think 2 (out of 4 or 5 who decided to make a second attempt) passed during a follow-up exam the following January, so a total of about 7 out of 15 students for "one year" wound up being admitted to candidacy.
Do you think that reducing language requirements is a good thing or is it "lowering standards"?
@Mehta, I think reducing language requirements is probably a correct re-prioritization of "requirements". Some things are more important than others.
Speaking too broadly, the US and Europe have different models for PhD programs in mathematics. This reflects partly that they have different models for undergraduate programs in mathematics, and so students entering PhD programs do so with different backgrounds. It also reflects partly a difference in philosophy. (Speaking of "Europe" as a unified whole is obviously ridiculous, but for this discussion it is probably not as ridiculous as it would be in some contexts, provided one's notion of Europe does not include Britain where the educational system possibly has more elements in common with the US.)
In Europe an undergraduate studying mathematics typically takes only courses in mathematics, perhaps with some complementary courses in physics, computer science or statistics (closely related fields). In the US an undergraduate studying mathematics might take well less than half her courses in mathematics (My case is a bit extreme, but it makes the point - I got an undergraduate math degree from a US university taking 14 of 38 courses in mathematics, and 2 or 3 more in related fields, depending what one considers related; this is simply incomprehensible in most European systems). One consequence of this is that when a student finishes a European undergraduate program in math that student has typically seen a lot more math than a student who finishes a US undergraduate program in math (the situation is really far more complicated - the far greater flexibility of US undergraduate programs means that it is possible for a student to take a great deal of math, even at the graduate level, as an undergraduate, and so the distributions of courses realized are very different for US and European students - (again speaking too broady) in any given European system every student takes essentially the same classes, whereas in the US two students with math degrees can have taken radically different sets of classes). The content that the typical US student hasn't seen as an undergraduate is frontloaded onto the doctoral program in the form of the classical year long first year doctoral sequences in analysis, algebra, and something else - note that many US doctoral programs allow an incoming student with more preparation to take qualifying exams early and skip some or all of the required courses - such contingent mechanisms handle the better prepared entering students coming from Europe or Asia or from a US program that allowed the student to advance rapidly. In practice the administrative flexibility of US doctoral programs means that "requirements" are adjusted or waved as is necessary to accomodate individual circumstances (I know a successful researcher who never passed one of his qualifying exams). In Europe, "requirements" usually really are requirements in the absolutist sense of the word, and the only way to endow a doctoral program with a similar flexibility is to minimize the formal requirements.
The preceding should all be qualified by the observation that roughly half the PhDs in the mathematical sciences awarded in the US are awarded to students who hail from outside the US, probably a greater percentage at research oriented institutions. So in fact the typical student entering a US graduate program in math comes from Asia or Europe, and was prepared in a non-US system. Although this is less true in Europe, it is increasingly true in Europe as well. Nonetheless, the institutional expectations implicit in how graduate programs are structured are typically based more on the corresponding expectations implicit in how local undergraduate programs are structured than they are on the nature and origin of the students entering such programs (the latter takes longer to assimilate administratively). (Institutional expectations need not be set by mathematicians, nor even by academics; often they are imposed politically or administratively by people with little understanding of what they entail except in a formal, procedural sense.)
The other reason is philosophical. This is a personal impression, probably quite debatable, but my impression is that European doctoral programs tend to be more focused, the idea being that students immediately start research, and develop deeply in one particular area, while US doctoral programs tend to be less rushed, and have as an explicit goal that the student acquire a certain breadth, the idea being that really novel ideas often come at the interfaces between well established research areas, or by applying ideas from one context in another. For example, in Europe a student typically chooses an advisor before entering a program (i.e. enters to work with a specific person), whereas in the US the choice is typically made in the first year or two of the doctoral program. The US structure allows the student to explore her interests for a while before focusing; the European model obligates focus before the interests are developed. In Europe a student is formally expected to finish a doctorate in 3 or 4 years. In the US, 5 years is normal and 6 is fine. (If we are talking about star students at "top" places all the expectations change, but I am focusing on the "typical" students who will mostly become ordinary mediocre researchers.)
To some extent the differences in the structure of doctoral programs also reflect differences in the expectations for the postdoctoral phase. A "postdoc" in mathematics in the US means a temporary teaching position during which the person is expected to develop an autonomous research program. A recent graduate needs to be prepared for that level of autonomy. In Europe a "postdoc" in mathematics typically means a position directly connected to a particular research group, in which the student is expected to participate, sometimes in a still directed manner. A student entering such a position needs less autonomy a priori than a student entering a US style postdoctoral position, but may need considerable area specific knowledge to function usefully in an established research group.
Surely some of the characterizations in the preceding are wrong in the details, or when compared with any specific context (particularly vis-a-vis Europe), but what I think is valid is the claim that the structure of doctoral programs reflects ideas about the preparation of students entering such programs and the needs of students exiting such programs, and that such expectations are different in the US and Europe, even if it is hard to articulate exactly how without oversimplifying (the discussion includes dozens of national systems ...) Also the intellectual traditions in the US and Europe are different, and this effects the structure of doctoral programs. Again, a properly nuanced examination of what the differences are would require a book, but the general feature that seems most salient is the relative importance of breadth versus depth. Maybe also the differences reflect different ideas about the importance of developing exceptional talent and training/forming ordinary talent. To me the US seems more oriented towards the former, Europe more oriented towards the latter (this does not claim that one is more succesful than the other in either regard; intention does not imply results).
11 of 32 in mathematics, plus 3 in CS for me. I previously taught a place where students were not allowed to count more than 13 (of 36) from any single subject towards graduation.
In the US tradition, a PhD does not simply indicate research ability; it also indicates a basic ability to teach all undergraduate courses (except perhaps upper-level electives) in the field. There are many colleges in the US with only 2 or 3 math professors (in fact collectively these places hire more math PhDs into permanent positions than research universities), and a small department relies on all its members being able to teach all its courses. (If the algebraist in the department has a heart attack, the applied mathematician will have to cover the undergraduate algebra course.)
In particular, this is why algebra and analysis are almost always part of the requirements; these courses are central to the undergraduate curriculum almost everywhere.
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31768 | What to do when other professors place unfair demands on my students?
A recent question asked how students should deal with professors who "think their class is extra special". Putting aside the question of how good students are at judging what an appropriate workload is: how should other professors handle this?
For instance, I've had students whose previous class routinely ran late, causing them to be late for mine. I once taught a class where several students had a professor immediately before me who decided, in clear violation of university policy, that their midterm exam would take place during a double length class period, which meant that would miss my entire class (which was in fact also my midterm). (This is slightly less crazy than it sounds, because it was a summer course.)
Let's stick to the case where the other professor is actually violating university policy. Students are usually very reluctant to try to enforce such policies on their professors, and I don't think I could in good faith encourage them to: even when there are written policies about these things, it's often unclear how a student would go about enforcing them, it's not clear that the relevant chair, dean, or provost actually would enforce them, and there's real potential for negative repercussions to the student.
I could be inflexible, but this seems unfair to the students, who are then stuck between two inflexible authority figures. Even if I'm right and the other is wrong, students shouldn't bear the brunt of that.
Finally, I could seek to enforce the policy on the other professor, but as mentioned, it's not clear how one does that, especially if the other professor is in a different department. (And since it's often relatively senior professors doing this sort of thing, at that point I worry about negative repercussions.)
"Students are usually very reluctant to try to enforce such policies on their professors": Of course: it's not student's business to enforce policies. At most, they can complain, but enforcement of policies is a faculty or department's duty.
Just curious, do you administer the same number of midterms as the other professor during the semester? Or do you administer more?
Dear Henry! This is an interesting problem. Did you talk to that professor about it (in person)? This is the first thing one should do before involving any power. Just man to man talk. Much better for personal relationships at any workplace. Might be the easiest and humanly thing as well, but sadly, people often forget about this possibility!
Get a copy of the institution's rules and insist to have them enforced.
I know of one university when the time table software is linked to the lighting system, so the lights (and projector etc) are turned off in the room just after the lecture is due to finish. (The door locks are also integrated so an unbooked room cannot be used.)
@BenCrowell As a student, I think I would say a last ten minutes is more important than a first ten minutes. There's an argument for not wanting to miss intro/context, but I would reason that "well, it's 5 minutes before he actually starts, and the first 5 minutes will be much less complex than the last 5 of this". It would be very frustrating to experience this routinely though, I've personally only had to make the decision on odd occasions.
@BenCrowell I had this situation as a student. Often, the overrun was essential information for the homework, so simply leaving was not a realistic option.
Students normally look at the clock on the wall and get very fidgety in the 1-2 minutes after time, put away things, close bags, get ready to move. Get clocks on walls, make students autonomous.
Finally, I could seek to enforce the policy on the other professor, but as mentioned, it's not clear how one does that, especially if the other professor is in a different department. (And since it's often relatively senior professors doing this sort of thing, at that point I worry about negative repercussions.)
I see no alternative to "enforcing the policy on the other professor". Seniority does not confer the right to violate university policy. In my opinion you should not let hypothetical concerns about your career or your tenure case stop you from standing up for your students in a situation in which policy is clearly on your side: assistant professors are university faculty, not captives who hope to be rewarded in the future for their docile behavior.
The way to bring it up is to communicate with the other professor as soon as possible. I would recommend speaking in person or over the phone, as email renders trivial a large variety of passive-aggressive behavior: e.g., they might not respond at all, leaving you to wonder how long to wait. If you talk to someone face-to-face they have to either be reasonable or display their unreasonableness directly to you. How do you look another faculty member in the face and say "I'm sorry that students will be missing your midterm, but it is critical that my midterm last double its scheduled length"? You should come to the meeting knowing the relevant policy cold. You should bring printed copies of the policy, but only take them out if things are not going your way.
You should continue talking to this person until you have conveyed that their proposal is against the policy, is specifically detrimental to your course, and that students are being caught in the middle. If they agree to that or at least acknowledge receipt of the information and still are intransigent, then you should end the conversation, calmly, by saying that you will have to take the situation up with the administration.
I would then bring the matter to your department head and see what is suggested. If the faculty member is in a different department then it may be in order for the two department heads to have a discussion. If the department head does not take ownership of the issue you should ask whether he [I happen to know that the head of the OP's department is a "he"] wants you to take up the issue with the higher administration. If not, then as an assistant professor this may be the place to drop it, but again you should communicate clearly that policy is being violated and students are suffering. Or you could take it up with the higher administration: I might have done that as an assistant professor. (As a tenured associate professor I would probably do it now, and would not worry about it jeopardizing my future promotion or dealings in the department. On the other hand, the egregious behavior you described would probably not even be attempted at my large public university.) Tenure and promotion is not a docility contest, and "He reported a rule violation" is not a point against someone's case. I think honestly the issue is mostly one of your own peace of mind, so act accordingly.
You certainly have my sympathies: it sounds like the other professor is being both selfish and unreasonable. It's hard to deal with unreasonable people -- you just can't reason with them! -- and if a situation arises in which it is primarily a battle of wills, then the unreasonable person tends to take the outside track. The fact that you care about the students and the other guy apparently really does not could indeed make you blink first. You may for instance end up having to give a makeup exam to some of the students. If so you should clearly document every time you do that and have the individual students vouch for you as well.
+1 for talking to the other professor first. Sometimes the other professor means well and just doesn't know that it doesn't work out for the students. For example, many profs at my university did a 15min break in the middle of a 1 1/2h lecture to give the students time to get a coffee and some fresh air. However, when the physics department moved 4km away from the math department, the 15min less between the lectures turned out to be a real problem for the students - but the profs didn't know that, because they didn't have to get to the next lecture 4km away.
"... captives who hope to be rewarded in the future for their docile behavior" pretty much applies ubiquitously at every level of academia, sadly.
@Paul: I think your assessment is too bleak. The pressure to be docile is nearly ubiquitous in academia (and in many other careers...), but we get to decide how to respond to that. In the current academic climate, departments are seeking to tenure the overwhelming majority of tenure-track faculty (and tenure rates are indeed very high: I would guess over 90%). An acquired reputation of being truly difficult to work with can be problematic, but not always agreeing with other faculty is really not, in all of my experience.
Where I did my undergrad, students' complaints were common, and now the dean has a zero tolerance policy towards extending compulsory lessons or exams beyond the allocated time. It takes them only one student complain to get involved.
The most immediate action they can take is just not allow the booking of the room, which is quite effective in itself; and also talking to the professor in question. In case of repeated transgressions, they can attempt other actions, like giving that subject to another department in the following years.
So, the best way you can solve this is to get the people in power involved, and show that the students don't need to go through many hoops to get their rights enforced.
If you want to ensure enforcement you need the students, because they are the only ones who will surely know when there is a collision. Make sure they know there are channels open for them, anonymous, and swift.
As a student, I have e-mailed a professor to point out the difficulty caused by his overrun habit. I was much older than most of the class, which had two consequences:
I needed the entire scheduled 10 minutes to get to my next class.
I had enough experience to know that sending the e-mail would not affect my grade etc.
Even so, I would have welcomed support from the professor teaching the second class.
Just curious: did you try to enlist the help of the other professor?
@aeismail Not explicitly. If I remember correctly, I did copy him on my e-mail to the overrunning professor, so he would know why I was arriving late for his lectures.
Not sure whether student councils are really so unimportant at other institutions, but once again I would advice you to address a student representative from that class (or otherwise from that year). Point out the specific rules they are violating and they should know who to address and how to get the rules enforced, after all, that's a huge part of what the student council does (assuming it's in the students best interest, which this does sound like, keep in mind to always highlight the advantages for the students if the policy is enforced). The advantage is that you are not 'attacking' a colleague and the student council will never mention your name. On top of that - if played well - it will even put you on good terms with the student council (after all, by pointing out the specific policies that were violated you saved them work), which might be useful if you ever make an unintentional mistake somewhere.
In all of my experience with American universities, student councils / student associations have essentially no role to play in issues like this. Student associations can provide a voice for students to advocate for certain changes. In this case the rules are already as desired; the problem is that they are not being followed. It is not the student council's role to try to get individual faculty members to follow university rules.
Agreed with Pete. At least in the case of most American universities, this would be a matter for a department chair or dean (or provost) to resolve. The student councils have no authority over faculty members. The best the student council could do would be to go to the same people you could just go to directly.
@reirab: Absolutely true, except if you go yourself you will be conceived as attaching a colleague, if the student council takes this up it will be seen as students defending themselves.
Henry,
IMO you best bet is to ask the other professor to help you out with an issue. Explain that students are complaining that the "other professor" runs over.
The professor will then either engage with you in resolving the problem or will try not to engage. Either way summarize the discussion back to the professor in an email and try to use the mutually agreeable solution. You may have to try this a few times but if within one or two meetings you don't resolve the problem you can then escalate it to "upper management" with documentation of what has been tried.
If none of this works you could in clear conscious ask at the beginning of a course if your students have "that other" professor before you ad suggest that they not keep both.
Once you show the way other brave souls may follow suit and the peer pressure could evoke a behavior change where your voice could not.
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197385 | On the merit of text-to-speech system during manuscript writing
Background - I am an educative staff in an university. In my country, there is not a tenure system, but I can work here until the specified retired age. I am suffering from every kind of procrastination.
Situation - My lab students routinely write theses every year but in a local language other than English. I always feel extensive rewrite in addition to the language translation is necessary to submit it as a journal paper, which tempts me to the above-mentioned procrastination.
Let me ask a question to an academician who knows life-hacks well. I am thinking that a writing is a psychological battle with myself. Someone recommends me a text-to-speech (TTS) system. Would you also recommend I use TTS software? How easy is it to build such a TTS environment? Do you think such an environment encourages me to finalize those drafts?
I've edited the question on the basis that the original author liked my answer (below), so I think that interpreted correctly this is a valid question. I deleted the text that seemed to indicate they were just "shopping" for a solution, and boosted the general academic question.
I often recommend my project students use text to speech systems when writing their reports. The part of your brain that is good at language is the speaking/listening part, not the reading/writing part. Students often write phrases that sound obviously wrong if you just read them out aloud, and that often makes it easier to see why it is wrong. TTS is an easy way to engage the speaking/listening part of your brain to check the output of the reading/writing part. The problem with reading it out loud to yourself is that again you are using the reading/writing part of your brain.
thanks for nice comment.
Apple devices have it built in, which I always used to use, but I have switched to using Speechify, which is more suited to this type of work.
It's helpful both in reading articles that you want to really understand deeply, and helps with editing. It is helpful to hear your work in another voice in order to be both self critical and ensure the writing flows well. But, at least in English, something that is perfectly grammatically correct in written form could sound odd when heard out-loud, so it's a good idea to not rely too heavily on TTS.
Can Speechify read Math equations ?
@Nobody I just checked and yes it does manage those alright.
I don't follow the logic of your question. It seems like you need machine translation more than text to speech. Assuming your dissertation students are a good source of material for publications you want your name on. I don't expect to publish very many of my own students' dissertations; I encourage the best to publish themselves, and try to get the ones who aspire to write publishable work to write not only in English but in Latex. Then you can focus on your own work, and just edit their articles if and when they get to that phase.
On the other hand, I have used speech to text to write sometimes, particularly when I had a typing injury. That can help.
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8380 | Importance of GPA and GRE scores for grad school admissions
I was reading the following article by Mathew Might. HOWTO: Get into grad school for science, engineering, math and computer science
I saw the following the paragraph
What doesn't matter
GPA? I don't care if it's 2.0 or 4.0. I won't even look at it. The school you went to? I'll judge you the same whether you went to Nowhere State U or a top-ten school. Transcripts? Never seen one. GREs? Irrelevant. Where you work/worked? Unless it's a research lab, it's not important. I don't think these items have much predictive capacity as to whether or not someone can complete a Ph.D.
Is Mathew Might telling the truth?
For me it's very hard believe that GPA, GRE scores and undergraduate school don't matter. I used to think that they play an extremely important role in grad school admission.
Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2897/will-a-good-gre-computer-science-subject-test-score-overcome-a-weak-academic-r
Is Mathew Might telling the truth? — That's an awfully provocative way to ask. Matt is describing his own beliefs and behavior; he's not claiming that nobody cares about GPAs or GREs.
@JeffE while agreeing with you, probably the question has been badly worded, and the OP means do most of professors think this way?
I am not doing my PhD in CS or maths but based on my experience, I believe it's a yes and a no, more specifically:
I don't think these items have much predictive capacity as to whether or not someone can complete a Ph.D.
... is an accurate assessment of the situation. Being a grad student is sort of waking up in a different world, what you have done previously isn't really indicative of what you are capable of doing during your PhD. Most PIs are aware of that...
GPA? I don't care if it's 2.0 or 4.0. I won't even look at it. The school you went to? I'll judge you the same whether you went to Nowhere State U or a top-ten school. Transcripts? Never seen one. GREs? Irrelevant.
Sadly, I don't think this is all that common. How a professor chooses a student varies a lot, and I don't think your GPA etc will be irrelevant to some profs. Especially not if you are in a number-driven, cold-heart-competitive place...
What's more common however is that your grades won't be the only criteria. They will most likely not be a deal-breaker. You will most likely get a chance to explain why you did good on some courses and worse on others. Primarily you will get a chance to explain what you like to do with your career.
It is highly dependent on the program. Two programs that I applied to were polar opposites and demonstrate the variety in a very succinct way, I think.
School 1:
GPA south of 3.5? don't bother applying.
GRE quant scores south of 700(1)? don't bother applying.
Never published or fewer than 5 years professional experience? Seriously, why are you wasting our time.
School 2:
GPA north of 3.3 are preferred, GPA north of 3.5 will get preference, but we can work with you.
GRE scores should be submitted if you have them and they are still valid.
It is strongly recommended that you have relevant academic or industry experience
The only real difference between the program admissions is that school 1 accepted baccalaureates on a straight path to PhD and school 2 requires a recent masters degree in one of a few rather specific fields.
This was my experience but your mileage may vary. As I say, it's very dependent on the program.
(1) I don't claim to understand the new-fangled system, sorry.
were they both american schools?
Yes. Both are schools in the Washington DC area and both programs are comp sci/info sec. One is a PhD program and the other a DSc. Which is why, I suspect, that the programs have such markedly different approach. If you're interested in more detail we can follow up off line.
I do not understand this : "GPA north of 3.3 are preferred, GPA north of 3.5 will get preference, but we can work with you."
Or should it be : "GPA north of 3.3 are preferred, GPA south of 3.5 will get preference, but we can work with you."
avi: I was speaking casually. It would have been better to say "The college prefers a GPA greater than 3.3, and GPAs better than 3.5 will get preference, however; there is not a strict minimum GPA." Does that help?
The more popular the school and program, the more likely it will use test scores and transcript grades as "screening tools" to weed out uncompetitive applications. However, there are probably reasonable thresholds that exist on both measures; exceed those, and your exact GPA and GRE scores probably won't be taken into much consideration.
Ultimately, though, GPA should play a much stronger role in GRE, if only in the sense that somebody who does outstandingly in the core classes but struggles in "general education" classes that don't pertain to the field will probably have an easier time than somebody who has a better overall GPA, but weaker grades in the major. GRE scores are only correlated with performance in coursework; I don't think it has much to do with actual aptitude for research (although it may have some correlation).
I absolutely agree with this. In my example above the first school is extremely competitive and the second is a teeny-tiny-local college. Good point about competition being a factor here.
GRE scores are only correlated with performance in coursework — ...if even that.
This depends greatly on the field. I have been in graduate admissions committees in two different fields.
Field A: the subject GRE in this field is a joke. The committee doesn't look at it, and doesn't look much at the regular GRE's. It's all recommendation letters and grades in the relevant courses.
Field B: the subject GRE in this field is very difficult. The committee is very reluctant to take anybody who scored less than the 90th percentile on the GRE. (Of course, you have to have good grades and recommendation letters as well.)
I'm mainly interested in mathematics.
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99701 | How will the success of my previous projects affect future funding?
I have two funded projects. One works great but the other is terrible (probably wrong postdocs and PhD students). When I send future proposals, my history is evaluated against the overall research output, right? There is no factor indicating one of my projects has failed, right?
I have two options:
Let the weak project fail and focus on the successful one to improve my overall research output. Then, I have a strong record of publications for the future proposals.
Use some funds from my successful project in the problematic one (e.g., hiring more people) to save it at the cost of sacrificing the successful one.
By the way, I am an assistant professor of chemistry (close to promotion) and the projects have been funded by European schemes, if it matters.
Are you sure you're allowed to transfer funds from one project to another? The research grants I've had all required that the funds be spent for the purposes described in the proposal. If I wanted to do anything else with the money, I'd have to get permission from the granting agency. Whether they would give permission is doubtful, especially if the other project is funded by a different agency.
@AndreasBlass I am quite sure that no funding system allows transfer from one project to another. OP probably meant to hire people for the first project but assign them to the second project.
@Googlebot pretty sure that would be fraud, if done without the agreement of the funding agency.
I cannot imagine circumstances in which choice 2 would be ethical much less legal.
Well, option b might not be ethical, but it is common practice. Many highly respected people in my field told me, "you should have 50% of the work for a project already done, so you can invest the people in writing new grants and preparing new topics - or helping out in other projects". I do not say this is a good practice, but it happens. And if you are having a larger group, financing all people without gaps is nearly impossible without such juggling of ressources. But my answer to the problem would be a third option: Invest more of your personal time in the weak project!
What is the specific question to be answered here? Not clear
I think the much more interesting part of the question is how success/failure in a funded project affects future funding (and it is also the title). The tactics of partitioning funding of two projects should probably be a separate question.
While a common practice, that would be fraud.
Less fraudulent would be to bill everything that 'counts for both' to the stronger project, to conserve money to get the weaker projects done. (Equipment, staff meetings, etc).
For you, depends on how your department weights grants brought in vs. papers published. If they value grant money more, that you've damaged your chances of getting more is not something your should reveal, while papers are something you can play up.
It's hard to give a general answer, obviously different fields and different research areas differ in many important ways.
1) In my experience reviewers looks at overall past productivity vs overall level of support, not whether some specific past project was successful. Having some projects fail is the normal working of science. There are some exceptions, for example high profile projects like centers or inter-institutional collaborative efforts. In those cases there is certainly a strong incentive to declare success on a specific project.
2) In terms of what you should do: I think it is almost always a bad idea to throw good money after bad money (the "sunk cost" fallacy). If anything, I would move support from a failing project to a successful one. Again, there are certainly exceptions. Maybe the failing project still holds a lot of promise, and just a few months of effort by an experienced postdoc can push it over the hump. This is something only you can judge.
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99978 | The position I applied for was advertised as Associate Professor with Tenure, but now they’re saying it’s tenure-track Associate Professor
I am an associate professor, who has received tenure in the US in 2014. After receiving tenure, I moved to Europe to help my family with some health issues, and found an associate professor position in a country where tenure is 'by law' meaning the position cannot be revoked or taken away. I am now looking to return to North America, and have begun to apply for associate professor job openings.
I have applied for a position as tenured associate professor. I interviewed and was told I was selected by the department as their top candidate. However, the dean at the new institution just emailed me that the new position will be associate professor "tenure-track," meaning I would need to apply for tenure within 4 years.
Clearly, what I had applied for is not what I am being offered. In my view, there is a flaw in their advertising. The position description clearly stated "the University of X invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor or Tenured Associate Professor in...."
While I understand that each university has its own interest in mind, this seems like a very bad start of a relationship. If I accepted this demotion, I would probably do so with some resentment. The University in question is academically equal to the one I first received tenure from.
I am seeking advice on how to respond to this proposition and would be very grateful to hear people's opinions.
It would help if you could provide details on the discipline (biomedical, engineering, ...). In any case, your approach depends on how much you are willing to risk being denied the job altogether.
The field is architecture. My main issue is that this option was never even discussed during the interview, when all the conversations seemed to imply that I was applying to a position with tenure (as advertised in their posting). if this is a reflection of how the institution works, I would not have much confidence that the tenure process would be straightforward and fair.
Did you follow up with the dean about this?
@Mad Jack: How to follow up with the dean is the question as I understood it.
Thank you for your comments. I have not yet replied to the dean's email, which is only a day old. I wanted to first give it some thought. And I am more and more inclined to let them know that I would only move if the position is tenured.
Do you have a sense for whether this email was written just for you, or whether you were sent a canned "new hire" email--and maybe got the wrong version instead?
@Matt Right, there is the chance that you email the Dean and he/she says "whoops wrong email!"
Do you actually have an offer letter in hand, or is the dean telling you in advance what the terms would be if they made you an offer?
One possibility is that they considered you for immediate tenure, but didn't feel confident enough in your qualifications to grant it, so they're offering you a short clock as a compromise.
Keep in mind that immediate tenure is kind of a big deal - they're committing to you for life, on the basis of having met you for a few hours. From that point of view, you could consider that you've been considered and rejected for the job you really wanted, but are being offered a different one: you can take it, leave it, or try to negotiate for something better. But it wouldn't be a bait and switch.
As to "within 4 years", would you be allowed to apply for tenure sooner - perhaps after just one year? You can have a discussion with the chair and dean as to what kind of time frame they think would be appropriate, and what you would need to do to be ready.
this is not a formal offer and it is specified at the bottom of the email. I understand your points. There is a risk associated with them committing to me. Just as there is a risk in being tenured at a university and leaving it for a temporary position. You are right that this is a different position than the one I am applying to. I just would have appreciated knowing before I made the oversea trip, and perhaps hearing from them during the interview, when the question of tenure was discussed as one of the things that attracted me to the job.
By my reading, I might guess that after interviewing you they considered whether to make an offer with immediate tenure, and they decided against it. (You'd hardly expect them to make that decision before interviewing you, right?)
It might be worth considering that it's not necessarily clear who "they" are. It's possible the department wanted to make an offer with tenure, and the dean is overriding that recommendation. If that's the case, the department chair or chair of the search committee could be an ally in further negotiations.
very good point. thank you for your thoughtful advice. The last scenario is what I also imagined could have happened. If that is the case, it will become clear once I reply as Pete Clark suggests, that I kindly but firmly reaffirm my interest in their tenured position as it was advertised.
I'm a bit confused. You said the ad described the position as "for a tenure-track Assistant Professor or Tenured Associate Professor". Was it ever clearly stated which you were being considered for?
@J.Denworth wording referring to what was advertised is not polite and not likely to be helpful. A job ad is not a contract and neither they nor you are bound by it. Furthermore, the discrepancy is not helpful. If they offered you a "tenure-track Assistant Professor" you wouldn't accept it.
During the interview this was discussed and I made it unequivocal that I was applying for the tenured position. I have no intention to litigate this issue. I simply wanted to survey what other experienced academic would do when confronted with this decision. I inserted the few lines of text from the ad to provide more detailed information, but with no intention to accuse anyone
Based on what you've said,
In my view, there is a flaw in their advertising. The position description clearly stated "the University of X invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor or Tenured Associate Professor in...."
Well...yes, you're exactly right. It sounds like the department and the dean were not on the same page when the position announcement was posted.
While I understand that each university has its own interest in mind, this seems like a very bad start of a relationship. If I accepted this demotion, I would probably do so with some resentment. The University in question is academically equal to the one I first received tenure from.
Again, I agree completely. You've had two different tenured positions, including one at a US institution of (you say, and I'm going with it) comparable academic quality to the one you're applying for. You applied to this position and interviewed for it -- presumably taking some trouble doing so, since you now live in Europe and have family there -- based on the information you received in writing that it would come with tenure. Only at the end of the process have you been informed otherwise. Well...yes, that's a seriously alarming bait and switch.
In my opinion there is really only one thing to do. You should respond by calling attention to precisely the facts you mentioned to us, especially that (i) the position was advertised as with tenure and that's why you applied for it and (ii) your last two academic jobs have had tenure, including at US institution X (you don't need to explicitly say that it's of comparable academic quality; I would leave them to claim otherwise if they want to), that you are very excited and interested in the job, but only under the original terms: you are not contemplating making an international move from a permanent academic job to a possibly temporary one.
In other words, I think the issue is serious enough to prevent you from taking the academic job...again, for exactly the reasons you say. The type of employer who will not be held to what they told you before is exactly the type of employer to cause you N years of deep worry that they might not give you tenure, and nothing in your question suggests that you should subject yourself to that.
I really hope that they respond well to your holding your ground. Good luck!
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
Assuming starting with tenure is a must for you, you should let the advertised nature of the position go by, as it's not really relevant. You just state that at your career level, you can't entertain an offer that doesn't come with tenure, and you hope that the offer can be modified accordingly. This is absolutely your situation, there's no mincing of words, and there's no way a silly argument about the semantics of their ad can start up.
Whether you thought because of their ad that the position came with tenure is also fairly irrelevant. Either they see fit to ask their leadership about whether they can bring you in as tenured, or not.
Update: In other words, treat the current situation like any other job offer where you're negotiating for an acceptable situation. Thank the Dean for his or her offer, and say how happy you are about their interest in you. Then say that you can't accept a non-tenured position. Perhaps in this case, you might even add a terse apology that you didn't make that crystal clear earlier in the interview process (as this really comes down to a communications issue, and it takes two parties to have a miscommunication).
I appreciate your post. And as I explained to another the text from the ad was added simply to give a clearer picture. "False in advertising" was too strong a language to use. I got carried away. You are right, this is no different than any other job search.
I'd +1 this answer if you dropped the "asssuming" part. OP should not accept the bait-and-switch, IMHO, even if he'd been willing to accept the inferior offer had it been made to begin with.
@J.Denworth it's a hair different - because of the ad, you know how far they can go. They've tipped their hand.
Oh dear. Well, I agree with Pete L. Clark's take on the situation, but I feel it's important not to mince words and to be extra clear about what's going on: frankly, the only conclusion I can draw from your story is that the people you are dealing with are some combination of: unscrupulous, dishonest, acting in bad faith and/or incompetent.
Let me explain. The university that invited you to interview knew full well that you are tenured and are expecting a tenured position, given your situation as someone who has been tenured for over 3 years and is now on your second(!) tenured position, in an institution comparable to theirs in reputation. It seems inconceivable to me that they would think an untenured position would be remotely attractive for you. Thus, if they invited you to interview for a position advertised using the words "the University of X invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor or Tenured Associate Professor", to my mind that means they are representing that:
they consider you (at least based on how you look "on paper") a qualified candidate for serious consideration for a tenured position, and
they know, and know that you know, and know that you know that they know (etc), that you would be traveling to the US for the interview on the expectation of being considered for a tenured position.
If you accept that this is so, how is this consistent with their subsequent behavior, that is, the communication you received from their dean? As I said, there must be some bad faith, dishonesty or incompetence involved. Possible explanations I can think of are:
The department invited you for an interview but never intended to seriously consider you for a position. For some shady reason, they want to go through the motions of appearing to try to hire you (or appearing to try to hire someone) but not really wanting to finish the job. They are expecting you to say no to their untenured offer.
The department wants to offer you a tenured position, but the dean is against it, maybe because of some internal conflict with the department. So the dean is disingenuously trying to propose to offer you an untenured position, assuming that you'll say no (or perhaps hoping he'll get lucky and you'll say yes).
At the time the department invited you to interview, both they and the dean thought they would be able to offer a tenured position, but because of some change in circumstances (budget cuts or whatnot) they are now unable to do so. Instead of admitting that you made the trip in vain, which would be embarrassing, they are pretending they were thinking of an untenured position all along.
Etc etc.
I should add that at my university, if we were thinking of offering an untenured position to someone who is already a tenured professor, we would make that very very clear to them before they come to interview to avoid a major waste of time and effort for them. It is clear to me (based on my experience having been a department chair for 3 years) that any university with competent people acting in good faith would behave similarly.
To summarize: this whole situation smells like bad news. You can consider accepting the untenured offer if you think that it's something you can live with and are willing to overlook being treated in this shady way, but personally I think that a rational response would be to politely explain to the dean that you are expecting an offer at a level comparable to your current position, and that if he/she is unable to make such an offer, you wish him/her luck in recruiting someone else - just on the off-chance that there's been some innocent mistake and they will be able to offer you a tenured position after all.
I wouldn't bother complaining or expressing outrage in your response to the dean about the rudeness of making you travel to the US under a dishonest pretext; these (most probably) unethical people are not worth trying to reason with - if they can't respond to your entirely reasonable request, just cut your losses and move on. Good luck!
Edit: when you email the dean with your polite reply, it might be a good idea to copy the department chair, again just on the off chance that there's been an innocent mistake and that having people other than the dean aware of what's going on will help correct the situation more quickly. I don't think that scenario is very likely, but it's best not to make assumptions.
I think you missed an optition. They invited the candidate thinking that they would be a good fit for the department and that they could make a competitive offer since they have comparable rank to the candidate's previous employer and have been told that tenure could be offered to the right candidate. After the interview it was decided the best offer that they could make to that candidate was one without tenure. This could have come from the Dean alone or the whole search committee. It does not mean anything was done in bad faith.
@StrongBad I disagree, if they were so unimpressed with a candidate with OP’s situation and history then they would simply reject him/her. See also the comment I wrote under your answer.
It's not bad faith precisely but: "We have the option of hiring a tenured associate professor, we considered all the candidates, interviewed a tenured associate professor and then decided he was the best candidate.... but he's not so good that we want to offer him the tenure he already has right away, although we think we'll give it to him a few years down the line." is a strange way to proceed. If the best you can do is offer a demotion to your top candidate, it's a pretty screwy job search.
@PeteL.Clark are your expressions "strange way to proceed" and "screwy" not just polite, euphemistic ways to say "someone is being dishonest or incompetent"? If not, what other explanations do you have to offer for the "strange" and "screwy" ways these people are behaving?
@Dan: I don't have any other explanation to offer. I also don't know exactly how job searches in all US universities and departments (e.g. architecture) work, so I leave a bit of room because of that.
I agree with @StrongBad. Rejection would have been a clearer way to go. And one that I could understand. This just seems odd. As I concluded in my first post, not a good start for a lifetime relationship. But judging by all of these comments, it seems clear that this way of operating is the exception. Not the rule. Thanks.
My bet would be that the administration as a general rule doesn't want to make tenured offers to people who currently don't have tenure, and either haven't thought through or don't care what that means for people moving internationally. The associate without tenure offer is then a compromise between the department and administration. No individual person is being dishonest, but there are multiple stakeholders and it's resulted in something strange happening.
The job search in the US can be a confusing process. It sounds like the position was being advertised for someone with experience ranging from an assistant professor tenure track level to an associate professor tenured level. For whatever reason, they have made an offer to you at the associate without tenure level. This does not seem to me to indicate a flawed search. It is just what it is. For example, in my field tenured associate professors are expected to bring with them considerable extramural funding. The offer might be a compromise between your seniority/experience and things as an international candidate that you are lacking. You need to talk to the Dean/Search chair to understand this.
Leaving a tenured position for a non=-tenured position is clearly a step down. To some, tenure is not the ultimate goal and increased salary or better quality of life (and possibly even decreased teaching or better start-up) can offset the loss of tenure. The amount you value tenure is something that you need to decide for yourself and then work with the Dean/Search chair to see if a mutually acceptable agreement can be reached.
One thing that I would be concerned about is that at many universities nontenured associate professors are rare. While a non-tenured offer with a one-year probationary period is fairly common, a four-year non-tenure period seems odd. I would want to know how often this occurs and what benefits that provides over an assistant level position and what benefits you will get when you get tenure. It is also absolutely critical that you understand which of your previous accomplishments will count towards your tenure review and how the tenure process works for associate professors.
The job search in the US can be a confusing process. Unless you mean this as a euphemism for "the job search in the US can involve interaction with some dishonest, unethical and/or incompetent people", I am afraid I will have to disagree with you. In the ordinary course of affairs when a job candidate is dealing with honest people, one would never encounter such "confusing" situations. You are being way too charitable with your assumptions about the hiring university's motivations. See my answer for a more detailed analysis.
@DanRomik I think it is much more likely that the Dean is honest and authorized the search at both the assistant and associated level in good faith. The Dean decided that the candidate the department put forward wasn't good enough for tenure. I believe had thereceived been a better candidate, the Dean would have offered tenure. Maybe I am being too charitable.
The Dean decided that the candidate the department put forward wasn't good enough for tenure. — If that's true, the appropriate response from the dean is to reject the department's proposed offer.
a four-year non-tenure period seems odd — I've heard of longer, offered and accepted in good faith.
@JeffE depends who makes the offer. For some schools the department puts forth the candidate and the Dean (or Dean's office) handles the offer. In my wife's department the rank is decided by the chair and search committee, but tenure decisions are out of their hands. The chair goes to the Dean and says we want to offer associate with tenure, if the Dean decides no tenure, then the department has to decide if they make an offer without tenure or do something else.
@StrongBad the dean’s actions are inconsistent with your good faith hypothesis. As JeffE says, if the candidate is so unimpressive to the department or dean, their logical course of action would be to reject them. Offering an untenured position to someone with OP’s employment is disingenuous and indicative of bad faith (or, being as charitable as I can, incompetence). It is as if they said “we don’t like you for the position we flew you out here to interview for, but how about working as a janitor? We think you could be great for that!”
@DanRomik I disagree. They made the "best" offer they could. I think it is worse to go we want to work with you, but we don't think you are going to accept the offer, so we are not going to make the offer. They are offering the same job with the same duties and responsibilities, the benefits are just less than what everyone hoped for.
@StrongBad -- it's probably rare that somebody makes the "best" offer they could. They make the "best" offer they think will attract the candidate identified for hire.
To add to Pete Clark's excellent answer, sometimes an institution will hire at the Associate Professor level, but with a pro forma tenure review after one year. For various reasons, they are unable to hire someone directly into tenure. However, with such a short review period, tenure is virtually guaranteed.
That does not appear to be the case here, with a four-year review cycle. I would not recommend accepting this offer. Regarding the immediate question, I concur with the advice to bring this up with the dean as a serious issue.
I did not know about the pro-forma tenure review option. The dean wrote " The tenure-track appointment is for four years. You are eligible to apply for tenure as early as one year after the date of first appointment. However, the normal time to apply is in the penultimate year of the tenure track appointment." The language does not sound like the 'pro-forma' scenario you outlined, or does it?
I would further add to this that, in my experience, a job offer with such a pro forma tenure review is usually made when the candidate has not previously held a tenured position, or not previously held one in the US. (And especially if the candidate has no previous teaching experience, for example if they're being hired from an industry position.) But none of those seem to apply here.
@MarkMeckes, I disagree. Some institutions are forbidden from offering anyone a position with tenure, hence the pro forma review. However, in this case it doesn't seem like a pro forma review.
@vadim123: That's true, and I meant to be referring to institutions that aren't in that situation; I should have been clearer. But since the OP applied to a position that was advertised as tenured...
So... all this talk of "some places can't offer a Tenure position out of the gate" - if that is the case... why is it not advertised as solely tenure track? Why mention "Tenure Track OR Tenure"? "OR" means they can offer it out of the gate and him being offered Tenure Track is a deliberate decision - NOT a limitation by "rules". If it IS a limitation - then that's false advertising.
I agree with that last post, it is negotiable, noting that sometimes the process does take some time (as per the pro forma discussions) and may not be successful. My guess is that the 4-year clock suggests that the department or leadership is worried that coming from Europe you will not have considerable (recent) experience in the U.S. funding process or that they want to see proof that you will succeed. If I were in your situation, I would not move from tenured into a 4-year clock even if given strong assurances that granting tenure will "not be a problem". As to negotiating, I would highlight your success in U.S. prior, including award of tenure, and highlight your plan of attack for funding your lab. Plus, if you were top pick at the current institution, you likely can be top pick elsewhere. Finally, when moving (if you choose to), ask your current institution for a leave of absence; if things go bad, you can consider going back.
The only verbiage you present from the university is:
"the University of X invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor or Tenured Associate Professor in...."
[bolding mine]
That sounds to me that applications that are submitted will be considered for a Tenured Associate Professor or a tenure-track Assistant Professor. Perhaps there is more information that you are leaving out, but based on what you have presented, I don't see any reason to be confident that a tenured position would be offered. If distinction was important to you, you should have asked for it to be clarified.
As for how you should respond, you should decide whether you are willing to accept these terms. If not, then tell them that you are not willing to accept anything short of tenure, and be prepared to not get the job. They might be able to work something out, but don't count on it.
Also, "demotion" is not an entirely accurate term in this context, since it is not within a particular institution.
EDIT:
In English, words often distribute over "and" and "or". For instance, in "You can have soup or salad", "you can have" distributes over "or", giving the implicit meaning "You can have soup, or you can have salad". What distributes depends on context and can be ambiguous. You seem to have interpreted this as "the University of X invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor or applications for Tenured Associate Professor in...." That is, some applications are for a tenure-track Assistant Professor, and some applications are for Tenured Associate Professor. However, without this distribution, it can be interpreted as meaning that each application is for a position that will either be tenure-track Assistant Professor or Tenured Associate Professor. The university could have been more clear, but you shouldn't have just assumed that the interpretation that favors you is the correct one.
OP was offered neither a tenure-track assistant professor position nor a tenured associate professor position. The position offered was tenure-track but non-tenured associate professor. Only the most tortured parsing of the ad's language would include that precise offer as a possibility.
You seem to imply that Assistant Professor and Associate Professor are equivalent. Is that true?
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114170 | How can I prove that the head of the lab did not have contribution to my work?
I performed part of my PhD thesis in a lab outside my university. After deciding to publish the result, the head of the lab did not give me the permission to publish it. He wanted to be the coauthor, himself and one of his students. But they did not have substantial contribution to the project. They allowed me to use their lab and their materials. he blocked my work totally. I do not have permission to publish the results just because I do not want to give credit to them since they did not contribute to my work. According to ICJME, technical help does not make eligibility to be the coauthor. Their lab knew these standards and accept them. However, the problem is that I cannot prove that their help was not that much to make them eligible to be coauthors. Even my supervisor believes that I should consider them as coauthors because he thinks that they helped me during my stay in their lab. Also, he thinks, like many other people, that it is a custom to consider the head of the lab as a coauthor. Does anyone have suggestions for me? How can I unblock my work?
What field are you in? 'Giving authorship' for lab use and material use is the custom in some fields. We could discussed if this is good/bad, but if it is customary, you can't do much.
So using their facilities (and training and procedures and...) was not substantial? Simple - publish the paper without using any data obtained there. Sounds like it should be easy to do that, right?
@Emilie : my field is Biotechnology. I was working on an enzyme mutation.
@Jon Custer: They did not train me. The head of the lab never spent time on my project. I just use their lab facilities. I cannot publish without those results since those results are most of the results I obtained. They also told me that they would send my samples for a measurement to another lab, but they did not. They caused that my samples lost their efficiency.
Well, I'll be blunt - if you came to my labs to perform work you would have my people as co-authors. The equipment isn't up and running and ready to perform leading edge work all by itself. It takes knowledge and expertise. Maybe the stuff you used could be found anywhere and just works all the time. But, likely not.
@Jon Custer: even if I knew how those equipments work since I had learn about them before my PhD? The facility that I talk about, are not specific and do not need special knowledge. Also, I do not think that technical help means substantial contribution to a work.
Creating, maintaining, and operating a lab that can carry out relevant experiments that actually get technical results is a non-trivial undertaking in many cases. You relied upon the lab being functional. There was an agreement that you could come in and use their equipment, which you needed to get your results. You needed their technical expertise, and used it. Perhaps you knew how to run a sample through a machine. But, the machine being there, and being ready to provide correct results was dependent on the expertise in the lab.
Let us continue this discussion in chat.
Sorry, I don't think you can do much at this point. These things should be negotiated before any resources are shared. Nothing is free, and different people may expect different forms of gratification- reciprocation, acknowledgement, authorship. You are entitled to having your opinions about this, and the correct time to voice them is at the beginning of the labwork/collaboration.
It is possible that your advisor has a prior understanding with this lab that you are not aware of. If this is not so, share your misgivings with your advisor and seek to learn his/her reasons for conceding authorship. With that knowledge, you can avoid such a situation next time.
This time, 'unblock' by giving credit.
This is definitely something that should have been discussed, and agreed upon prior to entering their lab. However, the past can't be changed, so finding a way to move forward is prudent at this stage.
You want to publish your results
You will be first author.
You used the facilities of the lab you were visiting which are maintained by the head of the lab and potentially another of his/her students.
The head of the lab is customarily (but not always) last author.
Perhaps there is room for negotiation; add the head of the lab, but not his/her student.
Learn from this experience and be clear, IN WRITING, about publication intentions in situations when you are visiting another researcher's lab.
At this stage it really does seem you have two options.
add them as authors (or the compromise mentioned above) or;
don't publish.
Best wishes!
Not only that, but choosing not to publish is going to be seen as very anti-social and could seriously burn bridges with this lab because it seems like the OP doesn't understand how authorship works.
Depending on what the data in question is, and any prior lab agreements on who gets to publish with it (or data related to it), the answer may still be a flat out "no" end of discussion.
Agreed @AzorAhai , negotiation and compromise at this point, to save not only OPs reputation with this lab, but potentially others, is probably necessary.
Agreed @JonSG , but it seems the problem is that there was no conversation upfront meaning there is no agreement in place. It is extremely unwise not to consider authorship when joining a lab; as a visitor or not! Additionally, even OPs supervisor thinks they should be added as authors. Personally, I am not against massaging the situation for a positive outcome for all involved.
@SeriousAboutPsych, Ok, I understand. but according to ICMJE (icmje.org/recommendations/…) they do not eligible to be the coauthor. I do not understand if that lab accept ICMJE standard, they still wants to be coauthor. If we agree about an standard we should follow it in practice. When I asked them about type of their help, they could not answer it properly.
@bina Your question doesn't say you all agreed a priori on ICMJE standards. If you did, you should add that info to the Q as it is very important.
@bina unless ICMJE is explicitly agreed on beforehand, then I wouldn't put much store by it. It takes more than a set of recommendations by some editors to change 50 years of ingrained community practice.
In general, it is impossible to prove a negative. However, the lab with which you worked may be able to show that what they did meets the requirements for co-authorship.
But I would consider the issue from the following perspective: everyone else—including your own supervisor—is saying that you should consider them as coauthors. Given that they are more experienced than you are when it comes to publishing, it would be reasonable to follow their advice.
The most important thing for you right now is that you are the first author on the paper. If you believe that there was no value added by working in that lab, as someone suggested in the comments, then you can demonstrate that by excising what you did with them from the paper and seeing if it's still viable. If you can do that, then you can just go ahead and submit the paper without their contribution or permission. If you can't, then perhaps you should reconsider what is possible and reasonable.
(One final thing to note: the ICMJE guidelines are recommendations, not rules.)
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120079 | Should we chair a session in which we present?
In a prestigious conference in my field, I am asked to chair a session. However, in the same session, I have my own paper, should I chair this session?
If the conference has asked you, there is no reason not to. Of course, chairing can mean different things depending on the conference. It may be just introducing speakers or keeping them to a schedule, or it may be actually chairing a discussion. There are other possibilities, I suppose.
I don't foresee any conflicts in such a situation, though you may want to accept or defer any responsibility for it depending on your comfort level.
In my case, it is introducing speakers and keeping them on time (including me in case I accept). And yes, the conf. has asked me for it.
Good idea to turn the stopwatch over to another while you speak. Speaking last might also be easier to manage.
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112395 | Does the academic community perceive letters and short articles differently from longer articles?
There are some journals that accept short articles of 2 to 4 pages.
I have submitted (and had accepted) such a letter (Cannot specifically name the letter) which is 2 pages in length but it is a SCI-E journal.
How would such an article be viewed by the academic community? Is there a big difference between the two?
Similarly, how does academics view journals that only publish such short articles?
Thanks.
Could you be clearer on what you mean by 'standing' of a letter? Do you mean is it considered a worthwhile thing to do? (Note that Physical Review Letters and Applied Physics Letters are well regarded.)
By 'standing' I mean how does the professors, academics see such publications while considering offering post-docs or job offers.
I’m sorry, but we can’t comment on the effects of individual journals.
The arguments and conclusions of a paper should stand on their own, no matter the length. After all, Fermat caused quite a stir with one line written in the margin of a book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem
Thanks, @aeismail for change in title. It looks more academic now. But still, I don't understand why is this question on hold as it is a genuine question. How else do I get to know the answer to the question I have?
I’ve removed the hold.
There's an interesting study of ecology papers by Fox et al., finding that at least in that field, longer papers tend to be cited more. The explanation they advance, however, is that longer papers contain "more and a greater diversity of data and ideas," not that scientists feel more warmly about long papers than short ones. Also, the effect size they found was small, with less than a 2% increase in citations per 10% increase in page number. This suggests that padding out a short paper with extra analyses is not an efficient way to raise its profile.
(Short papers, of course, can be very influential: the first paper to accurately describe the structure of DNA was almost exactly one page.)
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108016 | Can I accept two funded offers from universities and decide later after April 15?
I am an international student. I received several offers, but I am interested in two options:
1) Option A: It is my top choice. However, it gave me only partial tuition, so I will need external sources of funding. The resolution of these sources is going to be in June (federal funds), several months after the April 15th deadline.
2) Option B: It gave full tuition and a monthly living stipend. I am very grateful to the university.
For both programs, I have until April 15 to accept offers. I have been reading about April 15 Resolution and it has complicated me to make a decision. Since both schools gave me financial aid, I think there is a problem in there about accepting an offer concerning financial aid. As far as I understand, in Option A, if I pay my deposit fee I accept their financial aid. Nevertheless, to attend Option A I will necessarily need external funding. If I don't receive it, I will not be able to attend Option A.
I already have an opportunity to study a graduate program in US (Option B). I would not like to be in the scenario of rejecting a good and safe opportunity and not have external funding, that would mean not to attend graduate studies this year. I would love to go to Option A, but I am restricted to external factors as funding.
Is there any advise you could give me in this situation?
Some students take a break or intermit to top-up their funds with a job...
No, you cannot do this.
According to the April 15 Resolution of the Council of Graduate Schools, you cannot accept multiple award offers simultaneously. You are not committed to any offer signed before April 15, in that you can submit a written statement declining a previously accepted offer. But you cannot accept multiple offers before or on April 15, and changing offers after that date requires a written release from the school with whom the offer that was “in force” on April 15.
So, there are only two options: 1) accept safe offer or 2) life is about risks. Right?
Basically, yes.
Question is, how are they going to know? Following some dumb rule for the sake of following dumb rules is dumb.
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1950 | How can I get involved in grant proposal reviews as a graduate student?
I need to get some more experience with writing grant proposals, and I know that professors are often invited to review them. How can I get involved in it while still being just a graduate student?
Possible duplicate of http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1498/how-do-you-earn-opportunites-to-review-journals-or-conference-papers
@Suresh: You're right... this is a close match to the other question... Perhaps I'll limit it to research grant proposals rather than papers, so that my question is more distinct.
Reviewing grant proposals as a student is tricky, at least in some fields. The NSF is highly unlikely to ask a grad student to review proposals (it might theoretically be possible for a brilliant student who is almost done with their Ph.D., but I've never heard of it happening). Furthermore, faculty are not allowed to show proposals they have been asked to review to their students (it may sometimes happen, but it's breaking explicit rules regarding confidentiality). Overall, in pure math grad students basically never review grant proposals. I can't speak for other fields, but I'm skeptical that grad students ever play a major role in reviewing proposals.
Instead, I'd recommend asking your advisor to see the other side of the process. They could share their own proposals, and perhaps even reviews of those proposals or drafts of upcoming proposals. They could also ask collaborators whether they had any proposals they would be willing to share. This isn't quite the same as reviewing proposals yourself, but it could still give you valuable experience with how grant applications work.
Once you're faculty (or eligible to write grant proposals), you can often request to serve on panel review committees. But till then you're unlikely to see proposals "in the raw" because of the strict confidentiality rules that @AnonymousMathematician mentions.
Receiving an invitation to help out at a NSF or NIH study session is highly unlikely and logistically difficult. However, I would try to get involved with study sessions for an University driven call for proposals. Alternatively, you could get involved with a course that does a mock grant proposal as part of its coursework. I just submitted a mock proposal recently and I'm sure that the TAs will be forced to look over my work and get practice in the process.
You can't get experience serving on a grant proposal review panel as a grad student. Sorry; that's just how it works.
However, there are other ways to get experience with the grant proposal process. The number-one way: talk to your advisor/PI and ask them. In particular, ask them if you can be involved with the next grant proposal they write. Ask them how you can help. Maybe you can read a draft and offer comments. Maybe you can brainstorm with them. Maybe they can outline a piece of it and you can try writing a draft of a section.
Also, you can ask to see copies of past proposals they've submitted (both funded and unfunded). After you read the proposals, you can ask your advisor for his/her own assessment of the proposal, and even ask to see the reviews of those submissions from review panel, compare to your own assessment, and use this feedback to improve your knowledge.
Quals proposals are another great form of practice at this sort of thing; they require some similar skills. Spend time on your quals proposal and try to make it outstanding. Read other great quals proposals. Offer to give feedback to your fellow students on their quals proposals. Learn as much as you can from that process, as some of those lessons will carry over to help you write better grant proposals. Similarly, getting good at writing a research statement (for a job application or a fellowship application) is a useful skill that has some overlap at formulating and writing grant proposals. Of course, these are not the same as proposal-writing, but the experience will serve you well.
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97426 | Is it self-plagiarism to copy & paste from my own published paper to my grant application?
If I copy & paste sentences from my own published paper to my grant application, will it be considered self-plagiarism? Is it forbidden? The grant application is not published anywhere; this is an internal submission for the grant agency.
Is there a reason why you can't properly quote, e.g. in the sense of "I'm asking for money to further investigate a problem I already discussed in [1], where we found the following interesting questions: (quote)"?
I'd agree that citing is better. Even it's fine for this round (which I think it is fine), in future you may share this grant with your teammates or students, who may lift a couple sentences from the grant for their paper's introduction, it'd be nice to be reminded at that time to avoid accidentally plagiarizing.
Many questions about plagiarism answer themselves by keeping in mind the following (working) definitions: plagiarism is presenting someone else's contribution as your own contribution; self-plagiarism is presenting (your own) previously published contribution as a new contribution. (Of course, what counts as a contribution depends on the discipline and the context; what is considered boiler-plate in one can be a genuine contribution in another.) For a grant proposal: Any text not describing your new contribution for which you apply for support is not covered.
I think the question identified as a duplicate is a bit broader than the question asked here. I think we need a dedicated question for this specific use case. Thus, I vote to re-open. I'd be happy to offer a bounty.
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11985 | How should I choose which graduate programs to apply to for the PhD?
This fall I will be an senior mathematics major at a small public liberal arts university. I'm trying to finalize the list of schools to which I will apply (to PhD programs in pure math), but I am finding it somewhat difficult. I know that I am not a candidate for admission at top-tier universities. My school is relatively unknown outside of its state, and the professors who will write my recommendation letters aren't very well-known either (although they do publish somewhat frequently in their respective fields). I have taken two semesters of abstract algebra, one semester of real analysis, and two semesters of topology, and received an A in all. By the time I graduate I'll have taken another semester in real analysis and a course in complex analysis, plus several other applied and discrete math classes. I haven't taken any graduate courses since my school doesn't offer them, but I have completed a research project with one of my professors in the area of math which I hope to study in grad school. My GPA is around 3.85.
I think (and please correct me if I am wrong) that I should focus on applying to "mid-tier" programs, but I find it very difficult to determine which programs are at this level. I know that one student from my school was accepted at a program ranked in the 40's by the U.S. News math grad school rankings.
Essentially, my question is this: Do the U.S. News rankings accurately reflect the selectivity of programs, and if so, is there some point in the rankings at which schools become "mid-tier" or at which I would be competitive for admission?
I think you should apply to the schools where the professors do the research which you are interested in. You don't want to be in the best school in the world studying something you don't like.
Yes, the rankings (roughly) reflect the selectivity of the program, as far as I know. Your choice to focus on mid-tier programs makes sense. (I think defining mid-tier as starting in the 40s is plausible, though I suspect you'll get conflicting answers from different people.) However
Don't confuse the quality of the program overall with the quality of their specialty that you hope to study. Their specialty program could be much better or worse than the program overall. In math departments (as opposed to, say, some computer science departments), students are typically admitted to the department, rather than to a professor's research group or a specialty area. Taking advantage of this could get you into a specialty program that's rated higher than you "deserve".
Don't exclude a school just because it's too highly rated. It's good to apply to a wide range of schools, some "reach" schools that you think it unlikely you'll be admitted to, and some "safety" schools that you would be quite surprised not to be admitted to. All sorts of factors influence how likely it is you'll be admitted to a given school in a given year, many of them completely unknowable to you. For example, maybe a new faculty member will be coming and looking for students (or maybe one will be leaving). Maybe the program has all their TA positions tied up with current students who haven't finished yet, or maybe not. Maybe a dean wants to grow the program, etc. Many of these things you just can't know. Most likely, you won't get into MIT, Harvard, Princeton, or Stanford. But once you get into the 20s, 30s and below, the outlook is less clear.
Focus on fit, rather than solely on ranking. Think about where the school is located. If you plan to live there for 5 or 6 years, you don't want to hate the place. This can include proximity to your family or friends, climate, scenery, nightlife, etc. If you know what specialty you want to study, the school should have at least 1, but hopefully 2 or 3 folks that you would potentially like as an adviser.
Focus on aspects of your application that you can still change. With a transcript no stronger than yours, I got into a top-25 school. The cool part is that for the specialty I chose, they were top-10. At this point, most of your transcript (and much of your application in total) is fixed. But you didn't mention your GRE scores. (The surprising thing about the GRE is that you can do pretty well if you're just really good at Calculus (through multivariable), Dif. Eq., and Linear Algebra.) I think my subject test was something like 65th percentile. That's not terribly good, but I think it was enough to convince the admissions committee that even though I was coming from a small LAC that no one had heard of, I did know something. The other thing I did, which I highly recommend you try, is get a letter of recommendation from a faculty member at that school (where I was admitted). I wrote code for him for 3 or 4 weeks (about 30 hours/week, I think) during Christmas break of my senior year. In exchange, he wrote a recommendation for me. I'm sure it didn't say that I was a math wunderkind, but whatever it said added just enough to my application to get me in.
+1 for point 3! This is one of the main deciding factors for us (I have a wife, and a daughter on the way, so the neighborhood is almost more important than the selectivity of the program.)
@Dan C: What is a good way of looking for the "right" professors besides looking up the math faculty of each department? Also, I'm international so looking for connections from professors, that I know, is almost non-existent.
@TheLastCipher I'm not sure I understand your question. By "right" do you mean someone to do research under? or someone to get a rec letter for (as in 4.)? or something else? Having connections is huge. I went to grad school in the city where I grew up. I don't remember how I got the connection that led to the rec letter, but I think it was through a contact of my father. (My undergrad adviser did not have a strong academic network.) I would suggest that you look through the math faculty of each department. It is a lot of work, but potentially has a big pay off.
@TheLastCipher If you don't have good contacts, I would recommend first getting a masters degree, at the best place you are admitted with funding. (It is less important that your choice for a masters program satisfy point 3, since you will likely be there no more than 2 years.) Use the time during your masters to attend conferences to try to build your network (with any guidance you can get from your faculty mentors). Then, using those contacts, you may have a better idea of where to go for a PhD program, and who you could work with.
@Dan C: By "right" I meant to do research under. Thank you for the advice!
Dan C's answer is great, and I just want to echo some points and add a few things to it.
First, I'm not sure why you've decided you're not a candidate for a "top-teir" school. It sounds like you've been successful in your coursework, and you can likely get strong letters of recommendation. If you don't bomb the GRE, you can certainly get into a "highly-ranked" school! I went to a college just like the one you describe, and my friends and I all did fine when it came to grad school admissions -- one of my friends got into a "top ten" department, and we all got accepted by schools in the top twenty or thirty. So don't count yourself out simply because your school is small and relatively unknown. And, most importantly, if you do get into a prestigious program, be sure to base your decision to enroll on more than the US News rankings!
(I've used the quotation marks above because the rankings are all a bit questionable, and one should really consider the strength of a department in your field of interest, like Dan C said.)
Regarding the professors who will be writing your letters of recommendation: They may not be heavyweights in their fields, but chances are they know some people of influence. Take a look at some departments, get a feel for what you'd like to study, and possibly with whom, and then talk to your letter writers. It may happen, when you mention your interest in working with Professor X, that your letter writer was roommates with Professor X in grad school. These little personal connections won't get you admitted, but they will help ensure that your application gets a fair evaluation despite your school's relative obscurity.
Good luck! Aim high.
I'll just note that my credentials weren't so different from yours when I graduated from college (obscure liberal arts college with little track record, etc.) and I got in to Berkeley, Michigan and Northwestern. Of course, I can't actually compare our cases (and this was a decade ago), but I don't think you should hesitate to apply to, say, Wisconsin, or UT Austin or Rutgers (depending on your regional preferences). If you doubt it, you can always contact the graduate coordinator and ask if they think you're a plausible candidate.
As Dan says, a good range is the best approach; apply at least one place you can't quite believe you'll get in, and at least one place where you feel absolutely confident, and a few in between. This stuff is indeed incredibly unpredictable, but there are a lot of slots in reasonable graduate programs, and fewer good candidates than you might think.
I'll only address the question of deciding what "mid-tier" means. There's one coarse classification that could be helpful to you.
There are 48 math departments considered as Group I under the AMS classification (the older one, deprecated as of last year but the most useful one in my opinion). There's obviously a lot of variation within this group, but I think it's safe to assume that the programs at these 48 schools are stronger than the 56 math departments in Group II. (The bottom of Group I is probably not separated from the top of Group II by too much, however, so don't stress too much about the cutoff.) However I have a lot less confidence in the division between the bottom of Group II and the top of Group III; in this region the AMS's case for switching to the new groupings seems quite strong to me.
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10975 | Publishing as an undergraduate student: can/should I list my university affiliation?
I have done some research during the past year on one of the topics I am studying. Now I have got some nice results which I think I should publish. I think I can write a conference paper based on my results; a journal one might be too difficult at this point.
I have conducted the research alone, and have not received any help from any faculty members. Now, when I'm writing the paper, I came to consider for the first time am I allowed to publish under the institution I am studying in? I mean, I can list my university as my affiliation, even though I'm just an undergrad student, right? .. I could not find anything on this from the university rules, so I guess its "quiet information".
am I allowed to publish under the institution I am studying in? — Of course you are!
Ask one of your professors or the administration about what the best course of action is.
Most likely, you should publish as affiliated to the university as the work was conducted while you were at university. In any case, you have nothing to lose by doing so.
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76453 | What is the best way to merge subfigures and convert to a required format for submission to a journal?
I'm currently preparing a paper for publication and so trying to construct the figures. I'm finding it more difficult than making figures for a report mainly because journals expect one figure file for each figure, regardless of whether it contains subfigures or not. This leads to some problems/hurdles:
I can't use LaTeX's \subfig package, so I have to manually place an (a), (b) and (c) on the figure and keep track of the caption if the ordering of these changes.
Journals' rules about figure submission vary quite a lot, some can take pdfs, some want vector graphics, others raster.
I have to somehow merge the output from various programs into a single file; for example diagrams made with Tikz make up the same figure as a graph plotted with python's matplotlib.
With having to merge subfigures in such a way, my workflow becomes quite convoluted if I have to modify one of the subfigures, and then regenerate the single figure file.
Why not ask at TeX.see since it seems like you want a technical answer. Seems like a perfect job for the standalone package/class.
@StrongBad Thanks for the suggestion, but I did want to make my question as broad as possible, I merely used my own experiences as examples to illustrate my point. I hope it doesn't come across as if I was asking for technical help in this particular case.
Possible duplicate http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1095/software-to-draw-illustrative-figures-in-papers
@user3087409 I removed your comments to the mods in order to keep the question clear. Please feel free to post your comments as comments.
so I have to manually place an (a), (b) and (c) on the figure and keep track of the caption if the ordering of these changes – I know, this is mostly my opinion: But in the vast majority of cases, I find it more user-friendly not to use these indicators at all but to refer to “Fig. 5, left” or similar. This way people know directly where to look or even remember the respective part of the figure and their flow of thoughts is less broken.
Journals' rules about figure submission vary quite a lot, some can take pdfs, some want vector graphics, others raster – The PDF format is capable of containing pixel as well as vector graphics. I have not encountered any journal that seriously requires pixel graphics; see also Why do some publication venues prefer TIFF over some vector formats? In general, I do not expect you can go much wrong with PDFs.
@Wrzlprmft: 'I find it more user-friendly not to use these indicators at all but to refer to “Fig. 5, left' or similar" - while this may be a matter of preference, the point that the OP has to "keep track of the caption if the ordering of these changes" still stands.
@O.R.Mapper: Sure, but the problem of manually placing such indicators is gone.
@Wrzlprmft: Ah, I didn't realize that's a problem. If I am supposed to provide one PDF for the entire figure, I would have LaTeX render that PDF file while still using the subfig package or something equivalent.
@scaaahu - See chat.
I don't know how well this will apply to you because I don't use tikz much. But if you can save them as say a pdf, this might work for you.
I use illustrator (but inkscape is similar and free), and I link in the files so that if there is an update to any component it will update. And I merge them all together.
Then I can just save it as a pdf or svg (or whatever format the journal wants). I found this a little cumbersome to start off with, but now that I'm used to it, I have a hard time reverting.
This is a nice use for linking that I hadn't thought of. How well does illustrator/inkscape keep edits, i.e. if an image has to be rescaled/cropped in order to fit into the figure, and the linked component is updated?
Illustrator can handle rescaled images (keeping dimensions true to the original figure) as of cs5 I believe. But I don't think inkscape can.
Use \subfig and typeset your document as you wish.
Save it as a pdf.
Within the pdf select the figure and crop everything else (on a mac you can use the select tool and then command-K in preview).
Save the cropped figure as a .pdf or .tiff (or whatever is required).
Replace the \subfig command with the cropped figure. It will look exactly the same (you may have to adjust the size) and will conform to journal requirements.
I'm not sure this will conform to journal requirements - often journals will want higher resolution files for their raster formats. Also, I think this will degrade vector graphics to a raster format, which should probably be avoided.
I keep separate files for every subfigure, which may be created using different means.
I use LaTeX to create a pdf for the entire figure, which combines the subfigures. In this way there is one pdf file corresponding to each figure. The tex file is to arrange the subfigures according to the desired layout, as well as to place the (a), (b), (c). I use overpic to do the latter. The package textpos is useful for the former.
In the tex file for the document, the figures are inserted using the usual includegraphics command, and for each figure there is one includegraphics command.
Not sure if this helps. Probably you are already doing this and are looking for something more efficient.
I have used Matlab and Sci-Lab for creating graphics so far. In Matlab, I have also made the process of data analysis automatic, with minor interventions in the input parameters. Next, I have converted the data in separate files(*.txt) to be read after by a new program which creates the final figures. From my experience, Matlab provides the best quality in EPS, and is also good for data analysis but is not free. Sci-lab is good for graphics and free, but for analyzing data is very slow and time consuming. From what I have seen, R also is a good candidate for plots and have the biggest number of line styles(when printed on grayscale), but I have not worked with it.
There's the usual automation tradeoff: https://xkcd.com/1319/
In practice, I end up using Inkscape (Illustrator if your school has a license, I guess) to manually put figures together from different parts for the final submission. This allows export to PDF or TIFF, and hasn't given me too many hassles.
If you are going to be regenerating these figures all the time, i.e. there's a big collaboration and everyone will be submitting new versions of these figures, or if you have a paper with 100s of figures, it might be worth it to develop a script using ImageMagick to connect all of those different pieces together, using montage and labeling: http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/annotating/
However, the circumstances where this is a good use of time are going to be pretty rare! (Also note this is going to be better for raster output.)
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1966 | How much information should I divulge about on-going unpublished research at a conference?
I'm developing a paper right now based upon some of my preliminary results, and I'm attending several conferences to present and get some feedback on my results from other experts in my field. A thought occurred to me that because my work is yet to be published, I there is a potential for others to steal my idea and publish before I get a chance.
I'm probably over-thinking this, and there is little chance of it actually happening. But I'm curious how frequently this happens in scientific domains. Do people go to conferences to steal ideas? If it does happen, how can I best prevent it from happening? Obviously, I want to share my ideas with the world, but I don't want to lose a chance to take an idea into fruition. What should/shouldn't I share about my research before it is published? Should I simply wait until my paper is accepted before I go on the conference circuit?
Update:
My field is computational science (not to be confused with computer science).
This really depends on the research culture in your field, your academic career stage (student, postdoc, pre-tenure, or tenured), how close your ideas are to fruition (= publication), and the specific people you talk with. Have you asked your advisor?
I agree with @JeffE you should at least specify a field. The answer for biochemistry will not be anywhere close to the answer for mathematics.
If you have coauthors or an advisor, you should definitely check with them. This is the kind of thing that can make a collaborator or advisor very upset if their idea about it is different from yours.
I wonder if there's a nice social networking research problem here :) - given a finite speed of dissemination, and a finite risk of unauthorized replication (followed by dissemination), which version of the meme will "win" by taking over more of the graph of connections :)
@Suresh: If only I had the time to pursue it :)
As some comments note, answers will vary dramatically by field, but it seems better to have a bunch of answers for different fields to one question, instead of having people ask the same question a dozen times for different fields.
For math, if you're talking about a completed, submitted paper that hasn't been published yet (say, because it's still being refereed), you should feel free to talk about it; the submission date proves your claim on the result, so it can't really be stolen at this stage. (Also, you already put it on the arXiv, so it's already public, right?)
Suppose you're still writing the paper, but the results are completely solid. There are good reasons to tell people about the result: you may be want to discuss ideas for how to build on your paper, you may want to give people a head's up that the theorem is coming---say, so they can use it to prove things themselves, and you may want to establish a partial claim on the result in case someone else is doing the same thing. There are also good reasons not to tell people: even though you're really awfully sure the result is solid, there might still be mistakes; routinely announcing results well in advance of the paper can negatively affect your reputation; someone could use your ideas to write their own paper faster. (There's an interesting phenomenon where once people know a theorem is true, it becomes easier to solve; sometimes a problem is open for a long time, and then abruptly solved multiple times in a short period.)
Taking these together, I'd advise not to announce a result until the paper's finished unless there's a strong reason to do so. This is particularly true early in your career, when it's more likely that you'll mistakenly believe a proof was really-definitely-totally finished. (I was given this advice when I was in grad school, and while I haven't followed it 100% of the time, I've never regretted following it.)
re math: I know an author who got an important result. He put it in the arxiv and submitted it to a big journal. Within the year while the paper was being refereed, another group generalized his result and, acknowledging his preprint, got their result published. The original's author paper was rejected, and thus became unpublishable.
@MartinArgerami Wow, I have never thought something like this could happen. My supervisor is not very fond of arXiv and discourages me from using it and I have decided to use it once I (hopefully) complete my research program. But this part scares me a bit.
@Hap: it's an extreme case and each one has to make their own decisions. For whatever it's worth, most people in my area put their papers in the arxiv while submitting to a journal.
This will really, really depend on the field you're coming from - or even the sub-field. Take two examples:
Mathematical epidemiology: If I present a paper with a nice infectious disease model, with the equations, the parameter values, and some numerical results, but I haven't tackled anything analytical yet, you could very well - if you could get all that down - beat me to publication.
Observational epidemiology: I could tell you everything about my study but, without access to the raw data, you'd have to go find your own multi-year hospital acquired infection cohort to study. Good luck with that. And if you still beat me to the punch? Well, I probably deserve that.
Generally speaking, for in-progress stuff, I present enough for people to know what I'm doing, comment on it, etc., but not enough to fully replicate the experiment without coming to me for more information. For example, some folks I'm working with struggled with whether or not to present a theoretical result without its implementation done yet, because someone could scoop us with the implementation. We decided for the audience I was presenting to, that was...unlikely. For another audience? They'd get the theory in broad strokes, but without enough information that the theory alone is enough of a springboard to run with the paper.
I say give all the details and don't hold anything back. Most researchers do not want to enter a first to publish race from that far back. People tend to work on similar topics so getting scooped is bound to happen. This doesn't mean your ideas were "stolen". I think you are less likely to get scooped if you let people know everything you have done and where you are going. This lets people get out of your way or approach you about collaboration.
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7360 | How common is it to inadvertently "reinvent the wheel" in academia?
When engaging in research, I know its a good idea to read lots of papers and talk to others about what has been done before and what is currently being researched to avoid "reinventing the wheel". That is, to avoid researching/publishing a result that has already been discovered.
In fields where physical experiments are common, replication studies are necessary. But in theoretical/computational research, originality is key and duplication seems to be generally frowned upon. How common is it to inadvertently publish a finding that was already discovered? What do you when you happen to find yourself in this situation? Should you just scrap your work if your methods are too similar to someone else's?
I find I'm being forced to reinvent the wheel. The papers I'm reading (document page analysis--image processing) have no means to replicate their work. I want to stand on the shoulders of giants, but the giants didn't release their source code.
After reading a lots of paper, I do not have the feeling that I am "standing on the shoulders of giants" any more. It feels more like standing on a pile of dwarfs (albeit very clever dwarfs!).
@Dirk The giants are generally represented by careers rather than individual publications.
"What do you when you happen to find yourself in this situation?" be reassured that you were thinking along the right lines - it is an indication that you understand your subject well. Especially if it was already published by a very well respected researcher. This has happened to me several times.
How common is it to inadvertently publish a finding that was already discovered?
Far more common than anyone realizes or wants to admit.
Stigler's Law of Eponymy states that No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer. (Stigler's law was proposed in this precise form in 1980 by Stephen Stigler, who self-referentially attributed it to Richard Merton, but of course similar statements were made earlier by many others, including Stigler's own father.) I wouldn't go as far as claiming that every scientific discovery is misattributed, but there are hundreds of examples. Off the top of my head: Fibonacci numbers, Pascal's triangle, Gaussian elimination, Euler's formula (both of them!), Voronoi diagrams, Markov's inequality, Chebyshev’s inequality, Dijkstra's algorithm for shortest paths, Prim's algorithm for minimum spanning trees, the Cooley-Tukey FFT algorithm, the Gale-Shapley stable matching algorithm (for which Shapley recently won the Nobel Prize in economics), ...
What do you when you happen to find yourself in this situation?
Be brutally honest, both with yourself and with the scientific community.
If your work has already been published, post a reference to the prior art in your web page listing your publications. (You do have a web page listing your publications, don't you?) If possible, publish an addendum to your paper. Email anyone who has cited your paper already, giving them the earlier reference. When asked to review papers that cite your paper, include the earlier reference in your report. Become a walking advertisement for the earlier work.
If your work hasn't already been published, try to figure out which parts of your work have actually been done before. Some of your results will appear verbatim in the earlier work, so you can't take credit for them. Some of your results will be easy corollaries of the earlier work, so you still can't take credit for them. But perhaps some of your results will take the old work in a new nontrivial direction. Build on that.
Also, if your results were previously known in a different field, there may be some value in bringing those results to the attention of your research community.
Should you just scrap your work if your methods are too similar to someone else's?
Of course not! Now you have evidence that your methods actually work! Push them further!
Thanks JeffE. This answer is one of the major reasons I joined this board. I have been bothered by this issue for long time. Now I know what to do. I don't know how to show my appreciation beside upvoting.
Besides the excellent JeffE's answer, I would like to add one more point to the phenomena of reinventing a wheel. It touches more "research towards an already invented wheel", rather than "publishing a reinvented wheel".
You have a problem and need to crack it. Your problem is practical and novel, you know that. But in order to solve it you need to invent some machinery and you just do not know whether it already exists, or not - simply because you do not have a good feeling for all the subtle aspects and issues of your problem. In such a situation, it is often easier to steam ahead, learn as you go, invent something for your problem and then, when you already are familiar with all the quirks and dark corners of your problem, look around carefully to find out how's the thing you invented actually called. The odds are, it already exists in some form, most probably invented in a different niche for different purposes, but it happens to be very similar to your problem.
Of course the above does not work for everybody, because it can be a frustrating experience to find that somebody else already invented what you did too (usually already long ago and in a better quality than you). My angle on this is to be always proud of myself, because those early solutions tend to come from very smart people, so if I managed to independently come up with the same thing as they did, it's a reason to feel better.
At that moment, however, one should realize, his/her approach and angle to the whole issue is slightly different than that of the guys who invented it earlier. You simply came to the same junction from a different direction and you are heading elsewhere. At that point it's just great to proceed in your direction, because you can be almost sure, that your direction is original and unexplored territory - otherwise the earlier work would be cited and that's easy to find out.
The process I describe above also partially explains why inventions tend to be named after guys who arrived to the junction later. They simply had a perspective which took them farther in terms of social impact than was that of those who originally solved the problem. Often solutions get named after the guys who popularize them and make their applications bloom, not those who solved them originally.
Also, sometimes intentionally reinventing the wheel is worthwhile. Several of my recent papers grew directly out of getting frustrated trying to understand someone else's proof, giving up and proving the same result myself (which was easier because I already "knew" the result was true), and then going back to see if I'd reinvented the wheel. Most of the time I had.
Knowing a problem and having an idea how to solve it does imply knowing good search terms. This is particularly true in fields using weird acronyms or the name of the (re)inventor. I solved the problem described in this paper because I didn't find existing work. My solution then allowed me to find related work in another field. That enabled me to develop a more general framework and to highlight particular properties that had not been discussed previously. Quite a typical development, I think.
Reinventing the wheel may be beneficial if you explain something better than the previous studies, release your code/software, etc.
In computers science it can be frustrating when people publish a summary of their methods, provide results, but no code so that others can apply this to other data sets. So you end up reinventing the wheel.
Often the methods are published and well described, but don't include the code - there is a big difference between reinventing the wheel and reimplementing it. In any case, the core of most innovative methods amount to a page or two of pseudocode; all the remaining volume is just engineering, data format conversion, etc and often you'd want to customize that part anyway.
... and hiding the micro-optimizations that aren't so micro but in fact critical for the algorithm to attain the performance and results described. These, you'd certainly want to know by having the source code.
It happened to me once (in 40 years of doing research). I proved a very cute theorem in complex analysis by using tools from a (seemingly) totally unrelated area of math. (This connection between two unrelated research areas was the most interesting part of the paper.) I asked everybody I knew who might have known if the result was proven earlier - everybody told me that this is a new theorem. I posted the preprint but did not send it to a journal since I wanted to do a deeper literature search. It took me two years, but eventually I found that the result was indeed published (in German) in 1920 by some obscure German mathematician who proved it by a totally different method. I told everybody involved about the situation and moved on. Afterwards, people started to rediscover this theorem with different proofs. They also started to ask me to publish my proof since they found it useful for other purposes and eventually I did, of course, giving full credit to that German mathematician. The moral of this story, if there is any, is that sometimes reinventing the wheel can be useful.
Yes, some wheels are better than others, and/or are better in various use-scenarios. :)
I am curious about this "very cute theorem in complex analysis"! Any way we can get more details? :)
@MalikYounsi: Sorry, no, I like to maintain my anonymity.
@MoisheKohan no problem!
This is not reinventing the wheel, but is related to the lack of certain researchers’ willingness to be forthcoming enough to help younger researchers avoid reinventing the wheel.
I worked with computer science graduate students and their advisers after I started as an assistant professor in a mathematics department, and I was flabbergasted when we were reading a paper that I said had a flaw but the student said we couldn’t question it because the authors are famous. Then I convinced the student to write to the authors asking for the proof details for the unproved claim that was at issue. She told me that their response was that they won’t send the proof because it’s proprietary.
I lost much of my hope for humanity that day.
I’d love to take you up on the beer; if I gained some hope since writing that answer, then it has been thrashed away by the 2024 USA presidential elections….
Can we chase the beer with some nice scotch?
I would assume, as you mentioned you are in theoretical/computational research, that there is some specific scenario you are referring to which may not be relevant to my field (Biomedical science) or others.
How common is it to inadvertently publish a finding that was already discovered? Very common in most fields, with the large number of journals and the "publish or perish" machine continuing to churn out hundreds of thousands of manuscripts more and more of the same is being published, and it won't be stopping anytime soon. So the chances that researchers produce the same or similar work/results is highly likely. The paper mills copying others' work to produce completely fabricated work is also highly likely.
What do you when you happen to find yourself in this situation? Should you just scrap your work if your methods are too similar to someone else's?
NEVER EVER scrap your work! If you can't get it published in a high impact journal, publish in a reputable low impact journal, if you can't publish there put it up on arXiv or similar to get your work attributed to you ASAP.
If you have inadvertently, not intentionally rediscovered something that you missed in the current literature, amend your paper, better yet write another paper about how you think these parallel discoveries could have come about and compare and contrast, then reference both papers.
If you somehow were lucky enough to replicate or reproduce someone else's research or results independently, this is a great thing, possibly it means you are doing robust research, you should be proud.
I would also add that many many researchers do this deliberately for a living, they advertently copy others research, publish it as their own "original research" and then use it to build a career on. If you are looking for sustainability as an academic i.e. winning lots of grants it is a viable option as it can also be done transparently in biomedical research as many researchers can have similar research and the "original idea" is a bit ambiguous. Anyone copying others research to win grants can just say they are replicating others work if caught, or say "to our knowledge we are the first to discover this...", the old "get out of plagiarism free cards" !
Welcome to research and academia!
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60176 | Do you let Google Scholar index popular science articles, conference abstracts, etc.?
I enjoy that Google finds things I've written that I would never bother to link on my own web page, just because it's nice to have all my writing collected somewhere given I've made the effort. But given that academics often assess each other from Google Scholar, I'm worried that my "year" index is getting cluttered and makes it look like no one cites my recent work. Of course, some people allow Google to automatically list discovered works and have their indices full of articles that aren't even theirs, but that's obviously unimpressive.
If you are the kind of person that clicks "year" on Google Scholar to see what an academic does lately, and you were checking the Scholar page of someone you were thinking of hiring, funding, or working with, would you be put off by fluffy articles like book reviews, conference abstracts, and popular science mixed with good ones?
hardly anyone knows to click year and it is perfectly usual for recent pubs to not have cites yet. I think people are more likely to look at the bar chart as you have no choice but to see this item.
Personally, I think that it is important to let one's Google Scholar index all of one's work.
When I am assessing a colleague, I will often exclusively use their Google Scholar page, since every other search method I am currently aware of is either a) badly cluttered with not-their-work or b) tends to leave out significant "non-traditional" works such as white-papers, standards documents, workshops, and books. I use both the "Cited By" and "Year" orderings, the first to see if they have made an impact and the second to see how active they currently are.
When I see a lot of recent publications, I do not expect them to be much cited, particularly given potentially long publication delays and the fact that most scientific work draws little citation, even if it is good. Many publications, after all, are "bridging steps" that are important for building the foundations of high-impact publications but which may not be of interest outside of a very narrow group indeed.
What I would expect to see in a highly active researcher, then, is a couple of recent "hits" and a lot of recent publications with minimal citation. If, in fact, I saw a person who seemed to only have "hits" in their Google Scholar record, then I would find it very curious and think they might be engaging in strategic non-publication.
Obviously, I apply these standards to myself as well. Even if somebody can't be bothered to scroll down far enough to get to last year, they're at least likely to notice the recent citation statistics bar chart. Bottom line: I think that it is a good tradeoff to risk giving a mis-impression those few excessively careless readers in favor of giving a better impression to the more careful ones who are likely to actually be interested in the full list.
That's an interesting take that presumes all academics want google nosing about their lives. I know several that only selectively allow google to index.
@JimB Personal life, sure, but openly published scientific works should be indexed and easily findable.
No, conference papers, etc (same stuff mentioned n Stuart Golodetz's answer) should not necessarily be found but published works, I agree should be findable in Google and Bing.
@JimB Why do you think conference papers aren't significant published works?
Most of the time its something that ends up published later.
@JimB It's published right then, at the conference. In many cases, an "extended version" gets published as a journal article, superseding the original conference paper, but in many other cases that does not happen. I see no reason to pretend that the conference version does not exist.
I gave this the "answered" because it's been a week and it's the highest rated & I said that would be the main criterion since I was asking for an opinion. But I don't think it's a great answer because the first two paragraphs contradict each other. If GS is the main way you assess someone, how can it be a good idea for them to have every piece of dreck they got strong-armed into writing on it?
@JoannaBryson "every piece of dreck they got strong-armed into writing": it sounds to me that you have a rather low opinion of some of your own pieces of work. I've sometimes been surprised, however, that things I personally didn't like very much have apparently been of more interest than I might have thought to others. I feel it's important to let the whole record speak together in the index, rather than try to bury parts of it. The right place for selective presentation is on a personal web page, not an inclusive index like Google Scholar.
Yeah, you never know what people will find useful. I got a fan email last week because of my stack exchange writings! But I actually think of Google Scholar as an academically facing site, and have a nearly-complete list (with a brief precise) of my writings on my web page. Maybe I'm not keeping up with the times...
My rule of thumb for Google Scholar is that any piece of writing that is available in full goes on the Google Scholar profile. That includes working papers, newspaper articles, book reviews, etc. However, it does not include conference abstracts: in my opinion, those are teasers of work to come and so aren't substantial enough to be included.
In hiring decisions, I think the CV still trumps a candidate's Google Scholar page. With easily 100 applications for one position, it's just not feasible to look up everyone's profiles. If an article is not on the CV, it's the candidate's loss. There's really no cost to having a section at the end of the CV on non-academic writing, for example. Just as long as these articles are not mixed in with peer-reviewed publications. If someone's work lends itself to being grouped into different domains, then organizing publications into subsections seems sensible. Maybe that would also address the comment by @JenB about CVs that are too long? That is, maybe the objection is to clutter rather than length?
Caveat: This is necessarily quite subjective.
Personally, I wouldn't necessarily downgrade my opinion of someone who had produced some really good work simply because they had also produced some other work that was comparatively less exciting. However:
I would be slightly concerned if their other work was actively wrong, rather than just unexciting -- it would make me wonder if there were also mistakes in their exciting work that just hadn't been spotted yet.
I might well view the person's Google Scholar page as less useful when it came to finding out what they'd been doing lately, and start searching for their research page instead.
I'm currently too junior to be assessing people for academic jobs, but if I were assessing someone, I wouldn't change a hire decision to a do not hire decision (or vice versa) based purely on the look of their Google Scholar page (or web page). I'd base any decision far more on things like the quality of their research (I'd read their publications), their ability to teach (I'd potentially get them to give a mock tutorial), their commitment to both research and teaching, and their overall attitude to other people and to learning.
On a separate note, it wouldn't surprise me much if very recent work hadn't received many citations (due to the inevitable lag time between when you publish something and when it gets cited -- people have to read your paper, do their own work and get it published before they can cite you).
I use GS in a couple of different ways but neither is really about assessment.
I am in one of those interdisciplinary areas where people who are more discipline focussed may have a couple of papers that are relevant to my work, but most of their research is not. So if I am using a reference that is say 5 years old, I will often use GS to have a look at everything that person has written to (1) identify whether they have a relevant research thread or just a couple of papers and (2) find the relevant papers. This is because a researcher's official website will typically list the papers that are important in their discipline, but may not list the 'random other ideas' type of paper. That is, the website is set up to present their main research, particularly if it is uses a department template.
From the other direction, I never allow GS to automatically add my papers and I don't necessarily permit everything that GS finds even it is mine. I obviously allow journal publications, but I only have more significant working papers, reports and conference presentations. Even those, I might combine (for example, if a conference paper is an early version of something then I might combine the two records so that someone following the conference paper can immediately find the more complete / later paper). In some sense I am trying to direct any searchers to what I think is the best description of my research.
So, back to your main point - would I get put off? I would get put off if someone had lots of minor work, even if they also had the major work. To me, this looks like padding. However, I came from a government/industry background, and many academic CVs look too long to me. Twelve pages of publications gives me the impression that the person has no ability to assess relevance or is too lazy to customise the CV. So I may not be the best judge.
Thanks. Your usage is very much like my own. I certainly merge old versions etc. One difference in academia is that you have PhD students, so I feel badly to take off minor works for me that are major works for them. But I certainly have two separate CVs, one for business & one for academia. As you see from other responses, academics can be very concerned about not losing work, so I guess the real question here is whether google scholar is that place that's a complete index, or whether it's become a CV and therefore needs more substantial curating / pruning.
I gave this the bonus because it came the closest to actually answering my question (the last paragraph.) A lot of the other answers didn't really address the question but talked about how to use GS, which I already do.
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191380 | Can a degree program require students to get a minor in another field?
I recently found a Computer Science BA degree program that requires, as part of the program requirements, students to get a minor in a second department. They say this is done to provide the student with breadth and depth apart from their BS program. Is this arrangement of "Just get any other minor" a common or uncommon in CS or other STEM departments? Is it beneficial for the students versus teaching additional humanities-oriented courses in the CS department?
If anyone knows of examples of such programs a comment would be appreciated.
I think this the title for this quesiton would be better if it was "Is requiring studnest to get a minor in another field beneficial" or even "what evidence is there that requiring...". The answer to almost any "Can a degree program..." is "yes, a degree program can do what ever it wants"
I think it is common for colleges to require students to pick a Major + Minor. It is unusual that the CS Department itself is enforcing this as opposed to the college as a whole.
The BS in Mathematics in my department has such a requirement and our faculty have chosen to keep the requirement so that students have more breadth in their undergraduate program. I can't say how common it is.
It is a fairly uncommon practice that I would expect to see at small liberal arts colleges. Such a program does make sense. Many computing related jobs benefit from such capabilities as good writing (which one can pick up by studying history or theology for example) or some background knowledge in an application area such as music or art for people interested in certain aspects of game development.
The college can then offer a reduced computing program (as compared to ABET or ACM core requirements) while still allow their graduates to transition easily in a role in computing.
Prescribing the minor would not work well. One of the reasons to get a liberal arts degree is to be a good all-rounder.
Students from an ABET accredited program should be able to code around these liberal arts students (though that is debatable), but will not do so well in jobs that are not exclusively engineering oriented.
Finally, the experience gathered on the job becomes a larger and larger part of a person's capabilities so that the importance of the college experience slowly recedes over the years.
On a personal note, many, many years ago, I was at St. Louis University, which at that point (how times have changed) had a very rudimentary CS degree in Mathematics, but their graduates were picked up by Anheuser Busch and similar places, not because of their engineering skills, but because they could easily learn to do the software engineering jobs (basically application programming) while being able to write such things as manuals and communicate well with the users of their programs. Apparently, they found it more difficult to teach these soft skills to graduates from more computer centric programs.
What is ABET and ACM?
@AzorAhai-him- See abet.org and acm.org. The first is an engineering and CS accreditation org and the latter is one of the two main computing societies.
I'm surprised you say "uncommon". I'll guess you had such a rule in your undergrad days as did I.
@Buffy I can Google, why don't you add those to the answer?
@AzorAhai-him-, not my answer, so I hesitate.
A degree program is basically a list of requirements to fulfill, primarily a list of courses. For example, you must complete courses A, B, C, D, E, F, X, Y, Z to get the degree.
Requiring a minor is no different than saying you must complete A, B, C, D, E, F, M, where M = X, Y, Z. A program may give you some flexibility on what courses fulfill X, Y, and Z; if they choose to organize X, Y, Z into various versions of "M", that's really no different.
An institution can group and require their courses however they'd like, presumably they're trying to either make their program attractive to students directly or make their graduates attractive to people who might want to employ or train them further (and therefore make their program attractive to students indirectly).
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108890 | Using others' dissertation theme and layout
I have been working on my dissertation and when doing the literature review I stumbled across another dissertation with similar research ideas as myself.
When reading it I reallly like the layout and structure as they based it around a specific well known framework. I have found myself using a similar layout and theme but with my own content, data collection, analysis and findings.
Can someone confirm if this is ok? Or will I need to restructure it?
Within reason, the general structure and format of a research document is not really something that can be protected by copyright and is not really subject to copyright. You shouldn't run into plagiarism issues, either.
However, if you very closely mimic the organization and layout of a thesis, you should at the very least acknowledge the source to which you are indebted for the structure of your thesis with a citation.
Hi, thanks for responding. Where in the dissertation should I cite?
Probably wherever you discuss the structure of yours.
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111728 | Will I be too old to apply for Ph.D. at the age of 30
I have completed my master's degree year ago and took a gap of 2-3 years before committing to the Ph.D. Right now my financial condition is worse and I don't want to make any decision in any urgency. My peers are getting enrolled for Ph.D. and I am getting worried by watching them. I am 27 right now and planning to collect enough money and build my resume strong to get into a decent Ph.D. program in Europe or Asia. Is my decision wrong? I need some advice from experienced peoples.
Thank you.
No. I've seen doctoral students twenty years my senior. Do it if you're ready.
@SeanRoberson My intention is to get enough experience and knowledge so that I won't have hard time deciding on what field I want to work on.
@SeanRoberson nothing wrong with this as an answer, but it's not a comment :)
Absolutely not.
You are never too old, in years, to start a Doctoral program or to otherwise extend your education. However, you need to do a couple of things while you "wait".
Most important is that you don't lose your edge. If you are working in the field of study you should probably be fine and your experience may help. In fact, it may give you some ideas about unsolved issues in the field that might lead to research and a dissertation. But you will also need to try to keep current through readings. You don't say which field you plan to enter, but some move faster than others. New possibilities for research open up as well.
The second thing is that you will need to be prepared to answer questions about the gap in an intelligent and positive way. Getting experience in field is a pretty good answer. Recovering from burn out is not so fine.
However, as you age, you may take on additional responsibilities that you don't now have: family, kids, mortgage, ... Seek life balance of course, but as your responsibilities change, so may your goals. You will also need to deal, increasingly, with the needs of others. But nothing is an absolute block.
Remember that you will age no matter what you do. It is better to spend your life doing something you love than otherwise, even if it takes a while to realize the dream.
My current job at a start-up is aligned with my intended research during PhD.
That should help, but note the new penultimate paragraph in my answer.
I totally agree with you. I work in AI (artificial intelligence) company and my future research would also be in AI. I love my job, though pay is less but learning is awesome.
Definitely not!
In fact, one of the best researchers in my group started her PhD at the age of 33. She managed to publish papers in high impact journals, got a patent and last year she was hired as a post-doc.
As @Buffy said, it is indeed important for you to have an idea of your project. However, from my experience, don't hold onto it too much. Be adventurous! Good science might come from a previously established good idea, but it can also happen out of chance. You'll never know if you don't try.
And also agreeing with @Buffy, do take into consideration your personal side. Living out of PhD salary can be quite tricky if you have others financially relying on you. Another thing is: make sure that, if you have a partner, he/she will be supportive. PhD involves working late hours, sometimes following tight deadlines, dealing with frustration and so on.
Don't compare your age with others'. Everyone has a different time to do things. As long as you know what you are getting into and you are ready to commit, you will be more than fine.
Best of luck in your PhD!
I am not married as for now. Planning in between PhD or may be after that.
@User relationships are not the problem, selfish partners are. You will be following your dream, so make sure that your significant other will not compete with your work.
Hello, I can't comment on that as I have never been in any relationship yet.
@User Additionally, do try to find a good balance in your professional and personal life. Have fun in the meantime. Getting too dragged into work will only make you too stressed out.
I had really bad moments during my first year of PhD because I was neglecting my social life. Find a good balance for you, and your PhD years will be nice.
Thank you for your kind advice, I'll keep that in my mind.
@User My pleasure! I really hope that you find a career path that will bring joy and sense of accomplishment for you. :)
I started my Phd at the age of 35 and I never feel too old to do research. I acyually found that my years experience acquired from work helps me quite a lot in my Phd study.
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109315 | Change from one PhD-Program to a much more prestigious (and better paid) new program at my institution
I started my PhD last year in November. I've now heard of an incredibly attractive program that is just starting this autumn, with insanely good working condition (the salary is basically twice as high as my current salary and there are also nice internship options, which my program completely lacks.) My PhD advisor actually also participates in the program as an advisor. Thematically it is very close to what I am working on currently. I'm not unhappy with my current position or working environment.
Is it advisable to talk to my advisor about applying for this program? Of course, it is not very likely that I would even be admitted to the program, but it is so attractive, that not applying seems stupid. For different reasons, even though my advisor also participates in the program, I would not be able to apply for a position supervised by him.
I would have definitely applied for this program, had it existed last year. Also, when I started my PhD I did have the clear intention of finishing it, so some possibly related questions do not apply here.
So a conversation with your advisor starting with something like 'Hey, whats up with this new program I've heard you are involved in?' is out of the question?
If you apply there could be a like a 50% chance they accept you. If you don't apply, there would be like a 100% chance that they won't accept you. Consider doing what's in your best interest.
I don't see how this is an ethics issue. Unless you're worried your advisor might behave unethically upon learning about your desire to apply and either sabotage it, or hold your attempt against you later if you failed to get in. Those are the dangers we can't really judge the individual for you. However if you start by telling your advisor you are currently happy, but that the double pay and other opportunities are too tempting to pass up, it may go well.
I have some sympathy for your situation - my PhD programme had x5 Wellcome Trust funded students, plus me as the single MRC funded PhD student on 1/2 their stipend. In my case, one of the other students decided to leave the programme early on, however that did not mean that I got access to their higher funding.
Just a couple of things to be aware of in your situation when talking to your supervisor (I'm based in the UK and did my PhD in Genomics):
1) Depending on the policies of your funding body and the timing of when you drop out of the programme your failure to complete your PhD could be recorded and could negatively impact your supervisor's access to grants from that source for future PhD students. I know situations where late or non-submission of a thesis has had a greater impact on the supervisor's prospects than the student's - PIs/departments don't want a black mark on their record jeopardising future funding.
2) Depending on your funding situation any unspent pot of money allocated for your PhD might be lost to your department/supervisor should you drop out (not to mention that a year's worth of expenses has already been consumed).
First off make sure you have some solid research about that program, I've seen tons of friends jump ship from Masters of Engineering to MBA Business, only for them to call me crying about how terrible the program and job opportunities are.
Second, you best get solid networking connections, a prof is an okay start but knowing the dean of program is better.
Third, find out which companies/organizations are the big sponsors of the program and network with the people who are board members.
Fourth, find out and get to know the people who are doing the acceptance of applicants. Might take a few phone calls and emails, but use some social engineering (legal ways only, don't do anything illegal). And then network with them.
Fifth, join the Uni club associated with that program. And network with the people in that program.
Recommending that someone date the dean's kids is such horrible advice that I don't even know where to begin.
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109398 | coauthor removed other author's name after reviews
I have discovered that a co-author has submitted a book chapter to a major publisher omitting my name of co-author list without me knowing. I was included in the first submissions, but corresponding author made an executive decision to not include me, based on unknown grounds. I have substantially and creatively contributed to the work, in design, datacollection and analysis. What are my options now to get credit where credit is due? technically it is plagiarism, I think.
I would verify that this was done on purpose first
how does it change the facts?
It may or may not technically be plagiarism, but it’s definitely fraud if it was done without your consent. Papers and book chapters can be retracted for such infractions.
If this has indeed happened, then your next step—assuming you've reached an impasse with your co-authors—should be to contact the editor and publisher of the book, laying out your case with the appropriate documentary evidence included in its entirety. Make sure they have enough information that they’re not going on a “fishing expedition.” There should be clear correspondence—emails showing the work and production of the article with your participation, and so on.
And, never work with that person again...
If you do as the above answer says, you could possibly put the entire publication on hold until your issue has been resolved , that will derail the reputation of the bad guy the next time he goes to a famous publisher !
I'm curious, why do you say it's not technically plagiarism? It certainly seems like wrongful appropriation and misrepresentation of another author's work to me.
@Anyon There isn’t enough to say if it’s plagiarism, especially if results and decisions were shared with the other authors. But what has been done is absolutely unethical. If I were writing the editor, though, I’d lead with “My co-author removed my name without my consent,” not a plagiarism accusation, which would be confusing.
@aeismail I certainly agree with that, and with your prudent edit.
Why the first step would be contacting the editor and not the co-authors? I think that he should escalate the situation to the editor only after talking to them. It is implicit in the question that he already contacted them, but for completeness and to avoid ambiguity I think it would be better to set this as the first step as @cactus_pardner suggested in his answer.
@TheDoctor: I was assuming an impasse had been reached. I've made that explicit. But the obvious issue is that if the OP changes the other authors' minds, there will be a major issue raised at the journal—why was the author added all of a sudden?
You might also examine if there are any parts where you hold the copyright. It's usually not of that much importance in academia, but if you insist that nothing appear in a book without your name on it if you are the copyright holder, then he's in trouble.
Retraction Watch has a lot of useful reports on the aftermaths of such investigations. I'd recommend looking at the kinds of sanctions universities have imposed.
It's easy for people to make stupid mistakes, especially if they had to write the author list in a new form. (Harder to accidentally delete one name from a pre-existing list, though.) I recently got an email from coauthors saying, "Oops, we forgot to put your name on the most recent submission," after being on a prior conference submission. They promised to make it right on the next phase of the project.
The absolutely first thing to do is to approach the corresponding author directly about this mistake, and politely ask them to correct it in the current draft (or with the editor and publisher, if it's that far along). They will either do so or give you more information. Even if it was somehow intentional, treating it like a mistake allows them to change course but still save face.
Before you approach them about this, be prepared to escalate the issue as aeismail suggests. If they refuse to add you back on, then contact the editor and publisher. You can also add, "The corresponding author claimed X when I asked about this today, but clearly the emails enclosed show !X." That is, if the other person is acting in bad faith, then they might try to talk with the editor and publisher before you do; and there is some benefit to being able to tell the story of a conflict first.
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109618 | During junior year, should I focus on taking advanced courses in my major for admission to grad school, or can I take courses for my minor?
I came in as a liberal arts major freshman year, and by around February realized it wasn't what I wanted to do.
I took general chemistry last summer. By the end of the summer, I had begun working in a research lab and was already on track to graduate with the rest of my fellow biochem majors. By that I mean I was in the same courses as everyone else,
e.g., took organic, physics, required maths, etc.
This summer I'll be working a paid internship working in the lab, and might be able to get something published. Junior year will be this fall; I'm taking biochemistry and physical chemistry. In that regard, I'm on track with the other chem majors.
I'm not sure to what extent this is a "problem" per se, but I've really begun to enjoy physics and decided to minor it after the introductory physics courses I took this year. I was considering taking two higher-level physics courses both in the fall and spring of my junior year.
I want to go graduate school for chemistry. But will it look bad on my transcript if I have all of those physics courses junior year? That is, will it seem like I'm not focused enough in the field of chemistry? Should I be spending those seven credit hours on something like analytical chem or a special topic in biochemistry course instead? Should my junior year have more chemistry courses than biochem and pchem? Should I drop the physics courses to focus on more chemistry courses?
It sounds like you've got a plan to take all of the courses required for your chemistry core. That being the case, having a physics minor won't hurt you since physics and chemistry are closely related sciences. Having a broader background in a related science will likely help you as long as you have the required core courses. You will also have a chance to do some more upper level chemistry work in your senior year.
Doing research will really stand out in your application as well, and this is at least as good as having done an upper division special topics course. Since graduate school is more focused on research, having undergraduate research experience lines up well with your plans, and that will stand out to the selection committee.
My one suggestion would be to start looking ahead to where you want to go to grad school. Look at their graduate college page and see what courses are required for applicants and make sure your remaining course work lines up with that. Also look at the faculty research pages and start thinking about who you want to work with as a graduate adviser (a critical decision!). Contact a couple you're interested in and ask for a phone or skype informational interview. In addition, talk to your current research adviser or the principal investigator you're going to be working with this summer. Most likely, they will be very happy to mentor you in preparing for graduate school, and also helping you establish contacts at your schools of interest. My undergraduate research advisor helped me open doors to both graduate school and a prestigious post-grad internship that really boosted my appeal as a grad school candidate. Good luck!
If you're applying for graduate school programs, you want to present the strongest case you can that you are on track to satisfy the requirements of the program and, even more importantly, that you will be able to do research in the field. Most undergraduate chemistry departments have a relatively well-specified curriculum, with a number of courses being fairly standard requirements (general, organic, physical, inorganic, analytical), and then a few electives. If possible, if you can, you should try to have all the "standard" courses and one or two of the more advanced electives finished by the time you apply.
The extra courses in physics might be helpful, but not nearly so much as the chemistry courses will be. So, if you have to choose between a chemistry course and a physics course, I'd go with the chemistry course this year, and wait until your senior year to take the remaining ones.
You see, under normal circumstances I'd do this, but the class is only offered on odd years, and it's a really interesting course on gravitation and spacetime that I won't get to take unless I do it my junior year. At the same time, that's four credit hours I could be spending on some specialized biochemistry course
You said you wanted to take multiple courses in physics, so you could always split the difference.
Right, the issue is that if I don't take those specific courses this year, they won't be offered the next year, my senior year, as they're only offered in the spring of odd years (2019)
Given that, I’d argue do one of each: take an advanced chem course and an advanced physics course. Unfortunately, sometimes we have to think of long-term goals in making short-term decisions and sacrifice. Besides, you might be able to incorporate some of your physics work into your graduate curriculum, as many grad programs require a minor as well.
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157717 | What happens if I don't pay the article processing charge after my paper was accepted by a gold open access journal?
My manuscript has got accepted and published online as "in press" in an Elsevier journal.
I noticed that it is an open access journal late after its acceptance.
I have not signed any forms yet, but the "in press" manuscript is online.
I cannot afford the cost and asked for a waiver. They declined my request.
Can anybody recommend me what to do?
What happens if I don't pay the fee? Will it affect my chances of future publications in other journals of the same publisher?
Please let me have your thoughts.
Thanks
Will your employer pay the fee? Some will.
You probably accepted some kind of contract when submitting your manuscript. Have a look at the journal guidelines and agreements that you accepted.
@Mark, implicit contracts are problematic. I doubt that there is any thing enforceable until you sign something. A submission is just an offer, not a contract.
@Buffy, no, they won't. The open access journals is a red line for them.
@gnometorule, I have published several paper in Elsevier journals but all were non-open access. I have had reviewed many manuscripts for the journal but never knew it was "only OA". In the guidelines page it is not clearly stated that they are OA. But, have a link, which I did not click, to a page where it is explained in detail.
@Mathisfreedom: It sounds as if I mid-read your question.
It is very strange: usually there are some forms to sign before they can even start the publishing process. There may be some fine print on the journal web page saying something like "by submitting the paper, you agree to the following terms and conditions", of course (or even some "I agree" button that you might click without reading what you are agreeing to as most people do). You may want to check that to see to what extent the "contract" is enforceable. Unfortunately, I have no answer to your main question. Promaster1 may be right but that doesn't sound like a real threat, just nuisance.
@ fedja, In the journal guidelines it is stated that "Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (see more information on this). An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement." I have not completed the forms sent to me by the journal and Elsevier yet.
how did things turn out for you? Did you pay the fee?
I am exactly in the same situation right now. I regret greatly that I did not read the open access's policy carefully.
@Idearix They keep sending me emails, yet I cannot pay.
That's odd, when I recently submitted to an open access elsevier journal (which are currently waiving the fee) selecting the publication method (which included the cost) was one of the steps I had to do on each submission / revision. In any case I'd contact the editor and explain your issue.
Can anybody recommend me what to do?
Apologize and retract the paper.
What happens if I don't pay the fee?
Your paper will not be published by this journal.
Will it affect my chances of future publications in other journals of the same publisher?
Probably not. I doubt they track this behavior. Many of Elsevier's journals are edited independently, and will not care about a mistake made in a different journal.
Why is this answer being downvoted?
@JeffE because the last part is dangerous - this kind of behavior can be tracked, and journals can also feel aggrieved since it's rather exploitative of their resources. If you were the editor/publisher of an open access journal, would you send a paper out for review knowing that the authors had earlier reneged on an implicit agreement to pay the APC?
Rather than depublish the paper, it's more likely that they'll paywall it (unless this is a pure open access journal).
@henning--reinstateMonica The question is clear it is pure.
Irrespective of weather the last part is true or not (the answer says "Probably"), there really is no other option than withdrawing the paper.
"Your paper will not be published by this journal." Are you sure? Have you ever seen this happen?
Assuming you can't pay the fee, then you should make it clear to the journal that you can't pay the fee. What happens next is up to them. It's possible they will retract the article; it's also possible they will publish it anyway as a gesture of goodwill.
Will it affect your chances of future publications in other journals of the same publisher? It's possible. Modern editorial management systems are capable of tracking submissions by the same person, and the data can be shared between journals. The real question is whether the journal will take action. They are more likely to take action if they think you were being exploitative, and less likely if they think it was a genuine mistake. In the former scenario, the exploitative author submits to the journal knowing they will not publish there, but are making use of the journal's resources/time to get "free" peer review for their paper. It's similar to how taking up "free consultation" services with no intention of actually purchasing the service can be viewed as exploitative. To avoid looking exploitative, you should definitely say that you noticed the journal was open access too late.
"making use of the journal's resources/time to get "free" peer review for their paper." That's both an ineffective and an unethical way to improve your work. I doubt anyone has ever done that.
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36558 | Can I send math subject GRE scores to programs that do not require them?
I'm applying math graduate program and know that some program reads "gre math subject is not required". Does that mean I can't send gre subject score to them?
And if I also want to apply cs program, can I send gre math sub score to them to exhibit my mathematical ability?
You can still send it in. You can always add more information to your application, but there is no guarantee that they will consider it. I know a few schools have stopped asking for GRE subject scores because they don't feel that it's a good way to predict performance, and if that is the case they will not look at it. Assuming you have a good score, it will not count against you.
You can and should send them. Not required means it is not essential; they don't want someone who has not taken that exam to worry. But grad schools would typically want to know about a candidate from as many sources as possible and getting your subject GRE scores is really a good plus point for your candidature. Of course , additional fee for each report has to be borne
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93552 | Is it okay to ask a former tenured professor why he suddenly left his job?
He's also not listed in the faculty directory / contact list any longer.
I used to meet him about twice a semester to talk about life and academics, so he knew me fairly well.
He was tenured and, to me, was brilliant.
Can I email him to say hello and ask why he left? Or is that being too nosy and inappropriate?
Only you know if you know the guy good enough to do that. And what has this to do with "academics"?
Do not be nosy. Just email and tell him that you would quite like to continue meeting him twice per semester, assuming that he still has the time and the inclination to do so.
This is very country-dependent and culture-dependent. In some it would be ok, in others it would be nosy and rude.
Does it potentially impact you? You may be able to get your impact analysis without prying too much into personal details.
May be a better fit for the new https://interpersonal.stackexchange.com/
Unless you are a very good friend, you should not ask the question. You can, of course, continue to meet him in private if he is up for that. I do not recommend prying into the issue if he does not talk about that from his own initiative.
As Philipp said .. Maybe you know someone in his former department you can quietly ask? "Oh, he moved to Princeton" or "He had a heart attack" or "He started his own company" or "He resigned to care for his ailing mother" ...
There is a million possible reasons why the professor and the university do not work together anymore. Some of these reasons might be private matters which should not be shared with the public. Tenured appointments aren't broken easily, so you can assume it's either one very serious problem or a huge number of small problems. The problem might or might not be relevant to you personally. But unless you have good reason to believe that the problem is relevant to you, acting on the assumption that it is would be unfair.
You could always ask, but if the professor doesn't seem to be willing (or able) to speak about it, pondering the issue will just hurt your relationship. But if you really want to find out what happened, you might want to ask people in person, not per mail. It might be a matter nobody wants to make any statements about in writing.
I disagree with "you can assume it's either one very serious problem or a huge number of small problems." It might not be a problem at all. I know someone who suddenly left a tenured full professorship to move to a research position in industry. His main reason was that he wanted to develop resl-world applications of the theoretical work that he had done at the university.
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80581 | Can one do mathematical physics research without much knowledge of physics
I've looked around a little but did not find something that really answers my question.
I'm a (pure) math student currently applying for Ph.D. My interest are in fields that are closely linked to physics, mainly PDEs and analysis in general. I have basically no basis in physics except for some very basic reading.
My question is: is it really possible to do good research on the maths of a subject such as quantum mechanics, kinetic theory, general relativity, etc... without prior knowledge beside maths ?
I should finally add that this question is for a Ph.D. in West Europe, and that the programs I target do not have a taught component (even if it is probably possible to follow some courses if necessary).
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about a specific subject.
Should I move it into the mathematics stackexchange? I hesitated to put it here at first.
I revised the title to say "mathematical physics" since that's what the body of the question specifies. The answers would be totally different if you wanted to do math research that isn't directly related to physics.
It might be off-topic also on Mathematics SE (and also on Physics SE), but I don't know their rules very well.
If you want to do applied math with applications specifically to physics, you either need to learn some physics, or you need to have close collaboration with someone who knows some physics. Same for any other area of application.
Historically, most of the mathematics was developed to solve physical problems, and a fair amount of physical intuition helps to understand the ideas behind the mathematical methods, interpret solutions and check that their mathematical form is consistent with subject-specific problem, and also to develop new methods and communicate them to the users. So in general some background in Physics improves your chances to do a successful research in Applied Mathematics, and in particular to carry out PhD program.
However, there are some areas of Maths where you do just fine without any Physics. For example, general analysis of PDEs can lead you into functional analysis, and I don't think that analysis of properties of Sobolev spaces relies hugely on physical intuition.
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85090 | How to submit a computer science paper to arXiv when I am a physicist?
I am member of the Physics Department at my uni. I did the arXiv registration and automatically was allowed to submit papers in maths and physics. However I am interested in submitting a pre-print work in computational linguistics (mixed with acoustics). I found the right place in arXiv to do this: https://arxiv.org/list/cs.CL/new. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to sumbit papers to computer science -> computational linguistics. How can I do this?
That is somewhat hidden. Here's where you find that:
Login to the arXiv, go to "My Account". Below the info-box with your information there is the link "Change User Information". There you'll find boxes for the different groups to tick.
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87108 | Should list my advisor as an author on a paper I wrote alone?
As a part of my PhD project, I wrote a paper. When my supervisor read it, she said “it is perfect and complete, go ahead and publish it yourself because I cannot contribute more to it”. She really meant it and tried to do me a favor.
However, I still think it can be more beneficial for my future to have her name on my paper. Should I insist to have her as a coauthor or it might be useful in the future to have all the credits of a good paper?
If you put your supervisor on the paper as an author, that would be academic dishonesty since she did not contribute sufficiently to it to earn authorship. Having your supervisor as a coauthor does not increase the value of the paper (and for you personally, it would probably decrease the value).
What you are proposing is known as gift authorship.
@DavidKetcheson: True, but I advise against using that term. It makes it sound like a positive act of giving, which is not how I see it.
it can be more beneficial for my future to have her name on my paper – What makes you think so?
@DavidKetcheson I'm not convinced this is a dupe. The other question is quite clearly phrased around a lab environment and it's not clear that this applies, here.
My advice would be to read the answers to http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/644/705, and if they don't adequately answer this question, revise this question based on what you've read there. At minimum, that will help you provide relevant information (e.g., about the involvement of your supervisor in project topic selection and the research work itself; the field and the standards in your field); but more likely, the answers there provide a suitable answer to your situation.
You should be a sole author for two reasons. First, your supervisor did not contribute to the paper. Some journals actually make you write out what each author accomplished, so you would be at a loss there anyway. Second, a sole-authored publication will demonstrate that you can work independently, which looks great to faculty search committees! When you are on the market, they want to hire people who will become independent researchers. You are demonstrating that by sole-authorship! If you want to publish with your supervisor because she is well-known in the field, my suggestion is that you talk with her about an additional paper project that both of you can work on.
On a side note, your supervisor might have described your paper as "perfect and complete," though this is only one reviewer's opinion. Though the paper may be at a stage for journal submission, please be prepared that the 2-5 blind reviewers may have different opinions about what is "perfect and complete." You still may get A LOT of revision requests from them. I'm sure you did a great job, I just don't want you to get discouraged if the reviewers end up being more critical.
Best of luck!!!!
One problem a friend of mine had: his advisor had encouraged him to write almost exlusively single-author papers, so that when it came time for him to apply to postdocs, people in the field did not know who his advisor was because they had written hardly any papers together! So, it is important to balance the value of a single-author paper with the value of letting people know who your advisor is (as well as only listing authors in a paper who actually contributed to the paper.)
@Joshua The way the hiring committees will know who his advisor was is by the fact that his advisor will be writing him a letter of recommendation.
@TobiasKildetoft, but they won't know until then. It's difficult to establish at a general level during your grad school years who's student you are if that fact isn't being advertised on your papers (at least in some fields).
@Joshua And why does it matter before that point?
Exactly this, +1.
If simply having others know that someone is/was your advisor is important, my suggestion is to list your advisor on your CV where you list your degree and institution. For example, underneath "2010 | PhD, Discipline, University of Somewhere" you can write on the line below: "Dissertation/Thesis Title. Advisor, Dr. V. Smith."
To the point of only having single-authored papers, this is also discouraged, because it is unclear if you can conduct and write research in a collaborative setting, which is how most research is done today.
@TobiasKildetoft, to help build your brand before that point, and to get people to notice your papers (people are more likely to read papers coauthored by an established person in the field than just by someone random they've never heard of before).
@Nicole Ruggiano: I would have thought that everyone who is recently graduated (well, virtually everyone; there's always going to be exceptions to most anything) would say who their Dissertation advisor is on their CV, and probably also the title in order to convey at a glance what the topic is. The fact that you would have to even say this suggests that this is not as universal as I had thought. On the other hand, I don't think I've ever seen a CV (in mathematics) where this was not listed, and at the least I've seen several hundred such CV's in the past 25+ years.
Thanks for the follow-up, Dave! I have learned that graduate students and junior faculty have wild variability in the amount of professional development mentoring they receive. Also, many junior scholars look at senior scholars' documents for guidance on CV writing, and a senior person wouldn't necessarily have that. So, I don't take for granted what junior scholars know and don't know about CV writing. It's good to make sure they have the basics!
TL;DR: Don't list her as an author, because: 1. She isn't one. 2. It's ok for you to be the sole author.
First it must be said that the question of what benefits you is the minor consideration in listing the authors of a paper. A scientific paper needs to be attributed to the people who performed the research and/or writeup, and that's that. While there are many cases in which it's not clear whether a person should or shouldn't count as an author because the weight of the contribution is debatable, this is not one of them. So even if it were to help you somehow to list your advisor as an author - it would be inappropriate. Unethical even.
Irrespective of that fact, it's perfectly common and acceptable, and often appreciated, for PhD candidates to write papers of their own. So you're not even risking anything.
I advise clarifying with the supervisor whether "go ahead and publish it yourself because I cannot contribute more to it" meant that you should submit it with only your name in the author list, or whether they meant that in their opinion it was ready for submission and that they had no suggestions for improvement.
At the University where I completed my PhD, and at others Universities of which I have direct knowledge, it was the norm (i.e. expected) to include supervisors as co-authors independent of direct contribution to a paper.
In the case where you are the (otherwise) sole author then the author list would read < self >, < supervisor1 >, < supervisor2 >, ... . And in the case where you were the lead author and had contributions from others then the author list would read < self >, < co-contributor1 >, < co-contributor2 >, ..., < supervisor1 >, < supervisor2 >... .
Additional commentary:
I have not been able to find anything which states this explicitly. I have since found this, which to me indicates that supervisors should only be listed as coauthors if they directly contribute, contradicting what was communicated verbally to me:
List the authors on the title page by full names whenever possible. Please be absolutely sure you have spelled your coauthors’ names correctly. Be sure also to use the form of the names that your coauthors prefer. Include only those who take intellectual responsibility for the work being reported, and exclude those who have been involved only peripherally. The author list should not be used in lieu of an acknowledgments section.
(Additional Information for BSc Honours Dissertation and MSc Research Projects)
On reflection, this suggests that early papers will normally have supervisors as coauthors (assuming intellectual or tangible contributions to the papers) as the PhD candidate develops as a researcher, but that later papers would only list supervisors if the supervisor has clearly contributed in the same way as would be considered for any other person to be listed as a coauthor.
(Independent of this, I have also seen academic environments where it is politically expedient to list supervisors as coauthors - to keep them happy, so to speak...)
Could you provide anything official from said schools on this policy? It goes directly against most academic principles of what authorship means.
Mick, I take "publish it yourself" and the fact that the poster asked this question to suggest that it does indeed mean "without advisor as coauthor". Just because it was practice at your institution to include as courtesy doesn't mean it is universal. I too had one paper as a PhD student where my advisor said he didn't contribute and shouldn't be included.
I have added some additional commentary. In my opinion there seems to be often cases where academic principles and internal politics are not aligned. ;-)
My advice is to ask your supervisor. If she really does not want to go on the paper, ask other colleagues who might have helped you. If she hints otherwise, include her. Being alone on that paper might raise your reputation in a way, but it might also give the impression that you are grandiose and ungrateful and not a teamplayer. And that you don't recognize a situation where you can indebt other people to you at no cost. If in your group, everybody writes their papers with ten co-authors, chances are that being a sole author on a well-published paper will invite bad feelings from your peers.
But the OP clearly already asked their supervisor, so does this advice make sense?
Honestly, I think this answer is mostly nonsense. Authorship is an important thing, and it's important that every person listed as an author made actual contributions to the paper. Advisors often contribute (e.g., through general discussion) more than the student thinks but, in this case, the advisor has already said that she doesn't feel she should be an author. Looking around for other people to list as authors is even worse. And no reasonable person is going to come to judgements or jealousy because of one paper.
In any case, it's very unlikely that somebody would write a single-author paper in an environment where most papers have ten authors. In that sort of environment, almost all research begins as a group project, so there are multiple authors from day one.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:48.889576 | 2017-03-26T11:53:48 | {
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68053 | Ways to Improve Grading Speed of Papers
I have the privilege of teaching composition. This requires me to read several dozen papers in a given class. I have rubrics but no matter what I have to sit down and read the papers word for word in order to assess them. They're not long papers (about 10 pages), but I still have to read them.
Naturally, this takes a great deal of time in comparison to grading other forms of assignments. Checking main ideas, grammar, cohesiveness, APA formatting, etc.is slowly becoming a nightmare.
I want to know ways that others use to decrease the amount of time it takes to mark term papers.
There's a related question here, although that one is about grading problem sets, not papers; but maybe you will find some of those suggestions useful nonetheless.
yeah I saw that, so I was really careful in how I worded the question. This question focuses on compositions and not short answer/problem sets
Hmm, a tremendous amount of creative liberty was taken in the editing. I know we need to catch grammar but I don't recall saying anything about a "nightmare". I just don't express myself in such a vulnerable way.
Not sure what you're getting at? You can see the complete version history by clicking on the "Edited" link above and see exactly who said what. As far as I can see, "nightmare" was your word.
You could always say "If you don't hand me any of your sheisty papers you will get an A. If you hand me one of your sheisty papers, I might not like it and you might not get an A."(Zizek) Then all of your papers will be read with quality but you might not have any papers to read!
I find it efficient to make several passes through the all papers. Although it would involve reading each paper more than once, I find I am able to give them better focus and achieve better results, which I will explain.
In the first pass I check for very basic things, such a rubric, have they been labelled correctly in the correct basic format; I check for typos, spelling, citations, bibliography and note anything messy and distracting. Having got those out of the way I find I can now focus on content without being constantly distracted by flagging the visual aspects. I read (scan) through all the papers only handling the trivial aspects. Once done I start again on the next pass.
In the next pass I focus on the reading and ensure the sentences and paragraphs make sense. I can pick up missed words, malapropisms, homophones, punctuation and such like this way. Once I am happy that the words make sense on a micro scale (in all the papers), I can start to look at the bigger picture.
On the third pass I can look at overall structure; is the material introduced in a sensible order, is the focus on the right area and finally did I enjoy reading it and did overall make sense.
It might seem long winded, but I find that my performance (scripts per hour) can be faster and more detailed than myself or compared to colleagues that note everything in one script before moving to another.
This may not work for others, but I offer it as an example methodology.
To clarify, do you do all three passes on one paper before moving on to the next paper, or do you do pass one on all papers, then pass two on all papers, etc?
@ToddWilcox No. I do each pass on all the papers before starting again on the next pass. I thought my wording was clear....
Funny, I thought my wording was clear in that I wasn't asking a yes or no question... In any case, your method for grading is now clear to me, at least.
Sadly, you would have to read every single paper. In your particular case (language composition), you ought not to take shortcuts. Sparse reading of the composition would not provide proper evaluation. Hence you may not be able to decrease the time you spend for correction.
But, there are ways you can reduce the stress you get during correction. Segregate your task and process them at regular work-rest intervals instead of taking them all on at once. Also as you progress, your speed at evaluation will increase, but it will require experience.
Well, I don't want to sacrifice quality I just want to improve my efficiency
@DarrinThomas: Efficiency in this case would only improve through practice.
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