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28216 | How often should I review my notes?
Many years ago I was studying with the Open University. During that time I bought a revision aid. The basic principle was that you wrote out all you knew about a topic immediately after learning it. The note pages were marked so that they could be referenced against a sort of calendar. The idea was that you read through your notes something like the next day, again a week later and again something like 4 weeks later.
I recall that the thinking was that the frequency set coincided with the way your brain moves stuff from short- to long-term memory.
I'm just about to start studying again and I wondered if anyone might know what the frequency for reviewing one's notes might have been.
Are you asking about what is a good revision frequency from a scientific perspective? Or are you asking about what revision history was used in the particular software that you used to use? If its about software, I imagine it would be important to know what the software was called.
I'm really asking about what a good revision frequency might be. As I said, I'm about to start studying again and would like to give myself the best chance of making a decent fist of it.
Although this question is about Academia and learning, Your question seems opinion-based to me. Learning habits differs from one to another. Some people learn fast, some other need more frequent revisions. There is no solid advice here.
Are you looking for an answer based on personal experience, or research with supporting citation? If you're mainly interested in the latter, you should [edit] the question to say so, and also add the [tag:reference-request] tag.
@ff524, I'm looking for an answer based on personal experience. As I've said, I'm about to start studying again and am looking for a as much of a leg up as possible.
There are several algorithms for scheduled repetition of information on flash cards. It's possible that the software you liked uses one of these. This Wikipedia article on spaced repetiton discusses Pimsleur's graduated-interval recall and Leitner system, among others. This isn't the easiest topic to search for, but the Wikipedia article calls it "spaced repetition", and includes a list of alternative names. That should help you do further research.
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15793 | Should I challenge my professor who thinks he's always right?
One of my professors has been in the IT development fields for over 40 years. He thinks he is up-to-date with all the latest research and technology. But I believe he's not.
The problem is - he hates when a student (like me) dares to point out his mistakes or flaws in reasoning. Or when a student suggests a better (modern) solution to a problem.
How to deal with such a situation - should I keep challenging him or keep quiet until the end of semester? I don't want to lose grades (he's been known to give lower grades to students who asked him too many questions he wasn't able to properly answer).
Perhaps your professor is not against you pointing out his mistakes, but is against you pointing out his mistakes in public. He might take it as a sign of disrespect. You might want to communicate with him in private so that he doesn't lose face. (Although I personally have no problem with students pointing out my mistakes in public; in fact, I encourage them to do so.)
Usually I don't care about examples, but this question would be far more interesting with examples. As a matter of fact, I have hear about something similar wrt a boss being wrong and the employee telling the story is who was actually wrong...
What is the whole point, when you know you are at the losing end ?
Don't challenge the person -- that is confrontational, and generally will not lead to a productive outcome. If you believe there is a more "modern"/better alternative, then you could just ask about it in a way that lets him do his job -- instruct with what he knows. But be careful, you might just get tasked with "Please research a qualitative comparison of the two solutions, and come prepared to present to the class at the next meeting".
A lot of professors are annoyed by different perspectives not because they don't appreciate them in general but that they have an agenda to get through in class. You might find if you talk to him outside of class, he is different because he is not on the clock.
The type you represent is one I hate most during a class. And I guess I'm not the only one. (As others said, you could always try to talk with him after the class is over. If he does not care or just not open to your opinion, leave him be.)
Two factors that have not yet been addressed by any of the answers to this question: (1) A professor may give 'glib' answers that are technically not 'correct' from an in-depth perspective, because they intentionally want to keep things simple for undergraduates. (2) The best time to challenge the views of an individual professor is when you yourself are a professor and your challenge is i)rigorous; ii)well substantiated; and iii)unambiguous. There is a hierarchy within academia that pretty much guarantees that your views will carry little to no credibility until you complete your credentials.
@shwetaG: never argue with a professor — This is one of the few times I wish I could down-vote comments; like many other professors, I actually prefer students to tell me when I screw up.
@JeffE: It's not a problem for a student to question a professor. However, it is a problem if a discussion becomes a heated argument or a fight.
Show a bit of humility in your approach and consider the possibility and perhaps probability that he or she is right in the light of longer experience in the field. By all means ask why and explain your reasoning, but do it tactfully.
You're asking for advice on how to handle a situation without stating what your goal is. Is your goal to change the professor's behaviour? Convince him you're right? Graduate on time? Don't make us guess what your goal is; if you want advice on how to achieve a goal, state the goal.
When I was still in school, and I found mistakes in assignments/tests/exams, I would do it with the mistake in place, then do it again with the correction but as a separate answer (box it or something). Also I tend to ignore minor mistakes profs make during class, but if they do make bigger ones, I wouldn't go "Sir you're wrong..." I would try to make it look like I'm asking a question and he will figure it out... If it's a matter of opinion (which seems to be the case for you), the prof is always right :P
I can share an experience from college. I went to a school of natural resources. My environmental issues class teacher thought I/we were crazy when I pointed out we should use hemp fibers to make paper and other material. I pointed out that his own teachings said to be open to new ideas. This was back in the early 90's. That same semester Job Strobel, a tobacco farmer in Southern Ontario, was granted one of the first licenses to grow hemp for fiber. We plastered my teachers door with the news article. He apologized for calling us crazy next class. :) Depends on how you approach it i suppose.
It depends. When I was undergrad, I greatly appreciated the professors that could admit when they were wrong (since everyone, sooner or later, is). "Is that 2+2 really 5?" would suffice for them. But I also had one prof that I used to argue with mercilessly, because he was utterly unqualified for the subject, and spreading a bunch of factual misinformation. Example interaction: "That theorem seems wrong. If you substitute 0 for that x, you're getting 1=2." - "The theorem must be correct, the book says so." I had background in the subject, and considered it a duty to other students who did not.
Then again, it was not in US, I had a considerable reputation with the other faculty, and he knew he could not take revenge upon my grades without risking to expose his own deficiency as a professor. In general, though, a competent professor can always fail you legitimately (by posing a question he knows you can't answer), so being confrontational is not usually a good idea. He was not a competent professor, and I couldn't work up any degree of respect for him, so confrontation it was. After a while, the class thanked me, recognising that they were learning more from me than from him.
In my experience, grade paranoia is usually misplaced. As long as you remain civil and are right, there is no issue. But then, that's in CS in Germany; I've been told that student-professor dynamics are entirely different in other fields and even worse in other cultures (e.g. India).
I love it how almost everybody here, and especially @JeffE, think that because they have the right attitude and a well-functioning environment, it's the same for everybody. Some of us come from countries with not-best educational system. We can't get out (cost, family values, cost), and we have to finish because that's the best there is and the only thing we can do to help our future. I saw an old, outdated professor getting all the funding over younger, eager, good professors, just because the the old important people with money still remembered the old professor from old times.
@penelope: There's always a way to deal with these situations. If you're afraid of a direct challenge, phrase it as a question. "Why is it X? Can't we do Y instead?" or so on.
@penelope I can tell you that it's like there EVERYWHERE. Except for geniuses, who would still need some luck finding a good mentor to bring him/her up, seniority plays a big role. Recent generations (including mine) have been brought up to think that being right is the most important thing, I would like to disagree (so does this guy: http://www.ted.com/talks/ric_elias.html). Regarding your example of older prof getting funding, maybe younger people should consider building their own network of friends in order to surpass their predecessors? Yes the old prof had to work to make connections too
@Populus And building new connections would be grand if there would actually exist a wide-spread practice of funding from external (e.g. non-government) sources. It would work if the funding committees were not made of same, inert people as years ago, who still remember a name from years ago. If the uni was not pressed to state an old name or risk their finances. Mind you, he's getting by nicely these last few years, but with very "modern" and unconventional funding schemes. I'm not saying he'll not make a name for himself in time, but it will take a (very) long time due to system inertia.
Not enough points to answer, but after years of questioning profs I developed a technique: "So, it seems to me like we could use x for this. Would that functionally be the same? Could it be better? Would it be worse?"
From that, there are four basic answers he can give: "Yes", "No", "I'll get back to you on that", or "This is not relevant." If you feel he does not give a sufficient answer when saying "No," discuss it with him in private.
As far as grades are concerned, you are in college. You can appeal always appeal to a higher power if you think you are being mistreated.
One more thing: always ask your question from the position that you are wrong, you just don't know why yet. This will save you a lot of pain when you are wrong, and it forces you to keep an open mind. If you start with the assumption you are right, it is far harder to understand the explanation as to why your way might not be best.
I can tell you from personal experience it's probably best not to argue. I had an almost identical issue my senior year in college. I was given advice by my grandmother in that she said, "he (the professor / head of IT) is so tenure in his ways and beliefs, you are not going to change him, so don't bother." This is probably true in your case as well. There are always forums like this one to 'debate'; doing so with a professor may not have a favorable outcome.
@penelope while I agree with you that there are some real problems wih cliques in academia I find your initial comment needlessly confrontational (in particular, your digs about age and 'family values'). I should also point out that shwetaG is the one who made a blanket statement which contradicts the statements of a significant number of people (see for example here: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14291/how-should-students-react-to-inaccuracies-in-professors-teaching-without-causin/14292#14292).
It seems to me that both of you are assuming that because you have the wrong attitude and/or a poorly functioning environment everybody else must as well. The evidence rather suggests that professors who accept students who question them are not uncommon (of course, I accept that such folks are probably over represented on this site). Some anecdata: I have found such (excellent) teachers IRL both as a student in India and in the US.
You are probably suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's okay, many students suffer from it.
When teaching a subject matter that involves critical thinking and logical reasoning, a good teacher can lead her students to a problem, explain it and equip them with all necessary facts and logical tools to solve the problem themselves. Consider this when talking about these issues with your instructor.
Short answer: Probably not.
As you pointed out, you may lose out on grades by challenging this professor. A larger problem, in my opinion, is when you (the student) approach the class with an attitude of discovering the professor's many mistakes. With this attitude, you also lose out on the opportunity to learn from his expertise. While this particular professor may not be as modern as you would like, it does not mean you cannot learn from him!
Keep quiet until the end of the semester, except when you have a valid question. And don't approach intending to prove him wrong; approach intending to find out how you can learn from what he knows. Ask questions because you want to learn, not because you want to prove the professor wrong. If you believe you know a better solution, it might be appropriate to ask "Would this solution also work? If not, why not?" Ask, don't tell. Your professor is human too, and most of us have a hard time always responding graciously to a smarty-pants student who thinks they know more than we do!
I guess you're right; it's not worth trying to prove your point because no matter what (I should assume) a professor wants me to succeed.
The professor probably doesn't give a damn about your grades. They're your grades and he has other students that, if you start messing up their grades, will be a different story. If you think he's wrong then there's no need to wait but "Ask, don't tell" is a good policy to follow up after the lecture/lesson (an email with references to books or good sources and ask why he disagrees with that source.)
It worth 100 upvotes. Great.
Furthermore, assume you are right. Then what's the big deal? Just sit there and be right.
@JonathanLandrum: The big deal is, all the other students are learning wrong. In some situations, "Sit there and be right" is safe, but selfish and unethical choice. (I wrote a specific example of this in the question comments.)
@JonathanLandrum that defeats the purpose of education.
@Amadan I think those occasions are few. I mean, if the instructor is writing "2 + 2 = apple" on the board, by all means, interject. But it could just be a case of the student not actually understanding the subject fully. Or it could be the instructor wants to teach it this way first, and then show the "correct" way next. I can think of numerous examples of this in Chemistry, where students are first taught about double bonds, for example, and later taught that there is really no such thing as a double bond.
@user13107 see my previous comment.
@JonathanLandrum you raise an interesting point about teaching the wrong way first.
+1 @Amadan same reason I point out mistakes in material.
@JonathanLandrum I had the opportunity to be seated on third-world schools and unfortunately lot of what is taught are SIMPLY wrong, perhaps partly due to brain drain -> therefore lack of good professors :(
Have you ever seen a skit on The Chapelle Show called, "When keeping it real goes wrong"?
Trust me when I tell you that every class in every semester has a student that thinks he or she knows it all.
It can be hard to stand in front of a class and have all the answers. Sometimes when I've stood up there and say something, I've felt rushed to give an answer so I don't look stupid, and it just came out all wrong so I looked (or felt) even more stupid. Then I just walk around for two days realizing how stupid I am.
Even the best professors can be wrong, but the better ones will at least correct themselves in the next class or send out an email explaining something further.
The best way to handle the professor isn't necessarily to try and show them up in class, but to either go to office hours and ask for clarification. If you still think they are wrong, explain where you found the answer and show them.
If its worth the time to engage them at all, then that can be best way to do it. If they don't respond well in that situation, then its not worth your time and you should just keep quiet and focus on your grade.
Believe me, as an undergraduate I've battled many worthless TAs only to have the head of their department say that they have to back up the TA because that's just how its done.
When I got to graduate school, it was a different ballgame and I really put a professor through the ringer with the department when she tried to give me a bad grade because she was incompetent. But when I did that, I slowly went up the chain, documented every conversation and interaction, highlighted the syllabus, noted changes she made mid-semester to the syllabus, and then made a formal complaint. In turn, the professor was reprimanded by both the head of faculty and head of graduate studies, and my grade was fixed. But that was a serious slog to get through.
Never challenge a lecturer. Ask. If it's something that isn't directly related to PRECISELY the point they're currently teaching, ask during office hours rather than in front of the whole class.
Praise in public, criticize in private -- and criticize by asking "would this have been another answer, and if so why is the one you showed us better", rather than by acccusing.
Quoting Dean Inge: "There are two kinds of fool. One says 'This is old, and therefore good.' The other says 'This is new, and therefore better.'" Before demonstrating yourself to be the latter type, politely make sure you understand what was actually being taught and why. You may have completely missed the point he was making.
(Note that this is just as true when working with a boss, or even when you're the boss. Start with a discussion rather than assuming one or the other side is inherently true and that there must be a winner or loser. In the end, the boss does have the final say, because they have to consider more than just the technical merits of that one point, but you're a lot more likely to have a pleasant and productive experience if you try to work with people rather than against them.)
One more thought: "who thinks he's always right" is more of a comment about your attitude than about that of the instructor. Of COURSE he thinks what he's teaching is correct, or he wouldn't be teaching it. That doesn't mean he can't be wrong, but it does mean you need to respectfully justify your objection if you want it (and yourself) to be taken seriously. And unless the error is a simple typo/"thinko", that's likely to take more time than should be sliced out of most lectures. Talk to him afterward. He can always announce a correction at the next lecture if you convince him that one is needed. And if you can't convince him, ask yourself why not rather than assuming he's just being an ass.
IF it's an outright mistake, certainly. But that isn't how the question was phrased. And even then, it should be phrased as a question, because the odds are at least as great that the error is the student's rather than the instructors. Hopefully more so, if the instructor is at all competent.
When facts clash, I assume one of the following is true: a) I am wrong, let me learn why; b) The other is wrong, let me confirm that; c) There is a misunderstanding, let's clarify. It is not about winning or losing; it is about detecting which of these is true, and what insight one can achieve in cases a and c (or learning what one can safely ignore, in case b).
Right. But "challenge" is the wrong word for any of those. Challenge is explicitly confrontational, especially given the characterization of the professor stated at the beginning. I say again: Don't challenge. ASK. It accomplishes all the same (legitimate) goals without pitching an emotional grenade into the conversation. And unless you think he has MISSPOKEN, and the accurate statement is life-and-health critical, take it offline rather than disrupting the whole classroom and the whole flow of his presentation. Grant him the dignity of letting him (appear to) correct himself, if needed.
I agree with "don't challenge, ask" thing. About disruption, I'll often factor in the size of the class - I'd have no compunction in speaking in a class of 10, but I'd only react to big things in class of 200. However, "dignity"... screw dignity. Nobody is infallible, and people who try to appear infallible instantly lose my respect. I'm fully with @BenCrowell: letting falsehoods and errors slide is a bigger obstacle to education than a quick "Shouldn't that be a 4? - Oh, right you are!".
"Shouldn't that be a 4" -- Certainly; if it's a typo, it should be corrected immediately. "Shouldn't you use an entirely different approach" -- take arguments over the content of the class offline UNLESS it is very specifically being run in seminar/socratic mode -- in which case the instructor will generally have said right up front that he welcomes questions even if they diverge from the lesson plan. If you have to ask the question, you know the answer.
@keshlam: Okay, a non-typo example (~1990, high school): "Output peripherals include card punchers, printers, plotters... Monitors? I guess, but that's a passing fad. They're useless, you have to copy everything by hand before it disappears. That won't last long before people realise how stupid it is to pay all that money just to have to use their pen again. Don't bother with monitors in the test." (much more relevant to OP's question, I suppose, than the maths example)
One can always find exceptions; there are bad instructors out there. However, those few individuals are incurable, and interrupting the class to argue with them is more likely to prevent anyone learning what they can teach than to improve overall learning. If you can't work with the teacher rather than against them, drop the class and tell the department head why, and let them try to find a better instructor. Don't try to take over teaching the class; that isn't your role or your responsibility or something you can actually do effectively from a student's seat.
... He's entitled to his stupid opinion, the whole class already knows it's a stupid opinion, and from the student's point of view all that's immediately important is that that his opinion will not be on the test.
Let me put it like this, he is the teacher and you are the student. Ask yourself if the things he is wrong about, are really worth mentioning. If not, then it is probably best you keep quiet, and don't compromise your grades. There are always going to be people like him. If you keep trying to challenge him, you may very well become a 'right' fighter yourself, like him.
...and as a student, it is your job to challenge every aspect of the material presented, rather than taking your professor's word for everything.
In class is not necessarily the right time or place to challenge the professor, though. This is especially true if doing so will confuse other students further.
@RobVolgman Sometimes this is the case, but I find it is more often the case that the professor getting it wrong is confusing. People are left trying to work out how something works when it doesn't.
It depends on whether this teacher is dangerously wrong or not.
If his teaching the wrong things to everyone then he needs to be challenged. Challenging him in class won't help. Talk to him in his comfort zone and find out what you can. If he is genuinely a bad teacher, you need to find your campus support network and work out how to escalate the problem.
But in this case it sounds like he is a good teacher, trying to get through a lesson as others have said, but not necessarily completely up-to-date or good at putting down smart-arses.
In this case, learn what you can, he might have old ideas that are really great! When you can teach his class, critique it.
This depends a lot on the country and university specifics. However during my studies once happened for me to observe students replacing professor they deemed it is not competent enough for the particular course.
The student group should apply to university management asking to replace the teacher as not good enough. Of course, such application must list multiple factual errors in presented material, uncovered topics that you consider important for the subject, examples of undelivered information that you think would be highly relevant to the given lecture and the like. Significant number of students should apply so it would be difficult just to represent this as a personal conflict.
If the teaching person is not a head of laboratory / department but instead is under supervision of another competent professor, you may also talk to his supervisor. Some universities concentrate on research so deeply that teaching may be delegated to somebody more junior and less experienced.
If you cannot find enough arguments or supporters for this procedure, the professor is actually competent ...
Consider the situation as something like you're going to paint an abstract image - you're free to sketch whatever you can imagine but there has to be a meaning or purpose for what you're doing. The point is this: your professor is probably unaware of what you consider as "flaw" in dealing with his students, as such, serving as his "shadow" could make him realize such thing. But if he is aware, then the problem is not to think about the ways to harmoniously deal with him; rather, you should adjust with the kind of classroom atmosphere that he wants.
It's indeed "abstract" because no one else really knows the best way to have the kind of learning environment or teacher that you want other than you...
It's his job to instill to his students he knows everything so they will listen and follow him. All you would be doing is damaging what he is trying to build with his students.
It won't go well for you, nor offer you anything positive in the course and most likely harm your grades. If you know more then most, then instead of using it to attack your teacher, do something that will equally give you what I believe you do want from the teacher -- "His respect, & knowing you are very knowledgeable" -- by offering assistance to other students who do need help.
This way you get to show your intelligence in the field, your teacher will love the help in class with most teachers already being spread thin, and he will most likely shine on your grades better. Even if "YOU" do make a mistake, because of the effort at assisting others, he may overlook it when grading.
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24288 | Is it best to avoid all interactions with disreputable or predatory conferences?
Potentially predatory publishers and journals (as listed on Beall’s list here) are springing up more and more often, but they do not always stick to journals and publishing articles. Some host conferences, workshops, or other events with reputable chairs and directors.
If the publishing agency behind a conference is fishy or believed to be predatory, but the conference it hosts is chaired by reputable names, is it still best to avoid the conference?
Has anyone had experience going to a conference or workshop like this?
Re: conference it hosts is chaired by reputable names : note that one of Beall's possible criteria for listing a publisher as predatory is "includes scholars on an editorial board without their
knowledge or permission" (or, includes scholars on conference committee without same). Do these "reputable names" mention this conference on their own web pages? Are you sure they know they are listed as chairs?
I have emailed one of the chairs asking a question about the conference, so I am waiting for a reply. I've done a bit of googling and it doesn't seem like there are any references to the conference on either chair's professional website. It is definitely not looking bright!
Update: I have emailed both chairs now, still awaiting a reply.
There's a rather vivid write-up from an attendee of an OMICS conference at: http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/09/12/conference-attendee-to-omics-i-want-out/#more-2225. Obviously, this experience might not be repeated at other conferences, but it gives an idea of how things might go.
Very interesting write-up: thank you for that.
Update: No response from either chair...
Publishing in predatory journals looks bad on your resume. It suggests that your work was not good enough to publish in a respected journal/conference, and, frankly, you're better off not publishing the work.
Why would you spend your time and money to attend one when there is no shortage of good, legitimate conferences? Your time is valuable. Stay away from anything that you even suspect might not be first-rate.
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63716 | How can I get sufficient guidance from an advisor who's always travelling?
How can I get the most out of my advisor's knowledge if s/he's always travelling and out of office?
We communicate by email, but I find it uncomfortable as I am new to the field I am working in and sometimes questions/answers are not very clear.
Skype / Hangout? You can share the screen which is useful to show doodles live.
@Zenon Thanks, I am aware of these technologies. I understand my question is both wide and narrow enough but I meant strategies more than technology especially that his time is limited as he is both a research and works at a company and is always attending conferences. So it is more about strategies to make the most of his time and knowledge.
Not a good answer, but: work hard to use email more effectively. One of its virtues is that it allows asynchronicity, so your advisor's hectic schedule need not be such an obstacle. But your own careful, well-thought-out questions, and follow-ups for clarification, become more important. I realize sometimes it's the very vagueness of an issue that is the problem, but/and one can/must work to capture sufficient specifics to communicate in useful language ... rather than "uh, well, I'm confused, ..."
Find other students, postdocs, or faculty who can help you.
Some possibilities:
Consistently-scheduled discussion-by-video (Skype, Google Hangout, whatever). Treat these as you would any meeting: send a good agenda in advance.
Collaborative workspaces, e.g. a Google doc where you and your advisor can leave comments to get issues resolved
A bug tracker, even if that's an idiom both you and your advisor understand
Someone else deputized to triage and help you over simpler problems, so that your advisor knows that whatever reaches them is important and/or troublesome
The goals here are to ensure that you get what you need as conveniently as possible for your advisor and as quickly as possible for you.
I had some success via sharing a git repository with the LaTeX source to the thesis-in-progress, with a branch in which I added commits for my suggestions to be cherry picked or not by the advisee). Students recorded daily (or so) progress reports in a wiki, which I looked over from time to time.
In a time previous to git, we interacted via email (I printed out a copy, and sent a detailed email with suggestions).
The above requires more or less independent work by the student, and is hard on discussing alternative courses of action, or techniques to apply, brainstorming, whatever. So this works best when the thesis work is nearly done.
Note that someone who is permanently on the move probably has their hands full with both the job to be done at the current location (if you the superstar invited for a week, they'll fill your agenda to the brim to make the most of the visit, and invite you to all sort of social activities "so you don't get bored" and to show off with the visiting dignitary), handling domestic issues far from home, and assorted travel-related activities. I.e., they will have precious little time available to guide advisees, and thus will probably make terrible advisors.
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45443 | How can I obtain the necessary quantitative knowledge for admission to a masters in business analytics?
I intend to pursue a masters in business analytics in the United States. However, since this is a highly quantitative program, I doubt I will stand a chance to be admitted given that my undergraduate degree is in accountancy.
What are the options available for me to obtain the requisite quantitative knowledge? I think the Quantitative Studies for Finance program offered by Columbia University would be suitable but it is quite pricey.
Are there similar programs in other universities or alternative modes of study that can give me sufficient quantitative background to apply for grad school?
I don't think a Quantitative Finance program would be ideal preparation, given your undergraduate degree in Accounting. It's overkill, meaning you'd spend a lot of time (and money) to learn things that you won't need or apply to Business Analytics and NC State.
Instead, you could assemble the necessary knowledge and skills though a series of undergraduate courses, and even some on-line MOOC courses. The basics: single and multivariate calculus, linear algebra, probability and statistics (based on calculus), a basic programming course (one of Python, Java, etc.), a mathematical programming course (MatLab, Mathematica, R, or Python + NumPy + SciKit). To this base you could optionally add one of the following: Data Science MOOC, a Decision Science MOOC, a Business Process Management or Total Quality Management MOOC, or even a Data Visualization MOOC. These MOOC courses will give you some knowledge of how the basic knowledge is applied to business analytic problems.
I did think of going the MOOC route. But the NC State and other university require courses taken for credit. So, that rules out MOOC courses, doesn't it?
@inez Not necessarily. You have all the credits you need from your undergraduate degree. Everything I am suggesting could be taken for non-credit, or credit -- what ever is available. What you can show through your application is that you got additional training to bolster your quantitative skills. These should also reflect in a higher Math GRE score, too. (Not that Math GRE covers any of these topics.)
It really depends what kind of analytics masters program you're looking at.
For quantitative finance, you'll need a solid background of probability theory. It'll also be essential that you know the basics: i.e., calculus (single and multivariable), linear algebra and a decent amount of measure theory.
Good luck!
thanks for your feedback. I would like to do a masters in business analytics like the one offered by North Carolina State's Institute for Advanced Analytics. What kind of programs can I enrol myself in to gain the necessary college credits?
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154156 | Is it ok to start looking for other postdoc positions?
I'm currently doing the first year of my postdoc. My contract is coming up for renewal in a few months and my PI has asked what my plans are for next year. I told him that I was hoping to stay in his lab for at least another year, but he's told me he can't yet guarantee my contract will be renewed.
I've heard from other people in the lab that my PI normally holds off from confirming that he'll renew your contract until the last minute, where he'll then try to add some extra clauses in the contract that demand the postdoc to complete certain projects or papers by a certain date.
I'm relatively confident that my PI is intending to renew my contract, as he's pushing me to write some grants that would start next year.
But as he can't promise anything yet, is it ok for me to start looking for other postdoc positions in case he doesn't renew my contract? If so, should I let him know that I'm looking for other roles?
Thanks!
The PI sounds awful.
IMO, it is ALWAYS ok to look for other positions; you aren't liable with anything except what is written on your contract. Unless your contract is renewed, I would consider a to-be-a-jobless person
Actually, it sounds like it is essential for you to to look for alternatives. It is improper for the PI to hold you in jeopardy and he should be more clear.
But your career is at risk if you just "hope for the best". You also need to "plan for the worst". It is more than OK.
Whether you let him know or not is a matter of your judgement of his personality. But it might be fine to say (a) I'd love to stay, but (b) I recognize it may not be possible and need a backup.
A postdoc is a transitory position. Looking for your next job and career step is not just okay, it's essentially what those positions are for.
+1. I specifically ask the potential candidates about their long term plans during the interview. Having a good plan (even outside the lab) is a definite plus. So no need to be shy about it.
You need to plan ahead for the sake of your own career, as well as your financial and mental well-being. There may be certain cases where a PI genuinely can't let you know until the last minute whether they can renew your contract, such as if they are waiting for the outcome of a grant. It seems that this is not the case here however.
You could try politely speaking to or emailing the PI setting a reasonable deadline after which you will apply for other positions. E.g.:
"My contract is ending in December. I really hope that it will be possible to extend my contract here, but appreciate that you cannot commit to an extension at the moment. If it does become possible for me to stay, please let me know by the end of September, after which I will start submitting applications for new positions."
However if I were you, I would consider whether I want to work for a manipulative PI. If they want you to work on a particular project or paper, they should be upfront about it.
These days one should start sooner rather than later. September sounds late to get a position lined up by early December (early because of the holidays that likely would slow down getting everything signed sealed and delivered).
I would recommend having an honest conversation with your PI ASAP, making it clear that:
(1) You'd be happy to stay and continue and expand your research with them;
(2) If the contract extension cannot be guaranteed, in the current uncertain funding and political climate you need to start looking for alternatives ASAP;
(3) This would drain some of your time and attention from the current research, which you would not like but, well, these things do use up your mental energy;
(4) If they cannot guarantee extension, you'd appreciate their advice on which other PIs might have funding available and would be good to contact, or which funding opportunities to pursue;
(5) Because it's important to both of you that by the end of your postdoc you have a first-author publication, if they cannot guarantee extension, you need to discuss which of your current projects to focus on. Also, whether you could take some aspect of your current research as your own to develop independently in the future.
Basically, make it clear that you need to know the contract situation and plan accordingly --- and that it is also in the PI's best interest to let you know early.
Best wishes from a new PI who's had his former postdoc positions extended repeatedly, and who is being very clear to his current lab members about their contract situation!
Yes, you should look for another job. In any contract negotiation, you should always consider your "best alternative to negotiated agreement" (sometimes referred to as a BATNA). If your advisor comes to you with a new employment contract and you have a choice between staying on or being unemployed, you will probably sign.
If, on the other hand, you have two offers, you can choose which one you like best. A second offer also gives you the confidence to negotiate better terms, avoiding unpleasant projects, for example.
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154288 | Should I finish my undergrad in 3 years (this year) or 4 years? Which option is better for graduate school application?
Chemistry major, I can graduate this year with a high GPA (3.95+, with 2-3 graduate-level class) decent research (2 year+, started in freshmen year) and likely 2 publications (one first author, one second author, both on journals with IF around 6).
My biggest concern is the recommendation letter. Having one less year is really hard for getting recommendation letters. I stayed in my school for my freshmen summer research. Also this year because of covid. So I may end up with only one strong recommendation letter from my research advisor.
Does the fact that I can graduate in 3 years outshine the recommendation letters problem?
Or It's best for me to just take another year for getting more publication and get a summer research position so I'll get a recommendation letter from professors in other university?
Hard to understand that you can't get good letters with that GPA, etc.
Nobody cares how long it took you to graduate from your BS.c, so whatever you decide to do, make sure that it will make you will have a bigger bag by the time you graduate.
@Buffy I worry about letters from professors who only taught me in the class are not as good as professors that I did research with. Also the letters are limited in only one university (I had no interns in other universities).
If this is for US study, don't put extreme importance on anyone item. Build a complete picture of your likely future success. And, it might be a mistake to "waste" a year just for something ephemeral. There might be other reasons to do another year, of course.
There is no benefit to graduating in less time except getting a year ahead. No one will be impressed by a 3 year graduation.
It's more important that you show proficiency in courses related to your intended area of study, and obtain research experience.
If someone's option was to graduate a year early or do a research project, I think the answer is obvious: stay and research. You have some research experience already, so your decision seems mostly between applying right away for grad school or gathering more experience for awhile and then graduating. The choice is entirely yours, there is no "best" answer.
The reason that I want to graduate in 3 year is I want to start my graduate program as soon as possible. I spent a ton of time in the lab and I definitively love workin in lab. I think I'll let the admission committee to decide wether I'm proficient enough. Since I can always switch back to 4 years maybe I'll decide after the application result next year.
@Nitrogen Seems reasonable - like I said, that's your trade-off to consider.
Another thing to consider is how covid is effecting applications, whether it will be harder to start with covid going on or after (since there may also be a flood of students/postdocs at this time as well, or a change in the amount of funding avaliable). I do know covid's placed hiring freezes in some US universities. But someone more knowledgeable than me should be answering this aspect.
Outside the US 3 year bachelors are normal (so I was initially confused by why finishing in 3 years kept being brought up). If you do another year (having completed the chemistry component) you could look taking courses in other fields. More advanced knowledge of maths/physics/biology could place you in a more unique position and might give some insight in future research/position your for a particular research field. Worst case they become weird courses you did in undergrad that you surprise your lab with your breadth of knowledge. Edit: specifically programs in EU, UK, Australia, Canada
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42845 | Mentioning times cited, F1000 citations in CV?
I am applying for a faculty position and want to highlight the quality of my publications.
Are any of the following appropriate in an academic CV:
citation rate (citations/year)
F1000 Recommendations
separating a 'monograph' from other 'articles'?
If so, how should I do it?
For example, should I just put the information parenthetically at the end of the reference, like:
Author (Year) Title, journal, vol, (> 10000 citations; 2 F1000 recommendations)
note: this question Should I put my h-index on my CV? is similar, and some of the ideas from that question apply here. However, it is not a strict duplicate because the h-index addressed there is a single metric for evaluating a candidate; my question relates to publication-level metrics, and which are useful to provide within the reference list of a CV.
I've never heard of F1000. If I haven't heard of it, others may not either, so they will find it odd if you cite it.
I do not know how recruitment people will interpret this but If you have to include it; maybe h-index is useful?
Closely related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17990/19607
@Kimball I would go as far as calling this a duplicate.
@CameronWilliams: I would hope no-one takes the citation number indicated by Google Scholar overly seriously, given that it is highly distorted - it includes "citations" found in bachelor theses and the like, if the university's digital library catalogue happens to be indexed.
it includes "citations" found in bachelor theses and the like — So what?
@O.R.Mapper: I actually find such citations just as useful as ones in journals. I shows real impact.
@WolfgangBangerth: So, all I have to do to lift a paper from 0 citations to 5 citations is offer 5 Bachelor theses that are somehow related to said paper, if only by a single sentence?
@O.R.Mapper: Yes. But if your paper has only 5 citations, it's not particularly good anyway. If, on the other hand, your paper lists 100, 200, 300 citations on google scholar, then it is clear to me that you cannot have achieved that number by simply offering lots of Bachelor theses.
@WolfgangBangerth: The ratio of peer-reviewed papers compared to student theses among those citations should be checked in such cases, and it is of course very possible the high citation count points to a truly notable work. My concern is that student theses such as Bachelor theses, irrespective of whether the cited author offered/supervised them themselves or not, lack almost all of the "natural restrictions" that normally limit how many peer-reviewed works contain citations for a given paper. It just doesn't seem right to add up and compare numbers that are subject to very different factors.
@O.R.Mapper: I guess we may simply have to agree to disagree here. I see the distinction, but I think real impact implies impact across the board. If a math paper is so abstract that it is simply never relevant to Bachelor theses, then it isn't relevant to anything outside the innermost core of academia either. To me, this seems like a problem.
@WolfgangBangerth F1000, or the Faculty of 1000, is largely specific to life science, and I believe it is quite well known. This is a forum of experts that recommend papers of interest in their respective fields and score them. I think many people would consider such a recommendation positively.
@WolfgangBangerth enough to merit mention in a CV?
Conventions may vary somewhat from field to field, but I'll answer with respect to the fields covered by F1000, where people tend to be more interested in citation metrics than in many other areas.
First of all, I wouldn't include F1000 recommendations. I don't think that people take F1000 all that seriously and listing this information smacks of trying too hard. Under most circumstances, I'd suggest that one not include the citation counts either. As discussed in a recent question, the CV is not the place to do a sales job. If your citation metrics are strong, it is indeed good to bring this to the attention of the hiring committee, but you should do so in your cover letter and/or research statement rather than on your CV. Better yet, have one of your letter writers present this information. You could even get them to report the F1000 figures if that is really important to you. Nor would I list an h index on a CV, no matter how good it is. You could mention it in a cover letter, but again it is something that looks much better coming from one of your recommendation letters.
All of that said, if you really have a paper with >10,000 citations as in your example, this is so exceptional that it would merit a note alongside that paper on the CV. Even then, I wouldn't list citation counts for all papers but just for this one. Even a paper >1000 might merit mention on a CV if you are early career, but I wouldn't list anything in the low hundreds on the CV.
I'll conclude by noting that there is a nice economics paper by Harbaugh and To, entitled "False Modesty: When Disclosing Good News Looks Bad", that deals with almost exactly this situation. From their abstract:
Is it always wise to disclose good news? We find that the worst sender with good news has the most incentive to disclose it, so reporting good news can paradoxically make the sender look bad. If the good news is attainable by sufficiently mediocre types, or if the sender is already expected to be of a relatively high type, withholding good news is an equilibrium. Since the sender has a legitimate fear of looking too anxious to reveal good news, having a third party disclose the news, or mandating that the sender disclose the news, can help the sender...
+1 For the last paragraph. Recently, I commented on a question http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/42679/546 saying the OP has too much ego by stating he is a student at the most prestigious university in somewhere. That comment got expectedly high up-ticks. Now I know why.
It's quite common and very helpful to provide a link to your author profile in services like Google Scholar, Web of Science, MathSciNet, etc. This makes it possible for someone who wants to look up your publications to find them without confusion with other publications by authors with the same or similar names. They can also look up citation counts and other bibliometric statistics. I've seen these included on many of the CV's that I've reviewed recently.
Citation counts and statistics like the H-index change rapidly, and including them might come across as overly boastful in a CV. I haven't ever seen these on any CV that I've read.
Books and monographs should generally be placed in a separate section of your CV apart from the peer reviewed journal articles. It's also appropriate to have a section for conference proceedings papers and other lesser forms of publication.
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19368 | Pedagogical reasons for time-limited exams
Reading the various questions about open-book and closed-book examinations got me wondering:
Is there any sound pedagogical reason for a time-limited examination (closed or open) at the undergraduate/advanced UG level ?
I understand that there are many good logistical reasons, including:
classroom management in a big group
a desire to prevent cheating
and at (say) the elementary school level, I understand that timed tests (say of multiplication tables) create a certain level of felicity with manipulating numbers that helps with more complex tasks later on.
But at the UG/advanced UG level, it seems to me that deep understanding is usually more important.
Note: This question on the unreasonableness of the prescribed time limits is related, but not exactly the same (i.e it takes as given the existence of time limits and merely questions the actual time span set)
Yes, but even in music performance, it's not speed that you're testing. If the music calls for speed, then yes, but if you're playing an adagio ?
@Suresh I think you mean facility, not felicity. Unless you think multiplication tests make the students happy about times tables (which would be somewhat contrary to my experience).
Or better: Automaticity.
Is there any sound pedagogical reason for a time-limited examination (closed or open) at the undergraduate/advanced UG level ?
For many subjects, yes. For others, no.
I had an exam for a subject in school called "technical graphics". It involved drawing parabolas and projections and so forth on a big sheet of A3 paper with pencils and protractors and compasses. It was widely-regarded to be a subject of skill more than knowledge: the exam was timed and you had to accurately and quickly and carefully draw up four or five questions. A small inaccuracy becomes compounded through the rest of the drawing. Given unlimited time and some basic knowledge, nearly anyone could ace the exam since acquiring the necessary knowledge was easy; but acquiring the skill to do the timed exam was hard. And it was the skill we practised in class. Was this skill useful? Was it a learning outcome to draw quickly? I would say yes, of course; if I were to become a draughtsman (leaving aside CAD et al. for the purposes of the analogy), learning to draw quickly and accurately would be important to my livelihood. And it was the tightly-timed test that put emphasis on this learning outcome.
Likewise if I were doing a cookery lesson, cooking quickly would be important. If I were doing a programming lesson, programming quickly would not be as important, but it would still be important. And so we get into the usual varying shades of grey.
Generalising, we can define different types of learning based on the two main types of memory targeted: procedural memory (residing below the level of conscious awareness) and declarative memory (facts and/or knowledge that can be consciously recalled or inferred from other such facts/knowledge). Some subjects – like technical graphics or cookery or programming – put a strong focus on development of procedural memory alongside declarative memory. Other subjects – like biology or history – emphasise declarative memory far far more than procedural memory.
As such, I would say that the importance of a time-limited exam for a subject is correlated with the emphasis on procedural learning for that subject. A teacher may then wish to consider whether or not procedural learning is important for their subject or not.
This is a very nice answer. And yes, the key is to figure out whether that kind of learning is important: I suspect that for some topics, it's not, even though time-limited exams are used.
Absolutely! I think time-limited exams are extremely overused.
Another obvious area where time counts is emergency medicine - one can't simply let a patient bleed to death while working hard to remember how to apply a bandage.
Oooo. What an intriguing question.
My "answer" is that there is no pedagogical reason, merely practical ones. This is based on the attached study (1) that shows the difficulty with assuming only learning disabled students benefit from more time for exams. Apparently the "time doesn't matter" idea is called the Maximum Potential Thesis.
I certainly am guilty of writing questions that push student time limits to the max... essentially creating a reading exam in addition to a biology one. Student recall of vocabulary and definitions should be quick. But my main learning goal is thoughtful, connected thinking rather than fast thinking.
Zuriff, G. E. (2000). Extra examination time for students with learning disabilities: An examination of the maximum potential thesis. Applied Measurement in Education, 13(1), 99-117.
Seems like you design tests to work agaisnt your main learning goal.
One example of "a reading exam in addition to..." is the WorkKeys tests that are sometimes used by workforce development centers. At first glance, they only seem to test basic reading and math skills, but they are strictly timed and are intended to simulate decision-making in the workplace. If you have an impatient customer waiting for you to dispense gasoline into his '10 liter' tank, you don't have until next Thursday to figure out how many Imperial gallons will fit in it - he will find another gas station.
I design exams to be finished in around an hour and a half (one class block here at UTFSM), but allot three hours (two blocks). To give students some leeway in arriving late (bad bus connection?), and to give time to check their work or correct mistakes. The exam should not (or rarely) be a rush.
Open book exams
A particular reason for time limits is the open book exam. Such an exam without any time limits would allow the student to simply study all the relevant topics on the spot, and be useless for evaluation; however, an open book exam with an appropriate time limit will separate students based on their knowledge and obtained skill, while allowing the benefits of open-book exams for subjects where people aren't expected to memorize everything but use reference material as needed, and in those disciplines where you should teach students a habit to always doublecheck and verify in case of doubt, instead of guessing, e.g. medicine.
In essence, the time limit is a tool to check if you need to look up 5% of issues or 95%.
This is correct. A properly designed open book exam tests higher-order mastery and broad knowledge over rote memorization of individual factoids. If you are competent to practice medicine, you can occasionally look up dosing recommendations when you haven't prescribed something in a while. Most doctors I know don't actually memorize everything. If you don't have a broad medical knowledge, you may not know where to look for dosing recommendations, and probably don't have the necessary background knowledge to know how to use them or when they are or are not applicable to the present case.
If you ask me, the "evaluation" doesn't interest me (too much, see later). I'm interested in them learning. If it is during the exam, so be it (I fondly remember some courses in which I learned a lot during exams... by design). On the other hand, it is my responsibility to certify that who passed the course did learn what they were supposed to learn. A fine line to walk.
I am not sure if in the field of Pedagogy there is any study on the topic, but in the field i studied (Electronic Engineering), doing things fast is very important. Not only you need to be able to understand a topic, but you need to be able to solve problems in a restricted time period, as is the case in the real life profession. When you are working on a project and you need to design something, or are presented with a problem in a system, the engineer in this case needs to be able to identify and solve the problem in the shortest time possible. It is basic competition, "The fast drives out the slow, even if the fast is wrong".
I don't see why. I've heard this rationale, but it never made sense to me. If you're being asked to produce an answer in one hour, then no one is simultaneously expecting that answer to be the best one possible.
Of course is not going to be the best one possible, but the student should try to to the best they can with the limited time that they have.
I'd be interested in hearing of actual work scenarios where the exam conditions are replicated.
@Suresh, I'd be interested in hearing of actual work scenarios where unlimited-time exam conditions are replicated. I think I might like to apply!
@badroit indeed :). But at the risk of taking your comment seriously, the purpose of teaching is to help students learn material. "recreating real-life scenarios" is a side issue. So the arguments are not symmetric: it's perfectly fine to have unlimited-time exams IF that creates a better learning experience, but justifying a time-limited exam in terms of "real-world" scenarios is what requires justification.
@Suresh, the purpose of undergraduate education is not the same as basic education (k-12 in US). It is not simply to help students to learn the material but also to prepare them for future jobs. If you are studying computer science, then you are going to be a programmer. This job requires certain level of performance. You can't spend unlimited time on any given assignment at work.
The discussion reminds me of a documentary I saw about Andrew Wiles where he worked in secret for seven years to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. That got me thinking about what I would work on if given seven years no-questions-asked ... it might even be something useful, who knows. @Suresh, yep, my comment was intended only as a counterpoint. But besides proving Fermat's Last Theorem and the likes, I do struggle to think of work scenarios that are free from short-scale time constraints.
Btw, let's be clear that "unlimited time" is a strawman. We're really talking about a 1hr exam vs (say) a 1-week takehome.
Wait, no one is questioning a 1-week takehome exam, but we go back to the same: You have only one week , a limited amount of time. The teacher can't just say, so this is the project for this semester, handle it in whenever you can.
"The teacher can't just say, so this is the project for this semester, handle it in whenever you can."
Umm... Isn't that basically the idea of a term paper or term project? I'd say those are pretty standard, at least judging from both my graduate and undergraduate experiences.
As an engineer, I would rather disagree with this answer. I would much rather hire an engineer who takes somewhat longer to think his designs through and then verify that they're correct than one that just tries to whip something out quickly. Sure, time to finish is not unlimited, but I've never encountered a real-world scenario that even remotely resembled a time-limited exam in my engineering career. Exams that are designed to put 'time pressure' on students are testing a skill that is irrelevant in most fields rather than actually determining whether students understand the material.
@reirab, you are probably right, although in software development, the standard practice seems to be that the project manager comes and says: "This just came in, customer want this and that feature. Please do it for tomorrow, no testing we release directly to the customer. If you are a good programmer, then you'll do it right and ther's no need to test right?" And so you have a limited time to think the best way to do what they are asking. I could be a little biased btw.
@bone, Yeah, that does happen sometimes, but that's bad management. It's specifically one of the reasons that I look for employers where the management are actually engineers, not some guy with just an MBA trying to manage an engineering department.
@Suresh, most education should prepare/evaluate for later "real world performance". And very rarely isn't time an issue in the "real world". And also very rarely required to solve every problem without considering external sources (from the textbook through standard reference texts up to latest research reports).
It is often the case that a problem can be solved in multiple ways, some of which involve more "brute force" and some of which involve deeper understanding of the material. The "brute force" approaches are often also much slower than the approaches involving deeper understanding.
Time limits are then one tool that can help to distinguish the depth of understanding that a student has for the material, by making it difficult to accomplish with "brute force" methods in the allotted time.
I had personal experience with this myself as a teaching assistant for the introductory artificial intelligence class at MIT. Many of the things that we taught in that class and the questions that we used to test for them had this property. Students who understood the material well typically finished tests with lots of time to spare and left early, while the ones who were struggling to rediscover the material during the exam came to complain to us afterward about the lack of time --- not the most pleasant thing for any involved, but one that we found no good way to address in the time that I was a TA for that class.
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97353 | Is it common that marker TA make the marking scheme instead of the professor?
I had a course in which the instructor let the markers make the midterm marking scheme and had students ask the TAs to resolve any marking issues instead of talking to him, though the instructor provided sample answers. As far as I know, many TAs are inexperienced and I think leaving the job of making marking scheme to TAs may be too much for them. IMO, making marking scheme should be the instructor's duty. I don't know if it is common in university.
This might vary by country, but in the US, if the graders are undergraduates--which shouldn't be the case for midterms--then I would say that it's unusual to allow them to decide on the grading scheme. If the graders are grad students, it's quite common. At many schools even first-year grad students are the instructor of record for a course.
My daughter's a TA in math at a university in the US. She just got done grading a pile of exams. Don't know if she had to decide on the grading scale or not.
I graded plenty of midterms as an undergraduate TA. I didn't set the grading scheme, though.
The schools I have experience with have policies against undergraduates making signficant grading decisions--such as for exams--about other undergraduates.
When I was an undergrad, back in the '90s, my department would hire undergrads to grade the exams for the big gen-ed course in our field. We worked in small groups marking a single problem on all the papers, and the group set the criteria for the grading—but we had to get it that scheme approved before we could use it.
From my personal experience, both as a student and TA I would say that this is quite common in the US, particularly in large, lower level courses. Many professors find such courses boring to teach and will hand off as much as they can to the TAs. For some courses, the TAs may even give regular lectures.
As a TA, it's not all bad though. They often write portions of or all of the exams, which allows them to make sure students have a firm understanding of the most important material. They also likely have a better grasp of where students are struggling and will focus on those areas during recitations or review sessions. Students tend to feel more comfortable approaching them, assuming they're doing their job appropriately.
Regardless, if you truly feel like the TA is marking unfairly and isn't doing an appropriate job explaining their grading scheme when you ask them about it, you should take it up with the course instructor - particularly if others students are voicing concerns over the same issues.
Actually, I am the marker. I just feel that some students' questions are not up to TAs to resolve but my instructor insisted that TAs MUST meet with students to resolve any marking issues. I just disagree with my instructor's regrading policy somehow.
Well, you should speak with your instructor with as explicit concerns as possible. Ultimately, it's probably going to be your call though, so all you can do is try to be as fair as possible and learn from the experience, particularly if you have several students with similar concerns. Many institutions will provide TA training for grading as well - you might check to see if your institution has a workshop or something. Rather surprised it wasn't covered in your training though.
The positive attitude to being offered responsibility for something is to take it, not to run away from it. You can't avoid it for ever, so start taking it right now!
@JaredAndrews Actually, I didn't get training before being a TA. That is also the reason why I think the instructor let me decide too much.
@Rapidturtle: I suspect you will get much better results not by telling the instructor “We are not trained for this, you should be doing it!” but instead by telling them “We are not trained for this, please can you help us do it?” The latter option shows that you are enthusiastic and willing to work and learn, so is more likely to be received positively by the instructor; and assuming they do help, it gives you valuable experience and training on a new skill. If they don’t respond positively to that request for help, then you are on more solid grounds to voice your concerns externally.
As someone not from the US (I'm a PhD student in Hong Kong) - yes, here too. TAs are only graduate students, however. Before we were allowed to take on TA work, we had to take a "Certificate in Teaching and Learning" course where it was explicitly shown to us how to create a good grading rubric and grade fairly, among other things.
Don't think that everything the instructor does will automatically be better. TAs have more time to spend on the course, usually. In my case the professor is so busy that practically all his sample answers, when he does have time to make them himself rather than leaving it to me, contain multiple errors! (Of course I also make plenty of mistakes, but they usually become apparent while grading and get fixed before the students see them.)
In my experience (two large state universities in the US) this is unusual. My experience was that the TA or TAs graded the midterms and finals, but the professor reviewed the exams before the grades were officially recorded and before the exams were returned to the students.
Now, about the grading scheme. For exams, the professor gave the TA(s) the grading scheme, which had been built into the exam during the design phase. For homework:
For a large course with multiple TAs, the more experienced TA(s) would set up the grading scheme, and the less experienced TA(s) would ask a more experienced TA for guidance when unsure.
For a smaller course with just one TA, the instructor often provided guidance. If not, the TA could set up a grading scheme, and if in doubt, could check with the instructor.
Tip: If I were in your shoes, I would request an assignment, for next semester, to a large course, where you'd be part of a TA team, and would learn by doing, alongside at least one more experienced TA.
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95747 | How do I know that I have truly lost interest in research and should drop out of a top CS PhD program?
I am a second-year CS PhD pre-candidate in a top PhD program. During my first year, I published a first-author paper at the best conference in my area, which I know is a big accomplishment. My advisor is famous in his area and also very caring and supportive, and my labmates are great too.
The thing is my second project didn't go very well, which caused us to change the entire story right before the deadline. I worked more than 70 hours per week and gave all I could, but there was not enough time to get everything we need in a good shape, and my advisor was frustrated with the progress and pointed out problems that I hadn't seen everywhere. I continued to work, but found myself too frustrated and suddenly lost all interest in research, stopped caring about papers, did as best I could to avoid talking to anyone, and want to leave this place and never come back. I know most PhDs somehow have this feeling, but I notice that this time it's quite serious:
Forcing myself to work resulted in a breakdown every night with the feeling that all I did was nonsense and meaningless.
My first paper has now become a joke, laughing at me that I could never publish with my own efforts.
I have no intention to participate in lab communication and truly don't want to talk to anyone. I can't even bear to hear others typing due to the feeling that I am the only one who doesn't make progress.
How can I know if I truly have lost my interest in research (and should drop my Ph.D.), or if this is something that I can overcome? After all, if this is the best I can do, why not go somewhere else and use my skills to actually contribute rather than wasting everybody's time? I am so tired of receiving new tasks at 4 am or 11 pm due the next day. I would highly appreciate your advice!
Imagine your future life away from research and the academic context. Does that bring you joy or sadness?
Counseling can help a lot with things like this. Maybe it would help to look into that before doing anything irreversible. Also, there may be a possibility to take a leave of absence, so that you can go back if you change your mind in a year or so.
" receiving new tasks at 4am or 11pm due the next day." Is this the norm in top phd programmes?
@MarkoKarbevski In mine (which is a top program), I would have been fortunate to get that much advance notice. Usually it was "Hey, this report was due 3 weeks ago and now they are mad, I need it in a couple hours" -- and that was the first we (students) had been told about it.
@tpg2114 And I hope that your answer was: "Then you should've told me 6 weeks ago. Now you're welcome to do it yourself"
@MarkoKarbevski Not in my experience, except maybe very rarely in front of a deadline, but then you should yourself already know that work needs to be done and it's not the expectation that you start working at 4am on something. Also, if you miss a deadline there is (nearly) always another one waiting, even if it doesn't feel like it before you failed it (because for many the deadlines are the main motivator, so they have to 'be real').
This seems more an issue of burnout than of interest or disinterest in research. Get professional help! Psychologist etc. and/or talk to the respective university counselor if there are any.
@MassimoOrtolano: While I concur with the sentiment, as a student who has an advisor similiar to OP's (or at least so it seems from my reading of the post), that's rather unhelpful advice and frankly aounds like a great way to earn a 1-way ticket out of the department.
For what it's worth, the way you feel is very common at this stage in a PhD. Talk to fellow students, and seek counseling. Take a vacation if possible.
@tpg2114: What makes you think it is a "top program", when (if your comment is typical) it seems to be run by people who are either unable to manage, or sadists who enjoy abusing those under them.
Highly applicable to your situation: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2219/31917
You just need a break, a sufficiently long one. If you felt the same afterwards, then don't waste your time anymore.
Wow forcing yourself to work to breakdowns every night. You will make a really staunch defender of the way things work once we let you in. :)
When you have to ask this question. You have truly lost interest
@tonysdg If you cannot tell your advisor "No." or "OK, but I will need more time." to unreasonable requests you should want to get out of there. That is not a top program, but a toxic program.
I will stop just short of saying that you clearly have depression, but these thoughts sound like the type of extreme statements one thinks when they are depressed. (E.g. your first paper is not laughing at you, it is somewhere between an inanimate object and abstract concept. Also the isolation and loss of interest are classic depression)Unfortunately, if your brain is working against you, it won't matter whether you quit or not, because you will still be depressed. Talk to a doctor and try to get a prescription so you can have the opportunity of seeing things with a non-depressed perspective.
To be honest, this pretty much exactly sounds like my last workplace in industry before joining academic forces. I'd say it's not research but your environment that frustrates you. A change is needed, indeed. But maybe you can save (or recover) your passion for your field in the process.
I was putting the finishing touches on an answer when this got closed :/ the tl;dr is that I've been there (dropped out of a top CS PhD program), but I knew what my alternative was and actively chose it, rather than going along with the depression voice of "just give up already, you're not good enough". Highly agree with recommendations for counseling - they will help you evaluate your situation more clearly. It gets better!
If available, I would immediately seek out the university counseling services (as mentioned in a comment by @Nate Eldredge ) The things you are mentioning could be symptoms of depression. Or, you may just need some strategies for coping with failure. Often people with your accomplishments haven't experienced much failure in their lives!
Taking advantage of the (usually low-cost or free, if you are in the U.S.) counselling services at the university will help you sort out which of these things it is. Your counselor can also help you come up with strategies to make well-reasoned life decisions for yourself (or with your committee). Regardless, don't make any rash decisions.
In the U.S., it is very common for PhD students to deal with these issues and to seek out counseling. An informal straw poll in my PhD cohort revealed that 90% of us had done so, and approximately 60% were on anti-anxiety medication or continued treatment regimes at any given time. The older students even began to organize a yearly workshop to talk about stress and how to get the help you need!
An update: This 2018 study finds that graduate students are 6x more likely to experience depression and anxiety, compared to the general population.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/06/new-study-says-graduate-students-mental-health-crisis
A word of caution: having counseling services is maybe standard in the US universities, but it might not be commonplace everywhere, and it might not be generally common for PhD students to seek out counseling. The OP doesn't specify their country (though we can guess that they are probably from the US). See also this discussion.
Good point! Specified US in revision. I Saw "top CS program" and good grasp of English, and my mind said US. But obviously that is not a certainty, I apologize.
No need to apologize, it's a great answer ;-) Coming from another culture, I find the results of your poll astonishingly high. When I was a student, no one of us seek counseling (actually at that time, about 20 years ago, there was no local counselling service), but we surely supported each other. Among my PhD students, I daresay that no one has ever seek counselling either.
I have put some thought into it and I realized that my cohort was a bit of an outlier. Among the students in general I think the percentages may have been closer to 60-70% and 40%. International students were definitely less inclined to seek out counseling services, but also felt the stress. One of the international students actually led/organized the pro-counseling workshop for the department. I think her attitude was "This is an American thing, but it is really helpful and we should not be wary of it!"
60%!! There is something profoundly wrong with this system!
@MassimoOrtolano: your difference in experience may well be a matter of age as well as the culture you come from. Increase in the availability and usage of mental health services has been a big trend over the last couple of decades — at least in the US and much of NW Europe, and I guess many other places too though I haven’t seen it myself.
@PLL You're right. For instance my university setup the counseling service probably around 10 years ago. I'll search if we have any public statistics on how many PhD students access the service.
@Strawberry the problem is part drug legislation part culture.
Some amount of burnout is very normal, especially just after working really hard for something that didn't pan out the way you hoped it would. The timeline isn't totally clear from your question, but if this just happened, give yourself some time to relax and cool down! Take a few days off from research: go for a hike, cook a good meal, whatever. Then, when you're ready, ease yourself back into it: maybe talk to your advisor about putting this frustrating project aside for a bit and trying something else out.
If, after a while, you still feel this whole thing sucks and you don't want to do it anymore, then it's worth thinking more about that. Especially if you think the high levels of stress and/or feeling bad about things are more persistent, definitely look into meeting with counseling services if they're available at your university or elsewhere. Or you might eventually end up deciding that you're better off dropping out of the program: many people do that, and for many of them it's the right decision. But now, in the aftermath of an unluckily bad experience, isn't the time to make that decision.
I can't even bear to hear others typing due to the feeling that I am the only one who doesn't make progress.
If you can't talk to a counselor right away, it also sounds like you could do some reading up on impostor syndrome. It affects all of us, especially those like me who really aren't good enough to be in academia, but more so at times when things happen to suck.
I am so tired of receiving new tasks at 4am or 11pm due the next day.
If this is your advisor constantly giving you research tasks to do immediately, this is something you should talk to them about. In a CS setting, this kind of request is only at all reasonable if it's very infrequent. Most things should be predictable farther in advance, or not be so urgent.
"do some reading up on impostor syndrome. It affects all of us, especially those like me who really aren't good enough to be in academia"....Ah the irony.
@SH7890 Yes...though of course that doesn't mean there's not some truth to it too.
You are right about it being common for Ph.D. students to wonder if it's worthwhile continuing. Every single doctoral student I've talked with has had the same thought at one point or another. I completed a doctorate myself and was in that place several times...especially after submitting my research project as a conference abstract in the spring, trying unsuccessfully all summer to get it to work, and at the point I was going to get in touch with the conference organizer to tell him that I was not going to be able to attend I had the key breakthrough. Sometimes I wonder if I would have had that breakthrough if it weren't for the pressure and urgency and sleepless nights and frustrating days.
"Bad planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." I have worked in IT for 30 years and the only time that getting tasks at 11 pm or 4 am due the next day is even remotely acceptable is for a production problem. Are you getting those tasks as part of a research assistantship? If that's the case, you have to ask yourself if it's the job or the program, and if the former if there are other options. I was never paid for research and worked my way through teaching recitation classes and later lecturing. It might be time for a talk with your advisor to clarify expectations, as well as with your committee and department secretary (or other graduate student liaison that helps you to navigate the process) to get advice and keep you focused on what I would assume is your goal--finishing the degree.
Get an appointment with your thesis committee (advisors) or PhD support office (if there is one) stat. These things can happen, but you need to address them with counselors immediately, before they get out of hand.
Whatever you do, don't make a rush decision. Good luck!
Your expectations were set based on the great success of your first paper, and now you're frustrated that you've put so much more work into a second paper but it failed in comparison.
This is a life lesson - not in your career path, but in workload management. You burnt out and exhausted yourself. Had the 2nd paper turned out brilliant, you probably would have gotten away with it, because the feeling of accomplishment would validate all the extra effort. But it didn't turn out so well - you are feeling the stress collapse inward now that it isn't bolstered by your high expectations.
There are two very helpful things you should do. First, take a vacation and get away from work for at least a week, preferably two weeks. Second, you should set your next project up to be something small, easily manageable, and something you enjoy. You need to learn workload management, and that will prevent 80% of the burnout you currently feel. Very few people can sustain a real 50+ hour workweek in an intellectual field. Most (notably doctors) have a lot of mentally de-tuned time, which allows them to manage long hours better. The supposed 'executive' 60-hour workweek includes meals, exercise, travel, and sometimes even family time in that 60 hours. The Americans’ Use of Time Project has estimated that people who claim to work 55-59 hours per week actually work about 42-47 hours (http://fortune.com/2012/10/16/how-hard-do-executives-really-work-today/).
You won't hit a home run every time you're at bat, so don't set yourself up to always be at bat with all the bases loaded. Give yourself some time to recharge, and bat some easy singles against the warm-up pitcher.
First: stop working 70 hour weeks
I find it sad how little attention academia pays to the huge amount of research into productivity[1]. Working absurdly long hours does not make you more productive but does kill your creativity, ramp up your stress levels, and sooner or later makes you burnt out
Second: take time off
You have holiday entitlement as a PhD student, use it now. If you're in Europe you'll likely get a sensible amount and can take a couple of weeks off. If you're in the US, you're probably restricted to a smaller amount but you still have entitlement you should be using. In your state, a break is necessary.
Third: learn to say no to completely unreasonable requests
I am so tired of receiving new tasks at 4 am or 11 pm due the next
day.
Any task received outside of normal working hours should be considered unreasonable. Reject them. Any task received without reasonable time to do it is unreasonable. Stop accepting them. Write back - in work hours - with what you consider a reasonable timescale in which you can achieve it, taking into account your other work.
Fourth: seek support from the University
Your university will have student support and counselling service available to you; find out what they are and use them.
A PhD is a long and hard process, and research is - by its very nature - a hard slog, with variable success and, sometimes long, periods of failure. If you knew how to do it already, it wouldn't be research. It is normal, therefore, for PhD students to have periods of doubt during their PhD programme. Before deciding whether you wish to leave, take the time to get yourself into a clearer mental state so you consider it properly.
[1] For an enjoyable introduction read The Mythical Man Month and Peopleware. Actually, if you're in CS read them anyway.
Aside from the very good advice of getting counseling and balancing your work and life(!) a popular saying comes to mind: When you fall off a horse, you've got to get back on.
Probably you need some well deserved rest first, but IMO the best way to get rid of the sour taste of your previous experience is to venture into a new project. This will allow you to rediscover why you're doing what you do and help you keep your mind off your previous disappointment (this will require effort!). A variation of this idea is that if you eventually decide to quit, try to do it with a good taste in mouth.
If there's something I've learned during my PhD is that personal growth is as, if not more, important as the actual technical aspects of it. In this case you're dealing with a major disappointment. However, it's within you to make this a valuable lesson and demonstrate to yourself that you can overcome this and other obstacles that might (and will certainly) come in your life.
A few points in addition to other useful answers:
The negative experience you've had is not with research in general, but with a combination of a certain project, a certain advisor, and the settings of being infinitely overworked and pressured for a certain period of time. So you've been depressed and demotivated by that not by "research" in general. And while you should certainly avoid being in that situation again, don't confuse the specific with the general.
Also, even if you decide you've had with your current project; or with your advisor; or with your university; or with your sub-discipline of CS - that does not mean you should necessarily quit.
Note that the fact you've not exhausted all options does not mean that you absolutely have to stay. If you don't find a setting in which you're satisfied to work (after some emotional recovery and some attempt at reconfiguration); or if it becomes clear to you there's something else you want to be doing - it's perfectly justifiable to quit and go elsewhere, even if some people frown upon it.
You did not say anything about why you're doing research in the first place. That's enormously important in my opinion. I'm against being in a Ph.D. program just looking to get ahead. Do you not have something concrete that interests you? That you want to discover or get to the bottom of? Your Ph.D. research should be about doing that. And that should be your key motivation - not chalking up merit points for publications or conferences etc.
When I was feeling down due to my research not going well, I found my teaching work to be rather consoling and satisfying. I'm not sure what it's like for you, but if you haven't tried that, consider it.
"[I] found myself too frustrated and suddenly lost all interest in research, stopped caring about papers, did as best I could to avoid talking to anyone, and want to leave this place and never come back."
This sounds exactly like a psychological reaction - avoidance of people, and seeking ways to not think of the upsetting thing. I would say absolutely, seek counselling help, and view these as appropriate and mature steps to take, because this is something that could also be playing out in other times and places, causing you distress.
I can't say if you have actually lost interest, but I don't think so. I think it has hit you hard and the reaction against that perceived lapse might be misinterpreted as lack of interest.
It's a very common reaction to avoid that which we feel we have done wrongly, and this sounds much more like that reaction. Also to feel that taking the pressure off is acknowledgement of a kind of failure - it isnt.
The good new is that when that aspect is looked into, many people feel renewed vigour and energy on resuming.
Speaking as a person who reached burnout and left, to the islands no less. I truly believe in retrospect, the greatest life lesson would have been to push the doctorate thru. I did change course in life and my degrees are not directly relevant to my current path, yet they will always have tremendous value. You did succeed in the first year of the program, this is not your first week, you have significant time (and success) invested. Get this doctorate, you don't necessarily need this doctorate or any other to eventually succeed in whatever career path you choose, but this doctorate and all its prestige and benefits will be there for your life. The great lesson you are going to learn here is not about subject matter, it is about your inner self. Can you push thru after major disappoint, learn from failure, regain composure and conquer seemingly insurmountable pressure, or will you run, give up by saying you lost interest? Either path you choose will define you for life, your inner self, and only you will be experiencing the consequences every single day thereafter.
Speaking as a person who reached burnout and instead of leaving, tried to "push through". Next thing I knew I was in hospital for a week. Then I left for good and never once have I missed the "prestige and benefits" of the doctorate I didn't get.
Burnout is a serious issue. Working 70-hour weeks is detrimental to your health even before burnout (which is just round the corner anyway if you do it continually). You're picking between your health and "this doctorate and its prestige and benefits".
Note I'm not saying you need to leave for good. Maybe coming back after a break is going to work for you. But I'm pretty sure you need to stop killing yourself with 70-hour weeks, and think it likely that you need weeks or months off.
Just get your PhD and leave afterwards. Most published research is irrelevant anyway. The science community has a serious problem with their "accomplishment" metric: h-index / number of papers etc. They do not allow for failure or dead tracks which, however, are quite natural if you are doing real research at the brink of current knowledge.
"Just"? That's not a "just". That's incredibly difficult, emotionally, in such a situation. You don't "just" get PhDs.
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52314 | Why do faculty use the software "Blackboard"?
It is becoming apparent to me that, outside my field, use of Blackboard and other LMS software is becoming extremely common. Indeed, a rash of technical problems here is making it apparent students and administrators alike seem to assume that Blackboard is the exclusive (locked) gateway to the course's content. I have had to explain that, actually, my syllabus and homework assignments are posted on the web, freely available to anyone, anywhere.
I have used Blackboard a little bit (to mass e-mail my students and to post grades) and I find it to be slow, kludgy, and buggy. I would find it painful to heavily use this software, and I find it vastly simpler to create a course website.
My question is -- what is it that drives Blackboard's popularity? Is it that most faculty do not want to learn HTML? That faculty prefer to keep their course materials private rather than public? Are there other useful features which I have overlooked? Or other factors?
I find it vastly simpler to create a course website. — "What do I look like, some sort of computer nerd? I don't have time to lean HTLM or whatever. Much easier to use commercial software written by professionals. You can tell it's quality because it costs so much. Yeah, it's kinda painful to use, and it's kinda broken, but that's just how computers are. Hey, you're a geek, can you tell me why I can't get this stupid thing to work?"
I would love to see some data on what portion of universities use various forms of LMS and the breakdown of which departments use it. Eg at my uni most use the LMS, but literally no-one in CS does.
I hope you don't mind my clarification of your question title. As it was, I was very surprised to find the question actually asking about a particular software, when, based on the former title, I had expected a question about why and how to use blackboards (rather than whiteboards, or rather than multimedia things) in class.
As for mere websites that don't include special educational features, wikis are often adequate CMS. For instance I see the Helsinki University wiki is huge.
Because we don't have any $%#(*&%# choice in the matter. Old joke with the serial number filed off and a new paint job: Knock, knock. Who's there? ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... blackboard.
You should see what we use at the last University I taught at. I WISH we used Blackboard. So I did what you did, put up my own course materials on the Web.
It is needed for some purposes (correct email of students, online proctoring of exams, etc), and is required for some classes.
A widespread problem in the institutional procurement of software: lack of technical acumen among those making the purchasing decisions, leading them to rely on the largely irrelevant paper qualifications of the vendors.
Protecting this question because a lot of low-quality answer flags have been raised on the answers.
For everyone who hadn't heard of the software, see http://www.blackboard.com and Blackboard, Inc.
Just a note. I studied at two Universities that both use BlackBoard. At one University I found BlackBoard useful as a student. At the other university it was a hopeless mess. I think that if BlackBoard is set-up nicely and all the professors make an effort to work with it, it could be a nice product. But if that is not the case its a hopeless mess :(.
Blackboard is used by the university I teach at and I used it at the university I studied at -
Blackboard (BB) is mostly uniform. While you can customize your courses, to an extent, a student moving from one course to another using BB will already know where everything is. BB is simplistic and students have different technical abilities.
Having each instructor learn HTML is a large order. I teach with an 80-year old man who still has a flip phone and can barely use that. Contracting someone to create the webpages would also be an issue because costs and instructors changing the courses that they teach may want to change the webpage.
BB also has (at least where I studied and teach) a copy checker. If a student from Z class uploads the same paper to both Z and Y then when they upload it to Y the instructor is told that there is a paper within the servers (goes back 2-3 years I believe) that is x% similar to a paper submitted in course Z.
Plagiarism tools are by no means something special or uncommon in such software.
Correct. BUT different tools run different algorithms and if instructors made their own websites every one of those website would need to use the same tool, and run off of the same server. An institution would likely require certain things to be included and not allow some things on a self-made website for students. It could be no different than BB if an institution has strict guidelines.
Thanks for your response. One question: "A student moving from one course to another using BB will already know where everything is." Are faculty, in fact, motivated by this concern to use it? Maybe they are more unselfish than me. :)
I believe, as an instructor, that instructors should be interested in seeing every student succeed and give them ample time to focus on course work. Some instructors would make a website more simplistic than BB but I know of others that would try and make it the size of Google (obviously an inflated reality). A student shouldn't need to take the time to learn how to navigate their course when they need to be reading or studying an assignment. I give a lot of assignments that focus on research and use BB to post the assignments and relevant links they could use. I'm here to teach business...
courses and not to teach website navigation. Instructors would then have to take take to teach students how to use the entire new system.
Another thing I should mention is design. A poor website design could make things 100x harder for both the student and the instructor.
So... why BlackBoard? Why not Moodle or something less expensive/vendor-locked?
Blackboard somehow has marketed their product to be the de-facto standard for universities and public school systems (at least in America). Compare with TI-82 compatible calculators, which are overpriced, underpowered, teach no valuable skills, and yet somehow are required for all students above a certain math level in most public school systems in America. That's because Texas Instruments has done a good job of marketing or conning school systems, depending on your point of view.
To a student studying a dozen courses, it's easier to work around something which is ten times as complex and annoying as twelve easy to learn microsites.
This doesnt really answer "why blackboard". There are other tools out there that provide the same style of product, and you dont need to "learn html".
Read @ToddWilcox's comment. It's all about marketing.
@Memj, not really, for instance many plugins just defer everything to Turnitin so the datasets and logic are the same.
@ToddWilcox in the TI82's case it also helps that anything significantly more capable is generally banned because being able to do symbolic algebra makes it too easy to pass tests without actually knowing any of the material. Anecdotally, using a Casio graphing calculator in HS during the late 90's meant that since I had to either find the "Do X" feature on the calculator or write a program to do it myself, I generally had an easy button to verify the work for new material my tests that the majority of my TI using peers were only shown how to use after we moved to the next topic. ...
... Although if any of them were more ambitious, our teacher loaded the full set of programs for her trig and calculus classes at the start of the term. Almost none of my peers actually took the effort to learn how to use the programs on their own.
Moodle is the de facto standard in Germany and Austria.
You opinion about the state of Blackboard is pretty much what most of us who use it also think.
At the institution I work we (the faculty) are required to use Blackboard for all modules and there is a minimum level of information we have to post there about our modules in a standard format. This does at least ensure that there a minimum standard is achieved for each course and that it is consistently presented to students - the alternative of having everyone use a different system would lead to chaos and confusion for students. This is how it used to be before there was an institution VLE. This minimum standard is really a least common denominator and not too bothersome to set up.
Another perceived institutional advantage is that the management and running of Blackboard is outsourced. In principle this means less IT staff needed to maintain it however in practice we still need dedicated internal staff to assist faculty in using Blackboard and to act as a buffer between the institution and Blackboard when issues do arise (and there are still many bugs and idiosyncrasies in Blackboard).
Those of us who wish to use technology more effectively do find the limitations of Blackboard an issue. Some colleagues link from Blackboard to external sites to overcome this. My solution has been to write a set of tools that integrate with Blackboard that provide the types of approaches I want to use. These are actually run on another server but from the student and staff user point of view it appears as part of Blackboard. The only limitation is that I cannot integrate into the grade centre of Blackboard for collating marks. In any case my own feedback and marking system actually provides much more flexibility and statistical analysis and copes properly with multiple teaching assistants marking different students so it isn't much of a disadvantage.
Nobody I know would use it if we didn't have to.
A lot of my colleagues that teach ground courses just refuse to use any online software. They believe that if that course has a classroom then it doesn't need to be taken online too. Personally I don't mind BB, mostly because I've gotten used to it.
There wouldn't be a demo of any sort, or a more detailed explanation of what you're talking about as your solution anywhere on the internet, is there John ?
No my own tools are used across departments internally but are not at a state I would want to release or support externally. I don't like having to do this type of cottage industry internal development. There are institutional risks but it does make my job more efficient.
There are a lot of answers already, but I want to add to @CreationEdge's answer: one of the benefits of LMS software is that it provides some features that would be hard to do using HTML.
Probably the most important is providing a secure gradebook which shares each student's grade with that student and no one else. (In my experience, this alone is the "wedge" which drives LMS adoption---students love being able to check their grades online.) Once you've started using one, there are often some other features---class discussion forums, support for online turn in of assignments, and a course calendar, for example---which are doable in other ways but which good software can do automatically and easily.
Just about every specific piece of LMS software seems to be pretty unpopular, in part because the underlying problem is hard. It turns out that every professor wants to do something slightly different. So either the software tries to accommodate everyone, requiring you to search through lots of options and get them configured just right to get what you want, or it's inflexible so a few people think it's perfect and everyone else loaths it.
"It turns out that every professor wants to do something slightly different." The reason why most software is complex to use.
If an organization provides Blackboard for their faculty, then they're much less likely to also provide other services that accomplish the same general goal (like private web page hosting, course-specific fileshares, etc). IT departments don't like having to maintain redundant services. In those environments, users generally don't have any other option than Blackboard.
I believe the real question is why Blackboard in particular is so popular. A big reason for this is that Blackboard was one of the first CMS systems available that focused on the educational sector. Educators could try it out for free and since most schools didn't have any sort of CMS at the time, IT departments got a lot of requests for it. Over time, Blackboard has bought out several of their largest competitors, further entrenching themselves and making it more difficult for a rival product to compete. Blackboard also had a patent on an "Internet-based education support system and methods" that they've used to scare off competitors (the patent was eventually ruled invalid).
The real competition in this space is from open-source systems like Moodle. They're insulated from the problems listed above since they don't live or die based on market share, and since Blackboard has pledged not to assert their patents against open-source or non-profit entities. Unfortunately, it's hard for an open-source CMS to gain the same traction as a proprietary product like Blackboard, regardless of the quality of the product. Blackboard puts a lot of resources into advertising and marketing, and open-source projects generally can't come close to matching that. Decisions about which CMS to use are generally made by high-level management (not IT, faculty, or anyone else who actually has to use it). These folks aren't likely to even know what "open-source software" is, much less what options are available, so they tend to base their decisions on what they hear from sales representatives. If there was a company behind Moodle that was pushing it as aggressively and consistently as Blackboard, I have a strong feeling that you wouldn't see Blackboard anywhere near as often as you do now (surveys frequently show the overwhelming majority of blackboard users don't like it).
This isn't a unique tale. You can replace "Blackboard" above with the name of almost any other piece of "popular" enterprise software and the story is pretty much the same.
My university uses Blackboard, so I am required to use it for entering final grades. I use it for only that, because I find Blackboard to be not very user-friendly.
There are alternatives that are free, better, and don't require any knowledge of HTML. I use Piazza to host course information, distribute announcements, and as a tool for students to ask and answer questions.
We had two different systems around here for a short while. Students hated them with passion, not the systems themselves but the fact that they were just different. Now we have only Moodle, and as long as no extensive customization is done, it works fine. Yes, it is quite dumb in some operations, I'd much prefer to have e.g. a command line tool to set up homework than the endless clicking around for a routine, repetitive task. But it works.
You're allowed the enter final grades into BB? Where I work we can put the final score of the final letter grade but final grades have to be submitted directly to the schools student information system (SIS). BB has a feature to hold such things and transcripts of grades but I was of the opinion most places do not use this feature to do security.
I think it has a lot to do with software patents. From the wikipedia article on blackboard:
The United States Patent and Trademark Office granted the company U.S. Patent 6,988,138 for "Internet-based education support system and methods" in January 2006. The patent established Blackboard's claims to the concept of connecting together web-based tools to create an interconnected university-wide course management system.[83] The firm announced the patent on July 26, 2006, and on the same day it filed a patent infringement lawsuit against rival education software company Desire2Learn Inc.[83][84] According to news reports, the awarding of the patent and the lawsuit against Desire2Learn led to concerns about patentability in the electronic learning community.
In short, they got the patent on this kind of software, and they started muscling people out of the business on the same day. While there are plenty of alternatives now, I think that for a long time, it was slim pickings. There were open source alternatives, but they were specialized projects not getting many contributions.
I can't find the version history online, but I remember that in the 8 years I was a student (don't ask), my university used Blackboard 6, and after those 8 years, Blackboard 7 came in, which looked exactly the same. Which suggests to me that Blackboard acquired a monopoly through the patent system, and then sat on their asses.
And of course, even now the whole thing is a far cry from what you'd expect from a modern web-application. Considering they employ 3000 people, I shudder to think what the whole operation looks like behind the screens.
It looks like you would expect. Many years ago I sent a letter with issues to a BB representative. She passed it on to IT with some nasty remarks about me, asking them to only answer the questions that were positive for BB. Which they did, inline, including her comments and passed the whole thing back to me. I informed colleagues in neighboring universities and the CEO, who actually called me that Christmas Eve at home to apologize. Needless to say, we didn't buy BB, but now have a Moodle instance running.
I think the reason why BB is popular in the US is that it was one of the first enterprise apps to hit the education market. There's a lot of other nice tools out there, but schools have been invested far too much in this broken product that getting rid of it is either difficult to justify or simply bogged down in internal politics.
There's some nice paid and free alternatives out there that do a much better job than BB. One good example that I have seen taking momentum in the open source community is Moodle but it doesn't have the marketing drive that BB enjoys and will take time to become mainstream.
+1 This is a good point, since my school requires 24/7 enterprise support from any LMS.
Is it that most faculty do not want to learn HTML?
On the contrary, I find that faculty who insists in writing their own HTML even when it is inappropriate is a very common trend.
Maybe you are an exception, but you should ask yourself a few questions to make sure you are not biased.
Are you sure you should write your site by directly editing HTML? Is your HTML accessible? Do images have alt tags, for instance? Does it have a readable color scheme? Is it responsive / does it scale well to mobile? Does it have a look that does not resemble a Geocities website from the 90s? Have you tested it on several common browsers? Does it take you more or less time to write than Markdown or the visual editor that you'd probably find in Blackboard? How long does it take you to publish a PDF file? Do your students find your website better and easier to use than Blackboard, on average?
I interact daily with both mathematicians and computer scientists, and I have found that on average computer scientists have learned not to mess with hand-written HTML in the past years, while mathematicians seem very resilient on it. It is a trend that probably comes from Latex-induced perfectionism. (And, looking at your profile, it seems to me that my guess that you are a mathematician is correct.)
In practice, these highly legitimate arguments end up taking the backseat versus public access (many lecturers want their materials to be public; university-installed CMSs don't normally even offer the option), quick access (on a typical HTML class page, each file is 1 click away; in Canvas/Moodle you have to navigate for a while) and exportability (Canvas/Moodle have their export options, but you're getting too much -- you don't want your students' homework). I'd love to have a more programmatic way to set up my class websites; it's just I don't.
@darijgrinberg Moodle offers the option to make your course public.
Interesting -- I guess I should have looked more closely.
@darijgrinberg On a course page, Users -> Enrolment methods -> Guest access -> Allow guest access.
Also, while these are arguments against LMSs, they are not arguments in favor of writing your own HTML from scratch. There are plenty of other choices: wikis, Wordpress and the like, static website builders like Jekyll. All these should allow you to set up new courses easily by cloning existing ones (but I think Moodle does that, too).
Glad you mentioned Jekyll, which is on my longtime "to learn" list. I really wouldn't include Wordpress, given how hard it is to get right (and if you don't, you're creating a sandbox for spammers). I guess if I had to make some structured website really quickly, I would fork and modify Joanna Rutkowska's minimalist blog or something similar. Still, nothing is as quickly deployed (talking short-term) and yet as durable as self-written HTML. I'm going to migrate my teaching page to a different university soon -- just a matter of copying ...
... over folders! I have no idea what I'd have to do if it was spread across LMSses, wikis or blogs, at least if the latter were on the university servers. (Again, the non-lazy long-term answer is to get one's own server...)
@darijgrinberg J. Rutkowska's blog is written in Jekyll, it seems. I use a similar solution myself (with webgen rather than Jekyll), and I find that it strikes the perfect balance for me between easy to edit and portable. As for my teaching page, typically it contains links to the Moodle page for each pair (course,year), so that's easy to migrate. The difficult thing is migrating course contents between different years, I agree, but typically this requires some amount of customization anyway.
BB might be popular but is by no means the only game in town. My University used to use BB but then we switched to Sakai which is cheaper. We are not forced to use Sakai. I post problem sets in my personal page. That said how do you make student grades accessible to them without violating privacy laws and wasting lots of your time? I can not see any good alternative to a system like BB or Sakai.
The main reason that we were given is that students expect it, or some similar uniform interface. Additionally, fFaculty in non-science departments may not have access to a general-purpose HTML server, and it becomes a major drain on staff resources if computer staff have to implement a course web page using whatever database system the college set up for personal web-pages. BB and its ilk somewhat require you to get on board with a particular uniform way of thinking about course content, and uniformity is a virtue these days. And it does make it easy to turn in materials online, by a fixed time, which is technically doable with some script writing, but many people in arts and humanities are not so familiar with scripting.
I can't comment on the specifics of Blackboard (we use Moodle) but Course Management Systems (CMS) / Learning Management Systems(LMS) / Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), whatever they're called, don't usually do anything that you couldn't do by other means, such as a web page, emailer, whatever. Their advantage is that all of these functions are contained in a common environment, with a single user interface, and so staff and students don't waste time with the distraction of learning how to drive multifarious systems.
BTW, @MJeffryes, I agree that free software isn't necessarily more suitable for universities but the open-source aspect of a VLE like Moodle might be an advantage over Blackboard, etc. There's a fairly healthy hacker community for the former.
Their advantage is that all of these functions are contained in a common environment — This is not obviously an advantage. I like toast and eggs at breakfast, but it's hard to imagine a single device that does both well. Similarly, I don't necessarily want to post lecture notes, securely store grades, and send email with a single program.
@JeffE: isn't it useful to be able to cook your eggs and toast in the same room?
Sure, just like it's useful to have all those functions available on the same computer. But I prefer to use software crafted for each task, just like I prefer to use separate kitchen tools instead of throwing everything into the microwave. (Even if it does mean washing more dishes.)
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16075 | How do I determine if my contribution to an area of research merits publication?
I am a new worker in real functions with little experience and few published papers but not in top journals.
I together with my two colleagues found a new characterization of a well-known class of functions (first Baire class). I am pretty sure this is new. However, we cannot decide the extent of its significance because we are unable to find a good application. But suffice it to say there are some old results in the area that admit a very straightforward proof using our characterization. For instance, functions with countable discontinuities can be shown to be of first Baire class using our characterization with a very easy proof.
My question, is this enough for publication? I am afraid to submit it and got a snobbish review. By the way, I am from a third-world country.
I don't know. I would say that it is publishable. And if you are able to show previously known results more simply with your characterization, that is great, and I think worthwhile!
If you don't submit a paper, you're never going to find out it's publishable—unless someone beats you to it. Basically, if you and your colleagues believe you have a publishable advance, then write it up and submit it.
On a related note: have you solicited feedback from colleagues in the field? Has it been presented at a conference somewhere? What have you heard and done to "talk the work up" with colleagues? Has anyone told you it is (or is not) publishable?
The first sentence says it all....if you want to know if you can, then try and see what happens. A bad review might sting but it won't hurt for long. In the end, you'll be better off by learning how to improve.
Yes I presented it in a conference and one expert in the field said that our characterization is something new but did not hinted about the significance of our result.
It sounds like your work merits submission. Whether it merits publication depends on the journal. It's always good to consult with experts ahead of time, but failing that the best approach is to find a journal that seems in tune with the results (maybe it's the one where the prior work was published, or one that contains most of the relevant material that you needed for your result). Then submit it and see what happens. In the worst case your paper will be rejected, but then you'll expect to get review feedback, which is really what you're looking for.
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69155 | Research Gate gathering data
Does anybody know how ResearchGate gather data? I just clicked on a scientific paper in my browser (not through Research Gate), and in less than an hour I had received an e-mail notification that the author of my recent read is on ResearchGate. Is this legal?
You probably downloaded the paper from ResearchGate directly, because sometimes the Google scholar points to the ResearchGate copy of the paper.
No, I read it directly on the ScienceDirect and I was even not googling it. That is why it is surprising for me.
Do you have a researchgate account? If yes, you clicked through the terms and conditions and you probably have agreed to them knowing every time you bat an eye.
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about the proprietary mechanisms behind a particular commercial site, and thus both not publicly disclosed and likely to change without notice.
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67092 | How important is the choice of a guide/adviser for pursuing PhD in a topic
I am really in a fix in my career.
I completed my Masters in 2014. I qualified in a PhD Scholarships Test in 2015 and in the same year joined in a University for research work.
My interest lies in Linear Algebra, Topology, Abstract Algebra. My guide offered me to work in Spectral Graph Theory. As I was not quite acquainted with the topic I took up this topic for research.
As I am reading on my own, I am getting stuck on many theorems and some problems.
My guide has said recently that he does not have much expertise on this topic besides the preliminaries and hence he can't answer each and every problem of mine. He has said that the topic is new to him also. I have found now that also does not have any research papers to his name on Spectral Graph Theory as well. I was not aware of this before
My question is how important is the choice of a guide/adviser for pursuing PhD in a topic and what needs to be checked before joining him.
Is it wise continuing to work with him or should I look for some alternatives. Does getting a PhD depend a lot on your guide or I am expecting a lot from my guide? Does pursuing a PhD mean you have to do all along yourself?
I know there are many in this site who have got a PhD or have served as guides/advisors for many students. Please help. Any suggestions will be helpful. I would be happy to give more inputs if required.
There's still hope. If your advisor doesn't have domain expertise, search for a mentor who does.
Working on a PhD in an area where your advisor appears to have little to no expertise in is fraught with danger. A PhD degree is in some sense an apprenticeship - while you need to do the heavy lifting, you also get/need to learn the tricks of the trade from an accomplished master. Every craft has subtler/finer aspects that are not acquired easily. Would you want to rely on someone who himself doesn't appear to know much, even at a high level? I wouldn't do a PhD with such an advisor for the same reasons I wouldn't learn painting from someone who doesn't know it himself/herself.
On a more important side note, it might not be very wise to jump into a doctorate in an area you have such little knowledge/interest in. You do appear to have the right background, but even with that, doctoral level research in Spectral Graph Theory (and applications, if you are interested in them) is not going to be easy to pick up, even with an expert advisor.
I disagree. Many very successful PhD students have worked in areas that are not precisely in the expertise of their supervisor. Certainly nowadays, when you have the web, and easily connection to other resources this is quite common. It also indicates independence and shows initiative.
@Dilworth;is it possible to pursue a phd only relying on the web ?
@learnmore, the web as a starting point, yes. Then you should meet with people, and especially let them know your work. Also, you can almost never rely on your adviser to teach you things. You should be able to develop your own self-studying routine. This is essential in phd. PhD is a lonely road (in math, and other theoretical areas).
@Dilworth: PhD studies require 'independence' and 'initiative' regardless. The question is, why make your life harder still, esp when you have the option of making it easier? How is this extra machismo going to be of use, given that the enormous risks of picking a dilettante advisor are only too well known? The OP would be competing against peers (for awards, publications, jobs, etc.) who have better equipped advisors. It makes much more sense to keep it simple and play it safe. This business of working with amateur advisors ends badly all too often (exceptions of course are always there).
@andy, you are confusing two things here: an amateur advisor and an advisor who is not an expert in some sub-field. There are excellent and professional advisors that had great students not in their sub-field expertise. If someone is an "amateur" advisor, even to have a phd in his/her area of expertise is not worthwhile.
Also: Spectral Graph Theory is quite close to algebra (abstract and linear).
And yet another point: many excellent phd students have advisor who knows almost nothing in their area, e.g., in MIT it is usual to have an advisor with whom you don't publish anything. These are of course very good students, so it might not be for everyone.
@Dilworth, Yes that's what I meant. I didn't mean, amateur per se, but an amateur in that particular research area. And yes, like I said, exceptions are always going to be there. But for a vast majority of the cases, this approach is simply just inviting trouble. Ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
A chief hazard in working on a topic (in mathematics, for example) in which your advisor is not expert (and for which you have no other immediate expert co-advisors) is analogous to the idea of trying to make money on the stock market only with knowledge available to everyone else. Yes, there is the internet, but it is available to everyone else, too. The way to make big money on the stock market is with "insider information", but in the U.S. this is illegal (unless you are in Congress!) Analogously, unless one imagines that one is "special", it is not so easy to get started in some line of research without expert advice. Luckily, it is legal, and certainly desirable, to have expert advice! Otherwise, one may fail to understand relevant keywords, for example, and thereby be unaware of work already done. Or be unaware that dozens of other people are already working on whatever problem one sets as project goal, setting up a situation in which one's thesis inadvertently turns out to be old news? Or that one's project-idea is known (to experts) to be infeasible? How to avoid such issues?
Despite frequent claims on this site and others about a Ph.D. simply being "learning how to do research", I would also claim that there is such a thing as "expert knowledge base(s)", and these are not easily replicated simply in software (with or without the internet).
(By the way, the usual style in mathematics is that advisors are not co-authors on PhDs, in any case.)
... that is, yes, there are considerable risks in the situation you describe, and they are not standard and certainly not required. Unless you consciously choose to accept them, you should change your situation.
It's crucial. You can get technical help elsewhere, but your advisor is ultimately the gatekeeper to your future career. And it is a career; just being good at math is not sufficient without the set of contacts and public presence that your advisor controls access to. You're in theoretical mathematics, and it's extremely difficult to get an academic position in that area, and it's extremely difficult to do any significant research outside of such a position. (It isn't difficult to find a random high-paying job with a degree in pure math; but if you only wanted that, getting a PhD is not an efficient method of going about it.)
The point of grad school is to prepare you from an academic career, and that involves (and, honestly, is mostly about) getting the appropriate CV that will allow you to enter that career. Your goal at this point is to churn out publications. Ask your advisor if, given the difference in your research interests, he can help you with that. This involves knowing enough about the subfield to direct you toward the better journals and conferences, identifying the cool problems that will attract notice, and avoiding the problems that are intractible or just not interesting. He may be able to do this; if so, there's really no reason for you to switch advsiors. If he can't, find someone who will.
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24174 | How can I include figures with non-English text (and a translation) in the appendix of a research paper?
I'm writing a research paper in English, but my data is in another language.
I want to include some pictures in an appendix, but they contain some writings in the foreign language.
How can you include translation in an appendix?
Is it a common practice to write the translation over the picture since it has the necessary space. I don't want to put the translation below the picture to avoid taking too much space.
Are writings in other language important for your message? Can you remove them in some graphics editor and replace by English labels?
They are very very important. The picture, with the writings, is pregnant with cultural meanings and should remain so. I'm asking if I can the translated text in the picture using a software. Thank you
As the comments state, if the wording is of any significance to understanding your manuscript then a translation is in order. Depending on the type of figure you have several options
If your figure exists in editable digital form, you can see if actually changing the wording is possible. Even better if the format is a vctor graphics is to redraw the figure completely.
If your figure is a bit map, you could ad labels to the figure and provide translations in the text or figure caption (preferably).
Clearly the possibilities vary with the format of the original but it will be important to make the figure as understandable as possible for people not familiar with your native language.
Could you please further explain the second option?
Since you cannot change th etext in a bitmap you need to figure out some other way of adding translations. Introducing some form of markers and then providing the markers and the translation of the word in the caption might be one way. I am not advocating a single method but to use your creativity in a way that would make it easy for the reader to understand the figure.
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34146 | Can a single bad letter of recommendation ruin my chances of getting admitted to grad school?
I am dealing with one very mercurial professor and I had a bit of an incident with him. I think I might have offended him slightly (I told him about the deadline to submit a letter of recommendation (LOR) in the nicest possible way and yet he flared up on me). My seniors tell me that he has the habit of extracting revenge on people who ask him for a LOR if they irritate him. I am afraid I might have offended him; he kinda scares me. But he is a very good researcher in computer networks and I performed well in his class. I don't want to drop him and choose another faculty.
Now I know very well that the other two lecturers are going to rate me well, but if this lecturer gives me a bad rating will it harm my chances of getting admitted?
As a side note: I was always taught to not only ask a person for a LOR, but ask whether he/she is willing to write a positive LOR. The reason to ask explicitly for a positive one is that in many countries a professor/boss is formally not allowed to deny a request for a LOR and therefore will agree, but write a negative one. He/she is allowed to deny to write a positive LOR (obviously), and in that case you can find someone that is willing to write a positive one, because, as mentioned by @BobBrown, a negative LOR is something you really want to avoid.
@Michiel must be noted that at least some will not refuse to write the letter, but will suggest you get a better reference.
@Davidmh: That's been my approach: "Ask someone in whose courses you performed better."
Ofcourse @DavidKetcheson.
@dannsh13 If you are talking about the legal notion of "defamation of character" in US law, then what you said is not accurate. That term only applies to false statements. I think the same thing is true in the UK as well (although in UK law the burden of proof regarding the truth of the potentially defamatory statement falls on the defendant.)
@TrevorWilson - this is my understanding of the law too.
Pick someone else if it isn't already too late.
The actual answer to your question is this: It is far better to have a good letter from a faculty member who is relatively unknown than a bad letter from someone they recognize and respect. In fact, the latter is probably the worst thing that could happen.
If it is already too late, i.e. you have asked Professor X, he's agreed, and you've sent him the material (which is probably an online link these days) then work hard to make writing the letter easy. Put together the following information and send it fast:
Include your student number.
Remind him which of his classes you have taken, and when.
How did you distinguish yourself in those classes?
How would you describe yourself? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? He is going to have to answer those questions when he writes your reference, so the more details the better; but these must be things your referee knows himself.
What are some of your academic and nonacademic accomplishments that he may not remember?
What makes him particularly qualified to write a letter for you? That is, why should the recipient of the letter value it over a letter from someone else?
This goes in an email that says, "Thank you very much for agreeing to write a reference for me on very short notice. I hope the following will be of use to you when you write it."
One of the other two faculty told me that they had the LOR printed on a college letter head, signed it, scanned it and uploaded it. Is it necessary for colleges? Cause I am pretty sure he wouldn't do that extra work.
That's an entirely different question, and you should be able to find the answer in the admission material of the institution to which you are applying.
Yes.
A bad recommendation can ruin your chances. If a letter writer were to write that you had committed some grave academic dishonesty, for example, that would look extremely bad for you, even if the others were generally positive.
An answer to another question says that even a "good but not great" letter could keep you out of some departments.
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11017 | Value of recommendation letters from professors in a different field
I will be a second year math under-grad in September, and currently doing an internship at applied math research institute. However, my interest after my bachelors is to do PhD in pure math at a top math school. My question is:
How important would the recommendation letters from my current supervisors be while I apply to grad school? (Note: My supervisors are very active in their field of research, but are not quite famous.)
Recommendation letters may also represent soft skills. Hence, they are important. Your personality is independent from your field of study, so there is little point in withholding recommendation letters - indicating what kind of person you are - to future supervisors (or committees) if you are going to spend the next 3-4 years working in a team or with a supervisor on a project.
Source: PhD Student
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13330 | How difficult is it to get a paid PhD studentship in physics in Germany?
I would like to ask about the possibility of getting a paid PhD position in Germany.
I am going to defend my thesis in Physics after a few days and I am thinking of applying for a PhD.
My specialization is in nano-science and surface physics.
The average of my Master's degree will be at most 2.7, which is between good and satisfactory.
Does the average play a pivotal rule ? Is it difficult to get a paid PhD position?
Good grades can help, but they aren't the be all and end all. If you put together a great CV and have positive references then you've got a good chance of gaining an interview.
More important than grades I think is simply showing that you are, and will be, a good researcher. Not every great academic was a hotshot from Harvard in their undergrad years. And not everyone with a perfect GPA from Harvard would make a good academic.
I can tell you from personal experience that you don't need amazing grades to get a PhD scholarship. Just put your best foot forward in proving that you're an excellent researcher and go for gold.
Is it difficult to get a paid PhD position?
In Germany, most PhD positions are paid. In physics, you would typically get a half to three quarters full-time equivalent position as a university employee. I don't think it's particularly difficult to get such a position, if you have the right qualification for it. This will also depend on the place where you got your Master's degree.
Does the average play a pivotal rule?
A lot of professors that I know do care for good grades. And many university regulations ask for at least a good degree for admission as a PhD student (in my place, that translates to 2.5 or better, though there's a tolerance for students from abroad to take care of differences in the grading systems).
My suggestion would be to look for position being announced through for example in:
http://www.academics.de
http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/
http://www.drarbeit.de
and apply or get in contact with the person there to see how far you can get.
Also try to use your personal network: Ask your supervisors whether they know good labs to apply to, or whether they could even throw in a word for you.
From my personal experience (just started a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in Hannover), it is not difficult. As @silvado mentions, most Ph.D. positions are paid with about 75 % equivalent of a university employee (corresponding to about 1500-1600 EUR after tax per month). You can look at the Internet for open positions or try and contact group leaders that you would like to work with (possibly after a consultation with your current supervisor). The latter, however, might require some time as the professor will need to find funding.
Regarding grades, some professors might care. In my case, that was not the case and only my research results (i.e., my master thesis) were important. Nevertheless, that is just a single experience and it might be different elsewhere. Anyway, I guess you can always ask about this and, if you can reasonably explain why your grades are not better, this might not be a serious issue.
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131009 | As a post-doc, should I pursue incremental research or revolutionary research?
I've recently finished my PhD (the field almost doesn't matter, but applied mathematics if it helps), and begun a 3 year grant-funded postdoc with a heavy but very flexible research emphasis, in the same general area as my dissertation. At their request, I sent my doctoral adviser (a super senior/recently emeritus professor) a list of the papers I'm currently working on/close to submitting, and my ideas for approximately the next 6 months to a year.
All the papers I'm currently working on represent incremental progress on projects that either developed from my dissertation, or formed as collaborations with others. I didn't outline any wide-eyed ideas, because all the wide-eyed ideas I have will take several years and a long list of incremental progress to come to fruition. In my opinion (formed in part by reading science philosophers like Kuhn), this is how science progresses: incremental progress as long as it yields fruit.
My adviser responded with an alarming level of "concern" (to put it gently) that my current projects are not ambitious enough and he feels they don't match his expectations of me nor do they sufficiently challenge the status quo. I got the impression that he seemed to think that by publishing works that are only a slight improvement on the existing literature, I won't amount to anything, which I took to mean I won't be able to get myself a "real" job once my 3 year postdoc is up.
Oh, and by the way, he suggested a solution, which is essentially to drop everything I'm doing and spend more time working on a particular idea that he thinks will revolutionize a particular area of science. I'm always skeptical any time someone says that, no matter how good the idea, so I pushed back and said no, I'm going to pursue an array of topics, some of which are pretty mainstream, in order to build up a good publication record and good relationships with people in my field.
Ignoring the complexities of funding (my funding is flexible enough to permit me to work on a wide array of sub-topics), am I right to think that an early career academic doesn't really have the political (or emotional!) capital built up to make a "bold move" into an unproven field, which inevitably might involve trying to convince many experts they're doing it wrong? It seems to me like "challenging the status quo" is a dangerous game that can only be played by those with Tenure.
Or do I have it backwards? Is academic science so competitive that one can only progress, career-wise, by challenging the status quo? If so, aren't we just chasing each other around in circles, scientifically speaking?
This doesn't answer your question (perhaps subverts it), so I'll leave it as a comment: Perhaps it is okay to do incremental but meaningful work, and even if that means you don't have as "good" of a job in the long term, it might still be worth it. Others in non-academic fields give up on jobs paying much more for quality of life issues. Even if you aren't finding the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet you could stand your ground here, especially if other mentors see your work as valuable.
if you're in a hot growing area, then you will get a job no matter how incremental your output, as long as you are productive. Betting everything on a revolutionary result is risky then. Conversely if you are in a stagnant field where you and the other hundred graduates this year are waiting for each retirement to have a shot at a job, your research will need to be revolutionary.
I wouldn't go so far as to call this an answer, but I for one think it's too risky to bet everything on one high risk/high gain idea, especially if my funding was not directly related to it (I've seen some funding calls specifically for high risk/high gain ideas as well). I think being able to show recent publications from your current postdoc is vital in finding the next position. If you can do it on the side or build up to it and explore it that way, it might be worth it. I am very interested in other answers to this post.
Consider that he may be correct.
There may not be an upper bound, but there is certainly a lower bound to the 'boldness' of work that will move you to the next level.
Indeed, while progress is usually incremental, few good faculty positions go to individuals that produce 'usual' work. Your senior advisor has certainly had time to feel out what is likely to succeed.
I'll admit the existence of a lower bound, but just because a new approach is bold doesn't mean it will necessarily pan out. In this particular case I have scientific reasons to believe that this new approach won't necessarily yield the promised revolution. I'll admit that most faculty positions must require research uniqueness (we can't give this job to anyone else, because only you do this), but I seem wary of the idea that research uniqueness is only found by jumping off a cliff.
just because a new approach is bold doesn't mean it will necessarily pan out — Exactly right. But if you know in advance that something will out, it isn’t really research; it’s just homework. Good faculty positions (and research grants) don’t go to people who only do homework.
Rather sounds like a rhetoric question to me seeing the competition on positions with tenure.
And this is not restricted to the post-doc phase. I have worked in groups where the professor already and intentionally choosed research questions/methods with high risk of success/failure of the individual PhD student. Different professors will have very different research/risk/diversification strategies. Some groups work with same amount of people on one topic, other on 3 or 4.
If you have funding for 3 years, which is over average for post-docs, I think it is clear you are expected to deliver something significant, not only incremental. Results that would allow to acquire further funding.
Also, I don't have the same understanding of philosophy of science (Kuhn) as you. Paradigms are not shaken by incremental research, general relativity etc. were revolutionary theories that were adapted slowly and incrementally by the community. It's fun to read about this. There is even a stackexchange site (history of science)
Another view is, do you win scientific prizes with incremental research? Most of them go to researchers that developed new concepts/measurement methods/theories. Of course incremental research has to be done and most of the tenured researchers and PhD students work most of the time on such projects. But the post-docs, in my opinion, are really the one selected to risk something and being able to manage to accomplish it. And you can also find that a nobel prize on average gets awarded on average over 20 years after the discovery and it is known most of the researcher, depending on field, make significant discoveries in their 20-30s, PhD and post-doc phase again.
In the best case you already acquire funding during your post-doc time and can hire PhD students on your own as PI. Then you can diversify your research topics from risky to incremental
I don't think it would be a wise decision, to follow his advise 100% and drop all your current topics you are experienced in. From his overall strategy this can make sense to put single researcher on very risky new topics, I know such professors myself. In the aftermath, if it succeeded and you got outstanding results, you and he did everything right, if not it is very likely you regret it to not have proceeded with projects you were experienced and successful in. I would suggest to negotiate again with him how you diversify the research projects and how division of labour is organized with PhD students.
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80339 | Why don't major research institutions systematically publish their subscription fees to scientific journals?
I read on https://ropengov.github.io/r/2016/06/10/FOI/:
Finland becomes to our knowledge the first country where annual subscription fees for all individual publishers and all major research institutions have been made available.
[…]
Limited access to detailed pricing information and agreement details are likely to result in suboptimal contracts (Cockerill, 2006; Shieber, 2009). Improved access to subscription costs can hence be expected to lead to better deals and lower costs for the universities. It can also facilitate transition to the Open Access (OA) publishing model.
Why don't major research institutions systematically publish their subscription fees to scientific journals?
References:
Shieber, S M (2009). Equity for Open-Access Journal Publishing. PLOS Biology 7(8): e1000165.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000165
Cockerill, M (2006). The Economics of Open Access Publishing. Information Services and Use 26(2): 151–157. Available at: http://content.iospress.com/articles/information-services-and-use/isu499 [Last accessed 28 October 2015].
Why would they systematically publish those fees? They don't systematically publish other specific expenses.
@DavidRicherby See quote in the question.
Most governments don't mandate it. Without a legal requirement, what's in it for the university?
@DavidRicherby is the quote unclear?
@FranckDernoncourt No, but the quote only tells how someone speculates that it might be beneficial to all institutions if they all did this. It does not tell how it would be beneficial to an institution if they are - for the time being - the only one to do so.
@Jasper if you disagree with the quote and its references, feel free to write an answer.
Presumably an important reason is that publishers contractually forbid libraries from disclosing this information, see for example http://access.okfn.org/2014/04/24/the-cost-of-academic-publishing/:
And then libraries are not allowed to tell anyone what these costs are. Libraries are placed under huge amounts of pressure not to release this data, and in the case of Elsevier, they are explicitly forbidden to by non-disclosure agreements in the contracts they have to sign.
This is a reference from 2014, so perhaps meanwhile things have changed (but I would guess not).
Relevant, from April 2014: Tim Gowers went on a campaign to file Freedom of Information Act requests to Russell Group university libraries in the UK, with mixed results. That post also has lots of relevant information, including in particular some glimpses into the mechanisms used by publishers to keep their contracts with libraries under wraps.
My favourite from that post, highlighting the contradictions that emerge from that: (in response to a librarian's refusal to provide information: "You say that the disclosure of the information I ask for would be likely to have a detrimental effect on Elsevier’s future negotiating position with that of the university. You also say that it would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of the university itself. I do not find these two statements easy to reconcile. Could you please explain how it is possible for both parties to lose out?"
It's extremely common that parties to a contract prohibit each other from disclosing details about the contract. For instance, I work in business software, and AFAIK, all our customers (large grocery chains) are forbidden to give out details about license and other fees. This is not confined to academia. Yes, I do realize that there are different dynamics at work in the public and semi-public sector.
@E.P. it's a bit too basic a question, but you could try asking it on [economics.se] anyway.
@StephanKolassa That is a false equivalence. Of course this happens in private-private transactions - that is not in question. However, unless you can provide examples in the public sector, and particularly where a public institution is forbidden from releasing those details to its members and constituents, your business-software example is completely moot.
@E.P.: I did mention that dynamics are different in the (semi-)public sector. Plus, quite a few universities are private corporations (e.g., Harvard), even if they do get tax money. Finally, contracts are contracts, and I'd say that private-private contracts provide at least a useful starting point for understanding public-private ones. I'll happily admit that there is some tension here when we talk about taxpayer money.
@StephanKolassa Indeed you did, but the equivalence remains false. The real tension here is that it's not only the university that is a public institution - the scientific publisher is also a part of the academic commons, building a monopoly over freely donated labour, and they're plenty happy to keep up the pretense that they are there to serve the academic community when that pretense suits them (and then drop that once the lawyers come to the table). A private-private contract is a terrible model for this situation.
Perhaps it's because if many universities had enough backbone to do this, they would already have started a full-on "war" against journal publishers and their outrageous contracts, and the prices would have come down to something reasonable and uniform?
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61383 | Why has the time spent studying declined so sharply in the United States over the the past few decades?
I read on https://www.aei.org/publication/leisure-college-usa/ :
Study time for full-time students at four-year colleges in the United States fell from twenty-four hours per week in 1961 to fourteen hours per week in 2003.
The authors give some inconclusive statement regarding the reasons behind the trend:
The decline is not explained by changes over time in student work status, parental education, major choice, or the type of institution students attended.
Evidence that declines in study time result from improvements in education technology is slim. A more plausible explanation is that achievement standards have fallen.
I wonder why the time spent studying has declined so sharply in the United States over the the past few decades. I am only looking for data-supported answers (or pointers to them).
Given that Facebook was launched in 2004, had they made the comparison a few years laters, they'd have observed an even larger drop in the study time :-)
Note that it is misleading to include the footnote verbatim when reproducing that figure. In the original context it may have been accurate; now it certainly is not. Please crop or rewrite the footnote giving credit to the actual source, not yourself.
Summary: "Kids these days, I tell ya".
One caveat: The linked article, including charts ("Source: Authors' calculations") and quotes is from the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank -- not a peer-reviewed article.
It's not Facebook or Instagram or the rest of the plethora of social web services available today. Perhaps that's part of it, but from experience I would say the most significant factor is necessity to work and limited government financial assistance. Please see my anecdotal answer as reference to my claim, which seems to be very prominent amongst middle-class Americans, and the financial responsibility is shifted almost entirely on the students, which limits their ability to spend time on academics: rather, they work to pay for school.
I'll add that the paragraph: The decline is not explained by changes over time in student work status, parental education, major choice, or the type of institution students attended. - is entirely incorrect. Student work status has unfortunately necessitated change (more work done), parents seem to be worse at showing their children the importance of education, major choice is extremely important in terms of in-school employment and thus affecting hours spent studying, and the institution can double between schools; financial responsibility is absolutely a factor.
@BenVoigt: Nah -- it's very obvious that the "authors" mentioned in the in-image footnote are not the OP, just as the "authors" mentioned in the OP's own commentary are not the OP. There is zero risk of misunderstanding. (That said, it would make sense to put the image itself inside a > blockquote.)
“Evidence that declines in study time result from improvements in education technology is slim.” Riiight. Computers & the Internet haven't made information that used to take hours of digging in book any easier to find. Nope, not at all. Haven't helped a bit. I call bullshit on that hypothesis.
@DanielR.Collins I agree, but it looks like the trend was echoed in some other sources. If the statistics was purely wrong, i.e., the actually trend is the reverse (= the time spent studying has increased in the United States over the the past few decades), you're welcome to post as answer and I'd be happy to upvote and accept.
@DanielR.Collins AEI is a libertarian think tank, not a conservative think tank.
@Chloe: "conservative think tank" is the description used at Wikipedia, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. See reference links [2] and [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute
@SlippD.Thompson The way lectures are typically held (at least within my frame of reference), neither is necessary. It may be different for humanities.
Does "study time" include lectures, exercise sessions, etc or is it just independent study?
The conclusion seems to be oversimplifying things. This looks like a chicken-and-egg problem. Do the students study less because the standards have fallen, or have the standards fallen because the students study less and professors can't flunk 90% of them?
@Raphael Hmm… maybe. I was a CS major & art minor. Even 9-13 years ago (class of 2007), being able to just search for relevant text and see a snippet before heading to the stacks to grab the book was invaluable. My ADD + no text-search would've ='d hours upon hours of reading all kinds of interesting stuff in old books and not actually getting the assignments done.
@SlippD.Thompson As soon as you have to access material not provided in pre-digested form by the teacher, there is no argument that IT and the internet have increased efficiency manifold. (Or has it? You find lots of crap, too, so you have to sift through stuff and filter; you have lots of distractions; ...) My point is that that is rarely necessary, for passing the course at least (in my experience).
@Raphael And in my experience, actual research was essential for doing well in a number of my mid-to-high-level courses, and especially so for my senior year where my CS courses were only independent study projects.
@SlippD.Thompson If my observation generalises, this is less the case today. Which would fall under "lower standards" or maybe "higher teaching standards" (i.e. teachers should do more; I don't think that's necessarily better), I guess. If there's little to no independent (literature) research to be done, technological impact on efficiency in that arena is less important.
I think part of their issue may be the full time definition has changed over time as well. http://completecollege.org/pdfs/2013-10-14-how-full-time.pdf They study should really compare per hour in-class to per hour out of class and even this is not perfect due to advances in technology (not accounted for either). I do not see any error bars in this publication or even mention of the likely error. I am sure they are respected academics but I hope this would not pass peer-review. No funding mention either and this is published by a conservative think tank. I am skeptical of these findings.
Please take extended discussion to [chat].
From the abstract of a possibly related publication: "One drink per day of the cheapest brand of spirits required 0.29% of U.S. mean per capita disposable income in 2011 as compared to 1.02% in 1980, 2.24% in 1970, 3.61% in 1960, and 4.46% in 1950."
@DanielR.Collins You should know to take Wikipedia statements with a grain of salt. The Washington Post and the New York Time are rather liberal and tend to conflate libertarian with conservative. However, looking directly at the first hand source, http://www.aei.org/about/ "The American Enterprise Institute is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity and strengthening free enterprise." Those are most definitely libertarian principals.
First, it is important to deploy your scientific skepticism in assessing this claim. The source, after all, is the American Enterprise Institute, which is a political "think tank" that is explicitly dedicated to pushing a particular point of view. Other key elements of its scientific record including taking tobacco company money to produce pro-smoking studies the 1980s and recent attacks on global warming.
There does, however, seem to be at least some difference there, and a deeper analysis of both the data and possible causes found that a major transition happened across the 1970s:
Expansion of the student population to include many more people who are working to support themselves, parenting, commuting long distances, etc., which means they cannot devote as much time, and
A shift in faculty requirements away from teaching and toward research, with a concomitant decrease in the amount of work that faculty are able to support asking from students.
From the early 1980s to today, however, the situation appears to have been more stable.
Personally I don't see the situation from the early 1980s to now to be stable. I would call it anything but. My uncle received an education in the exact same field as me 30 years ago. He painted houses 5 hours per week and was able to fully pay for his college expenses. I am 5.5 years through my education working 35 hours per week at $16/hour gross and still end up $10,000+ in debt per year, and I am not unwise with my budgeting. American education has changed so significantly in the past 3 decades that there is practically no comparison, especially financially.
@ChrisCirefice That may well be true, but it is a different aspect of the situation than the question of how many hours people are using to study: when I say "the situation appears to have been more stable", I am referring to the conclusion the linked analysis makes that the average number of study hours has not declined significantly further.
Is your item 1 significant for gross averages? Isn't the full-time on-site student the norm?
@Raphael My understanding of the analysis I am paraphrasing is that "full-time" refers to the number of credit-hours that a person is enrolled for, not whether they also have competing responsibilities. Likewise I do not believe that there is distinction between on-campus dormitories and off-campus housing, as those students all take their classes on-campus in the same classrooms.
@jakebeal Right. I was thinking in terms of population. If, say, only 5% of all students have other obligations than studying today, this change of the mean can probably not be explained by your item 1.
@Raphael I suggest you read the linked source for the details.
The review/comment on the study you link does not give any such data. Maybe the original study does; I did not see any skimming. I do note Figure 2, though, which clearly shows that at least the work factor almost vanished as distinguishing criterion over the years! Too bad they do not show averages with variances; it seems to me (just from looking at the figures) that study time "normalized" (to a lower level) across the board. If that is indeed the case, explanations like your item 1 do not work.
@Raphael, the linked study (McCormick) discusses Item 1 in various places—for example, in the paragraph that begins, "There is one other important point to make with regard to compositional differences in the student population between 1961 and 2003." McCormick points out that Babcock and Mark themselves "indicate that when hours worked and major were added to the analysis of compositional differences, the change in student population accounts for 18 percent of the drop in study time." [continued...]
@Raphael [...continued] McCormick argues later that demographic changes in student bodies may in fact account for more of the drop in reported study time; that's part of the point of McCormick's Table 2 and the text around it.
@Vectornaut Thanks, I missed that. (The data are weird. I wonder what is missing: 50 hours per week for all activity seems a bit low. That's less than eight hours a day!)
@Raphael, I think there's a lot of time missing because there's a lot of activities the NSSE doesn't ask about. Also, the "Study" entries in Table 2 don't appear to include time spent in class! As McCormick puts it: "NSSE asks students how many hours they spend per week on seven activities: preparing for class, working for pay on campus, working for pay off campus, participating in cocurricular activities, relaxing and socializing, caring for dependents, and commuting to class. NSSE does not ask about time spent in class, nor does it ask about work in the home apart from dependent care."
@Raphael: For an example of how time might leak through the cracks in the NSSE, consider this hypothetical day. The activities chosen may not be likely to all occur in a single day, but they hopefully illustrate the variety of things the NSSE time use questions don't see.
[0:00] Respondent's alarm clock goes off an hour before she needs to leave for class. None of her activities in that hour (hitting snooze, fumbling through her dresser, showering, eating cereal, brushing her teeth, putting on makeup, packing a lunch) are reported on the NSSE, although her commute to class is reported. She has three hours of class, not reported. She has a physical therapy appointment, which lasts 40 minutes, and leads to another 10 minutes on the phone with her insurance company.
[4:50] She stops for groceries on the way home—20 minutes, if the checkout line is short. She spends an hour cooking, which she may or may not report on the NSSE as "relaxing," and 20 minutes cleaning up. Uh oh, she's out of clean clothing! The half hour she spends walking to and from the laundromat, folding clothes, and hanging delicates up to dry is not reported, although the time she spends reading a textbook in the laundromat is reported as studying.
[7:00] Respondent spends 15 minutes replying to e-mails from a prospective subletter and a potential summer internship supervisor. She spends 5 minutes recycling junk mail and writing a rent check, and 5 minutes refilling her bicycle tires. She then spends 10 minutes removing makeup, brushing her teeth, and changing into pajamas. Her bathroom breaks throughout the day, which she may or may not report as "relaxing," have added up to 10 minutes.
[7:45] Respondent's total unreported time, from waking up to falling asleep, is anywhere from 6:35 to 7:45, depending on what she reports.
@Vectornaut I see, thanks for the elaborate clarification! Out of these things, some would count as "discretionary" (jung email) while others are not (sleeping, eating, housework). Mandatory and other attendance at university should also be covered. There's always a better study to be done!
@Raphael, I think part of the point is that there's no clean line between discretionary and non-discretionary time use. If a student spends an extra 20 minutes getting dressed each morning, is that discretionary? What if she does it to look more professional and be taken more seriously? Is exercise discretionary, given that it may be linked to academic performance (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/vigorous-exercise-linked-with-better-grades/)? Yes, there's always a better study to be done—but the time researchers would spend doing it is discretionary as well...
In 1961, one could easily get a good job paying a reasonable salary with the possibility of continued promotions without going to college. This is much less true in 2003, so many people are going to college not out of interest but as a default choice. Hence, while the population going to college in 1961 did so because they were interested in academics, many of the people going to college in 2003 don't actually want to study. Hence it is not surprising that, on average, they study less.
I agree with this; as a college student I see this all the time. It's sad, but that's reality. However, there is another perspective that should be explored - the academic that wants to study but simply can't; I explore this in my answer as an anecdote.
Much less not true? More true?
Follow-up question: are these uninterested students still successful? If so, why? Do the motivated students just do busywork? How does the extra effort relate to success? (Not that answering these questions should be answered here, just to provoke some thought.)
@Raphael, as I was an "interested student", I studies things that I know would not be on the exam, and read research papers for fun... So is leaning more then is needed to pass while at university "busywork"?
@Ian When I wrote "busywork" I thought of assignments that the interested students were doing and the other not in the context of the certified standard the university establishes -- which is passing all courses. Of course you benefit from some (not all!) extra work.
@Raphael, going to university used to be about leaning, getting a degree was just seen as a nice side effect...
@Ian Yes, and I wish that were still true for most students. :/ Fact is, you (as a teacher, university offical or politician) can no longer assume a self-motivated student intrinsically interested in the material. Well, you can, but then your failure rates will go through the roof (if you maintain standards). Since there are all kinds of pressures for that not to happen, well...
Yes. This is the correct answer. Roughly the top two-thirds of American students go to college now. In the 1960s, it was more like 20% (actually, that's probably a generous estimate.) Obviously, the top 20% of students are, on average, more studious than the top 67%. By 2003, the percentage of Americans who had attended at least some college was higher than the percentage of Americans students who had graduated high school in 1961.
With some exaggeration, today's 4-year college is yesterday's high school. And what was available as public education is now bought at a high price from private (and even from public) colleges and universities. This is just one part of a 35 year trend toward privatization (in the US). All of the other things discussed (Internet etc.) apply to Europe etc. as well, but the problem raised is specifically American. (IOW, it ain't the Internet that's to blame.)
@Drew The fact that most public universities (at least in the state of Michigan; see my university's budget for example, page 13), receive less than 15% of their budget from the state and none from the federal government, it's not hard to imagine why they have to recompense 50% of their operating revenue from tuition. The lack of federal and state funding puts the burden ($15k/year) on the students, and since a bachelor's degree is essentially required nowadays, where does that leave students...
@ChrisCirefice: Yes. And like so many other short-sighted and self-centered Americanisms ($$$ in elections, medical care, retirement support, gun control,...), this one is specific to the US. Other countries pay for free education for all using taxes (and the taxes are raised more progressively). What the US does for K-12, in terms of public funding, other countries do for preschool and higher education as well. There is nothing new or unusual about this - the world's democracies have been doing it for decades.
@Drew Yes. Like I've said in another comment, the United States has its priorities backwards when it comes to education. Constant reductions in federal and state funding cause cuts in academic programs (such as music or foreign languages) in K-12, lack of support in pre-school programs for working parents, financial burden at the university level, and an overall reduced effectiveness and even interest in education. The U.S. needs to take a page out of Europe's handbook; this is one reason why I would without hesitation move to Europe - for the academic future of my (future) children.
As much as I'd like to leave this as a comment, I just can't. So here's a semi-rant but very informative piece of an American student's experience, and why we don't spend as much time studying as we may have 20-30 years ago.
As a full-time student with parents who have fallen into essentially infinite debt due to tax and bankruptcy laws, I have zero financial support in college. My tuition and living expenses are about $18,000 per year and yet, amazingly, my federal + state aid totals about $12,000 per year (and this is 90% loans!). Yay America!
I had academic excellence scholarships my first two years, but when I transferred universities I lost the ability to obtain scholarships; the reason remains obfuscated to me to this day; universities are businesses!
So where does that leave me? Approximately $6,000 per year in deficit to my institution. I am incredibly fortunate to have chosen a major which has led me, after two years of hard work, to have two part-time jobs at approximately $14/hour each after taxes. I work these two jobs a total of 30-40 hours per week in order to pay off this deficit.
Now, imagine a full-time student who is in class 15 hours per week, with 10-20 hours per week of homework, working 30-40 hours per week to pay for school. The total? Approximately 60 hours per week spent on school and work, and not counting study time.
I satisfy the minimum requirements for my courses and work - I do my homework and work and pass my tests; believe me, I'd love to spend time studying more what I care about, but time does not permit. I am a lucky one in that I seemingly absorb information like a sponge and I don't have to spend time studying in order to satisfy university requirements. Others? They unfortunately have to spend 10+ hours per week studying to remember what they learned.
The point is, Americans in general have more financial assistance nowadays than before; ironically, the cost to students is much higher. Thus, many students like me need to work to afford school (even after taking out the maximum of federal loans per semester). In needing to work to afford school, we become trapped in a self-fulfilling prophecy - students study less, care less about school, and drop out more, even though the cost (economically and personally) is more.
I study less because I have to do more to be able to go to school. I know that many others are in the exact same situation as me: less time caring about school and more time working part-time minimum-wage jobs to afford the ever-increasing tuition and living costs.
This is the current state of American public higher education, and it is not fun.
Edit: The issue of financial aid and taxes was brought up in the comments on this answer, so I'd like to talk about that in terms of the typical student.
Financial Aid
Financial aid can be broken down into 4 basic parts:
Scholarships
Usually privately funded by individuals or organizations
Merit/need-based
Essentially "free money" (well, you worked for it in high school, so technically not "free")
Grants
Usually funded by the federal government, state governments, or non-profit organizations
Usually need-based or promoting disadvantaged prospective students
This really is free money (for the student)
Loans
Funded by the federal government or private entities
Paid for by the student (generally after graduation)
This is the opposite of free money. Loan servicers make thousands of dollars off the interest.
Personal finances
Funded by the students' family members or themselves
The results
In my particular case, I receive $0/year in scholarships because I transferred universities and am no longer eligible to receive them; I receive about $1,500 per year in grants (the Pell Grant, specifically) because my parents make decent but not great money (middle class Americans); I borrow $10,500 per year in federal loans, and I fund the other $6,000 or so with my own personal finances.
The problem is that when this deficit occurs - when #1-#3 don't cover the entire cost of tuition + living expenses - it's up to the student or their family to pay it, and on time. Unfortunately, you can't just owe the university money when you graduate and pay it like a medical bill over time. You have to pay it up front or you don't get to register for classes; incidentally, if you don't register for classes for 6 months, you have to start paying your loans!
Like my family, the $6,000 per year to cover one child's education just isn't there. Most families I know don't even have $1,000 to spare, including mine. Thus, the student must take on the additional responsibility of working - and working a lot - because most jobs available to undergraduate students pay minimum wage. With some basic math, at $8/hour a student would need to work 15 hours/week year-round in order to make $6,000 to pay university costs. That is not time spent studying.
Even if I received the $6,000 per year in scholarships I was receiving at my first institution, I would still be borrowing $10,500 per year in loans. 4 years of that and the total debt after interest nears $47,000 and the interest continues to accrue during the repayment period. I am fortunate to be majoring in Computer Science, so I have very good job prospects to pay back such a balance. Others may not be so fortunate.
The solution?
As James mentioned in a comment, it seems that I was implying that we should increase the available financial aid (which would mostly be loans). In fact, we should instead work to solve the crisis of public education in America by reducing tuition costs. As mentioned, taxes play a big part in that.
I'm no expert, but it seems to me that cutting our $600 billion military budget by $50 billion to add to our currently $70 billion education budget would immediately solve a lot of problems for American students. Relieve the pressure from students to put themselves tens of thousands of dollars in debt to get a bachelor's degree and maybe we would have more time to study. But I'll leave that project to the budget board that drives the future of our country.
Even though this is anecdotal, and the original statistic in the question seems poorly supported, I wouldn't be surprised if this were quite common.
Chris, I am impressed with your full time studies while working 30-40 hours per week. Your story gives me hope for the future. However, I don't like your attitude towards the $12,000 per year in aid. I'm in the phase of life where I'm paying quite a bit of taxes. Part of that is going into grants and high-risk loans provided to students. You might want to remove the "zero financial support" from your first sentence. Instead of implying that financial aid should be raised, perhaps you should campaign for lower tuition fees.
@James Thank you, and valid point - the financial aid is obviously helpful, but the tax money you (and I) pay could be better spent toward education, reducing tuition costs and eliminating the need for such a large sum of financial aid. And, I guess I'm not an economist so it's probably more complicated that that - but, the $10,500 out of the $12,000 I mentioned is purely loans. I'm borrowing from the federal government, not receiving actual aid. That's just the maximum I can borrow per year, otherwise I would borrow $18,000 and not work so I could focus on school :)
I had (basically) the same experience during my tuition. To go off what @James said, increased loan amounts would not have made me work less. So long as I was passing my classes, I would have put all my other time into working still - so I have less debt when I am finished.
@ChrisCirefice While the $10,500 is a loan, the interest rate is low enough that in the grand scheme of economics and financial management, you are getting a little bit of something for nothing. But even from that point of view, what you're getting is far less than $10,500.
@ToddWilcox Add that up over 4 years for a typical college student, 6 years in my case because I have 2 majors and a minor, and you have a huge sum of debt. Now, add the interest over a typical 10-year repayment and it's at $40k in principal but about $15,000 in interest. So no, it's not "a little bit of something for nothing". It's bad economics putting a huge financial burden on young adults who need college in order to get a decent salary, and who now have to work to minimize the penalties they have to pay for doing so.
@ChrisCirefice I assumed you were talking about Federal loans, which have a favorable interest rate. If your total interest is really $15,000 over ten years, then you are probably looking at a rate of between 6% and 7%. At the federal rate of 4.66%, your total interest would be about $10,000. That $5,000 difference is what I meant you would be "getting", although of course you're actually not losing it. But with a federal loan you would be getting value of the education and the ability to finance it for $5,000 less than "normal", which from a certain point of view is the government giving $5k.
@James - Most public universities are already taking in so little money that they are forced to provide a substandard education. There is no way to lower tuition fees without either raising direct government aid to universities (which raises taxes just as much as financial aid to students) or doing as European universities (which are even more severely underfunded) do and failing half the students.
@ToddWilcox Just because private loans (which make money) decide to have 20% interest (as an exaggeration) doesn't mean the difference is money the government is "giving" you - the government could just be "breaking even" rather than "earning" money, with the interest rate covering the people who are unable to pay their loans (though I know that is not true - we are getting some amount or taxes wouldn't be there). You make a good point that the students do get something - but I do think it's less than (private loans) - (federal loans)
I suppose another outlook could be, "why do so many people attempt college and fail? - which drives up the cost for everyone who attempts" - Which could be creating a source of pressure, from society, for college to be "more easily achievable", so more people can graduate, so that it "costs less" - (because after graduating they can pay back their loans), but in actuality, making it "more achievable" means people can be paid less after graduation - because the degree means less and there are more people with them.
@DoubleDouble I think we can all agree that the public education system needs some work in general. The best we can do is raise the pertinent concerns (as I have in my answer) and make them visible to the people who have the power to make changes (e.g. federal and state officials, university administrators, famous economists, researchers, etc.) If nobody knows the struggle and there's no research to back it up, nothing will change.
I would note that 'America' can't really be generalized quite this far. In my state, the qualifications to get scholarships that cover nearly all of tuition are absurdly low. When I was in undergrad (2004-2008,) the qualifications to get a (state-funded) scholarship that paid 3/4 of tuition were the same as the qualifications for admission at the state university I attended. This (predictably) resulted in tons of people going to university to party for a year on the state's dime and then flunking out. About 40% of students were gone before the 2nd year.
Such bickering about giving students low-interest loans and griping about paying taxes! In the rest of the developed world, higher education, at all levels, is essentially free. For everyone. And by "free" I do mean, yes, that the people as a whole pay for it, through taxes. (And the rest of the developed world does not have a New Guilded Age tax system skewed in favor of the wealthy.) America is short-sighted when it comes to educating its people, just as it is for so much else.
+1 for "...it seems to me that cutting our $600 billion military budget by $50 billion to add to our currently $70 billion education budget would immediately solve a lot of problems..." - and not only in education!
@TT_ I'm no budgeting expert but it seems to me that we could sacrifice a few billion-dollar tanks and jets to help the future of our country (students/young adults) instead of trying to militaristically preserve its current state. Of course there's a lot of politics in the budget but seriously, the U.S. has its priorities backward.
I'm surprised nobody seems to actually be examining the paper itself. I expect most here are academics, and this is a study after all. I did this and already found potential issues. I'm sure as you dig in further, you will find more to question. Like any study, one must first find potential flaws and address then with a follow-up study.
The authors are examining surveys from several time periods done by different organizations. There is very much a potential for framing effects, i.e. the way a question is asked can bias the answer. The authors then seek to remedy this by taking variations on the survey questions and asking them to current students at a single major university in California. They then use the variation in answers and use that to adjust the results of the surveys.
There are two problems with this:
1) it addresses only the framing effect and introduces its own flaw, which is that they are randomizing across students today at a single university in California. There's no reason to believe that a student from 1961 from a different university would answer the same question in the same manner as a student from 2010 from that particular university.
2) In fact, I'm skeptical that they properly addressed the framing. As I looked into how the datasets were gathered, I found they were gathered in very different ways and I can't imagine how you could remedy this by just giving students randomized survey questions at the end of class. For example, the time-use survey from 1965 was done by asking respondents to keep a diary. Then this was followed-up by an in-person interview. Would results gathered in this way differ than asking people to fill out a form at the end of class? In fact, it's well-known that one way to bias a study is to ask people to keep careful records. By asking people to think whether they spend their time doing X, you actually influence the time they spend on X. In this case, I imagine asking students to keep track of their study time would definitely affect the time they spend studying!
Given these issues that arose immediately from just a quick glance at the paper, I would say one should keep a skeptical mind about these types of research papers, especially when the authors don't make it easy to refute their claims; I wasn't able to find the survey questions they used, for example, to address the framing effect, nor did I find any discussion of how they addressed the differences in data gathering or record keeping.
If you ask about time spent studying for different classes and add up, you'll get more than 100 hours/week. Guaranteed.
I do not believe this paper. It is not peer reviewed. It is made to look like an academic journal but it is not. It is produced by a conservative think thank and hence is unlikely neutral. The methods are questionable. Did anyone find error information? I suggest skepticism. They draw conclusions their methods cannot support.
Excellent point, and the first thing that occurred to me: how can they possibly measure this accurately across so many decades and so many different colleges and student-contexts? The only way to measure it at all is by asking students, which means you're really just measuring students self-impressions of how much they study, which is already inherently inaccurate in concept alone...
@RBarryYoung There are lots of ways to measure study time. For example, I could operationally define study time as time spent in the library. Step 1: choose the operational definition that give you the result you want.
@emory Yes, but that is not an accurate nor meaningful way to measure actual student study time, which is my point: Any claim to have done so is highly suspect.
Part of the reason could be more political pressure/prioritization to produce higher number of graduates, which has resulted in lower achievement standards, and hence easier coursework. As a related example from secondary education:
Most established tragically low expectations. President George W.
Bush’s 2002 education reform, “No Child Left Behind,” only worsened
this problem. It set the impossible requirement that 100% of students
be “proficient” in reading and math by 2014, and punished schools that
weren’t making adequate progress.
To bring themselves closer to 100%, many states simply lowered the
score needed to pass their tests. The result: In 2007, Mississippi
judged 90% of its fourth graders “proficient” on the state’s reading
test, yet only 19% measured up on a standardized national exam given
every two years. In Georgia, 82% of eighth-graders met the state’s
minimums in math, while just 25% passed the national test. A yawning
“honesty gap,” as it came to be known, prevailed in most states.
http://fortune.com/common-core-standards/
I know at the community college where I teach, a combination of pressure for higher graduation numbers, and also concern for students holding full-time jobs and caretaking families, has over time led to simplified coursework and fewer outside homework assignments.
Why would the students of 1961 spend more time "studying" than students today?
In 1961 in the US, there was military conscription. Students who flunked out could be drafted and sent into the combat zone.
In addition, many universities had mandatory ROTC. When your ROTC instructor plows through, it is better for you if you are studying than if you are goofing off. If you can goof off with a book in your hands, you are "studying".
Is there a decline in educational excellence
Yes, there is a well documented decline in educational excellence. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/11/19/dreams-of-better-schools/
In some respects, it has always been so. With the possible exceptions of the postal service and the motor vehicle bureau, few public institutions rival our schools in public dissatisfaction. “We can all agree,” according to the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, “that American public schools are a joke”—and it is not hard to find comparable statements from commentators on the left.
What should one make of such claims? In a study published more than a decade ago by the Century Foundation, Richard Rothstein, who later became an education columnist for The New York Times, rattled off a list of similar lamentations stretching back more than 150 years. As early as 1845, when the nation’s first standardized test was administered to a group of fourteen-year-olds under the direction of Horace Mann, the examiners were shocked by the “absurd answers,…errors in grammar, in punctuation and in spelling.” Writing in 1902, the editors of the New York Sun declared that America’s schools had sunk to the level of “a vaudeville show.” By 1955, a best-selling book, Why Johnny Can’t Read, charged that the failure of the schools was “gradually destroying democracy.”
Hesiod has been reported saying "When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint". True. But I can - as one single point of reference - compare the levels of education when I was studying at university to the level now, and it has massively dropped. We had covered in the first year material which now takes 2-3 years to cover (if at all). True, we were not business-savvy and were not internet-streetwise, so that's where the extra intellectual resources may have been redirected nowadays.
@CaptainEmacs Correct. The decline in academic excellence has been going on since at least 750 BCE and probably longer. Professors tend to graduate from highly competitive universities and teach at less competitive universities. If a professor graduated from a less competitive university and ended up teaching at a highly competitive university s/he would probably think that academic excellence has gone up from his/her school days.
Excellent point, very perceptive, I upvoted you. However, I am still in contact with my alma mater and I am afraid to say, the same effect, albeit weaker (so that's why I agree you have a point), is visible there. A recently published study suggests grade inflation in the US where the notable exception was Princeton. So, it may be a real effect after all, and our patronisation of the elders actually inappropriate. Rather, the system may be "ratcheting back" to quality whenever the "leidensdruck" ("suffering") becomes too high and true (rather then pseudo-)reforms are undertaken.
I'm not upvoting this, because the "Yes" in the 2nd part of the answer seems contradicted by the quote -- or perhaps it's a sarcastic commentary, in light of the conventional counterargument that "elders have have always groused about the youth and therefore they must be wrong". But at our institution, for example, we could absolutely show documentation of testing material over the last 50 years or so that shows the assessments getting much easier and more rudimentary over time.
@DanielR.Collins It is my belief (for which I do not have evidence to share) that in general students today are better than students of yesteryear. This belief is not necessarily inconsistent with academic decline at your institution.
In think the answer given that states "standards have fallen" - which is mentioned by your study authors is pretty much the reason.
However, there is a bit more to it - at least at a guess.
For example, here in the UK, successive governments have been league-table obsessive with the deranged expectation that the performance of schools and students can be measured accurately.
Along the way, GCSEs are also graded based on statistics where the most frequent mark is a middle C and the rest are arranged around it - this means worse performance by all does not result in worse marks.
But coming back to the league tables and rankings:
A bit issue of ranking is that nobody wins when someone does badly but everybody wins when they do well.
Exam boards have no incentive to provide hard papers, as schools prefer to pick the easy one - for a good ranking.
In addition, the current UK system relies a lot on fairly simple tests that can be marked quickly by the teachers paid to do so (still takes months...) - from questions that guide you, to multiple choice questions (at A-level at least). Especially multiple choice questions can also be solved by deduction rather than knowledge. In addition the format of today's questions has changed a lot.
In the past one may have asked you have a system with A, B, C, D work out X, Y, Z.
Today you would be given a system with A, B, C, D, told to work out X, then assume it is H, continue on to Y, assume it is I and then continue on to Z.
And there is technology:
In the past, if students wanted to cheat, they would spend a lot of time preparing their notes somehow, however the act of preparing notes is effectively revising.
Today, a student wishing to cheat would more likely try to use a mobile to google an answer.
And lastly, "learning to pass the test". I guess partially due to the ubiquitous access to "knowledge" on the internet, actually learning has become less important. It has become fairly standard to learn for tests only with students "cramming" before a test and then forgetting everything later...
Incidentally, simple questions that are easy to mark are a part of the problem here, if questions required and actual understanding of the problem, more time would have to be spent revising.
Most of this I have seen since 1970 or so, with rather little change.
I personally feel you're more or less right, but this is really more of a rant than a stackexchange answer, as I hope you can see
@Au101 - I suppose it is both. Is it a bit of a rant? Yes. But it is also the answer. Having said that, I won't stop anybody from editing bits that they feel are badly worded (or potentially incorrect).
Given that Stackexchange also puts dates on posts, there wouldn't be any mistaking the answer should things change in the future as it would be linked to our current time.
Note that the 'technology' you mention was not the same in 2003 as it is today. Smartphones were extremely uncommon in 2003. iPhone wasn't released until 2007 and Android was released in 2008. The old Palm devices before that time were very slow (as were the pre-3G iPhones, for that matter) and were quite uncommon. We did have graphing calculators and laptops, but it was generally obvious if you were using a laptop during an exam and putting notes in a graphing calculator wasn't much easier than sneaking them in on paper.
While I can't speak for the U.K., I was in college in the U.S. shortly after the time of the second data set (I started in 2004) and I would say that basically none of what is mentioned here is really the answer for why the average time spent studying for college students in the U.S. Nearly 100% of the difference can almost certainly be explained by the fact that the top two thirds of students go to college now, whereas it was something more like 20% back in the 1960s. The average study time of the top 67% is less than the average of the top 20%. This is not really surprising.
The source article is not very clear on the definition of "study time", and it appears to be inconsistent with federal law.
In order to be eligible for federal student aid, a student must be enrolled in a full time course of study. 14 hours per week of study time do not qualify as full time studying. For financial aid purposes, full time is 12 credit hours for undergraduates, or 9 credit hours for graduate students.
http://financialaid.gmu.edu/federal-stafford-student-loan/
At the school where I teach, this usually translates to taking three classes of 4 or 4.5 credit hours per quarter. Each class requires about 4-5 hours of classroom time, plus another 8-10 hours of prep/homework time, for a total just shy of 40 hours.
This article claims a "study time" of 14 hours in 2003. My best guess is that they are only referring to classroom time. If that is the case, the statistics may simply indicate a shift from classroom time to homework from 1961 to 2003.
There are other possible explanations.
What is needed is a more rigorous definition of what this study was actually looking at.
The article seems clear to me; it says that the data comes from time-use surveys which "asked students to report the number of hours per week they spend studying outside of class." This answer doesn't seem relevant.
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63619 | How much revenue do academic authors make on their published books?
Is there any dataset that look at how much revenue academic authors make on their published books?
I am aware of the question How much do Springer-Verlag authors make per book sold? but answers there focused on royalties (i.e., data on number of sold books is missing), and the question was on Springer-Verlag only.
I am most interested in the computer science field (machine learning and natural language processing in particular), but I am curious about other fields as well. I am most interested in the United States but curious about other countries as well.
What type of books are you interested in? Stephen Pinker makes loads of money from his popular science books, while publishing an edited collection may not make anything.
@jakebeal most interested in books related to their work as researcher or teacher.
Follow-up question: If an author does not intend to make much revenue from a book, why not making it open-access?
I signed a contract with a large academic publisher to produce sort of a lab manual and I may be the only person who ever uses it unless I get really lucky. Going with a big publisher is a way to get as many eyes as possible looking at your book and hope that they adopt it. However the revenue is totally based on the agreed royalty on the price of the book so I'm not sure why you weren't happy with the other post.
@RickHenderson The question on this page is a reference request for actual data with a decent sample size.
@Franck Dernoncourt that's why I posted a comment and not an answer.
@FranckDernoncourt see this post, I also added it to my ansewr https://martin.kleppmann.com/2020/09/29/is-book-writing-worth-it.html
I co-authored a research monograph in a rather specialized area of applied mathematics. I have received about $300 in royalties over several years. I think this is typical.
For most authors, the important consideration is not how much money they will make, but how effectively the publisher will be able to distribute the book. This usually means going with a well-established publisher. I know some highly-respected authors that also shop around to find the publisher that will distribute their book for the lowest reasonable price.
I've earned about $800 per year on average for my share of the royalties on a graduate-level textbook that has been moderately successful over the last 13 years. The money certainly isn't sufficient compensation for the time that has gone into the project.
It varies, but often, nothing. I have three experiences with academic books:
As a postdoc, I was signed up with Springer to write a book together with my advisor. According to the terms of the contract, our only recompense would have been one copy each of the finished book. The book never got finished anyway.
More recently, I wrote a book chapter. Springer again. I don't know whether the editor received any royalties, but I received only a copy of the book.
I was also asked recently to contribute a chapter for a book to be published by a university press. I declined when I realised that they were asking authors (including the editor) to pay a hefty publication fee, even though they had a guarranteed market (two profs would be using it as a text) and would also be charging students for the finished book, with no royalties back to authors.
Gee... bad luck. I made $76 in royalties on the chapter I wrote. Total. Over the useful print life of the book.
Considering the unfair - to put it politely - terms for authors, I'm wondering why one would prefer to publish a book or a chapter by using traditional publishers, when nowadays we have a lot of self-publishing and on-demand publishing options. Some presumably valid reasons include formal peer reviews and scientific publisher's brand. While the latter is, unfortunately, part, ingrained into current academic culture, the former can be easily reproduced by asking independent experts to review one's manuscript and publicly share the feedback.
@AleksandrBlekh as someone who recently published a book (graduate level math textbook), I don't really see what you mean about the terms being unfair. I get royalties for however many copies my book will sell. Granted, it won't be many, but I knew that when I started writing the book. Can you elaborate what exactly you see as unfair?
@DanRomik: Sure. The fact that authors know upfront that they will get laughable money (see Bob Brown's comment above as example) as royalties doesn't make the situation fair. My point about fairness is attributed to the profit split between authors and publishers, which I find ranging from unfair to outrageous. The latter especially applies to journal publications. P.S. Congratulations on publishing your book.
@AleksandrBlekh I think you're failing to take into account the fact that my and Bob Brown's (and other academic authors') "business model" is very different than the publishers' business model. In my case, I actually did get paid for writing my book - by the university I work for, and by the NSF. The little royalties I get are extra money that if you think about it probably ethically should belong to my employer (the fact that it doesn't is arguably an unfairness in a reverse direction to the one you're talking about). ...
... So, to summarize, maybe some academic authors are in fact treated unfairly by publishers, but your argument making that claim is in my opinion rather weak and incomplete. I personally don't feel that I've been treated unfairly.
@DanRomik: It's not that I was "failing to take into account...", but I was not aware of the fact that the "academic authors' business model" is dominant (primary) throughout the whole academia ecosystem (that is, if it's true). If that's the case, then I agree that it's rather fair (for book authors with such arrangements). Having said that, if my understanding of journal publishing is correct, that subset of academic publishing does not imply similar arrangements at all and is unfair in both paywall & open access models. These issues are so well-known that I'll skip relevant comments.
@DanRomik: Just to clarify: the last sentence in my previous comment is likely not perfectly formulated, but it implies my assumption that you are well aware of those frequently discussed issues.
@AleksandrBlekh regarding journals, I agree that there is unfairness, but the people who are treated unfairly are the readers not the authors. Authors are academics who are paid by their universities to write and publish research. With a few exceptions, they shouldn't have an expectation to make a profit from publishing papers. What is unreasonable is when publishers manage to capture an exorbitant amount of profits at the readers' expense, while providing a fairly low value service that is easily replicated. But that's a different story and has nothing to do with what we're discussing here.
@DanRomik: I'm glad that you agree on journals. However, your point on lack of unfairness to authors is questionable to a degree. I think that it is not that authors should expect to make a profit from publishing their work, but that universities might not necessarily fully compensate authors for knowledge creation and dissemination through their pay. How can we accurately (read: fairly) measure monetary value of research results in a form of societal progress, research commercialization and positive effect of affiliated authors' achievements on corresponding universities' reputation?
From http://ndsuspectrum.com/textbook-scam-14-billion-industry-robs-students-professors/ (mirror):
According to the National Association of College Stores, out of every dollar spent on a textbook, about 77 cents goes back to the publisher. Publishers make 18 cents in pure profit. The writer takes home about 12 cents. This does not consider the gravy bookstores take in on buying and selling used books, where they keep all the difference, and can sell a used book for $30 until the binding falls apart. Then, they can sell it for $25 as a loose-leaf edition.
As a side note, from the same article:
Four publishers control 80 percent of the $14 billion textbook market. They are Pearson, Cengage, Wiley and McGraw-Hill. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, textbook prices have risen 800 percent since 1978, which is way beyond inflation. For comparison, health care has inflated 575 percent and home prices have gone up 325 percent. From 2002 to 2012 the cost of textbooks rose 82 percent. The textbook market is a $14 billion industry.
At the risk of self-promotion, I can offer one more data point.
I self-published an undergraduate computer science textbook through Kindle Direct Publishing, which pays 60% royalties minus printing costs. I set the list price of my book at $27.50, and Amazon's printing costs are $6.51, so my royalties are ($27.50 × 60%) – $6.51 = $9.99 per copy.
I sold 139 copies of my book in August 2019, for which KDP estimates I will receive $1,382.63 in royalties at the end of October. (There's a tiny discrepancy from currency conversion of royalties from non-US Amazon sites.)
Like Hadley Wickham, I give away my book for free.
Self publishing works for those who have a way for potential users to actually find your book. You don't have anyone but yourself promoting it in most cases. But if you have sufficient reputation in the field that people can easily find you then it can work out well. And if a publisher did have control over your book, the cost to the buyer would be much (much) higher.
Personal experiences here: the authors/editors generally get 10-15% of sales revenue. Note this is sales revenue. If the publisher e.g. offers a discount, authors also get less royalties. If the book is pirated, authors get nothing. Royalties are split between all authors/editors.
Monographs: A monograph probably won't sell more than 500 copies at best (last I saw 300 is more common). Order of magnitude estimate: if each book costs $100, then the author of a monograph might get $3000.
Textbooks: An undergraduate textbook can sell tens of thousands of copies or more if it's widely adopted, but if not then 1000 copies or fewer is common. Graduate-level textbooks have sales more in line with monographs (albeit somewhat higher).
Review volumes: Chapter authors can receive something too during contract negotiations - my experience was that chapter authors get a copy of the book but that's it. Review volumes don't tend to sell many copies - definitely not more than 1000, and closer to monographs than to textbooks.
Popular-level books: These can sell 1000+ copies if they're reasonably well written, but the median is lower at maybe 500-600. There's a long tail as well - a book can sell millions of copies (c.f. Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time). Note popular level books usually have a significantly lower retail price compared to the more technical books.
Caveat: popular level books have a bigger potential market, so with a dedicated publicist one can increase the number of books sold by an order of magnitude or more.
Textbook sales vary a lot depending on the discipline and level- a successful graduate textbook in a specialized field will sell fewer copies than a successful lower level undergraduate textbook for a general education course.
@BrianBorchers edited to distinguish between the two.
Hadley Wickham recently posted on Twitter that he makes $1.68 per copy of R for Data Science. The book currently sells for ~$20 on Amazon.
Granted, he gives away the book for free online and the purpose of his tweet was to tell people to not feel bad about getting the book for free.
Edit:
I recently found a blog by where Martin Kleppmann takes about royalties from his book, Designing Data-Intensive Applications.
He did quite well, with close to 1/2 a million in revenue, but he was his publisher's 2nd highest selling book in a hot field.
As quote from 29 September 2020, which answers the OP's question:
The total sales since the beginning have been (in US dollars):
Print: 68,763 copies, $161,549 royalties ($2.35/book)
Ebook: 33,420 copies, $169,350 royalties ($5.07/book)
O’Reilly online access (formerly called Safari Books Online): $110,069 royalties (I don’t get readership numbers for this channel)
Translations: 5,896 copies, $8,278 royalties ($1.40/book)
Other licensing and sponsorship: $34,600 royalties
Total: 108,079 copies, $477,916
I don't think this is a good answer, since the main variable - how many copies are sold - isn't mentioned.
And how many copies were sold? This is the question? As I know, publishing such technical books by famous publishers can provide a remarkable revenue.
@Eilia, one gets a "remarkable revenue" mostly for elementary (first year) textbooks, not advanced work. The market is too small.
@Buffy, Agree with you but I know some (computer-centric) publishers such as Apress and PacktPub pay the authors in a reasonable way.
@Eilia, the income per copy may be reasonable, but the volume is small for most advanced books.
@Buffy, maybe, but they said they pay a fixed amount at first. After that a specific percentage to ,e.g., 2000 copies and so forth. I know that the authors never can benefit as publishers from their works but they can benefit from side advantages. They may be asked to run workshops or video course. In fact, it's more for become famous in the field.
@RichardErickson Thanks very much for sharing Martin Kleppmann's blogpost, it is very insightful! I wonder whether he considered self-publishing his book, since he seemed to have done most of its promotion.
@FranckDernoncourt good question. I don't know, but I just added a list of revenue from the blog. He would not have gotten the last 3 items if he self-published. Plus, a Publisher lends credibility to many buyers so I don't know if we would have sold as many books. And, I'm guessing their copy editor helped. Self-publish versus trad publishers would be a good question for this site.
I was paid 50K with no royalties for a proprietary textbook and 25K when it was revised. Individual chapters for another text paid between 4 and 6k
Please specify the currency.
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62971 | For a professor in the US, How important is one's relationship with the dean?
Through a colleague, I have entertained the idea of switching my current workplace. The program itself is relatively new, at a US research university, while the dean has been there for 20+ years. I get along with everyone, including the director. However, I am a bit cautious of the current deans' expectations and direction for the program compared to what they would like to invest (monetary) in it.
The faculty have said it should not be much of a concern as interactions with the dean are rare, and other administration are more involved with actual implementation. They also say the dean may leave in the next 5 years. I have a feeling this is somewhat being said to appease the concerns.
As a general question, how important is the relationship or shared vision with the dean on a faculty member in terms of being able to implement change (for the better, in ones own opinion) in the day to day business, considering this vision is shared by other current faculty who are also slightly in disagreement with the current dean.
Why is there a close vote on this, particularly without comments?
This will depend heavily on the country you are in. I edited the title to specify the country.
If you change a position, you negotiate your needs for the duration of a sufficiently useful time horizon (say, 3-5 years, as a ballpark number). What you do not negotiate, you can assume not to be agreed upon and can change on short notice. I would not make this dependent on the cordial relation with the dean (although that doesn't hurt).
The question, although reasonable, seems hard to answer in general terms. Programmatic change is generally not done by individual faculty members in a department, but by groups and/or committees of them, in confluence with the department Chair/Head.
Many programmatic changes do not "go through" the Dean -- in particular "day to day" business usually does not -- but those involving nontrivial financial changes usually do. For all but the smallest colleges it is rare for individual faculty members other than the Head to have substantive conversations with the Dean about such things: again, it would be better if they went through the department as a whole and/or the Head. When it comes to financial outlays that must be approved by the Dean: I've seen plenty of instances where the Dean approves but "just doesn't have the money," so I would have to think that even mild disapproval of the initiative would sink it pretty thoroughly.
Perhaps the most useful thing I can say is: look at where the program is now and look at where it was in the recent past. If you are really unhappy with the current position or the perceived trajectory of the department, then you should not count on being happy with it in the future (no matter who the Dean is). Conversely, if those look reasonably good to you, talk with the faculty and see how they feel about the future. If there's some important change coming around the bend, I hope they will let you know. But it is more likely that being in the department for the next ten years or so will be roughly like having been in the department for the last ten years or so. The Dean does not reside in the department, so unless s/he is actively at war with the members and interests of the department, some disagreement in the overall vision need not affect the actual working life of a professor in the department unduly.
By the way, the bit about the Dean "may leave in the next 5 years" sounds way too vague to take seriously. Maybe s/he will and maybe s/he won't. If s/he does, maybe the next Dean will be better or maybe worse. It is very hard to plan for the future with regard to this kind of thing: honestly, I probably wouldn't even try.
If she does, maybe the next Dean will be better or maybe worse. Indeed, I have never expected things to get better with a next dean. That would seem particularly foolish given the current trends of higher education.
The note about leaving is a little relevant to age of the dean, but the point that the next one could be worse is good. Your answer was along the lines I was thinking, so it is helpful as a bit of a confirmation.
That is very hard to answer. Sizes vary, organizations are different. Some departments are mostly autonomous, others depend in minute detail on "decisions higher up". And that can even vary among neighbouring departments, depending on number of students, prestige of faculty, amounts of grants and consulting, and so on.
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21366 | Can a journal withhold referee reports from the authors of a rejected paper?
We submitted a paper to a journal published by Cambridge Press. The paper was submitted last year (2013). After five months we got the decision yesterday. We don't mind the decision, however, we are shocked by the editorial comments that although they have the reports they don't relay the reports to the author/s for papers which are not proceeding further. Is this approach common in journals? We feel this is very unethical from any author's point of view.
This seems very strange. What is this journal? I see no reason to keep the journal name secret.
Modern Asian Studies
I once had an editor refuse to send me a referee report because a paper was accepted without revisions, so his reason was that there was nothing to do, so why did I need the report? I was quite peeved by this, but then it was kind of the opposite situation, so there considerably less cause for complaint. :-)
Just to clarify: Not relaying the reports to the authors was (according to the editorial decision) something that was not done for reasons specific to your paper but as the default action for rejected papers?
Not specific to our paper.
The comments on the answers made me think of a possible variant of this question: what if the referee asks the editors to forward their reports? Referees are owner of the report and should be entitled to ask that, while they can't reasonably forward their report themselves due to anonymity issues. User15667, I suggest that you try this out if you happen to write a review for a paper rejected by this journal in the future, just to see what happens.
I consider that not giving authors the ground on which the decision was taken to be both unethical and bad for science. How should the authors improve the paper if they don't even know why they have been rejected? How can they get a sense of what the community expects from them?
I am not alone in this: the International Mathematical Union issued ethical guidelines for journals, including that the default policy should be that referee's reports are forwarded to author. However many journals give the referees the opportunity to give comments solely for the editors, and some editors prefer not to forward some reports to avoid pissing off the authors. I never heard of a journal with a policy of never forwarding reports of rejected papers before; this sounds absurd or really cowardly.
Now I get the picture and see that I am not alone in finding this cowardly and unethical.
It is often cowardly and unethical but there is the black swan event that makes it not entirely justifiable.
I suspect things are rolling differently in social science and science journals...after a review of the posts!
@user15667: the habits are likely to be different (even between different nature science fields and between different social science fields), but I do not see why the ethical and efficiency reasons for giving authors the precise grounds on which their papers are decided upon should not apply equally to all fields.
Hmm...points to ponder.
The reports are the property of the editor of the journal as they are the commissioning body. They do have the ability to share parts of the reports to the ms authors but they are under no legal obligation to. In some cases (especially with negative reports), the referees may ask that the editor to not share the comments.
There are really no grounds for effective mechanism to appeal this type of policy.
The best suggestion would be to go to another journal -- perhaps one with a faster turnaround time. And ask some of your colleagues to read your ms and see why it might not be getting the positive results you had hoped for.
Followup: The journal has no legal obligation to tell you why they denied your paper. They might have a moral one (such as the disciplinary association urging them to), but no legal one. If they have it written in their bylaws that they will, then of course they will, but there is no legal requirement to.
This is similar to universities not having a legal (as opposed to moral) requirement to tell you why they didn't hire you or private granting agencies not having a legal requirement to tell you why they didn't give you funding. Again, if their policies (or if there is a federal/state/local requirement, etc. then they will) dictate they they must, then they will but this is rare to non-existent for private institutions (including non-profits).
Source: I've sat on the editorial board of the flagship journal of my discipline (in the social sciences).
but they are under no obligation — [citation needed]
@JeffE - see edits.
There will always be a fight between 'good' and 'evil', 'sense' and 'non-sense' in the academia. We just need to be more prepared for all this.
@User15667 - agreed.
I find the emphasis on legal obligation a little strange: until a journal accepts your paper and you sign a contract with them, what legal obligation could they possibly have to you or you to them??
(For that matter, if the sentence "The reports are the property of the editor of the journal as they are the commissioning body." is meant to be interpreted legally, I doubt it is true. I don't see how a document written by one person can become the property of another person without the first person signing some acknowledgment of this.) What statement is your "Source" a source for? I don't understand how saying "I've served on the editorial board of an unnamed journal" could be source for anything.
Your conclusion "There are really no grounds for appeal of this policy." is incorrect. Perhaps there are really no legal grounds, but that's not the same thing.
@Pete - That's exactly my point. The editor/journal has no obligation to share anything with the ms author about the process. If you have contradictory information, please share it.
@JeffE , you can appeal to your deity, or to the sympathy of the editor, but there's no higher power to a journal editor that a msg author could appeal to for something such as feeling that they are entitled to see reader reports. If you feel there is another form of appeal possible, by all means list it.
Not being under the legal obligation to share something is hardly synonymous with that thing being your property. It seems obvious to me that the referee reports are not owned by the editor in any legal sense: if anyone "owns" them, it would have to be the referee who wrote them. But I don't see this going anywhere useful.
There's a big difference between an appeal being groundless and an appeal being ineffective. If the editor already lacks the integrity to reveal the referee reports, he's unlikely to grow a conscience on appeal. That does not imply that the appeal is groundless. (A longer term form of appeal is the court of public opinion. If everyone knows that this particular editor hides referee reports, people are less likely to submit to his journal. But that doesn't actually help the present appellant.)
I agree. Yet, issues need to be out in the open. Thanks for sharing your views.
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17928 | How can I transition from industry to academia without having a college degree?
I've been working in the "private sector" since my late teens. I've gathered good web-development experience to be able to find work quite easily thankfully. I was never really interested in getting a degree, I only have a high-school diploma. I was passionate enough to study for myself and learn new things from colleagues and friends.
Web-development is still my passion, however recently I've been thinking about the actual work that I've been producing over the years for the companies I've worked for. It seems as though that even if the work is fun and challenging, I still get very little recognition for it: once the work is produced, my name is barely ever mentioned. I've been asking myself if all these things I'm building are really going to change someone's life.
Then I look at academia and research. Here people are doing things they actually love and study those subjects deeply with passion and generate new knowledge to help others within a specific field.
Has anybody ever switched from an industry job to an academic job? I'm wondering if it's possible to do research without a degree. What suggestions might you have for someone in my situation that wants to get a glimpse of the life of an academic where you can build and study something you actually love and not always do what "the company" wants.
Just for clarification: Would you be satisfied helping build software for researchers based on their requirements, or are you looking to generate your own ideas and pursue them?
You've really spotted my concern: I guess I'm a bit tired of working based on other's requirements (private sector). I want to generate and pursue my own ideas.
Instead of going to academia and research, which normally require a PhD degree, have you considered go for a start-up, in which you are able to "build and study something you actually love and not always do what "the company" wants"?
The startup world is exciting and certainly have thought about it. However, it's highly based on consumerism, while I'm mostly interested in research that doesn't always lend to building a product someone needs.
Another option if you find your job tedious, is to contribute to an open source project. Of course you will still have to work to support yourself / family but it is your chance to contribute to something useful for everyone. Although chances are, that you will find out that working mostly for free (like a PHD) is not that much fun. So, do this first and if you like it, then consider research.
What country are you in? I think the answer to whether or not it's possible to do research in academia without a degree will depend on the location.
If recognition is your key desire, academia will only be marginally better for you than your current situation. Just because your name is on a paper, doesn't mean anyone is going to care about your work.
I feel like there's a couple of threads in your question outside of recognition though. I'll make some comments where I can.
To transition into academia and start working on your own ideas you'll need to probably start a degree program. Masters and PhD programs, more than anything, are training programs on "how to work on stuff".
It seems obvious right now that you have hundreds of ideas and the skills to pursue them -- but the academic context is a bit different. Research typically fits into a larger context than a single project, and you'll need to be able to sell your ideas to people who are experts in the area; most research projects that aren't 'consumer' oriented produce papers, not projects, so you'll need to learn how to write papers. The requirement for evidence is (or at least ought to be) high, which means that you'll need to learn what kind of evidence you have for your hypothesis, how to gather it, how to present it. All of this, the politics, the nitty-gritty of putting together a paper, is what you ought to get from a degree program. You can try to do some of this on your own to be sure, but it's not an easy ride.
If you want to get a feeling for what working in academia is like, without getting the degree, I'd seriously look into the possibility of becoming a programmer for a university. This helps you get a feel for what the work, environment, people are like. It could be that if you find the right project, your influence will be sufficient that you can get the recognition you want, without having to get the degree.
Reading your question, I get the feeling of a grass-is-greener illusion. One thing that might be worth considering is: How much of the problem just your job? Could you find work at another company, in another niche, doing some other kind of programming that could be better for you? I feel like you could get 99% of your desired outcome not from academia, but from a job change. Maybe you need to go deeper into the stack; work with a company that builds the web technology you use. Maybe you need to go higher in the stack; start building client applications to the web technology you use. Maybe you need to get away from the web... perhaps start looking at transitioning into games, or hardware, or.... the list is endless.
You're right, it's probably a grass-is-greener feeling I'm having. I'm just fascinated by the possibility of studying and doing what you want, and at anytime being able to work on other things. You set the requirements. In the private world, the clients do.
@LucaMatteis True... but be aware, even in academia, you're going to have a boss; be that your supervisor or your funders. I wish you the best though; if academia is the dream, follow it, even if it means going through a degree program!
@LucaMatteis I believe this comic (courtesy of PHD Comics) accurately describes what you can expect from academia, with respect to "doing what you want": http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1436
Like Matthew, I get the feeling reading your answer that you don't have an extremely clear idea of what switching into academia would entail, and a pretty starry eyed view of what life in academia is actually like. While it's true that at its best, being an academic lets you work on exactly what you want to, pushing forward the boundaries of knowledge. But it's a long slog to get to that point, and even when you're there, there are a lot of other issues at play.
Of course, if you're independently wealthy, you can do whatever you want, but for most of us, we need to have a job, and just like any other job, a lot of the parameters are dictated for us. You also often have to get outside funding. In both cases, it's true that you aren't literally assigned research projects from on high (though some days that would be a lot easier than coming up with them yourself), but you do have an eye constantly on impressing your colleagues (on various levels) who make or influence decisions about funding, promotion and hiring. Not to mention that one often has teaching or service duties which really are assigned from on high (though admittedly, I think these still have a lot more autonomy than jobs in most fields would). I'm sure you can find plenty of horror stories about how this can go awry just reading the archives on this site. And that assumes you can get a job, which is far from assured (especially if you want to stay in Italy!).
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16113 | Which part of the GRE is more important to admissions committees?
I graduated from the University of Michigan with Psychology and Communication Studies degree.
I am planning to apply to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) master's degree and Information Science master's degree.
For those of who do not know, HCI is an interdisciplinary field, combining mainly computer science, cognitive psychology, and design.
I have two GRE scores and I have trouble deciding which one to send for my application.
Score 1: Verbal: 158 (78%) / Quantitative: 165 (91%) / Writing: 4.0 (58%)
Score 2: Verbal: 162 (89%) / Quantitative: 161 (81%) / Writing: 4.5 (78%)
The second set of scores has higher verbal and writing values, but the first has a higher quantitative value. Which should I send?
I have no idea why this question was closed. This is a question related to applications to graduate school, which is clearly on-topic.
@hciapplicant, I've tried to make the question more broadly applicable. I hope you don't mind.
Be sure to read the application instructions carefully. It's possible that they want you to send all your scores.
@DavidKetcheson I don't mind at all. Thank you for your thoughtful response.
First I will say that in some departments, GRE scores are a very important component of your application. For instance, I work in a department where each year we get applicants from hundreds of different universities in 70 or more different countries. Comparing GPAs between all the different educational systems is very difficult (we do it, but place relatively less weight on it due to uncertainties). Meanwhile, the GRE is a single standard. Also, whereas some departments in the USA can rely primarily on GRE subject tests, it's quite rare for international students to take those. The bottom line: good GRE scores will never get you admitted by themselves. But in some places at least, poor GRE scores will eliminate you.
Now, as to whether the verbal/writing or quantitative scores matter more, I think this depends heavily on the field. If you were applying to a math/science/engineering program, the quantitative score would be by far most important. It's generally thought that good writing can be taught to you later (and technical writing is different from the persuasive writing the GRE tests you on, anyway).
I assume that if you were applying to an English or fine arts program, the verbal/writing scores would be more important. The fields you're applying to are somewhere in between, and I don't know them well enough to say for certain.
[Edit: see @shion's answer for the opinion of someone who knows more about your particular field.]
I doubt it really matters which of these scores you send, for two reasons:
I don't think GRE general test scores are particularly important in the first place. How they are used may vary between institutions or fields, but in my experience admissions committees do not pay any attention to them. Maybe there are other committees that do pay attention, but I'd be surprised if anyone relies on them as a major component of the evaluation process. [EDIT: As David Ketcheson's answer demonstrates, there's more diversity in how these scores are used than I had realized.]
Small, random fluctuations are normal if you take the exam several times. This is widely known among people on admissions committees, and it's reinforced by seeing the applications that include multiple scores. This means no sensible admissions committee member will attach great importance to small distinctions.
So I believe you are overthinking this, and either set of scores will be fine.
Is it possible to send both?
ETS will send both if you'd like, and that could also be a reasonable option.
I understand I could send both of the scores if I wish, but I noticed that you can only list one score in the application form. If I choose to send both, should I just list the most recent one and send both scores anyway? Thank you!
In my department (HCI/Information Science), the popular notion is that having a very good score on your GRE will not get you in but having a poor score (relative to the rest of the applicant pool) can keep you out.
This is especially true for PhD applications and somewhat true for MS applications. For the latter, the pure numbers (GRE/GPA) matter more while for the former, your statement of purpose, research experience and letters of recommendation are what tips the balance in your favor.
In sum, generally for most HCI/IS programs, all parts of the GRE matter equally.
Logistically, it also does not matter which score you send because ETS will send all your GRE scores in the last 5 years i.e. admissions committees will see everything.
Thank you for your comment. ETS has recently revised their system and now students can only choose whichever score they wish to send. Admission committees are no longer be able to see all of the test scores unless I send all of them.
Ah. Thanks for the information. I did not know that. Even this year I remember seeing multiple new scores from new applicants.
I think it was August 2013 when they changed the policy, but I am not certain. I checked again and found out that you can actually send multiple scores if you wish.
Score 2 Writing: 4.5 (78%) is significantly better than Score 1 Writing: 4.0 (58%). This is one of the indicators that you may have better chance to succeed. Your presentation skills will be very much needed in graduate school.
Score 1 Quantitative: 165 (91%) is better than Score 2 Quantitative: 161 (81%) but not that much. They are both fine. If the graduate school program you are applying to concentrates heavily on math/stats, Score 1 looks better.
I just learned info from the comment the OP made, the student has the option to send single score or multiple scores. (This is why I like this site so much. We exchange info.)
My suggestion is, send Score 2 if applying to a design oriented HCI program (your presentation skills will be important in this case). Send Score 1 if the graduate school program is math/stats oriented. Send both scores if you are not sure.
Also, please note that not all schools require GRE. Good Luck !
@hciapplicant I updated my answer based on one of your comments.
I want to supplement Anonymous Mathematician's answer.
I would lean towards the second set of scores. Writing skills are often overlooked in academia, but since you will be writing a (hopefully great) thesis, I would put the most emphasis on the writing.
Your other scores are basically the same.
In my heavily quantitative social science program, I have heard some professors saying that GRE quant score is a good predictor for 1st year GPA of grad students. I do not know how seriously they consider GRE math score into admissions, but I am sure they give it more of a passing notice. That said, I think both your scores look fine and they do not really differ much. If I can, I would just send both.
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154609 | Should undergraduates add a "course-based research experience" section in their CVs?
I am an undergraduate student in the US getting ready to apply for some research internships as well as cold emailing some professors for some opportunities (all in the US). This will be the first time I will be applying for a research internship; that is, I do not have any previous internship-based research experience. I've noticed that undergraduates who have completed research internships tend to have a "Research Experience" section on their CVs. I have, on the other hand, completed a few courses with significant research components.
Is it acceptable if I include a "Course-based Research Experience" in my CV wherein I briefly explain (using a couple of bullets) the kind of research I did in these courses or am I better off having that information in a cover letter? The issue is that some internships don't allow me to submit cover letters and for the ones that do, if I try to describe the kind of research I did in detail, the cover letter ends up being longer than ideal.
Can you explain what it means to you to have a course with a significant research component?
@BryanKrause By that, I meant classes with research papers for (mostly final) assignments.
I wouldn't normally consider a research paper to be "research experience", assuming these are the sorts of papers that summarize work by others without making some novel contribution to science/human knowledge. That's just a normal part of coursework that is expected from the education section of your CV. Unless there is something about these papers that makes them different than how I am thinking...
@BryanKrause This question was written with the discipline of economics in mind. In the papers I mentioned, I summarized other's works for a literature review section, but I also conducted statistical testing on my own. Hence, would it be acceptable to have a "course-based research experience" section on my CV? Would you recommend merging this experience somehow in the education section itself?
Not sure what the standard is in economics. Sounds to me like just basic coursework but I'm a biologist. In biology we do lots of courses where there is a lab component where we do experiments, get results, do statistical analysis, and write into papers, and also courses with substantial papers written based on literature (sort of a review-style). I would not consider either of these to be research experience in biology.
@BryanKrause I just want to communicate, through my CV, that I am not a total newbie to the research process, and I am not sure what the best way of doing that is. Do you think a couple bullets in the Education section would be acceptable (under a sub-header titled "course-based research experience" or something similar)? Do you have any other suggestions for how the same can be achieved? Thanks!
I think I've said all I can without knowing your courses or the field of economics. My view is that it is disingenuous to present the type of work typically done in courses as "research experience". The correct way to identify that level of work is through your educational background. That is, if it's something everyone in your major would do by their 3rd undergraduate year, then all you need to do is indicate you have completed 3 years of university education within that major. I cannot say whether the work you are describing follows this or not.
Just call it "Research Experience." The fact that you happened to earn course credit at the same time you did the research is irrelevant to the needs of employers.
Perhaps this is discipline specific?
I am looking to apply for research internships in Economics if that's what you're asking. Do you have any specific insights regarding this? Also, I think, at least in Economics, the idea is that the kind of research one does as part of a course is not as in-depth as one does in an internship, both time-wise and level-of-difficulty-wise.
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154586 | Abusive supervisor & academic career
I am a Ph.D. candidate in economics in the UK, and now start my 4th and hopefully final year of the program.
I currently consider changing my supervisor (SV hereafter) because of an ongoing conflict. During my second year, she matched me with a former Ph.D. of hers, "co-author" or "CO" from now on, so the three of us could write a paper together. While things started OK, CO became increasingly possessive of the project. His tone became aggressive and disrespectful, he gave me non-sensical, inconsistent instructions, lied to my supervisor behind my back about things I had never done or said (learned of this during meetings with my supervisor), and he repeatedly deleted content I produced from our draft for reasons that stood in complete contradiction to earlier agreements. Suffice to say, progress was unsatisfying.
I was baffled that SV did not intervene, but seemed to go along with him; I had severe self-doubts. Yet after a particular crappy "revision" of our draft by CO, SV shortly after told me she considers CO's input crap and admitted he's difficult -- turns out she was not paying attention and had until then simply trusted CO by default. I was relieved, but unfortunately, nothing changed afterward; while SV repeatedly agreed with my views, she nevertheless continued to humor CO, and backed him when he criticized me for lack of progress. At some point, SV finally admitted to me she has no understanding of our project topic and what we are doing, which explained a lot of her weird behaviour.
This toxic situation has taken a toll on me mentally, and it needs to stop. Unfortunately, SV is a leader of our rather small field, and I was told not having a letter from her is a red flag in job applications. Fortunately, I have done research assistance for another young prof at our faculty who appreciates me, and he would be willing to take me on as his student.
Any advice on how I can handle this gracefully? I have no reason to trust my SV anymore, and think her perfectly capable of ruining my reputation if I changed. Is there a way to protect me against this? Or should I just accept the academic trail is dead for me and look for suitable industry jobs instead?
I find this a bit puzzling. Can you specify your ideal out come and second-best outcome here? Have you actually asked to quit the co-authored project? Did you explicitly ask for the supervisor to have a conversation with the former student about behavior or did you just assume she would when you told her you didn’t like it? Have you had a conversation with coauthor about their behavior?
Ideally, I would change to the other prof without burning bridges with SV, meaning I might still get a good letter from her (puzzlingly, she actually said I am a ``high-calibre student'' to me recently).
I did not ask to quit because the research idea is from me, and I still think it has high potential.
Yes, I had told SV I do not know how to tackle CO's behaviour, and asked her for advice. She told me she's looking into it, but I am not aware anything actually happened.
No, I have not talked to CO directly; we now despise each other to a degree that makes any normal talk very hard.
The second-best outcome may be no change of SV, but a tacit agreement that I would work with the young prof for my third chapter.
Did you ask her for advice, or ask her to intervene? I can’t tell if you are expecting direct results with indirect conversations or if the supervisor tried to intervene and got nowhere.
Excuse my vague wording. Yes, I have asked my SV at some point to talk to CO and pay more attention to our exchanges, which she said she did. The only effect seemed that CO was passive for a while, only to return 100% to earlier behavior. I mentioned this to SV, she agreed this happens, nothing changed.
There is no one who has full power to ruin your academic trail. Please remove this idea from your head. Try to be diplomatic and keep a nice relationship with SV (even if you change her) and also with CO. I don't know how it works in UK but in a lot of European countries, A boss is obliged by law to write a letter when former employees are searching for other positions. Also, do not make assumptions before taking to SV. Sometimes those ideas are only in your head.
SV is clearly not forceful enough to put CO in place. It's a weakness, but not necessary an antagonist disposition. So, don't open a fight at multiple frontiers. Keep your SV friendly, or at least collegiate, add your new prof to the team (if they can help you), cut off contact with CO (or at least downgrade it to the lowest possible level). CO will not become your friend. If you can afford to not have to continue this work with CO, discontinue it.
The situation is resolved: I spoke to SV plainly and explained to her that I found her supervision last year unacceptable. I did so in a factual, polite manner, listed specific occasions where I felt left alone, and concluded, given the poor results, that it may be best for both of us if I continued to work with the other, younger professor.
It turned out she reacted well to clear words. While she is not happy that I leave, she supports my decision, reassured me she will still write a letter for me and sent favorable comments to the young professor. I suspect she is actually ashamed she didn't tackle CO and let me down; as Captain Emacs noted, it seems to be a character flaw, but not hurtful intention.
In any case, I thank you all for your comments (which encouraged me to do this).
Since you have already completed most of your PhD, your best course of action is to finish your PhD as soon as possible. Then you will be free of CO's bad behavior. Negotiate a plan for completion of your degree with your supervisor. Request that this plan does not rely on CO since they are not dependable.
should I just accept the academic trail is dead for me and look for suitable industry jobs instead?
The information you have provided in the question tells us nothing about your ability to find an academic job. However, academic jobs are in general scarce and low paying.
Having a Ph.D. supervisor who "admitted to me that she has no understanding of our project topic and what we are doing" sounds crazy to me, especially after she arranged for the three of you to write a joint paper (presumably on this project). This sounds as if you definitely need a new supervisor. You mentioned that another young prof wold be willing to take you as his student. Does he understand your work? Or will he understand it after a reasonable amount of explanation? If so, might he and your present supervisor be willing to be co-supervisors, if you really need the present supervisor's recommendation? The ideal situation might be that the new supervisor actually supervises your work while the present supervisor handles administrative stuff and adds her recommendation's weight to your job applications. (Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if your present supervisor's recommendation counts for less than you think, in a field that she doesn't understand.)
The project is based on a joint paper of SV, CO, and another guy. My research proposal extends this paper, thinking, naively, this would help us all to start from a similar level of understanding since I had provided research assistance for said paper. Unfortunately, it turned out SV had severe misunderstandings about what was done in this past paper, so her main contribution seems to be her name on top (prestige trading, saw and heard about that before). While I like what you propose, the issue of CO remains. This guy will not leave the project willingly, as he sees the potential as well.
Sure CO remains a problem, but not one you have to deal with much in the solutions that Andreas and I are suggesting. It sounds like SV has very little power over CO because this all stems from CO’s work. SV certainly can’t kick CO off a paper stemming from his work.
If you've almost finished your PhD, finishing it makes more sense than changing supervisors.
Co-supervisors are not so unusual in Economics.
I would say that the overarching problem is that Co is not easy to work with and that SV doesn’t have the capability, motivation, or bandwidth to deal with it. Just because someone is a good researcher doesn’t mean they are a good manager. If, as you say in a comment, this is an extension of CO’s work, then SV also has very little leverage, other than seniority.
So, if you want a career in academia, move on to the new faculty member for the third essay, and it will become self-revealing if you should move on all together. If this will be your job market paper, and if it is done well, it may be enough to get you an academic job in Econ (particularly with a post-doc). To maintain your relationship with SV, I would frame this as a conversation specifically about the future of your third paper, rather than the past. Explain the topic you would like to work on, and that you think that engaging the other advisor as a co-advisor would be useful. Then forget about the first paper for the time being and focus your efforts on the new work. This should allow you to get good work done while keeping a positive reference from the first advisor — both of which seem positive for your future prospects.
I don't think this answers the question.
This answers the question of “any advice on how I can handle this gracefully?” Based on the two priorities from OP in the comments, which boil down to working more with the junior faculty member and less with SV.
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60172 | Ethically, should you report cheating that you learned of indirectly?
Six classmates and myself have been in the same program for the past 2 years and one of them just informed me of another classmate that sits beside him of cheating on exams, so I informed the professor, and now that person may be kicked out of the program.
Did I do right?
Why did that classmate inform me of the other persons cheating? I felt an ethical obligation, because of the program we are all in too disclose this information to the professor and did not want the burden of knowing on me.
"Why did that classmate inform me of the other persons cheating?" Well, does that classmate hang out here? If not I doubt you'll ever know. Why not just ask him/her?
The basic question is rather simple: ethically, should you report cheating that you learned of indirectly? Seems clear to me. (The "Why" question seems rhetorical and secondary.) Voting to reopen.
For many types of moral situations, university rules actually require that you inform a superior as soon as you find out yourself, or you are also in violation. It may be that the classmate who informed you didn't have the civic courage to report it but knew that you did. It is precisely to break cycles of no one saying anything that the rules are set up in the way I just described.
Or of course it may be that they were lying. As long as you passed the full information to the professor about how you knew what you knew as well as what you believed you knew, it is now the professor's responsibility and not yours. If there's anything you haven't already told the professor, I'd suggest contacting them again.
...one of them just informed me of another classmate that sits beside
him of cheating on exams
And why did you believe him? If your classmate told you that the guy behind him is a thief, would you go to the police without checking it? You refer as to your confidant as a "classmate" and not even a friend. Do you believe everything that other people say without checking facts first? How can you be sure that your classmate does not have some kind of animosity or vendetta towards the other student? You should not be that naive.
Regarding ethics, you should go to the professor and tell the absolute truth, i.e., that you did not witnessed first hand the other guy cheating and you naively believed the words of another classmate. Let the burden of truth lie to the one that provided you the information. And next time check your sources first before jeopardizing the future of strangers without solid proof. For all we know, the poor guy might be innocent and you just might be a naive pawn in someone else's vendetta. As is well known in criminal law: "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer".
Please don't take this negatively, but perhaps "your friend" was too sure about your ethics, and he/she knew that if that information was given to you, it would reach the teacher. So, he/she made you do, what he/she believed was ethically correct to do, but didn't want to do it himself/herself, for whatever reasons. Not having first hand info of the ground reality, I/other users on this site can only speculate about those reasons, so I better leave that part out. :)
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48981 | Is there any special field in political science to study security issues?
In my country, students can follow a special field in political science which is about security issues (like Terrorist, Threats and opportunities) in Masters programmes. The graduated people can work for Foreign ministry, intelligence services or embassies.
I know the fields in master can vary country by country, but is there any similar fields in German Universities?
What about UK?
If there is, can a non-citizen person study in these fields?
Yes, there are several International Security Studies MA programmes in Germany and in the UK. Examples from Germany include a Master in Peace and Security Studies at the University Hamburg and a Master in International Security Studies at the Universität der Bundeswehr in Munich.
In general, a EU citizen can study in other EU countries. Visa and admission criteria for non-EU citizens vary.
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8031 | Why are all these papers exactly 10 pages long?
I've been reading papers authored by professor A's PhD students. I have read about a dozen of papers by now, and realized that all of them are exactly 10 pages long. These papers were written by different PhD students and they were published in several different venues (very good ones). Is 10 the magic number for paper-length? (at least in professor A's field, which is computer science - human computer interaction)
Have you checked whether those venues have page limits?
Just a quick comment to add to the answers below: in many fields, journal papers are the important thing, but computer science tends to have a strong emphasis on conference papers, with important results often being published in conference proceedings only. Since Professor A's field is computer science, this probably goes some way to explaining why most of his students' papers are conference papers and therefore subject to a page limit.
Most American computer science conference papers are precisely 10 pages long, because most ACM conferences have a strict 10-page limit on proceedings papers.
(ACM is the Association for Computing Machinery, the primary professional society for computer science.)
It's worth noting that although 10 pages is just an upper bound, in practice it functions as a lower bound as well: almost everyone has more to say than will fit (so they use all the space they can), and even if you could say everything in 9 pages you don't want to look like you're the only one without 10 pages of content.
See also: "Why are everyone's NSF proposals exactly 15 pages long?"
Conference papers often have fairly strict page limits; however, there is no uniform consensus even between different conferences in the same field, and certainly not between fields! For example, one fairly extensive series of conference papers (whose conferences I attend semi-regularly) limits contributions to six pages.
Similarly, many journals—such as "letters" journals—have even more severe restrictions (four or five pages), while other journals have (seemingly) no page restrictions at all: I've known papers in both engineering and mathematics journals that have gone for 20, 30, or even 40 pages.
In many applied math journals, the typical paper length is around 20 pages (with large variance). On the other hand, the page layout is much less cramped than in other venues. I wouldn't be surprised if a 20-page paper could fit in a CS 10-page proceeding just by changing the documentclass.
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20646 | What is the significance of the corresponding author?
In your field of research, what is the significance of the corresponding author?
Does the title "corresponding" imply that the person is the expert out of the list of all authors, or that the person is responsible for communicating with the journal / reviewers?
When should the PhD student, if she/he is set as the first author, also be the corresponding author?
Possible dupe of http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/10062/285. There is also http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/19641/285 . These two are the same. I'm not sure if this question is exactlyt the same as those.
As Faheem pointed out there are other questions that deal with what a corresponding author is. You second question is not covered by those questions though.
The corresponding author should be an author that will be easy to find again after a few years. Ph.D students are not great choices since they are almost by definition not going to have the same contact information by the time most people read the article. In mathematics this is a serious concern because the backlog in articles can be multiple years and the student can already have graduated and moved across the world by the time the article is officially published.
As the other questions point out in some fields corresponding author is used to indicate contribution to some degree. But the old fashioned use of "the author you can find an address for" is still a worthwhile thing.
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101187 | Why are PhDs the most common doctoral degree?
I have heard many people say they have a PhD in a certain area. For nearly all of my life, I thought a PhD was simply a doctorate, and I didn't know that it had anything to do with philosophy.
There are many doctoral degrees, why are PhD's the most popular doctoral degrees by a long shot?
"There are many doctoral degrees" ... To clarify the question, can you provide examples of these other types of degrees that are common in your area?
This answer suffered a Major Revision!
A Ph.D. is an academic doctoral degree and have nothing to do with philosophy nowadays.
From Wikipedia:
In the context of the Doctor of Philosophy and other similarly titled degrees, the term "philosophy" does not refer to the field or academic discipline of philosophy, but is used in a broader sense in accordance with its original Greek meaning, which is "love of wisdom".
People often refers to an academic doctorate as a Ph.D., even when the official title in their university/country is different of Doctor of Philosophy. The reason beyond its popularity is because a Ph.D. is a title traditionally conceded in countries with anglo-saxonic language and since the common language in the academia is English we often "translate" our titles to the equivalent in English.
I have recently learned with @Pete L. Clark that there are different types of doctorates in the US that give the same legal statute as an academic doctorate, but with different structure and requisites from a doctorate in Science. The example that he used was the Doctor of Arts (D.A.), a title that gives equivalent rights as a Ph.D. in which concerns teaching and research in universities.
My previous misunderstanding was due to the structure of high level education that I am used to in Portugal and Brazil. In both countries Therapists, Physicians, Lawyers and others do not have a doctoral degree. In Portugal a physician have Master's degree in Health Science or a 6 years pre-bologna licenciatura degree (undergraduate degree). If a physician/lawyer/therapists wants to have a doctoral degree here they need to engage in a minimum 3 years doctoral course, publish articles and defend an original thesis.
For a historical insight and more complete overview, please read this article and this article.
I'm sorry for the previous wrong answer. I think the question is too wide and depends highly on which country we are talking about. I assumed things about the doctoral degrees on the US that are not true.
Edit: Of course that there are many different ways to refer to an academic doctorate depending on the country the title is emitted. The point is: they are all equivalent. A German Doktorgrad is equivalent to a Ph.D. in the UK and to a Doutoramento/Doutorado in Portugal/Brazil, etc. In the other way researchers would not be able to work across the borders.
This seems untrue, ish. In common communication, yes, a doctorate refers to a PhD, but hearing it applied to MD is not uncommon. And technically, various other doctorates exist: JD (lawyer), DMD (dentist), DSD (dental surgeon), OD (optometrist), DVM (vet), PsyD (psychologist, though it’s relatively new and a PhD in psychology is the more common doctorate in that field), etc. The thrust of the question, I think, is why so many fields congregate under PhD instead of each having their own _D, like some of the above.
The history section in the linked article is the relevant part. Traditionally, a university degree was either a professional degree or a degree in the arts/philosophy. Fields of study have evolved, but many of the old titles remain.
@KRyan These titles are specific from some countries like US and they are not equivalent to a Ph.D or a doctorate. Physicians and Lawyers in Brazil and Portugal are called doctors only because the tradition of using it as a pronoun to express respect. In general physicians have a master's degree in health science.
This answer is unfortunately wrong: Even Wikipedia states in the first paragraph of its "Doctorate" article that "There are a variety of doctoral degrees, with the most common being the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), which is awarded in many different fields, ranging from the humanities to the scientific disciplines". There are MDs, D.Phil, D.Eng, German-style D. rer. nat. etc.
@errantlinguist The point is: there are many different ways to call a real doctorate at doctoral level depending on the country where it is emitted. However they are all the same title and equivalent across the borders. A German Doktorgrad is equivalent to a Ph.D in the UK and to a Doutorado in Portugal. Read the second paragraph of the article you referred, a MD is not equivalent to a doctorate.
@TheDoctor No, you are again wrong. Just because "doctor" in English sounds like "Doutorado" in Portuguese does not mean they are interchangeable: Holders of a Doutorado are doctors but not all doctors hold a Doutorado. Moreover, this has nothing to do with countries: The UK has PhDs, D.Phils, D.Eng, which are all doctorates but are not equivalent. I'm now downvoting because you don't seem to understand the differences and are strongly arguing that there are none, which is dangerous to others.
@errantlinguist So please, answer clarifying the difference between a D.Phil and a Ph.D. Even the University of Oxford says that they are the same title: https://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/faq/dphil-faq.html .
@TheDoctor The difference is that you can get a D.Phil from Oxford but not a PhD. Stop looking for low-hanging fruit: See the Doctor of Engineering degree, which is not even functionally equivalent like D.Phil and PhD are.
@errantilinguist They have no practical differences. From the article you referenced: "since 1992 some British universities have introduced the Engineering Doctorate, abbreviated as "EngD", which is instead a research doctorate and regarded in the UK as equivalent to a PhD."
@TheDoctor yes, they do. Read the article. "while research toward the D.Eng. is applied, rather than the basic, fundamental research in a Ph.D." Even your example Doktorgrad is wrong: There are many Doktorgrad titles in Germany such as D.-Ing, D. rer. nat. Delete your answer because it is wrong and misleading and could even get people sued (you can't call yourself a PhD for every single kind of doctorate, only as a translation of certain ones).
@errantlinguist The difference is only on the field of research, as I have said before. In many countries there are only one name for the doctoral degrees, independent if it is applied or fundamental research. I'm not convinced that my answer is wrong and I think you have not understood my point. Flag my answer and ask for a community intervention if you think it is misleading. I will not delete it. Now I need to work and I will not continue with this useless discussion.
PhD was originally a German degree. Its usage has evolved in different ways in different countries. 2) The research doctorates granted by faculties of medicine in some countries can be either DMedSci or PhD, depending on whether the recipient is also MD.
It is generally accepted in the US that MDs, DDS and certain related medical degrees are doctoral degrees. Some have even made that argument for JDs. They are not research doctorates, but that does not make them cease being doctoral degrees.
-1 because this answer is factually wrong. PhDs are not the only kind of doctorates.
Everyone, I'm not usually the sort of person to ask this, but I'd like everyone to downvote this, seeing as the answerer has acknowledged that the answer is dangerously misleading and has not even amended it; The only reason I can see why they are defending their answer as it stands is because of how many upvotes it has.
If MDs are equivalent to Master's degrees in Europe then what do European doctors get??
@errantlinguist where I have acknowledged it? :)
@TheDoctor your arguments keep getting weaker and weaker after being proved wrong again and again. Everything you write is wrong, and then you add qualifying information, e.g. "the difference is only on the field of research". That is everything but an explicit acknowledgement; If you were academically honest, you would admit your original answer is wrong and delete the answer in order to save others from potentially getting hurt. Instead, you keep throwing out excuses and new, weak arguments.
@Azor-ahai They get a master's degree in Health Science. If they want to have a doctoral degree they need to engage in an academic doctoral program, publish articles in peer-review journals and defend an original doctoral thesis. The same thing for lawyers. They are still called doctors by the general public, because it is the historically pronoun of treatment for those professionals.
Flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer.
Agreed that it is not worth flagging, but: yes, you are simply incorrect that "PhD" and "doctorate" are synonymous. To see this it is enough to exhibit a doctoral degree that is not a PhD. For this see e.g. here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Arts. One of my colleagues has this degree and has a job for which a "doctoral degree" is a requirement: here is is webpage http://www.math.uga.edu/directory/michael-klipper, which has a link to his CV, in which you can see that he has a DA rather than a PhD.
@Pete Thank you for this example. Now I see that I was wrong. I've never heard about such title as equivalent to a doctoral degree, with all the legal consequences of allowing to pursue an academic job as professor. Here in Portugal this title does not exist in arts, we have academic doctoral programs in arts with the same structure and demands of a doctoral program in science. Do you think I should delete my answer?
@TheDoctor how is the "Doctor of Arts" comparison any different to the "Doctor of Engineering" example, which you refused to accept?-- even the wording is similar: "While the Ph.D. is the most common doctoral degree in the United States, the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation recognize numerous research-oriented doctoral degrees such as the D.A. as "equivalent", and do not discriminate between them."
@errantlinguist Giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're genuinely asking: Your overall rhetoric is ineffective here because it reeks of elitism and dismissive bias, with just a hint of sycophantic melodrama. Pete's references clearly support the validity of his claims with concrete examples, while the purpose and applicability of your reference is unclear and gives an incoherent impression of frustratedly grasping for an emotionally appealing but ultimately flimsy argument. At least, those appear to be the main differences...
Emitted or omitted?
Downvoted, fully agreeing that this is a blatantly wrong answer. (Another example of a non-Ph.D. doctorate is the "D.V.Sc.", by the way.)
I have edit the answer based on this discussion. I hope that now it is acceptable.
Note that in Brazil, the top degree is called a doutorado, but in Portugal, it's called a doutoramento (anyone with an undergraduate degree is already style Dr./Dra.)
PhDs are more common because PhDs come from all fields and most countries.
To talk in broad strokes (I suggest looking into each of these points, e.g. in wikipedia for more details.)
Lets break our doctorates into 3 kinds:
Research Doctorates
These are given for doing research, and intended to train researchers.
Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD)
all fields of study, in all countries
Doctorate of ___ field
Some countries: Austria, Germany, Switzerland and others
Dr-Ing (engineering) etc
Higher doctorates
Doctor of Letters (Arts, Humanitites), Doctor of Science etc
Field specific doctorate
more or less lifetime achievement awards for research.
Generally pre-req'd on having a PhD for at least 10 years.
Dr. habil
see Habilitation
Most common (but not restricted to) in Germany, Austria, Swizerland.
Requires a PhD equivalent
Obviously there will be less people with any given higher doctorate than PhDs since they are a subset of people who have PhDs with in a given field.
Professional Doctorates
These are doctoral degrees that are required to do a profession.
Medicine Doctor (MD) i.e. a Doctor of Medicine
Every "doctor" in a hospital has at least this.
Juris Doctor (JD) i,e Doctor of Jurisprudence
which in many countries required to be a lawyer
by tradition laywers never take the title Dr.
There are a lot of professional doctorate holders.
You've probably seen the thing about PhD holders not using the title Dr on plane tickets because they don't want to be called upon for medical assistance (which they can not provide).
There are probably more PhDs awarded each year than MDs.
But not by a huge margin.
In 2014 the US had 18,078 MDs graduate (source)
and 54,070 PhDs; of those only about 40,000 were in science and engineering and of those only a very small portion would be in medical science (source).
Also in 2014 the US had 43,832 JDs graduate (source).
This is as compared to only 14,000 nonscience and engineering PhDs; of which only a small portion of which would be in Law.
I posit that for any field with a professional doctorate (I can only think of MD and JD) there will be an order of magnitude more professional doctorates than PhDs in that field.
The only reason PhD numbers are so high vs professional doctorates, is because they are the same degree no matter the field.
Similarly, the only reason they are high compared to Dr.Ing etc is that those degree are only common in certain countries; and are field specific.
And vs Higher doctorates: they are prerequed on PhD, and are field specific.
Note also that in some countries PhDs (or doctorates) were introduced in relatively recent times. For instance, in my country, Italy, this degree was introduced only 34 years ago.
@NajibIdrissi yes, I thought that I was talking in approximations was clear enough, but I guess not. I have editted. Habilitation is kinda a doctorate. Sometimes it gets translated to X doctorate, doesn't it? (I'm not super familar, so do tell me if that bit is ouright wrong). If so then it is a higher doctorate in the sense that it requires a (lower) doctorate before you can start it.
Am I understanding correctly that you are saying that I can improve this post by just deleting the "Dr. habil" section?
Comments are for discussing how to improve the post, and I want to understand is that the suggestion you are making?
And a technical quibble (which doesn't change your point): medical doctors don't always have MD degrees. In the UK, at least, medicine is an undergraduate degree (unlike the US, where it's a graduate course), and newly qualified medics will typically have a pair of bachelors' degrees (MBChB). Thus most 'doctors' (know where your tonsils are) aren't 'doctors' (with a doctorate). MDs are the minority who have also done medical research (‘PhD in medicine’) and who are thus real doctors as well as proper doctors (!).
I have a French "doctorat en informatique", which was found to be equivalent to a PhD in the Canadian system... A rose called by another name and all that...
The doctorate-vs.-habilitation issue is further confused by the circumstance that at one time (perhaps still now but I don't have recent information), the Russian (at that time Soviet) system had two degrees of this sort. One, equivalent to a doctorate in the U.S. or Germany, had a name that sounded like "candidate". The other, equivalent to a German habilitation, had a name that sounded like "doctor".
In one's early education, especially in more traditional contexts, learning involved X being true because the teacher said so. Don't question the teacher; just make sure that you know X. It was all about memorization (rote learning).
This would start to change when a student would reach the highest levels of education, at which point they'd be able to argue and contribute their own understanding. So instead of focusing on rote learning, a student would have to demonstrate their ability to think and engage in critique of their field (scholasticism). This is, successful students would become philosophers of their field rather than simple repositories of memorized facts.
Education's become increasingly liberal with a shift from rote learning toward critical thinking, but there's still a semblance of that early expectation that pre-Ph.D. students are supposed to memorize what's being taught while a Ph.D. would symbolize one's ability to go beyond that.
Historical background
Academics used to be folks who participated in medieval universities. There was a heavy religious flavoring to academia compared to today's more secular settings, but it was still general academia nonetheless.
A lot of stuff came from this time. For example, on graduation when you dress up like Harry Potter, it's because that's how these guys used to dress.
Anyway, so this is where the Bachelor's/Master's/doctorate thing came from:
Course of study
University studies took six years for a Master of Arts degree (a Bachelor of Arts degree was awarded after completing the third or fourth year). Studies for this were organized by the faculty of arts, where the seven liberal arts were taught: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music theory, grammar, logic, and rhetoric. All instruction was given in Latin and students were expected to converse in that language. The trivium comprised the three subjects that were taught first: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. These three subjects were the most important of the seven liberal arts for medieval students. The curriculum came also to include the three Aristotelian philosophies: physics, metaphysics and moral philosophy.
-"Medieval university", Wikpiedia [links and citations omitted]
And that stuff was a lot of the rote learning, before one was a proper doctor.
After that, one'd go into the realm of philosophy, becoming a more critical thinker (scholar):
Once a Master of Arts degree had been conferred, the student could leave the university or pursue further studies in one of the higher faculties, law, medicine, or theology, the last one being the most prestigious. A popular textbook for theological study was called the Sentences (Quattuor libri sententiarum) of Peter Lombard; theology students as well as masters were required to write extensive commentaries on this text as part of their curriculum.[citation needed] Studies in the higher faculties could take up to twelve years for a master's degree or doctorate (initially the two were synonymous), though again a bachelor's and a licentiate's degree could be awarded along the way.
-"Medieval university", Wikpiedia [links and citations omitted]
This system was already established by the time "science" started to be recognized in a more modern sense. At that time, it was still just Philosophy, or more specifically "Natural Philosophy".
So, to be a "doctor of philosophy" is literally just that - to be a scholar of philosophy who's gone beyond the intro years of rote memorization to the point where they can engage in scholarly critique of their field.
Ph.D.'s as further Master's degrees
In the historical context in which these degrees were named, the human knowledge pool was way, way smaller. It was a drop compared to today's oceans. And so, the prospect of learning much of the human knowledge pool was far more reasonable, if many'd still have regarded it as challenging.
Today, a lot of Ph.D.'s are awarded to students who probably don't quite get the whole philosophy-of-their-field thing. That seems to be a natural consequence of there being a lot more one can learn before reaching the point of critique and abstraction.
So, today, a Ph.D. can be something like a fancy Master's degree. For example, one can basically get a Master's in Chemistry, then do a bunch of lab work to test something out, and get a Ph.D. for that (experimental chemistry).
In principle, we might argue that there's some need for revision to the academic credentialing system to better capture its modern reality. And we've actually kinda done that already - as noted in the Wikipedia link above, a Master's and doctorate used to be the same thing; they got more separated in part due to the human knowledge pool growing and more ranks being needed to account for it. But that'd be a different topic.
For the purposes of this question, a Ph.D. got its name in the scholarly days when academics were basically those who learned their field and then engaged in scholarly critique of it. And today, the name's kinda a historical artifact.
Further reading
I found a neat paper that discusses the evolution of doctoral conference since the scholarly days:
"Hora Est!: On Dissertations", 2005.
This document's a look at what scholastics/academics had to do to be recognized as a doctor. And while the title specifies "On Dissertations", it notes:
Less than a century ago a dissertation was not always required to obtain a doctorate. Successfully defending a number of theses sufficed. [-page 7]
Other interesting factoids:
Apparently dissertations used to be more about disputing (critique) points, written up as a disputation. This contrasts with the modern description of a PhD being about adding to the human knowledge pool.
It seems like prior academia was far more concerned with religion than modern academia. Early academics seem to have been something like clergy.
I don't see how this answers the question, he is asking why are phd popular degrees among other doctoral degrees.
@HermanToothroth Was primarily responding to the "For nearly all of my life, i thought a phd was simply a doctorate, and i didn't know that it had anything to do with philosophy." part by explaining the connection between a PhD and Philosophy. Ultimately it's just a name that had historical grounding. After its historical inception, the name's just stuck around.
@HermanToothroth If I understand correctly, to put it another way, this answer is saying that PhD's are the most common doctoral degrees simply because "PhD" was the term most commonly chosen for degrees at that level. And it also gives a justification for why the designation "PhD" was chosen so often, at least in older times.
This answer is actually wrong: PhDs originally did not entail original research at all, just lengthy scholarship and examination. The title comes literally from the meaning of philosophia-- love of wisdom. You were a doctor of philosophia because back then there was no distinction between e.g. biology, mathematics, astronomy... If you were smart and we're good at it, you could work in the field. Even today, e.g. physics PhDs can and do work in e.g. computer science.
Not to toot my own horn, but my answer explains the historical precedent behind the name philosophiae doctor from the history of philosophia.
So an S.J.D is a doctoral degree but a J.D. is not? This conversation seems entirely pedantic.
@Nat the scope of your original answer is entirely different to that of your current answer.
@Nat honestly, I find this whole question a hot mess and wish I hadn't partaken in it.
@errantlinguist Ya know, reading about this topic and its popular perceptions has been a lot of fun. Academia's got quite a history following from ancient times, shaping what it is today, though there seems to be little understanding of it online. I'm glad that you did opt to participate; I may've had a bit of fun with the comments, but your answer provides a lot of useful information.
The title philosophiae doctor is a remnant from a time when there were no "degree requirements" for jobs and there was not a myriad of different sub-fields: the title "doctor of philosophy" comes from the Greek philosophia, literally "love of wisdom". In other words, doctors of "philosophy" were originally much more "free" in what they could and did contribute to intellectually, which is more of an artifact of how far we've progressed in terms of research between now and then than anything else (cf. Wikipedia for a good overview of university structure from Medieval times onwards).
This is shown by the great number of polymaths in the past in relation to now, including but in no way limited to
Aristotle (384–322 BC),
Archimedes (c.287–c.212 BC)
Ptolemy (90–168 AD)
Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber) (721–815)
Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi (994–1064)
Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179)
Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
Copernicus (1473–1543)
Matrakçı Nasuh (1480–c.1564)
Akbar the Great (1542–1605)
Isaac Newton (1643–1727)
Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716)
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765)
David Hume (1711–1776)
(cf. John Chiappone's Intro to Humanities site for many more)
There are many more people with higher degrees now per capita than there were back then, so there should theoretically be more polymaths now, but the state of the art has progressed to a level that staying cutting-edge in many fields at once is now much harder. However, even now, people who earned their PhD in one field can and often do go on to contribute to other fields, thus meaning that the spirit of the doctor philosophiae is still alive.
Xkcd made a comic of a very old joke which illustrates this well, but the joke as I know it repeats "A is just applied B" until it terminates at something like
Mathematics is just applied logic, and
logic is just applied philosophy.
Being someone with a philosophy-leaning background myself, I'd say the author stopped at mathematics because he's a mathematician (it turns out he's a physicist with a sense of humor good enough to be make fun of himself!).
Origins of the PhD title and its spread
The PhD title originated in Germany as a comprehensive title not specific to any field and was popularized by Americans who studied there and brought the title back to the US. See Wikipedia:
This situation changed in the early 19th century through the educational reforms in Germany, most strongly embodied in the model of the University of Berlin, founded and controlled by the Prussian government in 1810. The arts faculty, which in Germany was labelled the faculty of philosophy, started demanding contributions to research,[15] attested by a dissertation, for the award of their final degree, which was labelled Doctor of Philosophy (abbreviated as Ph.D.)—originally this was just the German equivalent of the Master of Arts degree. Whereas in the Middle Ages the arts faculty had a set curriculum, based upon the trivium and the quadrivium, by the 19th century it had come to house all the courses of study in subjects now commonly referred to as sciences and humanities.[16] Professors across the humanities and sciences focused on their advanced research.[17] Practically all the funding came from the central government, and it could be cut off if the professor was politically unacceptable.[relevant? – discuss][18]
These reforms proved extremely successful, and fairly quickly the German universities started attracting foreign students, notably from the United States. The American students would go to Germany to obtain a PhD after having studied for a bachelor's degrees at an American college. So influential was this practice that it was imported to the United States, where in 1861 Yale University started granting the PhD degree to younger students who, after having obtained the bachelor's degree, had completed a prescribed course of graduate study and successfully defended a thesis or dissertation containing original research in science or in the humanities.[19] In Germany, the name of the doctorate was adapted after the philosophy faculty started being split up − e.g. Dr. rer. nat. for doctorates in the faculty of natural sciences − but in most of the English-speaking world the name "Doctor of Philosophy" was retained for research doctorates in all disciplines.
The PhD degree and similar awards spread across Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The degree was introduced in France in 1808, replacing diplomas as the highest academic degree; into Russia in 1819, when the Doktor Nauk degree, roughly equivalent to a PhD, gradually started replacing the specialist diploma, roughly equivalent to the MA, as the highest academic degree; and in Italy in 1927, when PhDs gradually started replacing the Laurea as the highest academic degree.[citation needed]
Despite specialist terminal degrees appearing in other countries, this never gained much traction in the US and to a lesser extent in other parts of the Anglosphere. Additionally, in the Anglosphere (especially in the US), the ideal of greater education as being truly comprehensive in this manner seems to remain stronger than in e.g. continental Europe, with the tradition of liberal arts still being very strong there while being relatively uncommon in higher levels of education in continental Europe. This could explain how the modern notion of the single title "PhD" as a terminal research degree seems to have spread from the US: Many universities outside the Anglosphere which previously offered terminal degrees other than the PhD are now offering them as a trend of the times and increased internationalization, thus explaining some of the perceived convergence towards the PhD as a single terminal degree even outside of the Anglosphere.
The author is a physicist, not a mathematician.
@DanielFischer thanks; physicist also makes a lot of sense.
This answer is pure speculation with little actual information, except a long and pointless list of "polymaths". I would need some actual evidence to believe that the fact that a PhD is the US degree for most research doctorates has something to do with the liberal arts tradition. PhD education in the US is narrowly focused and has no liberal arts element to it. Even breadth requirements in PhD programs are limited to the field of study.
@SashoNikolov I supplied a huge amount of links which you can read about; What "actual evidence" do you need if that is not enough for you?
Moreover, what is your knowledge of higher education in the US? is your specialization in the history of education?
@SashoNikolov I now added explicit passages from Wikipedia illustrating the connection between philosophy, the liberal arts and the modern PhD title. On the linked Wikipedia pages you will find many bibliographic references to books which explain history much better than I can do.
I still see nothing here that supports your assertion that the PhD being common in the US has something to do with the US liberal arts tradition. I have a liberal arts education and a PhD from US universities and currently the two have very different cultures. I am indeed not a historian so maybe there is truth to your claim of a link but nothing in this lengthy quote supports that. Rather, it shows the origin of the title in the German tradition.
@SashoNikolov I unfortunately cannot and will not write a thesis connecting all the dots between a historical tradition of liberal arts to the name of the PhD (I'm sure some actually have done, or at least a book or article). However, the simple fact that I work with PhDs in psychology, neuroscience, computer science, physics and mathematics every day on the same topic is empirical proof that research can be multidisciplinary. As shown, as an artifact of history, the "older" title of PhD ironically reflects this more accurately than specialized degree titles do.
@SashoNikolov "The arts faculty, which in Germany was labelled the faculty of philosophy" > philosophy back then encompassed much of what we call "liberal arts" now and even more (this requires the huge amounts of reading/writing I don't have time to write out) > Americans get PhDs from German arts/philosophy departments > Americans popularize and refine PhD-granting programs. The fact that a modern PhD program is very specialized has nothing to do with the name, and I never suggested it. Originally, they were very different to what they are now. That is the point.
Ok, both the title PhD and US liberal arts education can be traced back to the faculties of philosophy in Germany. But your last paragraph strongly suggests that the following two facts are related: (i) liberal arts education is still strong (in the present) in the US, and not in Europe; (ii) in the US doctoral degrees never differentiated, while in Europe they did. I don't see evidence of a link between (i) and (ii). If you cannot provide any, why are you stating (i)?
@SashoNikolov fair enough, that is indeed my personal speculation based on my understanding of history and also of the history of education in the US. I'm sure people smarter than myself have written stuff about it, but I can't "prove" a link between them or cite proof. Thank you for being open enough to consider my argument, though. I edited the answer to make my own conjecture a bit easier to spot.
I guess the German style is that if you are in the Faculty of X, you get a [degree] of X. At some point, X happened to be philosophy. Americans copied the title, but because it was not connected to the organizational structure, they kept it regardless of organizational changes. (We Finns kept the Faculty of Philosophy alive for ceremonial purposes, and the literal translations of our degrees are still PhD and MPhil.)
@Nat the scope of your original answer is entirely different to that of your current answer.
A Ph.D. refers to an academic doctorate. Which means it is awarded upon completing a body of original research in recognition of such completion. Professional doctorate degrees -- MD, JD, DMD, DDS, DO, DC, Psy. D., Pharm.D (and I am borrowing this list from one of the other answers to this question) -- are awarded in recognition of attaining a high level of professional training in those disciplines.
Incidentally, "philosophy" used to refer to all studies which we call academic today. So the title "Philosophy Doctor" stems from those times.
BTW, there is a number of people with double titles MD,Ph.D and DDS,Ph.D. These indicate both academic research credentials and clinical training credentials. Presumably, a Ph.D. (in one of life sciences) could be received without ever seeing a human patient. Whereas an MD is more patient-oriented.
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73037 | As a copy editor for a professional journal, how far should I go in adjusting the wording of an article?
(It is important to note that the articles are generally written by people for whom English is not their first language)
I recently got my first article to edit, and realized very quickly how uncertain I was about how detailed I was supposed to be in my editing. The article was very wooden though and required a lot of editing to hold a professional English tone (to no fault of the author's, since English was not his first language). I am very good at editing and so had to settle on just going with what made sense to me, but I am wondering if there is a consensus or specific set of rules to follow.
For instance, I always use the word 'one' to denote an inclusive general view in my essays (ie, "If one accepts the premise of John Doe, then yada yada yada...), but this author continually used 'we', which seemed odd to me. I couldn't tell if it was something that needed editing, or was an intentional stylistic choice. I decided to be conservative there and left all the 'we's, but would really appreciate some input.
You are employed by a journal. Ask them what they want?
They don't respond well unfortunately.
In my field at least, "we" is not unusual. But you should really read past issues of the journal you are editing for to get a sense of its style.
" I always use the word 'one' ... this author ... used 'we', which seemed odd to me:" Are you employed to impose your personal style preferences on every paper you edit, or to work to a particular style guide (either a public one like CMS or an in-house document)? It's hard to imagine why consistent use of either "one" or "we" in a paper would make any difference to the users of the journal, regardless of your personal preference.
Folks, use of "we", "you" and "I" is generally not considered proper in formal writing.
@SnakeDoc, you might find the answers to this question interesting. http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12400/active-or-passive-voice-in-international-research-journal-within-the-field-of-m
As a non-native, I would likely write we, and I would just as likely be happy if a native speaker corrected it to one. I don't think you can assume a stylistic choice if the original author struggles with the language. Even if they did make such a choice, and it is wrong, you would have to correct it.
@SnakeDoc : maybe not in your field, but the "royal we" is pretty typical in a lot of science & technical papers.
As a native speaker of English, "one" sounds dated to me. I'm sure the matter is covered in style guides: does your publisher not have an official prefered style guide?
I think a reasonable rule to follow when editing an accepted manuscript prior to publication is to make the minimum changes required to conform with proper grammar as well as whatever style guide your publication uses. (The latter might include, for instance, citation formats as well as the use of British versus American English for spelling.)
If there is ambiguity in editing possibilities, I would propose the change to the authors, but also, if possible, flag it as an "author query" to ensure that the change is viewed and a consensus reached.
I would propose the change to the authors Should the editor be involved in this case?
@scaaahu: No. This is handled at the proof stage, so editors are not required. It would usually be handled with a note in the proof saying something like: "The authors' intent was not clear. Should this be written as (version 1) or (version 2)?"
While editing wrong English is a really good thing to do, and I do really like it when someone does it to me ( so I can learn how to do it better in the future) this has an important problem in research articles: You may, accidentally, modify what they author meant to say.
I don' know what you are supposed to do, but if you end up deciding to change wording in the article, I suggest you notify the authors you have done this and ask for review. Don't just tell them "this is the last version prior to publishing, is it ok?" but notify them that you reworded different sections of the article.
If you are going to go ahead of this I suggest you make 2 files. One with all the required formatting modifications and then another one built on this last one, with all the wording changes. Ask the authors which one they prefer.
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75231 | Can a personal meeting with a scientist be referenced?
Suppose I meet a scholar at my university or some other institute, who is a famous person known for his or her work. and I ask questions related to the subject I am working on, and I get some answers or other useful information. Ethically, can I cite this meeting in my paper or not? (Provided I do tell the person that I am working on something related, etc.)
Does this person know you will be citing your conversation with them? Did they know before starting the conversation (their answers might be slightly different if they do vs they don't)? Are you gonna let the person proofread your citations? This could affect their professional reputation.
Yes as i said that they will be aware of that, i am meeting them in relation to some work. I will not agree on citations proof reading, as in that case we should also let the published work authors to proof read in case we mention some weakness in their work. Any how a personal meeting can be challenged as never took place in case of conflict.
The difference is that any published work you cite is already proofread before publishing and written with the knowledge that it will be available to the public, a conversation is completely different.
Strictly speaking, yes. The APA style, among others, does have instructions on how to cite private conversations (see https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/11/ for an example), but in practice I've never seen it been used in psychology (or natural science) papers. This is probably because a personal conversation cannot be easily verified, which makes such citations less useful. One thing you can do is to track down the relevant papers and thank your colleague in the acknowledgement section.
The one time I cited a Personal Communication as a reference, the journal requested that the person I was communicating send a letter asserting that, yes, he had in fact said that thing. I don't know what would have happened had the person been unavailable, but I had the strong impression that the journal editors would have requested that we re-do that section and not include the pers. comm.
Verification aside, usually the important thing is not that "expert x" said something. It's science after all. So I'd question whether the information isn't published anywhere (it should be) and cite that. If not, e.g., if it is about a research idea, I wonder too whether acknowledgements wouldn't be a better place. But as arguments go, citing an expert alone is a very weak link in the chain.
We were reluctant to include a Personal Communication because it was unscientific and, in itself, difficult to verify -- but the communication was on the order of "Yes, we accidentally swapped these values in the table and the correction hasn't been published yet because the journal is slow", so there didn't seem to be any way around it.
That's why i asked, some times you get chance to meet face by face, and what is said is not published...so in that case as a last option. I guess if there is approved citing style then it is allowed and considered as valid
Hmm, not clear to me why getting information from a scientist in a personal conversation is "less scientific" than getting exactly the same information from a journal article written by that same scientist. Citing an expert per se doesn't prove anything, that's the classic logical fallacy of "appeal to authority". But if in a conversation he relates the results of an experiment he has performed, I'd think that's exactly as valuable as getting it from a published paper. Yes, the published paper has the advantage of being easier to verify, perhaps less prone to errors in transcription. ...
... But a personal interview is likely more timely, perhaps the only way to get information on some ground-breaking new discovery. And of course outside the realm of scientific papers, if we were talking about journalism, personal interviews are a primary source of information.
@Jay readers don't really care where you got information on some ground-breaking new discovery, that's not the main purpose of scientific citations. Readers use citations to obtain the detailed information to which you are referring - citing a publication or even a webpage is useful in this regard, citing a personal interview is not - unless the full interview is available somewhere. Readers also use citations to verify claims - you can make a claim without providing direct evidence yourself, but point the reader to some evidence published by others; but a personal interview doesn't do that.
Perhaps the important question is about why this (cited) statement is needed in the paper? If your conclusions depend on this statement (e.g. fact about reality) being true, then you need to provide some evidence that it is so, and "Bob told me something like this" really isn't enough. However, if your conclusions don't rely on it, but your work was helped by ideas from this unpublished information, then it would be appropriate to simply put it in acknowledgements as this answer suggests; there's no real need to make up something to cite if there's nothing useful to reader that can be cited.
@Jay if you need to cite a ground-breaking new discovery, then the appropiate thing is to wait for that discovery to be published.
Agreed with @Peteris - in the sciences, I can't imagine anything that was conveyed in conversation that would be necessary or useful to include in a publication (assuming this is an academic publication and not a documentary or other type of journalistic work). It wouldn't matter if "Albert Einstein said in conversation that this mathematical transformation is valid", for example, or "Stephen Hawking agrees this hypothesis has merit", etc. What matters is proof and peer-reviewed results.
@J... I can't imagine anything that was conveyed in conversation that would be necessary or useful to include in a publication -- how about the example we ran in to, "We accidentally transposed some values in that table, and the correction won't be out for a while yet because the journal is slow"?
If at all possible, follow Drecate's advice and cite the relevant papers.
If this isn't possible (e.g. a scientist told you about an unpublished observation in their group, like, "Oh yes, we often saw that, but never got around to writing it up."), citing a "personal communication" is appropriate.
HOWEVER, if you do this, the person you are citing should know about it! I would send them a copy of your draft before you submit it. This avoids circumstances where 1) you misunderstood them, and they didn't say what you thought they did, or 2) they thought they were speaking "off the record," and don't want to be cited in support of this point, or 3) you are "spoiling" their result by announcing it before they publish.
Yes, it is possible, and I have done this once or twice. As others have said, it is better to cite a published document if possible, but (Smith, pers. comm.) is sometimes acceptable: typically if it's for a minor point that referees are unlikely to dispute, or for a minor detail of published work that didn't make it into the published version.
Examples:
"Liu and Smith (2006) used 15mm glass culture tubes for their samples (Liu, pers. comm.)"
"Environmental managers report that farmers in this region generally do not trust models (Freeman, pers. comm.) so we took a participatory modelling approach to increase trust and transparency, following the advice of Jones (2011)."
Yes - but don't use that as a crutch for taking sole credit for a result that's not entirely your own.
If you're writing a paper in which that is a significant part of the novelty, try to make him/her a co-author; or otherwise coordinate with that person, since you're working on the basis of his/her idea to a great extent. Another option you could offer him/her, if they don't want to be cited, is a thank you note for useful discussion regarding XYZ.
If you're writing something in which the citation is not part of the novelty of the work, it's simpler and more obvious that you just cite a "personal communication" like other answers suggest.
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96380 | How do I deal with a stubborn co-author who won't respond to suggestions?
My research group is preparing a theoretical article in a field where author order matters (computational neuroscience), and it has to be submitted soon, as our funding ends soon. I am an author "in the middle of the list."
The first author (TFA) has made a first draft and started circulating it. Although results-wise everything is ok, the text is very poorly written (both in terms of English and general logic understandability). TFA is known to be not very responsive to even minor correction suggestions.
Our PI knows the situation but he started his PI career relatively recently and his management skills have not yet fully developed, as far as I understand it. He says that he will just rewrite the whole text in the end (as he did with a number of other articles before).
Technically I or another middle author could rewrite the draft completely to make it better. However I think it would make the first-authorship of TFA somewhat strange-looking, and in general I feel that there should be some better ways.
So the question is: how are situations like this typically resolved?
"I think it would make the first-authorship of TFA somewhat strange-looking," Not at all. Writing is only one slice of a larger pie, and if the other slices of the pie are mostly of his baking, then there is no reason why he shouldn't be the first baker.
I would say that typically in life sciences, rewriting the paper carries little weight in terms of authorship order. Events that happened before writing (developing the idea, executing it, producing results, etc) are much more important.
@Bitwise my field is not a pure life science, we do mathematical models for life sciences. So it is not like TFA sat days in a dirty lab doing dangerous experiments and now somebody wants to steal his effort only because he has bad writing skills. In the case of this particular article the first author did a few not-that-difficult to code computational experiments and found some important articles that our model is based on. But the most important thing -- the formulation of the equations, was done by the PI.
The history of this question seems to have been a bit murky to me "I want to rewrite an article that is poorly written by the first author, can I argue to supercede him as first author") Now it appears to be changed to ("I can't get the first author to do what I want him to do". I'm not quite sure what you are asking. You can't get him to agree to let you be first author if you rewrite his text (which many comments suggested was not very strong case on your part) ? or is he not agreeable because he refuses to Let you do some massive edits while keeping the authorship the same?
Rewriting the text doesn't necessarily qualify someone to be the first author of a publication. If you're using the intended first author's structural outline and just rewriting sentences, then I don't know if that's sufficient to usurp the intended first author's claim. If I were the PI, I don't think I would do that.
What I might do is place a note in the paper along the lines of "X and Y contributed substantially to the writing of this paper," where X is the intended first author and Y is the person who rewrote the paper.
Better still would be for the PI to work with the intended first author about the corrections that are needed, rather than just rewrite everything. Helping X to become a better writer will reduce the PI's workload in the long run.
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7329 | How to choose to which conference submit a scientific paper?
Nowadays, in almost every scientific field, there are hundreds of conferences. Many call for papers emails fill our mail boxes.
Freedom of choice is great, but, how to choose to which conference send a paper?
Should I choose one...
based on the scientific relevance?
based on the scientific vicinity to your paper theme?
based on its prestige?
because of some official ranking?
because it provides the best food?
I suspect the answer is different in computer science (where conference papers actually matter) than in other fields.
It is always about the location ;)
Have you asked your advisor?
If you have the money, then target the top conferences wherever they are. If you have secured a faculty position, then target the conference you like the most whether its top or not.
Because it's in a nice place, of course!
In an ideal world, you would like to choose your conference by their relation to your paper's main topic, and the possibility of impact to your field.
Now, you might be inclined to choose according to other filters:
Based on its "possible attendants", such as a highly-esteemed
investigator you might want to know and get feedback from, in a more
personal way.
Your own "travel experiences" (such as wanting to travel to a
far-away location, or to re-visit some beautiful place).
Most conferences consider acceptance as a "at least one of the
authors must attend and present their work" binding commitment, so
unless you are going with your college's support, you must
consider the ongoing rates on inscription, hotel rates and
added values (such as travel expenses or food, among others).
Some other reasons might apply, but your main filter must be to choose a conference in which your work is closely related to.
Some of the best conferences I have been to have been ones outside my area of specialization, but for a new research sticking on topic is probably key.
I concurr, but you at least need to send a paper that is "somewhat related" to the main topics of the conference, for them to accept it.
Not a complete answer, but is substantially reduces the number of conferences to consider, the first things I consider are: timing, location, duration, cost. It has to fit into my teaching schedule and I have to have results and enough time to write them up, but not so far off that I want them out (timing). A one or two day national conference is much easier to deal with than a week long overseas conference (location and duration). I have to be able to afford it (cost).
Why choosin' a conference instead of another?
Conference is a social event. Even in computer science where conferences really matter, attending and presenting a paper either in a talk, or as a poster is still a personal dissemination of results. With this prelude, I argue that you should choose also (if not primarily) on the basis of what kind of audience you expect to attend your presentation.
sometimes, your paper is a message to the community (incremental works or methodological remarks come to mind). In that case you want to target precisely the community your paper speaks to. So even if it would be a small workshop without proceedings, if your result matters to the small community, you should speak primarily to them.
most of the time, you have a standalone research result. Q: What are you after with it? A: impact = citations. Hence, go to a place attended by those guys who are likely to cite your work. Usually, that is correlated with the position of the venue on the Top-XYZ ladder = badge (see below).
sometimes, you want to get a badge = have a paper at this prestigious conference which will shine on your CV. Fair enough, there you have the way to decide.
Ideally, you should go for a place providing both 2 and 3. Honestly, I see little good from choosing a conference based solely on its focus. Doing so, you might end up at C-tier venue full of people who are interested in the location and the buffet.
If you are new to research or new to a particular field, you should discuss this question with a colleague who has experience in that field (for students, this is your advisor). They know which conferences are the most important/useful/well-attended. After some time you will know this too and can decide based on personal experience.
Outside of expert advice or personal experience, here are my criteria, in order of importance:
It is sponsored by one of the major relevant professional societies. Which are relevant depends on your field. In mine, this means SIAM.
The work I would like to present is relevant to the focus of the conference.
The timing and location make sense. This can depend on many things, but it is less convenient to travel when you need to be in class (as a teacher or a student). You may have limited funds, or limited tolerance for long flights and layovers. Choosing a conference because you have some particular desire to visit that location is not generally a good idea unless the other factors here align too.
The size of the conference, in number of attendees and also breadth of scope. After many years I have come to the conclusion that smaller, more focused meetings are more useful to me, but I know people who feel just the opposite.
In fields where conference submission acceptance rates are relatively low (i.e., the process is highly competitive), conference prestige or rankings should indeed be an important factor. In others (like mine, applied math) conference submissions are not really competitive and there is not a hierarchy of conferences in terms of prestige.
For small thematic workshops, criterion #1 above is often irrelevant; but for anything larger it is essential.
Don't choose a conference based on the food.
Why does professional society sponsorship matter? IEEE in particular has sponsored some truly shady conferences in the past.
@JeffE fair enough; I've edited my answer. In my field, any large meeting that's worthwhile is sponsored by SIAM or its equivalent in another region. I don't have enough experience with other societies so I removed them. As already noted, for small meetings this is irrelevant.
Even in applied math, professional societies sponsor conferences because they're worthwhile, not the other way around. Most AI and machine learning conferences are (a) not sponsored by a professional society and (b) huge.
@Jeffe Sure -- I'm not claiming causality, just correlation. I explicitly state that these are my own criteria; I can't speak about other fields because I don't have any knowledge there.
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70 | Do I need to have teaching experience before entering grad school?
I'm considering going back to graduate school, but I've heard from a number of friends that graduate students are all required to teach. Is that the case? I have no teaching experience at all. Will that negatively affect my chances of getting in?
I think the teaching requirement is program / university specific. Some more information may be helpful.
Uh... typically the PhD is where you start getting teaching experience. At least in Italy. Non-PhD's can volunteer to "assist" in some laboratories through "150 hours" programs, but that's it.
@badp - That's actually only true for academics. In the "real world", people go to school to learn how to teach. That's how your first grade teacher learned to do her job... not by on-the-job teaching.
@eykanal I guess I fail in assuming that by "teaching" you only meant "teaching in academia".
In general, no, it won't. Having teaching experience might weigh in your favor in exceptional circumstances (a graduate department that needs a lot of teaching assistants, and you're "on the bubble"; you're going into an education program or something similar; or the application specifically asks for teaching experience).
However, most graduate schools don't expect that students have prior teaching experience, and provide training to smooth the transition.
Teaching load also varies widely from program to program: some science and engineering students TA for one semester over a five-year program, while humanities graduate students may have to TA every semester to pay for their studies.
I've heard from a number of friends that graduate students are all required to teach.
This is usually a requirement for doctoral students, and only because most doctoral students are having their education paid for by the university or grants. If you are terrified about teaching, my advice would be to visit your local Toastmasters chapter. While there is far more to teaching than being able to speak in front of others, the fear of public speaking is the largest (in the sense of provoking fear) hurdle that I've heard folks mention.
For doctoral students, you may very well be expected to teach - rare is the department with sufficient faculty and graduate student funding that using TAs is unnecessary. That being said, learning to teach in those institutions is considered part of your training - not something you're expected to have in advance.
I had a small shred of teaching experience before entering grad school, but many of my fellow students did not, and it mattered not even a little bit.
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2744 | What's the best way to share my presentation slides online?
I'm thinking of posting slides from some of my technical presentations online. One option I've used in the past is just posting the PDFs. But I've seen some sites that offer nice interfaces for others to view and share your slides without downloading them, such as
SpeakerDeck
Slideshare
Present.me
I am primarily interested in advertising my research to other researchers who might be interested in using it or collaborating.
Which site should I use, and why? Or are raw PDFs the way to go?
In case it matters, I'm a computational mathematician and my slides are a mixture of text, equations, plots, short videos, and diagrams.
I'd instinctively find anything else than a raw pdf file annoying, due to the lower portability and implied access control. I suspect I am not the only one in my field (numerical mathematics).
Keep in mind is that, if the presentation contains unpublished results, you shouldn't publish it at all. Doing so could jeopardize your ability to publish the papers in a reputable journal.
@eykanal That may be discipline-dependent. I publish all my preprints on arXiv prior to submission and it's not a problem. Presumably slides are even less problematic. Take a look at http://www.carlboettiger.info/wordpress/archives/3641.
@eykanal: I agree with David. In computer science at least, posting anything to the web (formal preprints, technical reports, slides, blog entries, videos, StackExchange answers, whatever) absolutely does not preclude or jeopardize later formal publication.
@JeffE - My statement was based on hearsay from both my PhD advisor and labmates. It was in reference to both the biomedical engineering and cognitive psychology fields. Given the postings here, I'm not sure if he was correct, but I figured it was worth posting.
@Eykanal is correct. Certain fields *cough chemistry *cough won't accept papers that have been deposited. Patents will also have rules on what is considered "public disclosure".
@eykanal how reputable are draconian reputable journals?
I typically post my slides on my website as pdfs. On the title page of my slides, I have started adding a line that says something like "slides available on my preprint page", and sometimes I'll mention this at the start of my talk. On my website, I have a page for all my slides and I also link to the relevant slides on my preprints page. Personally, I prefer when speakers make their slides available as pdfs, because I like being able to download them and file them away, rather than needing to bookmark a website. Similar to my preprints, I'm excited to have folks download my slides (so I don't see any reason to control their distribution).
I agree about the downloading - I know some people really care about controlling access (which is why I mentioned it), but I don't think it's actually advantageous.
Downloadable pdfs are nice on many grounds, but using one's website may be not a long-lasting solution (unless one has a tenure), effectively making pdfs disappearing after a few years.
@PiotrMigdal I don't have tenure yet, but I do expect to get it. I guess my plan is to move my website (and pdfs) with me wherever I go (if I do end up moving). A Google search on my name easily finds my website, so (possibly with a little digging), my pdfs should be easily accessible for a long time. One possible future alternative would be if the arxiv allowed posting of auxiliary files. Then you could post your slides as an attachment. Currently, one hack would be to post the TeX source of your slides to the arxiv.
From what I can see, some key issues to think about are:
Social media integration and analytics. These sites will help you advertise your presentation and gather data on who views it.
Downloading. You can make it inconvenient or impossible to download the slides. That's an advantage if you want to control the presentation and keep anyone from archiving a copy or extracting figures (you can't stop someone determined and knowledgeable, but you can stop casual users).
Accessibility on devices. My smartphone cannot view Present.me presentations at all, and it has a little trouble with SpeakerDeck and Slideshare presentations. (I can view them, but they are awfully small and I cannot zoom in.) I don't usually view slides on my phone, but I do every so often.
I agree with Anonymous Mathematician, but I want to add an additional key issue:
Rendering Compatibility: Can whichever method you choose properly render all of your content? I have had trouble converting PowerPoint files containing chemical structures drawn in ChemDraw (which are vector graphic objects). Creating PDFs seems to be hit or miss depending on the method I use. Notably, Office is better at it than Adobe software. Slideshare will not render these objects at all. I do not have experience with Present.me or SpeakerDeck.
If your presentation is in LaTeX, you may want to try writeLATEX. You can actually make your presentation in writeLATEX, and share it from there once it is ready.
Google Docs is another option that allows you to:
Embed the presentation on your site with a nice interface.
Provide a public link to the presentation, where viewers will have the option to download as PDF, PowerPoint or Text.
Make lists of viewers (possible contributors) authorized to comment or edit.
Additionally,
While making the presentation:
Work from school, home or anywhere with an internet connection, without the need of manually synchronize.
Work collaboratively, collaborators can edit or comment.
Revision history (who changed what) with the possibility to revert changes.
During the presentation:
See your notes using speaker notes.
Present remotely using Google+ Hangouts
Interesting, but this would require that I write my presentation using Google Docs (no TeX!) so that's a non-starter for mathematical fields.
I am one of the developers of SlideWiki and would suggest you to use that (http://slidewiki.org)
SlideWiki features include:
WYSIWYG slide authoring
Logical slide and deck representation
LaTeX/MathML integration
Multilingual decks / semi-automatic translation in 50+ languages
PowerPoint/HTML import
Source code highlighting within slides
Dynamic CSS themability and transitions
Social networking activities
Full revisioning and branching of slides and decks
E-Learning with self-assessment questionnaires
If I understand correctly, you are in the SlideWiki team. It would be fair to mention this fact in the answer, just to let people know that this is a "self-advertisement" and not a recommendation from an uninterested user.
Actually, it's even in policy of StackExchange sites - you are allowed to recommend service that you are affiliated with, but you must disclose your relation.
I edited my answer. Thanks for reminding me this policy
If you want to keep track of the people viewing our work, Figshare might be worth a try.
I do not think they provide the nicest viewer for presentation, but they keep track of the people viewing and sharing your work. They also enable your work to be citable but providing a permanent link to it. The only drawback is that once you publicly publish something, they do not allow you to remove it...
I found scribd to be useful in sharing files/papers. You can also know who accessed and downloaded your paper or at least you would know how many times it was downloaded.
If you are specifically interested in getting your research out there and tracking who looks at your research, I suggest ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net
ResearchGate is generally for developing a research profile for yourself based on your publications and communication with other researchers. But recently I have noticed people uploading presentations to their profile which then get added to their publication record on the site. People can provide feedback on the presentations and the site provides some decent analytics on activity. It also provides a means for people to cite the work.
I get annoyed with the spam sent by this site.
Just to clarify, I am not an affiliate of this site. IMHO it is one of the best options for what the question is asking for. You can easily control what emails the site sends you in your preferences.
I'm talking about spam that it sends to people who do not have an account there. You certainly can't control that through your preferences. See http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16870/researchgate-an-asset-or-a-waste-of-time and other questions about RG on this site.
Thank you for providing the link, I had not seen that thread. I used to have the same issues with RG, but the site has improved considerably in the last couple of years. After having a quick look at my profile settings I can confirm that there is an option to disable 'invitations'. Also mentioned here: [link] (https://www.biostars.org/p/63561/). But I agree the sites use of such tactics is a legitimate reason to boycott the site.
Good to know that they are changing. Sounds like "spam on" is still the default, though?
SlideJar is a great platform (http://www.slidejar.com) since it provides search and results at a slide level. It also has a way for you to provide real value to the folks who you want to share with as they can mash up individual slides into new presentations and save them for later reference. ANyone can set up their own slidejar site (see http://neillasher.slidejar.com as a reference) and can actually earn revenue by people mashing up their slides and saving them.
Unfortunately that site only accepts powerpoint slides. In my field, almost nobody uses Powerpoint.
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11195 | Can something published on arXiv or optimization-online.org be mentioned in my CV?
I was thinking about submitting one of my papers in arXiv or www.optimization-online.org and hence I was just wondering if mentioning the same in my CV would be appropriate. Is it done usually? If yes, how should I actually mention something like this in my CV? Kindly guide me (I have no previous experience in publishing papers and I'm an undergraduate student).
I list my current submissions in my CV (under "Current Submissions"), whether they're on the ArXiv or not.
@ChrisWhite Thank you for those links. Nevertheless I have put up a question giving the complete description of my current position here -> http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11213/should-i-still-try-to-publish-this-paper-i-wrote-after-it-getting-rejected-kin. Would be nice if you can give it a look.
Putting non-peer reviewed publications on your CV is perfectly fine, but you should be aware that for research-oriented jobs and admission to academic programs you will be primarily judged by your peer reviewed publications. I have seen CVs that separately list peer-reviewed works and non-peer reviewed works, and sometimes the non-peer reviewed works are simply listed as "technical reports."
If you believe that the papers you write are worthy of being mentioned on your CV, then list them. But don't think that by putting a bunch of low-quality non-peer reviewed works will do you any favors when looking for work or when applying for academic positions (whether graduate school or employment). Obviously, you should avoid putting them on your CV if you are doing so simply to demonstrate that you can write a paper.
Thank you for the response.
I would admit that the paper isn't something completely novel or path breaking. The essence is that I have tried working on the Traveling Tournament Problem and with the help of existing algorithms and techniques I have applied it on a very popular sports league and got significant results (such as reduction in the total travel by around 25%) and I am quite sure no one has actually worked on THAT league before. But my problem is that I tried submitting it to a top springer journal but it got rejected saying there wasn't any new ....(contd in next comment) [1/2]
........ technique that I was employing. And post that I have been in a complete dilemma on whether it really is worth publishing. Would be really nice to hear your view on this. I mean do people accept such papers? [2/2]
When you say "you should be aware that for research-oriented jobs and admission to academic programs you will be primarily judged by your peer reviewed publications," I think it's field-dependent. In high-energy physics we all check the arxiv for new papers and publishing is an afterthought. It's relevant when being judged by people outside the field (e.g. promotion and tenure reviews), but not really inside the field.
@MattReece I get that, but is your CV filled with arXiv-only papers? How do you judge mediocre arXiv papers from high quality ones if you see them on a CV? (not that you can necessarily tell high quality peer reviewed publications, but you can judge quality conferences and journals, and have a modicum of confidence that a peer reviewed publication has been vetted more than on arXiv).
No, it's not filled with arxiv-only papers, although my CV usually has a few papers that are on arxiv and haven't been published yet. But in my experience when looking to hire a postdoc, who may be at an early stage of their career, I don't mind seeing a lot of arXiv-only material on their CV. It's difficult due to limited time but I would hope people always try to judge quality based on content (or indirectly via who is citing it, what recommendation letters say, etc) more than publication venue.
This only pertains to mathematics since that's the only field I can speak for, but there it's normal for people to list preprints on the arXiv in their publication list or CV making it clear that it is listed as a preprint. I think people understand perfectly well that there are long lead times on getting things published.
That said, I would say that you should think carefully and get advice from more experienced people in your field before submitting to a preprint archive. At least in the case of the arXiv, once something is posted, it can never be taken down.
Thank you for your response.
But again, I'm a little worried on how publishing these preprints actually work. I mean, the thing is as you've said it takes so much time to actually get a response from a journal regarding their decision. So in the mean time can I just put the same paper without any modification in a preprint archive or should I be asking some kind of a permission from the journal (to whom I have submitted/will be submitting) before doing so?
At least in math and CS, yes, you can just post your paper to the arxiv. In fact, many journal allow you to submit manuscripts by just sending them an ArXiv ID.
@JeffE I am always curious about a minor issue, never bother to ask. I noticed that you use ArXiv instead of arXiv very often. Which one is their official name? I ask you because I know you're one of the moderators there. Please let me know if the answer is long. I'll post a question if necessary(or should I ask them?) Thanks.
I think "arXiv" is official—in particular, like Dead Kennedys and Talking Heads, it's just "arXiv", not "the arXiv"—but I can't get past the initial lower-case letter for a proper name.
Depends on your field. If in it arXiv is not popular, make a separate list named "Preprints".
If it is popular (i.e. people are expected to post on arXiv along with sending to the journal), then it is common to have a single list (where, naturally, papers from last months or a year are only on arXiv, other - both have the journal reference and arXiv ID). If older papers are peer-reviewed then it is somehow implied that the new ones are likely to get into journals/conferences as well.
However, if you have only arXiv preprints (e.g. as you are only starting your career) it is not implied that they will get accepted. Anyway, listing them is way better than listing nothing - just make a list of "Preprints".
In any case putting preprints may give you an edge - especially if your preprints are related to research they are interested in (for me, quite a few times, they were a starting point of a specialistic discussion).
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52393 | Article with unspecified-but-present authorship ("consensus document")
I'd like to properly refrence an article whose author is mentioned as A Consensus Document (it has some 25 authors).
I have never seen this kind of authorship before; the citation entry generated by the website does not contain an "Author" field (which is problematic for BibTeX and somewhat intriguing on a personal level).
I don't know what would be appropriate to remedy this situation. Would adding an author such as Consensus Document make sense?
Otherwise, could I just add the first author in alphabetical order1, or would this misrepresent the authorship?
Another possible alternative is that, since one of the authors (not the first one in alphabetical order) wrote a foreword to the paper, maybe he could be considered as the first author instead?
1 The authors are only presented in alphabetical order.
I was expecting for a more formal definition of what authorship should constitute in this case, if such exists, otherwise I may delete the question if indeed there's no such notion.
Otherwise, it would probably be best to specify all authors in your .bib entry and let BibTeX shorten the list when creating the label. But you cannot assume somebody is first author unless you know they are, which you don't. Indeed, insofar as 'A Consensus Document' means anything to me, it suggests that none of the authors should be considered as having priority. But, As Alan says, this is off-topic for this site. The correct strategy may depend on: your discipline, the kind of document you are writing, how/where it will be published, &/or the style used for the references and citations.
The website you've linked to, under the "How to cite" tab, suggests the following format for the entry:
(2008), Vacuum Assisted Closure: Recommendations for Use. International Wound Journal, 5: iii–19. doi: 10.1111/j.1742-481X.2008.00537.x
Note that there's no author information at all. I suppose that's not a problem for numeric-style citation call-outs, but it sort of begs the question what should be done if authoryear-style citation call-outs are to be used.
The printed article itself provides the string "Expert Working Group" (followed by the names of all members of the group) where one would usually provide the authors' names. This suggests using a "corporate author" approach, along the following scheme:
@article{vacrfu:2008,
author = {{Expert Working Group}},
title = {Vacuum Assisted Closure: {Recommendations} for Use},
journal = {International Wound Journal},
year = 2008,
volume = 5,
pages = {iii--19},
doi = {10.1111/j.1742-481X.2008.00537.x},
}
Note the use of double curly braces around the argument of the author field.
If that's too unconventional for your taste, you might try either
author = {{Expert Working Group (Apelqvist et al)}},
or, more simply,
author = {Jan Apelqvist and others},
as the content of the author field.
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188318 | Is doing a PhD in philosophy with a master's in an unrelated discipline viable?
I have a master's degree in computer science, and have been working as a software developer outside of academia for about a decade. I'm considering trying to transition into academic philosophy with the ambition of having an academic career, as far fetched as this may be. I'm evaluating the following two options:
Pursuing a ~1-year MA degree in philosophy first (e.g. at Birkbeck College), followed by a PhD.
Trying to apply directly for a PhD (in Europe, which officially means 3-4 years of study) in a somewhat related subfield (philosophy of technology and science).
Option 2 is something that was mentioned to me as a realistic possibility only recently: apparently, people do get directly accepted for philosophy PhDs with e.g. a math background, and no formal philosophy education. However, I'm not sure if skipping a relevant MA could hurt me in some way.
Would it be a faux pass if I, with my lack of formal philosophical background, tried asking individual professors about the possibility of doing a PhD under their mentorship? I fear that this could earn me a black mark with them and impact my chances for future collaborations (after obtaining an MA). I have a pretty good idea about a topic I would want to work on, and have studied extensively on my own, but I have zero relevant publications. I do have some publications in other scientific disciplines, though.
Even if I were accepted to a PhD program directly, would not having an MA in philosophy worsen my chances when competing for academic posts after having finished my PhD? My intuition tells me that in most case, not having an MA would be negative (I'm no prodigy and am not going to produce some ultra-extraordinary publication record that would outshine everyone else).
I retagged it to add Europe since this would be different elsewhere (such as US).
@XZYZ that would be CS and natural science people. Which obviously doesn't bode in my favor without any other formal qualification.
This really depends on how much accompanying self-learning in philosophy you have already done prior to starting a formal program. Unless you have a substantial amount of self-learning already in philosophy, it seems to me to be premature to do a PhD program, having come from a background in computer science. At a minimum, PhD candidates in philosophy would be expected to have learned undergraduate-level material in metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, aesthetics and political philosophy. If you have already covered those through self-study then you might have the necessary preparation, but if you haven't then you are probably behind the expected level for an incoming PhD candidate. (And if there are any of those terms where you need to look up the meaning, then you don't have the required background yet.)
It is true that there would be some overlap in your computer science background and aspects of the field of logic and foundations of mathematics/computing, but this is only one branch of philosophy, and even there the overlap would be relatively small unless you have already done a substantial amount of self-study going beyond your field.
Unless a university has a policy to the contrary, there is nothing wrong with making preliminary inquiries with academics in the field to get their advice on whether you know enough to enter a PhD program, and if so, whether they would be interested in supervising you in a topic of interest. In order to avoid looking silly, I recommend you begin by making some tentative inquiries to see if the academic in question believes that you have sufficient background for a PhD program, or if you should do an MA program first. If it is the latter, you can still flag your interest in future PhD study under their supervision and then come back to them in a year or two when you're ready for that program. You aren't necessarily expected to have publications on intake to a PhD program, but some applicants will, and this is an aspect of the competition for places (which is another advantage of doing an MA first --- you might get a chance to write some publications before applying to a PhD program).
Unless you can demonstrate having a reasonably well-rounded background in undergraduate-level philosophy through self-study, I doubt that you will be admitted directly to a PhD program in philosophy. In the unlikely event that this were to occur, you would find that there is an early period where you are behind your peers and have to rapidly learn material that they learned as undergraduates. This harms your chances of successful completion of the PhD candidature, but if you were to complete it successfully, it would not worsen your chances of competing successfully for later academic posts.
Not a European philosopher, but....
Would it be a faux pass if I, with my lack of formal philosophical background, tried asking individual professors about the possibility of doing a PhD under their mentorship?
Like most things, it's all about your tone. It is certainly not a faux pas to humbly ask questions when you are well-informed but open about your weaknesses. Though even given this, your response rate may be somewhat low.
Even if I were accepted to a PhD program directly, would not having an MA in philosophy worsen my chances when competing for academic posts after having finished my PhD?
No one cares about your MA (or lack thereof) when you have a PhD. However, skipping this step would likely reduce the amount of interesting things you have published by the time you apply for post-PhD positions. Even if most students in your field don't publish during an MA (not sure), they will likely be able to "hit the ground running" faster than you will be able to.
as far fetched as this may be
You certainly know already how long the odds are (and how low the salary is if you succeed!). I would just ask you this: if you were 100% sure that you would not get a philosophy faculty position, would you still go down this road? Or would you just study philosophy in your spare time as hobby? In the latter case, I would think very carefully before proceeding.
Thank you for confirming my intuitions. "[I]f you were 100% sure that you would not get a philosophy faculty position, would you still go down this road?" - I have been trying to talk myself out of this for about a decade, and it only resulted in misery with severe consequences for my wellbeing. Studying as a hobby has failed to meet my needs, and a regular job takes away too much time and energy. So yes, this is something I'm willing to try, even though I realize the chances of ending where I'd like to be are practically zero, something I've been warned about constantly.
Coming in very late on this and you may have already made a decision but… I recently returned after a 35 year gap to do an MA in Philosophy (Exeter Uni) having graduated in Pholosphy originally. I struggled for about a term before finding my philosophical feet again. One of my colleagues graduated in English two years ago and moved to philosophy. She has struggled more. The primary reason is the mass of basic concepts, schools of thought, philosophical methods etc that are taken ‘as read’ even at MA stage.
A lot of are instilled by debate, lectures and colloquiums with very good philosophers who will knock all your rough edges off and point you in the right direction when you stray down paths that aren’t going to help you. Without this kind of experience, you may struggle.
Take for example the ability to compare different methods such as conceptual analysis, phenomenology, historical epistemology and XPhi. There’s a lot of philosophy to read and understand to get this basic toolkit.
Without the toolkit a PhD would be like trying to make a table with wood but no saw: you might fashion something but it would be hard to sell as a table.
Sorry if this sounds hard but it’s how the PG world tends to work and why it may be difficult.
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143872 | How does earning a Masters in Iceland differ from the US?
I'm a US citizen with an BA from a US university but I have been looking at the University of Iceland for a Master's in Environment and Natural Resources while scoping US schools as well.
I know generally what topics I'd want to research such as sustainable agriculture, resource management, water management, or policy, but I have no clue what to do when it comes to projects yet. Would these be issues for applying to a program in Iceland? Is it also normal to email professors in Iceland asking to work with them? That doesn't seem to be as much of a thing in Europe as it is in the US for a Master's.
In Europe, to be admitted to a Master's program, there are normally quite formal requirements. In particular, you need a Bachelor in a to-be-defined field. If your Bachelor is from another university, or in your case even another country, someone will have to approve its equivalence. That's usually not the professor's role (though their support might help to convince the relevant offices of the relevance of your background).
I would recommend to first contact the University's International Office, introduce to them what Bachelor you have from what university, to ask them what the procedure would be for you to enroll in the Master course.
In Europe, a Master degree is typically one or two years including course work and a small (~6 months) research project. You don't need to decide on the research project at time of enrollment, rather when you are already enrolled you can contact professors with ideas, or the professors may suggest ideas already. Details vary.
Note, also, that Iceland is a member of the Bologna Process.
@Buffy This is very useful information, I was just about to ask whether general European advice even applies to Iceland.
All of this is super useful. Thank you so much for your responses!
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40959 | Discussing finances with advisor: Am I being selfish?
I have a bit of a quandary. I applied for a fellowship to send me to a foreign country for two months. They will give me a stipend, and pay for all of my other expenses. In the event I don't receive this fellowship, my advisor said she would fund me the whole summer using her discretionary funds. I would go on this trip and make it back exactly one month before classes start: would it be selfish for me, in the event I get this fellowship, to ask her to also fund me for that last month while I'm back and doing work?
The thing is, the fellowship stipend is about as much as I would make during the whole summer working here, so I would be making more money than I would normally make over the entire summer. Perhaps I am overthinking this.
I am aware that I am in a minority with this sentiment, but I never understood why discussing salary / stipends (also known as contract negotiation everywhere outside of academia) is such a no-go for some. From my point of view, everything you mention is fair game - you are free to ask for this additional month of coverage, but of course your advisor is not in any way obligated to cover you. That you make more money this summer than otherwise does not seem like a relevant information to me.
To make it clear, the fellowship pays for the stipend, living expenses and plane trip. She will not fund me at all during this period. If there is no fellowship, she would fund me for 3 months. If there is fellowship, I would ask her for the last months funding.
I see! Thanks for the clarification. I guess that would then depend on what project you and she can carve out for one month worth of work. Having a one-month student helper and a three-month one are very different.
Perhaps I am overthinking this. — Yes, you are overthinking this.
What you are getting paid when you are not working for your university should not matter. Taking it to a (albeit artificial and ridiculous) extreme, if a top programmer in industry, with a salary of 100k$/year joins a doctoral program in June, would you consider that his salary from January to May is enough so you can not pay him for a couple of years? In my view (and some jurisdictions too), working for free is very close to slavery, and should be avoided when possible.
So, absolutely, you can go ahead and ask her if she will fund you. Your situation is good in the way that if she says no you will have a backup.
With this said, I can understand if she refuses. If it is a single, non continued project, it is not as efficient to hire a person for one month as for three, and if you are not going to do it, she may use the funds to hire someone else for the full time. If you are going to continue doing your usual work during that month, there is not so much difference between being there one or three months, and your case is stronger.
As an extra, during your fellowship, you will probably learn a bunch of new things, so you are an extra asset for your group. You can also offer to give a few seminars on what you have learned in partial exchange for the funding.
I was with you except working for free is very close to slavery -- this statement comes across as out-of-touch, to say the least. One is voluntary and the other is not.
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11260 | How strict are listed minimum requirements for admission to a graduate degree program?
I'm a rising senior at a Chinese university. I'm really interested in pursuing a master degree (as a stepping-stone to a PhD) in the US.
I do not know what "Minimum Requirements" for admission really mean. For example,
Applicants should have at least a B average (3.0 on a 4.0 scale) in an undergraduate curriculum which includes a strong emphasis on mathematics.
My undergraduate school applies a mixture of the British and Chinese grading systems. While 4.0 represents a perfect average, less than 5% of students have an average above 3.5, and only about 25% of students achieve a 3.0 (I do not know exact number).
Do minimum requirements like the one above mean "if you get grade lower than 3.0 in any grade system, do not waste your money on applying," or something else?
The question How to convert from one grading scheme to another? is related, but not a duplicate.
One way to judge how competitive you will be is to see where others from your university have gone to get their Master's degrees. If you would consider yourself comparable to them in terms of your grades and other experience (e.g., research), you should be just as competitive.
The TOEFL requirement is sometimes a stricter requirement than others.
No direct conversion of grades is possible between various systems. So, you will have to argue your way into their program, by presenting your results in the best light possible and making a convincing case that you would fulfill their requirements if you were in their system. Because in the end, your application will be judged by people, not computer. At least if you make it clear that your system is quite different.
One of the ways to do it is, as you started to do, by comparing percentiles: figure out what their grade requirement equals to in terms of quantile, and start from there. “I am in the top 25% of my school, which is equivalent to a grade of XX (based on these official statistics)”. That sort of reasoning.
In general, yes. If your grade is well under 3.0, you may be wasting your money for the application fee. Your application may be filtered out by some secretary.
However, I would strongly recommend you to use other criteria to determine which schools you want to apply. You want to consider the programs and the faculty the schools have. If they have the program you are interested in and the professors you would like to go with, then go ahead to apply no matter what. You never know.
Another factor is the school you'll graduate from. Many admission commitees are aware of the different standards that different schools use. They understand that 2.9 from school X may be actually better than 3.5 from school Y. If you can afford to the application fee and you really like that school, go ahead try.
Other factors such as TOEFL and GRE scores, recommendation letters and research potentials are sometimes even more important than your GPA.
Good Luck !
This belongs more as a comment than an answer, but I lack sufficient reputation to comment.
In my experience (based on programs I applied to in my field), the listed minimum requirements are well below the de-facto requirements of the program. This is definitely field specific, though.
The above comment was based on applying to American universities, coming from an American undergraduate and graduate background. In your case, you should be able to convince them on the application essays of why the listed gpa doesn't tell the whole story.
I actually think this is an answer, and it would have been wrong to post it as a comment.
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112649 | Data/analyses on distribution on academic research income across research active staff
Does anyone know of any analyses of the level of ‘research income inequality’ in research grant income across research active staff? Ideally by field, country, and time?
I.e if you had a list of all research active staff, and the research grant income associated with them in a given year as PI or Co-I, and arranged the list from lowest to highest, what would the distribution look like, and what would the gini coefficient and other measures of inequality (eg 10:90 ratio) be?
I would expect something like an outsized hockey stick, but also that there would be greater inequality in less well funded fields and vice versa.
That's a fairly broad request. It might be easier to find numbers from specific funding agencies. NIH noted that 10% of the investigators receive over 40% of NIH funding. Whether that's an efficient use of money or not is a matter of debate.
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10928 | How often should one evaluate a plan for an academic career?
I'm about to start my PhD. I feel I should try to plan my academic career; or set some general goals at least. The time line could be something like 5-15 years. The first years are easy to plan: study this, study that, publish a few papers etc. It gets more difficult to make plans beyond receiving the PhD. I think that if I don't know where I want to go with my degree, it becomes difficult to make decisions during the coming years: when to say yes, and when to say no. I know I don't want to just end up somewhere doing what other people think I should be doing.
How do you plan your career? How frequently do you update your plan and/or check have you progressed as you planned?
I think people were reacting to the title of the question, which was way too broad to be answered reasonably. However, the last question could stand on its own.
@CharlesMorisset I'm bothered by this reopening of a very broad, sprawly question. There were no reopen votes other than yours, that I can see. The close reasons themselves give an explanation as to why the question should be closed. Across the whole of Stack Exchange it's accepted that close votes do not need comments to justify them, and I don't see any good reason to change that rule here.
What I tell my students starting out is to make sure that they have realizable goals. Saying "I want to be a postdoc in field X in five years" is realizable. Saying "I want to work for Professor X at University Y on project Z in five years" is probably not realizable. Making sure you have a plausible goal in mind, and the ability to work toward it is incredibly important.
However, it's important to realize that goals and opportunities change over time. What you think you want to do now may not be what you want to do a year from now. So that's why it's important not to have goals that are too narrowly defined—otherwise, it makes it harder to change your mind later and still be satisfied with the way things turn out.
How often do you reassess goals? As often as you feel you need to. But you should also distinguish between the different ranges of priorities—short-range, mid-range, and long-range. Short- and mid-range should be reviewed on a very regular basis (weekly to monthly); the longer-range stuff at least a few times a year. But these are guidelines that work for me; you need to find a system that works for you.
Here is an advice I give a lot lately: given the state of affairs, make sure each you take a position (start a PhD, start a postdoc, etc.) that you want it, and not that you want what you expect to get after it. For example, if you take a postdoc that you don't really want because you hope to get a tenure track afterward, you have a great chance of regretting that choice a few years later. If you follow my advice, the worst that should happen is that you have fun with research for some years and end up frustrated not to be able to continue.
This advice is probably not that good for PhD in countries where it is a valuable diploma in the employment market; in France, outside academia you do little more with a PhD than without, and the advice stands (I know a few people that ended up high school teachers after a PhD they did not enjoy, that seems quite a waste).
That said, it means you should reevaluate your plans at least at each opportunity (starting PhD, end of PhD, next postdoc, etc.)
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110173 | Dealing with mistake in scheduling an extra lecture
I am a TA for an undergraduate class, and I have the following situation:
Usually, I give my (one-hour) lectures (which consists of solving exercises and reviewing theory as needed) at Thursdays 12 p.m., but this week they have the midterm right at this time, so I decided to move this week's lecture to Tuesday (today) to help the students. The professor is aware of this and saw no problem, although it might be relevant to say that I had no obligation to do so: I could say "there's no lecture this week" and be done with it. Instead, I said that this lecture would be at the same time, 12 p.m., but I mistakingly wrote 1 p.m. at the webpage of the course. When a student emailed me yesterday asking for confirmation, I hastily confirmed the 1 p.m. mistake, only to realize the screw up.
To minimize the harm, I decided to show up at 12 p.m. and give a two-hour lecture. I put a follow-up message on the webpage informing that I would be there earlier, and sent an email to that student (I do not have everyone's email address). A lot of people showed up at 12, asked their questions, then a lot more people appeared at 1, visibly upset, and asked their questions. All in all, in the end, it seemed that everyone had their questions addressed, so I won't lose any sleep over this.
I would like to know, though, if I could have dealt with the situation better. Or if there is a standard strategy for dealing with this kind of mistake (certainly I'm not the first nor will be the last TA to do this).
I don't really see how you could have done things that much differently: you made a mistake, tried to honor it so that nobody showed up and couldn't ask questions, and was open with everybody as much as possible.
The only thing you might have done is ask people to attend one hour or the other, but they would have in principle every right to attend the full two-hour session if they so choose.
(That is, of course, in the event that you announced the wrong time. The easy way to fix this is to check, double-check, and triple-check the announcement before you post the announcement.)
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122862 | Risks in accepting a position if candidate considers themselves unqualified and believes they will fail
Freddie was offered a post-doctoral position they did not apply for, by Sasha. Sasha and Freddie know each other because they used to share an office. The topic is quite different from what Freddie has known in the past. Freddie is surprised and hesitates to accept. Had the position been externally advertised, Freddie would not have applied for lack of self-assessed qualifications, but Sasha convinces Freddie to learn on the job. Notwithstanding the impostor syndrome, Freddie accepts, being between jobs and enjoying the opportunity to broaden skills if successful.
The risks for Sasha are quite clear: perhaps too optimistic about Freddies skills, and if unsuccessful, that will be bad for the project. But what are the risks for Freddie in this scenario? In the scenario in which Freddie is unsuccessful, how damaging would that be to academic career chances? Is the value of an unsuccessful postdoc positive, neutral, negative?
In a previous version of this question, Freddie was called Sue, and Sasha was called Sam.
Hmmm. Does Sam have motives beyond the job? Does he desire a non-academic relationship with Sue? If so, there is an obvious red flag here and it leaves Sue at the mercy of Sam's good will.
@Buffy Oh! No, I certainly don't think so. Sam forwarded a job opening to Sue for the attention of her husband hoping he could also find work in the same region. (Sues husband was interviewed but not hired.) I think Sam wanted to bypass bureaucracy normally involved with hiring and was aware Sue was looking for work, but I really don't think there's any nefarious motives.
@user2768 You are right. I have changed the names to be unisex and have removed any gendered pronouns.
The main question here is what kind of postdoc Sasha needs to appoint. Does Sasha have a specific project / task that they expect Freddie to handle? To that extend is this negotiatable?
If Sasha has a very specific task in mind that is largely un-negotiatable (e.g., because of hard commitments to a funding agency, or because there is a specific study that Sasha really wants to do), and Freddie foresees that they won't be able to actually do this, then they are only setting themselves up for failure when accepting the postdoc. The consequence will likely be a personal fallout with Sasha and a big setback to their own career. Nobody wins here, and Freddie should decline.
If Sasha is more flexible, and Freddie can do something that would be of significant value to Sasha's research programme, it is likely that things will be ok. The consequence in this case will likely be that the project gets adapted or shifted to another person, and things will work out alright. (or at least it has the same chance of working out alright than any other postdoc)
Given that Sasha knows Freddie personally, and has explicitly invited them to apply, I presume that the second case is more likely than the first - but a frank discussion between Sasha and Freddie is necessary. It is possible that Sasha is not aware that Freddie lacks these skills, or that they overestimate Freddie's ability to learn the required skills on the spot, but it is equally possible (really: more likely) that Sasha is fully aware that the project will go in a different direction with hiring Freddie, and they are ok with that.
Many academics I know (including myself) care more about the potential of a candidate to do good science in their overall field than whether they are the best fit for a specific project. In other words: I would typically rather hire a great person who is a bad fit for the specific project than a medium person who is a great fit. Ultimately, I care more about good papers being written in my team than what I care about the topic of any particular project. Freddie needs to find out if this is the case for Sasha as well.
Choosing the right postdoc is super important. Not many people will be forgiving to Freddie if she explains that her failure to publish was due to her taking a position she wasn’t qualified for. It may be that some people would be agreeable to take her for a second postdoc, but that involves its own hassles and risks for an already unhappy Freddie.
This is all if the postdoc goes badly.
If it goes well, then it could be seen as better than a postdoc in Freddie’s field! Switching fields makes you a bridge between them and expands your skill set.
To conclude, high risks, but also high rewards!
Are you sure that not many people will be forgiving? Taking risks and then failing, is that so bad?
It’s often a numbers game. Should I take Sue who had a bad postdoc or Alice who had a great one? There’s one position to fill, often enough...
But what are the risks for Freddie in this scenario? In the scenario in which Freddie is unsuccessful, how damaging would that be to academic career chances? Is the value of an unsuccessful postdoc positive, neutral, negative?
It's probably obvious but I think it's worth mentioning: the risk is to damage their career chances by not producing anything (or very little) during the postdoc. Depending how long and how unsuccessful the postdoc is, this loss of opportunity might undermine their future applications when compared to other candidates who would have maximized their scientific production.
(I'm saying this based on my own experience: a few years ago I had applied unsuccessfully for positions after a couple unproductive years; when asking for feedback I was told that my low publications/year ratio was an important factor)
Notwithstanding the impostor syndrome, Freddie accepts, being between jobs and enjoying the opportunity to broaden skills if successful.
Despite the risk, this sounds a reasonable choice to me. The fact that the PI is aware of the risk but encouraging anyway is a big advantage in this scenario, since the candidate can expect the PI to be helpful and patient. Together they could establish a plan with specific targets for the postdoc, and agree to pull the plug at a certain point in time if things really don't work out.
It's possible Sam invited Sue to apply because Sam did not expect anyone as qualified as Sue to seek the position. Maybe Sue is overqualified in reality, and should seek a better position.
This does not provide an answer to the question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post. - From Review
@Buzz The asker wanted to know what the risks are. I have identified a risk. The real issue is that the asker has multiple questions. Of course there are other valid answers.
If there are multiple questions in the question, than one ought to suggest improvements by comments or vote to close, not write an answer.
@TommiBrander I post here to give people helpful answers, not to improve the quality of the questions.
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31663 | Professor for a performance class is scheduling class time different than the class time listed in the catalog
I have a professor who is allotted 8 hours of time, 2 hours Monday/Friday and 4 hours Wednesday nights to rehearse the yearly opera. However, when we received the syllabus (halfway through the semester when the rehearsals began) we found that rehearsals were scheduled M-F nights and conflicted with numerous other things in the department as well as blindsiding our work schedules and etc. Is this allowed? I can't find any language in any handbook obligating the professor to teach in the times that they are scheduled by the registrar.
An abstract answer presumably won't help you. Instead, if you decide to challenge this, you'll need to know the rules at your specific institution. But first have you tried discussing it with your professor? He might be clueless (and unaware of any hardship he is causing).
@EnergyNumbers That's a spectacularly unhelpful comment. One really shouldn't throw away all outside commitments on the whim of a professor who doesn't stick to her/his own schedule.
That being said, I don't understand the question. Is the "yearly opera" the class, or is singing in the opera your hobby which just happens to conflict with your class?
As a quick Google search shows, he's getting a degree in vocal performance, so it's a class. Is there any comment in the class description about 'times to be arranged?'
@EnergyNumbers if this was a student seeking a Master's in physiology and the professor teaching medical anatomy and wanted students to come in to the morgue M-F nights in addition to the 8 hours allocated, the same issue would apply. The subject of course study should not matter if it is an actual course, even if it were an elective.
@EnergyNumbers: It's quite likely that the opera is part of the asker's postgraduate degree. Performing in a university's opera program would be routine, even expected, for a student studying for an MFA in vocal performance, for example.
Performance groups, even when taken for credit, operate outside the "norms" of scheduling. It is unlikely that your concert will take place at the same time as your scheduled rehearsals, so you will need to make an "exception" to the rules just to participate in the performance—which is kind of the point of the class in the first place!
That said, the faculty member overseeing a performance class does need to be respectful of the schedule to the greatest extent possible. It is not fair to ask students to completely rearrange their schedules when alternatives are possible. If the faculty member does not believe there are enough scheduled hours to get things done, then there needs to be an adjustment in the course.
However, he will "get away" with this unless people make an issue of this. It sounds like there are a large number of people impacted. If so, then there is enough ground support that you can challenge it collectively without reprisal. (You can also "take it up the food chain" if the professor is unwilling to make changes.)
In professional and serious amateur theater companies, I believe the usual approach is that before rehearsal schedules are set, the key performers and crew are asked to submit a list of "conflicts", times when they are unavailable for rehearsal. The director/producer then makes a rehearsal schedule, indicating which people are required to attend which rehearsals (it is generally not necessary for every performer to attend every rehearsal). However, if someone has conflicts that the director can't work around, that person may be cut from the show and replaced by someone else.
I agree that it should have been made clear at the start of the class that there would likely be rehearsals outside of the scheduled class hours. However, I think the most you can realistically expect at this point are minor tweaks in the rehearsal schedule - performance space will already have been booked, and so on. An opera is usually a signature event for a music department, so they are unlikely to want to do anything that would seriously disrupt it. You might achieve better advance notice for next year's class, but that's not much help at present.
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2791 | In writing a paper, how far can criticism of previous works go?
What are the appropriate limits when criticizing the previously published work of others that you're citing in a paper? Are there limits with respect to maintaining decorum and decency?
Good guidelines for this issue can be found in the following style guide: http://redbowlabs.com/~ali/words.html -- it is directed at a machine learning audience, but I think the recommendations are fairly universal.
The field makes a huge difference here. In philosophy, if you're not criticizing previous works, you're probably doing it wrong. In some friendlier sub-fields of biology, you are expected to phrase your criticisms as extensions and insights. Also, the more data-driven the field is, the less it matters what you say either way.
I agree with @RexKerr that the field makes a big difference. I see far more explicit criticism of prior work in (theoretical) computer science than in mathematics, even though the fields are quite close and some of the same people (including me) work in both.
Generally speaking, any critiques should be brief and directed (i.e., "the cited works failed to consider <X> in their analysis", "to simplify their model, they assumed <X>, whereas in reality <Y>").
If you're criticizing assumptions, be sure to specifically state which assumptions you challenge, and clearly deliniate (with references) why they are incorrect. Note that many papers use incorrect assumptions to begin work in a new field, and your critique should recognize that (i.e., "The seminal paper assumed <X> [1]. We extend this work by removing said assumption.")
If you're criticizing conclusions, again state specifically which conclusion you disagree with, and be sure to provide data/analyses to back up your conclusion.
If you're challenging their data, note that (in neuroscience, at least) this is perfectly common; findings differ all the time. Progress often stems from finding the cause of these differences between data. You should note the difference and mention something along the lines of "Our findings differ from those of <X> [1], and we believe this is because <Y>". Note that it is almost a requirement to mention something like this; if you don't, (1) the researchers whose paper you missed will probably mildly insulted, and (2) people familiar with the field will assume you didn't do your basic literature search, which makes you look stupid.
Needless to say, ad hominem attacks are always inappropriate and should never appear in scientific literature.
I agree, especially with the last sentence. I have seen papers use very mild language such as "[X] stated this as a theorem without proof, and yet the following counterexample shows why this statement is false." My favorite is: "[X]'s paper is identical nearly word-for-word to [Y]'s paper."
Could you add a section re:criticizing their methods?
@thedarkwanderer - Honestly, I'm not familiar with many instances of that occurring. From what I've seen in neuroscience, statistics, and signal processing, new methods will almost always be published as a standalone paper. The method paper may contain some data, but the point is to emphasize that the technique works. As such, those methods are INTENDED to generate response. If you think they implemented a method incorrectly, I guess you would just say that, although that sounds kinda like a rookie mistake that you would hope the journal would catch.
I think that simply by thinking in terms of "criticism" you have already gone too far. I try and point out what the previous work has done and demonstrate how my work builds on that. Things like reducing the number of assumptions, doing additional analysis, or using a better method, don't require you to criticize the previous work.
I disagree with the first sentence: criticism is in itself a valuable activity, for the community at large and even for the original author, and explicit criticism should be encouraged, rather than making people try to read between the lines. However, you're right that gratuitous criticism is a bad thing, and the examples you mention should not be framed as criticism.
@AnonymousMathematician thinking about your comment made me realize my working definition of criticism is flawed. Looking up criticism on Wikipedia, for whatever that is worth, made me realize that criticism is not necessarily as negative as I thought.
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34889 | Using previous student essays as examples
I teach English as a second language to pre-college adults in the U.S., and I'm interested in the idea of using essays from previous students as examples in a writing class. At a previous institution we used a permission form that students signed giving the university the right to reproduce or modify written work, in part or whole, and with identifying information removed.
However, as an adjunct who will likely work at multiple schools, I would like to have that permission myself as well.
What would be the legalities to consider doing such a thing?
If I have students' written permission, should I still have permission from the institution to do this?
Will a signed statement (in English), given by someone whose understanding of English is demonstrably weak, function the same as any other?
Is there a precedent for instructors to gain this permission? As opposed to the institution as a whole.
Would a blanket statement applying to all assignments work, or should it be for each individual assignment?
Edited to clarify: I'm interested in both positive and negative examples. Perhaps more so negative ones since the errors produced by international student populations would be more authentic and difficult for me, a native speaker, to reproduce.
I also have no intention of publishing them outside of classroom materials. Anonymous Mathematician made an excellent point that withdrawal of permission would be impossible if I did this. The only foreseeable publishing I can imagine would be as a course pack or teacher's guide given to the institution or other teachers, but I would still want to ask for additional permissions to do this.
Whose understanding of English is demonstrably weak? (Sorry.)
The students' are only in the ESL classes based on a low test score in English language skills. While it doesn't prove that they would not understand the forms they sign, it could be a tricky part. Then again, they sign all sorts of documents with just about any college or university, so I'm not sure. I would probably want to make sure I state that translations could be made available if the English form is not clear.
Good question!
I ask students individually by e-mail if I can use their essays as examples for future classes. Almost always they are thrilled and happy. Then again, I only ask people who serve as positive examples. But I think if you explained to an ESL student that they have the bones of a good essay and that you would like to use it as a sample essay for future students to work on to help improve, I think they would be similarly pleased.
This would be more problematic if I wanted to use the examples in a textbook, used negative examples, or if I posted essays publicly on the internet. Then I might want a stronger version of a copyright waiver, such as what your previous school uses.
Thanks for your response. I clarified my post to address the issue of publishing and positive / negative examples. I would definitely need negative examples more than positive, but both would be preferable.
I think it's all in the phrasing of how you ask them. If you've used student essays previously and have kept the tone positive and constructive even when dealing with a non-perfect one, then students will have faith that you won't be using their essay to make fun of them. I'd also stick to ones that are relatively impersonal (i.e., that don't discuss their personal/ethnic/religious background). Rather than a blanket request, I'd stick with targetted ones.
I'm not a lawyer and can't address the legalities, especially for students with a weak grasp of English. I'd imagine it would be best to write a clear, straightforward permission form that gives some explicit examples of what you have in mind in addition to an overall statement. I'd recommend the following principles as well:
Students should be assured that they don't need to agree to this and can withdraw their consent at any time in the future by getting in touch with you. (The main drawback I see to this is that you wouldn't be able to use their work in published teaching materials, since that wouldn't be compatible with withdrawing consent in the future. However, if you have in mind large-scale public distribution or anything that hints of profit, you should really make this explicit anyway.)
To avoid the appearance of coercion, it's best not to ask the students until after the course is over. That way, they won't worry that their decision could affect their grade.
I'd mention this in advance to your department chair in e-mail, not necessarily to ask permission but just to make sure he/she is aware of it. That way you'll find out quickly if the chair considers it a problem, and you'll have the e-mail as documentation if you run into any difficulties later. (Adjunct positions can be precarious enough that it's not worth taking unnecessary risks.)
If you request permission for a small number of carefully chosen essays, you can explain to the authors why each one would be a useful teaching tool. That would likely get a better response than just asking for blanket permission, although it would be more work and cut down on your flexibility.
Great response, and thank you. As far as publishing, I edited the original post to clarify my intentions toward publishing the the essays. I would likely include a notice on the bottom of any materials I make to remind myself and any colleagues I allow access that there are limits on usage.
A technical but not legal suggestion (as I'm not a lawyer).
You can choose a license from Creative Commons and ask your students to release their work in such a license.
Given your needs, you could have something like a CC-BY-SA or CC-BY-NC-SA.
Pros:
these licenses are internationally recognized
there are many translations (so you can actually let the student understand the terms of the license)
you would be given the right to modify the text, print it, share it.
You would have though to release your material with the same license (and I see as a feature, not a bug, but that is a personal opinion): often this is seen as a limitation if you want to publish something, but as long as you don't want to incorporate these excerpts outside classroom materials it's not your problem.
This is asking students to grant an incredibly permissive license, far more so than is required for your purposes, so I'd strongly recommend against this unless you discuss the implications with them in detail. There's no way I would have agreed to this as a student. For example, a Creative Commons license would allow anyone to repost the essay on their website to make fun of it or humiliate the author. (Of course the chances of this happening are slim, but I don't think it's a good idea to ask ESL students to authorize anyone to do almost anything with their essay.)
I think that you are right (theoretically), but the same could happen even with a full copyright. From a practical point of view, everyone with access to a text can copy it on the internet and do what they want (and this happens all the time). I'm assuming the teacher would not state the identity of authors, and I'm assuming a general "good faith environment". Copyright does not protect from bad faith or trolls. CC are at least translated in different languages, and this could be helpful.
I'm also not a lawyer, but a "misuse" of the work violates the license. I'm still not sure if "making fun of the essay" is a misuse, but it's a possibility (see this FAQ at pag.6).
Misuse only covers violations of the explicit license terms (such as not attributing it correctly or implying that the author has endorsed this use). You're right that in any case copyright can't prevent some forms of misuse in practice, but I still don't think it's appropriate to ask students to agree to a permanent license that has far-reaching terms they probably haven't thought about. Creative Commons licenses are a great solution when the author wants the work to be distributed as widely as possible and has thought about what that means, but ESL essays rarely fall into that category.
Brilliant idea. I could potentially include a short lesson giving background on CC licenses during a plagiarism / copyright unit. With CC-BY-SA I would be able to compile them into a course workbook or teacher training guide if I or the college choose in the future; with reasonable restrictions.
I don't know it would be too permissive, in fact the alternative (requesting permission for myself alone) is too restrictive if I consider that the institution or other teachers may be interested in using them as well. Even if there was a way for students to release under an open license while extending the interpretation of misuse that could quickly become too much to manage.
Secondly, I would definitely encourage students to request that their name be left out; which should remove most of the concern that Anonymous Mathematician brought up. Another one: would this prevent them from using their own work outside of the CC license in the future? Say, if they wanted to publish it or sell it for some reason?
They can obviously do what they want with their work. As far as I can tell, publishers could have issues. A publisher may have issues in publishing something that has been released before with a CC-BY-SA license. But it's not written in stone and depends by the content itself, the publisher, the license (is it NC? is it SA? etc.).
Another critical issue is that CC licenses are not revocable. https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#What_if_I_change_my_mind_about_using_a_CC_license.3F
"Releasing" an essay to the public is overkill. The CC licenses are nice and useful but don't apply them willy-nilly...
@AnonymousMathematician About "For example, a Creative Commons license would allow anyone to repost the essay on their website to make fun of it or humiliate the author.": CC licenses don't waive moral rights of authors.
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54839 | Can I pursue Masters in a field different to the one in which I got my Bachelors degree?
I will be graduating from BS Aeronautical Engineering in about 6 months. But over the last couple of years, I realized that I'm more passionate about Geopolitics, international relations and diplomacy. So, I'm thinking of changing fields in Masters. I intend to opt a degree in International relations, public policy and economics.
Now, as mentioned in the question, how difficult is changing majors like that? What is the attitude shown by universities toward applicants like me? And how do I go about convincing professors to take me in?
Have you taken any classes in geopolitics, IR, or poli sci? Do you have any internships or significant experiences in such? Those will all help - but otherwise I imagine you'll have an uphill battle going directly into a completely unrelated field. Try looking for programs that merge public policy and engineering - that'll likely be easier to get into (not that I'm straight up discouraging you from applying to IR/public policy/econ programs, just another idea!).
It is not so rare to see people opting a masters programme that is far different from the undergraduate one. So, there is no need to feel out of the crowd. Such people who go after their passion do succeed, but not without the initial struggle to adapt to the new subjects. This would mean you would have to do more homework yourself than others in the same programme.
The masters you choose should depend on the career you are aiming at. If you are highly confident that you will be working in that field then you may choose the field that highly deviate from your undergraduate degree. But be wary of the fact that you might not be able to switch back. This act might belittle your undergraduate degree, so seeking for a job relating to it might have you at a disadvantage in most communities. That is, unless you choose do masters for that degree too.
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120109 | Does country of author influence the rejection of research paper
One of my faculty, during a lecture, told the following lines
some good journals and conferences even consider the country of
authors and sometimes they think that the research papers from a
particular country may be not good. So, we need to be more careful
while writing the paper and regarding its novelty.
Is his claim true? Does the reviewers and editors of the journal consider the country as one of the factors in the decision?
Alice: Why does our journal doesn't accept papers from China? Bob: Our journal is open to everyone, we are one world. Alice: But according to the latest stats around 90% of the papers in our journal came from U.S. Bob: That is not our fault, it has to do with the submission rate. Chuck: Things has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. Bob: Thats right, India and China are producing the same amount of papers like the US. Chuck: but not in English, they are preferring their local language. Alice: You mean, our journals rejects paper written not in English? Bob: That's perhaps the reason.
I think the primary source of non-topic-related bias comes from seeing the authors' names.
@Kimball: That would be strange, since many researchers at US universities aren't US born, or have what would be thought of as "American" names.
@jamesqf I meant their specific names, as in who they are, i.e., there is much more bias coming from researchers' reputation and it would be hard to try to isolate bias regarding the country they work in.
You shouldn't think about it that isolated, nor should you quote so much out of context. When the reviewer gets the impression that you could have been more careful while writing your paper, you are on track to being rejected and the country you live in or come from has absolutely nothing to do with it.
I am not sure that I ever seen any substantiation statistical research on it, but it is definitely believed that researchers from some countries are under pressure to generate large quantities of research papers, but not necessarily under the same pressure regarding the quality of their research. The lists are subjective and vary from one researcher to another, but often include China, India, Russia and post-Soviet countries, etc. So, yes, peer-reviewers may have a subconscious bias against research papers from these countries. This bias may be further amplified by the language barrier — if the paper is written in sub-par English, it may reflect on the perception of research explained in the paper.
However, reviewers should not allow their bias to affect their decision and there are systems in place to ensure they don't. Good journals have good policies which encourage reviewers to work with their bias and also involve a diverse panel of reviewers to consider the merits of the paper more objectively.
Regarding your last statement, yes, it is always good to carefully check your paper before submission and stress the novelty and usefulness of the proposed research idea.
I'm surprised you don't mention blinded review, which is very common and should eliminate even the possibility of this bias from the reviewers' perspective. It's better to remove sources of bias than to try to "work with their bias". Under blinded review, the author's country cannot affect the reviewers' opinions, because they simply don't know it.
@NuclearWang true, except for the language barrier which was mentioned and potential hints to the culture of the authors based on examples and real world arguments in introductions, for instance. E.g. choosing local celebrities for examples, citing mostly papers from a certain country etc. Those are not absolute identifiers, but can be (subconscious) indicators.
"if the paper is written in sub-par English, it may reflect on the perception of research explained in the paper." Of course, it may also affect the ability for the research in the paper to be understood. I've read some papers that contain entire paragraphs where I literally couldn't even tell what they were trying to say. And those were papers that made it through peer review.
Nor, alas, is sub-par English limited to those for whom it's not their native tongue. Though it's often sub-par in different ways.
@NuclearWang Double-blind peer-review exists in a variety of disciplines, but not in all of them. Mathematics, for example, is almost exclusively one-way-blind: reviewers know the authors, but not vice versa.
@reirab Sure, bad language is bad. However, even grammatically correct English can sound "unnatural" to native speakers, creating a bit of discomfort and dropping a shade on ideas described in the paper.
"... believed that researchers from some countries are under pressure to generate large quantities of research papers, but not necessarily under the same pressure regarding the quality of their research". Sadly, it is my understanding this is just about all countries. The severity and source of the pressures can differ by country though.
Having worked in China, I am now biased against research coming from that country. You reap what you sow.
You won't find any editor willing to say that they are influenced by the authors' country. It's both something that's politically incorrect and something that people don't want to think is true for them. But that's not to say subconscious bias doesn't exist. Similar to gender bias, nobody is willing to say they're biased, but somehow, at some level, they exhibit biased behavior.
I'd say that there is some level of bias in respect to an author's country, but it's small and no "good journals and conferences" will ever state that they consider the author's country in a negative way (they might, however, consider the authors' country in a positive way, viz. "authors from developing countries are especially encouraged to submit").
Similar to gender bias, nobody is willing to say they're biased I'd go further and say that most people strongly believe that they aren't. But when it comes to bias their intentions are largely irrelevant.
When reviewing a paper, you subconsciously have an expectation of how good it is. If you know previous work by the authors and liked that work, you expect to find good work in the paper under review (and you are much more disappointed if this expectation is not fulfilled). This can affect the way the paper is read and hence the review as well. Similarly, the institution names of the authors induce some expectation of quality if the institution is known to the reviewer. Double-blind review is supposed to minimize this effect, but there are always some hints left in the paper.
Now a western reviewer may be less likely to know for the majority of Asian institutions how well-reputed they are. This means that the authors do not get a subconscious bonus here. This is normally not a big deal if the paper is good enough, but for journals with low acceptance rates, this can be problematic for papers that are close to the borderline of acceptance.
Likewise, language may be a big deal here. For instance, experienced US-American reviewers may have seen all the usual writing errors that French, Italian, and German native speakers typically make, and because of this these do not obstruct their understanding of the paper content. But for the typical errors made by Asians, this may be different, and a reviewer who is not certain about the meaning of some statements in the paper is just less likely to write a very supportive review. Local customs in structuring the paper and building up a compelling argument may also lead to a similar effect.
As an Asian, I agree.
"For instance, experienced US-American reviewers may have seen all the usual writing errors that French, Italian, and German native speakers typically make...But for the typical errors made by Asians, this may be different". As a US researcher, my experience was the opposite (I believe I am more familiar with typical Asian grammatical mistakes). This is probably because the university I attended was 60% Asian and the majority of my fellow grad students were born in Asian countries.
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48479 | How can you precisely match Chinese academic positions with western style?
Since 1919 the first time "democracy" and "science" was introduced into China, two academic position systems have been carried out in Chinese research and educational institutions. One is from Former Soviet Union, known as the "研究员" ("Researcher" or "Research Fellow" in rough English translation) system, the other is from western style, that is "professorship". Who knows how to properly translate "研究员" or "副研究员" into English equivalent positions? This questions confused me and other Chinese academics for years.
I have no idea about the Chinese academic system, but I am convinced that the answer to the titular question will be you can't. The best you can generally do is to do a loose mapping and accept that some nuances will be lost in translation.
There is a Baidu page in Chinese to explain it.
Vote to close as "Too broad". I don't think there is a universal definition of the terms in the Chinese world. As far as I know, there are different systems in the following areas: China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. Each has its own systems. For the question to be more answerable, you may need to specify the location and provide more details. Hopefully, someone knowledgeable will be able to answer it.(Not me, I am as confused as you are.)
Actually, I think there are good questions about the subject - research fellow (very rough translation), such as: What exactly is the difference between research fellow and professor (still may be too broad), Can a research fellow teach? If so, what is the time limit? quarter time? half time? Can a research fellow teach at a university other than his institute as an adjunct professor? Conversely, can a university professor be a visiting research fellow at another institute while on sabbatical leave? Etc. Pick one, you'll have a rather more answerable question.
@Peter I added "Researcher" or "Research Fellow" English translation into your question to make it more understandable to non-Chinese speaking users here. If my edit changed the merit of the question, please remove it as you wish. Thanks.
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34804 | Should I talk to my professor about my grade?
I just found my grades for the fall semester, in an introduction to international relations class that I took, I got a B.
I got a 93% on the midterm, which was worth 25% of the grade.
I always came to class prepared, having done the reading, and actively participated, so I probably got an A in participation, which is 5% of the grade.
There was a mock UN simulation which was worth 20% of the grade that I felt my group did pretty well on, but I never got an actual score back. I made some small mistakes, but worse case scenario, I think I got around an 85%.
My final paper, worth 25% of the grade, everyone said that it was a really good paper, and that it deserves an A, even people who took the same class from her, as well as writing tutors that I went to.
The other 25% of the grade was reserved for quizzes that according to the syllabus, we're supposed to take place every two to three weeks. However, she only gave us two. The first one, she failed everyone, and said that she did that to scare us, and make sure that we read the material. The second one, I got an A on.
I asked her about the quizzes, and she said that they were used for extra credit, which doesn't make sense according to the syllabus.
I am really confused about why I got a B, and I think that she might have made a mistake.
Should I talk to her about it when I go back to school, and if so, do you think that she made a mistake?
"She failed everyone" seems to me to be more like "everyone failed." Perhaps that first quiz was unusually hard, but it was you who failed.
Related question What to do about "grade grubbers?"
Suggestion: Don't ask about your final grade (and its computation). Instead, ask something like "could I see my grades for [whatever the individual assignments were that you don't have grades for yet]?" This shouldn't be difficult for her to give--she should already have calculated and saved those grades somewhere. Then, you can do the math yourself and see why you got a B.
To expand Bob Brown's answer, yes, you should talk to your professor politely with the objective how to improve your study in the future.
In my opinion, your grade is probably on the borderline between A and B. You need to ask her what grade you got for the final paper (worth 25% of the grade). [E]veryone said that it was a really good paper, and that it deserves an A is not enough for you to say you did get an A on it. You need ask her how well was your final paper.
Generally speaking, it's not easy to change a grade after it's out of the professor's office unless there was an obvious calculation error.So, don't expect she will change your grade from B to A unless your final paper was extremely well written.
I won't be surprised if she tells you that your final paper was okay but not good enough for an A. In that case, you should ask her what you can do to improve your writing skills so that you can get better grades for the future essay writing assignments in other courses. Good luck!
To scaaahu, in my college, we have a + and - system. So it was strange that I got a solid B, given that a classmate of mine, who got a C- on the midterm, and wrote a worse paper than mine (I read it, and he didn't even address the points on the prompt), got a B-. It's just strange that I worked so hard, did what I was supposed to do, and got a B.
@KevinGawora Grading on essay writing is sometimes subjective. It is what the professor thinks of your paper counts.
Scaahu, I guess you're right. However, I did recieve 95% on the essay portion on my midterm, so the professor thinks I am a good writer. Therefore, although I might have not necessarily gotten an A on my final paper, I probably got like a B+ or an A-
@KevinGawora The point of my answer is to encourage you talk to the professor for improvement in the future, not to argue for the grade. You are a sophomore year student. You have plenty of chances to make it up for that B. If you keep studying hard, I think you can get very high GPA. A grade B in an intro class is really a minor issue for a good student like you (judging from other parts of the grading you described in the question). Be cool and have a happy holiday.
You can always come and say that you suspect a clerical error somewhere and want to check the calculations. Such a request is totally reasonable and I see no reason to get it rejected because when 4 people (1 professor and 3 TA's) grade 120 students, a few grading errors are inevitable and when one instructor grades 10 students and something distracts him, errors are still possible.
However, the only thing you can insist upon is what is explicitly (yes, explicitly, nobody cares about how you (mis)interpret the words: the Supreme Court role here belongs to the instructor and the instructor only) written in the class syllabus. Again, no argument should ensue if you just say: "Look, it says 120 points is an A, and I have 123".
Everything else is at the discretion of the instructor. You can make a sad face and say "Poor me! Just getting my very first non-A grade after all that hard work!" (or something else with the same meaning) and it may work, but don't get offended or frustrated if it doesn't. As long, as the formal computation yields B, getting anything better is a favor that may or may not be granted in exceptional cases, but not a right to fight for (no "Give me a perfect grade or give me death!", please. Remember that even if your name is Patrick Henry, you are standing not in front of convention delegates, but in front of His Majesty Colonial Army officer, so his choice may be not quite the one you expect... ;-) )
Yes, you should talk to your professor. Do not use the word "mistake." Just ask how your grade was calculated.
@saachu thanks for your holiday wishes, and I hope that you enjoy your holidays as well
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87899 | What is meant by "space" in "respond in the space provided" in IEEE major revision letter?
Recently, I have received the following comment.
When submitting your revised manuscript, you will be able to respond to the comments made by the reviewer(s) in the space provided. You can use this space to document any changes you make to the original manuscript.
Furthermore, I have received the original manuscript (in .pdf) as an attachment. The attached manuscript is highlighted with some red color underlined pop-ups messages.
I am having a doubt regarding the space. What is the space the editor is talking about? Is it the space specified in the original manuscript, or do I need to incorporate the same using a new response sheet.
It sounds like the resubmission form will include a text box where you can write your response.
Does resubmission form means the space specified as a pop-up in the original manuscript.
the comments made by the reviewer(s) in the space provided Please specify what's the format of the comment made by the reviewer(s).
@JessicaB You're probably right. Would you consider expanding the comment into an answer?
Sounds like a relic from the times when submission were handled on actual paper.
@scaaahu. Its in .pdf
Please add the info you provided above into your question. Once you do it, I will retract my close vote as unclear.
The info you added was put in wrong place. I edited it to make it right. Also, I vote to re-open the question.
I voted to reopen after your edit, but it is still not very clear what the pop up messages are. I am assuming that the reviews contain some blank space where you can explain in a few words how you addressed each comment.
This sounds like a question that can easily be answered with a quick email to the editor.
The format of the referee report doesn't matter. What matters is the format of the re-submission process.
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86862 | Do the fixed-term contracts in academia lead to a brain drain?
A significant, perhaps growing proportion of research at universities is carried out by postdocs¹. Postdocs are typically employed on fixed-term contracts. Personally, I know several people who have been employed on chains of temporary research contracts for well over ten years, including some all the way to retirement: their work is good enough to satisfy their PI, but not good enough (or perhaps not interested) for promotion. Some may seek to move to industry, not because the work is more interesting but because a permanent contract is easier to get, such as suggested in this Dutch-language article), but a response in the same article denies that there is a brain drain.
Is there any evidence for a brain drain from academia to industry, lured by permanent² contracts?
NB: although personal stories/anecdotes are interesting (I could offer my own) it would be even more interesting to see if there is actual research into this question.
Edit: I welcome answers that challenge the assumption that job security as a researcher is more easily achievable outside academia than inside. Some PhDs do of course become professors, but I've rarely seen professors that have much time to do research, as opposed to supervise research. My question supposes the perspective of people who wish to do research themselves rather than in a supervisory role.
¹I use postdoc here in the meaning of any time-limited contract which is mainly or entirely focussed on research.
²Of course, no job is certain until retirement, but getting a mortgage without a permanent contract is likely hard/impossible.
From personal experience -- yes. I am a postdoc and I want to keep doing what I'm doing, but I have grown roots where I live (own apartment, child in elementary school struggling to learn a new language, etc) and will not be willing to constantly move to other cities, not to mention countries, for new jobs. Industry offers a way out: if I have to move, it's only once more for the nearest future.
People move from academia to industry at every stage of their career, and that's a fact. But how do you define "brain drain"? What kind of evidence are you looking for? Statistics? Comparing the percentage of people that left 30 years ago compared to now? But that's potentially with very different conditions...
@FedericoPoloni I interpreted the "brain drain" such that a person wants to and would have continued to remain in academia, were it not for the uncertainty brought about by the fixed term nature of the contracts.
PhDs have always moved from academia to industry. And sometimes they move back from industry to academia. The current academic system creates more PhDs than it requires to maintain itself, and has so for a century or more. I would not call this 'brain drain' - the system functions more or less as it is designed to.
@JonCuster But universities might be better able to hold on to good-ish researchers if they could more easily offer long-term contracts. Of course that would mean, ceteris paribus, that the career path getting into such contracts becomes more difficult (which might not be a bad thing, for moving into industry as a fresh PhD at 25 may be easier than after 10 years of postdoc at 35).
This is probably specific to Europe, or other countries that use this model for employment. In the US there is no such thing as a "permanent contract" in industry; postdoc jobs are in some sense more secure because you are very unlikely to lose the job before the end of the year. If someone really wants a "permanent" position, they are more likely to get it by staying in academia and eventually gaining tenure.
@NateEldredge Is it? In the USA, is it possible to get a mortgage for a person with an employment contract that shows an ending date 18 months from now, with an informal commitment from a PI I'll probably find money to extend your contract? (I find it surprising mortgages can exist at all in a country where people can be fired at will, but that's another discussion) Let's take it to chat.
Universities seem to hold on to good researchers just fine - they take PhDs and hire them as professors. It is true that not all PhDs who want to be professors become professors. Just like not all programmers (even with PhDs) who want to work at Google actually manage to do so.
As a researcher at a national lab, with experiences at IBM Watson and Bell Labs (in the old days), I'd have to say you seem to have a very black and white view of academia vs labs vs industry and where the 'best' researchers should go. Not all PhDs want to go in to academia. Not all PhDs should work in academia.
@JonCuster It would seem odd to hold on to good researchers by promoting them to a professor position where they have less time to do research than they had before. Just like how it would seem odd to promote a good programmer to a management position. Do universities hold on to good researchers in research positions? I have no opinion on where the "best" researchers should go; I would like to do research without wondering all my life in what country I will live 2–4 years from now. The question does suppose such is more achievable outside academia than inside, but do correct me if I'm wrong.
I can only provide anecdotal data, I was going to do this as a comment, but it got too big.
I'm a postdoc (finished my phd in 2012), and I'm tired of it. In some cases (fapesp, brazil) postdocs don't have any rights or benefits (no vacations, for instance).
Worrying about how I'll provide for my family from next August, when my contract ends, compromises my performance... More than that, I don't have continuity, I can't think of anything medium term, because I have no idea where I'll be in one year.
I really like the projects I'm working on. But this whole thing has taken its toll on my and on my family. I'm seriously considering changing careers to get some kind of stability. I'd like to stay on research, but maybe research doesn't want to stay with me :)
update: I do not have kids, it is just me and my wife. We are postponing that exactly because I don't want to subject a kid to this. And its easier to move around when its only the two of us. If I'm honest, I don't know of any other non-religious profession that requires this kind of commitment. Maybe the military, but at least you got benefits, sometimes housing. And financial stability, if not geographical.
Update since this got voted and showed up on my dashboard. My contract got renewed in 2018, when my supervisor looked me in the eye, said "yeah, you should be making more than 50k" and offered me a 45k contract, that I signed. Last straw. In 2019 I finally gave up, went to work in the industry. Cloud infrastructure is a lot easier and pays a whole lot better. Which comes in handy for child costs :)
I'm admittedly salty, but academia is a highly competitive ponzi scheme...
Brain drain?
The term brain drain to me has a decidedly negative connotation of a loss (here to academia).
In contrast, I'd like to point out that education is one of the main functions of a university. From that point of view, highly educated people leaving university for industry is not a loss but an intended outcome.
And that makes it close to impossible to measure how many researchers that should have stayed are leaving because of conditions*.
Here in Germany, we distinguish between (more-or-less pure) research institutions and universities, where that educational aspect is more pronounced. And in general, academia over here produces far more people finishing "lower" levels than are required to fill in the free positions higher up (e.g. we have 2 - 3 times as many habilitations per year than newly filled professorships).
I grant that there may be an hen-and-egg question here.
I see more of an IMHO totally unnecessary waste in the transition from researcher to research manager within academia - in that I totally agree with OP.
Where to find job security?
I would like to do research without wondering all my life in what country I will live 2–4 years from now.
IMHO this is a totally understandable wish for security and the possibility to plan ahead. I guess there are very few people who don't need this for their whole life.
The question does suppose such is more achievable outside academia than inside, but do correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm not sure whether you get much more of this security with a career in industry - that is, without paying by something else / other drawbacks.
The father of a friend once said that you may expect to be able to work where you like or what you like - but to be able to find employment covering both wishes would be extremely good luck.
Industry may also expect you to move to a different country, or you may be transfered to another site which is, say, 200 km away.
Also, those highly interesting start-up companies where working is so much fun and everyone so enthusiastic and full of ideas [like in academia] - they tend to fail (not because fun in work or enthusiasm is inherently wrong - but they are high risk enterprises - or e.g. the founders may move on to a different job, and the thing is silently closed down).
OTOH, I know people who got themselves technical positions in academia in order to have long term contracts and reliable working hours.
I took a different route and a now somewhere between industry and research (feel free to contact me if you'd like to know more)
In the end you'll need to find out for yourself what your priorities are and how much career and what else you are willing to trade in for job security.
* Personally, I have left academic positions because of conditions - not the length of fixed-term contracts, though. And I found the official length of the contract far less important than how the respective institution (supervisor) deals with the fact that they can offer only fixed term contracts.
This is interesting advice about how to handle and evaluate academic fixed term positions, but at best indirectly answers the question (by calling into question its premise).
@henning: I took the second question from OP's comments below the question. But yes, essentially my point is: while the question "how many people educated to what level does academia provide [per year]?" would easily be answerable, the question of brain drain from academia to industry - which I take to mean unwanted losses - is essentially unanswerable because there's no black-and-white for the reasons why people move from academia to industry (and maybe back).
@Roland: "There are the same expectations in academia." OP started from the finding that academia expects them to move on frequently. My point is: that's not unusual in industry, neither. So going from academia to industry may not help that much with finding a permanent home. Commuting 200 km or moving is just equally bad whether the position is in industry or academia, IMHO.
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86864 | Why are most universities reluctant to offer open-ended contracts to research-funded-staff (such as postdocs)?
In some countries, labour law requires that if an individual has been employed on temporary contracts for a certain amount of time, the employer must offer them a permanent contract (or let them go). They may be reluctant to do so when labour law stipulates they need a reasonable cause to fire employees; however, if a company cannot afford to hold on to people, they can and are let go.
Somehow, different principles seem to apply within universities, where postdocs¹ and other research-funded staff are often held on contract after contract, up to an entire career long. The postdocs at my university want to persuade the university to offer postdocs a permanent contract, but with the understanding that if the money source for their salary runs out, they will be let go; just like employees in industry would. I'm told some universities already apply that principle. It would not increase the de facto job security for postdocs much, but it would open up the option of getting a mortgage for those who expect to stay in the same city for a long time.
Considering that universities could let go of staff if they can show they can no longer afford to hold on to them, why are they so reluctant to offer postdocs a contract that doesn't stipulate an ending date?
NB: to the best of my knowledge, this phenomenon is global; therefore I am interested in answers that are either generic or specific to a particular country
¹By postdoc I mean anyone employed by the university with a role primarily to do research. Formally my employer calls this "research funded staff" but colloquially this group is referred to as postdocs regardless of age.
A country tag would be helpful.
Sequential contracts are different from one, larger one. I saw an opening for a "two year minus one day" contract somewhere in Canada...I'm guessing that there the limit is two years. Then they fire and re-hire you, its a different contract, loophole achieved.
@FábioDias Depends on the law, I think in Sweden the law is something like two years within a three year period or something like that, but I believe academia is exempted (I'm not sure, though).
@gerrit: As I understand it, a lot of this comes down to an EU directive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-term_Work_Directive_1999, which various member states have implemented in different ways. I'm not aware of anywhere which explicitly names academics as excepted, but each version will have loopholes.
@fabio in the UK that does not work and is still considered continuous employment, not that employers have not tried it.
@gerrit You should also probably note that in many cases an employee can't sign away statutory protections from employment law regarding situations like being "let go when the money runs out". As such, the University, as the employer, would have a large number of potential pay-offs or legal difficulties, if personal relations with the researchers soured.
This issue touches deep into my heart. Thanks for asking this question.
Something that may be important in the case of post-docs is, that often their position is attached to specific funding. - Thus you are working for 2 years on Grant A. Now if your department is good at getting funding, you continue on Grant B, but if Grant B were not obtained, you would not have the position (unless there is other funding, internal money, etc. etc.)
Using the term "postdoc" may cause confusion, because to me a postdoc is by definition an early-career researcher hired for a limited period. But the question as I understand it has nothing specifically to do with the terminology. It amounts to why universities don't offer long-term contracts conditionally on maintaining adequate external funding, but rather offer successive short-term contracts.
One answer is that sometimes they do offer long-term contracts. In U.S. academic medical research, it's common to have long-term "soft money" positions for which most or all of the funding comes from grants. There are even tenured soft money positions, in which you have a guarantee that you cannot be fired without good reason, but where there is no obligation for the university to pay the salary except as supplied by external grants. (Sometimes they are responsible for a small percentage of it, and sometimes none at all.) This becomes less common as you move further from medicine, but long-term soft money positions exist across science and engineering in the U.S., at least in small numbers.
Why not always do this? One reason is to avoid raising expectations. My impression is that it's rare to offer a long-term soft money contract unless there's a reasonably high chance that money will continue to be available for quite some time. Even if there are no legal obligations, it's terrifically awkward to fire someone from a position for which they mistakenly believed funding would continue, and it's easy for people on soft money to be irrationally optimistic. (You see this frequently with tenure-track jobs: someone starts by recognizing that they genuinely might not get tenure, but after a year or two their nerves have settled and they find it tougher to take the possibility seriously.) This means there's a strong incentive not to offer long-term contracts that are too speculative.
Another issue is whether the department or university really wants this person to have a long-term affiliation. There's sometimes a feeling that people on short-term contracts don't really count for the department's reputation, since they are just visiting anyway, while people on long-term contracts count more. This means other faculty members have more of a reason to exercise oversight.
This answer is from a mostly German perspective, but I guess parts of it would apply to other countries with similar labour laws.
The key problem is who to "let go" when funding is short. Are you always going to fire the person that happened to work on the most recently finished project if there is no new funding coming in around that time? Well, according to labour laws you can't do that with unlimited contracts.
In industry, if money is running short for a company, it's not only up to the company to decide who will have to go and who will stay. Instead, a dismissal plan has to be carefully worked out between for example the union and the company, and deciding who has to go is to a large extent based on social aspects and time someone has stayed with the company. Take this to academia, and you'd always have to fire the youngest person when money runs short, which for sure universities don't want to do.
Also, in contrast to companies who can run up losses against their capital for some time, universities (at least in the systems I know) can not do that, so they don't really have the flexibility to tide over a bad time in funding.
Regarding the general employment laws, there is usually a catch with the "let go if you run out of money". Once you trigger that process, the law puts limitations on how you can hire in the future. For example, in Finland, if you lay off someone because you want to discontinue that role in the company, you are not allowed to employ anyone for the same or very similar role for a year and you are supposed to offer them an option of transferring to a different role with open vacancies, even with lower salary. (Which logically makes sense, coz otherwise companies would always use that or some other similar extenuating circumstance argument as a loophole to fire anyone unwanted with a permanent contract).
I can see how that would be a problem in academia where there might genuinely be a 3-month funding gap. Is that not anyone, or not anyone else? My department does have the policy of offering postdocs near the end of their contract the option of transferring to newly opening postdocs, but they have no obligation to do so. With permanent contracts, they would.
You are not supposed to be reopening that role for a year. So technically, anyone. Though, to be honest, I am not a labour law expert. I believe it would make sense for postdocs to consult a good labour lawyer before making a proposal to the university. There may be some loopholes that work in your favour.
Another thing to consider is how you define budget. Because technically, "we ran out of money" should apply equally to everyone with a similar role. Which in your case is probably all postdocs in your department or potentially even across several departments. The funding, however, may come specifically to a certain research group. So it is possible that unless the university sets up every research group as a separate legal entity, they either have to lay off across the board at once or cannot lay off anyone at all.
Good point. Although the university would be able to argue that a sociologist on a project where the funding has run out cannot reasonably be offered to work on particle physics, I can imagine a situation in which the university would be required to channel money from the particle physicists to the sociologists to honour the sociologist's employment contract, for the university as a whole has not run out of money. But surely there must be analogous situations from other employers; but that would be a question for [Workplace.SE] or [Law.SE], not here.
Since the question is tagged UK, it's worth noting that here a researcher on an open contract isn't simply "let go", but rather "made redundant". Redundancy isn't a trivial occurrence, and implies several fairly onerous commitments on the employer, including redundancy pay, and a similar offer of alternative employment. https://www.gov.uk/redundant-your-rights/overview
@origimbo But Anyone who’s worked continually for the same employer for 2 years or more has the same redundancy rights as a permanent employee, so that wouldn't make a difference for the employer (I'm on a 4-year contract).
@gerrit it will, in the sense that the university is not obliged to renew the contract after 4 years, so they don't need to secure a permanent source of funding.
@OlgaK Why would the university be obliged to secure a permanent source of funding for a contract that is permanent rather than 4 years? Other employers have no such obligation. And if I read gov.UK correctly, not renewing a fixed-term contract is considered a dismissal and for contracts longer than 2 years the rights are the same, so it looks like we have the same rights already (I can't find anything in our local collective agreement saying otherwise)
@gerrit I suspect none of us are lawyers, but my understanding is that ceasing to employ a person on a single fixed term contract for a project that the employee knew would end after 4 years almost certainly counts as a justified dismissal, whereas letting the same person go for the same reason after multiple contract renewals, or after 4 years and one day must be treated differently, with a greater onus on the employer to do everything right. As you commented elsewhere, this could mean employing a researcher far outside their own field.
@gerrit other employers are required to "secure permanent funding" implicitly. Your business is either a going concern or bankrupt. Going concern means you are a functioning business in the foreseeable future. And functioning means you have to deliver on your liabilities, in particular, paying salaries to your employees. In other words, once you offer a permanent contract as an employer, you make a commitment to pay the salary in the foreseeable future.
Because they can. It isn't that companies are less reluctant than universities to offer permanent positions; universities -- at least in many European countries -- are in a better position legally to use fixed-term contracts.
Universities' interests as employers are not so different from companies. They like flexibility.
More and more, university research is funded by third party grants. This is a rather new development in European higher education. For example in Germany, between 1999 and 2011, third-party funding increased by 204%, while government-provided research funding increased only by 42%. These grants have a fixed duration and therefore don't allow for the long-term financing of permanent positions. To create permanent positions, financing would have to rely more on a university's basic budget, in turn requiring larger university funding, which in Europe typically comes from public education budgets. Thus, at the end of the day this is a political decision about the allocation of public spending with all the distributive bargaining that it entails.
Postdocs are hired by PIs or department heads with permanent positions. Those have mixed incentives. On the one hand, PIs need postdocs to keep their research going. On the other hand, PIs want to remain free in their own career choices, which implies the freedom to move to a different institution. In that case, they either have to convince their current postdocs to come along and the new institution to bring those postdocs on board. The latter impairs their own 'hireability' and their bargaining stance vis-à-vis the new institution; the first depends on the goodwill of the postdoc. Or the PI can leave the current postdocs behind, but this will not be welcomed by the old institution, as it impairs its attractiveness for any successors who might want to bring in or hire their own staff.
Thus universities have similar interests as companies about flexible employment (although for partly different reasons). However, they have different opportunities:
Short fixed-term contracts indeed allow more flexibility than permanent positions. Letting go of employees on permanent positions is costly for the employer, and it is not easy: Compensations have to be paid, notice periods and social criteria (determining e.g. who has to be fired first) have to be obeyed, and perhaps even "social plans" have to be negotiated with the unions. The scope and stringency of dismissal protection varies between countries; by and large is is stronger in scandinavian social democratic systems and in continental conservative systems with a tradition of "neocorporatist" social partnership, such as Germany and France. It is more limited in liberal systems like the UK, the U.S. and in Eastern Europe. In any case, the point of dismissal protection is obviously to make dismissals more difficult.
Employers can use fixed-term contracts to work around this constraint, but governments set legal limits to this strategy by stipulating when work contracts can be time-bound. In Germany, for example, the Befristungsgesetz (time-limitation law) says that companies can use fixed term contracts for more than two years only for certain reasons (e.g. parental leave replacement). However, the legal bounds of fixed-term contracts are much more lenient for universities. The Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz (fixed-term contract law for the sciences -- a nice German compound noun) allows fixed-term contracts for various reasons, most of which are trivial in academia. Examples include that the position is financed by soft-money (i.e. postdocs) or that the position also serves a training purpose (PhD students). I assume that similar laws exist in other countries.
In sum, universities as employers have similar interests compared to companies, but they have different opportunities.
As for your first point, I don't see how a P.I. relying on continued grant success is fundamentally different from a company relying on continued sales. In both cases they could let people on "permanent" contracts go if income drops and they can't afford to keep them.
More and more, university research is funded by third party grants — As opposed to what?
@JeffE as opposed to direct state subsidies I assume.
@silvado Was there ever a time when research was primarily or even significantly supported by direct state subsidies? (Not in my field, at least within my lifetime, at least within the US.)
@JeffE In Germany direct state subsidies make about 80 % of the total university budget, formerly it was even more. That is not easily split into teaching and research budgets, but still state subsidies would be the most significant chunk even when considering just research.
@JeffE In The Netherlands, 57% of university funding is from the national government. This is used to pay salaries for lecturers, education infrastructure, laboratories, libraries, real estate, support staff. This is the second-lowest figure in Europe; only in the UK it is lower (40%). In Norway and Iceland it's over 90%. The remainder is tuition fees (high in UK, moderate in NL, zero in Norway, Sweden, Iceland) and national or international grant funding.
@gerrit Almost 100% of academic research funding in the US comes from the federal government, but faculty must still apply for grants from federal agencies to obtain that funding. That money is counted separately from direct state (not federal) funding, which supports only a tiny fraction of research expenditures even at public universities. At least at my large public US university, federal money for research is a larger fraction of the university budget than direct state support.
@JeffE Clarification: the 57% is direct funding. A further 7% is funding through the Dutch equivalent of the NSF, which is competitive. Those numbers cover all university expenses, I don't know the figures specifically for research.
@gerrit Exactly. The difference is in labour law, not in incentives.
Companies and PIs have the same incentive to be able to let people go when not enough money comes in. But different rules apply to companies and PIs relying on grants. The temporary funding through a grant can be used as a legal reason to use a fixed-term contract instead of a permanent one. Companies don't have this "tool". Granted, I'm generalizing from the German situation here.
I'm going to question the concept of "continuing funding source" and its expiration. Most postdocs paid from grants are in fact paid from different grants at different times, and sometimes from department money. The postdoc may or may not be aware of this, but in all cases where I have paid postdocs (quite a number of cases), we've frequently switched from which account someone is paid, in some cases making the change retroactively.
In other words, it is difficult to define what it would actually mean to have continuing funding. If I have paid a postdoc from 3 different grants in the past, all of which have run out, but I have a fourth grant that was approved, would that require me to continue paying the postdoc until that fourth grant also runs out?
Adding (quite late!) a slightly different perspective to the excellent answers already there.
As far as I know, in many countries in Western Europe, the long term dynamic is actually the opposite: a few decades ago, the academic workforce used to consist of a large majority of permanent employees (with public servant status or similar). Quite consistently with this model, funding was largely channeled directly to research institutions which then enjoyed a quite high degree of freedom as to which projects they choose to fund.
In the past couple of decades, these European countries progressively switched to the US/UK competitive model. Similarly to the capitalist model in economy, competition is meant to encourage the best researchers to strive for the best funding opportunities. This naturally implies a significant reorganization of the way resources are allocated: in order to maintain a permanent competition between researchers and institutions, most of the funding is allocated on a "project" basis: researchers submit their project, projects are evaluated and compared against each other, and the winning team gets the money. Projects must be limited in time for the same reasons.
Given the very high degree of specialization involved in every research project and the uncertainty for any specialized team to secure funding in the long term, it wouldn't make any economic sense for an academic institution to keep a large proportion of permanent researchers on their payroll; the model clearly calls for hiring specialized research staff on a temporary basis, for the duration of the funding.
@NajibIdrissi I admit that my answer is quite subjective, since I didn't find any statistics to support it (to be clear, I didn't find any statistics at all about this point). I'm not sure what is wrong with it though, and your comment doesn't really help.
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10014 | Academic Genealogy
Mathematics Genealogy project has existed for many years. It currently has 170,235 records as of 15 May, 2013. I understand there are many computer scientists in that database since computer science is generally considered a branch of mathematics.
I have found several other similar efforts. For example, the Academic genealogy of theoretical physicists Wiki page consists of about 100 theoretical physicists. I cannot find Physics Genealogy project in general. A Chemical Genealogy Database does not appear to have built a very large database.
My questions are:
Are there genealogy project for other disciplines?
Is there a general academic genealogy project somewhere? If yes, where? If not, are there efforts to construct it?
So you want to find the 'parent' which would tie together all of the other genealogy projects?
@earthling Yes, if there is one. So, I don't have to Google everywhere.
This could be one such starting point. I don't think there is a definitive source though. http://academictree.org/
The Mathematics Genealogy Project is already broader than math. It touches many disciplines related to math in contemporary academia and, as you go back in time, includes a wide portion of academic work. 1000 years ago my academic ancestors were a bunch of bishops. The difference between mathematics, philosophy, and theology was not always very clear or very large.
@Axel Please pay attention to my question •Are there genealogy project for other disciplines?
Mathematics Genealogy project has existed for many years. - Citation needed.
@LeonMeier the project went online there in fall 1997.
I believe Academic Tree qualifies as a general academic genealogy project. It includes the fields of:
Neuroscience, Experimental Psychology, Linguisitcs, Primatology, History,
Philosophy, Music, Law, Theology, Economics, Advertising, Ingestive Behavior,
Physics, Chemistry, Oceanography, Drosophila Genetics,
Fission, Yeast Genetics, Mycology and Fungal Genetics, Evolutionary
Biology, Marine Ecology, Terrestrial Ecology, Developmental Biology, Cell
Biology, Telomere and Telomerase, Infectious Disease, Neuropathology,
Computational Biology, Science and Techology Studies, Biomechanics
I think the neurotree subtree is the largest of the areas covered with 40,000 people. It allows me to trace my academic linage back to Jesus Christ (thanks to the philosophy tree) in a mere 88 steps.
The Mathematical Genealogy Project has well over 100,000 so it is definitely larger.
@BenjaminMakoHill I don't understand your comment. Why does the number matter in terms of answering the question?
I think I misinterpreted your answer. You said that neutreeo was the largest with 40,000 but it seemed, in your original text, that you were claiming that neurotree was largest genealogical database on the Internet, not the largest subarea covered by the Academic Tree website. I edited your answer to try to clear this up. If my edits are indeed correct, you can ignore my comment.
@DanielE.Shub I am wondering about the engineering disciplines.
There used to be a computer science offshoot of the mathematics project, but it's disappeared! I was on both, but only put my PhD students on the CS one. It was a pain. There may have been issues e.g. about multiple supervisor, disputed supervision, policing?
I don't think multiple supervisor would be an issue. There are math PhDs with multiple advisors in the math project. My real question is, why math is successful but other fields are not that successful?
@scaaahu If you look at http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/acknowledgments.php the answer to why the Math Geneology Project is still around looks like "money." Mostly raised from individual contributors.
@BSteinhurst Thanks for the info. I just look at the last section: To the order of FLT (FWT), etc. I agree money is one of the factors. Now, my question is, there is no or not enough money from contributors for other fields? Engineering seems to be more wealthy than others. This is still a puzzle to me.
@scaaahu I think you are underestimating the amount of work that goes into collecting that money. Talk to any fundraiser and they will tell you it is a nontrivial task.
Wikidata collects doctoral advisor relationships between reseachers (among many other kinds of relationships). By now there are 900 such relationships1 but I would not be suprised if people start to import data from other academic genealogy projects.
1Try SPARQL query SELECT (COUNT(*) AS ?c) { ?s p:P184 ?o } to get current numbers. Anyone more familiar with SPARQL can surely query a distribution among academic disciplines.
Does this require both researchers to meet wikipedia's notability standards? If so, it would only record a small fraction of all such relationships.
Wikidata's notability standards are less strict. I'd guess at least all PhD's having advised another PhD can be included.
@Jakob standards are less strict, but "has advised a PhD" would probably still fall well below their threshold.
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104541 | Persistent issues with salary pay as a postdoc in China: What can I do?
I am a third-time postdoc, and had never before had problems with getting paid. For almost two years now I have been a postdoctoral fellow at a university in southern China. This is my first experience in Asia, and thus I am not sure of how common the situation I am facing is. Communication is arduous, not due to language differences, but a number of cultural traits which are hard to explain.
At the end of my previous contract, I contacted many institutions for job opportunities. I did not plan on accepting yet another postdoc, but these colleagues here convinced me (> 100-long-email negotiation) that I'd be paid a good salary, enjoy a good work environment, and easily take an assistant professor position as soon as conditions allowed. To make it clear, I signed a postdoctoral fellow contract for a 120k RMB salary per year, with a promise of an extra 60K RMB per year to be provided by the college. There are some extras on the contract, such as 10K RMB for purchasing a laptop, and reimbursement for moving expenses (to date, I never saw those).
I was instructed to apply for a visa after signing the contract. I needed a certain official document about which they claim they were unaware. After further email exchanges where I had pictures and links about the document, it took 2 months to get it by mail. This delayed my arrival btwo 2 weeks from the start of the contract, but over email they said that was no problem. In reality, they never paid me that 1st month while dismissing it by saying "probably will fix that later".
Another full month came without any pay, and apparently the administration couldn't agree with the bank on spelling my name, but I never knew the details. After many trips to the administration to find out what was wrong, I was paid ca. 5,500 RMB for the month. I tried to complain but no one would understand me. Then the confusion started.
I will try to summarise below as best as I can. It is really complicated, and everyone tells me "not to worry".
I get paid ca. 5K RMB as fixed salary on the 5th-6th every month.
Around the 25th they pay me another instalment which is highly variable, typically within 1.5K-4.2k RMB. (Tends to be higher before long holidays).
After one year I got ca. 90K RMB, irregularly paid out of the contract's 120K.
Only after aggressively complaining, hinting a lawsuit, I received 100K out of the promised extra 2x60K. (divided in 3 irregular transfers, made by some 18-y-old undergrad, late at night)
I get more info only by pressing uncomfortably hard. I was once told I'd get 13 payments per year (never happened). Then I was told some unspecified large sum is retained to fund my expenses to any trips/conferences I might wish to attend. I was not clearly informed of when or even if I would get the withheld amount. Few other postdocs openly discussed this problem with me, and they said (one Chinese and one foreigner) they had the same issue. The Chinese postdoc recently was offered to move to a new salary regime where he now gets a fixed, higher salary (took him months to tell me).
To make things even more complicated:
I have found in my internal access system some separate account originally containing 40K RMB under my name (some "funding" mentioning my name), which is being used to apparently pay internal procedures. Upon asking about it, I was told to "not worry about that". There are currently <20K RMB left in this virtual account.
A PI which is not the person I dealt with over emails is the person who signed my contract. According with local standards I am then supposed to consider him my "leader". This person is frequently absent, shows no interest in what I do, and refuses to reply any email about my salary/project. Now I am pushed to list this PI's name as last author in anything I write. My first paper from here is about to come out, and at the last minute I am requested to ask the editor to finally list this PI as the corresponding author.
I feel like I am being constantly blackmailed over retained promised salary payment. My visa expires in a few months. They passively owe me >80K RMB and I do not know what to do. I hear that suing is usually not advisable in China as lawyers ask for huge fees and judges tend to favor local standards and influential institutions/persons, plus the defendant will typically delay forever by refusing to engage.
I wish to ask whether anyone here had a similar situation, and would know what could be done? Particularly in China?
Before you ask: further unmentioned issues not directly related to salary finally did not make this a "healthy work environment". I am now informally told that "it is really hard for foreigners to get accepted locally as assistant professor because getting a major NSF grant is required, and that depends on significant connections (guanxi) and understanding of Chinese language/culture". Not that I was planning on staying longer, but just to clarify.
* UPDATE * 02/04/2018
I finally left China yesterday. I will summarise the chain of events and the current situation. I think I understand most of their scheme now.
About two months prior to my departure I started pressing the administration about the rest of the salary. They insisted a large, unspecified part, would be paid as soon as I finished all necessary exit procedures correctly. Moreover, the secretaries said a part of the payment would be retained as "taxes," but they were unable to specify what percentage nor type of taxes. Exit procedures included preparing lengthy reports which had not been requested before. At the same time they further reduced my salary, interrupting the last "2nd parts of salary" due to "unforeseen reasons" and said they'd try to fix that also at the very end!
After I quickly assembled reports and delivered all documents (signed by several professors who make it clear they are making some favor), the administration agreed to finally calculate how much they owed me. I went there several times only to hear back more nonsense. For instance they kept remarking they might not pay me for the last month "because I had delivered a final report prior to the end of the contract period" as they instructed!
Finally, after pressing them considerably, within 10 days of my departure they provided me their numbers. They would pay me a "reward" for completing documents, plus one month of basic salary, and promised a large sum adding up to the final amount... in exchange for invoices.
I confirmed with responsible PIs the need for invoices. They explicitly instructed me to buy invoices from companies they'd recommend by paying 10-15% of the declared value to "reimburse the rest of my salary". They insisted this is common procedure, offering help to "find invoices to exchange". I was shocked and refused.
I went to the Principal Office with a complaint letter, in English and Chinese. I spoke with the sub-secretary for 1h. They explain that what is declared on the contract as salary includes a significant amount which is to be spent with research only, and that invoices ensure the university can pay/reimburse. They say this is detailed in rules in Chinese in some book somewhere if anyone had questions. I made it clear nobody had ever clarified that, it should be explicated in the contract, and that I could not deal bogus invoices in exchange for payment. I told them I could only provide true invoices, which they accepted as a clean solution. They thanked me for "bringing me a major misunderstanding to their attention".
Finally I purchased credit for services with biotech companies with about 5k USD off my promised contractual salary. Got the "rewards" plus some delayed payments. It is not crystal clear from the numbers where is the last month of payment (I haven't had the guts to sieve that now).
After being paid I contacted my Consulate reporting the events, letters. Mainly to ensure some authority was aware in case of any political revenge (e.g. unfair accusation, arrest). I finally left without any events. I avoided physical contact with the PIs, who refrained from answering any further emails after I refused to purchase invoices. A few hours ago the Consulate notified the situation to the local Foreign Affairs Office, and emphasised it looks very serious.
This is where I stand. I hope something will be done to at least stop these schemes ongoing with other postdocs. I am moving to publish the story in the international press, and possibly file everything to the Ministry of Education right after. I thank everyone here for providing insights and suggestions. Keep an eye on the news.
@SolarMike In fact when my visa expires I am leaving back to my home country. But this is not to say my experience has been much better around there: I just had no issues at getting paid. I am wondering whether I ought to just drop their debt behind when moving on, or whether there is some internal resource (Foreign's Interests Office or sth) I could mention or reach out for.
@Scientist find a LAWYER and also you can report to bureau of employment, and central Education commision
@hexadecimal Thanks. Actually I did contact the local consulate of my country and was provided with significant attention (they held a special meeting with me reviewing all documents) but no direct support was offered. They said the best they could do (at the beginning of the situation) was to phone them for some enquiry but they guaranteed that would make matters worse. They told me to 'play their game' for some time and see how it goes. Eventually I contacted them again and all they offered was a lawyer's number. They said there are many other similar cases happening.
@SSimon That sounds like more specific advice. Thanks. Would you know further details about this commission? As mentioned I was told by different sources (consul included) that involving a lawyer is likely to waste more time/money and result in a null outcome.
@Scientist From what I gather the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA) can mediate problems between foreigners and their employers. I thankfully don't have experience with dealing with them and as you say the fact your employer is presumably a large public institution could make things more difficult. But it may be worth giving your local branch a call (or getting a Chinese speaker to do so).
Is the university a public university or a private university?
@Bobgom Thanks, I had heard of this organ before. I will try to check their website for any standard instructions and see if it looks like a good bet. Perhaps I will mention them prior to making any actual moves to see the effect.
@Scientist yes, you need to involve beurocrats, china law system is different. Embassy will help you by sending letter to ministary of education! This is china dont think in western way
@SSimon Sorry but I am not sure exactly what you recommend. First you said a lawyer, then "bureau of employment", and "central Education commision" and now the "ministary of education". Please, could you provide me with further info on these organs? The local consulate of my country wasn't finally willing to intercede with anything (e.g. a letter) but I haven't tried the Embassy, which is much further away.
@Scientist Going to embassy is big minus, China is communist country and asking embassy to do something is last resourt, your only option is ministry. I think I need to write answer.
@scaaahu I will not hint too much at this moment. Let me just state I am not aware of any actual private universities around here.
https://www.zhihu.com/question/52131526/answer/232792998 The above post (in Chinese) also states how a postdoc/research fellow was cheated of his salary. Basically, the salary offered can be deducted in many ways (like "insurance", "tax", etc.) in the end it is nowhere as near as the original offered salary.
@yoyostein Yes, I have heard from several other colleagues about similar schemes here and elsewhere. My impression is that most local postdocs get scammed passively while convincing themselves that everything is correct or else pretending. Under the hopes they'll be rewarded later, or find something better, believing this is like that everywhere.
@Scientist It is quite sad and discouraging to foreign academics. Also, the post I quoted above happens in a 911, 285 school in China, in fact a top 10 university in China. If such top universities still resort to cheating researcher’s salary in such cunning ways (that even locals get cheated), I have little hope left in what happens in other universities.
@yoyostein I unfortunately find it very hard to read. A local friend here insists that they situation they describe in this post is "not that bad" because "everyone locally knows of those problems". As I said I believe people here convince themselves that they're not being cheated. I know this university they're talking about. It is very near to where I am. Just take your personal conclusions then. Thanks for sending, BTW, it looks very useful for later.
@Scientist I dont see this as China only problem, recently the same problem was in famous French Institute, I see it as unnecessary hustle, that unfortunately will emerge by adding number of PhDs that finish
horible event, mainland China is so obscure sometime. Generally, no one should accept
@SSimon I believe only through ample exposure this can cease from being obscure, towards becoming impracticable to maintain. If you hear or know of other such cases, please report them somehow!.. Let us see how this one fares.
@Scientist maybe for Chinese yes, for foreigners... Even they have a need for post docs, I would suggest NO.
Invited by the OP to post my comment under another post here:
Courts in China are often unwilling to rule in favor of foreigners in economic dispute cases. Not to mention that Chinese law already provides inadequate protection for workers in this case. I am not a lawyer myself, so I do not feel qualified to talk about the legal details, but in general it is very hard for workers to get what they deserve when they end up in a wage dispute, and especially if you're foreign. (Source: a close family member has experience working as an attorney-at-law in many wage dispute cases, including a few involving foreigners).
China can be pretty unfriendly for foreigners living in the country, as there are a lot of limitations on them. I would not suggest avoiding the country, but do expect a lot of difficulties.
More:
To solve this problem, you do need to know some Chinese politics. In China, universities are placed under direct administration of either the Ministry of Education or the provincial Department of Education, and they have no administrative autonomy whatsoever (unsurprising, because there is no separation of power in the Chinese government system, even on paper).
So, a court might not solve your issue. The court, as another government agency, would be unlikely to rule against another government agency. Also, this is a case of economic dispute and you are a foreigner. If you really want to go to court, find an experienced lawyer. Note, however, that Chinese courts can forbid foreign citizens with unresolved civil litigation from leaving the country; if your bring the case to court, you might risk not being able to leave the country until the case is resolved.
You might have a better chance if you escalate the issue to a higher level governmental agency. The Ministry of Education 教育部 might be a good choice (they likely are your university's direct supervising agency), so is SAFEA 国家外国专家局. Do try to contact them.
If you think there's corruption involved, try the Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection 中央纪律检查委员会 (aka 中纪委). The Ministry of Supervision (now the National Supervision Commission) is in fact just another name under which the CCDI operates, so no need to contact them individually. The CCDI is an extremely powerful agency, so they might be the most helpful to you (of course, that's if they do take your case seriously).
Do write a letter to the CCDI if you are confident that misuse of public funds is present. However, instead of writing to your university's president 校长, perhaps writing to your university's Party Secretary 党委书记 might be more helpful. Also, see if there's a Central Inspection Group 中央巡视组 inspecting your university. If there happens to be one, you might as well report to them directly.
Do consult a lawyer. Be sure to choose a lawyer with experience working with foreigners.
This is excellent advice, thanks much for your investment here. I will update here on where I stand. I left an official complaint with the Principal and "spent" the rest of the money they owed me as credit with local companies. I had the unofficial support of the local Consulate of my country in case any threats were made, and left the country. My plan was to splash the whole affair in the international news, and follow with an official complaint to MoE. However I hit a deadlock: reporters are apparently scared of publicly commenting on this since I did not take this to court first.
My plan was News -> MoE -> possible litigation or agreement from abroad. But reporters would prefer I'd go the other way around, and I am the strong impression that if I contact MoE alone and from email they will just ignore me, as the local Province Administration has been doing. I do not wish to waste time & money on lawyers just to get ignored and perhaps encourage reporters. I have been meantime warning colleagues informally via talks and discussions about what happened, via Postdoctoral Associations.
@Scientist I don't think reporters will help you much in this case, especially if it's international news. But indeed appealing to party apparatus (likely there's a party discipline problem here) will be much more effective than lodging complaints with the government. Indeed, if you don't intend to take it to court, a lawyer might not help you too much, plus lawyers with experience working with foreigners are expensive indeed (I know how much they make! :-D). I would say try reporting this to more places definitely. Of course, cnsult your own country's MoFA too!
Thanks! My main objective is to neutralise these people, while they rely on me keeping quiet. Also I think a news press piece would break the communication iceberg from government organs, because of "face". The consulate did contact our MoFA about filing a joint complaint with the Chinese FAO but they finally claimed they'd refrain from "getting directly involved in professional contractual disputes" while, again, pushing a lawyer recommendation. Perhaps if more cases surfaced (I am sure there are many silent victims) more will happen. There is strong local custom of hushing these issues.
Regarding finding a lawyer: the law firm behind this blog gives an impression of great expertise and while their focus is on enterprises they may well be able to help find a suitable lawyer for your case. Don't expect any of this to come cheap or be worth the trouble.
Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection... Sounds scary. Like something from a Orwell novel...
@fgysin Well, it basically is...
there is some sort of administriation court in china, i think
Your first stop should be: Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security
中华人民共和国人力资源和社会保障部
How you will contact and make a complaint without knowing of Chinese language, I am not sure. I would suggest you a lawyer, but the culture is not the same, so what is consider lawyer in West it is not considered as usual in China.
there is also Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
Also, there is Ministry of Supervision 中华人民共和国监察部
I mention them because the information you provide clearly indicates misuse of public funds.
if you dont know the Chinese language I recommend going for help to Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China. they should know English and they can advise you where and how to complain.
This looks good. Do you think I should first mention these names at the administration to see whether they fix the situation before I actually move with the official complaints? I heard from expat SSL teachers that usually mentioning SAFEA may resolve many salary issues with bad schools (but yeah: a crummy language school is different from a big institution). Also, please, could you also provide the official Chinese name for "Central Commission for Discipline Inspection" ? Thanks much!
Sorry if you feel this is too personal or risky, but have you ever heard of such a situation before in China? How common is this? Was there official any precedent from which you took this protocol of reaction?
@Scientist no because they know you don't speak Chinese.
@Scientist It is common, but not common for first Tier cities. You need to tell me what is the tier of city that your uni belongs
This is a full-blown first tier. Also, please, could you also provide the official Chinese name for "Central Commission for Discipline Inspection" mentioned in your answer? Yes: I don't speak Chinese but finding someone to at least translate won't be too hard. I say it because from my experience they get scared quite easily, around here.
@Scientist OMG it is first tier!!!!! You shoud report them in ALL of them!!! this is not common...
中国共产党中央纪律检查委员会 quite unusual for first tier uni. make two reports, one to president of the university and one to central commision
Let us continue this discussion in chat.
See also the discussion linked above to zhihu.com/question/52131526/answer/232792998 . Apparently it might be more common than we thought. This other place is not only 1st tier but also top national uni. In fact quite close to where I am, physically.
@Scientist I apologize if you misunderstood me, yes this is common in China even in first tiers, however, it is much more easier to report and handle the issue in first tiers,bcs they are closely alligned to the party.
I wish to ask whether anyone here had a similar situation, and would know what could be done? Particularly in China?
I might add my feedback on this, comparing it to my experiences. I've been a postdoc at Nankai in Tianjin, and have worked here ever since. I love China!
Miscommunication is normal here: you plan your life and career based on the information they provide, only to find out what you envisaged is incorrect. If you're particularly concerned about money, China is probably not the place to be.
I signed a postdoctoral fellow contract for a 120k RMB salary per year, with a promise of an extra 60K RMB per year to be provided by the college.
I'm an associate professor with years of experience working in China, many Chinese co-authors, and a fellowship; I'm a native English speaker, I speak Chinese (sort of), and I have a Chinese green card. Regardless, this salary would be higher than my current salary. Very few postdocs (any?) in China will get such a high salary.
I needed a certain official document about which they claim they were unaware.
This happens a lot: rules and regulations change in China quite frequently, and officials don't update the websites (both the Chinese and English ones). It's normal to find out mid-way through an application that something else is required.
In reality, they never paid me that 1st month while dismissing it by saying "probably will fix that later".
I arrived in January, started getting paid in May, and they backdated it to March. During this time, I wrote papers which would probably impact me far more than a few months salary. I also get to live in China! China!!
I also didn't (and still don't) pay rent as the university covers my accommodation, and I barely pay bills.
Then I was told some unspecified large sum is retained to fund my expenses to any trips/conferences I might wish to attend. I was not clearly informed of when or even if I would get the withheld amount.
I've racked up some huge travel bills: 9 countries this year; 10 countries last year. The payment of flights, accommodation, and registration is usually done by the university, so I don't have to do much. That's quite a lot of life experiences!
...everyone tells me "not to worry".
I've learned not to worry. I just work hard, gain experience, and publish, and money sorts itself out.
Exit procedures included preparing lengthy reports which had not been requested before.
I was asked to write a report at the end of my postdoc too (something like 70+ pages); something like a "postdoc thesis". I copy/pasted my papers into it, put in a whole bunch of conference photos, etc. Nobody is ever going to read it.
They would pay me a "reward" for completing documents, plus one month of basic salary, and promised a large sum adding up to the final amount... in exchange for invoices.
I've never heard of this. Here, invoices are needed for reimbursement (e.g. for hotels, taxis, etc.), but never anything else.
They explicitly instructed me to buy invoices from companies they'd recommend by paying 10-15% of the declared value to "reimburse the rest of my salary". They insisted this is common procedure, offering help to "find invoices to exchange".
I've never heard of it. I'd probably refuse too.
They explain that what is declared on the contract as salary includes a significant amount which is to be spent with research only, and that invoices ensure the university can pay/reimburse.
That explains the extraordinarily large salary, and the mysterious invoices.
It sounds like your colleagues were trying to find a "workaround" ("buy invoices from companies they'd recommend") so you can claim the research-allocated funds.
My experience with "don't worry" agreements (not in China, but in Europe - but I am fairly sure that this is universal) is that they only work as long as there is nothing to worry about. When shit hits the fan these agreements are not worth the time spent on talking about them. By now I get an allergic reaction as soon as somebody tells me not to worry.
Hi , thanks for your feedback! In fact the whole situation is in the past by now. My conclusions when related to your answer below: (i) postdoc salaries in China have increased considerably, and annual 180-250k rmb are being offered now (if paid we don't know); (ii) on working free for months, I'd rather do it from home than abroad, especially in the life conditions offered; (iii) on the postdoc thesis I did the same as you; (iv) finally on the invoice scheme I now understand they wanted a share of the funds as they claimed over data, authorships, etc. Calling it salary was just a bait.
As an example of a fairly high salary offer for candidates (alongside discussions of not being paid correctly): https://www.zhihu.com/question/52131526/answer/232792998
@user74089 Really hard to say because I don't have a wide experience around China which is a huge country. But I have heard that problems with salary pay are a local constant, and that an unbalanced relationship with supervisor is to be expected.
"buy invoices from companies they'd recommend" => indeed, this is a big thing in China! Illicit street doodle ads often sell invoices ("fapiao"); there's a quite big black market (but which operates in a not-quite-underground way) for those. However most people only use them to claim expenses while doing their taxes, and the revenue agencies sort of turn a blind eye on this (b/c income tax doesn't make a large percentage of the revenue of Chinese gov't). But you can easily get into trouble if you use fake invoices to claim fraudulent reimbursements
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36744 | My adviser agreed to write a letter of recommendation, but hasn't done so
I am currently a M.Sc. student and I was planning to apply for PhD programs. I asked my adviser to write me a letter of recommendation two months ago, and he agreed to do that. However, now that the deadlines are approaching (in 2 days) he has refused to write a letter, and basically he says that he wants me to stay in his research group and do a PhD under his supervision. In other words, he is forcing me to stay in my current school. I have been rejected from one of the PhD programs that I had previously applied, because he did not submit the letter of recommendation.
My first question is: what should I do? I do not want to create conflict, because he is my adviser and I need to defend my thesis in peace in the next two months.
My second question: If I do not send a letter of recommendation from my adviser, will it affect the decision of admission committee?
This is a time-sensitive manner and I really appreciate it if you could give me some insights, I am absolutely stuck here.
Gee, no wonder you don't want to stay in his group next year.
This is unacceptable behavior. I would escalate to the department chair or director of graduate studies.
That goes beyond unacceptable, to professional misconduct. I would report the situation to the Dean of Graduate Studies as well as the Department Head, and consider forwarding a transcript of the conversation you had with him to the institutions you have applied to, in place of his recommendation letter. Being publicly seen as a unprofessional buffoon by his peers may get him to smarten up, as that affects his research grant applications.
He says in his emails that he writes a letter, but I dont have any written document of him stating that he does not do it. He just did not submit the first letter and kept saying me that he wont write a letter. He is smart, never wrote an email saying that he wants me to work with him...
First point: what your professor is doing is absolutely not OK. There are valid reasons to back out of writing a recommendation letter late (illness, family emergency to name a few), but what he is doing is intentionally sabotaging your PhD applications.
Second: ask for a meeting with your advisor, where you can have some uninterrupted time to explain your motivation for wanting to go elsewhere for your PhD. Focus on things like wanting to diversify your interests, work with a large variety of people, maybe work on a research project that is not available at your school. Feel free to add in things like how working with him has helped you realise how many opportunities are out there and prepared you to undertake studies at insert name of university you are applying to. Ask him if he could write you the recommendation letter and tell him that when you have your acceptances you will make a choice of where to go, and you will not rule out your current institution until you have all the answers. Explain that you feel that he is limiting your options, and feeling shut in is not a good place to be when you are trying to make serious decisions about your future. In short, flatter him and the current programme, explain your motivation in a way that doesn't come off as "this place sucks" and hope for the best. Keep the tone of this conversation calm and non-confrontational. You don't want to destroy your last few months there, and even if he says no, thank him for his time and explain calmly that you hope he understands why you will still go on with the application with another recommender, and that you hope there will be no hard feelings between you.
If this doesn't work I would go to the professor that knows you the second best in your master's program, or maybe even from your undergrad, and explain the situation to them (confidentially) and ask if you can get a letter of recommendation from them instead on short notice. It will probably be seen as a little strange that your advisor isn't writing you a letter of recommendation, but at that point it's your best option.
Thank you very much for your support. I actually asked a post-doc to write me one, since I did not have any time. deadlines are tomorrow. The worst part is that all the schools that I am applying for know him and I was hopeful of an admission with his support...He ruined all of my dreams...I wish he could have told me from the beginning. I spent a lot of time and money for the application process...
While this is unacceptable behaviour, it it not uncommon at all. Many of my friends doing Master in Korea were in exactly the same situations as yours when they wanted to apply for a PhD in the US. Even worse, their advisers wrote for them bad LoRs, so that they could be rejected. Somehow they were all accepted, because doing Master in Korea often results in lots of publications.
Your first question: there is nothing you can do with your adviser. Your LoR should come from a prof. who really wants you to be accepted, and writes a LoR with his best effort. A bad LoR is much worse than no LoR at all.
Your second question: do not worry about what you can't control. Instead, try to make the best application with all you have.
When I wrote my Master thesis, I was having a family problem and couldn't focus. As a result, my adviser didn't satisfy about my work. Of course, he didn't want to keep me for a PhD, and was willing to write a LoR for me. But I thought his LoR would not be strong, so I chose not to get a LoR from him. This is not really a problem for me when applying for a PhD in EU, because most of positions required a Skype interview (and some followed by on-site interview).
Thank you very much for your support. I actually asked a post-doc to write me one, since I did not have any time. deadlines are tomorrow. The worst part is that all the schools that I am applying for know him and I was hopeful of an admission with his support...He ruined all of my dreams...I wish he could have told me from the beginning. I spent a lot of time and money for the application process...also Im scared of him now, what if he makes trouble for me in defending my thesis. He can easily do that I guess since he is the dean...Thanks again
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47436 | Do PhD advisors allow students to collaborate with faculty from other institutions?
I would like to know if PhD advisors allow students to collaborate with professors from other institutions in a major way. The context for me here is that I will be joining a Top-50 institution for a PhD in Physics. Considering the job prospects in academia, I think it would be worth collaborating with the topmost people in the field directly (who generally reside at topmost universities like Stanford, MIT, Princeton, etc.) to get solid recommendations from them along with my advisor's recommendation (assuming I produce good quality research with them). I would like to know how such an arrangement can be made possible without making my advisor feel bad. Are such arrangements common?
Of course, my current institution has brilliant professors as well and I would like to do my best to produce good research with them too. This is why the consent of my advisor in whatever I do is very important to me. I just want to make things as productive as possible in my current PhD program and have the best people in the field write recommendations for me so that I could continue working in academia.
Related-but-no-obvious-duplicates: Is it reasonable to collaborate with a professor when you are employed by a different professor? and How can a PhD student enlarge his academic collaboration network? and Can I instigate collaboration outside of my current research team, or is that bad etiquette? and...
... How can PhD student repair relationship with supervisor after PhD student engages in independent research without supervisor? and many questions tagged both "collaboration" and "Ph.D.", especially How should a PhD student approach a collaboration?.
This question is unclear. Are you asking whether your professor will let you collaborate? Are you asking how to approach other professors to collaborate? Are you asking whether collaboration is a good idea?
Please ask one question per question. Your title currently has two different questions stuffed into it. This site format often doesn't work well when you have more than one question it.
If two faculty members are interested in collaborating with one another, an excellent way to bootstrap such a collaboration is with a strong student who is interested in being working with both. This is often much easier than the faculty members trying to work directly with one another, since they are often each quite busy. It also often ends up resulting in a co-advising arrangement, either formally or just de facto. With the right student and project, this can be a really good, productive, and career-positive experience for everybody involved (it certainly has been for me as the external co-advisor), and many faculty members that I know tend to welcome such opportunities.
If you want to build an independent collaboration that does not involve your advisor, on the other hand, you should not be surprised if you run into resistance, particularly if your advisor is funding your position.
Thanks for your response. I definitely do not want to do things keeping my advisor in dark. It would be good for me that I get to work with the topmost people in the field with my advisor in the loop as well somehow.
Interesting thought. I will try to offer some factors to consider related to the approach you are suggesting.
There's a risk of spreading yourself too thin. All things held constant, I would expect it to be more difficult on average to build relationships with faculty at institutions other than your PhD "home base." The time and effort spent building these relationships would thus be re-routed from what should be your main thrust, i.e. developing a reputation as an excellent student in a place that actually voted to have you and invested resources in you.
Faculty at top institutions are extremely busy and inundated with queries from all sorts of places and people who want their time and attention on collaborations of various types. Successful faculty are very strategic about where they invest their energies (especially in Physics? sorry, bad pun). This partly explains the uphill battle presumed in point #1. They usually have plenty of students and postdocs of their own who want to "collaborate." The returns from such one-off partnerships with this or that individual who met them at this or that conference are dubious, and typically high-flying faculty end up collaborating on high-visibility/payoff projects. Unless your work will fall in that category, I think productive sustained collaboration with quality attention and care invested in the relationship on both sides is highly unlikely.
The only relatively common, accepted form of collaboration with faculty from other institutions that I am aware of is IF those individuals are members of your dissertation committee. Colleges (at least in the U.S.) often require that at least one committee member be from another department at the home institution. Along the same lines, it is typically viewed as OK if there is another, additional committee member from another institution, as long as their being on the committee is well justified, e.g. by filling a gap in expertise or being in a unique position to contribute something given their specific context/resources. In contrast, collaboration on side projects can cause some minor (which could become major if left unchecked) issues involving your Advisor wondering what the heck is taking up your time that you could be spending in his lab and writing his papers...
This being said, it is possible that in some disciplines such collaborations are more frequent and more accepted than in others, and may pay off in some ways. However, the though I would like to leave you with is to carefully reflect whether such collaboration will in fact help your career plans, over and above similar collaborations with faculty at your home institution. If you find yourself in a situation/project where the answer is a clear YES, well, you can at least give it a shot and see what happens.
However, if by looking over the fence (where the grass typically looks greener) you might end up missing some gems on your own lawn, I would say stick to the familiar environment and try to make the most of the opportunities under your nose.
Lastly, collaboration can take many forms. It may not be necessary to go it alone and try to carve out an independent project with someone from another university/lab. Being on a research team (as a Research Assistant) that has some external partnerships with teams at other institutions can be enough to develop some contacts and build some name recognition in those places. Being considered a valuable member of the research team at home, and being valued by your own Advisor can speak louder than trying to convince someone on the outside that you are wonderful and totally worth their attention. When you will be close to graduating, if your Advisor believes in your potential, s/he will go a long way to help you network with various other labs/teams that s/he has relationships with. I personally would recommend this more "organic" route.
The academe is a big boat that doesn't like to be rocked, and stability is generally considered an asset. Having a reputation for dedication to one or two large-scale, complex, team projects is probably going to help you more than having 10 separate fledgling solo projects/partnerships. (Note: If you were an undergrad with a major in Business/Entrepreneurship, this advice would be the opposite. But a PhD in Physics seems more aligned with the solid/long-term academic paradigm.) Whichever way you choose to play your cards, good luck!
@ChrisWhite +1 in both cases
@ChrisWhite, thank you for the counterpoints, this provides a better overall perspective. I guess I was speaking from personal experience and what I observed among my peers (in the social sciences) where outside collaborations weren't a major factor in employment prospects.
Yes. I recommend it and endorse the strategy.
I was a PhD student in the UK, but I think in total I spent more time working in Japan, France and California than I did at my institution in the United Kingdom.
At the beginning, all trips were at my advisor's suggestion (he was very well connected in numerous collaborations himself) but as time went on I built up my own "network", and eventually it became normal that I would be "invited" to join in directly.
As you can imagine I left my PhD with a lot of air miles, and more importantly I knew a lot of people on whom I could count for a good reference.
However it was never a "co-advising" situation as some have described. I always felt that I was visiting as my advisor's representative, and I always tried to keep it that way. As with any job it is important to manage your relationships with people carefully; if it seems like you are suggesting making your advisor redundant she is probably not going to be happy about the idea. Therefore I would always be sure to talk regularly with my advisor when I was in town and to keep him in the loop by email or phone if I was away.
A very important point is that of managing interpersonal relationships. A.k.a. "being fair".
@paulgarret Can you expand on what you mean by "being fair"?
Well, I guess "being fair" includes not swindling people. Not taking anything from the under false pretenses. Not giving away their confidential/secret information, that they might feel gives them a useful edge. As though one signed a "non-disclosure agreement" with nearly everyone one spoke to, especially one's advisor. Violation of expected confidentiality will not only upset people but will trash one's reputation. Is this responding to your query?
@paulgarrett I see what you are saying about misusing other people's work. However, I always worked in very collaborative atmospheres where we were all strongly encouraged to share our ideas (with attribution) rather than guard them as secrets.
Very good that you've had positive experiences! But we note that not everyone plays fair. Attribution/acknowledgement is, in my opinion, perhaps the most critical human-aspect thing about any progress. Both acknowledging "prior art", and explaining how one "came this way". :)
@paulgarrett Absolutely. But I think, or at least I hope, the more you work with potential "rivals", the more chances you have to build collaborations, or at least how to deal with rivals when you are no longer a student.
As a supplement to the other good answers, one might be a bit careful, since one model of "PhD advising" is for the advisor to give a student a sort of "insider information" (much like the notion of "insider trading" on the stock market, which is illegal... unless you're a member of Congress, but nevermind...), which the advisor might want to keep "inside". And the student should, hopefully, benefit from having this sort of head-start, as opposed to competing against more experienced people in real time.
Especially if the advisor has more than one student, keeping information (temporarily) non-public benefits all of them, so any one of them "blabbing" dis-serves the others, which is a bad thing. Vaguely reminiscent of the game-theoretic aspects of "prisoners' dilemma".
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95258 | Is it acceptable to ask a question concerning a proof in a thesis?
Is it against the "code of honor" to ask a question concerning the correctness of a mathematical argument in one's doctoral thesis?
I'm unsure about one argument in my thesis and I would like to discuss it. Would it be considered inappropriate? In which circumstances is it appropriate to talk about one's own work on the internet, i.e., when to be mindful of it?
Maybe I am missing something, but isn't this what you'd typically ask your advisor?
My adivsor is unavailable for two weeks and I'd like to proceed now.
A code of honor seems specific to your university. When I was in graduate school, we could talk about our research where ever we wanted.
The tag [tag:legal-issues] is for questions about "real" laws, the kind made by governments. There aren't any laws about this as far as I know, so I changed it to [tag:ethics].
Definitely appropriate.
A thesis is not a homework submission. You need to be the one writing the thesis (i.e., no ghostwriting or copypasting), but there is no requirement to work entirely on your own, as long as you cite the contributions of others.
A thesis may even contain no new results or ideas whatsoever, but just be a textbook-like treatise of a subject. In most cases (i.e., unless the treatise is really a lot more readable than existing literature and thus forwards science by making the subject significantly more accessible), such a thesis will probably be declined for lack of novelty if it's a PhD thesis (for a master's thesis, it's fine), but it does not constitute research misconduct.
I assumed so, since its fine if I ask someone personally, but I didn't know the general consensus. Thanks Darij, I will just wait a bit for another opinion and then accept your answer.
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122709 | What should the startup package consist of at US (primarily) undergraduate institutions?
What should one list in the startup funds if you are taking up a tenure-track position at a public undergraduate university in the US, mostly focused on teaching? I'm asking specifically for mathematics/applied mathematics/computational mathematics.
What country is this? Is it a purely or mostly teaching position? The meaning of "public" is different in the US than some other places. Usually it means run by one of the states.
@Buffy I edited my question. Please see changes.
I don't understand. Who edited it? Are you the same person? I don't understand if they are asking what funds they need to provide you for things like travel and publishing, or if they want to know what funds (grants...) you expect to bring.
@Buffy I go by the username "math". I don't know who the other person is. Regarding the question, I am asking about the list of things I can include in the start up funds if a school asks me to provide a budget while making me an offer of a tenure-track position. I know i can include travel expenses for the first 2-3 years and computing resources. But I wanted to know if there are other things that I am missing.
While I don't have a whole lot of experience with the kind of schools you mean, in math I have never heard of a school asking you for a start-up-budget in order to make an offer. Has this actually happened? Are you trying to negotiate an amount of a start-up or what you can use it for? (At my research school, they have set rules for what you're allowed to use start-up for---will they not tell you the rules?)
You need to do a fact finding mission if you want to do this properly. Institutions vary widely on their policies, and while I have worked as a research administrator at two research universities, PUI's (Primarily Undergraduate Institutions) can offer more flexibility than large institutions or much less due to funding restrictions. I am going to generalize my answer a bit for the masses. Some of this will not apply to you in particular, but as a research administrator, I make no assumptions on what cost categories may or may not look like for a researcher. You really never know.
In this answer, I am going to break down questions about individual cost categories to consider, as well as larger policy considerations that may affect your maneuverability in the future. Institutions vary so widely, a policy may make you claustrophobic or give you so much freedom, you can't imagine how it could be problematic. These vocabulary terms are so standard in research administration, that you should be able to Google them easily for most institutions. I am using Wellesley as an example in point of fact-- I have no connection to the institution, and yet can quickly find the policies I want to do this basic research on how they function.
Make sure you know the answer to the following questions as you make your budget.
Constructing the Budget:
A. Salaries. What are the policies on paying for undergraduate students (graduate if available)? Can you hire postdocs or is that forbidden? What about other staff? Is this regulated by the institution or the school/department? This information may not be freely available, but you should inquire about school/department policies.
B. Fringe. The forgotten cost. Google your institution's name and "IDC agreement". (Also referred to as "F&A" or "Facilities and Administration" Agreement.) Here's an example from Wellesley. You will skip the IDC section, which applies to sponsored funds only, and go to the fringe benefits rates. In this case, regular employees have a 34.6% fringe rate. Thus $1 of a "regular employee" at Wellesley actually costs $1.346. Next question-- is a student a "regular employee"? My guess is no. Typically institutions pay fringe for undergrads only during the summer (that temporary employee rate). If your institution's website doesn't explain this easily, try contacting the Vice Provost's office or Office of Sponsored Programs. While you are looking at a PUI, one of the reasons fringe is important to consider is that junior faculty often bring in postdocs in their first couple of years, because in a graduate structure, it's hard or impossible to get students in the door right away, and they are completely untrained. Postdocs typically draw over 20% fringe on higher salaries (~$50-80k depending on field).
C. Travel. Depending on the field, this is a lot or a little. I have worked in chemistry and CS, and CS is much higher than chemistry due to the way publishing works in the CS field. How expensive are conference fees though? Gordon Research Conference is really expensive, particularly if you are sending more than one student. Be aware that some sponsors will not fund foreign travel, if that is a consideration.
D. Capital Equipment. Is this something you need? This money is hard to get from a sponsor, and should be absolutely a priority for a startup package.
E. Materials and Supplies. This includes, but is not limited to: publication costs, poster printing, lab supplies, minor equipment, computing equipment, catering, and other supplies. Ask about policies for things like user fees and gases (if applicable), and other possible department-supplied expenses that may not be a consideration. How are office supplies handled? Are you responsible for your own printer and toner, or is that forbidden?
F. Tuition. Are you responsible for any tuition costs whatsoever? If so, find out what these costs are.
Other Considerations:
Uniform Guidance. If you apply for sponsored funding, you have to be able to allocate a cost with great precision in order to assign it to the grant. See federal law, here.
Thus if a computer cannot be allocated with any accuracy to this one project (e.g., an NSF grant) you should pay for it with startup. (See paragraph d in the above link.) What types of expenses will be difficult to divide between sponsored projects? Allocate more funds for these.
Supplemental Salary Policy. Are you limited to three summer months? Can you charge salary during the academic year? Can you charge your startup for this? (Typically, startups do not allow supplemental salary to be charged, supplemental salary provided from the school is a different pot of money. Do you get this or not?)
Direct Charging on Sponsored Awards. Does your institution allow you to charge your academic salary to a sponsored award? This can increase your flexibility in sponsored research, particularly if you are interested in relieving teaching load. Wellesley's policy is here. I have seen this policy used as a negotiating chip during difficult periods of funding.
Restrictions on Spend for This Account. As with the last paragraph, are there cost categories that are forbidden? Typically supplemental salary, staff salary, and non-research expenses. There may be more.
Cost Sharing and Matching Policy. If you want to apply for a grant that requires cost sharing or matching, are you responsible for this, or do you apply to the chair or dean for funds? Wellesley details their policy here.
Computing Policy. What devices are provided for your personnel (and yourself). Can you purchase any endpoint device you need or are there restrictions? What softwares are provided? Wellesley has a pretty impressive list available, listing Adobe, MATLAB, Mathematica, EndNote, and other software that one may be happy to not have to pay for. (Link is to Windows, but they have a Mac list as well.)
IDC and IDC Cost Recovery Policy. While there is no IDC "indirect costs" charged to your startup, you should understand the rate that applies to any sponsored funds and this recovery policy. Wellesley explains theirs here.
The reason you care about the IDC rate for startup is to understand the impact of IDC on a sponsored budget. If you apply for an NSF grant at Wellesley, the IDC rate is 75% of salaries and wages, which is really high, but only applies to salary and wages (not true of all institutions). That means for $1 of salary expenses, $1.75 is charged to the grant instead of the $1 that would be charged to startup. If the IDC base is listed as "MTDC" this IDC would be charged on other direct costs (including fringe) as well. This creates a compounding effect, whereby salary has fringe AND IDC applied, and IDC is applied on the fringe as well as the salary. As some sponsors (e.g. NSF) provide small, all-inclusive budgets, this could affect your feelings about your startup. This is typical in theoretical and physical sciences, compared to NIH-funded medical research, where IDC is paid IN ADDITION to the requested direct costs, rendering the IDC rate irrelevant to these researchers.
Does the institution give you funding back for the sponsored dollars you bring in? This policy varies widely, from nearly nothing to large percentage. Here's an example of Wellesley's policy, where they give the PI 10% of the IDC they received during the year. Is this something you expect will be a good source of revenue?
Internal Funding Availability. Are seed programs offered regularly, or other fellowships or initiatives? These are frequently found under the Provost or Vice-Provost's page. Wellesley's is here.
University Resources. High-performance Computing Resources, for example has a page here. Other pooled university resources should have a page with rate information or someone to contact.
Negotiations:
Some of these questions may seem like we are getting quite into the weeds. However, I have managed startups over dozens of faculty over the last 8 years, and I can tell you that they never last long enough, and it's an important emergency fund. So many expenses are unforeseen, and had department/school policies been more readily understood and available, the PI may have restated their requested budget to be more realistic.
While I haven't seen the negotiation processes, myself, I can tell you that it seems institutions frequently find a balance in your own compensation and your startup. I have seen startups in computer science pushing $1M (major institution) and their own colleagues may receive paltry amounts and get a decent bump in salary. [FWIW, a non-trivial number of PIs want more lab funding than personal funding. The stress of finding funding for research is very high.]
Make a formal, detailed budget, referencing policies as needed, and people will take you seriously, even if they can't give you everything you request. In general, I find this changes the tone. My detail-oriented PIs get more than those who don't put in the energy-whether from a sponsor or their own institution. There is a certain amount of respect from administrators (who tend to set school/dept budgets) when a PI pays attention to and references policies that are publicly stated on the website.
What do you think you really need in order to conduct your research program? Can you justify why you need these things in order to conduct the research? How much of this is so important that you'd turn down the job offer if you didn't get it?
Things that you might ask for include summer salary for yourself for a year or two, computer equipment (say $3K for a nice desktop computer up to $100K for a high performance computing cluster), funding to travel to conferences or money to pay undergraduate students to work on your research with you.
At a regional comprehensive undergraduate only public institution, chances are that there isn't much money available for a startup package. Based on my experience, I'd be surprised if you could negotiate for much more than a couple of months of summer salary, a few thousand for travel expenses and a few thousand for a desktop computer. At an institution with a graduate program, you might also ask for support for a graduate student.
In negotiating these things, you're likely to find that the chair of your department (or search committee members if the department chair is negotiating with you) can be helpful in telling you what others have received in the past and what the administration is likely to fund.
Whatever you do ask for, be sure to ask politely and don't let it seem as though you won't accept the offer unless your wish is granted. It's not unheard of for offers to be retracted in the face of startup package demands that are too high. You should also give a budget with justification rather than negotiating for a simple dollar amount.
The strategy of negotiating the salary and startup package verbally before a formal offer is quite common. It is a smart negotiating tactic on the part of the institution since you have nothing to fall back on until they make a first written offer. If you demand too much, they can simply move on to another candidate without ever making you a formal offer. Another advantage of this strategy is that it forces you to make a decision quickly- you can't draw out the process with multiple rounds of offers and responses.
Interesting. Do you have an experience with startup packages for experimental sciences?
I'm aware that science and engineering faculty often get much larger startup packages that include money to purchase lab equipment and renovate lab space. I'd still expect the package at a four year regional comprehensive state university to be much less than at a large state university.
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60481 | I would like to apply to a masters program in Japan but I have no research experience. Any advice?
I am pursuing a B.S in Math at UCLA, which is in the United States. My academic performance is above the average. My major GPA is 3.73 and my GPA for upper division courses is 3.56. My GRE General is 327. I might also pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level N1 held in this December, so I might be able to apply to programs taught in Japanese.
I am thinking about applying to some master programs in Japan such as information science in Tokyo University. The only thing that troubles me is that almost all universities require you to write research plan and contact the professor whose research interests you. This is quite different from US. As someone without research experience, how should I deal with this situation? Is there any taught masters program in Japan? Thanks in advance.
Which universities offer taught masters program in english language (in aerospace or mechanical to be specific)? All that I have come across demand research and no where it is mentioned about coursework or taught masters.
I'm currently on a Masters program in Japan, and I also didn't have any experience with research at all when I had to write a research plan, which made me very stressed.
As someone without research experience, how should I deal with this
situation?
There is no other way. You'll have to write your own research plan and contact your potential advisor.
It is pretty hard to write a research plan when you have no clue, but here is what I did:
Find something you would like to research that can actually be done at the lab you pretend to go. Read about previous publications on the laboratory's homepage, read about your potential advisor's areas of interest. You should know how to justify why you chose that lab as your potential advisor will probably ask you during email exchange.
Now that you have something that can be done at where you want to go, you'll have to justify why you chose that theme. Try to write about the potential applications of [your research theme] or how that will save the world or make everybody happy. Being able to strongly justify why your research is important is also essential.
Describe concretely which approach you will take to tackle [your research theme]. Of course you might have no idea, but you should at least have a hint from the point you researched the stuff that can be done on the lab. Write a rough schedule of about how much time your research will take (literature review, experiment designs/simulations, analysis, time for writing up your thesis etc).
Your research plan should have at least introduction, objectives, methodology (possibly with a schedule), and references. Include references from japanese authors if possible.
Remember that there is some flexibility, and once you are here you might find other research themes that are also interesting and/or more feasible than the one you initially planned.
Contacting your potential advisor is also a very important step. Professors from prestigious universities receive a LOT of emails and yours may just be easily ignored depending on your attitude. Depending on the university's guidelines, you'll have to first introduce yourself to the university's international office ("Kokusai-ka" or 国際課), which will then contact your potential advisor.
You should be very humble and polite. Of course they might not expect it from an international student, but it will give you a positive image. Overdo it and you'll look desperate.
In the first email, apologize for the sudden contact, introduce yourself, write up which university you're coming from, from which major. Say that you've read [potential advisor]'s articles about [research theme] and that you're interested in doing research under his/her guidance, and ask if that is possible (the lab may be full capacity). Do NOT attach anything in the first email, it's suspicious and will look rude (like you're pushing something for them to do for you).
If you are lucky, you might receive a reply within 2 weeks. If it is positive, you may be asked to send your research plan, academic transcript, TOEFL or JLPT certificate and possibly be asked some questions via email or Skype. At this stage you will probably be fine.
In case your first option gets rejected, write another email from scratch for other potential advisors (read his/her papers, etc - they suspect when the email looks like it had just one or two names changed, it suggests that you send the same email for many other places and conveys that you are desperate).
In any case, be prepared not to receive any reply at all. I tried contacting over 15 potential advisors/laboratories and got replies from 3 of them. I got rejected from one because the lab was full, and from another one because I didn't have a JLPT certificate.
Is there any taught master program in Japan?
I'm currently in a taught masters program in STEM field. We have many lectures, tests, appointments, seminars, etc. pretty much like undergrad, except that grading is mostly done by assignments instead of tests. Of course, it will depend on your university and department.
If you're talking about the IT Asia Program at the University of Tokyo then you don't need to contact faculty in advance:
If you already have any specific faculty members in mind under whom you would like to conduct your studies, please list them in the space below (in order of preference, if there is more than one). Although your wishes will be taken into consideration when assigning advisors, please note that they cannot always be granted.
However, in general the assumption is that the student will take some initiative in finding an advisor. Most of the faculty affiliated with these programs will speak (or at least read/write in) English so you should e-mail faculty of interest ahead of time. This is true as a general rule, not just with University of Tokyo.
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43542 | Do I stand a chance in US universities? How can I ask for so many recommendation letters?
I'm a fresh graduate with a bachelor degree in electrical and electronic engineering, currently aiming to study in the US for my masters degree. I am an international graduate from an accredited university. I graduated with a GPA of 2.61 which is low and I know it, my transcript is a combination of extremely bad grades and real good ones too, I have them all, As, Bs, Cs and Ds. I even have an F.
My question is, do I stand a chance at US universities?
I graduated from a university that is ranked among the top three in my country, I know I may have a bad record of grades, but I have been involved in scientific research group and I have also been part of the student community and club managements.
keep in mind I'm not aiming for the top ranked US universities, but I am more concentrated on the universities that have a good program regarding my area of interest.
Any advise is highly welcome here.
Also, seeing that I did bad in plenty of my courses, would it be okay to ask for a recommendation letter from a professor whom I did bad in his course?
keep in mind that I might apply to about 15 or 20 universities, that's a total of 60 letters ! How can I pull this off?
What is your best recommendations for me to conduct a strong enough application?
This is me.
possible duplicate of How does the admissions process work for US Ph.D. programs, particularly for weak or borderline students?
If higher education is what you are seeking , why does it need to be in USA? Why can't you continue in your home country?
Also, seeing that I did bad in plenty of my courses, would it be okay to ask for a recommendation letter from a professor whom I did bad in his course?
It is generally not a good idea! What do you expect the professor to write if he only knows you through a course that you failed? Best case scenario: he tells you honestly that he can not write a strong letter for you. But he may also write a bad letter, which would seriously compromise your application.
keep in mind that I might apply to about 15 or 20 universities, that's a total of 60 letters ! How can I pull this off?
You would of course send the same set of 2-3 recommendation letters for all your applications.
I'm going to disagree with this. If the professor knows you well, and you know he would write a good letter for you that places your bad grade in context that would mean something.
Yes you are right, I agree that it can be a good move if the recommendation letter does explain that the bad grade was an accident. However the original statement was 'I did bad in his course', and not 'I had a bad grade at final exam despite doing top work all semester and having a good relationship with the professor'!
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83881 | Why do Swedish postdoc ads typically have a requirement that PhD date must not be more than 5 years ago?
Ads for postdocs in Sweden appear to always have a rule like PhD degree obtained preferable not longer than three-five years ago:
Example 1, 2. I've seen it many times in the past but job opening links are particularly temporary.
Is this to protect people from becoming career postdocs? Is it a requirement from a funding agency? Or is it just a habit?
This is not specifically a Swedish thing (at least in math, I have seen such a clause as part of most postdoc postings). That said, it is entirely possible that there are also some Swedish laws coming into play here, since as far as I have been told, postdocs are a bit special compared to other temporary positions in Sweden, which usually have some more restrictions than a postdoc might.
@TobiasKildetoft In atmospheric science I appear to see it mostly in Swedish ads. Never seen it in the UK (and I know plenty of people who have been postdocs for >10 years).
In that case there might well be some restrictions imposed by Swedish labor laws. There are laws along the lines of "if you have employed someone for more than 2 years, you must offer them a position which is not time-limited", but I think postdocs are specifically exempt from this.
@NajibIdrissi Perhaps, but that's rather altruistic and I imagine most PIs prefer to hire the candidate most likely to be successful.
Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/61880/40589
@NajibIdrissi True, I had in mind a requirement from funding agency or law, not voluntary by PI.
@NajibIdrissi I find it more likely that a funding agency or legislator would impose a rule to protect postdocs, than that a PI would.
@gerrit perhaps if someone is still looking for post-doc positions after 5 years, they are not cut out for academic life. I don't really know these things but the logical implication is that a bunch of people have wasted the last 15 years of their lives must be painful to some.
@emory: "perhaps etc." - Hardly. I worked in industry for several years after completing my PhD and am now looking for post-doc positions. Am I not cut out for academic life?
@einpoklum whether I (or you) think you are cut out for academic life is not important. I am sure that there are those in hiring positions who think along those lines. Good luck in your search.
In Brazil we've barely the same, don't know why. Before 7 years you received your PhD, you can apply for post-doc positions, after that the National Council allows you to apply for "senior internship" funding. But, ultimately, they're the same thing.
@emory: What einpoklum was probably aiming at is that there's a difference between "still [being] looking for post-doc positions after 5 years" and starting to look for post-doc positions after gathering practical experience for 5 years. But then, the OP's quotation contains the word preferable, which makes me think it's precisely cases like the one described by einpoklum that may be considered separately, without enforcing the 5-year-rule.
I don't know about Sweden, but in the US there seems to be increasing mood in Universities to end, or at least not contribute to, the "perpetual postdoc" cycle. I don't know that there is real pressure from the funding sources, so much as a tough love from community leaders to stop taking advantage of a relatively cheap labor source by dangling prospects of academic success over them.
For example, our policy is to keep the total postdoc tenure to 5 years. If you come in having done a 3-year postdoc, that leaves you with two more years here. After this time limit is reached, the lab has to find means to fund you as an employee on the scientific staff if they want to keep you around.
Not all faculty love this, and some point out that by nature of some fields, postdocs tend to be longer. For example, if you're recording from single neurons and need a large data set, this can take forever. Despite such arguments, I haven't heard of any cases where the time limit has been waived.
The postdocs are not necessarily hung out to dry. We have a number of programs designed to help them find satisfying employment.
As they told you, this is not specific to Sweden but happens often, particularly with funding. After a number of years after your Masters, you are not eligible to get a PhD grant, and after a number of years after your PhD, you are not eligible to get a postdoc grant. I would say that's the general rule, written or not.
Reasons? The benevolent rationale I suppose is that after a relatively long time doing something else you might have deviated too much from academia/research and it takes time and money to get you back in track, so they'd rather spend it in a just-graduated that can be 100% productive since day 1.
The malevolent rationale is, well, actually the same one: after some time in the job market, you might actually be much more adult, independent, self-confident, and have built a reputation that allows you to speak up to your boss or find another job any time. Bottom line: much less submissive. Unfortunately, that's not exactly the kind of spirit that many research labs want... as often a postdoc is not considered much differently than an "older PhD student".
"independent, self-confident, and have built a reputation that allows you to speak up to your boss" - what industry position wants those qualities? It seems to me like those are exactly the "soft skills" that you gather early on during your doctoral candidacy, and that you have to work hard to suppress in order to "fit in" once you leave academia heading for industry.
Certainly, we have very different experiences. In industry I have always seen much less need to fit in and you are valued by your skills much more than in academia. In academia, leaving a lab or quitting a PhD/postdoc is seen as a betrayal and people are much more submissive. Just check PhD comics or the many questions of worried students on this site. Changing jobs often an tough salary negotiations are the norm in industry. Just try to do that in academia and see where it leads you..
"In academia, leaving a lab or quitting a PhD/postdoc is seen as a betrayal" - huh? That sounds like a typical industry thing to me, too. It's industry where people are secretive about intending to leave a job until the very day they have handed in their resignation letter. It's industry where leaving a job is seen as some kind of betrayal, precisely because you kind of turn your back on the previous employer and pledge your loyalty to someone else. Academia couldn't be more different in that respect; switching labs at some point is a normal fact of one's career progress and the ...
... intention is freely communicated months in advance, without any fear of getting fired for a lack of loyalty. Likewise, leaving a job does not at all mean cutting all ties there; indeed, moving on to another post is always a great opportunity for the previous lab to expand their network of collaborating institutions - and for the job-switching lab member, an opportunity to bring some new collaboration contacts into their new job. If you have observed anything else, indeed we must have very different experiences.
Great. Thanks for sharing your experience. I have seen you comment my answers often. It would be really helpful for posters if you devoted the same amount of effort and detail to answering their original questions..
"It would be really helpful for posters if you devoted the same amount of effort and detail to answering their original questions." - I do, as you can see in my profile.
I obviously meant in cases such as this one (the only ones I know), where you spend a huge amount of time and effort trying to refute answers you don't agree with or others whose experiences don't match yours. You are absolutely free to do that, of course, and it's even amusing. However, it doesn't move to a helpful or even better answer at all. Ok, at this point, everyone knows you don't agree with this answer or your experience is different. So what? And, really, who cares? Not providing an alternative, hopefully better answer does a disservice to the goal of the site.
"you don't agree with this answer" - nowhere did I say that. I disagree with two specific points, one made in the answer, and one made in your first comment. Neither disagreement implies disagreement with anything else you wrote in this answer or in the attached comments. I suppose this is leading off-topic, though, so I'll quit this conversation now.
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43839 | Another student used my completed work, what should I do?
I took a class a year ago, another student currently taking the same class had asked about my assignments to guide her in her work. I explained to her how intense the class is and sent her a copy of my work so she sees how much efforts she needs to put on that paper.
Without my authorization, she used my work for her assignment and now we are both in a mess. The school had contacted me about this matter and wants me to call them for a phone conference about this matter. The school policy includes but not limited to "no sharing of old assignment" or else disciplinary action will be taken. So how can one approach this case when asked to report by telephone?
Explain to the authorities exactly what happened, and provide as much proof as you can. Emails, chat transcripts, etc.
The policy includes "no sharing of old assignment", you broke this rule, now you have to face the consequences. Welcome to adulthood, were actions have consequences.
If I understand correctly, the other student took the class after you took it, so it's clear that she cheated from you, not vice versa. I suspect they merely want to talk to you to find out exactly what happened. You are probably not in any trouble, unless there is a school policy against sharing old assignments, or the professor asked students not to do this, or you knew that she would have the same assignment when she took the class. So I would simply answer any questions they have, and explain why you did what you did.
Yes she took the class after I took it. The school sent me a letter stating that I violated the school's rule and regulation about sharing. I did not know the school is against sharing old assignment. The student is currently on probation and now they are after me. Do you think they are going to place me on probation?
There's no way of knowing (without knowing more about exactly what your school's policies are, how the disciplinary process works, how convincing a case you can make, etc.). However, you should take this very seriously.
I am taking this seriously. They sent me a link to review the school's policy and I just noticed the school is against sharing old assignment. I don't know what my fate. Is there anyway or particular thing I need to say while on the phone conference to exonerate myself from any disciplinary action?
There aren't any magic words to avoid discipline that I'm aware of. Explain what you did, why you did it, that you didn't realise at the time that it was against policy, but now you do and won't do anything like that again. Is there a student ombudsman or someone like that you can talk to?
Thank you so much! I do not know of anyone to talk to. This is an online class. I just need to find the right word or try to convince them that I did not share my work to cheat but to guide her on her own work. I do not want be short of words when talking to them. I have never been in a case before. I will appreciate any help from this forum.
Presumably there's also an "evidence trail" that can back up your assertions. If so, I'd include that to show proof of your intentions. (It will also help if the assignment is one where the is no reasonable expectation that the other student wouldn't just turn in your work as hers.)
What actually happened was that she copied most of my work and submitted it online as her own work. The plagiarism checker detecte it as 100% originality from another student's paper, which is my paper. The school sent me a letter attaching the plagiarized work. They want me to report to them by phone.
So is there anyway to get myself out of this mess?
@Allyson If you have any emails between you and this other student that show that your intentions were not for her to copy your assignment, I believe that would help.
You need local advice, and random people on the internet who don't even know your school's policies or procedures can't tell you what you should do. If your school has a strict policy against sharing classwork, then there may be nothing you can do but beg for mercy. Otherwise, trying to prove your intentions were good may help. However, you should expect skepticism: the oldest trick in the book is to let someone copy your work after announcing that they shouldn't copy it, so you can claim you never gave them permission to copy and had no idea they were going to do so.
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40070 | My professor wants to know if his recommendation is helpful
Several weeks after I received the recommendation from Professor M, he sent an email to me and asked me about the result of my application to a graduate school. He wants to know whether his recommendation is helpful and my application is accepted or not.
Although I have submitted my application and supporting documents to the graduate admissions, the deadline for the program I have applied for is on the 18th April.
The only message I received from the graduate school was that they had received my application. I have no idea whether my application is successful or not, but the email from professor M made me nervous.
I can see that there are a lot of professors here. I guessed that some of you had written recommendation letters for your students. I would love to know this:
What were your reactions when you heard of your students telling you that their applications failed or your recommendation letters useless?
I feel scared when thinking of this situation.
I can not understand what is the problem here. Prof wants to know the results, you do not know the results now. You tell him, sorry, I do not know results yet, will let you know AFAP. Sounds super easy to me.
Maybe the undeerlying intention of him is to show interest of what you do, or keep in contact for some reason. Then, the question would be just something like "smaltalk", with not much relevance.
Just tell the professor that you don't know yet. I don't think it was his intention to suggest you should have received an answer by now, but if it was, he'll probably let you know (after all, he took the liberty of contacting you about it out of the blue...)
"Was my letter helpful?" is really a pretty useless question: assuming that you used the letter, you'll never really know whether it helped or hurt, because the admissions committee should not ever give you that information. The professor is probably really just asking the second question twice with different word: did you get in?
You should not feel nervous about this. Instead, you should feel good, because it means the professor cares enough about you to follow up with you and to hope that you've gotten good news. Thank the professor for their interest, tell them the letter was helpful (after all, it helped you fulfill the requirements to apply), but that you don't yet have any news because of the late deadline of this particular program.
+1 for the "tell them the letter was helpful". Unless you didn't use the letter at all, you should reply that the letter was helpful and much appreciated, and that you have not heard any results yet but will let the professor know as soon as you hear anything.
You should not be nervous about the enquiry, he just wants to know the outcome. Many academics lose track of time and/or have unrealistic expectations about how fast things move. I would respond that you haven't heard anything yet, but will let him know, regardless of the outcome, when you hear.
If you get in, he will fell happy for you and if you don't get in he will feel a little sad for you. Even if you are unsuccessful, I would not tell a letter writer that the letter was "useless". The only case I might say something like that, and I would be much more positive about it, is if you chose not to use that individual as a reference. Something like: for that position, I was limited on the number of reference I could submit and I felt my other references were a better fit for the position.
I would just tell him in the email that the application deadline is not for 2 months, so you may not hear back for a few months (in case he thinks you should've heard by now, or sometime soon).
@Kimball A mid April deadline seems very late, so I was thinking the department probably makes rolling decisions.
It is late for most programs in the US. Since the OP didn't say anything about rolling admissions, I was thinking it might be in another country where they don't start reviewing until April, but you might be right. @kitty, do you want to clarify?
I am not sure, kimball. I don't know much about their policy, I mean the school I have applied for. Thank you.
Hi, Kimball. But I know one thing, they allow people to submit their applications to the university anytime except in December and May. I am not sure if this is called Rolling admission though.
@kitty That doesn't necessarily mean rolling admissions (which means they review applications and give offers as they come in, rather than after the deadline). Usually (I think) if they do rolling admissions, the ads should say so (or at least say something like "applications before Feb 14 will be given priority") to let candidates know they have a better chance if they apply early. (BTW if you don't address me with '@' I won't get notified of your comment.)
@Kimball. Thank you very much for your explanation! Thanks for telling me the secret about the AT symbol, Kimball!
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102554 | How long before PhD graduation should I start applying for academic jobs
I hope this is not a duplicate, I saw this question:
How long before PhD graduation should I start applying for post-doc positions?
However, I didn't find any analogous question for applying for jobs (academic). Is there a certain timeline to look for jobs?
In particular, do I need to have completed the PhD or fulfill any requirement (e.g. submitted thesis) before I can look for jobs?
I am considering any kind of academic job, tenured, or non-tenured jobs like lecturer and adjunct posts.
I am looking at mid-tier universities in Asia, in applied mathematics and related fields.
Could you elaborate on what kind of positions you have in mind, and what field you are in? In the life sciences, the ones you've listed all require you to have some postdoc experience (maybe not technically, but certainly in practice).
Too broad. Please one question at a time. Specify your country and your target countries.
@Hexal I am looking at Asian universities.
@Gerhard I am looking at mid-tier universities in Asia, in applied mathematics and related fields.
Provide an estimate when you'd obtain your PhD in your application and better apply early than late.
For postdoc positions: apply approximately 3-6 months before graduation.
For (UK, AU)-lecturer and assistant professor positions: apply approximately a year before the graduation.
Usually, you have to be graduated by the first day you start with your job duties, though exceptions exist.
I'd add that in the US at least, some adjunct/lecturer positions are posted much later than postdocs, as schools figure out their needs after filling/failing to fill various positions, so you should expect to have a long hiring season, sometimes up until almost the first day of classes.
@Mathprof Feel free to add it to my answer if you wish.
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20901 | Compiling ethical standards for coauthorship across academic fields and regions
One of the hot-button issues on this site is standards for coauthorship, especially variants of the question "Must I automatically include my thesis advisor as a coauthor on all my papers?"
Since these questions (sensibly) come up again and again, I thought it would be useful to have a collection of links to various ethical standards for coauthorship. To the best of my knowledge, these standards will apply only to one particular academic field and/or to one geographic region. For instance, most of my colleagues would point to this statement by the American Mathematical Society. It applies (explicitly) to mathematics and (implicitly, I think) to mathematics done in the US and by Americans.
I was thinking of a community-wiki question where each answer posts a link to ethical standards in some academic field(s) and geographic region(s). To make the answers better, I would ask that respondents:
Quote in their answer the passages most relevant to coauthorship.
Please avoid "alphabet soup". Above I wrote "American Mathematical Society" rather than "AMS": mathematicians will know what AMS means, but most other academics presumably won't. Some other answers here refer to things like "BMJ": I certainly didn't know what that was.
(Ideally) Give commentary as to whether/how the standards in their answer differ from those posted in other answers.
The more comprehensive the list we can compile, the more authoritatively we can point future questioners to this list and tell them what is or is not an ethical practice.
Typically, SE discourages users to intentionally post CW-style questions, which this definitely is (as you state yourself). I realize that we often do things differently here, but we haven't differed in this respect yet. Personally don't think we should start compiling list-style questions, for all the same reasons why CW questions are disliked (need for constant maintenance, ever-increasing scope of discussion). For that reason, I don't think this question is in scope for this site.
@eykanal: The appropriate place to discuss these issues is the meta site. I find your objections disappointing bordering on exasperating, but if you post a question there I will try to respond to it.
Post added on Meta. @Pete, I generally would post something similar to the above on the question before posting to meta, particularly given that this issue has already been discussed.
possible duplicate of What are the minimum contributions required for co-authorship
@StrongBad: I think that the two questions are related but not duplicates of each other.
@CharlesMorisset While a good idea, many of the questions we get on this site can already be answered with a trip to Wikipedia, which suggests that the existence of that article isn't necessarily sufficient.
This is excerpted from the Ethical Guidelines of the American Mathematical Society:
I. MATHEMATICAL RESEARCH AND ITS PRESENTATION
The public reputation for honesty and integrity of the mathematical
community and of the Society is its collective treasure and its
publication record is its legacy.
The knowing presentation of another person's mathematical discovery as
one's own constitutes plagiarism and is a serious violation of
professional ethics. Plagiarism may occur for any type of work,
whether written or oral and whether published or not.
The correct attribution of mathematical results is essential, both
because it encourages creativity, by benefiting the creator whose
career may depend on the recognition of the work and because it
informs the community of when, where, and sometimes how original ideas
entered into the chain of mathematical thought. To that end,
mathematicians have certain responsibilities, which include the
following:
To endeavor to be knowledgeable in their field, especially about work
related to their research;
To give appropriate credit, even to unpublished materials and
announced results (because the knowledge that something is true or
false is valuable, however it is obtained);
To publish full details of results that are announced without unreasonable delay, because claiming a result in advance of its having
been achieved with reasonable certainty injures the community by
restraining those working toward the same goal;
To use no language that suppresses or improperly detracts from the
work of others;
To correct in a timely way or to withdraw work that is erroneous.
A claim of independence may not be based on ignorance of widely
disseminated results. On appropriate occasions, it may be desirable to
offer or accept joint authorship when independent researchers find
that they have produced identical results. All the authors listed
for a paper, however, must have made a significant contribution to its
content, and all who have made such a contribution must be offered the
opportunity to be listed as an author. Because the free exchange of
ideas necessary to promote research is possible only when every
individual's contribution is properly recognized, the Society will not
knowingly publish anything that violates this principle, and it will
seek to expose egregious violations anywhere in the mathematical
community.
[Emphasis added.]
The boldfaced sentence seems too narrow to me. If I work on a project with someone, then I think they deserve to be a coauthor regardless of whether they wind up making a significant contribution to the content of the final paper. I think coauthorship is warranted because there's an implied contract when people work together that, in exchange for freely sharing their ideas and spending time on the problem, everyone will be a coauthor. Am I interpreting the AMS statement too literally, or worse, am I being unethical? I thought something like this occurred for the Taylor-Wiles paper.
@Michael Zieve: you are applying it a little too strictly, in my opinion as a mathematician. There can't be a general rule for every collaboration, but if two researchers together work all the way up to the edge of a result, and then one researcher has the final crucial insight, it's hard to say that the other person made no significant contribution to the theorem.
Excerpt from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which governs most medical journal submissions, as well as those in most allied health fields, like public health. The full text is here: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html
The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4
criteria:
Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or
the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual
content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring
that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the
work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
In addition to being
accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done, an author
should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for
specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have
confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors.
All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for
authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as
authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be
acknowledged—see Section II.A.3 below. These authorship criteria are
intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve
credit and can take responsibility for the work. The criteria are not
intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship
who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity
to meet criterion #s 2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals who meet the
first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the
review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript.
Note that the recommendation is actually for contributorship as a concept rather than authorship in its traditional context. So from this perspective authorship and contributorship are not synonyms.
@PeterJansson I don't follow.
A big publisher has a brief (and somewhat vague) rule for all its journals, although to the best of my knowledge it doesn't do anything to enforce it. Note the 'or' as opposed to the 'and' given in another answer.
Authorship of the paper
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant
contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation
of the reported study. All those who have made significant
contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others
who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research
project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.
Source here.
which is very similar to the guidelines of the American Physical Society:
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant
contribution to the concept, design, execution or interpretation of
the research study. All those who have made significant contributions
should be offered the opportunity to be listed as authors. Other
individuals who have contributed to the study should be acknowledged,
but not identified as authors.
Source here
By "editor" do you mean "publisher"?
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32057 | Paper accepted in journal, should I remove style file for arXiv preprint?
I recently sent a paper to a journal (which I put on arXiv beforehand) which has now been accepted with some corrections. I want to put the corrected version on arXiv. The corrected version is written using the style file supplied by the journal.
Should I remove this style file? Does it matter if I don't? Will the journal get mad?
@MarkFischler: Indeed they have (see my answer) and I am rather sure that this was already the case five years ago.
Does the style file contain a license? This may contain the answer to your question.
thanks for the comments. The style file has a copyright but I can't see a license. Anyway, I think it is better for me to remove the style file so I have consistency in my arXiv preprints.
@math_guy Reformatting takes time; spend the time more productively, do research instead
Legally, the style file at first only is the software which you use to generate your paper and thus there should not be any problems in most cases, for the same reasons that you do not need to ask Microsoft for permission each time you publish something generated with Word. I see three problem cases, however:
If you use TeX, and ArXiv does not have the style file and thus you need to supply it, which would make it be published alongside your article. In this case you may be distributing a software that you are not allowed not distribute. In my experience, many style files are free to distribute though; have a look at it whether it contains some license.
The style file includes a logo or similar (e.g., Royal Society Publishing’s style file does this), which in turn may not have a license that allows you to distribute it and also probably is a problem because of the next point.
The style file makes your paper mention the journal’s name, publisher, or similar, which creates the false impression that your preprint is actually a publication of that journal.
Will the journal get mad? – Of course you need to regard the journal’s copyright agreement (which you accepted) with respect to publishing preprints in general or on ArXiv in specific (Sherpa Romeo is a database that helps you to find this out). But if the journal allows you to publish a preprint content-wise, I do not see any reasons why using its style file would enrage it, given that the above problem cases do not apply. Some journals even allow you publishing the journal’s version of the paper on ArXiv, e.g., the Physical Review series.
Finally, a stylistical argument: If the journal has a single-column layout but your paper has no long equations or something else that would make such a format a good idea, you may want to opt for a two-column layout for your preprint.
Thanks, this is a good answer. So it seems I am allowed to post post-review preprints. Upon consideration I think removing the style file is better so I have some consistency across my arXiv preprints.
I believe some journal style files have a "preprint" option you can toggle.
I think what matters in most cases is whether the journal staff (i.e., not just the external peer reviewers) made some corrections and improvements to the paper. If they did, you generally can't post the fruit of their labor on arXiv without violating the journal's rights. But you can post a version without those corrections and improvements -- and then you can even add additional other improvements of your own that were not in the journal's published version.
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14975 | Indian CGPA to US GPA system
I study in India and in here we have 10 pointer system. I wanted to convert my CGPA to american based GPA system of 4. I googled and got this website.
So does that mean I need only >8.5 to get a 4.
This may be a stupid question to some but please consider that I know nothing of american CGPA system.
There are so many variations within India that this question is rather moot.
The link in the version 1 (original version) did not break. So, I roll back to the original version. I don't know why the anonymous user tried to replace the working link. To the OP, if my edit contradicts to what you intend, please edit it. Thanks.
A US GPA is computed as an average of grades, mapped as follows:
A = 4
B = 3
C = 2
D = 1
F = 0
In some universities, there are interpolations between these:
A- = 3.67
B+ = 3.33
and so on for B-, C+ and so on.
I've heard of an A+ being awarded a 4.33, but that's not the case in my university where A is the maximum grade.
At least in my recollection, this maps non-linearly to the Indian CGPA system which is
A = 10
B = 8
C = 6
D = 4
Because of the non-linearity, you can't just for e.g divide your score by 2.5. Moreover, there are statistical normalizations that complicate the process. Personally, if possible, I'd just list the CGPA as is. Your transcripts will reveal the grade specifics, and that's more useful than just the summary number. I wouldn't trust the link you provided since they don't appear to provide any rationale for the mapping.
Separately I'd have a hard time seeing an Indian CGPA of 8.6 and considering it a 4.0. Even with grade inflation, that would be over optimistic.
Indeed, don't attempt a conversion. U.S. admissions committees are well-accustomed to (trying to) interpret varying grading scales. Don't waste any time or energy in a misguided effort.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:49.001521 | 2013-12-21T16:52:50 | {
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10242 | Postgraduate certification/diploma in software engineering
I have just done my Bachelor in computer science and got an offer to a software engineering position. Some people told me that a master degree is very beneficial for my long-term career development. Unfortunately I do not think I can get into any good master program because of my terrible undergrad gpa + no academic references. A postgraduate certificate program requires nothing.
My question is, what is your point of view on postgraduate certificate in software engineering? Is it just a joke comparing to master degrees? What about starting salary?
This site is for Academia. I took out the off-topic phrase in the question.
Short term wise, the postgraduate certificate will help you to find a better job with a higher salary because the certificate shows that you have some skill printed on the certificate. However, whatever the technology you learn while getting the certificate could become obsolete in a few years.
Long term wise, the master degree proves that you know more fundamentals than just a bachelor. It may not help you that much when looking for a job with better salary. Some employers would think you don't have the skills they want immediately. However, you'll learn those needed skills faster and better because you know more fundamentals.
If you want to find a job as of now, you want to have certificates. If you want to be an excellent software engineer in the future, you should get a master degree
I agree with @scaaahu that having a Masters shows that you have a strong understanding of important concepts. As you probably know there are commonalities between programming languages such as input/output, conditionals, loops, etc. the difference lies in how they are each implemented. However, by knowing one language(i.e. Java) you could learn another(i.e. C#) efficiently and in a shorter time.
It is also true that some employers might think you're overqualified since you have a Masters but others will recognize the added value your advanced knowledge could bring their company and the compensation may even reflect that.
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52326 | Ask for funding before or after applying
I finished my master in computer science about 2 years ago...
And I just started to apply for PhD... I have received a prompt reply to one of my email and I really don't know what should I do!? here is the response :
"Dear Ali,
It is impossible for me to know over a year in advance whether I will take any students for Fall 2016. Your CV looks interesting and I encourage you to apply to the program so you are eligible for any potential openings."
I asked for admission on fall 2016 but maybe I could ask for winter 2015 too...
Should I ask for funding now or after applying? How should I reply him?
Where are you located? Can you find out what the usual procedures at your place is? Do prospective PhD candidates usually acquire their own funding, or do they apply for positions for which someone else has secured funding beforehand? Answers might vary considerably based on this information.
What about Canadian universities?
Your question really contains two parts: about funding and about what to do with the email. @vonbrand already answered the funding part, so I will answer the other half:
This is really a rather common reply. If you apply for the fall 2016, you will likely take courses for the first year, so you're looking for someone who may start to be your adviser in the fall 2017 -- two years from now. I have no idea how my funding situation will look like that far out, nor whether I will gain or lose any graduate students until then. In other words, I cannot promise that (i) I will be able to support anyone financially this far out, (ii) I will have the mental and time capacity to accept more graduate students this far out. At least in the US (and likely in Canada), you can't generally expect to have an adviser lined up before you even apply to a graduate program -- you have to apply and accept admission to a department in the hope that when you need one, an adviser will materialize.
(I can only speak to the system in the U.S.) In the old days, you read the catalog. Nowadays, you read the department website. It will probably tell you at least 95% of what you need to know about how and when to apply for admission and funding. It will have a contact email to use for the remaining 5%.
Good luck!
The issue of funding is clearly vital to you (and I dare say all prospective graduate students), so the school can't take exception on you asking for details on the matter. In fact, you should ask them for alternatives that might be available, and (if needed) where, how and when to apply for that.
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110341 | Does the GDPR entitle students to see their recommendation letters?
If I am correctly informed, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) entitles any EU and EEA citizen to have right of access of any data stored about them (and non-EU/EEA citizens such access to data stored about them by organizations inside the EU/EEA). This clearly includes recommendation letters which in some form or another must be linked to their identity.
This probably changes the signaling value of recommendation letters so this should be of interest to both reference letter writers and applicants.
A side question would be whether this includes reference letters written before the GDPR went into force.
Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1152/should-i-waive-my-right-to-view-my-recommendation-letters
Member states can enact law that under certain conditions restricts the right to access, see in particular Article 23, 1(i). That is, your rights may be restricted when it would interfere with the rights of other persons. Disclosing a letter of recommendation, for example, might infringe with the right of the letter writer to privacy (or perhaps of that of other people mentioned in the letter).
See also https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/right-of-access/, in particular the section "What should I do if the data includes information about other people"
In many jurisdictions, you always had the right to do so. But it would always be hugely in your interest to waive your rights to access them...
The GDPR only applies if data is processed in an automatic way or is stored in a filing system. Does a professor's messy desk constitute a filing system? On a more serious note, the GDPR provides that the right of access "shall not adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others.". The right to privacy of the letter-writer is adversely affected if you obtain a copy, but I'm not sure of the precise details and whether this counts or not.
In the UK, most recently, reference letters during an employment recruitment process have potentially been available to the candidate for whom the letter has been written.
Bound to be the same for academic references.
No obvious reason for this opportunity to be curtailed by the coming into force of GDPR, quite the contrary.
When you say "potentially been available" do you mean that there is an option for letter writers to keep their letters private? Or that a candidate always has the opportunity to see their reference letters if desired?
@Kimball The previous state in the UK was the Data Protection Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998) which allowed access to your own personal data, as long as it was "reasonable" to search for, and allowed charging a reasonable fee (the standard seemed to be £10). Under typical circumstances, this would be most of the content of a letter of reference for a university, but possibly not all of it(the personal data of any other people in the letter still needed to be protected).
@Kimball not aware that referees could request that their letter be kept confidential from the candidate they write about; yes, by potentially, I mean a candidate may request to have access to reference letters written on their account, if they wish to do so, under the Data Protection Act 1998 indeed
@G-E I was thinking more along the lines of the US system, where it's common for applicants to waive their rights to view the letters (and the letter writer should see that the candidate has waived their rights).
@Kimball interesting; over here, the typical advice for referees goes along the lines of: 'write your reference letter as if the individual you are writing about the performance was reading over your shoulder.'
@Kimball For the avoidance of ambiguity, the right to view and correct one's personal data isn't something someone can permanently opt out of, either under the GDPR, or the previous version. It's just something you can choose not to exercise currently (think 2nd amendment rather than Miranda).
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68564 | (How) should I describe the company within my bachelor's thesis?
I'm writing my computer science bachelor's thesis in a company. The thesis is about optimizing one of their software products. Obviously I will need to describe the software in the thesis, but what about the company itself?
Is it sufficient to name the company and give a short description of what they're about, or should I go into more detail like e.g. the history of the company?
(I'm new here, so if this question isn't a good fit, feel free to let me know :) )
or should I go into more detail like e.g. the history of the company?
No, in general, there's no need for that: your thesis is not a company's brochure. Provide enough information to present the context of your thesis, but don't add too much unnecessary details.
Anyway, I suggest you to discuss this also with your university supervisor: they surely know what is the policy or the tradition about this in the university, and they can act as buffer between possible company's requests and university requirements.
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40476 | Do research-only postdocs harm chances for tenure-track opportunities?
Suppose a person spends their PhD at an institute with a high ratio of PhD students to other students, resulting in a very low teaching load for PhD students, resulting in no or almost no teaching/tutoring. Suppose he/she spends years in postdocs, where each postdoc is funded by supervisor grants, and involves no teaching. She/he does great science but does not acquire other skills or experience.
Consider that tenure-track positions always require stellar experience in research, teaching and getting proposals funded — all of the above.
Is it harmful to an academic career if research is great, but all done on other people's grants and with no teaching experience to speak of? If yes, how could one prevent or overcome this?
I have learned from this site that the answer to this question is very field-specific: in some parts of the sciences it is not assumed that a beginning tenure-track assistant professor has any prior experience as an instructor of record whatsoever. In some other fields -- in particular, in mathematics -- this would indeed be a concern (how much depending on the institution). Also the phrasing "leeching [off] of other people's grants" seems unnecessarily loaded.
@PeteL.Clark I removed the leeching phrase, I agree that it is not necessary.
teaching experience/caring about teaching can be demonstrated in other ways than teaching an official course at your college. You can get some outreach experience by teaching a short course for advanced grade school students, or by doing other forms of educational outreach. These things can help an applicant if they have no official teaching experience.
When I applied to several universities for tenure track positions, the calls I received for interviews did ask me for student evaluation records to be presented to them when I visited them for an on-campus interview. This was not a mandatory requirement for the application itself but it (teaching graduate/undergraduate courses) seemed to have a bearing on the final outcome (hire or not to hire). Of course, if you were to apply to a research only university, teaching exp may not count as significantly. I Suppose you would want to target univs/institutes based on their goal/strategic plan?
Tenure-track positions do not always require stellar experience in all of those - or only light experience in them, if there is strength elsewhere. Consider, for example, tenure track positions with few to no actual students, which do exist.
It depends. At my R1 university where the only thing that counts is research, you would be an ideal candidate for our hiring committees.
At other R1s which balance research against a modicum of teaching, you might face a little bit of an uphill struggle. It might be good if you could at least pick up some teaching experience or certification1 to help you in the job market.
You face the most problems at small liberal arts colleges, where you would face two issues:
The concern that you don't know how (or really care) to teach
The concern that you would think yourself ultimately destined for R1s and thus leave the SLAC at the first opportunity possible
You would have to counter these two prejudices in your job letter and interviews.
1. Even at my august institution, we're realizing our graduates are having problems on the job market because they have little to no teaching experience. So we have instituted a teaching and learning center where they can take seminars and workshops on pedagogic methods. They get a little annotation (certification) to this effect on their transcripts. Certainly not comparable to the teaching experience that doctoral students receive at public R1s.
+1. If you don't have much experience teaching, you need to not also broadcast that you don't want to teach if you're applying to a SLAC. Similarly, if you don't have funded grants and are applying at an R1, you should have a reason beyond "I can't be bothered".
@RoboKaren: What you say is true...but describing your institution as an "R1 university" seems to be modest to the point of potentially misleading. I am also at an R1 insitution....and though we certainly prioritize research over teaching, teaching still counts for something. In fact I recently gave a very strong postdoc who came to visit me the advice that he should teach at least one course even though his prestigious fellowship has no teaching responsibilities whatsoever. This guy is amazing...but there is essentially no one who is only looking for jobs at the very top places.
@PeteL.Clark - thanks. I keep forgetting that my institution is not the center of the universe. Ptolemaic replaced by a bit more of Copernicus.
I'm an anthropologist but all departments at my institution view research as of paramount value. Even an ethnomusicologist in the Music Department was not renewed -- despite being an accomplished musician and teacher.
I agree with this completely.
The answer depends a lot on the particular institution but even within an institution there are likely to be significant differences between academic departments.
In mathematics, many post-doc positions include some opportunity for the post-doc to teach a bit (e.g. one course per year.) I'd advise anyone in that situation to take advantage of the opportunity to get some teaching experience. Several universities have positions for early career mathematicians that combine a half time teaching load with plenty of institutional support for research- these look really good on a resume. Visiting Assistant Professor (limited term non tenure track teaching only) positions are also quite common in mathematics. These are a great way to get teaching experience, but you'll have a hard time doing any research while in such a position.
In the mathematics department that I work in, teaching experience is a significant issue. However, I've been on search committees in other STEM departments at our institution where most candidates had no teaching experience to speak of and this wasn't an important issue.
With respect to grant funding, it can be quite hard for post-docs to get experience writing grants since they typically aren't allowed to be PI on a grant while in a post-doc. However, any experience in writing proposals (even just helping your advisor to write a proposal) is a big plus in my opinion.
I don't know any mathematics postdocs in the US that have a teaching load of one course per year. Could you help me out here?
Some good examples of combined post-doc/teaching positions in mathematics include the John Wesley Young Instructorships at Dartmouth College (which have a one course per quarter teaching load) and a similar program at the University of Utah. Less formally, it's often possible for a research post-doc to arrange to teach a course and be paid by the department to do so in place of salary from the research grant. I interviewed a candidate last week who had taught one course in this way for each of the last two years while working primarily as a research postdoc.
One course per term is a much more standard load for a postdoc, sure. And, sure, if you don't have any required teaching than you often can (and often should, IMO) arrange to teach a bit here and there. I just took your first sentence as meaning that "one course per year" was a common standard teaching load for a postdoc. I guess I interpreted it too literally: sorry about that. (I am after all a mathematician...)
At many institutions, research is all that matters. If you're at an institute with a light teaching burden for your PhD students, it stands to reason that there may not be all that much teaching for the faculty to do. For example, at my graduate institution, faculty taught at most a class or so a year.
Similarly, if you have clearly thought about grants, have a submission plan, etc., they may overlook not having submitted grants if there was a rational reason for that, like recognizing the need to support a much larger grant effort over funding a smaller postdoctoral-level grant.
Basically, it doesn't need to kill your application, but you should be able to articulate what direction you will go in the future for research, teaching and grant writing.
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41185 | Are faculty positions more competitive than government research lab positions?
Whenever I've been in the audience of a faculty interview presentation, I left impressed but demoralised. It appears the bar of making it as far as the interview is very high indeed, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to reach a similar level. On the other hand, I know quite some people employed as researchers at national/supernational scientific research laboratories, or at research divisions of operational government institutes. I don't get the same impression there. It seems to me that people who obtain faculty positions are more outstanding than those who obtain scientist positions for governments.
Is my impression correct? Is it less competitive to get employed at research laboratories or government institute research divisions, than it is to get employed as faculty at a university? If yes, why is this so? At a university, faculty spend their time writing grants, teaching, doing administration, and hopefully still a little bit of science. At research labs, the exact division of work probably varies, but involves doing research, developing products, writing reports and papers, perhaps doing consultancy or other work. Unless one loves teaching (I suppose nobody loves grant writing), I'm not sure why a position at a university would be more desirable/competitive than one at a laboratory. Is my impression wrong, or am I missing something?
(I have this impression for at least Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, and Canada.)
I suppose that this needs a country specifcation. In the Czech system for instance, you don't really have "government research labs", for instance...
@yo' This is an international question. E.g. Czech Republic is part of a lot of supranational "government" labs that do research, either directly or as a EU member state: ESA, EUMETSAT, ECMWF, CERN, ITER... and certainly many other international research institutes. And if I'm not mistaken there's a research division at, for example, the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute. I don't necessarily mean national research labs and I explicitly include operational institutes that have research divisions in my question.
Of course the answer depends on the university and the lab. There are plenty of university departments with low standards, and some labs are truly excellent. However, I think your comparison is right on average for top universities vs. national labs in the U.S. There are several reasons for this:
Many researchers at universities aren't professors, and in some universities the non-faculty research staff outnumber the faculty by a substantial factor. To make a fair comparison, you should not restrict your attention to professors, but rather compare all research staff in both institutions (or look at especially noteworthy or high-level employees at labs).
Some research labs are huge. For example, Los Alamos and Sandia are each the size of a whole university, but they cover a much narrower range of fields. The top researchers at these labs are exceptional, but the sheer number of positions makes it difficult to maintain the highest standards for everyone. (And you can't just keep positions open for years while you look for the perfect candidate, since that would compromise the lab's mission.)
Researchers at national labs in the U.S. do not have tenure, and their jobs are subject to availability of funding and political interference. In some cases they face as much or more pressure to get grants as faculty do.
In his book A PhD Is Not Enough, physicist Peter Feibelman argues that government labs are a superior place to start one's research career. He argues that assistant professors (at universities) are burdened with too much busy work: committees, advising, creating lecture notes, teaching, and grading.
If academia is a merit-based organization, then prestige comes from one work (publication record). In my mind this means finding the best environment for research. Feibelman argues that a scientist's optimal path is to establish one's research at a national lab, then move to a university.
This is interesting, but does it address the title question?
Stereotypically, I would say your perception is correct: university faculty are (on average) slightly more outstanding than their colleagues at national labs. Why is this the case when science is easier at national labs?
A national lab researcher has one main job (research) with a token amount of administration on the side. A university faculty has more roles: research, mentoring grad students & postdocs, teaching class, advising students, and (more complex) university & departmental administration.
Scientists with minimal people skills are often proud of shirking extraneous administrative duties "to get some 'real' work done." Those with this attitude will likely find a national lab to be a better fit, while those with higher EQ will preferentially select faculty jobs. Perhaps this selection mechanism accounts for university faculty members being more "outstanding" than colleagues working in government labs.
But what might attract faculty to such a disadvantageous work environment?
superior university architecture & aesthetics,
convenient university location (universities (usually older than labs) had the city grow up around them),
greater variety of culture & the arts,
teaching/mentoring students is rewarding,
teaching responsibilities offset grant writing pressure,
cheep graduate students can be an effective source of labor,
faculty jobs are more abundant than those at national laboratory, and
the possibility of tenure.
(The University of Tennessee at Knoxville & Oak Ridge National Laboratory furnished me with these stereotypes.)
don't have to pee in a cup (http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/31/nation/na-nuke31)
I think you have an overly rosy view of the work of a researcher at a national lab. Beyond the postdoc level, researchers at national labs spend a lot of time on project management, line-managing people, mentoring grad students and postdocs, dealing with government and industry clients, and complex organisational administration (developing strategic plans, impact and vision statements, risk management plans, etc). There is often more paperwork and process e.g. for travel and publishing because we are accountable politically. Teaching is the only think we needn't do.
There is a big difference between the search processes at Universities and National Research Labs. In an open University call you may be going up against 100+ qualified applicants so even getting to the interview is difficult. In my field everyone of those applicants will be doing research in an area relevant to the department, have a strong publication and funding history, and some teaching experience. For a targeted call, the search might be limited to a subfield, for example an Psychology Department might do a search for a Cognitive Psychologist. The search might even get so specific that it is for a Cognitive Psychologist with interests in memory. For a research lab the search will be even more specific. For example, it might be for a Cognitive Psychologist that uses fMRI to understand memory issues of children with ADHD. If the National Lab search is lucky, they will get 5 qualified applicants, so getting to the interview is not that tough. National Labs are more likely to have top people in their sub-sub-sub------subfield than Universities, but that person may not be particularly strong relative to others in their field in general.
I wonder if that is true in general. As a counterexample, the British Met Office for its scientist positions in its recruitment typically requires only evidence of scientific analysis skills, scientific communication skills, a good understanding of physics in general, without requiring specific atmospheric experience. Indeed, I know more than one person employed as a scientist at national meteorological institutes, whose prior experience was in space science, particle physics, or other fields where applied research may be sparser.
@gerrit looking quickly at their 21 science fellows, which they equate to a full Professor, I found what seems like complete publication histories on 12 of them. Of those 12, 9 had 50+ publications. Obviously that doesn't say anything about quality, but it suggests to me that they are holding their own.
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38679 | Do price and value of degrees correlate much?
Many American colleges and universities have very high tuition fees, in particular at prestigious universities. For example, Harvard University in 2014-2015 is US$43,938 for tuition and US$58,607 for tuition, room, board and fees combined. Not coincidentally, the total US study debt is currently US$1.34 * 1012 and growing.
Many European universities have very low or no tuition fees, but their degrees are by no means worthless. To consider an arbitrary ranking, consider the list of Nobel laureates by university affiliation: tuition fees in the top ranking institution range from $0 to $50,000+. Personally, I am a post-doc at a reasonably well-known north-American university. I paid several 1000€ for my Bachelor's degree, 0$ for my Master's degree, yet I work along people who have likely paid far more. Have those co-workers wasted money? Or, to formulate the question more precisely:
Among high-ranking research universities, do those with high tuition fees perform significantly better than those with low or no tuition fees? Do their alumni fare better? “Better” may be measured by: current research output (high-impact papers published), number of winners of the Nobel prize, Fields medal, and other highly prestigious awards; and for those not staying in academia, lifetime earnings of alumni, or other measures. This should be possible to investigate
Maybe this question is of interest to folks at [Economics.SE] as well.
Just a suggestion: We have [tag:economics] tag on site, please use it if it is relevant to your question.
It should be noted that while the tuition for Harvard is huge, not everyone actually pays that much. If anything, the sort of folks likely to win the Nobel prize or other awards are the sorts who are likely to get full scholarships wherever they want to go.
@EnthusiasticStudent That seems to be more about the study/research of economics as a field, rather than the economics of academia itself.
@Telastyn That is so. I have never studied exactly how those scholarships work, i.e. how much is donation, how much a donation conditional upon successful completion, how much a (subsidised) loan. I'm making the silent assumption that study debts in North America are significantly higher than in low-tuition countries in Europe, but I have no evidence that this is indeed the case. If higher tuition is offset by higher (and more competitive) scholarships, then maybe study debts correlate less with tuition fees than I might think.
@gerrit See my answer below: need-based scholarship policies mean study debt is largely uncorrelated with tuition fees.
High cost and high quality are not related in the United States.
First, remember that there is a large fixed base cost of room and board, which amounts to around $10K-$15K, depending on location. Just a quick glance at a few top schools will show that the cost of tuition beyond that is correlated primarily with state-run vs. private rather than quality:
Harvard: $43,938
MIT: $43,720
Berkeley: $12,972
University of Michigan: $13,977 (in-state)
Also, remember that many of the high-priced colleges do need-based rather than merit-based financial aid, so these numbers should be seen as a "ceiling" rather than an expected price: even a super-genius will pay based on what their parents make, rather than based on how smart they are. That same Harvard article linked in the original post notes:
During the 2012-2013 academic year, students from families with incomes below
$65,000, and with assets typical for that income level, will generally pay nothing toward the cost of attending Harvard College. Families with incomes between $65,000 and $150,000 will contribute from 0 to 10 percent of income, depending on individual circumstances. Significant financial aid also is available for families above those income ranges.
Thus, even at a super-expensive place like Harvard, the cost of education is completely uncorrelated with its quality.
Interesting, but doesn't really address the core of my question. (1) How do you assess the quality of those institutes? (2) I can see the link between need-based/merit-based scholarship and education quality only if quality of education is measured by the quality of the students. That's a different discussion. (3) I don't think value of degree = quality of education. Perhaps some expensive institute has OK education, but excellent reputation and networking opportunities. Or a place in rural Anatolia has amazingly good teachers, but no-one knows the place, so the degree value is reduced.
Toward (1) and (3): All of the places that I listed are widely recognized as giving high-value degrees in science and engineering fields. You can use whatever metric you feel like, and they'll all come up near the top. Toward (2), I don't understand your point?
I don't challenge that they all give high-value degrees. But do you mean they're all in practice of roughly equal (high) value? I think we need more data points than four top-ranking universities to answer my question. Toward (2), what I meant is that I don't understand why you brought up scholarship criteria at all — how is this related to the price/value-correlation question?
Please feel free to extend the dataset: what you will see is that, for science and engineering at least, there is no correlation; I just picked some obvious examples. As for scholarships: the reason I brought it up is that it affects the de facto cost, pertaining to you question about wasting money.
This is interesting. So why put such a high sticker price on it if it will be discounted anyway? I can't imagine that, if there are significant aid packages at above $150k, that there are many people who qualify for the full rate. Is it really worth putting such a high price up if only a tiny fraction of the students will pay that much?
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110461 | Book of Abstracts?
So the conference that I am going to present a paper is going to publish a book of abstracts. Is this considered the proceedings of the conference? Or can I still grab my paper and send to a peer reviewed publication?
My field is management / social sciences.
Oh I am sorry, my field is management / social sciences. So, if I have an entry in the book of abstracts, it is still ok (there is no conflict) by trying to have it published in a peer reviewed journal?
In Social Sciences, conference "papers" are more like "talks" and are less like "publications". You'd be mad to do the work of getting a talk together and not publish it elsewhere. No conflict whatsoever, what you propose is the normal pathway.
You can still send it to a peer reviewed publication, and should. Conferences in my field (planning) are often used as a mechanism to obtain feedback on a draft paper. I'm aware of no example where 'conference proceedings' count against re-publication. My whole department submits papers for presentation to the Transportation Research Board (TRB), which then creates a compedium of the whole paper, and distributes it by CD. This is not considered publication, and most/many of the papers submitted to TRB are then revamped and published elsewhere. (TRB does cream off a limited number of papers to be published, formally, in the Transportation Research Record).
If you read the rules of the journals, you will see that there is actually a generally accepted rule. That rule is:
Your submitted journal paper should include at least 25% new material from the conference paper
So, you should not simply republish the same paper, rather you should add something to it.
The logic goes like this: You have a well thought out idea. You write it up and present it at a conference. During the conference, you get a discussion going about your paper and workout some details that you might not have considered originally. Then you go back, add (or clarify) a little bit (25%) and then publish it as a journal article.
This is extremely common in business management.
Someone from your specific field should confirm this, but in general, submitting to a journal should not be a problem.
However, do not use the same title, so that indexing/search issues don't crop up later. Similarly, you may like to modify the abstract a bit so that the two are not identical (which they shouldn't be anyway, the journal paper would typically be an extended/more detailed study).
There should be no trouble with exactly the same title and abstract if the poster wants. There are no indexing issues as the paper is not yet published.
Social Scientist here.
Presenting at a Social Sciences conference rarely counts as publishing a paper, and when it does, you'll know, as you'll have gone through peer review at that point. This usually happens after the conference and results in an edited volume (so, a book) or a journal special issue. "Conference proceedings" are rare in Social Sciences.
The conference book of abstracts is NOT the conference proceedings, it is just a guide for people who are attending the conference. Your paper is unpublished and you can submit it for publication wherever you like.
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96576 | How is the PhDs' (in Logics in Math) employment rate?
I am an undergraduate student who is majored in Math now. I plan to continue my phD degree in Logics in Math. My ultimate job plan is to be professor (I know instructor first). So I really want to learn the employment of PhDs in this major.
Thank you for your time.
What do you mean? The proportion of logic PhDs who become professors? I don't think such data is available, but you can try looking to see where the students of professors you're interest in working with went.
100% of university professors in this area are employed.
The NSF appears to have produced quite a comprehensive report on this topic, although it only considers 2015 graduates, which is perhaps slightly too recent to indicate long-term success, given the number of years one may expect to spend in postdoc positions without ever actually gaining a faculty position. https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17306/static/report/nsf17306.pdf#page12
I have a Ph.D. that you could think of as a Ph.D. in Logics in Math. Turns out Computer Science has much more money, jobs, positions, and supports than Math., so, depending on the precise field, you could very well brand yourself as a "Logics in CS" professor, and have access to the CS job market, which is better. For a better picture, look at http://cra.org/resources/taulbee-survey/ (In some cases, you can skip the instructor part, if you get post-doc position and then assistant prof.)
Again, which country are you from/hope to get a job in?! Otherwise, your question is too broad. If it's France for instance I think they have quite a lot of people working in logic and related area.
@dendodge, NSF, is for which country? The OP didn't specify where he/she is from.
@Dilworth That's US data, simply because it was the first Google result and I took a punt on it being the most relevant to people here (but not myself!).
"Logics in Math" isn't something that someone in the United States is likely to say (the plural sounds slightly awkward and "mathematical logic" would be more common). To me that usage sounds more like England (where "maths" with the plural is common). Just a guess of course, since OP hasn't specified in their profile.
For mathematics in the US, the American Mathematical Society collects a great deal of data (about employment among many other things) in their Annual Survey of the Mathematical Sciences.
With respect to your specific question, unfortunately they lump logic together with discrete mathematics, combinatorics, and computer science; presumably logic alone would have too few data points to be very informative. (The inclusion of computer science here doesn't mean the AMS thinks that computer science is one small subfield of mathematics. That refers, I think, only to people working on theoretical computer science who received their degrees in departments of mathematics.)
This pdf has the table that most directly addresses your question, for 2014-15 doctoral recipients.
When you say "math" you will need to employ one of the first lessons that I believe is fundamental to the discipline: defining. With this, then you can start to build and focus in on your topic of choice: employment rates.
With this said, your best bet (if in the US) is to take a look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In this case, the search parameters are for mathematicians, which loosely covers your search criteria. If you wanted to narrow down your career field, you can select a specific type to consider your aspirations and potential career given that different fields might have differing degree requirements (bachelors, masters, Phd etc.)
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56854 | Would lackluster grades in Applied math hurt an application for Pure Math PhD programs?
The question is pretty much the title. To start off, I'm not really worried about my record in pure mathematics classes/research. However, solely for the purpose of having a career backup I've also picked up a second major in applied math and several CS courses. I generally have little passion for these classes and ended up with a fair share of B's. My overall GPA is still fairly high but I was wondering if these grades would hurt my application to pure math programs and if I should address this in my personal statement.
you don't say why you don't like applied maths/CS classes. Pure maths research can be very fiddly and grotty. So if it's that you like studying nice theories, you won't like pure maths research either.
@MarkJoshi I did not think that information would be relevant to answering the question but it's simply preference. I think I have seen enough nasty PDE estimates to understand that pure math also gets fiddly and grotty and I do not find this to be a turn off.
The GPA is certainly one of the competitive aspects of an application for a graduate program in mathematics (and presumably, in most other academic fields), so anything which brings down your GPA hurts your application some positive amount. Lackluster grades in applied math and CS are probably going to hurt more than lackluster grades in history and cinema studies.
As is often the case with admissions advice, it's hard to be more precise because the individual admissions committee gets to make up its own mind on how strongly to weight everything. (And this may not be a bad thing: this is what allows one school of a certain caliber to accept your application while another school of the exact same caliber rejects it.)
For this issue, the structure of the department and university may play a role. Namely, for undergraduate programs at US colleges and universities (your profile lists you as living in the United States) it is relatively rare for pure math and applied math to be truly separate majors. In my department for instance applied math is an "area of emphasis" within the math major. Yet more commonly, there's just one major and students show where they fall on the spectrum by their choice of classes. If the graduate program to which you're applying is really just a pure math department (again, relatively rare at American universities, though my own graduate program was like this), then they may (perhaps) be used to ignoring or discounting applied math courses. If there's just one math department then admissions faculty who look at your transcript are probably going to view the applied math classes as math classes, and the amount that you will get dinged for your performance will probably be non-negligible.
Now comes the time to say that I find your overall approach curious. You should not major in a subject for which you have "little passion". If you know you are not interested in something then the obvious -- a bit narrow-minded, but strategically sound -- plan is to take the minimal number of courses required in that subject but make sure that you do well in them. (Most often required undergraduate level courses at US universities are not too challenging for the type of students who are going on to graduate study.) You don't like applied math or CS but you might, as a consolation prize, want a career in them? This doesn't really scan. I think it is much better to pursue serious career goals one at a time: if you don't get into graduate school for pure math you can still get a real world job with a major in pure math, and if at that time you discover that necessity has given birth to interest in these other fields: so be it, you can learn more about them then.
You ask whether you should address this in your personal statement. Perhaps, but since I find your explanation a bit strange I'm not sure what you should write. Consider providing less pointed information: e.g. you were considering a technical / industrial career until you discovered the depth of your interest in pure mathematics....Yeah, I find it tough to put a good spin on your situation that is faithful to the information given. So a brief "sorry, these grades are anomalous; what I really like is this and notice how stellar my performance is there" may be the way to go.
Good luck.
sorry, these grades are anomalous; what I really like is this and notice how stellar my performance is there I really like this explanation, honest and direct.
Thank you for the honest response. To be honest, most of these courses were taken under parental pressure and misunderstanding of the job market. Additionally I was able to pick up a second major in lieu of some general education requirements necessary to graduate. I decided to do so because I find it much easier to focus on 3-4 pure math classes and get a B or higher in applied math than focus on math classes and get a decent grade in a paper heavy class like literature.
My parents asked me — Oh god no. Do not blame your parents for your grades. You took the classes; you earned the grades. Own them.
@jeffe I in no way, shape or form blame my parents for my performance. I will likely not even mention any of these grades in my SOP. However, Pete said he found my approach curious and I wanted to shed light on why somebody may take classes uninteresting to them. I think my reasons are legitimate.
B's in the major you are not planning to pursue in grad school are not a disaster.
Sure, in grad school you don't want to have multiple B's in your transcript. But we're talking about your undergrad transcript here. B's are allowed.
Your strength in pure math will be apparent in your pure math grades, your math GRE, your undergrad research experience if you have any (this item is optional, so if you don't have it, don't fret), and your essay. I recommend that you speak in your essay about what really gets you fired up, in positive terms. (Leave out anything about how if you never have to write or debug another large piece of code again it will be too soon.)
There are plenty of schools where pure math and applied math are in separate departments. To be on the safe side, make sure at least one of your applications is to such a school.
And tell your parents (who of course want the best for you, but perhaps are not trained mathematicians), real men and women do pure math! (I'm saying that out of support for what you like. I personally like applied math best -- but everybody's different!)
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108466 | What do people with bachelor's degrees in humanities actually end up doing?
If someone majors in political science or international relations or history, what do they end up actually doing as a career?
I've found numerous sites that give the obvious answers what they can do, but to date no site that says what they actual do.
It's all fine and dandy thinking that an International Studies degree will prepare you for a career as a diplomat, but if 95% of graduates end up selling life insurance, or filling out form 2773A-11 for some bureaucracy, I may want to make a different set of choices.
I have a bachelor's degree in History and one in Philosophy. I am now assistant professor in Computer Science. Even if you end up doing something that is not directly connected to your humanities degree, they can help you to face a variety of situation, develop some skills, and I like to believe that they can sometimes make you a better human beings.
@aparente001 I have reviewed 2638 Closed Votes on Workplace SE. Based on my experience, this question will be closed there for certain.
I'm not aware of any large-scale surveys on the topic.
However, many universities conduct regular surveys on their alumni, to understand where they end up working. You can find them on Google. Here is one example from the University of Stockholm on political science alumni:
Public administration, state level (44 percent)
Public administration, local and regional level (14 percent)
Private companies (14 percent)
NGO's (5 percent)
Universities and university colleges (5 percent)
Political party/party organisation (4 percent)
Think tanks (4 percent)
International organisations (EU, UN, etc.) (3 percent)
Media (2 percent).
As you can see, in this particular University, the outcome is indeed what one would expect.
The reason certain courses (engineering, law, medicine) are referred to as 'professional courses' is that they prepare one for a particular profession, and that is the primary goal of the course.
In any other course, it is a good idea to assume that you are being taught various skills, but not necessarily being prepared for a career. To expect a career out of a humanities degree may therefore be misguided. Best to look at it as a stepping stone that could lead you in a multitude of directions.
Although a specific job path for a humanities graduate can be wildly different from person to person. Many jobs in policy, research or marketing are good choices for a well-rounded humanities grad. The degree program is meant to help you learn how to communicate clearly, think critically and make reasoned choices -- skills that can be beneficial for just about any career. Here are a few of the possible job choices for humanities majors:
Craft and Fine Artists ,
Social and Human Service Assistants ,
Community Health Workers ,
Advertising and sales agents ... etc.
Teaching, art historian at a museum , archeologist and so on might be a better option
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94957 | What should I do if my admission letter doesn't say anything about funding?
I have received my admission letter for a graduate program. But there isn't any information about funding. I have talked to my professor about the availability of funding. what should I say to my professor?
What did you discuss with your professor?
I contacted him beforehand and he gave me a project and he told me that if do it properly he will give me a funding. I did it well. and then he asked me to apply that university
It is very common that an admission letter itself doesn't contain any information about funding. However, it is assumed (at least in the US) that information about funding will be made available to you well before you have to give an accept/decline decision. This often comes in a separate letter/email, sometimes within 1 day of the first letter, and sometimes more than a week after - all depends on the University processes and timelines.
Regardless, it is perfectly acceptable to contact (call or email) the University to inquire about funding offer timelines. Usually you would ask the graduate program administrator, and they can answer or direct you to who you should contact instead. It's fine to ask the professor, but they might not know and thus haven't answered (they may very well have seen your email and sent off an email of their own and are awaiting a proper answer). Funding in academia is often weirdly complicated, and often requires multiple calls and emails to multiple people to figure out all the exact details. Often this process is made invisible to the student.
If you've had silence from all channels for over a week - or if there is some very pressing deadline approaching for you - you should re-attempt contact and politely inform them of the deadline you are under, and your need to hear about funding prior to that time.
As to what to say to your professor, if you haven't contact them already, it's usually safe to confirm you received your offer of admission, say thanks and express that you were excited/glad/pleased to receive it, and note it didn't mention funding. Then just ask about the status of funding available for you - and that's pretty much it.
Congratulations on your offer of admission, and good luck!
Thanks, is it a polite email for the professor?
I wanted to take the time to thank you for everything that you’ve done for me the past 4 months. Your support has been greatly appreciated, especially during the college application process.
I hope you don’t mind my getting in touch, but I’d like to inquire if there would be any financial support this study?
Sincerely,
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66567 | When is the best time to ask for letters of reference?
When should one ask for letters recommendations of the people of one's choice? E.g. when applying for a PhD program, should you ask for two or three letters all at once or should one collect a letter immediately after one has finished something significant like an undergraduate thesis, an (under)graduate research paper or Master's thesis, so that one has all the letters together covering maybe 2 or 3 years when applying for a PhD position?
I used both scenarios on different occasions. It is really up to you and how close you (know) and will be around your referees
agreed with TheFireGuy. if you're in, say, a small STEM department, your good work and efforts won't be forgotten - at least not for awhile. But, if you are talking about being a student at a large business school, with hundreds of students in those finance and economics lectures, then you might want to set up something like a credential file to be kept at the school, so that you waive your right to read your profs' letters -- confidential letters of reference about your work are what's meaningful, and grad schools will look for this.
So, to summarize: you recommend asking for the letters immediately if the risk exists that they won't remember one's work after several years and asking for the letters when time comes if there's a good chance that they do remember. In any case, the letter must be sent by the recommending person and can't just be taken home and put next to the undergraduate thesis until one wants to use them for application?
You can choose either of the options, but I would wait at least till I've had quite a few accomplishment. However, some professors take a long time to write, so it would be good to approach them at least a few months before you start applying. Letter of recommendation can be collected and filed till the time you need them.
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2428 | Can one's PhD work be an extension of their Masters research?
I am currently pursuing a Masters degree in Literature, and I see potential in further research on the current topic of my dissertation for a PhD in the future. I have been told that an Honours thesis cannot be used as a foundation for a Masters dissertation, so i am wondering if a Masters dissertation can be used as a base for a PhD dissertation later on.
Sorry? Why can't an honours thesis be used as the foundation for a master's dissertation?
Seeing your question, I guess this can vary from field to field, but the practice I've seen (engineering, neuroscience, and psychology) is that the PhD work often is an extension of the masters research. The masters work explores one facet of the research problem, and the PhD thesis explores two or three more. This is often a practical matter, as sometimes the masters is one step towards the eventual granting of a PhD.
In general the master's thesis and the doctoral thesis should not be on exactly the same topic. On the other hand, it is entirely rational for earlier theses to provide the inspiration for later work in one's career.
What you can't really do is retread the same ground—you will need to develop a different topic, with different literature citations and original research. But the move doesn't have to be radical—in literature, for instance, you don't have to go from Sophocles to Virginia Woolf. But you probably shouldn't do The Winter's Tale for your master's thesis and then Cymbeline for your PhD thesis, either.
Why not? As long as the PhD thesis contributes enough new ideas/results, why does it matter whether it's on exactly the same topic as the MS thesis?
It can be done, but you do run the risk of boxing yourself in.
I have never heard of any institution imposing a restriction such that your doctoral research is in a different field to your Master's research.
As long as your PhD research is a significant body of original research that greatly extends your Master's experience and appropriately cites any previous findings, there should not be a problem.
Indeed, in some countries it is possible to convert your Master's research into a PhD. For instance, if you are 6 months into a project and decide you want to greatly extend the scope of your research, you may be allowed a conversion. Bear in mind that where I live, a Master's degree is not a requirement to begin a PhD (you only need an honours degree, which is 1 year of postgraduate lectures and a small research project).
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557 | Alphabetical author list in non-alphabetical journal
(A followup for this question)
Say your field's convention is to have alphabetical-ordered author list. What should you do when your work is accepted to a (multidisciplinary) journal in which the convention is to order the author by contribution (e.g. Nature)?
My first stop would be checking if the journal has any particular authorship policies. If it does, follow them - if its not the way your field does it, welcome to the perils of interdisciplinary research.
From there, in my mind, it splits into two questions:
Is it a field-specific paper that happens to be going in an interdisciplinary journal. For example, are all the authors from Alphabetical Author List Field? Then put it in that field's ordering.
Is it genuinely interdisciplinary (multiple fields with different traditions)? I'd probably default to the non-alphabetical ordering scheme, as among people I work with its the more common ordering scheme, and those who come from other fields that don't do that are generally pretty understanding. Or, if the authorship list is small enough, see if there's a clever ordering of author names that gets everyone what they need (it happens).
If it's a well-known journal like Nature, then I would follow their convention. Everybody who reads the article will assume that you do.
Why is this better than having a note saying "alphabetical author list"? Wouldn't that possibly initiate an ego battle?
The note assumes people will read it. Most people won't, especially when skimming the abstract, or the entry on your CV.
The CV is a great example: shuold you re-order the authors list when put there? Otherwise some of you papers will have alphabetical ordering and some not, which might be confusing (for both sides).
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111737 | UK Postdoc - Is salary negotiation even possible?
I have an interview later this week and the advertisement goes something like:
Grade 7: £31,604 - £38,833 p.a.
While talking to a postdoc at my own department, she told me that the scale wouldn't actually matter, that I'll always be placed on the lowest possible spine on that grade and it's just to show that every year I can move up a spine. She said even attempting to negotiate would be seen as a major red flag by the interviewers.
I wondered if anyone here can confirm this. It'd be amazing if you've been hiring postdocs in the UK so you definitely experienced this. Is there a way to be placed somewhere else on that scale, let's say on £35K?
Disclaimer: I'm not greedy or material-minded, but life is expensive especially with two kids and being a single parent. This position is also in a pretty expensive area.
In what sense did she mean not wanting to live in poverty is a "red flag"? It outs you as not being independently wealthy?
@ASimpleAlgorithm: It's usually a "red flag" when you don't know how things work in your discipline/area. There's an element of in-group cliquishness to it (you need to know people who can explain it to you, or to have worked in a similar place before), but it's also a legitimate indicator that your expectations might be out of sync with the work, which can lead to unpleasantness (will you also raise a fuss when you discover you won't get a personal secretary?).
See also https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/63386/postdoc-salary-negotiation-uk
I went into my negotiations with the demand that they exceed the pay of other offers that I had received (for a position in the UK). The point being that I see no reason why you would not be able to.
Just two comments about the accuracy of your friend’s statement (since my answer is already too long): she’s wrong on both counts. First off, no, an attempt to negotiate is not seen as a red flag. It may be off-putting because it’s unexpected but any reasonable person will support it. Secondly, you move up at least one point on the scale per year: it’s at your line manager’s discretion to move you up one, two or three points (at the University of Cambridge, but other institutes have similar rules). That said, 35k is pretty unrealistic. Expect an increase of one or two points at start.
@ASimpleAlgorithm a £32k salary is not "living in poverty", it corresponds to a post-tax take of £24k, only marginally below the median UK post-tax household (not individual) income of £27,300. It will go less far in Cambridge or London but let's not pretend this is a poverty wage.
@ASimmons I assume the comment was hyperbole. But for a bit of perspective, UK postdoc salaries are absolute not competitive. Neither internationally with academic positions, not nationally, compared with industry. Most people will say “that’s normal” but it’s really not. It’s only normal because we have been conditioned to expect it. UK postdoc salaries are p*ss poor.
@ASimmons We all know young researchers at the cutting edge of their field with a PhD deserve <90% of the median national wage. No wonder Veronica wants to negotiate
@KonradRudolph That's a brave position and you're right that collectively we need to overcome the unfairness to academics in the UK. However, I would not dare a single parent of two to walk away from an offer only because it is not competitive with another offer (s)he may never receive.
~36kEUR is indeed lousy. In Germany you'd start at no less than 44k, easily 50k if you, like most people, were employed at a German university during your doctoral studies. But forget about negotiating about it.
@Karl Most people were not employed at a German university during their doctoral studies. Non-Germans are people, too.
@DmitrySavostyanov Really?
@AzorAhai It's less than a PhD would make in industry sure. And by a lot, as well. But two people on that amount make in the 93rd percentile for household income (source https://www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/). While there are many places that offer higher postdoc salaries, plenty do not- I understand France pays similar amounts to the UK, for example.
@ASimmons. The indvidual median post-tax income in the UK is around £18,000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom#Taxable_income). A single, childless person earning £24k post-tax would be in the 71st centile. Well above poverty. I earned £28k in my last postdoc, 5 years ago. In 3 years I built up £10k in savings living in Oxford.
@IanSudbery You say “childless person”. What about a single parent with two children (i.e. OP)? Childcare in Cambridge (like, presumably, Oxford) is expensive. OP’s salary won’t even cover two places in a nursery here, let alone rent and food. I’ve no idea how poverty is defined in this regard but OP will need to rely on an additional income, or government help. Sounds like poverty to me. :-(
Okay, I missed that part about being a single parent with two children. The IFS income distribution site puts you in the 41st centile in this case (it accounts for children, single/married status etc). I think technically poverty is defined as being in the bottom 20%. So yes, a single parent with two kids is definitely going to struggle on any postdoc salary in the UK, particularly in the golden triangle.
@KonradRudolph I don't see how that is even part of the equation, you can't expect much success if you go into a normal industry negotiation if you start with "I deserve more because I'm a single parent with two kids".
@pipe That wasn’t my point. But since you mention it: yes, that is a valid (and compelling) argument in industry salary negotiations (“I’d love to work here. You’d love to have me. Here are my financial needs.”). See also https://workplace.stackexchange.com/a/114782/14546 — note that the answer is about the US (and mostly in the past) but in other countries this still happens to this day. I know several employers (including my previous employer) that pay a premium per child as a matter of policy.
@ASimmons On your "not a poverty wage" comment, I am in the 89th salary percentile (a fair bit more than the OP's current prospect) however am the sole worker in my household (my partner cannot work due to ill health). I have two young children to support. Whilst I am fortunate to earn a salary higher than most, it is a struggle to stretch it to the end of the month. The question makes reference to the OP's personal situation, therefore you cannot state that this is not a poverty wage when although I am not a single parent, it is easy, at least for me, to see the difficulties they may face.
There is no reason why a post doc cannot be appointed at a higher point on the spine if there is money there, that said, rarely is there money available. The number of people doing multiple post docs in the UK is smaller than in the US, and they usually stay at the same school. That means they often can be appointed to a higher grade. Therefore grants for post docs usually budget for the lowest salary and normal progression. A school or university funded postion would have more flexibility, but the head of school is not going to authorize more money from their budget.
I would not bring up the salary until after an offer is made. Once an offer is made, it cannot really hurt to say "hey, I deserve to be at the top of the scale since ...". They will then laugh and say you are right, but that is all they can offer.
Nice answer (+1), though I think there is a danger in waiting until after an offer is made. In my personal opinion, it is better to put forward expectations up front. There is also an "anchoring" effect in making it clear up front that you are worth more than the lowest offer. I would think that once they make you an offer at the lowest level, it is probably hard to negotiate up.
@Ben the negotiations are not going to be successful. If you have minimum requirements for an offer, then state those up front and don't waste people's time. If you will take the lowest offer under the right circumstances, then don't shoot yourself in the foot,
The number of people doing multiple post docs in the UK is smaller than in the US, citation needed. My anecdotal evidence says the opposite (UK group with 10 postdocs at a department with ~120 postdocs).
@gerrit I cannot give you a citation, but in my field in the US it is unheard of to go straight from a PhD to a faculty position while in the UK pepe often do. Someone with 5 years of post doc experience would almost be guaranteed a faculty position in the UK.
@StrongBad Maybe we're experienced with entirely different fields. I know plenty of people with >10 years of postdoc experience who are not competitive for lectureships / faculty positions.
I would love to see a citation for the claim that “grants for post docs usually budget for the lowest salary and normal progression” because this contradicts my experience 100%. This whole answer seems to effectively say that you shouldn’t bother negotiating since it won’t work. Again, this is completely contradicted by my experience, and seems like bad advice.
Yes, you can negotiate your salary …
I, and several of my friends, successfully negotiated an increased initial postdoc salary in the UK.
… but it’s hard
First off, the timing is awkward: It’s altogether common to start your postdoc work without a contract in hand. At this point your chance for negotiation is effectively over (or at least greatly diminished). Many postdocs even start without having formally defended their PhD, which makes negotiation even harder (because your previous salary is very low, and you don’t yet have the degree, which determines the salary).
In addition, there isn’t a good time during the interview to bring up the salary. This is also true in industry but it’s even harder in postdoc interviews: depending on the circumstances there might not even be a formal interview.1 My advice is to bring it up before you commit, even hypothetically, to starting the postdoc. This may seem obvious but it’s not.
Secondly, you are negotiating with two distinct parties: your prospective group leader, who will also be your line manager, as well as the University’s HR department.
In my experience, your future PI is probably happy to support your demands, if they’re at all interested in hiring you. In fact, if the PI is blocking the salary negotiation I’d count that as a major red flag.
The University HR department, on the other hand, aims to keep cost low. They want you to justify every single increase. I had it easy, I was able to provide a salary statement from my previous “bridging postdoc”, which happened to be outrageously high by UK standards.2 Prepare to provide an extensive record of your work experience prior to, during and after your PhD. This seems to be the single most relevant argument for an increased starting salary scale point.
The easiest way of increasing your starting salary would be to get hired as a senior postdoc. But this effectively requires either extensive previous postdoctoral experience (which you don’t seem to have), or the support of your former PI; and your future line manager will still need to provide compelling reasons to HR.
You should negotiate your salary
Universities don’t really expect postdocs to negotiate their salaries. They expect them to accept whatever offer lands on their table. Some institutes3 go to great lengths to avoid having to negotiate, for instance by billing the postdoc as a “postdoctoral trainee”, rather than a full fellowship or research position, or by refusing to acknowledge relevant work experience before the completion of the PhD.4
I find this unacceptable, and strongly recommend pushing back. Prepare to walk away from an offer that refuses to acknowledge your work experience in a salary negotiation, or which pretend that you’re still a “trainee” after ten years5 of University education. This isn’t being “materially minded”, it’s valuing your own worth. Postdoctoral salaries in the UK are low enough as it is, compared to cost of living. Other European countries pay a lot more.
In sum, I strongly advise everybody looking for a postdoc to negotiate their starting salary.
1 For the position that I ended up accepting, I didn’t have a formal interview: I met the PI pre-interview and then scheduled a separate day to present my research to his group, and talk to its members, without the PI present at any point. After that I got a formal offer by letter. Luckily I had already mentioned the salary to the PI beforehand. So when I received the offer which put me into the minimum salary point, I replied to HR (CC’ing the PI) with my demands.
2 I did the bridging postdoc in the UK but working for an international organisation so I was paid a salary that’s competitive internationally, which the UK postdoc salary is decidedly not (my bridging postdoc salary was ~ 38k GBP; for comparison, the starting postdoc salary at the University of Cambridge was ~ 29k GBP at the time).
3 E.g. the Francis Crick Institute in London. Shame on them.
4 Even if you have several years’ worth of relevant work experience pre-PhD, the Crick Institute’s internal rules ignore this for the purpose of salary calculations.
5 Assuming undergrad, master & PhD.
HR will often tell a PI that the appointment should be at spine point X+3 and ignore the fact that there is only enough grant money for an appointment at X. I have never felt bad about blocking the salary demands. The grant is what it is and the offer is what it is. I feel bad that I can only ask for so much grant funding in my field, but that is a hard battle to fight.
@StrongBad Sure, there needs to be money for it but my experience somewhat contradicts yours (this is probably field specific): grants budget for bigger salaries, it’s HR which blocks this increase. This was explicitly the case for me.
@StrongBad makes a point that deserves emphasizing: if a position is paid out of grant funding, the total pot of money available for salary is often fixed. So, negotiating salary up may imply negotiating contract length down...
@avid As mentioned in my previous comment, in my experience the grant size is hardly ever the limiting factor. Furthermore, there’s other sources of money. If a PI wants to hire you, they may have ways of finding more money (that’s their job, after all). They may not be able to, of course. But this will be made clear during the negotiation. It never hurts to bring the question up.
@KonradRudolph The PI job is (a) to propose research, (b) to find funding and (c) to make research happen. At the interview stage, (a) and (b) are done. Finding extra money takes extra time and may delay the production of actual results.
I have not been on a hiring committee in academia, so take my answer with a grain-of-salt. However, I see no particular reason that an applicant could not negotiate their starting-point in a salary scale if the applicant has appropriate qualifications/experience to justify being on the high end of the scale. Universities hire new staff at all sorts of levels, and if they are willing to hire staff across different Grade levels, there is no reason to think that they would be unwilling to hire across different scale levels within a Grade level, particularly if it allows them to attract a good hire. (Bear in mind that there may be budget constraints that constrain what the panel can offer, but if they advertise a particular salary range, they should be able to make offers in that range.)
If you have not previously worked as a postdoc or equivalent, then it is likely that you will not be able to make a strong case for a higher level on the scale. In that case, it is probably not a good idea to seek a higher offer, and it may come off badly for you. However, if you already have substantial experience at this level of appointment (e.g., having done a postdoc or equivalent at another university), and you are close to the requirements of a Grade 8 hire, then you could point out your additional experience and skills, and seek an offer at the higher end of the Grade 7 scale. Basically, if you want to seek an offer at the high end of the scale, you need to be an applicant who is close to meeting the requirements of a hire at the next grade level. Be clear about this, and make sure you have judged things correctly, and can back this up.
If this is a situation where you think you might be a good enough candidate to be given an offer at the higher end of that scale, you should obtain a copy of the university's position descriptions of what it expects from a Grade 7 academic and what it expects from a Grade 8 academic. Check with the specific university you are applying for, but here is an example of grade descriptions from the University of Edinburgh. Once you have this information, you now have a basis for determining whether you are near to meeting the requirements for a Grade 8 appointment . If you are close to these requirements (by the university's own description) then that would make a reasonable case for seeking an offer at the high end of Grade 7.
One final piece of advice: if you are considering doing this, make sure you look at it from the University's point of view. Don't think about it from the point of view of your needs (single parent, kids, expensive area); think about it from the point of view of the University's needs. What is so great about you that you would be the exception here; the person who comes at the mid-level or high-level on the scale? What sets you apart from the other applicants they will get, that shows that you are much closer to a Grade 8 hire? If you can answer these questions soundly, then you have a reasonable case for seeking a higher offer. If not, it is probably best not to do that.
My personal experience: In academia I came in at the bottom of the pay scale. However, I have personally applied for a position (outside of academia) where I made it clear at the interview that I would consider an offer at the top of the available salary scale. This was a case where I was applying for a position for which I had very high qualifications and experience, and I was already working in another job that paid more. I had a nice interview with the hiring panel, and I explained to them that I was interested in their work, but that even at the top of the pay scale they were offering, it would be a small pay-cut for me relative to my existing position. I told them I would be willing to consider an offer at the top of their pay scale, since I liked the sound of the work they were doing. Two days later I got an offer at the top of the pay scale (a small pay cut, but a move I was happy with) and I was working there within a week.
In my experience (having had a couple of these positions) the bottom of the range is what you should expect if you're coming straight from a PhD, and then you would normally progress one point on the salary scale each year (the top salary listed is seven points higher than the low end, but some universities don't use all the points on the scale, in which case you can progress faster).
If you're coming from another postdoc, they may well start you at the point which matches the amount of experience you have, i.e. one point higher for every year of experience. I think this tends to happen (or not) as a matter of policy and so I wouldn't anticipate much room for negotiation, although I've never tried to negotiate so I can't be sure how it would be perceived.
I moved UK institutions with 5 years of postdoc experience and had my salary matched. I did ask for it and don't know if it would have happened without me asking, but there was no issue with that. The listed salary range is what they are willing to pay - I have seen some postdoc positions where the cap is lower due to funding restrictions.
During the selection process you interact with academics. The terms of your contract, including the starting salary, are prepared and signed by the HR department.
The relations between academic administration (e.g. Head of Department) and HR varies from place to place but I have not yet seen a University in the UK where this relation is described as ideal. It is quite usual that the HoD / selection panel is sympathetic to the arguments about the unique experience or particular life situation, but HRs would make a decision based on the specific rules they have.
The rules depend on where the funding is coming from. If the post is created by the Department, HoD / selection panel usually can suggest the salary that will be accepted. If the post is funded by the University, you will be likely offered a salary one spinal point above the final salary of your previous academic employment or the starting rate if it is your first postdoc. If the post is funded externally (e.g. via UKRI), the same rules apply within the additional restrictions imposed by limited grant budget.
To answer your question, salary negotiation in the UK is limited compared to e.g. US. In most cases, University matches or slightly increases the applicant's current salary.
You don't mention your discipline; my own is the physical sciences, and this may be somewhat subject-specific.
Regardless of how much experience you have and how much you deserve a salary higher than the base rate, the key question is where the money is coming from. Postdocs are almost invariably hired from grants that have already been awarded, hence from a pot of money whose size cannot be changed. (Many funders are strict about the categories in which money can be spent: that is, if I have been awarded £100k for personnel and £100k for consumables, it could be difficult or impossible for me instead to spend £150k on personnel and £50k on consumables.) So the only way to hire you on a higher salary may be to hire you for a shorter period of time.
If you want to go down that road, you might be able to argue that your greater experience is such that the project will benefit more from having you for 1.5 years than someone else for 2. (Perhaps you can complete the work faster, or help support more junior members of the group, or even apply for further funding as a named investigator to continue the work beyond the current grant.)
I disagree that trying to negotiate is necessarily a red flag, but you may look a little naive if you don't appear to appreciate budgetary constraints. But I think it would be perfectly acceptable to ask at interview how the post fits into the context of the grant; whether there is the budget to potentially renew it after X years or to hire at a higher grade; and so on.
Good luck!
Mostly correct, but it's normally equally difficult to pay someone more for a shorter period - if you received funding for a postdoc for 3 years, most funders expect to see you employing a postdoc for 3 years, not a senior postdoc for 2.5 or an RA for 4. This varies by funder, though.
I've seen ads with that explicitly said that the position was either senior postdoc for 18 months or junior postdoc for 24 months (or something along those lines).
Having said that, there is often a delay in hiring which can work in the postdocs advantage. For some grants, the university may only advertise the position after the contract has been signed, which might be after the project has already started officially. That means it may be 2–5 months after the project official start, that a postdoc would start. That means the position will be shorter, which means there should be some spare money in the budget to pay a little extra, and you may or may not be able to negotiate this extra money arguing you're doing the same work in less time.
+1 on this. Here in Canada, only within the past decade have some institutions acknowledged that Post Docs are legally "employees"; they were previously held to be "trainees" along with grad students. Their pay is strictly pass-through grant funds and the institutions consider it a great risk that they may be held accountable for benefits or other payments to them, for which there is no budgeted money. It would be entirely appropriate for a prospective PostDoc to inquire about the source of funds from which their pay will come.
Discipline specific advice klaxon: applicable to Bio-molecular science type fields (Mol Biol, biochem, genetics, genomics etc)
All employees at the vast majority of UK universities are paid on a single, nationally negotiated pay spine (although I recently learned that imperial is an exception to this). Your pay will be at some point on that spine.
The vast majority of postdocs will be funded from a UKRI project grant. When you apply for a grant to have to say, up to a year in advance of actually hiring, what you will pay the postdoc. Most university finance departments will encourage PIs to put point 2 or 3 on the universities Postdoc pay grade and then hire at point 1. The extra points are to cover the fact that there will almost certainly be an uplift in salaries on the national spine between applying for the grant and appointing someone. The money you are given then accounts for the fact the postdoc is expected to advance one salary point per year of employment.
However, once the funding agency gives you the grant you are not allowed to spend money earmarked for other things on salary, although you are allowed to spend less.
Now there is no reason when you apply for a grant to only apply for the lowest point on the pay grade. In my last grant we asked for enough money to appoint at point 5 because we were looking for some particularly rare skills. However, if you ask for too much the granting body is liable to reduce what you've asked for, or worst deny you the grant on a value for money basis.
The salary range in the Ad will be referring to the whole of grade 7 (look about the same as grade 7 at my uni). It shows the range of salaries you could conceivably get at the uni if you stayed long enough.
So by all means try to negotiate your salary. But don't be surprised if you just get a flat out no. That may not be because the PI doesn't want to pay more, but simply that their grant won't allow it.
On occasions I and my PI managed to roll an extra point on the scale when moving to a new contract. The thing to watch is hitting the top of RA I (possibly called something else now) as unlike lecturer A/B there is no automatic promotion, so you need to start applying for grade II jobs to get a raise after that.
After 14 years I made it to grade III but HR refused to consider a grade IV appointment despite the grade existing.
So my advice is to ask for a raise with each and every reappointment (even if changing institutions) some one has to compensate for the short term nature of your employment.
I recently did this.
This was my first post doc after my phd and I have yet to do my viva.
I asked when I was offered the position where I could be in the scale and manged to get a position mid point on the band.
My experience is in the US and with a different sort of job, but it may help give you something to think about. First, if you are to get anything beyond the minimum, the institution has to really want you. But they have limitations in what is possible, even then.
However, there is more to life than salary. You might be more successful in negotiating other things that will amount to increased pay. You might, depending on your field, need lab space or an allowance for journals or publication fees and the like. In my case, I once asked for a quite high salary and mentioned that the reason for the request was that I have very high standards for cooperative work with colleagues around the world and so have high travel costs, beyond what most places normally pay. They suggested a lower salary but promised to cover a substantial part of my travel. My request was valid and the university followed through on their commitment, so it worked out well. It turned out that the additional travel funds weren't taxable to me also, so another win.
Think about the whole picture, not just salary, but office, etc., maybe even housing.
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61108 | Is it bad to copy and paste from your SoP to other questions on a grad school app?
There was one school that asked to explain any breaks in university enrollment. Well I took a year off and was really active in research so I talk about that in my SoP. The question asked to explain any breaks, which I did thoroughly in my SoP. I just copied and pasted the part from my SoP where I talk about it and add a line or two of context before it. I didn't even think about it. Looking back I should have thought about it.
Did I do a bad thing? Will this come off as lazy? The passage stands on its own, IMO.
Well, eventually this is an opinion poll but I would predict the odds is at your good side. I've been reading many application packages in a graduate school and situations like yours do not bother me for the following reasons:
The statement of purpose is supposed to be the best thought out piece of your application. For that reason I think it's sensible to reuse the materials.
You have slightly revised the passage by adding some contents to the beginning to make the whole answer stand alone fine. That shows thoughtfulness.
Some committee members may even advocate for you for being able to include some crucial information in the statement of purpose without being asked.
So, I don't think it's a deal breaker. If you want to tackle this kind of situations more confidently, provide a shorter synopsis in the short answer, and note that a detailed description of the leave is included in the statement of purpose. This would improve the coherence between the application components.
Good luck.
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139078 | Academic life in China
I was offered a tenure track assistant professor position in China. However, I am not familiar with the admin culture and academic environment of China. Is it difficult to cope with the university admin in China? Does the acadmics 'interact' with peers and students differently in China? More importantly, is it going to be a very steep transition in migrating to a Chinese university?
Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Of possible interest: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/104541/20058 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/108041/20058 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/27553/20058 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/67163/20058
Look for posts in this forum from the user "Scientist". He is an expert.
This question seems far too broad to have a useful answer.
Why not take it as something challenging for personal growth. If you don't like you can always move back to where you are right now. You will be an expert to answer what you are asking, and there is nothing to loose.
I think you have a few important questions. Foremost, I am assuming you know the language -- to what extent do you know Chinese culture? The transition will be very steep if you do not understand the cultural nuances of all aspects of living and working in China. Indeed, from a Western standpoint, the interactions between students and faculty are much different. And, the interactions between faculty and staff are also different. As you consider the options, I would find out what criteria are used for promotion, and whether you must publish in certain journals on certain lists. I don't know where you have done your training. If your training is in a Western university, you may experience a very steep transition if you are unfamiliar with Chinese culture, practices, and norms.
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108833 | Voting by faculty after a Search Committee recommends a candidate for a TT hire
How are candidates for tenure-track positions/hires voted on after interviews and the search committee recommendation? (I am especially interested in R1 procedures.)
It depends. Each department will do it differently. In my old department, each person got an acceptable or unacceptable vote by the full faculty. However the search committee ordered the acceptable candidates for offers. In my new department, there is a full vote on who should be number one.
I know there is not one answer to this, but I think we could answer it because there are only a few common scenarios.
Would assume R1 indicates US?
To the OP, I add "united states" tag based on "R1". If your question is not about US job search, please roll back my change. Thanks.
@Dawn Thanks for pointing it out. I made an edit to specify the country.
I'm sure it varies from one place to another. In my experience, our search committee (TT position at an R1) had to come to an agreed upon decision in terms of the order in which we were going to recommend candidates (#1, #2, #3). From there, our recommendation had to be approved by the dean of our college, and from there the offer was made.
If you're asking about what criteria a committee uses for recommending candidates, a lot of aspects are weighed: how the campus visit went - particularly the research presentation, publication record/plans, does this candidate's research align with and complement what the department already offers or is there too much overlap with other faculty, can we see this person fitting in our department, can they teach what we need them to teach, etc. Ultimately, however, the big question is always: who is most likely to stick around and manage to get tenure according to our standards? In other words, who's the safest investment?
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86161 | My paper was under awaiting reviewer assignment then awaiting ed final processing. What does this indicate?
I have submitted a research paper in Elsevier journal. After 18 days the status was "Awaiting Reviewer Assignment". And after 4 months the status changed to "awaiting EIC decision". And now statues is "awaiting ed final processing". Can anybody please tell me what does it indicate?
@scaaahu It seems that in the current case, the paper did not go under the normal review process. I could not guess what this possibly means.
@PsySp There is a section "Editorial decision" in the answer of the linked question.
@scaaahu Yes. But this is a follow-up step of the review process. From the OP's comment, it is not obvious that reviewers assessed the paper. At least not all invited reviewers. Also notice that two different things: It is one things "awaiting Editor's decision" and another "EiC" decision.
@PsySp I think you're right. "Under Review" is missing before "awaiting EIC decision". I missed it when I read the question. Thanks. I retracted my close vote and deleted the dup message. Hopefully someone can come up with a reasonable explanation. Thanks again.
@scaaahu My only guess is that the Editor invited some reviewers, not all of which accepted. This caused the system to stuck in "Awaiting reviewer Assignment". Then, the other reviewers submitted their reviews and the Editor decided to go with these reviews only. So, now it's in the normal process of the Editor assessing the reviews. If this makes sense, Ic an post it as an answer.
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194995 | I submitted a bbsrc fellowship proposal. Does my institute own this material?
I have applied for a bbsrc fellowship. It was not funded. Now I am leaving this institute. In my contract it is written that all electronic material produced during the working time belongs to them
My question is whether also my fellowship proposal belongs to them and I need to leave copies of the content on their servers. Thank you
Your question is unclear. First, you said "It was not funded.", then you asked "whether also my fellowship belongs to them". Did you get the fellowship?
No. I mean does my institute needs to have a copy of the proposal?
I edited your question to include the word "proposal".
Perhaps you could explain what the word bbsrc means ... or is it an acronym (uppercase?) for something, and if so, what? Don't assume that most readers of academia will know the argot of your particular domain.
IANAL so I can't definitively answer this from a legal point of view. But I can say that irrespective of whether the institute could legally demand a copy of the fellowship, they won't do and no one will expect you to leave a copy. Indeed I can almost guarantee that any files you leave in any personal area of the institutional file server will be deleted shortly after you leave (unless special arrangements have been made). If you submitted the fellowship to the BBSRC, this will have been done through Je-S, and they will have a copy through that process anyway, if they really cared, which I'm almost certain they don't.
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108611 | Not willing to pay for a course
Hi please tell me if i'm wrong here, I started a course a few years ago, may be 2.
It was an accountancy course, the ACCA. I left the course after 3 lessons out of 10 as the tutor who was supposed to do the course left on maternity leave and was replaced with a foreign (European) tutor who spoke broken English and all she did was try to make small talk jokes. Now I left the course and explained that this wasn't something that I signed up for and now they want £2300 of me. but I'm refusing to pay. Am I right or wrong and if someone can point me in the correct direction on how to proceed.
I presume you weren't told of the substitution in advance, nor of the lack of qualifications of the replacement. It really isn't fair to bait-and-switch like that.
I think you should pay because you signed up for it. However, you do have the right to file a complaint to the school and tell them you want the money back or re-take the course for free.
I'm not entirely clear on the context here; it might be helpful to know if this course is through a college or a tutoring company or some other entity. Also, is the option available (and acceptable to you) to pay and take the current version of the course?
This seems less like an academic question than a question of contract law. Nevertheless, for what it's worth, if you are refusing to pay the amount claimed, then presumably the onus will be on the education-provider to sue you for the money, and establish in court that it is a valid debt. You will have an opportunity to argue that they failed to provide you with the contracted service and that the substituted service was sub-standard. Whether or not you have a good case will depend on the details of the matter, the specifics of your agreement with the provider, and the commercial laws of the jurisdiction in which this occurred.
If necessary and affordable, you should seek legal advice (from real commercial lawyers - not random guys on academia.SE).
UK common law may proceed differently than US law.
Absolutely - and even within these countries there is not a uniform commercial law (e.g., within the US there are different state laws). These days most countries have extensive legislation that modifies the common law position, and this generally has some minor differences by jurisdiction. We would need to know the exact jurisdiction to know what laws apply.
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110227 | "Upgrading" PhD
I have recently read many questions about doing a second PhD and (to my surprise) most people consider it a bad move. Also - it looks like some universities (for example Berkeley) even have formal policies against it.
I am now finishing two master degrees in Computer Science. My university is #1 in Poland, however in rankings such as QS or THE it's only around the 500-600 range (very low compared to my target).
I planned to apply for a PhD to a top 100 university in the world, and if I failed, then I would first do a PhD in my university and then - empowered with experience, a degree and papers - apply again for another PhD in a top 100 school. If I failed again, then I would do more papers and try again and again and again until success. This way I could "upgrade" my PhD.
This was before I found that there is formal policy against it (in USA, because in Poland no one seems to have any problem with it).
Now I am wondering what my options are. What can I do to maximize my chances of getting into a top 100 university from my position?
One may ask why I would even want to "upgrade" my PhD - I assume that getting a PhD from a widely recognized university will considerably improve my possibilities for working with the best people in the field.
Another option is to do a post-doc instead of a second PhD.
I would not recommend placing a lot of weight on rankings as to a large extent they are pretty much meaningless. The simplest issue being the focus on research while many European Universities exist to teach instead of researching. Research takes place at research institutes - which incidentally feature rather prominently in the Nature ranking based on institution. Then an institution that publishes a lot may be good for publishing and worse for teaching - and vice versa. A lack of publication/research output does not indicate bad teaching.
This would be similar to doing K-12 over again. By the time you're in high school, you're a much better learner than you were in 1st grade. You'd waste 13 years doing what could be done in 6 months.
You assumed that having a phd would improve your chances of getting into a phd program. I don't think that's true, personally, I'd find very weird, especially if they are in closely related fields...
By the time you get the first one you don't need the supervision for a second one. Just get on with your career.
In your last sentence, a more realistic outlook would be had by changing "will considerably improve my possibilities" to "might slightly improve my possibilities".
Life is not MMORPG and PhD programs are not dungeons with loot. Scientists don't form guilds that require high level gear for you to join them in raids.
IMO rankings are among the last things to consider when choosing a place to study/work in, especially if you plan on staying in academia. Instead, make sure you have a good group, establish contacts with the right people (i.e. influential and relevant to your interests enough to write good recommendation letters/coauthor papers with you) and do good work.
If that's available, you can try to find a way to do some research after your masters without enrolling in a PhD program. Once you have a publication or two, your applications to top PhD programs are much more likely to be successful. At the same time you would not waste your time doing multiple PhDs.
Could you clarify: do you mean a second PhD in the same discipline? Or does Berkeley really have a policy against somebody with a PhD in meths getting another in music?
@cfr "University policy prohibits awarding of duplicate degrees. If you have an MBA or comparable degree from an institute of higher education, your application will be ineligible for consideration." Sounds like music is ok.
@spam Thanks. That makes sense. So it is not just 'another PhD' but 'a comparable PhD' which is rather different.
@cfr Yup, but I planned to do exactly same degree
To make a good PhD degree, you do not have to be in the top 100 universities in the world. The high tier journals accepts papers and acknowledges valuable research contributions from all over the world.
Develop the skills you have acquired in your masters, get a highly motivated and experienced supervisor who is interested in your area/you are interested in his, seek good opportunities and move on. You may be surprised to receive invitations for research collaboration from top academics when the quality of your work is unparalleled.
As regards having more than one PhD degree, how many professors with the highest h-index in their fields, have more than one PhD? And there are many 'scholars' who did not finish from the top 100. Besides, there would also be other aspects of life that would require your time after the PhD. So it is essential think and decide well.
Great answer. It can also be helpful to round yourself out by doing outreach and working on your English and your teaching skills.
All of this is true in theory, but in practice the power of famous names and labels is hard to overemphasize. University name and supervisor name are one of the first filters people apply when considering whether to invite you for a job interview, accept your invitation to collaborate, etc. Coming from nowhere makes it hard to even get your door in the foot (though once you are there, your chances improve). Even at journals, inependent research shows that big names get you more favourable reviews. Moreover, the reseearch enbvironment tends to be richer and more up to date in top institutions.
A student's exceptional research can be judged and appreciated by experts from far and near. Even for the names and labels, in some cases, some of their papers do not get that much citation, since inclining the hearts of the people to cite their research is not in their hands. There are also several excellent academics who are outside the perimeter of the top 100. For anyone who can make it to the big names and labels, then that is fine, so as long as their experience, knowledge and training reflects in the output quality of the students research work.
I considered the second PhD after I graduated with one from Ukraine. Boy am I glad I didn't "upgrade" it!
The problem with the second PhD is that most of it will teach you the things you already know and, given its length, it is most certainly a waste of time. By the time you graduate with the first PhD, you will be about 30. By the time you get your second PhD, you will be about 35. Your employment prospects at 35 without work experience will be questionable no matter how many PhDs you have. Not to mention family considerations.
Another problem is that even top PhDs programs are highly bureaucratic and not very economically efficient compared to post-docs and other employment opportunities so your stipend, if you get any, will be shoe money in a top-100 university town.
By the time you are done even with your first PhD, the expectations of you will be much higher than now. "Getting into top..." will not be good enough anymore. More likely you will be expected to "create the top", or even tougher "create the only" to get a high salary, recognition, or profit.
"shoe money"? I can infer the meaning, but I've never heard this expression.
You shouldn't focus too much on university ranking, but focus more on the quality of your advisor.
In the end, your publications are what really matters. If you have great publications at A and A* conferences, nobody cares about the ranking of your university. Has the advisor published at high-quality conferences and can teach you how to write a paper that gets accepted there? Does he have the travel budget to send you there if you get a paper accepted? Will you have enough time to work on your research or will you be busy teaching all the time?
Even in the top 100, don't expect that all departments are great. Most universities have some professors, that are doing great work and are well respected within their community.
At the same time: If you have very good general computer science knowledge, even without any papers, I don't think you will have problems finding a PhD position at a Top100 in western Europe. (UK, Germany, Sweden, France, Norway, etc.)
My PhD is from a 600-700 school, and my postdoc and first research scientist positions were both in top-10 institutions. I work alongside many people from lesser-known schools, but alongside none with two PhDs.
My point here: another degree is not the only, or the most common, way to climb.
Buuuut... My time in these institutions has really tempered my belief the "the best work" is done here. The reward structure at "the top" encourages flashy work, and discourages both acknowledging mistakes and collaborating with the most qualified people. Some good work is done, certainly, but is it not as big a difference as I had hoped.
I am now considering a couple TT positions, and finding one with strong colleagues in a 500-600 school more appealing than one with a weaker group at a top 50 school.
I agree. My phd is from a 350-350th University. My first postdoc was at a top 3 university. It's important to see a PhD as the beginning of your journey, not the end. My advice: 1) Take every opportunity that comes your way and do your best with it. 2) Learns the skills (not necessarily knowledge) that is sought after in your field. I agree also that the quality outside the top 100 can easily rival the big institutions.
If you want to get into a better PhD program, the usual thing to do is to do a masters or work in a research lab and try to publish some papers. Doing multiple PhDs is not a reasonable approach.
Ultimately, you need to figure out what aspect of your application needs improvement and then work on that. Do you need more coursework to build the right background? Do you need research experience? Do you need better recommendation letters?
I would also emphasize that university rankings should be viewed with healthy skepticism. It matters more what you do and who your advisor/supervisor is. You should be able to judge the quality of a PhD without resorting to crude measures like the University's ranking.
I don't know that the top 100 is that impenetrable first of all, at least to the point that you'd need publications to even get in even near the end of the list. Things like test scores and recommendations will counter your prior school ranking. Work on getting those in place.
A much better option (than a "first doctorate" which I'd also advise against) would be work experience. You can get a job as a research assistant at a university (doing essentially the same research as a grad student). Given that you have a Master's degree in the subject (er two of them) you would presumably be able to work fairly independently as well, if you found the right fit. And now you have star recommendation #1 when you move to the next step. I know multiple people who followed this path.
In computer science you can also go directly into industry. The lines of such applied fields are quite blurred these days between industry and research. You could find a job doing cutting-edge work in the area of your research interest, and even present at conferences. If it's a large company they may fund your studies.
Generally in technical areas, (a few years of) industry experience is viewed highly in grad school admissions. While a prior doctorate would look strange. Imagine a job where the requirement is only an undergraduate degree, yet you have a person with a PhD applying. It looks like the person is discounting all their additional training and skills.
I have 8 years of commercial experience as software engineer, but why would university even care about it? I thought that they care only about papers.
@spam papers are not generally expected of applicants to grad school. Though research experience is extremely valuable to have. Industry experience is valued for multiple reasons. The most obvious being that your adviser gets a highly skilled student that can help advance the adviser's research agenda greatly.
Your advisor and their contributions to your field of work is much more important than the ranking of your school. Having a good advisor and a good relationship with them is key to being successful at the graduate level (which you probably already know). When potential employers or future collaborators investigate you prior to hiring/collaborating, they will look for the quality of your work, quality of your advisor's work, and the advisor's standing in the field. A good/great researcher can work at a good/ok school.
I have done 2 PhDs, and had very good reasons for that. But lets say it was very intense, as I had spend about 3 years for each for very reasons listed in answers above - to still be young enough in the end to get good employment chances. The second time around was extremely hard in the end, when you have to deal with bureaucratic hell, exams, job hunting and finalizing thesis all over again... the second time.
So its possible and doable, but I personally recommend thinking very hard how necessary is it for your career. And also how would you answer question on why did you need two PhDs, as it will be the first one you would receive in every single job interview.
Honest answer is: I want two PhDs because I simply like to learn and also I perceive PhD as accomplishment and that's what I would say on interview. I am currently doing 2 master degrees while working full-time. I already have 8 years or commercial experience. I am sure that I could do two PhDs while still working full-time too.
Your reasoning is very valid, and of course its doable and everything. Just think it all over very hard. Also consider, that having 2 PhD might make you overqualified for some jobs. And good luck in any case!
@spam I don't think one can do a PhD on the side and work full time. As a PhD student you are absolutely expected to work full time on your PhD. Which in many cases that goes well above a 'normal' 40h work week... It's not like studying for a degree! You will be doing research. It's a very hard job.
@spam you don't need to accumulate PhDs just because you "like to learn". I've spent around 40 years learning continuously learning "new stuff" while working in industry, and I don't have even one PhD. The numerical methods that I now use in day-to-day work (writing software for engineering analysis applications) didn't even exist (and weren't considered worth researching, since "everybody" knew they were nice in theory but wouldn't work in practice) when I started my career. Typically I spend 5 - 10 hours a week reading papers in academic journals to keep up with the state of the art!
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51185 | My advisor escalated things after not getting a coauthorship he did not deserve
I am a 3rd year PhD Student (Computer Science, India). I have two advisors, one internal and one external.
The internal advisor has no knowledge of my area and he doesn’t care what I am doing. He has no contribution to my research so far, but he keeps forcing me to make him co-author (2nd author) of my papers. I am a part-time PhD student (full time faculty in my college) in my college and he is my colleague. He has contributed nothing, did not even know title of my paper.
The external advisor is the one who actually helps me with my research. He wants all authorship to be based on contribution. He is external to my college and lives in a different city.
Recently I refused to make my internal advisor second author of a paper. Due to this, he got upset and he wrote in my progress report that I have attitude problem and I don’t obey my advisor. Now I have to stand in front of the dean, head of department and the entire committee (my advisor will also be there in the meeting with me).
Should I tell the monitoring committee about how my internal advisor unethically tried to manipulate me? Can it worsen the situation in future?
For something like this - at least in the UK - there is a postgraduate research tutor who is meant to be an impartial external. And to be honest, sending you to the Dean because you don't name him as an author seems a bit extreme - have there been other issues in the past?
Would moving to your external advisor's university be an option?
Is your internal advisor funding your research and providing the equipment? My understanding is that in some fields the head of the lab is expected to be listed as an author (often in a specific way, like being last author, that makes the role clear).
Related: What should I do if my advisor insists on being first author, in violation of my field's conventions?
I think the problem here is a cultural one. Even if you pull up the co-authorship policy, it won't make any difference. It's possible the committee will simply follow the norm cultural wise as opposed to what the policy says. If you are in Australia, the co-authorship policy rules.
How are 'attitude problem' and not obeying your adviser a 'crime'? In my university, there is a 'co-authorship policy', which clearly states that any co-authors must have made significant intellectual contributions. If such a policy exists at your university, I would bring it to support your case.
If you're fronting the committee because of supposedly poor progress, then I would gather as much evidence as possible to support your case. For example, your communication with your external adviser, papers published, etc.
I suggest you change the supervisor. The situation will definitely get worst because it looks like the internal adviser is unethical. He/she will 'burn you alive'.
In a lot of places/subjects it is also common for supervisors to be listed on the paper - in fact, that is the only style I have seen/encountered.
(Though supervisors tend to come last)
@DetlevCM: That does not necessarily make this ethical or acceptable. Also, in many fields, it is the norm that advisors actually do contribute to papers in a way that entitles them to authorship, but that does not mean that they are made coauthors because they were advisors.
As a sidenote: If your university/department honours authorship standards, you could amass proof that your interal advisor forced you to make you a coauthor despite having no contribution. The latter is usually difficult to prove but not so, if your internal advisor has no knowledge of your area and is not interested in your work (as you describe).
To survive on longer time spans, point 3 is a must..
First off, you need an ally. Perhaps your external advisor?
Second, you can provide information without getting defensive, and without going on the offensive. Your tack should be to be baffled as to why you are there. But baffled in a calm way.
When you let them know about the strange behavior of the internal advisor in this calm way I'm suggesting, it will be almost like speaking to them in code.
It will help if you go in there assuming that at least one member of the monitoring committee is a smart, ethical person who will interpret your code language correctly, and help you in a well-thought-out way.
If things don't go as you hope -- you can always back down and include the internal advisor's name on the paper.
Many answers here focus on the issue of authorship, rather than what I expect your real dilemma is, what should you say when you meet the Dean.
You have two options really - stand up and fight for what you believe in, or back down and try to keep the peace.
The fact that you even have to contemplate the latter shows what an utter mess young PhDs find themselves in these days. You are three years in, and he holds all the cards whilst you hold none. ...right?
Wrong! If you think it looks bad not to get your name on student's paper, imagine how bad it looks when word gets out that you refused a PUBLISHING student a PhD after three years because they claim their supervisor didn't put enough effort in to be a named author. You are calling the shots here. Go with your gut, because sometimes crappy old wooden bridges need to get burned.
This advice might be just, but dangerous. An individual who plans to challenge someone with more power should have a plan beyond "Go with your gut" (unless they literally have nothing to lose, which is not the case here.)
Being cautious is a luxury of the powerful, not powerless. It feels very cliche to quote The Art Of War in academia.so, but if confronted with a more powerful adversary, try to avoid a fight. If you cannot avoid the fight, do not attack half-heartedly so that he may pity you at the end of battle.
This advice is very dangerous, especially considering the fact that the OP is studying in India.
Your refusal to make him co-author could be perceived as an escalation itself from his perspective. We don't know the way you expressed yourself when you told him you wouldn't do it (in social situations, often the way things are said matters much more than what was actually said).
His decision to escalate even more up might go in many different directions due to multiple circumstances (rules, people in position of power, clout, etc.), so it's a bit difficult to be completely sure of what is the best course of action for you.
He might be doing this to intimidate you into complying with his demands. Which, in turn has at least two possible ramifications:
He knows the organization well and believes he will get to frame the situation in a way that you are to be considered wrong (either his colleagues will support him regardless of him being right or what you did breaks an unwritten rule, so the dean will support him no matter what).
He doesn't realize or refuses to admit he is being unethical and the support of his peers is not guaranteed, so, in a way, he could be assuming he will be considered right by default or seniority or even that now that he involved big wigs you will get scared, ask forgiveness and comply.
Now for the proper advice:
Read them university policies and rules, if they don't say you have this obligation, then you don't. If they say you have to do it, then apologise and tell them you didn't know about the rules. But do read the other advices below.
If there is no policy forcing you to to do as the internal advisor says, make your case to the monitoring committee, that is: talk your external advisor into interceding in your favour either by telling them himself or exposing your discussions with him about the work and organize any other evidence you have that the internal advisor is not contributing to this particular work otherwise it's just your word versus his word, be as polite as you can possibly be.
Your external advisor is not a neutral party, after all he told you: 'authorship should be based on contribution'. He will be a co-author, so what does the external advisor means by authorship based on contribution? I have the impression he doesn't want the internal advisor to have his name in this work, maybe the two of them had a falling out? Take care to not be in the crossfire if this is a feud.
Whatever the outcome, to change internal advisor like @Prof. Santa Claus says is one of the safest things you can do to protect yourself after you talk to the committee. You have no guarantee that whatever the outcome, this advisor won't be out for blood and try to make your life miserable.
Imho, If someone is leading you (i.e. "supervising" you), then he should be a co-author of any your work by definition. In my university, I can not image a situation when student's supervisor would not be his co-author. In a worst case scenario, he is at least supporting your work financially and
organizationally, isn't he?
In general, I am agree that it is a common bad practice, when a supervisor, especially in a big group, is not involve in the particular project too much. But, I am more then sure, that he is at least checking the initial ideas or the selling packages to the journals. Could it be that you know your part very well, but you are misunderstand the complexity of the supervisor's "businesses"?
Which field do you work in? For many fields it would be the exact opposite?
curiousdannii, I am working in area of cognitive science, in one of West European universities. I am not sure about other fields, but no-one really knows what is happening somewhere beyond his area.
This is very field specific and location specific, and it is unfortunate that the answer is given as a generalized claim. For example, in math, it is very rare for an adviser to be automatically on papers, and in fact often the opposite: frequently a point is made that papers in grad school connected to one's PhD in math will not have the adviser's name.
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108962 | Can UK PhD studentships legally effectively bar EU applicants by stating that "all eligible applicants must also have been resident in the UK"?
I am aware that many UK PhD studentships are only open to UK/EU applicants (question 1, question 2). In my understanding, they cannot (pre-Brexit) legally discriminate between EU and UK applicants, but they can bar non-EU applicants. But
my eyes fell upon eligibility requirements for this University of Newcastle PhD studentship, emphasis and link mine, which effectively bars EU applicants, too:
This studentship is available to UK applicants and EU applicants with settled status in the UK, meaning they have no restrictions on how long they can stay. All eligible applicants must also have been ‘ordinarily resident’ in the UK for 3 years prior to the start of the studentship, and not been residing in the UK wholly or mainly for the purpose of full-time education.
Such an additional requirement effectively discriminates between UK and EU applicants. The vast majority of EU applicants will not have been also resident in the UK for 3 years prior to the start of the studentship, or if they have, have been so for the purposes of education. Even some UK citizens will be ineligible if they spent any time studying abroad.
Is such discrimination between UK and EU applicants legal under EU law? It would appear to effectively amount to the same as stating "Europeans need not apply" by different means.
Good question. I think this requirement dates least as far back as 1995. As far as I recall an EU national would qualify for a 'fees only' studentship but no maintenance grant unless they were ordinarily resident in the UK.
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is a request for a legal opinion about the actual state of things.
Note that whether or not you consider it discrimination, it's the funding body and not the university that's to blame. Your quote doesn't appear at the UCL link you give, but similar wording appears in the second paragraph under "UK/EU candidates". The very next paragraph starts "If you are from the EU but do not meet residency requirements, your fees are still set at the EU/UK rate, but you do not qualify for full STFC support. We normally have a limited number of departmental (non-STFC) studentships that will pay both EU/UK fees and maintenance. "
Yes they can. They do. Before Brexit those grant existed. They dont discriminate the acceptance, its the funding that can get limited. In the same way that Marie Courie PhD fellowship (EU funded) do this, you can not have lived in the country in the last 3 years to get them.
@ChrisH I mixed up different pages I looked at. I fixed the link now, it was a University of Newcastle ad, and the link matches the quote now. Corrected.
@gerrit that one isn't so clear, but I think the same applies -- the funding body (a UK government agency) makes the rules. And employment legislation doesn't apply to studentships, making everything very confusing. In this case (unlike the previous UCL link) the studentship is part of a funded project so departmental funding can't be used instead for non-eligible students.
@ChrisH It is confusing. Which is why I asked the question. I had not seen this before.
You have answered your own question in the question: states can (under EU law) put conditions on, e.g., funding, based on residence, but not based on citizenship. As UK citizens who are not ordinarily resident would not be eligible for this funding, this does not discriminate on citizenship, so this is legal (*).
Anecdotally, in my experience a low single-digit percentage of "UK" applicants fail the ordinarily resident test, and I have seen at my institution roughly 5 students over the past 10 years refused funding from similar sources for this reason.
(*) I am definitely not a lawyer: the case law around ordinarily resident status shows that this issue is not unique to universities.
Neither your answer nor (contrary to what you said) the question offer any evidence that discrimination based on place of residence is actually legal. I agree with OP that this certainly appears to be de facto discrimination against EU citizens. In fact, it’s eerily similar to Trump’s embarrassingly transparent disguise for his “Muslim ban”. I’d love to see some actual evidence for the legality.
Discrimination laws generally restrict policies that have a disparate impact on a protected class, even if they do not explicitly discriminate. A policy against headscarves, for instance, would generally be considered discrimination against Muslims, even if Christians were also prohibited from wearing them.
The problem in this case in determining if it's legal is that it's a UK government body which is discriminating, and it's backed up by UK legislation (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2007/779/regulation/6/made). Is this law compatible with EU law? To my non legally trained eye it seems pretty shaky, but as far as I can tell, it's not been challenged in the decade since it was introduced, and the UK government obviously believes it to be legal.
@Acccumulation Bad phrasing on my part: yes, this isn’t discrimination in that sense (“discrimination” legally only applies to certain characteristics). But it still seems to make illegal distinctions between EU and UK applicants in the sense of this question (at least in the spirit of the law, but potentially not in enforceably).
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