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1404 | What excellent university DSP programs exist and what makes them excellent?
In the same vein as this question, but making sure to abide by Good Subjective/Bad Subjective, what DSP programs are out there that are excellent and why?
Please give concrete examples or at least a cursory explanation for what makes them good/thorough, and stand out from other programs at different universities.
@CharlesMorisset Hi Charles. Honestly, not really... I want to know what good universities exist for Digital Signal Processing (DSP), and what makes them good. To be frank I am surprised it has been migrated to here to be honest, since dsp.SE has the requisite people who would actually know. I would not mind making it clearer vis-a-vis DSP, but that is honestly my question.
@CharlesMorisset Thank you. I believe that if everyone gave their own experiences we might have attained a good post. I know its hard for individuals to answer it, which is why I asked the hivemind! :-)
Firstly, lets assume you're talking about graduate programs. X being such a specialized program would only be available at that level of study.
In a nutshell:
Large list of cross listed (undegrad/grad) or only grad courses in all areas of study. You still need to have courses that can advance your overall knowledge of engineering.
Large variety of courses in your area of study. (If your studying DSP, its not enough to just take a DSP class, you may find it relevant to study data compression, machine learning, Free-space laser communications.) This also means you wouldn't have to complete a large number of independent study programs.
Large Number of Faculty in your research area. If you are interested in studying music signal processing, you would want to do research with a professor who has experience in that field. If there are 10 professors, you could be more selective about who to work with or who will be the best fit for your research area.
As for schools with decent program: Binghamton University, while it is not well known outside of New York, its master's programs is well structured, large number of faculty in EE at least 3-4 DSP professors, 10-20 graduate level courses offered a semester and large number of those are DSP related.
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11686 | What should I focus on when asking for conference travel support?
A conference I'm submitting to will be able to offer limited financial support to a small number of participants needing assistance to attend the conference.. The date of the conference is several months after my PhD finishes and I don't know where I will be at that time, if anywhere, so I am asking for financial support. What should I focus on to maximise my chances?
So far I am mentioning:
The previous edition of the conference (for which I had other funding) was very useful for me. I presented paper A there (title, reference, I'm 1st author), and got major input that significantly improved paper B (title, reference, highle reuptable journal, I'm second author). Without my participation in the previous conference, paper B would not have been as good as it became.
The work I want to present now, which is paper C (almost ready for submission; probably published by the time of the conference; title, abstract; I'm 1st author) should be very relevant for the conference (should I send a copy of the full submitted manuscript?)
After the previous conference, I talked to a co-chair (name) and he encouraged me to ask for financial support should I be "between jobs" during the next edition (NB: he also encouraged me to explicitly mention his name, and I will)
My PhD is planned at <date>, and I currently don't know where I will be by then.
Does this roughly correspond to what they likely want to hear/know? Am I missing something? Am I saying too much? Should I focus on one aspect more than another?
(NB: the conference is held every 2 years and is in the field of remote sensing, and it is customary, but not mandatory, to write a non-peer reviewed paper for the conference proceedings)
Why wouldn't you mention the co-chair's name? Like many things, academia runs on networking.
I do mention the co-chair's name, but I don't mention that he explicitly encouraged me to state his name. I've edited for clarification, as I realise my formulation was confusing.
Do you have to mention the last point (PhD date, where you will be)? Please don't get me wrong. I am not asking you to lie. But, do you absolutely have to say it?
@scaaahu I don't know, should I? I'm the one asking the question here ;-)
I would not say it if I were you. I would say I don't know if and when they specificly ask me.
@scaaahu The reason I mention it is because it motivates why the internal funding I had the previous time is not an option now.
Its better to be honest and upfront. If not for ethical reasons, then for logical reasons that networks collide and you don't want to be found guilty of a few hundreds/thousands of dollars - which in the long run would be not much.
I was in a similar situation. I sent something similar to what you wrote and the folks replied back and gave me the funding from my new location. The other way to do this would be showing your affiliation as that of the "/". This is a technical fix - since that should get you the benefits of both locations. I prefer this because I am honest about where the work was done, and where I am today.
Hope this helps!
Well, where the work was done was clear, but I won't be here anymore by then, so they can't fund me. Actually, the latter is a supposition on my side.
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28192 | NSF postdoctoral fellowship eligibility requirements
I am about to receive my PhD and would like to apply for an NSF postdoctoral fellowship.
I have two questions about the eligibility requirements that I haven't been able to find the answers to online:
I have already secured a postdoctoral position with a mentor. I was offered a postdoctoral position and will start shortly after the fellowship application deadline. The NSF application materials seem designed for people who will start in the Summer or Fall in the year after the application. Does this affect my eligibility for the award?
I will technically receive my PhD after I begin my postdoc. Due to scheduling problems I've had to postpone my official thesis defense until after I begin my postdoc. However, I will have defended by Spring 2015, well before the award would be distributed. Does this affect my eligibility?
Can you link to the RFP of the fellowship you want to apply for?
For (2), a lot of people apply for the MSPRF the fall before they graduate. Most of these people defend their thesis around May or June, well after the announcement of the acceptance. For (1), do you intend to use the NSF grant with the mentor you've lined up, or are you applying for the NSF with a different institution in mind? (Obviously you cannot use the money before it is awarded.)
I intend to apply for the grant with the mentor I've lined up. I have some funding through my mentor, but the fellowship would give me much greater independence and flexibility.
Does this mean that I would have to propose research with someone else in order to be eligible for the award...?
possible duplicate of NSF grant proposals after earning Ph.D
I believe the question is different, as I will not technically have a PhD when I begin my postdoc. The eligibility rules for the fellowship explicitly state that the applicant should have a degree conferred prior to beginning the postdoc. The rule does not seem to apply in my case.
The eligibility requirements are stated in the solicitation. It certainly sounds like you will be eligible. If you defend in spring of 2015, then you can apply in falls of 2014,'15, or '16 to start the following summer (in fall 2017, it will be too late, since you will have had your Ph.D. for two years on Jan 1, 2018, and 2018 would the "year of the award). The only things that can make you ineligible are: losing your US citizenship (presumably easy to avoid), serving as PI on an NSF grant (again, not a huge danger), and being offered the fellowship and turning it down. (I think there is also some general stuff about drugs convictions, etc.)
Taking any kind of job will not make you ineligible, though it's possible it could influence the way your application is looked at (for good or for ill, I can't really say). You can apply with your current job as your site, or with a different one. I don't know many examples of people getting the fellowship after they first graduated, though of course, 2015 will be when you first graduated, so maybe that's not an issue.
Just a general comment: if you have questions about NSF awards, ask the program director. They'll be the ones who actually interpret the rules, so they know better than random people on the internet how they'll be interpreted.
Repeating my comment from the earlier question http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/12936, here are a few people who spent a year as a postdoc, then got the NSF postdoc to continue at the same place (details not guaranteed): Dean Baskin (Northwestern), Spencer Dowdall (UIUC), Ben Linowitz (Michigan), Keerthi Madapusi Pera (Harvard), Johanna Mangahas (Brown), Steven Sivek (Harvard), Brent Werness (U. Washington). These are all from the last two years [as of 2013; there must be more examples now].
@TomChurch I'd completely forgotten about that question (I've voted to close this one as a duplicate). Good point.
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63540 | Why "ETH" in degrees awarded by ETH Zurich?
Why are graduates of ETH Zürich awarded with titles that include the "ETH"?
This list of degrees conferred by ETH also states conclusively that "[t]he Bachelor and Master titles may also be used in the form “BSc ETH” / “BA ETH” and “MSc ETH” / “MA ETH” without mention of the subject".
However, it doesn't explain the rationale behind the "ETH" appendix.
Is it because they think they are superior, and everyone should immediately recognize this from their title?
I am not posting as an answer as I am not 100% sure. I graduated with an MSc from ETHZ, and as far as I remember in my discipline the MSc degree required more credits and work than the equivalent from Uni Zurich. At the time, my MSc from ETHZ was equivalent to MSc+MPhil of UK, or MSc Research of many other countries. But this could be specific to the MSc program I attended!
This seems to be historical. ETH is a university. Switzerland also has institutes formerly called Höhere Technische Lehranstalten (HTL), which are now called Fachhochschule.
The preconditions to enter the ETH and a Fachhochschule differ significantly. Finishing a degree at ETH used to take significantly longer, and the curriculum at ETH involved far more advanced mathematics.
Formerly the titles attained at a Fachhochschule was Dipl. Ing., Dipl. Ing HTL or Dipl. Ing. FH and the title you got at ETH was Dipl. Ing. ETH. As you guessed correctly, Dipl. Ing. ETH was a clearly superior different and more extensive education. The title from a Fachhochschule was roughly equivalent with a BSc while the title from ETH was comparable to a MSc from a competitive international university. This changed only recently, with the introduction of Bachelor and Master degrees in Switzerland a few years after the year 2000.
Nowadays graduates of a Fachhochschule usually get the title BSc, and graduates of ETH usually get MSc degrees, and have the option to cut their studies short and end them with a BSc degree, although last I heard it was still very unusual to do so.
This is missing some things... There are plenty of regular ol' universities(TM) in Switzerland. Students there get BSc and MSc titles without the ETH suffix. The ETH Zurich and the EPF (Lausanne) are not universities, but Federal Institutes of Technology. The difference here is that ETHZ and EPFL are directy budgeted/lead by the federal government, while the universities are budgeted/lead by the single cantons they are located in.
Indeed, there are other universities in Switzerland. Philosophy and Law can be studied at University of Zurich but not at ETH Zurich, while fields like Mechanical Engineering were only taught at ETHZ/EPFL, so this was less of a concern than the Fachhochschulen back then. There is some overlap in the generic fields like Mathematics and Biology. The preconditions to enter University of Zurich are the same as those for entering the ETH Zurich, and the studies take the same amount of time. Still a math degree from ETH is often seen as slightly more valuable than one from university of Zurich.
While @Peters answer is correct on the historical aspect and the difference to the "Fachhochschule(n)", there is something missing:
The ETH Zurich and the EPF (Lausanne) are Federal Institutes of Technology. And while they technically are universities (as by the usage of the term outside Switzerland), the difference here is that ETHZ and EPFL are directy budgeted/lead by the federal government, while the other universities are budgeted/lead by the single cantons they are located in.
Both institutions are also the most prestigious Swiss institutes of higher learning in many of their technical degrees/educations.
Last but not least both EPFL and ETHZ are notorious for steep learning curves and filtering out many not-quite-talented-enough students (after first year generally 30% or so remain). I guess one of the reasons why the old ETH suffix is still around is also due to a fair bit of (not quite unfounded) elitism.
It was usually about 50% of students remaining after the first 2 years of filtering by way of Vordiplom Prüfungen, unless that changed significantly in recent years. Also the ETH most certainly is a university if we use the international meaning of the word. The rest of the post I agree with.
ETH and EPFL are in fact universities, they are members of the Swiss University Conference and their degrees are considered university degrees. That is the reason why they need to be differentiated from the FH engineering degrees.
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62266 | How important is it to show students an application of the topics seen in an undergraduate course?
I am currently designing a proof-based Math course for my University. I already designed and ordered all of the theoretical content in the course and included some ad hoc exercises for practicing each of the particular topics in the course. However, I have also designed a long final assignment that introduces a problem covering roughly all of the topics in the course.
My question is on how helpful is it for the student to work on these kind of general assignments. Assuming he already understood each of the topics individually, will it be beneficial spending some weeks analyzing an application involving almost all of the topics seen? Is there any research on the educational benefits of these type of exercises?
EDIT: I would be grateful if someone could cite a research paper that talks about the benefits of showing these kind of general applications involving many topics in undergraduate courses.
Although cross-posting is discouraged on Stack Exchange sites, this question might have been worth asking on Mathematics Educators Stack Exchange, especially given your specific situation.
I can't point to any specific research, but it is a common observation that (i) students have difficulty putting individual topics learned in class into a context that would allow them to see where they are used, (ii) students who don't understand why a topic is relevant tend to forget it rather quickly. This is as true in mathematics as in many other areas, and I think it is widely thought that this limits the ability of students to apply what they learned to new situations.
Consequently, at least to me, it is of great importance to provide students with the context in which each topic I cover in my classes lives. Why do we care about a particular statement? What implications does a particular theorem have on areas they are already familiar? I know that this approach is not universally shared in mathematics (or at least others may define the context and the applications to be rather narrowly as "related areas of mathematics"), but at least in my view, it is important to show students what the material they learn can be used for. Otherwise, mathematics is no more than an idle game of moving symbols from one side of an equation to another.
I'm pretty sure there's been a bunch of math ed research on (i). I think the name it goes by is something like "transfer of knowledge."
I'm certain there is research on this. I'm just not familiar with this area, sorry :-(
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66644 | Transfer of credit (masters) in Germany?
Is it possible to transfer credit (masters) in Germany? I have completed half of my credits in a German university. Now I want to transfer to other university. Is it possible?
Thanks for ur reply.I wrote to some program coordinators of different universities(of course the same subject) and they said I have to take admission from the beginning. Thats why I was not sure whether its possible in Germany or not.
Formally, they have to accept the credits you have already earned, But some universities haven't gotten the word yet, unfortunately.
Credits must¹ be transferred if you are changing universities, this includes courses you have failed. Any course with the appropriate amount of credits that is 80 % or more equivalent to a course in the program you are transferring to will be transferred. Be prepared to do the paperwork, documenting the “Modulhandbuch” for all of the courses you have attempted.
You can only transfer, however, if there is space available in the target program. This is not always the case.
¹ This is demanded by federal law (Hochschulrahmengesetz, § 15(3)):
Zum Nachweis von Studien- und Prüfungsleistungen soll ein Leistungspunktsystem geschaffen werden, das auch die Übertragung erbrachter Leistungen auf andere Studiengänge […] einer anderen Hochschule ermöglicht.
(For certifying studying or examination accomplishments, a point-based system system shall be created that allows to transfer accomplishments to other degree courses of other universities.)
Specific realisations depend on the state or even the university. For example, the Berliner Hochschulgesetz states (§ 22 (2)):
Die Hochschulen haben Studiengänge und Prüfungen so zu organisieren
und einzurichten, dass insbesondere
[…]
bereits erbrachte Studien- und Prüfungsleistungen bei einem Wechsel der
Hochschule weitestgehend anerkannt werden können,
[…]
(Universities have to organise courses and exams such that especially […] already achieved studying or examination accomplishments can be largely acknowledged when switching universities.)
I have looked in some universities.Most of the universities in Germany does not take students in higher semesters.May be I should search in other countries of Europe.
I don't think that "most" is true. See the legal language that Wrzlprmft kindly put into my answer. It depends on whether or not there is space available in the program. Transferring credit to other European countries is theoretically possible, but in general an exercise in frustration. Note that there are deadlines for application to Master's programs, some as early as April or May, to commence studies in the fall.
Yes u r right.I wrote to some coordinators now and some of them said its possible.they asked me to provide them my module to see how much my courses match to them. Now my question when i will write them,sholud i ask the main supervisor(the head person who is responsible for the programme) also to consider or just the coordinator?is it ok if i write the head a mail also? does it make any difference?as u r in the same profession so i think u know what professors like u think. @Debora Weber-Wulff
Write to the coordinator. It is their job, they answered you. As department head I detested getting CCed on every trivial matter. Even though this is important for you, it is NOT of interest to the department head. Only deal with the person in charge of such a thing. In Germany this would be the ''Prüfungsausschussvorsitzende''.
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127524 | International Student applying for a PhD in a university in Taiwan
I am a student doing my Masters in India, and was considering doing a PhD (in computer science, specifically ML) in a university in Taipei, Taiwan. I went to their website, but couldn't find some of the details I was looking for. These were the questions (in no particular order)
Will language be an issue? Are we expected to learn Chinese? The website said that there are courses in Chinese and English, but nothing more. I wanted to know in terms of doing courses, communicating with the advisor and his other students, as well as writing papers.
What about food? I am a vegetarian.
Can i get scholarship there? From the govt or TAship/RAship?
What about the coursework which I will have to do in my PhD? How long would it take(duration)? And how is the workload?
And there was I thinking the Chinese were pretty good with vegetarian cuisine...
I took the liberty to edit out the name of the university because we do not take questions for a specific university. (The question is probably going to be closed because it's too specific.)
I had asked a question related to master's coursework in the US previously, and that was closed because it was too broad, and the details vary from university to university. So I thought I would look at them individually and then ask doubts pertaining to that specific university (which I cannot find on the internet). But now I'm confused, what exactly should be the scope of the question?
I know there are many international PhD students there. I think you need not to worry about English use in the classrooms. However, you will need to learn Chinese to some extent in order to live in Taiwan. Not knowing the local language would cause you a lot trouble.
There are quite a few vegetarian food only restaurants available in Taipei. But, they are not cheap and may be some distance away from university campus.
Talk to the university about 3 & 4.
(I am local in Taipei)
For 2, Vegetarian is quite common in Taiwan since there are significant Buddhism population (around 10% ?) there. You should able to find a greater variety of budget choices with a little effort.
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93380 | Who should be first author? Theory person or Experiment person?
The situation:
Two PhD students named 'Theory' and 'Experiment' are working on a project. Both are experimentalists by training but, from experiences working on a separate project, Theory comes up with an idea for a new experiment. Positive results from this experiment would have a small but significant impact on their field. However, Theory does not have expertise on the particular instrument required to conduct the experiment so, with the blessing of their adviser, Theory enlists Experiment who is an expert at using the instrument. Theory guides the experiment but the execution is all done by Experiment.
Happily, the results are positive!
The question is, given that Theory and Experiment agree to share first authorship, who should be listed first?
Edit: after writing this I found this thread
Had the idea vs. did the work: Who should be the lead author? which is very similar to this question.
There's also an interesting discussion of the issue in this blog: https://funkdoctorx.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/co-first-author-and-cvs/
As someone working in a field where authors are listed alphabetically, I feel this "first author" thing is getting out of hand. We decided that first authors are more important; then shared first authorship was invented. Now people start suggesting that, among shared first authors, the first one listed is more important. What comes next, shared first first authors?
Since different fields have very different conventions, this question needs more information before it can be answered
The question is, given that Theory and Experiment agree to share first authorship, who should be listed first? -- Varies by field. In my field, I see folks do an alphabetical listing of the two first authors. Sometimes journals allow authors to indicate equal contribution in the paper somewhere. Also, in your CV, you can indicate that the two authors listed first contributed equally.
If the order of shared-first authors matters, you're not really shared-first authors.
"Shared first authorship" means there is a statement at the bottom of the first page, saying "both of these two contributed equally" ?
Possible duplicate of Paper contributions and first authorship
Money guy, for sure.
@FedericoPoloni All first authors are first, but some first authors are more first than others. - Orwell, G. et al
Possible duplicate of Why do people sometimes put authors with equal contribution in non-alphabetical order?
Ooo! Research on how authors should be listed is gonna be my next paper! (Anyone that wants to help, I'll let you be listed too.)
@mickeyf Actually there are various research papers about authorship order, see here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1208.3391 and the references therein
It is impossible to answer with this information. are you assuming exactly equal amount of time writing the paper and doing all the analysis that went into that? People asking why it matters who is first is because it makes a big difference how the paper is talked about, how it is cited in practice, and even (barring that) frankly people are petty little bleeps so want to be first.
@RoboKaren The last author spot is reserved for money guy.
Possible duplicate of Had the idea vs. did the work: Who should be the lead author?
Shared first authors are listed alphabethically, at least that's what makes sense, otherwise they are not shared first authors!! I'd go with that no doubt.
From your comments I would say that your are the Experiment person, as you seem to be diminishing the role of the Theory person (he/she simply did so and so...).
From your description, the Theory person came up with the idea and guided the experiments, while the Experiment person simply run the experiments. As a general principle, I would tend to side with the Theory person (Peter's answer here seems to corroborate my view). I believe it also matters who is going to write most of the paper, which you do not mention.
However, as we are all a bunch of strangers on the internet, there's no actual way of knowing which is the case (the idea may be too simple or the experiment may be very complex, and so on...). The best thing to do would be to talk to your supervisor.
Most importantly, don't cling on unimportant details, as you already have a shared first-author status. Move on. This is the kind of meaningless thing that can ruin a scientific collaboration for good.
At least in my field, shared first (co-first) are not listed alphabetically, and additional (but small) weight is given to internal ordering of first authors. I agree it is silly, but the whole ordering method is distorted (in some papers I saw 4 co-first authors).
From the information we have I'd find it hard to lean either side. From the description given, I could also conclude that the Theory person might have had a vague idea, like "wouldn't it make sense to apply that method to that data pool I just discovered?!" and then the Experiment person went and actually did the work. Such an idea might be common enough that a lot of people have it, but don't spend the work to actually cary out any experiments. It might also be that Theory came up with a lot of theoretical frameworks explaining why the experiments could be a good idea, we don't know.
In the end it really depends on how much efforts both authors spent (and how valuable their efforts are to the project), and they seem to agree that it's about the same.
Throw a dice to decide who comes first. Then write a follow-up paper and inverse the order. Sometimes there is no right and wrong all you can aim for is fairness in the long run.
I'd think carefully about how much work has been invested by each student and scientific contribution, and how much each student will guide the writing of the paper. Based on what you've said so far I'd tend toward listing Experiment first. If Theory devoted more effort than I thought, perhaps co-first.
Did Theory say, "It's worth testing X, because if this is true, then Y"? Or did the student develop a quantitative mathematical model that is motivating the paper? Who is making the decisions about experimental details? Is Experiment making all of the decisions, because he/she knows the system being studied? Or is Theory making all of the scientific calls, and Experiment serving as a technician who happens to be expert in a particular tool?
I would have a difficult time arguing, however, that the student who performed all of the experiments - and without whose experience the project wouldn't have worked - could be listed less than co-first, though.
Edited to add: in case anyone's wondering, I'm a theorist.
#AJK thanks for your insight. I agree with your last paragraph. FYI Theory simply realized that an extant quantitative mathematical model predicted something never before tested. So yes, Theory said "It's worth testing X, because if that is true, then Y". The decisions about the experiment are being made equally. Theory knows how the instrument works and has used other commercial versions of the instrument but the version Experiment is using is more specialized and much more delicate so the adviser decided to have only Experiment become proficient on it.
So Theory has an idea, and he wants to enlist somebody to run the experiments. He could chose Experiment, or he could probably chose many other people. No matter who he chooses, he gets a paper from it; but because he decided to chose Experiment, this somehow makes Experiment more important and essential but Theory less important for the paper.
@DVSA - I agree entirely, which is why I suggested asking that set of questions.
@Nick: But maybe no one else has the same idea as Theory and thus, he can find any other minion to do his bidding to bring this knowledge to the rest of us, while Experiment may never give the world this knowledge on his own. Point being, it's hardly clear in such cases and as much as both brought about the same sweat in different forms to the project, I'd see them as equal contributors. Since they already share first author, I'd really be pragmatic with the remaining order.
My guess is the poster is Theory. Theory believes it's their original idea and feels the credit belongs to them but is worried that asking Experiment to be second author might be offensive.
In my field, usually the person who proposes and "owns" the project is the first author. However, usually the political setup is that both make clear that we do more than one paper out of this and that Theory is first author for the first paper and Experiment can be first author for a second follow up paper, especially if the second paper is an "experimental" or "methodological" extension of the first paper.
The answer heavily depends on your major and type of research. For example, most of the time in applied chemistry developing an experimental setup and conducting experiment for a very simple idea require a lot of efforts and expertise while in other cases (most of the time
in theoretical computer science) coming up with new idea require a rigorous theoretical (analytical and mathematical) analysis which is much more challenging compare to required experiments to prove the idea.
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116620 | Paper revision exact deadline
I am revising a paper submitted to IEEE TVT journal. I'm quite tight on time and trying to complete the paper revision by its deadline which is on Sep 10,2018 (Monday).
Does anyone have a paper on TVT and know the exact meaning of deadline for this journal ? Is it on Sunday night or Monday night ?
There was a downvote. I upvoted to make it up. I suspect it's because of the acronym TVT. Did you mean IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology by IEEE TVT? Please clarify.
Ask the editor.
Since this is already the date in question, let me note that the mail you got on the deadline may be very specific (date, time, place) or not. If not you can probably interpret it liberally in case you can't reach the editor in question. If they say 11:59PM EDT, Sept 9... then they probably mean it literally. But they may otherwise be interpreting it as local time on the 10th. That is most likely the case unless it was very specific.
Relax. Journal deadlines are not strict (unless they are for special issues with a set publication date). They're more intended to help keep the journal organized. Chances are you can go weeks past the deadline and nothing will happen, although if you wait months, your submission might be removed as dormant.
If you're still concerned, ask for a deadline extension. It's likely the journal will grant it.
While this may be completely true in general it may also be unwise to depend on the advice given in the first paragraph here. "Chances are" won't help you if you are rejected even if other journals wouldn't do that. Meet the deadline or ask the editor. Yes, if you request an extension it will likely be granted, but not if you don't ask. Assumptions are less than safe.
While a journal editor is unlikely to completely reject your paper for missing a deadline, there are things you should consider. The first is that you should keep the editor informed if you will miss a deadline, ask for an extension, and provide a realistic estimate for completion.
One reason for providing a deadline is just to keep you working. But note that an editor will typically have several issues in preparation at the same time. There may be restrictions on total length of an issue, both minimum and maximum, and the editor may already have a slot in mind for your paper, provided that you complete in time to fit the production schedule.
If you miss the deadline, then, while the paper may still be accepted, it may be delayed in publication, possibly for quite a while. That might be especially true for a long paper.
Of course, if there is no physical version of the publication and everything is done online, then the length is less of an issue. However, the editor may also have an idea about a theme for each issue and your paper may fit that theme for an upcoming issue. If you miss deadlines then it may take even longer, until that theme comes up again or a more general issue is created.
It is to your advantage, in just about every way, to work with the editor to make his/her life easier. It is a mutual thing. In particular, don't make assumptions that, if incorrect, make life difficult for both you and the editor. It is easy enough in most cases to find out what you need to know.
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121084 | Why do graduate engineering schools ask for academic reference letters?
I'm applying to study a master of engineering in Canada from Australia. As part of my application I'm required to provide two reference letters.
Now universities in Australia are very commercialized. Even in my third year courses, there are at least 300+ students in a course. I don't see the professors outside of lectures and consultations and as a result I am not 'close' with any professors. I was volunteering and working a lot during my undergrad degree and have thus provided my work and volunteering supervisors as referees. The enrollment team have responded by rejecting my referees and asking me to provide academic referees instead.
I am really frustrated by this as I fail to comprehend the purpose for academic referees in engineering degrees. If it's my academic performance you want to see, you have my transcript for that. If it's my character and capabilities, my supervisors knows it better than any professor ever could.
The only explanation that I can come up with is that this is an outdated system from a time when there were few students at universities and professors back then had closer relationships with students than they do now.
I know this feels like a rant but I am genuinely interested to hear the story from an enrollments perspective. why would graduate engineering schools ask for reference letters specifically from academics?
The answer is most probably due to the quality of references they have received in the past from non-academic referees, which turned out not to help the choices they made. Most times references are needed, such as for a passport, then the suitable source is usually defined with good reason...
I agree that references do not have to be from academics. That seems like an arbitrary restriction, though I can see how it makes sense to have at least one of your letter writers have a background in academia -- after all, you're applying to a university.
Why do admissions committees require letters to begin with? Because graduate school is different from undergraduate. It requires you to show creativity, initiative, independence. Only having good grades in undergraduate is not enough, so the transcript by itself only provides one piece of the picture. In addition, more students have good grades than can be admitted to graduate school -- so admissions committees have to have additional criteria to select from all candidates.
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12618 | How much is the normal salary of a postdoctoral fellow in North America and Western Europe?
I understand that the salary of a postdoctoral fellow depends on the field, project, contract, and so forth, but I am curious how much is the normal range for a fellow. Someone told me that he prefer to continue postdoctoral fellowship, as he gets the same salary of assistant professorship with less official duties.
In my experience, the range of salary for a postdoctoral fellow is much less than an assistant professor, something between $25,000 - $50,000. In Europe, it is in the lower side, but it is usually higher in the US.
I am curious to know what is the actual rate, and is there a norm for estimating the salary of a postdoctoral fellow?
In other words, when looking at postdoctoral openings, how much is an excellent/good/normal deal?
This is going to depend enormously on the country.
...and on the area of research etc.
@TaraB I know, and I just want to get an estimate for North America and Western Europe.
@All Western Europe is hardly a coherent unit, especially when it comes to salaries/benefits :)
@All: Then it would be a good idea to specify that in the question, but as F'x says, there's a pretty wide variation in salaries in Western Europe. (Also a wide variation in the cost of living between different countries in Western Europe and also between different cities in the US.)
Two answers mentioned the level of postdoc salaries in France. This is public information, but not always available in English. I have recently discussed this in more detail here.
Norwegian Polar Institute pays some 450,000 NOK (80,000 $) per year, -ish, from a recent job opening.
@gerrit, that is the standard entry salary for a postdoc in Norway. The standard entry salary for a PhD is just $10,000 less.
@adipro I realise.
Let's find some official numbers and statistics. From this article:
As a baseline, in 2012, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Research Service Award (NRSA) postdoctoral stipend for new postdocs was $39,264, increasing to $54,180 for those with seven or more years of experience. Funding levels at universities are broadly similar.
Post-doc salary guidelines depend on individual institutions, and benefits vary widely from place to place. In addition to salary, checking the benefits is important in the US, but less important in more civilized/socialistic (strike out the inapplicable term) countries.
A job site that gathers salary information from US job advertisements has the following for post-doctoral fellowships:
Post-Doctoral Fellow average salary is $39,302, median salary is $38,000 with a salary range from $20,779 to $961,896.
I think it's safe to say that $961,896 is an outlier, but apart from that, the median matches the NRSA number. It also shows that there is a broad range of salaries, even by browsing the job listings on that site.
For Europe, as I've said the situation is heterogeneous. I know how to find numbers for UK, at least. If you look at jobs postings from jobs.ac.uk for post-doctoral positions, the range appears to be £28,000 – £37,000 (apart from a few outliers). This would be roughly $44,000 – $58,000, but you have to adjust for taxes, health insurance, and then cost of living (which can be quite high in UK).
In France, CNRS is the largest scientific employer, and its post-doc salary is:
The gross monthly salary of a CNRS postdoc is 2,500 €
As an anecdote, when I started as assistant professor, my salary was significantly lower than my post-doc salary. And even some of my post-docs in my group had higher pay than me (as well as some industry-employed PhD students). But money's not everything…
The 2005 Sigma Xi post doc survey reported a median salary of $38,000 a year with a mean experience of 29 months. This is a little bit lower than the 2005 NRSA 2 years of experience salary number. Just another piece of evidence that the salary is approximately $40,000 a year.
@user11852 yes, the scale I gave is the total theoretical range, not restricted to recent graduates…
Can you tell me if postdoc salary is taxable in Ireland?
In many states in the US, you can search publicly available salaries for example California, Washington
A few more: Canadian National Postdoctoral Survey, Assessing the landscape of US postdoctoral salaries, United States National Postdoc Survey results, NSF Median basic salary of U.S. doctorate recipients
@All,
I can only give you some examples. In most areas in physics, in the USA, the postdoc salary ranges from 36000-45000US$ for most universities. Some high-ranked universities pay as much as 60000$ too to their physics postdocs, with an exception of Simons Center which pays 70000$. On the other hand, national labs pay around 70000$ for their physics postdocs - I don't know why the difference between the university payscale and the national lab payscales in the same country for the same field!
In the UK it is fairly uniform for any field, at least in science and engineering. It is usually between £29000 to £33000 per year. Where you lie in this range depends on how many years you have passed after your Ph.D.
In Australia, they usually pay 60000-70000 AUD + 9% (if the contract is for short term - I don't know if the short term means 1 year or less than 3 years though) or 17% (if the contract is for 3 years or more) superannuation, i.e., retirement fund. Again, there are precise rules on where you lie in this range depending on years after the PhD date.
In South Africa, it is somewhere between 180000-240000 Rand per year tax-free.
In New Zealand, you may expect the salary around 50000-60000 NZ$.
In Germany the salary levels seemed complicated to me when I was applying as there are many kinds of taxes and you may avoid some if you are married and have child etc.
In Brazil, you may expect around US$14000 for the national postdoc fellowship (52000BRL). With month life cost of US$1073 (3966BRL )
If you ask me, the postdoc life is miserable if you are in most universities in the USA and have even a small family to support. In my experience, Australia or the UK where the salaries are uniform and above the national averages for the fresh engineers (or other professionals), your life can be much more pleasant - well unless you are in the expensive area in Sydney or London!
Brazil seems excellent too but I can't speak Portuguese !
Edit: Forgot about Ireland. The salaries are around €35000 per year. I used to get paid around €43000 per year (each every expenses like insurance, taxes, 'levy' which was another kind of tax, etc. were on me though) in 2009-2010, however I would think the salary levels have gone lower after the credit crunch in which Ireland has been affected the most.
I should also mention that most postdocs in Math departments in the USA are paid 48000-55000 US$ per year but they have to teach 2 courses a year or so whereas the physics postdocs don't teach at all (if they teach then they get more money than their salary).
Also in Japan and South Korea the salaries are around US$40000 (converting. their local currencies)
very informative answer!
@SimonArnold great answer, would you have sources for these figures?
@SimonArnold: London salaries are higher to compensate for the higher living costs. I find it a bit unfair actually that it's the only place in the country where salaries and PhD scholarships are higher, because I work in a town which is too expensive for me to live in (St Andrews, Scotland).
Also I think NZ salaries have gone up (along with living costs). A friend there is getting $70,000 for his postdoc there and he only just finished his PhD. And in Australia the top of the range is more like $80,000 these days.
@TaraB how come St Andrews is expensive? it's in the middle of… well, I won't say “nowhere”, but it's a rather little place in the middle of the countryside
@F'x: Indeed, but it's very nice, and there are more people who want to live there than fit, therefore accommodation is in high demand. It has a lot of golf courses and so rich people come on holiday there and retire there. It's also close enough to Edinburgh for a day-trip, so not completely out of civilisation.
But this is getting rather off-topic!
By the way, other postdocs without anyone else to support can afford to live in St Andrews just fine. It isn't as expensive as London.
In Norway, postdoc salaries in biology are often in the range 75000-90000$ per year before tax.
@F'x, I should indeed put references for each of the figures I mentioned but it may take a bit of dig to get all these figures. However, I have applied to all these countries during the past 4 years and have got a job in each of these countries. So these figures are practical ones, i.e., quoted on my offer letters!
@Tara B, I don't know about St Andrew's but usually most other towns (except of course some big cities like Manchester) in the UK are fairly reasonable compared to their postdoc salaries which is as Simon Arnold said is even better than a fresh engineer (which is not the case in the USA where on an average a fresh engineer would get starting from around $50000 per year whereas a postdoc can except 36000-45000$). Taxes are slightly higher in the UK but then you have to consider free health services, great public transportation, etc. issues.
In the USA, health insurance can eat up the tax difference. And then you must buy a car unless you are in New York City! To have a fair comparison, then while talking about being a postdoc in London must be compared with being a postdoc in NYC which are equally expensive. I should add here that I am neither from the USA nor UK. I have worked as a postdoc in both the countries though. And the life as a postdoc in the UK is far more respectable than in the USA with the respective postdoc salaries.
In particle physics lab jobs are both highly competitive and prestigious, and often attract some of the next generation of stand-out scientists.
In math in the US postdocs generally pay between 40K and 70K with the bulk between 45K and 60K. The AMS has survey data and graphs.
The median for 2018 is $56K from a more recent survey result https://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/2018Survey-NewDoctorates-Report.pdf
Some anecdotal data from (theoretical) computer science:
A Simons funded postdoc gets ~ $70,000
A "normal" postdoc funded by a faculty member from an NSF grant seems to get between $50,000 and $60,000 around these parts.
A postdoc at an industry lab (say, Microsoft Research which I think is the highest paying lab, but numbers at other labs like IBM are not so different) gets upwards of $130,000.
Of course, part of the reason that these comparatively high is that the outside industry options all pay more.
Just adding information for some countries omitted above. For useful links find my answer to this question. For Germany, you are interested in the E13 scale (grade depending on you experience = the number of years from your PhD. start/defense - depends on the position), which boils down to somewhere around 40-50k EUR brutto. For Netherlands, you are interested in a salary scale 10, or 11 again depending on your experience, generally the grade corresponds to the number of years from your PhD. defense. The end result again lies somewhere between 40-50k EUR brutto. There are however significant tax reductions for "knowledge workers", which could significantly increase your net salary.
Later edit: adding few sources
Information about the "30% ruling":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_Netherlands#The_30_Percent_Rule
http://www.iamsterdam.com/en-GB/living/official-matters/thirty-percent-ruling
most universities also provide information about this, for instance TU Delft here:
http://www.tudelft.nl/en/theme/international-staff-and-students/staff-guests/procedures-prior-to-arrival/immigration-procedures/30-rule/
Do you have a link to more information about those tax reductions for knowledge workers?
@underdark: sure. See the edited answer
To give a lower-end answer, the worst position in France is "demi-ATER": it is a half position in the sense that you have half as much teaching duty than professors (about 4 hours a week on average, for about 24 weeks), but you are usually expected to work full time, research included.
It is paid less than 1200 Euros per month, net before taxes.
The full ATER position is as much teaching as professors, with a month salary of approximately 1600 Euros.
Wow, I've never heard of this. My PhD stipend in France is greater than that, even without a teaching post. Not I know what to look out for...
The answer to this very broad question depends on many factors such as (but not limited to):
field: I can't really say if the same position in one field makes more than another but it's very possible.
country: see other answers; North America or Western Europe are waaay to broad to be clumped into a single bucket. (see below for approx figures from Sweden)
university/city: bigger and more expensive cities usually call for larger figures, but in practice you don't get richer on that due to higher cost of living (particularly rent)
financing: postdoc but where? ... at a company/university/independent research institute? In certain systems it's also possible to apply for postdoc grants (ref in Swedish), I know some people who have gotten grants that include their own salaries. Getting such a grant means your financial burden on the employer is much less.
tax: some countries have special, time-bound tax classes for "visiting scientists" or something like that, I have heard that Denmark has a such a policy
That being said, I have got a figure of approx 32500 SEK/mon (ref in Swedish) which corresponds to roughly €45000 per annum (The source is a labor union for university employees).
Hope that helps
Denmark's reduced tax for foreign researchers is 26%, which in addition to labor market contributions raises to 32%. As an example, a postdoc with reduced tax and pension exemption (that means that the university pays you the pension that is supposed to pay to the state as you are a foreigner), the net salary is around 40k EUR.
In Ecology in North America, $45K is generally considered a good salary. $55K is possible via a competitive NSF post-doc. The lowest I've seen was I think $38K. Many post docs are funded via NSF grants and I believe there is an automatic cost of living adjustment implemented by the NSF. The lowest post-doc salaries I've seen are generally at universities in more rural areas.
I am not going to research this in detail for you, as you can find almost all of this online, and there are many western European countries.
For western Europe it really depends on the country, you can expect to earn roughly 2.5x more in Switzerland (86k CHF) compared to Portugal or Spain (€33k), with most of the other countries in between (Germany €50k). The cost of living also changes, but still you end up with more $$ in some countries.
In most countries there is a collective agreement, meaning that you get payed according to a table. For example in Germany all postdocs earn E13, with the exact amount depending on the years of documented experience, and you only get to E14 if are directly managing 3 persons that are in E13. So for a lot of places you don't have to worry about getting a bad deal on your salary.
Do you have a source for the hard requirement for E14? I know that such positions require some additional responsibilities beyond standard research and teaching, but I've never heard of such a hard-and-fast rule (and would be interested to see it). Usually, there has to be some vague argument about the tasks given being "particularly difficult and/or important".
You are right, that's also there and I missed it before. But it does start with managing 3 E13 employees and only mentions the difficult / important after. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarifvertrag_f%C3%BCr_den_%C3%B6ffentlichen_Dienst_der_L%C3%A4nder
Well, Wikipedia is hardly legal precedent... The actual law only mentions "Beschäftigte [...], deren Tätigkeit sich durch besondere Schwierigkeit und Bedeutung aus der Entgeltgruppe 13 heraushebt." Based on this text, you have to argue for each position independently that it has to be announced as E14 instead of E13; one possible blanket argument that seems to have frequently been successful is that the position involves managing 3+ E13 positions.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:49.017082 | 2013-09-13T00:46:41 | {
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8402 | How is US law on equal opportunity enforced in academic recruitment?
Almost every US university states on its job advertisements that the university is an equal opportunity employer. Based on federal law, this means that applicants not be judged by their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
What is the guarantee for this fair strategy in action? If the committee is influenced by negative personal views to underestimate the qualifications of an applicant, how can s/he prove/appeal/claim/complain?
For example, certain criteria are given for an academic position. If an applicant believes that the winner of this competition (the one who is finally appointed) is less qualified than her/him, how can s/he claim that the selection was not equal opportunity in practice?
How can one detect/prove this violation?
How does one proceed in case of a possible violation?
Welcome to AC.sx. I think this is an excellent question that is well worded. I also do not think it is really specific to academia and therefore off-topic.
@DanielE.Shub I somehow agree with you and had doubt to post it here, as it is more related to job topic. However, emphasis on equal opportunity employment is mainly within academia (for academic position). I have not seen such emphasis in other job advertisements. However, if this is out of interests of the AC audience, I will delete it.
What about migrating the question to http://workplace.stackexchange.com/?
@ChrisGregg That's OK to me, seems to be a good idea to attract more attention.
@All all government jobs are also equal opportunity.
@Zenon yes but the diversity (thus, the need for EE) of applicants for faculty positions is much higher than government jobs.
I think the question can be salvaged (i.e. made more on-topic) if one added the perspective of how equal opportunity principle is enforced in academic recruitment. Does the OP agree with this?
Despite my answering the question, as it stands it does belong on workplace.SE. If it is retooled as @posdef suggests, then it can stay. Particularly for example, "How does EEO impact the search process for academic positions?"
@posdef I followed your useful suggestion.
I think even after the recent edit, this question is better suited for Workplace. I interpreted posdef's suggestion not as "How to detect and punish violations?" (the current question) but rather "How do universities adjust their hiring practices to conform to EOE law?" (which I think would be on-topic here).
Being an equal opportunity employer means that the institution abides by the US federal law on Equal Opportunity - basically that the employer cannot consider race, color, religion, sex, or national origin when making personnel decisions. Additional protected classes, such as age, have been added to Equal Opportunity over the years. Equal Opportunity does not force an institution to hire someone they would rather not hire on the basis of being a member of a protected class, but it means they cannot artificially exclude that candidate. Equal opportunity means that all applications must be evaluated fairly. It does not mean that the best candidate on paper always gets the job.
This is in contrast to Affirmative Action, which in the US is "positive discrimination". In other words, the institution is forced to artificially maintain diversity in its staffing if it does not happen naturally. Affirmative action can mean that you would have to hire your second (or third) choice over your first choice to maintain diversity.
Edit - to address some comments.
From the perspective of an applicant, EO violations can difficult to prove, and the burden of proof is usually on the applicant. Most of the information collected during a hiring process is not (and never will become) public. It is shredded/deleted once the position is filled. An applicant's on paper qualifications are nearly impossible to know, unless you are a close acquaintance of the person. The CV that person posts on their website might be abbreviated, incomplete, or out-of-date.
Additionally, most hiring committees often consider important intangibles that are assessed during the interview. Academic positions are different from positions elsewhere. Most academic committees are assuming that they are hiring a person who will stay at that institution, get tenure, etc. They need to assess if the candidate is likely to do so, if the candidate is likely to thrive in the current culture of the department, if the candidate will get along with the faculty personalities, if the candidate is likely to start looking for something bigger and better five-ten years later, if the candidate is likely to survive the tenure process, if the candidate's specialty/expertise fill a current void in the department, if the candidate is likely to meet service expectations with enthusiasm, if the candidate is amenable to the crappy teaching load he or she will get the first semester, if the candidate's research plans are feasible given other expectations and institutional resources, etc.
You may have more awards, publications, conference presentations, fellowships, grants, letters after you name, or whatever on-paper metric you are using, but you may not have met the needs of the department or institution as well as the other candidate. You may feel more qualified, but someone else was a better fit overall for the position. This question and the answers to this question suggest that applications that look too good may not be considered seriously because hiring committees are afraid of a bad fit.
Alternatively, as may happen, the department you applied to may have always intended to hire the person they hired, but to meet legal and institutional requirements they conducted a search. They interviewed several other strong candidates from diverse backgrounds to satisfy EEO requirements, and then they hired the person they wanted to hire. I won't pretend that such behavior isn't shady, but it can be common, especially for administrative positions, and it is legal. The best way for a hiring committee to prove they are following EEO guidelines is to interview a diverse array of qualified candidates.
To allege that your application was artificially rejected because of your membership in a protected class, start by getting a lawyer. Don't risk jeopardizing your case by inadvertently proceeding without one. Then, do whatever your legal counsel advises. That is what they are for. The only real proof that the hiring committee discriminated against you is if no members of your protected class were interviewed. If you were interviewed, that means they either 1) considered you a strong candidate or 2) went out of their way not to exclude you. Either way, you have almost no case. It may make you angry if the second thing happened, but there is little you can do except to warn people you know away from applying at that institution. If they discriminate against you because you are not the one person they really want for the job, it is not illegal, it just sucks.
Even though it's good information I am not sure if your answer (as it stands) addresses the principal question by the OP: "What is the guarantee for this fair strategy in action? If the committee is influenced by negative personal views to underestimate the qualifications of an applicant, how s/he can prove/appeal/claim/complaint?"
Your description is correct, but as @posdef stated, I am curious what is the guarantee that this law is followed in action. I think this is more like a manual for search committees rather than obligation. I do not say they do not follow this strategy, but how to prosecute any possible violation ?
@posdef - I agree. I have updated my answer.
@BenNorris Thanks for the update. It contained many subtle points and I learned a lot.
The only real proof that the hiring committee discriminated against you is if no members of your protected class were interviewed. — I am not a lawyer, but I believe even that is not proof. For the hiring committee I'm on currently, we have to carefully document the criteria we use to decide who to interview. But there is no expectation that we must interview someone in every protected class.
Also: +1 for Hire a lawyer.
@JeffE - Having been on hiring committees, I agree. You can only be expected to interview qualified candidates. The law does not provide equal opportunity for unqualified individuals. However, I have been instructed to consider a diverse array of candidates, and definitely to carefully document the criteria and decision-making process.
To clarify, is national origin different than citizenship? Specifically, is it acceptable to consider visa status, which can affect start date and cost?
@David - Instead of asking about visas and citizenship, I have been instructed to ask if the candidate is legally permitted to work in the United States. Then, after the interviewing is over, Human Resources can seek for each candidate the proper verification.
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13497 | "Soft" ways to contribute to the research community in a new and growing field
I am doing my PhD research in a new multidisciplinary field within Computer Science. It is new in the sense that there are still no tools/implementations publicly available and several workshops co-located with different conferences. Many papers targeting this new area, have been published in different conferences and journals. As a PhD student and besides the scientific contributions, I would wonder what other soft things I can do for the field?
So far I have developed a tool for one of the main models in the field. I am documenting it to make it public. I thought about maintaining a bibliography. but not sure how beneficial it is.
You should remember that as a Ph.D student, the instruments at your disposal are limited. Having said that, maintaining a bibliography is a useful way to collect all relevant information in one place, especially given the multidisciplinary nature of the area. If you do this though, be careful to
make sure things are always kept up-to-date. There's nothing more annoying than a half-baked reference page
Be very liberal in what you include in the bibliography. It shouldn't be perceived that you're being a gatekeeper for the area.
If possible, provide some structure to the bibliography: sections, maybe some annotation, etc. Depending on how web-savvy you are, you might be able to create a form for people to enter information in themselves.
The primary benefit for you will be access to the entire body of work in the area, and some credit for maintaining the page. There will undoubtedly be name recognition benefits if you are perceived not only as the librarian, but as an expert on the topic.
Disclaimer: I am also currently a PhD student.
My research lies at the intersection(s) of HCI, privacy, location based social networks, mobility theory and spatial statistics. This means that the work in this area gets published from computer science-y journals like ACM CACM, IEEE Privacy & Security to communication-y journals like New Media and Society to conferences like CHI, SOUPS and MobileHCI.
I adopt 3 strategies to organize my own work. If I do not do this then the existing literature and new critical thinking about my area will spiral out of control for me.
I maintain an annotated bibliography for any relevant work in this area. As Suresh pointed out, its generally up-to-date and quite liberal in nature. This is not public but I always email it to folks who ask for it. I find that maintaining a bibliography in Mendeley, exporting as a BibTeX file and writing a couple of sentences about each article works for me. I make sure that each article is filed under some loose sub-heading. For instance, one such general sub-heading in my area could be "Location Privacy and Surveillance."
I write scripts in order to extract, manipulate and analyze data and I always publish them on github. This is public. Usually, I write scripts in php, python or R. Its great to see other folks forking my projects or following them and making them better than I could. :)
I write short blog posts about my impressions on certain topics and also post some simplistic visualizations and analyses of my work there. I take special care in making sure that these are short but to the point. Nobody likes to read long, rambling blog posts. :P
One very valuable thing you can do is to try to form or contribute to an online community of researchers in your subfield. In my area, these communities tend to form lately on Google+ and/or Twitter. You can start by following/adding to your circles people you know who use these social networks. Then when you read (or write) an interesting paper, post your commentary for others to read.
On G+, if you add the #spnetwork tag to your posts, they will also appear on https://selectedpapers.net/, giving them wider exposure.
A community I know of even has a reddit subpage all for themselves... :shocked:
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69410 | Reminder email about acceptance letter
A professor at a university replied to my PhD application email with a yes. I asked him further about his current research projects but haven't heard from him for nearly 2 weeks now; should I write him a reminder email? if so, how can it be in the politest way possible?
I would recommend sending out that reminder email. As a prof, I get about about 20-30 emails per day (of course, many people get plenty more than that). After a week if I haven't responded to an email it is usually not because I am ignoring it. Rather, it has been drowned out by hundreds of more recent notes and messages. Reminders are welcomed -- in fact they tell me that a potential PhD student is both organized and values knowing about my research.
Perhaps a simple response like 'I am following up on my email from May xx, 2016. I assume you are very busy but have you had an opportunity to consider my request?' with your previous email included within the email as a reply.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:49.019854 | 2016-05-28T04:57:14 | {
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23947 | If I upload a draft of my paper to arXiv, will I still be able to publish in an IEEE or ACM publication?
Since IEEE/ACM will eventually own the copyright of the papers they publish, and since they charge for access to papers, if I have a paper on arXiv is that a problem for them?
You can already post your ACM paper on your page free of charge using the Author-Izer service (http://www.acm.org/publications/acm-author-izer-service), so it doesn't look like they prohibit all free-of-charge access (although of course this is under their control).
Read the relevant copyright transfer agreement. For example: http://www.acm.org/publications/ACM-PubLicenseAgreement.pdf and http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecopyrightform.pdf — in brief, yes, submitting to ArXiv is perfectly fine, just follow the details of the relevant copyright transfer agreement.
Only if you tell them.
As @Jukka Suomela has indicated in the comments, yes, you will.
The relevant policy for IEEE (from http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecopyrightform.pdf) is:
8 . Electronic Preprints. Before submitting an article to an IEEE publication, authors frequently post their manuscripts to their own web site, their
employer’s site, or to another server that invites constructive comment from colleagues. Upon submission of an article to IEEE, an author is required to
transfer copyright in the article to IEEE, and the author must update any previously posted version of the article with a prominently displayed IEEE
copyright notice. Upon publication of an article by the IEEE, the author must replace any previously posted electronic versions of the article with either
(1) the full citation to the IEEE work with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or link to the article abstract in IEEE Xplore, or (2) the accepted version
only (not the IEEE-published version), including the IEEE copyright notice and full citation, with a link to the final, published article in IEEE Xplore.
For ACM, from http://www.acm.org/publications/ACM-PubLicenseAgreement.pdf:
(b) Furthermore, notwithstanding the exclusive
rights the Owner has granted to ACM pursuant to Paragraph 2 (a),
Owner shall have the right to do the following: [...] (v) Prior to commencement of the ACM
peer review process, post the version of the Work as submitted to
ACM (“Submitted Version”) to non-peer reviewed servers...
This answer is current as of August, 2014.
Just note that the IEEE copyright requirements quoted here are pretty much BS. From a moral/ethical standpoint they have no business telling you what to do with previous drafts; and legally, once you've granted non-revocable rights to, well, everyone, even if you "transfer" your copyrights to the IEEE you can just "have them back" by the terms under which it was published. (Caveat: I am not a lawyer.)
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102325 | Recommendation letter after 1 month?
I am applying for a US PhD program. One of my recommendation letters arrived 1 month late.
Should I
1) contact the department
or
2) contact potential supervisors to kindly ask them to consider it, given that the delay was out of my control?
or
3) do nothing?
Contact the department immediately and provide evidence that the letter itself was delayed. Then cc your referee on the correspondence.
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76553 | Emailing two professors who've co-authored papers I'm interested on working on
I'm interested in a graduate program, and I've identified a topic and idea that I have in mind for research. However, the related papers have been co-authored by two professors in the same department, who also head the related research labs together, as well. I want to contact them about research opportunities.
How would I go about emailing them? What's the right etiquette?
Email both of them individually
CC both of them in one intro email
Choose one of them and email only them
Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
From what you've said, it sounds like they're of equal status and you've given no indication that the work you may want to do is likely to be of more obvious relevance to one than the other.
As long as this is the case I would suggest contacting them both in an initial email. If you're looking to arrange a meeting with them then you could mention that you're happy to meet with them individually or as a pair.
Contacting them both at once gives you the benefit of increasing the chance that you'll get a response, while it provides them the opportunity to decide for themselves which of them (if not both) maintains contact with you. Furthermore, even if you only get into a dialogue with one of them, because you've copied in both from the beginning the other should be able to track what's been discussed.
If my initial assumption is incorrect and it's obvious that one of them may be more relevant to your interests (e.g., if one is the "theory-person" and the other is the "methodology-person") then you may want to consider contacting that one individually, but even still I would suggest there are advantages to approaching both at once.
It's hard to decide which one of them is the (theory/methodology)-person, since both of them have co-authored numerous papers in that field. They even co-head two research labs. My initial hunch was that it might be beneficial to contact them both together, but I wasn't sure if that was would be ok. Thanks for your ideas and suggestions!
Also, should I address why I've emailed them together, in the email? Maybe explain it's because they've co-authored the papers?
@shadow Yeah, I would say that I was contacting them because of my interest in the work they've both been involved in.
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12052 | How many arXiv papers are uploaded in their final (refereed) versions?
In a recent meta.physics.se discussion on the use of permanent links form physics.stackexchange, I proposed as policy that
when linking to the arXiv, link to the abstract page (arxiv.org/abs/...) and not directly to the pdf, as a courtesy to users on lower bandwidths. If the paper has been published (which will be noted on the arXiv abstract), include a link to the journal version, even if it's paywalled, if only as a courtesy to the referees' hard work.
One comment on the italicized part was
Doesn't pretty much everybody post the final version on arxiv?
and I would like to know (if that is even possible) to what extent this is true. My gut feeling is that this is field-dependent, but I do not know what evidence may be available to explore this, other than anecdotal evidence.
Thus: Is there a clear trend for authors to upload post-referee-process versions after publication? Does this depend on the specific field? What evidence is available for this?
Until recently, I thought that posting to arXiv the post-refereed version was considered bad form, especially if the author has already transferred copyright to the journal. However, I recently discovered that this is allowed by many publishers, including Elsevier. You can check on what is allowed by specific publishers.
@DanC Thank you for the link. I know that publisher policies on what is allowed vary, but for now I'm mostly interested in whether people actually take advantage of those rights or not, or in which fields they do.
In math (specifically math.CO), I rarely (maybe 1 out of 20 or rarer) see comments stating that the paper is post-refereed. I think the Elsevier policy on posting post-refereed versions is probably fairly new, in light of the Elsevier boycott. As a result, I think more people may take advantage of it as they become aware. For the time being, I believe it is uncommon.
@DanC: I believe also Springer recently changed their policy in that direction. See also http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11226/725 about increasing rights for authors.
@DanC: What do you mean by comments stating that the paper is post-refereed? Do you mean something explicit like "This is the final, published version"? It has never occurred to me to add a comment like that, although I always update papers post-refereeing. I'd guess that a lot of people do this without explicit comment.
@AnonymousMathematician The arXiv submission process has a Comments field. When I submit a revision, I use that field to describe the changes from the previous version. I suspected that was standard, but perhaps it is not.
@AnonymousMathematician: moreover, it has a "journal-ref" field, where you can give the final citation. I'm frequently wondering whether arXiv (or other author archived manuscripts) are the final version, and of what paper exactly, so I find that possibility an important help and try not to forget updating it.
It is a lot of work to find out which paper in arXiv has actually the same content as a published paper. However, taking arXiv's journal-ref field as a surrogate indicating which paper has a journal version out, I arrive at these fraction of papers:
So it looks as if the gut feeling that this is field-dependent is true: high energy and nuclear physics have consistently high fractions of papers with journal-ref field set. On the other hand, this seems far less common for maths papers. Note that a certain drop at the end is to be expected as the preprints may be uploaded to arXiv considerably before the paper is accepted, printed and the journal-ref is updated in arXiv.
Here's the marginal plot over all fields:
So overall, about 45% of the papers have a journal-ref. However, it is set for almost 60% of the 2001 - 2007 papers. Whether this is a real decline or just the lag between preprint and paper publishing remains to be seen (in a few years).
Also, neither the overall nor the subject-dependent trends seem to have a convincing increasing trend, even if the decline due to "not yet published and updated" is assumed to be the sole cause of the decreases.
For the complete picture, here's the development of total number of papers:
and number of papers with journal-ref set:
Thanks for making the effort to process the data and generate these graphs.
I guess the drop at the end is in fact mostly the publication delay. This is also field dependent - math journals are known for extraordinary publication delays, and that is very apparent in your plots.
@silvado: yes I agree. However, I wasn't aware that a delay of 6 years sounds reasonable e.g. for maths. In my field (chemistry/chemometrics) the delay is much shorter, also because we have to be careful whether pre-prints are considered previous publication, so I put my preprints to arXiv only after submission or even after acceptance/end of the embargo time. That makes much shorter to no delay.
@silvado: It certainly seems update delay, rather than publication delay.
By cutting off the 6 years, there is a clear downtrend for math/math-ph/astro-ph, and stay the same and up for others. It should be due to the difficult of publishing in those journal. To get the better comparison, we must also parse for real published paper and compare the date, which is very hard to do.
@cbeleites The tendency in maths to publish preprints very early certainly adds to the observed delay time in your data.
I post my papers on astro-ph after acceptance. None of my papers have journal-ref set, as far as I can see.
@xioxox: May I ask whether you have a particular reason for not setting journal-ref? I use it because I prefer "proper" citations and do not want to put any obstacles to people who wonder whether and to what extent the paper on arXiv and the journal version are the same. In fact, I put a box into the arXiv version stating that they are equivalent.
@cbeleites: I don't have the reference when I put it on after acceptance. No one in astronomy/astrophysics bothers adding it later. I think this likely because we all search for papers with ADS (http://adswww.harvard.edu/), which automatically associates the journal and astro-ph articles, giving the journal article by default.
@cbeleites you should also put a box in the published version stating they are the same!
@DavidRoberts: nice idea, but in my field not feasible: we often have an embargo of a year before we're allowed to make the author's accepted manuscript publicly available.
Only after you sign a legal document ;-). You can always point to the arXiv as being a preprint version, then update that later to the final version.
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11193 | How tightly enforced are open-access embargoes?
Many academic journals have copyright policies which forbid authors (possibly for a finite embargo time) to make their papers (either preprints, accepted manuscripts, or camera-ready versions) freely available (either on their personal websites or on repositories such as the arXiv). How tightly enforced are these policies? Are there known cases of publishers pursuing legal action against an author for posting copyrighted academic papers? Or would such cases normally be dealt with private requests to cease-and-desist?
This answer seems to indicate such cases are rare, but there could be privately-dealt with cases that are not visible. Or is there a large body of public-repository-published papers that possibly / probably / demonstrably have been publicly posted in breach of a copyright policy?
I am having a hard time thinking of reasons to ask this question that don't involve violating the signed agreement with the journal to respect their embargo. Since questions asking about breaking the law are probably frowned on in the Stack Exchange network, could you please clarify the rationale for your question?
I'm sorry it came across like that - my motivation is far from that. I have not and would not breach a signed copyright agreement, and would advise my friends to refrain from that - I choose the journal carefully beforehand. That said, the publishing business has been shown to be extremely predatory, from big-journal bundling to predatory OA journals, and the imposition of copyright restrictions is one of the stone walls authors hit most often. (cont.)
Publishers have already gone after librarians, and I would like to know how predatory the publishing business is as regards legal action towards authors. Are the 'OA-unfriendly' publishers actively defending their positions?
Most computer science researchers violate copyright/publishing agreements all the time, usually with the tacit acceptance (if not covert permission) of the publishers. It's not a moral failing.
@eykanal: wrt. reasons to ask this question that don't involve violating the signed agreement with the journal, please see my answer. At least for German authors after an embargo year, any signed agreement that forbids the author to make the preprint publicly available will soon be void. So maybe we can turn this question into a collection of scenarios when preprint publishing is legal even though the publisher tries to tell you it is not.
On a related note, and for the sake of completeness, SHERPA/RoMEO is a very good reference database for publisher policies regarding embargos and copyright. It is good practice for a researcher to know well the contract he may have to sign with a publisher before actually signing it.
This answer mentions a couple of instances of press releases breaking embargo (different kind)
One data point:
I am a mathematician, and I have never heard of this happening to anyone.
Many mathematicians post preprints on their website and to the arXiv, and it is somewhat common for mathematicians to also post scanned copies of the published journal versions of their older papers.
Ethical judgements may vary, but I am unaware of any authors who have suffered negative practical consequences for this, or even who have been asked to remove their papers.
But we also don't have the embargo system in mathematics; at least, not yet.
Nate is right, most publishing houses (including Springer and Elsevier) we use in math have quite decent copyright agreement when it comes to green OA.
I think it is really depending by the community: different academic communities do have different "openness" regarding open access, sharing of documents and collaboration. This reflects/is reflected by the related publishing segment.
This doesn't answer the question.
Update: Here's the new text of the German UrhG §38 Abs (4):
Der Urheber eines wissenschaftlichen Beitrags, der im Rahmen einer mindestens zur Hälfte mit öffentlichen Mitteln geförderten Forschungstätigkeit entstanden und in einer periodisch mindestens zweimal jährlich erscheinenden Sammlung erschienen ist, hat auch dann, wenn er dem Verleger oder Herausgeber ein ausschließliches Nutzungsrecht eingeräumt hat, das Recht, den Beitrag nach Ablauf von zwölf Monaten seit der Erstveröffentlichung in der akzeptierten Manuskriptversion öffentlich zugänglich zu machen, soweit dies keinem gewerblichen Zweck dient. Die Quelle der Erstveröffentlichung ist anzugeben. Eine zum Nachteil des Urhebers abweichende Vereinbarung ist unwirksam.
rough translation:
The author of a scientific work
which was produced during scientific reseach that funded at least half by public money and
which was published in a periodical that is issued at least twice per year
retains the right to make the accpted manuscript publicly available
after an embargo period of 12 months from the date of the first publication
as long as this is not for commercial purposes.
The source of the first publication must be given.
This right is retained also in case of a complete copyright transfer to the publisher of editor.
Agreements on this topic to the disadvantage of the author are void.
I guess the non-commercial clause will raise some questions and difficulties.
old answer:
Here in Germany, the parliament (Bundestag) actually voted to change §38 UrhG
to (among other changes):
Einführung eines unabdingbaren Zweitverwertungsrechtes für Autoren von mit überwiegend aus öffentlichen Mitteln geförderten Beiträgen in Periodika 12 Monate nach Erstveröffentlichung;
rough translation: introduction of an unalienable right of secondary use* for authors of contributions to journals which are mainly supported mainly by public grants 12 months after the primary publication.
* I'm not quite sure how to translate "Zweitverwertungsrecht" - it is the right for secondary use/exploitation(?) of a work. Meaning that agreements that the publisher get the exclusive rights to the work will be valid in Germany only for 12 months, thereafter the authors have the right to make these papers publicly available.
The new text does not yet show up (the voting took place only 2 weeks ago) in the law texts in internet, it will become §38 (4) UrhG.
While this still means that only papers with public funding are covered, and the embargo period may be annoying, I see this as an important step into the right direction. And it definitively means that there won't be any possibility for publishers to enforce anything after a year if a German author made the work publicly available.
In any case, our version of the "fair use" rights mean that I'm always allowed to send single copies of scientific papers which are needed for collaboration to my colleagues. So within the first year after publication, you'll still have to email me for the paper, but thereafter, you can blame me for not making the manuscript available e.g. via arXiv.
You should make clear that this pertains to the "accepted manuscript version", not the version formatted by the publisher.
@silvado: good point. I emphasised it in the text.
This seems to be changing. A recent article in the Washington Post, How one publisher is stopping academics from sharing their research (2013-12-19), describes a recent 'spree' of takedown notices sent by Elsevier to Academia.edu, the University of Calgary, the University of California-Irvine, and Harvard University. This seems to be a new development:
The letter to Harvard identified 23 articles that it requested be taken down from University-hosted pages in mid November. "We had not received takedown notices for scholarly articles before this, as far as we know," says Peter Suber, the Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication and the Harvard Open Access Project.
Academia.edu, which is a for-profit company, and also a competitor of Elsevier-owned Mendeley, got about 2,800 requests.
This story is also covered by Wired and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Here is one event that can qualify as such. In 2011, Russell O'Connor submitted a paper to the ACM Workshop for Generic Programming 2011 after having submitted it to the arXiv under a Public Domain licence. At press time, the printer asked O'Connor for a letter of permission from the ACM in lieu of an exclusive copyright transfer which he could not grant. Although he had informed the conference chairs of the arXiv upload when he submitted, and they were OK with it, ACM legal refused to publish the paper as it was "already published." The paper is only mentioned briefly in the proceedings in a note:
We note that one of the papers presented in the workshop is not included in the proceedings. This paper, ‘Functor is to Lens as Applicative is to Biplate: Introducing Multiplate’ by Russell O’Connor, is accessible as arXiv:1103.2841v2 [cs.PL].
This is explained in more detail in O'Connor's blog post The ACM and Me.
Fully agreeing with eykanal's comment, I can provide the following thought on reasons: as with all copyrighted materials originating from commercial sources, it becomes a business decision on when and how to hunt down those who break the rules. If some authors put their manuscripts out on their own web sites it is probably not worth the expenses to prevent it. If everyone did it systematically, I am sure things would look different. If publishers see a decline in subscription rates from libraries due to the fact that authors make stuff available, then I think we will see something akin to what happened with downloadable music. For a publisher, an author is also what makes the business go around, so hunting authors may not be a good business practice. But, with more and more published work being made available in formally illegal ways, I am sure it is only a matter of time before clamps are tightened. So it is a bit like teasing a sleeping bear, fine until it wakes up (and I do not mean "fine" as in agreeing with posting material illegally).
In addition to putting the published paper online, it might be worth noting that in many if not most cases, it is perfectly legal to post the original manuscript (before review and typesetting) on the web since this is not the copyrighted material that is in the publications. Unless you have signed off on immaterial rights you still have the rights to that original work.
The bottom line is it is illegal and many probably do not really understand what they have signed when they published their papers.
If everyone did it systematically, I am sure things would look different. — In some fields (like mine), everyone does do it systematically, and things don't look different.
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72370 | How should I interpret an almost-but-not-quite-alphabetical author list?
I just noticed a weird aspect about this paper (which was of interest here and recently came up again here). If you look at the author list, it reads
L. P. Gaffney, P. A. Butler, M. Scheck, A. B. Hayes, F. Wenander, M. Albers, B. Bastin, C. Bauer, A. Blazhev, S. Bönig, N. Bree, J. Cederkäll, T. Chupp, D. Cline, T. E. Cocolios, T. Davinson, H. De Witte, J. Diriken, T. Grahn, A. Herzan, M. Huyse, D. G. Jenkins, D. T. Joss, N. Kesteloot, J. Konki, M. Kowalczyk, Th. Kröll, E. Kwan, R. Lutter, K. Moschner, P. Napiorkowski, J. Pakarinen, M. Pfeiffer, D. Radeck, P. Reiter, K. Reynders, S. V. Rigby, L. M. Robledo, M. Rudigier, S. Sambi, M. Seidlitz, B. Siebeck, T. Stora, P. Thoele, P. Van Duppen, M. J. Vermeulen, M. von Schmid, D. Voulot, N. Warr, K. Wimmer, K. Wrzosek-Lipska, C. Y. Wu and M. Zielinska
In particular, it splits into an initial, non-alphabetic component,
L. P. Gaffney, P. A. Butler, M. Scheck, A. B. Hayes, F. Wenander
and then an alphabetic list from M. Albers through M. Zielinska.
How should I interpret this authorship convention? What fields is it used in, and to what purpose? My initial reaction would be to assign to the initial component a ranking down in 'importance' more akin to the "first author did most of the work, middle authors supported, and last author sponsored and oversaw the work" convention used in fields with smaller collaborations (at least in physics), but that leaves the alphabetic component in an awkward position, so I'm not sure my interpretation is right.
I think it depends on why you need to interpret the list.
@StrongBad In this particular example, it's mostly curiosity. (In particular, I'd like to get a feel for the role of one team member of this and a later paper, whose statements on a press release seem to me to be misaligned with what's actually in the paper.) On the other hand, I imagine this question would also be useful for people evaluating publications like this one on other (e.g. hiring) grounds to get an initial feel for the role of a given author in a collaboration.
Notice anyway that at the end of the paper there is a statement about the individual contributions.
@Massimo d'oh, of course. The question still retains much of its interest, though, I think. And the second paper has no such statement.
By chance M.Wenander was not M. Aenander.It would have been difficult to know in what list he were supposed to be ...
How should I interpret this authorship convention?
The first (non-alphabetic) authors are likely the main contributors in order of contribution significance as you guessed. Starting from the alphabetic ordering the authors would be those with lesser contributions (but equal to each other).
What fields is it used in, and to what purpose?
I do not know what fields this is specific to, but I would not be surprised if this is a common strategy for papers with many authors irrespective of the field. Ordering a long list of authors with equivalent contributions in some manner simply seems sensible and alphabetic ordering is a simple and common ordering scheme. Unless the publisher has a policy on how this should be handled, alphabetic ordering seems to be a simple go-to strategy.
This is precisely the convention we've used on papers I've been on with this type of structure.
@jakebeal And what field did you work in?
This has been my experience in both computer science and synthetic biology.
I would make an ideological suggestion: Don't interpret it at all.
I believe that the custom of choosing author list positions to express degrees of contribution, seniority, who-is-whose-daddy etc. is unbecoming and should be discouraged in favor of alphabetical author lists. To this end I would suggest applying a sort of "color-blindness" to the order of listing.
This doesn't answer the question. If the authors intended to communicate something by the ordering (and they clearly did) it is worth understanding what and why before you choose whether or not to ignore it.
For a small number of authors the order does not matter much. In this case however it is a good indicator of which of the many authors may be most useful to get in contact with for questions. An indicator of a corresponding author is another solution, but this is not always present for example it is not in the paper linked by the OP.
I agree with @Richard - and in fact I don't think I could have stated my position more cleanly.
@RichardRast: You're just stating the opposite claim rather than arguing it. It is worth it to not understand what and why, and choosing to ignore it.
@einplokum How can you know whether something is worth understanding, if you don't understand what it is? You argue it's unbecoming, which is indicative only of etiquette, but clearly other fields don't have the same social conventions as yours. If you choose to misunderstand or fail to understand based on applying irrelevant social conventions, how can that have value?
@RichardRast: I weight the positive effect of not understanding it with the potential positive and negative effects of understanding it, and reach that conclusion. For a (remote!) analogy, think of why it's better that police doesn't make unlawful searches. How can we know if it's worth it or not before they make the search? Well, the potential benefits are just important enough, whatever they may be, to justify the means.
Or in one sentence: The ends don't justify the means here.
@Benjamin I stand corrected! I overlooked it since I'm used to this information being on the front page.
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81082 | Should formatting affect grades of student essays?
I helped my friend, who never used LaTeX before, to convert her PG Diploma essay from a Word document into this system (for a molecular biology class). I convinced her that, with some learning, she could later produce better essays with LaTeX in shorter time, focusing on the content without worrying about the layout.
But she started to worry from the beginning.
She commented on the placement of large figures and tables which didn't fit immediately at the positions and pages where they called out. She was particularly concerned that these floating figures (placed professionally, I think, by LaTeX at the top of the following pages) "appeared in the wrong places in the middle of the next sections".
I explained to her that these automatic placements by LaTeX seemed "perfect" and "optimal" to avoid large white spaces left at the bottom of the pages; and that this approach is what we see in most professorially typeset materials (e.g., journal articles, and my thesis ;)).
However, the professor who later marked the essay commented that these positionings "look odd" and "broke the logical flow", and he seemed to prefer the "inline placement" of figures and tables. My friend now thinks that some points were lost because of this.
--
Should (such) layout and formatting issues in general affect the grading of student essays?
If yes, I assume this professor might not be familiar enough with professional typesetting practices, or he simply didn't like what he saw in the essay. Is he free not to accept the common professional typesetting practices in his course?
Is there really a fight over word processors? I have only run into the old "I expect it to be in MLA vs APA format" instances. I guess one could always ask the professor which processor they use/prefer.
I suggest your friend ask the professor for a breakdown of the grade. This can be helpful in many ways, as one strives to improve as a researcher and a writer. Your friend could mention that in the email, to prevent the professor from feeling uncomfortable with the request.
Is LaTeX better than Word? This is a holy-war kind of a question. I personally agree that LaTeX documents often, but not always, allow to produce a better typeset document in less time (as soon as you know enough of it to write the document, and do not spend time googling for "how do I do X in LaTeX").
Are LaTeX's floating objects perfect? Some things are less than perfect even with LaTeX, and handling of floating objects is one of them. You can suggest using [p] instead of [t]/[b]/[h] options --- this can still generate under-filled pages, but at least it looks like it is done on purpose.
Should you Professor comment on the layout? The way how the document looks definitely affects how it is perceived by the reader, so if something looks weird / unusual, it is all right for your Professor to comment on it.
Should the layout affect the grade? There is no general answer to that. Some Universities even have a very rigid guidelines on layout for theses submission, which sometimes, sadly, prescribe the use of Word, and sometimes, conveniently, the use of LaTeX (particularly if LaTeX is taught as a part of the Program). In this case, of course, students can be penalised for not following the guidelines. Sometimes points for "presentation" are included in the task specification --- and you can lose them if your Professor decides that bad typography affects the presentation of the document (I don't think LaTeX can be that bad, though). However, Professor should not simply reduce the grade if they feel that the layout is unusual.
I'll skip the software issue, which is irrelevant to the question
Should layout and formatting issues in general affect the grading of student essays?
In short yes. Any document which is handed in has to be formatted to make it as easy as possible to follow the train of thought and digest the reasoning. No matter if the document is a pdf, printed out, handwritten or ASCII text. If the document is not structured well it may not get full credits. Also note that one can only structure a document well, if one has well organized thoughts on the matter. As an example, it is usually fairly easy to see if somebody copied a solution for some exercises without thought even if there is not typo but only from the mere look of the result. Spacings are odd, linebreaks are often at the wrong point or the organization on the sheet seems to emphasize the wrong thing.
That said, anything more concrete will be on thin ice. Some people prefer strong structuring elements (e.g. having many lists and subheadings), others are distracted by that (prefer more plain text, less dominant subheadings, e.g. at the beginning of the paragraph rather than in a separate line). Some people prefer figures within the text, some prefer then on the top of the pages, some even like them in the margin or collected at the end of the document. I think one should remark that "common professional typesetting practices" do not really exist - there a lot of practices, man contradict each others and professionals did not agree on standards as is fact a lot of "taste" and "habits" are involved.
Don't ignore rules, also use common sense and intuition but stick to guidelines and requirements.
"Should" etc. is a philosophical question. Pragmatically, the questions are: Did this particular professor have specific expectations about the formatting? and In this field particularly, is there a clearly defined standard?
Most professors will provide or point to a style guide if asked. If there is a question about something that LaTeX is doing, then the student whose grade could be affected needs to get the professor's eyes on the questionable formatting before the paper is due (or at the very least, consult a grad student, writing tutor, etc., in the field).
Professors are often weirdly specific in their expectations - treating some style rules as law, and disregarding others that many people observe, often for reasons relating to the goals of that particular class - and so it's as well to ask: what standard are YOU grading on in this class? May I bring my work to you for a brief review beforehand?
Yes/no
Student essays are the best time to learn the formatting. You can comment the format, even if it does not affect the grading. Then you need to explicitly say that formatting does not affect the grading, possibly many times. At some point you may want to demand the proper formatting. The grading is a way to enforce that, instead of suggesting.
Academia is different from the industry. In industry the pictures must be in the proper places. In academia it is only a good thing. The professor has the right to decide in the end, what is the focus of the teaching.
Latex will make the overall formatting easier and saves a lot of time. Word is the best for what I call "shotgun reporting" where things are only added to the bottom of the document and once ready it's polished and then published. There is no revision and the document seldom is returned for editing.
I like to think that the students are adults that make the decisions. In few first tasks you may provide them with latex templates to learn latex, and give them the time to learn. But after many years I think that you should just ask for a proper document that will fit the purpose. If it's thesis and they know latex, then by all means they should use it (my opinion), but if it's about reporting the results, then they are free to choose (I still prefer latex, but Word almost just as fine).
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4769 | How do I appropriately use inline citations for multiple quoted paragraphs?
I'm writing a paper where I have a number of sentences across a few paragraphs, all from the same source. How should I use inline citations in this situation? Should I put them after each listed fact in the sentence at the end of each paragraph, or at the end of all of the paragraphs? The paragraphs are all topically related, but each one is different enough to be a sub-topic. In case it's relevant, the topic being discussed is technology, the paragraphs detail how companies using that technology.
Your original question was migrated here; check there for other answers. As this is also relevant on our site, it's welcome here as well.
From what I've seen, the only situation in which you would use a single citation following multiple sentences is if it's obvious that you're quoting that source verbatim AND the quote is uninterrupted. If you're using your own terminology OR the quote is interrupted, you should cite each sentence separately.
This becomes obvious when considering the purpose of a citation. Citations are there to answer the question, "who said this?" If you're quoting someone verbatim, and it's obvious you're doing so, then you only need a single citation, as the reader will infer that it applies to the entire preceding quote.
On the other hand, if you have multiple claims throughout a paragraph, after each claim the reader will wonder, "what's his source for this?" In most cases, you will be using multiple sources, and you will have a mixture of references. However, even if you have a single source for lots of claims, the reader will still wonder after each claim what the source is. You should tell them the source of each and every claim separately.
The exception I've seen—and that my advisor requested I use in my writing—is in the instance of a single logical thought pattern being followed throughout a paragraph or set of paragraphs. If you're describing someone else's work, it can be justifiable to state, "the following is an overview of Bob (2007)", or something to that effect. From my experience, though, that usually only happens in review articles.
Okay so it is acceptable to have the same citation listed several sentences in a row?
@DonRigatone - I would say "yes, that's fine". You can also just read through some of the articles in whatever journal you hope to publish in to see whether that's a common occurrence in that journal.
While not really an answer, this is often an indication of a lack of understanding. The original question used of language like paraphrasing, another indication of a lack of understanding. You should probably show a draft to a colleague asking for specific help.
If you really have only one reference which you take one paragraph to sum up, I'd really advise eykanal’s last item (the “exception”):
Tying one’s shoelaces with only one hand is notoriously difficult [1]. Although it seemed like an unsurmountable issue a few years back, the recent breakthrough of Smith et al. [2] relied on a few topological considerations which have been clearly delineated by Brown [3], and are summarized in the rest of this paragraph. [Here your description, with claims from Brown, without repeating the reference number]
However, little is known about the influence of the number of fingers used [4] in the tying process. Here, we present a research on tying shoelaces with even-fingered hands.
This is better than having a lot of claims [3] with the same reference [3] written all over one paragraph [3]. However, you need to make it crystal-clear what part is covered by the reference: using the paragraph boundary (and explicitly stating this) is a good way of doing that.
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5798 | What does this mean, "We recommend that you consider submission to an alternative venue"?
Recently, after submitting a manuscript for publication, I received the following response:
Your manuscript, referenced below, has been considered for publication in XXX: "Article Title"
Unfortunately, this manuscript on a fundamental topic does not fall under the range of topics that are covered by XXX, which focuses on the applied physical sciences. We recommend that you consider submission to an alternative venue.
My question is, what is the meaning of the sentence "We recommend that you consider submission to an alternative venue". To me, it sounds like a terse "good luck with that!" sign-off. However, that's an odd sentence, as they usually just write "no" in those cases. Does this imply anything particular about my submission?
"It's not you, it's me" :)
Would you please edit this question to give it a more descriptive title?
I think @eykanal made usefully explicit what was too implicit previously... Good. And this does resonate with the potential problem that (not only) a novice may inadvertently misrepresent themselves by failing to be explicit about what seemed obvious to them, but was not obvious to others, etc. Not an easy error to overcome, but awareness of its possibility is very useful.
It appears your paper is off-topic for the journal. An example would be submitting a paper on moduli spaces in Yang-Mills theory to an experimental physics journal. The former is dealing with the fundamental or underlying theory, whilst the journal is looking for experimental physics.
From what you've said by itself, it's ambiguous. That is, if your paper really is on a topic not usually covered by that journal, then their remark is completely bland, just meaning what it says. If, at the other extreme, you are pretty sure that your paper's topic is exactly what is covered in the journal, then, yes, their "recommendation" is just a polite form of rejection.
If you are a beginner at this, it is possible that your understanding of what your own paper is about may have some quirks or limitations, or you've presented it in a way that dis-served you, or you've presented it in a way that confused or mis-directed the editors/referee, etc.
For example, giving inappropriate/inaccurate keywords can get a paper sent to an inappropriate referee, who may think the paper is misguided, while if you'd given different keywords, a different referee might think it was mainstream and wonderful.
Similarly, unfortunate choices in title, abstract, and introduction can set things off down the wrong path. Getting an opinion from an experienced person about the actual appropriateness of your paper for that venue is necessary before it's possible to understand the situation.
The journal is telling you that the paper you wrote does not fit the type of topics that they aim for. The recommendation at the end is to resubmit your paper to a journal which does fit the topic of your article. Looking at the comments, they are more an applied journal, while the paper you wrote deals with more fundamental issues.
The sentence "We recommend that you consider submission to an alternative venue" clearly means that your paper does not match the scope of the journal and should be submitted elsewhere. This indicates that your choice of journal was probably not right. There is a possibility that the editor was trying to suggest that you choose a journal that does not cater exclusively to the applied physical sciences.
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7218 | Life as a math professor
I am currently an undergraduate math major in my 3rd year (in America). I have taken lots of pure math courses, and anything I put in my resume tells potential employers I'm probably going to be an academic.
However, I still would like to know from current researchers what is it like to be a math professor. More specifically, I have already guessed at basically what they do (research approachable problems, teach zero or one or two classes at a time, go to conferences and seminars to get ideas, life is probably easier after tenure and more stressful before, pay is sufficient but probably less than industry). When I look up career-related questions on this site, I generally get questions dealing with the items mentioned above.
But what is the job satisfaction like (people probably get impressions from colleagues)? What sorts of things should one consider before committing to an academic career (as it's a long road)? What is the work environment like (what sorts of people with which one has to interact)? Which types of people generally like an academic environment?
In my opinion, it really depends on the type of academic job that you want/are able to land. Professional life in (1) a top tier research university, is different than in (2) a medium tier Ph.D. granting department, is different than in (3) a Master's granting department with a more modest research agenda, is different than in (4) a predominantly teaching oriented, four year college.
The teaching load/research expectation continuum certainly varies across the four. On one end of the spectrum, say at (1)-(2), the teaching load will be light (as you describe) but with research expectations in terms of papers in top tier journals and landing external funding that is very high. However, even if the actual course load is less, you will spend a chunk of time working with graduate students in reading courses, research seminars, their thesis, etc. As you move from (2) to (3), the research expectations decrease as teaching loads increase. In (4), you very well may have no requirement to produce original mathematical research in the form of journal articles, but instead be expected to demonstrate "continued scholarly activity" which can take a variety of forms. On the other hand, you may be teaching 4 classes a semester.
Pay, generally---but not always and certainly not uniformly---decreases from (1) to (4). The autonomy of academic life is usually very attractive and serves to counterbalance a salary that is less than what people in some mathematical specialties could garner in industry.
In my opinion, the type of job one shoots for (and will eventually find success/satisfaction in) is a combination of one's passions (research vs. teaching vs both), innate talents (again, in both research and teaching), aspirations, competitiveness, willingness to deal with pressure, and geography, to name a few.
As a nod to pragmatism, one thing to keep in mind is that the vast majority of jobs are in (4) and (3). Jobs in (1) and (2) are highly competitive to land. I have many friends in all four categories who are happy and very few (none?) who are unhappy, although admittedly the latter category probably self-selected out of academia.
Finally, since you are a third year undergrad, you will get a MUCH better sense of how much you really like mathematics in graduate school. During that time all of this should crystallize greatly. You will also get to see the profession much more up close than you do as an undergrad. It is great that you are thinking of these things now; keep your eyes and ears open in the coming years.
This is all just my two cents. Certainly others may have very different opinions, experiences, and perspectives...
+1 for "you will get a MUCH better sense of how much you really like mathematics in graduate school". Research is very different from taking classes.
I agree with most of what JohnD wrote, but let me mention some additional points.
Many people that leave academia do so less because they're not "smart enough" and more because it doesn't suit their personality. Research often involves long stretches of work with no clear signs of progress. To quote Hans Bethe: "Two things are required. One is a brain. And second is a willingness to spend long times in thinking, with a definite possibility that you come out with nothing." You may enjoy reading Paul Seymour's article: "How the proof of the strong perfect graph theorem was found." (This is an account of the backstory of solving one of the biggest open problems in discrete math in the last 20 years.)
Particularly early in your career, this can be scary. Pre-tenure you have to balance a desire to hold yourself to a very high standard versus your desire to get tenure, which requires publishing papers, even if they don't always meet your ideal.
To succeed in research, you need to learn how to chart your own agenda. No one tells you what topics to work on, who to work with, how long to spend on a question, where to submit your papers, or which speaking invitations to accept. Personally, I enjoy making all of these decisions. But for some people, this lack of structure is very difficult to handle. It's essential that you develop a clear vision, perseverance, self-confidence, and the ability to solve odd miscellaneous problems that arise.
I heartily agree with all of that, Dan. And that Bethe quote is spot on.
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117348 | Post doctoral while working on self employed job
I am in need to know if there is a provision wherein I could do a post-doctorate in the USA for a year or two, while I am owning my own Biotechnology firm back in my home country?
This is a complex issue with a lot of variables. If your post-doc is for work completely unrelated to the work of the company then there is probably no serious issue as long as you faithfully complete the required work.
However, you will also face several issues if there is some relationship. For example, will you have conflicts of interest between the two aspects? That would make it hard-to-impossible to carry on. Likewise, are there intellectual property issues? In other words, is it possible that you will learn something in the post-doc that is, for contractual or other reasons, off-limits to your company. There may be other issues as well if there is any overlap.
For issues such as these, both the post-doc project PI and a lawyer should be consulted.
No My firm has nothing to do with the academic project and there is no common interest, one is on plants and other on animal and food or agriculture products and research. My firm is not self-owned but a partnership of recent origin. As I wasn't finding opportunities in academic, I had to decide to be self-employed. However, after two year struggle, I received some notable reputation in terms of publications from my PhD work that i think would help me in the academic expeirence.
We have no issues in the firm documentation that prevent the partners from going for a post-doc. but I was concerned if the financial aid for post-doc is government aided, do they have any restrictions that prevent the candidate from having alternate income unless he is fails to fulfill the work requirements of post doc?
@AvinashKumar, I doubt there are any financial restrictions for a post-doc, unlike for some scholarships. It is a job like many others.
Thank you very much Dr. Buffy. It sounds like a good news to me. I am glad I could discuss this matter here at academia with you.
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64961 | Surname change during PhD
I am in my second year of my PhD and am about to get married. I plan to take on my husband's name with my name and not keep my maiden name. But I have two publications already. What can I do so that I can associate my publications even after my surname change. Also, if I keep on publishing with my maiden name and use my husband's surname socially, and also change my surname in passport, won't there be a conflict when I apply for visa to attend conferences due to the two different surnames?
If you keep your (maiden) surname as a middle name after marriage, and publish that way, everything will sort itself out after a few publications under the new name.
When you apply for a visa, you'll almost certainly have to tell them any names you used in the past which, of course, includes your maiden name. The worst case is that you require a letter of invitation from the conference organizers and you'll have to ak them to address that to your professional name, rather than your passport name.
Honestly, though, if you only have a couple of publications in your maiden name, it seems easiest to just switch to using your husband's surname for everything.
The visa issue is not really Academia specific. Usually, you should be able to have an option to specify "Other name used" or "Also known as" when you apply for visa.
@scaaahu et al. I don't think this is can be considered a duplicate, because the linked question refers only to the CV, while here Rose asks a more general question. In fact, the most upvoted answer here virtually corresponds to the most downvoted answer there, considered as a non-answer to the question.
@MassimoOrtolano I actually hesitated to vote to close as duplicate in the first place. It really looks like the linked question is a duplicate of this question because this question is more general than the link one except the visa issue at the end. I think both question ask the same thing, but the linked one is narrower. However, the linked one was asked first. I believe the two questions should be at least linked together. I'll let the community or the mods decide if we should merge the two question. (I won't insist, but I won't retract the vote neither because the two are closely related)
@MassimoOrtolano I flagged the mods to consider the merge. (It's close to my bed time now. I don't have the energy to ask a question on meta)
Currently you are Miss Brown, soon you will be Mrs Green and later you will be Dr Green. I do not think this is a good idea. According to the problem page of our newspaper there are airline for which "Dr" implies "male", issue tickets for the wrong gender and then cannot or won't correct their error. My daughters are medical doctors and both call themselves Dr Brown at work and Mrs Green at home. This allows them to keep their two lives separate.
The usual answer in this situation is to continue publishing under your maiden name. Would this be a problem in your case? (Your concern about visas is not an issue.)
You should also consider registering for an identifier, such as ORCID or Researcherid. This way you can have an additional layer that relates your profile with your work. It is used in many submission websites and it is becoming quite common for funding agencies to require such a profile when submitting applications as well.
Having been in the same situation, let me share my experiences.
I was fortunate enough that I did not have anything published yet, only accepted, so it was possible to get the name changed before the paper was published (if you have anything in the pipeline, make sure to notify the editors as soon as you can). But as it is only a few papers, I would suggest the following:
Clearly you can't get your name changed on any printed versions, but it is certainly worth inquiring whether it is possible to have an addition made to electronic publications stating the new name (with a footnote about the change).
If the paper exists in any other form (such as on preprint servers or personal webpages), make the change to those versions (again with a footnote explaining the change).
If you cannot get the name changed on the papers in any way, make sure you point out on any future CV's and similar that some of the papers are in a different name. For many purposes, this will be the main reason it is important to be linked to those first papers.
Be prepared to sign all mails with both names for a while, at least the first time you are in contact with someone, so that people will be aware of the change. And make sure to keep whatever email you used to use (if you have one that includes your last name), so people trying to contact you about those papers can still do so, even if they are not aware of the name change.
Often your passport will have your maiden name, too. There might even be an empty field in your current passport. If in doubt for a Visa that you already have: call the embassy. Most likely they will tell you to use the name that is in the passport (surprise) until you get the passport changed. If you get a new passport, your will have to get a new visa obviously. Your new passport will likely contain your old name, too. Ask a friend that is married about their passpoe
rt. If you just get a sticker/stamp/print in your passport with the new name then it's not a problem. Essentially, consider a Visa to be tied go your passport, and assume that until you get your passport changed you have to use your old name when traveling. It is fairly standard to become married and change the name, you know... some people even get married abroad. Authorities know how to process this, and the usual procedure seems to be: use the old name until you get a new passport.
As for publications:
You can't change "printed" copies, but you can make sure all your webpages and your CV clarify the name change: "Jane Doe (née Obama)" such that when someone searches for your old name + affiliation they do get a pointer to your new name. That should be your key objective: if someone googles for the publication and your old name, they should find your new identity.
As for impact: of course some people will not associate these publications easily with your name, unless you do some good follow-up publications or get to know otherwise. But neither for your PhD nor for your scientific career this will matter much on the long run. Obviously your PhD committee will learn about the name change... and you can still add your old publications to your scholar profile as well as list them in your CV (again, you can emphasize the name change by giving your maiden name).
The easiest work-around, which completely eliminates ambiguity, is to use the word nee (more strictly née), which means:
originally called; born (used in giving a married woman's maiden name after her surname).
An example (from Google) is: "Mary Toogood, née Johnson".
This will ensure complete consistency, and leaves nothing ambiguous.
Hope that helps. :)
How do you propose to achieve "complete consistency" when there are already publications without this modifier?
@BenVoigt - Because anyone who comes across this and knows/finds out the meaning of this modifier, knows what exactly is cooking here. And of course, the modifier comes into existence only when you get married, so it is not a matter of concern that earlier publications didn't carry this. (Of course, they can not!)
-1, doesn't answer either of OP's questions, and isn't clear on when/how to use the double surname (while OP states that she does not want to preserve her maiden name).
I shudder to think what Google Scholar and other indexing services will do to a paper authored by "Foo, née Bar". Not a good suggestion for someone who wants all her publications associated with whatever name she goes for.
I assume you're suggesting that OP use née in her CV, not on the title page of her paper. Right?
@JeffE - Yes sir, CV or wherever else she's planning to keep some kind of a list of her publications. If the list is titled in this manner, and some entries in the list have surname 1, while others have surname 2, there would be no ambiguity (if I'm right).
you can use both your maiden name and your husband's surname in parallel.For example if your name before marriage was X Y, and your husband's name is A B, then after marriage you can use X Y(B) as your name. This can be solution of your problem.And during VISA you have to show your marriage certificate and the supportive documents in the context of your maiden name.
This does not really answer the question: the OP clearly stated that she doesn't want to keep her maiden name.
I have never seen anybody use a name with parentheses in it.
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164382 | Paths to mathematics/university/research while dealing with a few difficult situations
I'm a (just turned) 17 year old student (Year 11) from Australia in a bit of a tricky situation. Unfortunately, I spent most of the last few years and am currently in a psychiatric unit. I've also liked math for a while now, specifically certain subfields of algebraic topology and differential topology/geometry, like (topological) k-theory and cobordism for the former and spin geometry/index theory for the latter.
However, I've fallen very far behind in schoolwork and because of the risk associated with my going back to school, my the school admins decided to prevent me from returning (it was not a good school anyway - an all boys school (club) full of Neo-Nazis (that isn't even an exaggeration), rapists and the like. This leaves me in a difficult position because I don't thing it's possible for me finish school (I've been described/diagnosed by almost half of the DSM, MDD, Adjustment disorder with depressive features, GAD, SAD, BPD, cPTSD, NPD, OCD, ASD - all at different times).
I also can't really go back to home, so sometime next week I'm being put into a youth hostel/communal living place/refuge (this is bad because I might never get to see my cute dog (golden retriever) again). I really want to go to university to study math and eventually do research(?) in some of the areas I mentioned above but I don't really see a feasible way there. I know asking for life advice online is questionable but I really don't have any idea what else to do. Any suggestions/hard truths/similar experiences/comments in general would be really appreciated. Thank you all.
Matt, this forum isn't the right place for this kind of question, so it will probably be closed soon, don't take it personally. I'm not that familiar with the Australian system, but why don't you try contacting the undergraduate admissions offices at several schools and letting them know all this? Some of them might blow you off, so don't give up after the first try, but they would probably be able to help you navigate this.
Can you start at a new school once you have moved to the communal living house? I would hope that since you are a minor you have some sort of social services key worker who should be helping you with matters like this.
Some proportion of diagnoses are wrong. The more time you've spent in the psychiatric unit, the more diagnoses you might have. Some might have always been wrong, and some might have previously been correct but may no longer apply.
Please update us! It's been three years now. What happened? Or did nothing happen? How have you been spending your days? Please [edit] your question, add an addendum at the bottom, and tell us.
Universities typically demand qualifications, which you don't have. You could get some: You seem familiar with advanced areas of mathematics, perhaps you can study some revision guides, teach yourself whatever you need to know to get some qualifications. (I'm unsure which institutes you can enrol with in Australia. I presume such institutes must exist. They do elsewhere—not everyone follows the traditional route.) Alternatively, you could reach out to universities, explain your situation, negotiate why they should admit you without typically mandated qualifications. Perhaps you have someone who can help you, e.g., some staff member who happens to know an academic who is willing to help you navigate the system.
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119397 | Grad school - Is transferring to another school for a Master's program (Computer Science) a good option?
I am an international student in the US (important as my stay in US is tied to my student visa, issued to attend my current university).
I joined as a grad student in the MS CS program in one of the okayish public universities (ranked ~50 on QS/US news). I joined in Fall '18 and am still in my first semester. I took all the so-called "difficult" courses, but I find them very trivial (considering my undergrad was from a very good university). I am very disappointed with the curriculum and feel the coursework is not at all rigorous for a grad-school.
I might sound super arrogant, but I feel out-of-place when I talk to other students and hear them cringe about how hard the courses are, or how they don't have enough time to finish assignments within the deadlines as I find all of the coursework very trivial and feel that the assignments are a joke.
Fortunately, I am working with one of the best profs the university has to offer on a very impactful project and the research is going great. But that's the only plus point I see from sticking around.
My aim from grad school is to get research experience and join one of the Big 4s or upcoming CS unicorn startups. I cannot see myself joining one of the Big-Ns after graduating since the students from this school rarely bag a Google/Fb/unicorn startup job.
Since December is the Fall'19 admissions deadline, I am thinking about reapplying to those top 10 CS schools which I couldn't get into last year (probably because of my poor undergrad GPA).
On the other hand, since every CS company just asks leetcode-style questions in interviews, I can just be super good at it and try to nail whatever interview I get without wasting another year and then doing the same.
I'm not really interested in any kind of credit transfer either since I would like to start fresh in a more rigorous curriculum.
I'm not sure if switching schools would be a wise decision and could really use some advice from the community here.
PS :
Probably related -
Is transferring to another university an option for an unhappy PhD student?
Posting with a dummy account for anonymity.
I think you should stay where you are. My thoughts below.
Research. At the beginning, the classes seem hugely important and there is a lot of angst about whether you are at the "right" grad school. By the end, the only thing that matters is your research.
You write:
Fortunately, I am working with one of the best profs the university has to offer on a very impactful project and the research is going great. But that's the only plus point I see from sticking around.
This may be the "only plus point", but it's the crucial one. If you're doing good research, learning something, and publishing good papers in good journals, then your PhD is going very well.
Rankings.
I think you would have a legitimate concern if you were at a predatory grad school that no one had ever heard of. But you say your school is ranked ~50, so presumably it's a "real" school that people have heard of. Going to a "slightly" better school will make ~no difference to a hiring committee. Going to a famous, top-10 school might make a difference, but even that is maybe less than you imagine.
Other students. I would point out that it's not necessarily that the other students are dumb; it's that they haven't covered this material before. But even if they are dumb, that just makes it easier for you to get the resources you need. One of the best talks I ever attended was from Karen Kelsky, who made the point that hire-able grad students are able to "pass" as a professor -- in the way they dress, the way they interact with colleagues, and the work they do -- so the other students are really irrelevant here, your "colleagues" are the faculty.
Time. I would also consider that transferring schools is a lot of work and, if you start from scratch, it will mean wasting a year of your life while you repeat "year-1" of grad school. Grad school is worth taking your time and doing well, but I would also seriously hesitate to lose an entire year -- you only get so many years in the workforce, so an extra year in grad school means one fewer year in the meaningful, interesting job you'll eventually find.
That said, I admit that getting a degree from MIT or Harvard would be exciting. If there's a way to apply to such schools without burning bridges, it might be worth sending in an application "on a lark". If you get in and have an advisor lined up, then I might even consider switching. But I would remain fully committed to your program until then -- it seems like things are going fine, and there are definite downsides to transferring even to a top school. Good luck!
Thank you for the detailed answer. This really helps. I have decided to stay and focus on my research. Thanks again :)
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84343 | Is it dishonest to omit publications in one's CV?
The question in the title is motivated by recent comments on other questions on this site that were surprising to me. Is there a precisely defined and widely accepted standard for CVs that would mean omitting one or more publications in a CV is dishonest?
Please base your answer on one or more references and not merely personal opinion.
Note that this question is about honesty, not about whether it is a good idea to omit publications.
"Is there a precisely defined and widely accepted standard for [anything in academia]?" ---No. ;-)
There's no reason to list low-quality papers (such as that one based on your undergraduate thesis), ones in an unrelated field, ones at low-impact conferences, etc.
And in case omitting one or more publications in a CV is considered as dishonest: Does "publication" include technical reports, papers at non-peer-reviewed (or superficially reviewed) workshops, workshop papers describing work in progress, posters, articles in trade magazines, ...?
My question is an ethical one. I don't believe the other related questions and answers make any claim about the ethics of this. I'm fine if this question gets closed as "mainly opinion based", which would mean the answer is actually "no", as I expect.
How horrible is that one publication you want to omit, and why didn't you ask the journal to retract it?
"Dishonest" may be a bit too harsh for me, but it is definitely a case of "not the whole truth".
Considering that one often sees "Selected Publications" (e.g. short bios in leaflets or short CVs in grant proposals), I would always assume that "Publications" is the headline of a non-selective and complete list of publications.
My conclusion is, that omitting some publications in the list but not using "Selected Publications" may make it seem that there may be "a skeleton in the closet". On the other hand, one may argue that "Publications" means "Scientific Publications" and that certain papers, accidentally published by disreputable publishers, are not really scientific, so one may skip these in the list…
When I see "Selected Publications" in someone's CV, I immediately assume there is a skeleton in the closet.
Well, I know some people who select their publications to keep their CVs shorter than a telephone book. But you probably don't mean these guys...
@Dirk Anyone with a publication list that long surely has a few skeletons in it. ;-)
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11590 | Should bad prior work be ignored, or cited and criticised?
A high citation rate is desirable in academia. Citing other work doesn't cost much, so citations are cheap to give but desirable to get. That brings me to the question:
If a previous article addresses a topic similar to the one I'm writing, is that a sufficient reason to cite it? Or should the prior article meet a minimum quality to "deserve" a citation? To put it bluntly: if I'm aware of a prior crappy article, should I ignore it, or cite it and write why it's crap (of course in a more diplomatic way)?
In my field, some articles questioning anthropogenic climate change get quite a lot of citations from colleagues pointing out flaws in their reasoning or statistics...
Note that I'm exclusively talking about peer-reviewed publications.
I think the question you ask in the second paragraph is much more interesting than the complaint you register in the first paragraph. Who knows why someone fails to cite something? Lazy, personal grudge, carelessness... I would edit out the first paragraph and let the good question stand on its own.
@KennyPeanuts Fair enough, even if my need to vent a bit was what led me to the question in the first place, it doesn't add anything to the question itself. I've edited it out now.
There's a certain amount of judgment that needs to be exercised here. One of my more frequently cited publications is an attempt to correct methodological errors in a previous work (which was also highly cited). While it got the point across, it has also led to my work not being cited by the other authors, even though they've adopted the methodological points laid out in my paper.
Now, part of the reason why we discussed the work in detail was because there were major problems that led us to being unable to reproduce their results when we used their techniques with the "advantages" of modern technology. Since it in fact "inspired" our work, we felt the extended discussion was appropriate. However, if the same paper were to present results that were simply wrong, and didn't have the same "primacy" within the research literature, we would have probably ignored it.
Literature citations in standard journal papers (as opposed to review articles) are not meant to be ecumenical or exhaustive. Your job, as an author, is to exercise judgment as to which articles provide an accurate overview of the state of work in the field, and provide the best support for the arguments you wish to make.
I think your last paragraph nails it and I assume that the decisions about relevance are the judgement calls you refer to in the first paragraph. However the way it is written it seems like the judgement you refer to is in reference to not causing petty grudges with those you criticize (which I don't think should be factored into a decision about whether to cite or not).
Negative citations is what you describe. It is something of a fallacy of the system that a paper may get many citations and therefore seems important when it is clearly sub-par and is referenced in a negative connotation.
Seen objectively, one should give credit where it is due. If someone was first to realize something then that is the origin of the idea (in official terms), how good or bad the paper is, is irrelevant. In some cases first discoveries may just be gut feelings and not well-founded.
I sometimes have to bite my lip when I reference some papers because I really do not think they deserve it (because I know the background) but realize there are no two ways about it. You can of course chose not to reference it, as you have the freedom to chose what we cite, but you may end up getting reviews asking you to add it (if it is something key).
In some cases it is possible to provide objective criticism of a paper. The problem is that the shortcomings will have to be clear.
It depends what is your goal. If you are doing a thorough review of literature, you will have to cite prior work, even if your opinion of it is low (and you can briefly state why). If you are doing a comment, follow-up or other work where criticism of the prior work is key to your argumentation, then of course you have to cite it. But, if the field is otherwise plentiful and there are other more successful prior works which you can cite, you don't need to be exhaustive, and you can thus omit those works which you consider subpar (or of low originality, or derivate works).
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66438 | How to deal with an uncommunicative advisor?
So I have an advisor who seems to be kind of peculiar. He is quite famous in his field and has good reputation.
However, his way of working with students is more like waiting for him to come up with ideas for students. And since he has "good taste", he is always aiming for big goals which makes it take a lot longer to formulate any concrete project.
Research ideas from students are usually discarded. It's been over a year and I still don't have a research project. Also, for papers that he thinks aren't that important, he will ask his student to write it up and rarely take his time to read the paper or provide suggestions for revising which means that students have to wait a long time to get anything published.
The other funny thing is that he almost never replies back to his students' emails and rarely helps his students in finding postdoc positions. How do I work with this kind of advisor and is it a good idea to switch advisors?
Also, for papers that he thinks aren't that important ... students have to wait a long time to get anything published. — Is the advisor a coauthor on these papers? From your description, it sounds like they would have been too far beneath his notice to make significant intellectual contribution, in which case he would not be a coauthor. In that case, you do not need to wait for his feedback, advice, or permission to publish. Find other senior mentors if you think you need help, but then just submit it yourself.
It's been over a year and I still don't have a research project - Different fields and countries have different cultures. What is the norm in your area?
If your advisor is that smart and famous. Trust the process! Your time will come soon. Most likely s/he knows what they are doing and it is virtually very hard to change or even for him/her to feel the need to change! This may not what you need to hear, but this is from my experience with similar advisors.
Have other recent students been successful in getting the PhD? How long did it take them? Were they successful in getting faculty positions?
I am in US and a top university, I am not saying that he will delay graduation for students, there is even one student graduated with no publication. However that certainly does not help the student to survive in academia. I think currently he is kind missing the path himself, since he has told someone that he has not been doing anything interesting for over a year.
If the advisor is well respected externally in her field and active (what is her publication/conference record in the last 5 years?) and relatively supportive in other ways (interesting conversations about research topics, is available in person when students drop, has funding) and if she has a group of supported students/postdocs in her group; then my advice is to decide whether your personality allows you (cheerfully or pretend-cheerfully) to take on some leadership roles in self-mentoring.
start a weekly or bi-weekly group meeting, journal club, or similar where also people in the group talk about what they are doing. (try to arrange that it is convenient time (check his class schedule/university meetings) but do the meetings even the weeks he cannot show.
schedule a 20-30 minute meeting with him once every week or two regularly to discuss progress, don't count on him to set it up. Make sure to prepare something (at the beginning) that isn't asking for help so much as showing off things you find interesting or have accomplished that week.
The point is to avoid appearing as if you need hand-holding, but to get some interactions going which are positive and useful for yourself to succeed. (And show of how much of a self-starter you are).
The delay in publishing papers - if there are senior co-authors, also look to them.
On the other hand - choose another advisor
Sometimes email gets buried, but a consistent 'never replying or acknowledging an email from student(colleagues,department admin)' gives me the heebie-jeebies. We have had several faculty in my department over the years who had that trait and in their particular cases it never made any sense except as some stupid passive-agressive issue. So, on the basis of that trait alone, I'd suggest finding someone else who is more excited about their work and respectful of other's time and energy.
Thanks for advice! Some facts first, I am the only student left in his group, he rarely takes any postdoc. The whole group is quite small and he has been stuck with coming up with great ideas for several years without much progress and ignores student's ideas simply because they are usually not groundbreaking.
I have same experience too, but he always replied our email. What I suggested is you should talk to him what do you want and be polite, also you need a good impression for him. I think that he will hear you if you have a good impression for him.
If you couldn't make it, I think you should ask your dean or headmaster, or someone else if you want to change your advisor. But I think he's a good choice for learn in real world. In real world you will face many personality. Take him as a challenge will be good.
For his "good taste", better you investigated by asked someone or your senior, they might be help you.
I think you should ask your dean or headmaster, or someone else if you want to change your advisor — This is weird advice. Why would you need permission from anyone except your new advisor to change advisors?
Switch advisors and complain to your dean. When I was still in college, I had this issue with many professors. My o.chem prof promised research to many, but never got around to it, similar to your situation. I eventually had to switch advisors because this guy went nowhere fast. I also wound up complaining to the dean when other profs engaged in uncommunicative behavior, as well, because they are obligated to engage in timely communication with all students since their academic future relies on it.
From my academic experience, profs who are unhelpful are truly only out for their own good and could care less about you. Thus, you must switch advisors as soon as possible for your own good. Remember, for the most part, nobody but you cares most about your future, so stay actively engaged in your academic career to avoid these characters.
Hope this helps!
And what was the effect of complaining to the dean in your case, if I may ask?
All professors that were not communicating with their students were reminded of their obligations and students began receiving quicker and more frequent e-mails from the profs in question. Of course the dean's office tried to downplay everything, but more communication resulted. What's good is, where I went to school, if a prof received like three complaints, then further action was taken to stop the poor behavior, so it's good to start documenting stuff like this.
Most of the things you discuss in this post are matters of advising style which will work well for some students and not for others. Some students need more hands on advisors or smaller projects, and while other students will find more success with this advisor's approach. So if it's really not working for you consider switching, but strangers on the internet won't really help in identifying whether this advisor relation is working out for you specifically.
There is one big exception to my first paragraph, you say your advisor "rarely helps his students in finding postdoc positions." That's a big red flag and a problem. Presumably you want to get a postdoc, and if your advisor is not successful at placing good students in good postdocs, then you should probably find an advisor who does better. (Unless you just mean that he is successful in placing postdocs, but somehow does so effortlessly, in which case it's not a big deal.)
I agree with the overall tenor of this answer, but I am not sure about the line "if your advisor is not successful at placing good students in good postdocs, then you should find an advisor who does better".
Ok, softened it a little. I can certainly imagine situations where someone who wasn't generally good at placing students would nonetheless be the right advisor for a particular student. And of course, one shouldn't hold it against advisors for being willing to advise weaker students, someone has to do it.
It's your idea of "placing". Perhaps this reflects the relative standings of what you do compared with what I do, but with a PhD in the cohomology of Banach algebras one is not going to get a postdoc in the UK. I was extremely lucky to even get one in Canada, and not have a 2-body problem or similar.
I do agree that if the advisor does not do what they can to help, then this can be a red flag.
@YemonChoi: Well, there's two issues here. The first is whether it's the advisors fault or is to blame, and certainly there could be situations where faculty with a poor placement record with good students are not at all to blame. The second is whether a student should work with a given advisor. And there it's important to make decisions that will accord with your career goals. If getting a postdoc in the UK was a very high priority for you, then I would have advised you to switch fields.
You keep presuming large amounts of choice where there was none. I like to think, several JFA papers and a Crelle paper down the line, that I have proved it's worth training and then giving a break to those who got into mathematics because they liked it rather than casting around for areas that they think will have better postdoc prospects 4 years down the line. It is worth pointing out that the postdoctoral funding system in the UK is AFAIUI very different from the States
Sorry, I didn't mean to disparage your work, I was just taking your description of the situation completely as you described it (that your choice of field completely excludes the possibility of staying the UK). I also have no objection to someone deciding to do a PhD primarily for the enjoyment. Anyway, I've learned from your response and your good points.
No worries, Noah; sorry if I over-reacted. Problems of online textual communication, and all that :)
By 'rarely help his students in finding postdoc', I mean he will write a recommendation letter, and that's about it. He will never do anything trying to promote his students.
@Nobody in that case, I agree that this is not helpful behaviour. My own supervisor was very supportive in as much as was possible: introducing me to people, suggesting people I could approach, and writing non-generic reference letters AFAIK
This may not be possible, but you could help him overcome his 'ideas block'. Be proactive, ask him the specific areas that may be fruitful or if not, look for areas yourself. Read up, and then send him a bunch of 'interesting' problems/ideas and justification for why each is interesting and its significance. Be creative, think outside the current trend. This list at the minimum will be helpful to you in your PhD even if you change adviser. If you stumble on something interesting, I'm sure he will reply. Better still if he tells you why the ideas are bad. You can choose to argue your case or accept that they are bad; no harm done, either way you learn something. If in the list there is something worth pursuing, he may give you something more concrete (refine what you said) or spur him/her to come up with something more concrete. Good luck!
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71053 | Why and how to go to the US for a PhD-exchange semester?
Context: My wife and I are both PhD candidates in good-but-not-major eastern European universities, aiming to defend our theses in fall 2017 (i.e., in 15 months). She works in accounting, whereas my research focuses on engineering science. She has been accepted in an east-coast US university for an exchange semester as of January 2017.
Since for obvious personal reasons I do not want to stay one ocean away from her during 6 months, I'd like to visit US-universities at the same time (+/- 2 months).
Questions:
Exchange semesters are not common in my lab. So I lack perspective on how and why to go to the US. So here are my questions:
What is the purpose of visiting another university at the end of your PhD? What would be expected of me if I do go there?
Must such exchange be formally validated/accepted, or is a casual agreement with the lab PI ok? (N.B.: I am financially independent)
Can I directly contact "the one" Professor (of international and cross-fields renown) my research and saying that I'd like to collaborate, or is it mandatory to be recommended? Are there tacit how-tos?
Should I mention my wife's situation?
Note that I would have wanted such an exchange, even if my wife would not have been accepted for this exchange. However, her situation imposes the period.
My scientific supervisors do not have contacts in the US.
Update: I contacted "the prof", they accepted, (my supervisors got irritated because "one doesn't do that in our lab!", we discussed), I finally went to the US, learned a lot, had "the prof" in my thesis committee… and have now a PhD (-;
If you have only EU passport, you may be eligible to stay up to 90 days in US using ESTA in order to "attend short-term training (you may not be paid by any source in the U.S. with the exception of expenses incidental to your stay)". Otherwise appropriate visa is needed (e.g. J-1).
Contact the professor directly. You can't lose anything.
The purpose could be to improve your thesis, initiate networking, start some collaboration etc.
AFAIK, I didn't need any formal agreement - only when I applied for grant, I submit a formal letter of the host Professor that he will welcome me.
Your wife situation is that you'll be there for your personal interest anyway and that's opportunity to collaborate.
Ask your university department for international relations, whether there is some agreement with the US university and yours, there might be opportunity to cover some expenses of your stay there. It's better to get at least partial funding from your home university and claim that your home university pays you during immigration control and makes it easy with the host Professor lab.
I did internship after my PhD in US and stayed only 1 months and above mentioned points saved me from possible disappointment during border control. Host Professor welcomed the fact that I was independent financially. I used a small university grant from "eastern european" university which covers part of the expenses - the flight tickets, all other I paid from my pocket money.
@DSVA - yes. It needs to be considered in advance whether ESTA is enough, per https://www.application-esta.co.uk/all-about-ESTA , it can be used to "attend short-term training (you may not be paid by any source in the U.S. with the exception of expenses incidental to your stay)". Otherwise appropriate visa is needed.
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64356 | How should I deal with being harassed by my supervisor in a non-work situation?
I'm a female student in some huge and popular university in my country.
I have a supervisor who is much older then me. He is a very respected person in our community.
We worked together a lot, it was fine. We communicated about personal issues as well, but nothing sex-related and/or inappropriate. No physical contact, hugs or even handshakes.
There was nothing special until the day we were celebrating something along with a lot of other teachers and students. I had drunk more then I should and stopped realizing what was happening. Then I found myself face to face with my supervisor and he started to harass me. I waited for a lucky moment and ran away.
Now we are ok with this and go on working together. This episode is ignored but not forgotten. I feel responsible for this but not guilty. I know that I'm not the first student he had close relationships with. And I know that he thought I would not mind it, so, now he is sorry. I know about two very alike situations with my friends in two other universities in my city.
Should I blame myself for this episode? I think that only for my careless and non-professional behaviour, not for the sexual issue.
Do you think I had to leave the university or communicate to the authorities or something?
How can you prevent yourself of having such a person as your supervisor? In my opinion, if he wasn't interested in me that way, I could drink even more and nothing would happen.
I'm not in any position to advise you, so I can't answer your question, but I want to say that this problem is more common in academia than you'd think - and I've been in your position before so I empathise. It is NOT your fault. And to clarify: have there been any further episodes? Are you comfortable working with him, or not (either of these is fine, but if you aren't comfortable, a change needs to be made)? Also, what do you mean by "I'm not the first student he had close relationships with"?
Thank you for your response and support. Yes, I know that the problem is common, so I'm trying to learn more about it. No further episodes, he is sorry and he apologized, we don't return there anymore. I'm rather comfortable in work, but that situation was a shock for me and now I have some problems trusting him. But this education means a lot for me and I'm so close to graduating, the change would not worth it, I think. Not the first - there are people I respect, they told me that he had already had relationships and even marriage with students.
Hi @jango and welcome to Academia.SE! Questions asking directly for opinions on a personal case are generally closed as off-topic, and asking about "your" country is a bit too broad. However, your question is related to a common, or not-so-uncommon, situation in the academic world and might have a general interest. Could you try to reformulate your last question so that is less opinion based?
@MassimoOrtolano Hi, sure I can and would try, but it was a little difficult for me to formulate a good question so far. Some help anybody?)
Your supervisor did something wrong. What, if anything, you do about it is a personal choice. Maybe you should talk to your university's counseling service about identifying your feelings/wishes.
Thank you. Counseling service is a very good idea, but I'm afraid that if I talk to somebody about this situation irl, I will fail to keep it quiet.
Thank you. I understand and partially agree with your position. In fact, we were not along all the time and most of the celebrating crowd were good acquainted and drunk, but the problem appeared only between two of us. I mean, it was going to happen somehow anyway and I was only way too careless. I don't say that drinking a lot is a good thing to do, especially in society. But I don't think that every one would sleep with a drunk student, so how could I know I'm in such a bigger danger than I thought I was. And I'm sure that I hadn't done something truly sexual-provocative, just felt asleep.
@AnonymousPhysicist, it might be better to seek outside help. Go to a support group or a professional who is bound to keep this private, unless you really want to escalate the matter. Doing so might very well be extremely damaging to OP (an unknown graduate student against a star, the accusations of "she drank too much and provoked him, and now is trying to take advantage again" are very loose on some tongues). Yes, it sucks. Very much. My deepest sympathies.
Thank you. You are right. You know, I guessed that this type of situations are so common but I really doubhted that people would think, say and write exactly the same things I feel. My family and close friends did. I'm also a reasonably religious person and talked to one known clergyman, so even he supported me this way as well.
At least it does not sound like the most malicious of encounters, just bad luck and a alcohol-loosened inhibition. The right answer is in such situations by both: "I drank too much, let's stay out of each other's way until we are sober again." Failing that, the current state of things is as good as it could possibly be in such a situation (not great, but if you do feel you can continue working with the supervisor, at least workable). I wouldn't apportion much blame, people are human, but if you must blame, the supervisor gets one share, and getting unguarded with alcohol at work gets another.
Thank you, you are right. I still have a little doubt about speaking of people are human here, I don't understand how drinking and sudden sex can be regarded as human signs, but generally I agree with you.
It's your fault for drinking too much. And if you were so drunk you were not in control of your actions, how can you even know that you remembered the alleged "harassment" correctly? You may have made up the whole incident in your head. Let it go. It has no effect on your life except in your mind.
First, I would recommend that you put away any feelings of guilt and responsibility, and instead begin planning to protect yourself. Unfortunately, it appears likely that your supervisor is a predator and abuser given several red flags in your story. In particular:
Your supervisor waiting until you were impaired by alcohol before making unwanted sexual advances. This is a massive red flag of abuse: safe and respectful people talk with prospective partners when they are sober.
Your supervisor appears to have sought an isolated environment in the midst of a group event where he could assault you and where you could run away without others noticing.
Your supervisor appears to be manipulating your interpretation of his sexual assault on you: you say things like "we are OK with this" (taking a collective view) and "I know that he thought" (taking his view) and "he is sorry" (how did you feel?) that indicate that your view of the situation is being strongly influenced by his view. To be blunt: it doesn't matter what he thought or felt; what matters is what you thought and felt when you were sexually assaulted. Making you feel responsible for his feelings is an abuse tactic.
It sounds as though your supervisor engages in grooming for abuse, by picking certain "favorite" students and violating professional boundaries with them (talking about personal issues). Some people just have minimal filter with everybody, but the picking favorites is a red flag: abusers often do this in order to identify people who will be good victims for their abuse, and then may wait quite patiently for an opportunity to switch into their preferred mode of abuse.
Your supervisor chose to make a sexual advance on their student, over whose life they have a huge amount of power and control, rather than waiting until you were no longer their student and could be more of a peer as a partner.
Now, it's possible that your supervisor is not a predator and abuser, but that's a lot of red flags, including an actual sexual assault. Furthermore, most abusers do not believe that they are abusers, and can often be very persuasive to others, including the victims that they ensnare.
So, what would I recommend that you do? Unfortunately, the student/advisor power dynamics make this a tricky situation to navigate without doing harm to yourself and your career. I would thus recommend that you start by protecting yourself and then find resources or otherwise get professional support to help decide how to proceed.
Never drink or otherwise impair yourself when you may encounter your supervisor, even if there are other people present. He has isolated you for assault once, and may do it again.
Find some good resources on abuse and familiarize yourself with their information and recommendations. One site that I would recommend as helpful is: http://www.abuseandrelationships.org/. Even though you are not in a sexual relationship with your advisor, a) your supervisor just attempted to start one, and b) you are in an important relationship due to the student/advisor connection.
If you can, begin consulting with a professional therapist or counselor with a good reputation for helping victims of assault and abuse. Having a trustworthy and professional third party will be very valuable for helping you get a clear perspective on your situation and figuring out what is the right path for you, as well as helping deal with any emotional repercussions of your assault.
Once you've taken all of those other steps, you will need to decide which of several paths you want to take, ranging anywhere from filing formal charges against your supervisor to quietly changing supervisors to simply protecting yourself and carrying through to graduation. Unfortunately, all of the choices you make are likely to risk serious negative consequences to you, and only you (hopefully with aid from an experienced and supportive therapist or counselor) can decide which path and which risks are the best choice for your situation.
Wow. That's really such a useful information! Thank you very much.
@jango a comment you made on your question--your advisor started assaulting you while you were asleep or passed out? That's another huge red flag.
Let me express how sorry and embarrassed I feel (as a male) that you have been put under such stress for no other reason than being a young female, which behaved exactly as some her male co-students would have done (socializing on a faculty party).
There are In my opinion 3 aspects of this: Professional/etiquette, Legal and emotional. I wont discuss about legal, since you were not specific on the country and specifics of the harassment, and since I feel that this is not the direction you want advice. I will skip emotional, because to judge what has happened I don't need to understand the emotions behind. For that I have to say it does not contribute if you (seem, pretend or believe) to like each other (in one direction or two) or not.
Let's gather the facts:
He is your supervisor - he has the objective power
He is an employee, he gets paid for his work, and you are a student. In some sense, his customer.
He is older, in an environment where he believes that it's acceptable to get sexual with students in the presence of other teacher and students (This tell me that something is wrong with the faculty ethics there) - he has control
It seems normal for him to have relationships with his female students, who are in a insecure emotional state of transition - if that is a habit, it is clear that he is experienced in abusing his position (This again tells me that something is wrong with the faculty ethics there)
I could imagine that something like this incident would have been a misinterpretation of him, but in that case, i would have expected an sincere apology towards you
It is clearly unacceptable from an etiquette viewpoint to skip hugging and other more personal forms of interaction in a social relationship and wait until the other person is drunk enough to touch him/her in a sexual way.
So these are the facts as I see them, and my summary is clear: He behaved unprofessional, irresponsible, and as it seems intentionally abusive, with a lack of professional and interpersonal ethics. While you being drunk may have allowed him to do what he did, the failure is on his side.
I reinterpret your questions to:
I have a supervisor, which seems to be intentionally abusive if he believes he can get away with it (and I assume that this may be true). Given the asymmetry of power, what is the way with the least further harm for my life to get away from there and avoid future harassment for me from such nonprofessional and abusive people.
I assume that he is not emotionally involved in this (given his history), so there are good chances that he at least does not take your "rejection" personally and has some hidden issue with you (and e.g. takes revenge when grading). So I don't expect his behavior to be a recurring thing (towards you). However, if you have the feeling that the grade of your work was affected by it (or he make strange remarks indicating that he expected different from you), you should evaluate further steps.
My first advice: Try to walk away from it as unharmed as possible, as a student in a university you will fight an uphill battle in such contexts. Clearly separate you own good (getting away with a decent grade and without being harassed any further - if he tries it, walk away directly and go to the faculty) from the good of the others (i.e. telling the responsible person at the University about this - possibly do this later, after getting away.). Don't let people tell you that "women are at fault because they would need to go after such persons stronger" - in such a situation it is not your responsibility to clean up other peoples mess.
The second advice (as much as i hate to give it to you in this context): The world is full of seemingly nice and close people (students, teachers, colleagues) who lie to you, and will exploit your weaknesses. Some people are psychopaths and these are very good liars. Getting drunk (since it weakens you temporarily) among people you don't know is not a good idea, so only get drunk with people you know well enough.
The third advice is: look for the publication record when selecting a supervisor. If you see a stable pattern (e.g. Master students which are still there as Postdocs) of coauthors around him/her on the articles it means usually that he/she does not cause people to run away for emotional, sexual or other (workload) abuse.
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115253 | What is the nature of the "assistant professor" position in India?
In this recent academia.SE question, the questioner mentions that as an undergraduate they did research with an assistant professor. That faculty member had a master's degree (only) at the time and has since moved on to be a PhD student at another institution.
To my American eyes, it seems strange to have the positions of "graduate student" and "faculty member" intertwined like this. In a comment, the questioner wrote
Just to shed some more light on this, I come from India and here it is part of official policy to allow people with graduate degrees to rise to posts as high as assistant professor. I am not sure why this difference in academic practice has not come to the notice of admissions committees in the US in spite of the fact that thousands of Indian students have gone there over the years.
Well, I am the chair of a graduate admissions committee, and indeed this difference in academic practice had not come to my notice until now. I would like to understand it better -- in particular:
1) What does this position entail?
2) Which Indian institutions and departments are (still) hiring assistant professors with masters degrees?
3) Can a master's degree assistant professor retain that position indefinitely? Do they?
4) What percentage of higher-rank Indian professors did an assistant professorship between a master's and a PhD degree?
[Here follows more information about why I am asking the question and context about how what I know so far makes it sound different from the US. It is not necessary to read this part or address it in an answer.]
In the United States there are so many PhDs looking for academic jobs that the days when someone without a PhD can teach advanced undergraduates at a research university or nationally ranked liberal arts college are almost completely past (more precisely: there are still some such people, but they were hired a long time ago). However there are other institutions of higher learning in which faculty can teach with master's degrees, and I have known some cases. (I suspect that the window for this is shrinking as well, as we continue to produce many more PhDs desiring academic positions than the market can bear.)
But I don't know of any American institution of higher learning in which a faculty member with a master's degree can be an assistant professor but have no higher rank. Moreover, the type of institution which has tenure track faculty with master's degrees is quite different from the type of institution in which (i) faculty do research with their undergraduates and (ii) send students to graduate school. (I tried to choose language to minimize the elitism / academic caste-ism in that last assertion, but that minimum is unfortunately positive, since American academia is elitist...)
If you look at the US in, say, the late 50s or early 60s - it was quite common for people to be hired as Assistant Professors and expected to finish their PhD by the time they were up for tenure.
@Najib: I am the chair of the admissions committee at a department at a US university, which is why I am trying to understand Indian admissions from a US perspective. The OP from the linked to question said he was applying to US, Canada and Europe, so I am tackling part of that interface.
"Translation of academic ranks is usually doomed to fail." I'm not attempting a translation but rather an understanding. Also I think your sentiment is a bit defeatist: I believe I know how to translate "Lecturer [UK]", "maître de conférences [France]" and a few other things into American terms. They do not correspond exactly to any American academic rank, but one can still convey the meaning. [And I wrote that comment before I noticed that you yourself offer a translation of the latter term on your bio!]
@Najib: If by "translating" you mean "selecting a rank in US academia and consistently using that rank instead without any explanation" then I agree. I meant "understanding followed by description." Anyway, I edited my question to make it more clear that I want to hear about the Indian system and what I want to hear about it.
Indian universities are not very homogeneous, but it may be helpful to divide them into two categories:
(1) National institutes/universities:The top-tier universities with highly competitive admissions and recruitment processes. A commonly stated figure is that 1% of applicants make it to these institutes, though I think it may now be closer to 10%, with more institutes opening in recent years. In this category, an Assistant Professor must hold a PhD and have 3 years post-doctoral experience.
(2) Other universities: One requires a Master degree and must qualify a national-level entrance exam to become Assistant Professor. Yes, one may continue in this post without a doctorate, though in practice this is rare. Full professors (and perhaps associate professors too- not sure on this) require PhD.
The second category might appear strange from a US perspective. It may help to recognize that these universities tend to place pedagogy over research. This is an outcome of having a large population and limited employment prospects without a college degree.
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180917 | Can age limit be an issue for postdoc in China?
I have got post doc position in China a year back when I was 34. Due to Covid situations, my permit expired before and now lab fellow is planning again to apply for work permit but my age is 35 now. Can someone tell me I will get the work permit or visa? Or due to 35 above age, would I be denied?
China doesn't grant work permits to people older than 34?
It is mentioned on Chinese university website that they do not consider people with age over 35 for post docs. I have offer letter issued a year before but need to apply for permit again.
That's not the same as getting a visa.
Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/149518/17254
I hope so.. But my contract is also updated now that's showed my age is above 35 and PhD with more than 3 years.. So I want an authentic information if it's get approved this time by the university or foreign permit issuance office?
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144435 | I have an issue with one of my teachers and a chance to address it, but they're writing me a letter of rec. Should I address it?
I'm trying to transfer, I'm a good student and one of my teachers is writing me what I assume will be a fantastic letter.
I am in an upper undergrad level (200+) CS course with this teacher. We had a group project, and without going into too much detail, I was discouraged from intellectual exploration and feel like I was put into a box.
We're submitting our individual write ups, so I have the opportunity to address my feelings about the project. What I wrote is strongly worded but I feel like it gives a fair assessment of what my problem was.
Is this a bad idea? I will feel awful if I have to let this slide without saying something about it, but I also strongly dislike my institution and want to do what I have to do in order to transfer. Should I include my assessment or should I hold off until after I apply?
What I wrote is strongly worded but I feel like it gives a fair assessment of what my problem was.
I would reconsider the strongly-worded part. Giving a fair assessment is good, but people rarely react well to sharp criticism, and this can burn bridges. My advice is to state facts, not conclusions. For example, rather than saying that you were "discouraged from intellectual exploration" (a conclusion), you could say that you were "disappointed not to be able to pursue X" (a fact).
Should I include my assessment or should I hold off until after I apply?
Assuming what you write is not ridiculously far over the line, I would not expect your professor to change their letter of recommendation. Particularly if they've already written it, I doubt they would take the time to go back and make changes.
But, consider the cost-benefit analysis. The (potential) cost is burning a bridge (you can mitigate this by being diplomatic). The potential reward is that future students might have a better experience, but this is likely only if the professor (a) does not already agree with you, (b) agrees with you after reading your report, and (c) chooses to address your feedback.
I suggest that you leave it alone. Or at least leave it alone for a few months and see if you, then, feel the same way.
There is much to lose and little to gain.
And, while you may feel unsatisfied, you may still have learned from the course and the project. You can, in fact, learn from people that you don't like. If your time hasn't been wasted then don't let emotions spoil what may be a good thing.
As long as this isn't a situation in which you need to protect yourself, give yourself time for reflection and evaluation.
Have you tried speaking with this professor about the project, in an open and non-confrontational way? We don't have any details about the event you're describing, but maybe the professor had a perfectly valid reason for what was done, even if it isn't clear to you right now. Ask for feedback about that project, and why you were asked to do it the way you were.
Professors are people too, with all the same weakness and faults. A strongly-worded criticism in the official record is not likely to be taken well, nor is it likely to result in positive change in the future, nor is it likely to improve the recommendation letter they write for you.
If you have already discussed it with the professor and remain unsatisfied, I would still advocate for leaving it alone. You already discussed it with them and didn't get anywhere; a strongly-worded review is unlikely to get any further. It's natural to have the urge to repeat a point with extra force if you feel like you weren't heard the first time, but that urge also hardly ever accomplishes anything. Take your fantastic recommendation letter and move on.
Good luck at your new institution.
Part of maturing is resisting the urge. The urge to say the first thing that comes into ones mind, the urge to say the second thing that comes into ones mind and the urge to say anything at all.
If you do not like your project, remember this, and do it differently when it is your turn to arrange things. My experience is, you will with high probability suddenly discover how difficult it is to get things right while balancing every other constraint around it. You do not know why they designed the project the way they did. You talk about 200+ course participants? Perhaps they simply do not have the manpower to manage each of you individually, who knows?
Also, I find it remarkable that a comparatively minor criticism (such as the style of a problem-solving session, compared to - say - bullying, intimidation and the like) so much more often elicits the urge in people to write "strongly worded" responses. If people stood up to the system earlier in serious violations, who knows, perhaps we would not be where we are?
Maybe you are right in your criticism. Maybe not. We cannot judge. But you should think very carefully what you wish as outcome from expressing this criticism. If it is just venting and making your point, I recommend to drop it.
If it is that you really wish to improve things for future generations, and that's what you sacrifice your own well-being for (namely your letter of recommendation), that is your decision - in this case, the "strongly worded" part is counterproductive. You will neither get a fantastic LOR (unless the teacher is a saint) nor help future generations. The best in this case is a factual, but not charged list of suggestions for improvements. Best is you concentrate on the really important ones rather than a long list of "could be improved" entries.
Finally, keep in mind the possibility that you have not seen the whole context under which this project has been run and your teacher actually knows what they are doing.
Sometimes (and we, your internet advisers, cannot ultimately judge whether this is the case here) not saying anything is the best thing to do.
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158415 | Do graduate schools check the disciplinary record of PhD applicants?
Do Physics (STEM) graduate schools in the US check for disciplinary record if they don't ask for it in the application? The outcome of the violation doesn't appear on my transcript. Only way a graduate school can find out is if they ask my school (in US) for my academic record. I am not going to lie if they ask but some school's application form doesn't ask for disciplinary records. Does that mean they will not check for it?
This will surely depend on the school.. many schools also don't have the concept of a "disciplinary record"..
This can't be answered without knowing where the information is available. It would depend on the country and sometimes on the preferences of individuals. In any case, do not lie about your record on your application.
Is this a question about the US or elsewhere? Laws differ.
@Buffy it's for US
@AnonymousPhysicist Could you let me know what more I should include?
@user111388 what kind of school are those?
@user131275: many (most?) schools in Europe (minus UK).
Please don't vandalize your own post.
In the US disciplinary records are protected by FERPA, so one school can't check another's records without written permission from the applicant. Others here that say that the school you are applying to is free to ask you about why your transcript looks the way it does, are right. If you got kicked out of a school or failed a class for cheating, expect your transcript to reflect that somehow that's legal and to be asked about that in another way that's legal.
But the outcome of the violation is not on my transcript, does that mean they can not ask for it without my permission?
@user131275 how would they know about it if it’s not on your official transcript or other documents sent by the university where it was committed? FERPA prevents that university from telling without your written permission.
It is not on my transcript but it is on my educational/academic record
@user131275 that’s definitely not something that one school can get from another. Some schools won’t even let you buy your own official transcript, just an unofficial copy. My uni only sends official transcripts to other unis for money.
FERPA has exceptions for the prior consent requirement such as disciplinary records (you can find it in the link in your post). My question is do schools ask for it?
@user131275, I think you're misreading the places that say 'prior' as they're mostly related to children, and, no, to my limited knowledge, graduate admissions committees don't go seeking the other records of applicants than they ask you to send or have sent like letters of rec. and transcripts. That would be too much to review.
Generally speaking, in the US, you can depend to some extent on a "right to privacy" that would make such an inquiry improper and replying to it also improper. But it isn't necessarily assured.
The US Constitution is silent on a right to privacy, but many Supreme Court decisions have expanded that right, though not to the extent of the EU's Right to be Forgotten. Also, many US states will have privacy protections in place that make the communication of certain kinds of information improper without the consent of the person involved.
However, if some transgression of a student is also law-breaking, then the rules may change and the information may be part of the public record in that case.
In addition, most (I think) US colleges and universities would treat disciplinary action against a student as a private matter and some might purge the record upon graduation (or after some time period). Part of the philosophy is that if we are to punish a student for some act then that should be the end of it, though the record might be retained until graduation to guard against recurrences.
Overall, I doubt that, given the more or less general, if informal, sense that privacy is a right, that any graduate school would ask and that the likelihood of getting an answer would be very small.
Part of the reasoning here is that the grad school would have no particular reason to ask, having no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of an applicant.
Of course, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the candidate would be asked directly about certain kinds of misbehavior, and if asked it would be a potential problem if a candidate were to lie (as noted by Anonymous Physicist).
Yes some applications asks if the applicant has been placed on 'probation/suspension or expelled' etc for a violation, and some don't. My question is those that don't pose this question on their application, would they ask my current school for disciplinary records?
It seems doubtful, as I said. Asking you is a different matter, of course. They can also ask you for a release for such information and then it is up to the university as to how to reply.
In my experience some schools take a very hard line on academic dishonesty and expel students for cheating on exams. This would probably show up on your record.
Other schools give students a few strikes by having an internal list of disciplinary action, so that a repeat offender can be identified for expulsion. Otherwise the list stays private and probably won't come to light in future applications.
Discipline regarding drinking in dorms and things like that probably won't show up unless it gets so bad that you have a criminal record.
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193149 | Should we acknowledge manufacturers who provided free samples in a publication?
We recently asked several manufacturers if they could send us a sample of their material(s) for us to test towards their suitability for a process we developed. They sent us free samples. Once we identify the most suitable material we plan on ordering more from that material.
After receiving the materials, we decided to expand our testing towards optimizing said process and we have enough content for a publication. I am now wondering if we should (or have to) thank the manufacturers in the acknowledgements for their provision of free materials, even though we did not explicitly ask them for materials for the purpose of the publication.
Particularly if you will name a ‘superior’ product you need to talk to your local legal team first.
@JonCuster I am unsure if the legal aspect is necessary. After all, we will not generally name one product as superior, but as superior for OUR APPLICATION. That does not devalidate the product for other possible applications.
You should definitely mention this in the paper. There is a conflict-of-interest concern here so that you should be as transparent as possible. This arrangement is very common with pharmaceutical manufacturers and academic research.
Whether you do it in the acknowledgement or within the methods is really up to you, I'd probably put it within the materials and methods, as part of the ordinary recognition of where materials come from. E.g.:
Basket-weaving materials (straw, Intl Straw Corp, Des Moines, IA, USA; wool, Sheeps Down Under, Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia) were donated by the manufacturers.
In addition, you may want to outline the scope of the conflict in a separate disclosure section, and note that while materials were provided for free the companies involved had no input on the design, execution, or presentation of the results, assuming that's all true. Remember, "conflict of interest" doesn't mean your work is corrupted, it just means that interests conflict, and the best way to defuse any perceived issues is to be transparent.
You may also want to address whether this was an appropriate use of the materials from the perspective of the manufacturers. Presumably they expected you were going to use the materials to decide whether to purchase more: they're providing them as a sales tactic. Instead, you've created a product (research paper) out of the freely given materials, and that product could reflect positively or negatively on the people providing you materials. As you can imagine, someone could be quite upset if you've used their free gift to explain to everyone that their product is inferior to their competitors. If you've signed any agreement about the transfer of materials I'd first check whether that agreement has any statements about how the materials can and can't be used, and if it's unclear or unstated, it's probably worth reaching out for permission, or just asking to pay for the value of the samples if that's feasible. Jon Custer recommends in a comment to consult with your institution's legal team and I think that's a very good idea.
You probably mean “defuse” in “ diffuse any perceived issues ”.
Definitely the sources of the materials should be disclosed in the body of the paper. This is relevant to interpreting the results of the study, as it might turn out, for example, that NSW wool has has different properties than Scottish wool. If I got the samples for free then I'd be inclined to also acknowledge the manufacturers, as a matter of simple courtesy.
"quite upset if you've used their free gift to explain to everyone that their product is inferior to their competitors" That is a very strange idea. Companies send gifts to reviewers with the expectation of an unbiased review all the time.
@AnonymousPhysicist Just because some companies do a thing doesn't mean every one does or that every "gift" comes with the same terms.
I suggest that you ask each of them whether they would like to be acknowledged or not. Some might not want to be named, especially since you didn't make your intention about the use clear. Many corporations are (very) sensitive about being named in any way that might affect their brand.
If some say yes and some no, then you have a dilemma and you might have to be clear in an acknowledgement that there were others who prefer not to be named.
In general, however, it is good to acknowledge such contributions to a study but also to make the use clear and that the research will likely result in publication.
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180870 | As an inexperienced thesis supervisor, how can you guarantee fair grading?
Being a PhD student, I just finished supervising my first masters thesis. Now I have to assess and grade it. While I have a grading template provided by the university (listing the different aspects of the thesis and points out of X for each aspects), I am finding it hard to estimate how good the single achievements are compared to, well, the general level of theses. If I give full marks now because everything has been done satisfactory and well, and the next thesis that I supervise is even better - I cannot give that one better marks, so it would feel like I misgraded the first thesis.
I imagine that once you have amassed a certain amount of supervised theses, you can estimate the general level of one thesis much better and probably feel more competent to grade fairly and correctly.
But in my situation, having no previous experience in grading, how can I make sure as best as possible that my grading is neither too lenient nor too harsh?
Do you have acceess to previous theses and their grades? It could give you at least a reference to compare against.
Are you the only supervisor, or is there a more experienced member of staff involved (at least formally). If so, that would be the person to talk to.
@PieterNaaijkens there is a second supervisor (a professor) that definitely has more experience, but if I rely on her too much, that would kind of make having to seperate supervisors futile, wouldn't it?
@Louic I have access to some, but there all at the "good" end of grades, as our university library stocks only the theses with the best grades and our institute also rather tends to take only the top students for master theses. There is no real spectrum of differently graded these available to me.
The first time I supervised and graded a Master thesis (I was also a PhD student at the time), the other supervisor and I both graded the thesis independently and then compared grades. It's a good way to learn while maintaining a level of independent judgement. In the end, both our grades were in the same 'band' (say, an A in the US system or a First in the UK), and diverged by only a few points.
@Roland I was not aware that this system is so uncommon. At my university, one of the supervisors has to be a professor, the other one is only required to have at least the same degree that the student wants to obtain. Grading is done by both thesis supervisors.
(@Roland) Final undergrad dissertations can be assessed at least partially by PhD students in the UK, not just BSc, but the various 4-year straight to masters. I absolutely agree with your conclusion to get help from the relevant senior colleague - and would go so far as to say that while part of the prof's job, it's also part of Sursula's training and job to have that discussion.
I am not sure you are considering correctly the grading as something "competitive" and absolute (i.e. there will be a more perfect thesis in the future, so the today perfect should not be graded as perfect), but at at least this experience can count towards your https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/167963/good-ways-to-get-teaching-experience-in-non-teaching-position (yes, supervising can and must be part of teaching)
@EarlGrey Please correct me if my assumptions are incorrect! This is precisely the reason why I am here asking question, to get rid of misconceptions that I might have due to my inexperience.
@Roland True, generally PhD students help in preparing the Master's thesis, but I never heard anyone (formally) reviewing...
there is a second supervisor (a professor) that definitely has more experience, but if I rely on her too much, that would kind of make having two seperate supervisors futile, wouldn't it?
For many aspects of the jobs of educator and supervisor, you learn by doing. So, an appropriate course of action here would be to
First, try to write an evaluation to the best of your ability following the guideline you were provided, and advice from people with more experience on the question.
Secondly, you submit your work for feedback to a more experienced coworker. Here, the second supervisor seems appropriate, but another senior faculty you trust could be also helpful (they may not know the details of the thesis you are supervising, but they know the classic "beginner's mistakes").
Finally, modify your evaluation according to their opinion. If you think you had to do a major revision of your evaluation, you can go back to point 2. for another round.
I was feeling uncomfortable at first when doing this kind of task, as things can be hard to evaluate but you get used to it through experience. For example, one rubric for the evaluation of student research projects in my institution is the quality of writing of their thesis out of 20 points. But the first thesis of even the best students is seldom a flawless work, so how harsh should I be? I could know the answer only by comparing my evaluation to other faculty members.
Grading should not be on a curve.
If I give full marks now because everything has been done satisfactory and well, and the next thesis that I supervise is even better - I cannot give that one better marks, so it would feel like I misgraded the first thesis.
This is incorrect. Full marks does not indicate that there is no room for improvement.
Use the grading template. If it's not detailed enough, unfortunately people unfamiliar with your degree program cannot help you. Ask a person who is familiar, such as the degree coordinator.
how can you guarantee fair grading?
For small sample sizes, you cannot.
@DanielHatton Anything that involves ranking students should be controversial.
@AnonymousPhysicist So you are against grading altogether, as grading will always rank students? While I somewhat understand this viewpoint, it doesn't help with my problem.
@Sursula Just that small subsets cannot be expected to form nice predictable ranks. Grading is necessary still, but constricting the grading process to an outcome that produces ideal ranking would be doing a lot of labor for little fruit. Maybe a student gets a higher mark than the ideal ranking would imply, but that is an artifact of the subset and not a big problem. Grading someone more severely because there might come a better one next year would be a mistake. Or less severely on the inverse basis. Give the grade, worry about ranking when you have a decent set.
@ AnonymousPhysicist the approach @DanielHatton describes isn't exactly ranking students. It's ranking specific aspects of their work, and only getting to that point by comparison to more-or-less objective criteria
@Sursula I teach at a community college and I'm anti-grading. My final exam is a mock job interview and at the end I ask them to give themselves a grade based on their performance. They are pretty honest with themselves about how they did and graded themselves fairly. There have been many papers/books written about the problems with traditional letter grades. Google "Ungrading" or "how grading hurts students"
@Sursula "grading will always rank students" is false. There should be ties. Many ties. Nobody needs to know any grade other than their own.
You seem to have the misconception that grading is, somehow, competitive and that there is some linear scale on which you need to place student work in relation to other work.
I suggest that you work to give that up.
Every piece of work is unique and they don't compete with one another. Treat each as such.
Note that grading scales in some (not all) places are intentionally quite broad. Letter grades in the US, for example are quite broad categories. Strict numeric grades are a bit different, but it is probably incorrect to think of them as having true precision. What, after all, is the essential difference between 87 and 88? You are making judgments after all, not measuring.
And, is is true that over the years there is some likely "drift" in the meaning of grades. It is often lamented, but things seem to generally work out in any case. IIRC, Einstein was denied a teaching certificate upon graduation from (the predecessor of) ETHZ.
Talk to an experienced supervisor in your department
I would assume you at least have a second marker to moderate your inexperience. They will balance out your lack of calibration to some extent, but you can - and arguably should - go to your more experienced colleagues and seek their opinion and guidance. They may not be willing, or able, to read the whole thing but they should be able to spare five or ten minutes to help you calibrate your marks if you put the effort into explaining why you chose the mark you did.
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108859 | How do you send personalized information to each student in Moodle?
My institution uses Moodle as our learning management system. I want to send some information to each student that is personalized to each student but without any other students seeing it. This is a need I often have from time to time, but my most recent need is to give each student a unique ID to access a separate online resource.
In the past, I have done things like posting a spreadsheet with all student information, except that I somewhat hid their student IDs by only showing the last four digits of their student IDs: that way, students could identify which row applied to them, but could not easily tell which one applied to any other student (unless they already know their student ID). This is an unsatisfying solution, since a student who knows another student's ID would then know their information.
Is there a way to send small bits of information customized to each student? I'm imagining some sort of interface where I could maybe upload a spreadsheet with each row having a student IDs and the custom information in other columns, and then students would only see own their uploaded information, not any other students' information.
Edit: In response to one of the answers: my point here is that I am looking for an automated solution where I can post feedback to many students (whether 20 or 200) at one time, yet personalized based on some criteria (in my example, giving them individual IDs for an external computer system). So, individual entry of feedback one-by-one is not an option for my need here.
Note: I've searched around other StackExchange sites, and Academia SE seems to be the one that would be best for responding to specific how-to questions for Moodle. I'm surprised there is no tag for "Moodle" or even for "learning-management-system".
Could someone with enough points try to create a tag for Academia SE for "learning-management-system"? I'm surprised no such tag exists already. Ideally, I would also like tags for specific LMSs like "moodle", but I don't know if that would be too specific (there are currently around 50 or so Moodle-related posts on Academia SE, so its already fairly popular here).
You should be able to do that yourself - it only requires 300 reputation.
I'm not sure we really need a tag for that, because LMS are different across universities. For instance, in my university students have an institutional email address which is of the form ID@etc. and I'd have simply took the IDs from the LMS and generated automatically the personalized emails. Probably before creating the tag as @DavidZ says, it would be better if you ask on Academia Meta.
@DavidZ: Wow, I didn't know I had that power!
@MassimoOrtolano: I assume that when you said "I'm not sure we really need a tag for that", you were referring to a "moodle" tag, so I went ahead and created a "learning-management-system" tag. I have asked about "moodle" on Meta like you suggested: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4118/would-lms-specific-tags-be-appropriate-moodle-in-particular
I can't help but have a vaguely-nauseated reaction to the phrase (or acronym) "Learning Management System". The very use of such phrases is a passive acquiescence to the for-profit publishers' attempts to insinuate themselves as "essential" players in contemporary education. Srsly?
@paulgarrett, I really have no idea what you're referring to, especially because the vast majority of my experience with an LMS is with the open-source Moodle. (I did have a couple of brief stints with commercial ones, though.)
I'm answering as comment since it's not directly an answer: I gave up using moodle for such things, I'm using excel and python scripts for sending the mails via outlook. If someone ist interested, I could post some sniplets as answer, but since it is not really an answer, I'd stick to the comment for now.
Here's a quick thought based on a different learning management system (LMS). Sometimes in other LMSes you can upload feedback to assignments: you batch download each person's file, add comments, and upload each file with exactly the same name. Perhaps you could try a workaround like that, perhaps requiring you to create a fake or trivial assignment and get everyone to submit it.
For a more general approach that is LMS-independent, you could use a spreadsheet and your email program with mail merge. That is, one field would be email address and another field would be the comment, and optionally you could have the person's first name in another field. Then you could send a generic message with blanks filled in by the program. (You could send out a practice message to your own addresses or without any personalized content beyond student names and you can check your Sent log to see if it worked right.)
(The latter solution defeats the purpose of a LMS, but limited feature sets do, as well.)
Actually, your first proposal is exactly what I came up with as a workaround, and I gave detailed instructions how to do that in Moodle.
It's too bad that so much of this has to be workarounds! I wonder if there are feature request lists for Moodle? My sense is that LMSes typically try to use universities as go-betweens and discourage instructors from corresponding with them directly, but this may mean they lose out on the ability to better serve their users.
This is the workaround solution I eventually came up with:
Create a gradebook item (it could be called "Special Info" or whatever is relevant). Set the grade type to "Text" so that it does not affect any actual grades in the gradebook.
Use the Grade Import features to import the personalized information you want. But here's the key: instead of importing the personalized information as an actual grade for the "Special Info" grade item, specify it as "Feedback for Special Info" in the "Feedbacks" section of the import wizard.
When importing is completed, students will find the personalized information in their gradebook as feedback (not an actual grade) for the grade item you created for that purpose.
It's not the most elegant solution, since it artificially presents the information as a grade (but without affecting other grade calculations), but it gets the job done. Perhaps someone can post a better answer.
I actually did not know how to solve the problem when I started writing my question, but in the process of writing of a question, I came up with this possible (though imperfect) solution. So I've discovered a new value of StackExchange sites: posting questions can help me come up with answers to my own questions! (Well, maybe it works once out of 50 questions ...) :-)
With so many ways to give feedback within moodle I wonder why you are creating a separate spreadsheet with feedback in it? You can type feedback directly into any assignment activity you create in moodle. Even if the assignment was a traditional paper pencil assessment you can still create an assignment and post the feedback within it for each student.
You could make private wikis in moodle for each student where you can post comments. In addition you can put each student in their own group and make a forum that only group members can see.
Another option is to send a message through moodle with the personalized info. By far the simplest answer is to avoid creating externalll spreadsheets and use the feedback options already built into moodle for assignments and quizzes.
You could also start a thread at moodle.org to see if this is a feature the larger community may want to include in a future release. Lastly surely no institution uses moodle without some sort of on-campus support. Have you talked to your support team on campus?
I've edited my question to clarify that I want an automated solution. Any means of one-by-one feedback completely defeats the purpose of my question.
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110759 | What is the feasibility of entering a PhD program in Computer Engineering without a B.S.or M.S. in CS or Computer Engineering?
I've realized that I wouldn't have the funds to finish a master's in Computer engineering, especially considering the fact that I have a non-STEM degree so l would have to take prerequisite classes so I can catch up on the material. To be noted, I have some CS research but other then that that is the most CS/CEN exposure I have. So I would like to know the feasibility of doing a PhD in Computer Engineering without either a B.S. or M.S. in CS/CEN.
Depends what you studied. From Philosophy, I'd say no way, from Electrical engineering perhaps yes. Also some countries require a MSc for a PhD and some others just a BSc.
It is hard to offer much if any encouragement. I'm curious, though, about why you want to do this. What is it about this particular degree that will get you to your goals that something else for which you are better prepared wouldn't do? There are places that grant a doctorate with only two requirements: pass the prelims and write an acceptable dissertation. But finding an advisor even there would require extraordinary other qualifications of some kind I think. Prelims are usually pretty hard to pass without the coursework.
I do not think you are going to get a PhD from a reputable university without demonstrating general knowledge of your field at least equivalent to a master's degree. There are two common approaches:
Applicants prove they already have that general knowledge, usually by reference to their prior degrees, and the PhD program is research only.
Applicants may have a lesser level of knowledge, but the program includes coursework as well as research.
For the second approach, you still need to convince the university that you are a good prospect to learn the required material in a reasonable time.
Someone with a STEM degree is a much better prospect because they have learned and applied relatively advanced mathematics. Most universities will be able to fill their PhD program with people who already have at least a bachelor's degree in the actual subject, and so meet most of the prerequisites for the graduate courses.
Some universities do not enforce prerequisites on PhD coursework if you have the knowledge and skills. I did take several graduate courses without having taken the prerequisite undergraduate courses, but I had extensive practical experience, as well as having studied academic papers and textbooks.
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100013 | Supervisor wants me to withdraw from program
I have had continuing problems with my supervisor in that
I used data from a publication but didn't cite it properly (this was an honest mistake and during discussions, I plainly said that I received the data from elsewhere) leading him to accuse me of academic dishonesty.
I had some publications in journals not of a good standard and he started accusing me of lying and having fake publications.
I did a lab presentation for which I was not prepared enough and he called me lazy and incompetent.
I got delayed in providing him with some research material and he plainly stated that he does not want to supervise me anymore.
I am planning to talk to the chair of the dept about my issues but are these sufficient grounds for the chair to recommend that I be withdrawn from the department?
I used data from a publication but didn't cite it properly
It is hard to say from that description, but yes, that can qualify as academic dishonesty/misconduct and be grounds for removal from a program. That said, except in the most blatant and worst cases, programs, and universities, generally try and provide some other sort of punishment.
some publications in journals not of a good standard and he started accusing me of lying
I cannot see how publishing your work would be grounds for dismissal under any circumstances. Lying obviously can be related to academic misconduct and be grounds for dismissal.
got delayed in providing him with some research material and he plainly stated that he does not want to supervise me anymore.
Not meeting deadlines can be grounds for dismissal, but generally there is a procedure that most be followed. The fact that he does not want to supervise you anymore is probably the most problematic issue. Your program may require you to have a supervisor, if so, you will need to find a new supervisor.
It sounds like things are going poorly and a talk with the department chair (or head of graduate studies) is appropriate. If this is the first time you are talking to the department chair, then I highly doubt the conclusion of that meeting would be you being kicked out. The meeting might start the process of you being dismissed, but more likely, it will start the process of trying to improve your situation and resolve the issues.
apparently, these journals are what people term "predatory journals". However, I am of the opinion that whatever the status of a journal is, get it published if they are open for publication and accept papers.
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114790 | Can I apply to other postdocs after accepting an unofficial postdoc offer?
I am a PhD student in Applied mathematics. I submitted my PhD thesis (not yet defended) and am applying for postdocs. Until now I have gotten two unofficial postdoc offers: the PIs unofficially informed me about the offers mentioning the salary and duration. I accepted one offer by emailing the PI. However, I have not signed any contract yet. Till I get an official letter can I also apply to other places?
Any help/suggestions will be useful. Thanks in advance.
Do you want to keep applying because you would prefer another position, or because you are worried that the first offer is not official and might not happen? In other words, if you get another position which one would you take? In my experience the informal answer for a postdoc contract can be trusted, it's just that it can take time for the institution to issue the formal contract.
@erwan: thanks. It is the second one: it is not official. I want to go to that position which I accepted by email.
Till I get any official letter can I apply to other places also ?
Depending on the laws in your country, it is likely that you are allowed to do so without breaking any law. However you should be very careful about damaging your reputation in case you end up committing to several positions.
In my experience, in academia an unofficial commitment can be trusted and official paperwork can take some time to be issued. This depends on many things obviously, in particular how much you trust the PI who offers the job.
Since you mention that your main concern is about having a backup plan, I would recommend inquiring with the future PI (or the administration of the future institution) about their administrative procedure. Why not also mention to the PI that you are considering other offers? This could motivate them to speed up the process. And in case you feel that they are stalling, then you have a good reason to look elsewhere.
@NajibIdrissi fair enough, I updated my answer accordingly.
In my experience, in academia an unofficial commitment can be trusted — In my experience (in the US), the intention behind a verbal offer can almost always be trusted, but sometimes things go wrong. Which is why my experienced colleagues phrase their verbal offers very carefully, and why I advise my studetns not to “accept” anything less than a formal written offer.
@Erwan: In order to join the accepted postdoc phd thesis needs to be defended. In our country thesis is sent to two reviewers (one in country and another outside). Till now one review report has come, another is pending. All these procedure can take some time. In that time I want to apply for other places also.
@RIchardWilliams: actually it's fairly common to start a postdoc position even before defending the PhD, provided the defense is planned soon; this depends on the rules and usages in the institution and on the agreement of the PI, of course. Usually administrative constraints are not the main issue, what matters more is to make sure that the time frame is right: can you be available when the contract is expected to start? This can sometimes be negotiated, you can ask the PI.
Until you have accepted a signed offer in writing, you don't have a job and should continue to search for one.
If you've verbally accepted a verbal offer, you are free to continue to be cautious and continue to search, but you might want to prioritize accepting the eventual written offer that matches that verbal offer.
Of course they might send you a written offer that differs significantly from that verbal offer, in which case, feel free to decline it.
How important is your personal honor to you? How important is your academic reputation? I strongly recommend that you consider your acceptance as final, even though not yet legally enforceable, unless you come to an agreement with the PI in question that you want to withdraw "firm" acceptance until such time as the arrangement can be made official.
The proper (ethical) course of action is to communicate with the PI. You don't want to get a reputation that your word can't be trusted. Nor that you are willing to leave others "in the lurch" while seeking personal advancement. The negative consequences can all be on you and your academic reputation.
Of course, the PI can than withdraw the offer altogether if you don't come to agreement, so state your case carefully. But there is nothing unethical about changing your mind and communicating that to the PI. You just need to try to work out a suitable accommodation that is acceptable to both.
However, if you consider yourself bound, the only downside of looking elsewhere is that you may be wasting resources of the places you apply to. It may provide backup to you, but it would also be good to be honest with those new institutions that you are in the final stages of an acceptance. But then, if you get a new offer, you are in a deeper bind, unless the earlier offer wasn't as serious as it seems.
When you get such an offer it is even better to be clear in your intentions. If you are a bit tentative and feel at risk, you can say that the offer seems acceptable, but that it needs to be official before you can really accept it. In such a case you are clearly free to continue your search and even accept another offer. But even if you say that you would accept it if offered formally, you have given your word and shouldn't go back on it. But in this latter case you need assurance that it will be offered formally.
Consider for a moment the opposite situation in which they offer you a position verbally, which you accept, but then they continue their search without notifying you that it isn't really an offer. Suppose they then hire someone else instead.
No idea why this was downvoted. Sometimes it makes me sad how much push-back there is on academia.se to basic ethics. We see it also in answers regarding why cheating is bad.
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30622 | How commonly do researchers spend a long time (>10) years on soft money?
In Academia, a soft money research position is one where uncertain money comes from an external source. The employee or xyr supervisor/boss might need to secure funding every couple of years or so, in order for the position to continue. The way out would be tenure or a government job.
An obvious soft money position is the post-doctoral fellowship, but many post-docs might not find a faculty position directly. For example, if the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) advertises a soft money assistant researcher position, they have a defined path of promotion steps. UCLA defines four steps of assistant researcher (2 years max), three steps of associate researcher (2 years max), and nine steps of researcher (3 years max until step IV, possibly indefinite from step V). If coming in at step I of assistant researcher, it might, theoretically, take 4*2+3*2+4*3=26 years of positions in steps of 2 years (first 14 years) and 3 years (last 12 years), until one might be appointed indefinately, if I'm reading things correctly. Needless to say, not ideal from an employee's point of view.
Although time-limited positions and soft money might not mean exactly the same thing, I suppose they often go hand in hand. That raises the question: how common is it for researchers to spend a long time, say more than 10 years, in soft money positions? It's one thing to "drop out" of Academia when finishing a PhD at 28 years, it's another thing to move from postdoc to assistant researcher to associate researcher, only to finally discover, at age 45, that you're not good enough for tenure, and lack the necessary skills and experience for a teaching position. Oops.
In Science, Technology and Engineering (STEM) fields in the USA and Canada, how common is it for researchers to spend more than 10 years in time-limited soft-money research positions?
My bad. Deleted the comment.
The way out would be tenure or a government job.
There seems to be a misconception here, namely that tenure is necessarily a way out from soft-money positions. Instead, it's possible to get a tenured soft-money position. This means the university provides no salary or other funding (which are supposed to come from grants), but they can't decide to eliminate your affiliation with the university. This is obviously not as secure as being paid by the university, but it still means something. Controversial research can't be held against you, and the department can no longer decide you don't meet their standards. (The latter is actually a genuine risk. Sometimes someone is allowed to hang around in a soft-money position for many years despite not being respected by some of the department, because nobody cares enough to try to get rid of them. Then one year a new chair comes in and decides to clean up the department by imposing higher standards.)
Most soft-money positions do not lead to any sort of tenure, and it's rare to have an "up or out" scenario in which someone must achieve tenure or leave. In particular, the scenario described in the question, in which someone pursues a soft-money position for twenty years and is then denied tenure and forced to leave, is not standard or common.
In particular, I don't think the UCLA positions the question links to are "time-limited" in any harmful way. My reading is that once you reach Researcher V or above, you can sit at that rank indefinitely. The time limits on lower levels ensure that junior researchers will get periodic raises and titles the reflect their increased experience. There is no tenure in this career track at UCLA; there is periodic review, but I'd guess that it's not particularly severe (intended to make sure people remain productive, not to weed out otherwise promising researchers). It's certainly not a career track with anything like the security or stability of a tenured position, but aside from that it looks pretty reasonable.
In Science, Technology and Engineering (STEM) fields in the USA and Canada, how common is it for researchers to spend more than 10 years in time-limited soft-money research positions?
It varies enormously between fields and departments. In medicine, soft-money positions are pretty common and they can be prestigious and relatively secure. In mathematics, very few people support themselves entirely from grants. In computer science, it's in between.
As a rule of thumb, in the U.S. long-term soft-money positions are not a route towards a tenured hard-money position. It can happen, but this is not the typical or expected outcome. Instead, they are a parallel career track. One way to gauge how common this track is at institutions you care about is to look at departmental directories and count titles like "researcher", "research associate", "research scientist", etc.
That's an interesting answer. I should also add that we academics tend to get a bit obsessed with formal tenure. Having a job that is basically secure but you get reviewed every other year before your contract is renewed isn't bad at all in terms of job security when you compare it to most jobs in industry.
A good example of a soft-money with tenure is Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI). Their faculty must both build a tenure case and raise money to self-support and support their engineers and technicians. WHOI is an example of an institution that uses pooled-risk and bridge funding to make things less precarious for their soft-money PIs.
@xLeitix Is it? Would it, for example, be possible to get a mortgage, if you cannot show an indefinite employment contract? (I know that in Germany, for example, it isn't)
@gerrit I don't know the german rules specifically, but I know plenty of people that bought a flat / house while on temporary contracts (in Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Scandinavia). I don't think that none of them needed a mortgage.
@gerrit xLeitix's comment has a double negative so I think he means that they did need mortgages.
In the US, you can get a mortgage by showing an income stream that will meet the mortgage requirements. With a big enough down payment, you can even get a mortgage while on unemployment. Most US jobs have no contract and can be lost at will, so the banks don't tend to care about the length of your future contract (which would be 0 for most people). I was asked for proof of current employment, a copy of my pay stub and a list of all jobs for the last two years. But, the US home loan market is (was) quite a bit easier than the German market.
In the U.S., at least, long-term careers on various forms of "soft money" are a lot more common than it looks from inside the "core" academia of graduate school and tenure-track faculty positions. In reality, the research ecosystem is very complex, with all sorts of niches that aren't necessarily apparent from the outside. My own experience as a grad student was that I didn't even know any of these options existed until a colleague reached out and invited me into the non-traditional side of academia.
I know of many people who have had long and fulfilling careers, all the way to retirement (if they ever really retire), entirely on soft money. Some of them have been with a single university or company for that entire time. More often, they shift around from position to position over time, between university, government, small company, large company, consultancy, foundation, non-profit, standards organization, etc., in patterns dictated by the evolution of those organizations and how the research opportunities are shifting. Unlike with postdocs, this often doesn't require moving, particularly near a high-tech hub: Boston and the Bay Area are obvious examples, but many large cities have research sectors that interact with the local universities in all sorts of non-obvious ways.
The distinction between "soft" and "hard" money is not always as obvious as it appears, either. For example, there are organizations that pool soft-money risk, or have core positions that are effectively hard because they are pooled between many external grants. Even university professors can often have the option to "soften" their positions by buying out of teaching responsibilities.
From my experience, it seems that there are three main classes of soft-money researcher, showing up in all of these environments:
Primary investigators: just like normal faculty PIs, but with a higher cost and no teaching commitments. A PI who can establish a strong research direction and funding stream can hold a position nearly as secure as tenured faculty.
High-skill implementer: these are people who don't necessarily lead their own projects, but who work full-time for PIs in executing projects. Engineers, analysts, programmers, lab technicians, etc. Really good implementers are always in high demand for research, and can have a long and productive research career when teamed with the right sort of PIs.
Exploited labor: these are either implementers who haven't developed/proved their skill, people trying to become PIs who haven't made it yet, or researchers who are stuck in an exploitative environment. This is the type of soft money that seems to be most common in certain parts of traditional academia and can be "eternal postdoc limbo" (or its fake-hard-money cousin: "adjunct faculty limbo"). Unfortunately, it can often be hard for a researcher to tell if they're in this category and whether it's a passing stage or a trap they need to break out of.
Life in these worlds can be very different than in the teaching-centric parts of academia, but an awful lot of interesting things happen in them, and it offers much more variety in career options for a graduating Ph.D. with an inclination to research than I think most people know about.
In central europe, things look much the same as jakebeal explains in his strong answer. In reality, I think only a small minority of academics actually follow the theoretical trajectory of "PhD student - [short time as postdoc] - junior prof - tenured prof" around here. A simple reason for this is that the notion of tenured-track "junior professors" (whatever this position is formally called differs from country to country) is in fact a new-ish invention around here, and actual positions of this type are still very, very rare. My alma mater with more than 100 CS profs. had less than 5 calls for single tenure-track CS positions lifetime.
The career trajectory of an academic in central europe is generally much less standardized. The first step is always doing a PhD, but what comes in the next 10 to 15 years is different from candidate to candidate. Common career stations seem to include: (1) traditional postdoc positions, (2) working as a senior postdoc / soft-money PI (3) spending a few years in related industry, (4) founding your own startup (and, often, running it into the ground :) ), (5) working as a research scientist in a government or industry lab, or (6) going abroad (to the US or asia) for any of the options 1-5.
Some will then, after spending 10+ years in a combination of the options above, directly re-enter the regular university system as a tenured (full) professor. The majority, of course, will at some point before that drop out of academia entirely (e.g, their startup succeeds, they find work in industry more fulfilling and better paid, or they simply decide that their research isn't good enough to have a real shot at professorship).
From the sample of my colleagues (in Germany, math), I have no people following (3) and (4) but a substantial number of people following (7) tenure-tack or non-tenure-track junior prof.
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58512 | How can academia defend itself against journal website hijackings?
This is fresh off the press:*
How to hijack a journal. J. Bohannon. Science 350 no. 6263, p. 903. 20 November 2015.
I just saw it and I find it intensely worrying. In short, it appears that scam attacks on legitimate journals are now going beyond fake websites of the form 'sciencernag.com', to actually taking control of the internet domain name of journals.
The symptoms of such an attack might look something like this: you want to submit a publication to this hot new open access Journal of Scientific Results your collaborator just told you about. You look for the journal name on Google and you click on the top result. It looks essentially fine: correct website feel, new papers on the front page, etc. Out of curiosity, you might wander over to Thomson Reuters to see what they say about JSR, and maybe even notice that the website listed is the one you just went to. So you go over and you submit your paper, and when they ask you for article processing charges you might go ahead and pay them.
However, the journal website is in fact in control of a group of scammers, through a combination of means apparently to do mostly with the jittery ways in which the administration of web domains takes place. (The true JSR might be at a new website, trying to draw traffic there but powerless to stop the new owners of the domain.)
This sort of attack seems pretty much impossible to avoid as a reader or author caught unawares. (This is unlike, say, falling in the hands of a predatory journal, where much can be done by consulting Jeffrey Beall's list of potential predatory journals and publishers.) Bohannon's piece suggests that to verify the authenticity of a journal website against such an attack, a cautious visitor might try the following.
Dadkhah suggested two ways to spot a hijacking. First, check the domain registration data online by performing a WHOIS query. (It's not an acronym, but rather a computer protocol to look up “who is” behind a particular domain.) If the registration date is recent but the journal has been around for years, that's the first clue. Also suspicious is if the domain's country of registration is different from the journal's publisher, or if the publisher's name and contact information are kept anonymous by private domain registrars.
This seems incredibly onerous to me. It might be justified if one is about to fork over manuscripts or money to a smaller journal, but it's definitely much more sleuthing than I'd find reasonable for just casual browsing. However, it's not clear to me that there are any surefire alternatives to this (and even then, WHOIS queries can only run up suspicions, but they might miss e.g. what happened to Acta Physico-Chimica Sinica). Bohannon has provided a list of hijacked journal websites as supplemental data to the piece, but this is not necessarily complete and it would need someone curating it with a dedication to match Beall's to keep it updated.
I'm asking this mostly to raise awareness, but I do have a genuine question. Are there methods and institutions within academia that could be used to prevent or hinder these sorts of attacks? This sort of thing is probably not new in business, where it is very often sink or swim for companies (so there is more awareness that you need to protect your brand against things like this) but there is also more scope for companies to reinvent themselves (whereas it is very hard for an academic journal to change its name or website and expect their entire community to be aware of the change, unless it makes a big splash like the recent shift in Lingua did).
So academia has its own particular weaknesses to this sort of thing, but we also have a bigger set of structures and institutions that can work to prevent things like attacks on reputation from working. (In fact, it is the fact that one of these mechanisms - the Thomson Reuters listings - has failed that makes this such a serious thing, even if the actual scope is probably still relatively small.) What broader tools could we as a community implement to try and hinder this sort of stuff, and how would those mechanisms look?
* So hot off the press, in fact, that it was published in the future as of this posting.
It seems to me that this is a problem for any business/institution/organization with a website - if so, I'd wager the same techniques they use (good organization security, preventative measures, etc.) apply.
Those are techniques for individual businesses, though. On a broader scale, the business community simply lets careless organizations die. Taking that viewpoint means that even a small, new, creative journal gets judged by academia not by its academic proposals but by how well it navigates the thornier sides of the internet, with no backup from the community. I'm not sure I'd like that sort of world.
Have you seen the Target/Home Depot/OPM breach? It's a problem that affects organizations of all sizes - from your mom-and-pop DIY-website to major corporate entities to governments. I don't much like it either, but it's a heckuva lot harder to secure something than it is to break it - ask any 3-year-old who breaks a toy and then wants to put it back together :) I agree though - it's a scary world.
I might add - if your question is "how can the broader academic community protect the integrity of specific journals", that may be slightly more feasible/pointed. But protecting all journals, new and old, big and small? It's going to be thorny at best. Grouping them together under a larger org like the IEEE or ACM helps, but it's not a panacea.
I did indeed see them, but these are attacks of a different kind - not usually an actual electronic hack, but mostly a social engineering scam much more akin to the ones that get you to hand over money and papers to a phantom conference that never happens. These are targeted against academics and they work (or they work particularly well) because of the peculiarities of the field. And similarly to predatory publishers, where we can and need to create mechanisms to limit the damage, I feel that we also need to limit the ways in which how we run business helps these groups.
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this is a boat-programming question about domain-name security and phishing.
There is nothing special about a publisher's domain being hijacked compared to, say, any other online retailer. Indeed, it's probably far less lucrative to do, because only a very small proportion of visitors to the site are there to spend money, as opposed to reading articles (which is unlikely to work on a scam site, thus exposing it rapidly). I don't see that there's anything unique to academia about this, so it may be off-topic.
I disagree with this closure for the reasons I've already stated, but I guess burying our heads in the sand and ignoring the problem is also a workable solution.
What broader tools could we as a community implement to try and hinder this sort of stuff, and how would those mechanisms look?
In the long term, if we reduced and eventually eliminated our dependence on commercial publishers, and worked towards a future where all scientific research was free to everyone everywhere, then we would eliminate any possible financial incentive for scammers to hijack the process.
I'm not sure I agree. The incentive is there as long as any money changes hands (including advertising and APCs), and it doesn't go away even if the articles are free to read or even to reuse. I was looking for slightly more realistic, mid-term solutions, though.
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65934 | Do Nature journals wrongly claim copyright in their published pdfs?
I just noticed this and I'm slightly confused by a small detail.
The Nature Publishing Group states in its Publishing Licences page that the copyright on articles remains with the author:
NPG does not require authors of original (primary) research papers to assign copyright of their published contributions. Authors grant NPG an exclusive licence to publish, in return for which they can reuse their papers in their future printed work without first requiring permission from the publisher of the journal.
Moreover, this is supported by the Licence to Publish agreement, which explicitly states that
[...] the Authors grant to NPG [...], subject to clause 2 below, the
exclusive licence (a) to publish, reproduce, distribute, display and store the Contribution in all forms [...].
and
Ownership of copyright remains with the Authors, and provided that, when reproducing the Contribution or extracts from it, the Authors acknowledge first and reference publication in the Journal, the Authors retain the following nonexclusive rights: [...].
However, the published articles have a clear Macmillan copyright marker. Taking this paper as an example:
Is NPG wrongly asserting copyright to the entire article? It is my understanding that they could still be claiming copyright over the copy-editing and formatting, but since they have explicitly opted for a licence to publish instead of a copyright transfer, it seems to me that they should be crediting the authors with the copyright, e.g. along the lines of
© 2015 Qian Wang, Edward T. F. Rogers, Behrad Gholipour, Chih-Ming Wang, Guanghui Yuan, Jinghua Teng and Nikolay I. Zheludev. All rights reserved.
for the above-quoted example, with whatever legalese they felt necessary to indicate that they own the exclusive publishing licence.
Is there some interesting detail about copyrights that I'm missing here? Or is this simply a fudge?
I understand that this is not a big question and that it is on the edges of this site's purview, but I still think it is interesting. If the community decides that this is too much on the legal-question-answerable-only-by-a-lawyer, would migration to Law Stack Exchange be appropriate?
I read that as only asserting copyright over the other content on the page (the site header and footer, links to other articles, etc). For the paper itself there is a "rights and permissions" button that seems to explain the copyright status of the paper more clearly.
Hmmm, you mean "Copyright © 2015, Rights Managed by Nature Publishing Group" here? That is pretty ambiguous, I would say. The copyright mark on the website footer could be interpreted either way (compare with the much more detailed markings on the SE network), but the example I give is from the pdf, which does seem to assert copyright over the entire work.
@NateEldredge I reckon they're claiming copyright over the whole page. Not the article as such but the presentation of it. Consider that many publishers won't allow you to self-archive the post-print without paying for full open access.
I think this is a question where all we can say we are not lawyers, and few of us has detailed knowledge of (international) copyright law that one seriously can argue. If you have a practical problem eg uploading the paper to an archive or reproducing others figures, the most fruitful would be first asking the publisher about the specific issue and what they mean by these copyrights.
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61429 | What solutions exist to store data in text files and future-proof against tampering?
A recent question in Information and Security Stack Exchange,
How to know whether a textfile has been edited or tampered with
raises a very good point: if one wants to archive experimental data in an open, text-based format, in the long term, it is desirable to have tools to prevent the tampering of the files, or at least detect the tampering if and when it happens.
The answers at infosec are good, but they feel somewhat abstract and hard to implement for a busy PI whose hands are already full trying to run a research lab. It may be, on the other hand, that solutions already exist that fulfil at least some of the requirements, or that they will appear not too long in the future; it's certainly reasonable to suspect that some form of tamper-resistant data or lab-book signature scheme is already in use at least in commercial research organizations.
This question is relatively hard to pose correctly, as there is an inherent vagueness in the requirements, and it is probably better to keep it general. The main problem is, given a set of text-based data files, how to signatures, or similar devices, that can be used in the future to provide guarantees that the data has not been tampered with. Are there any specific solutions that will do this in an accessible way?
Do you want to track changes (see: version control) OR do you want to ensure that a file is unaltered (e.g. due to malicious users, connection failures; see: md5 checksum)?
Also, if you haven't taken it into consideration for the storage, you'll want to look at ways to avoid/detect/correct for data rot.
I don't have anything particular in mind - I mostly think it's an appropriate time to have a parallel thread here to the InfoSec one, focused more on usable solutions than abstract signature schemes. I think both tamper-detection and change tracking solutions would be interesting in this context.
@E.P. What is your question here that is about academia? This seems to me to still belong on infosec.
@jakebeal I suspect there is or will develop a market of tools geared directly at academics; in any case, as I said, academics tend to need plug-and-play solutions rather than abstract schemes that one could potentially implement oneself. In any case cf. this or this questions.
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is a question about information security, no part of which is specific to academia.
@PiotrMigdal, MD5 has been broken. Not enough to be able to doctor text files, but anyway. Use something else. You'd need a digital signature, like PGP or GPG offer.
Wow, you guys really are harsh.
In addition to good recommendations on the InfoSec SE site, some of which are not that difficult to implement (for example, digital signing), I would suggest another rather straightforward solution (unless your data is extremely large or extremely sensitive): simply use one of Git repositories, such as GitHub or GitLab, or research data repositories, such as Zenodo or figshare.
Git and Git-based services now support large files, plus you will have an added benefit of versioning for data files that you can match with your research workflows to enable reproducibility.
Check my related answer on some arguments for potential preference for Zenodo vs. figshare.
A private Github repository (they are in general very inexpensive) is my method of choice. They 1. Can be funded by your department with most likely no objections to the cost, 2. Allow for versioning of files with timestamps and version comparisons, 3. Offer collaboration features for your colleagues and have access controls if need be, 4. Are hosted so you don't have to worry about backing up data, 5. Are private to only the collaborators and can be made public if you feel like it. However, Github and similar services are don't work well with non-text data (no file diffs can be done).
@ChrisCirefice: Private repositories is what I implied in my answer (and, BTW, research data repository services offer them as well). As for diffs for non-text (binary) data files via Git services, your statement is not exactly true: 1) you can use Git attributes (see "Diffing Binary Files" on this page); 2) for image files, there are various approaches, such as GitHub's built-in one or this one.
The OP explicitly asks about text files, so Github should be good. Plus: I wouldn't trust any file format other than TXT and CSV to be legible in the long run. File formats change. Worst of all are proprietary file formats where you may not even have the necessary license in five years. Bottom line: store everything possible as TXT or CSV.
Unfortunately, using GitHub isn't really a long-lasting solution. It only lasts as long as Github's servers do, and depending on the success of a corporation isn't exactly future-proof.
@RogerFan: Your point is valid (in the context of long-term preservation). However, there are, at least, three approaches that alleviate the problem: 1) instead of hosted cloud versions, use of on-premise versions, i.e. GitHub Enterprise or GitLab EE; 2) deploying archiving solutions to several solid cloud infrastructures, i.e. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Compute Engine, and keep data in sync (chances of all three companies disappear are pretty slim); 3) use Zenodo, which is built around CERN infrastructure and backed by EU, which guarantees the long-term data preservation.
A common tools for checking data integrity is to use MD5 checksum. If you have unix-based system, you can do it form command line:
$ md5 some_file.csv
or (md5sum, depending on your system).
It gives some hexadecimal number (like dc50353b4a1e5d99cb49b65e33b18916) which will (almost certainly) change with any changes to the file.
The only problem with this is that you need to maintain a reliable and trustworthy way of disseminating the correct hash to end users. In this short term this is pretty easy, but if you want to archive data for potentially years or decades it can be difficult.
@RogerFan Short term: just put md5 on your website. Long term: same, but in archive in which you are storing your data (and which archive is good is another question).
@PiotrMigdal: Storing md5 hashes where you store data files is akin storing keys in the open in the vicinity of locks they protect. Bad people can simply tamper data files and then regenerate corresponding hashes and replace the original ones with them, all in the same archive. Unless you track filesystem changes, you will have no idea that the data files have been tampered.
@AleksandrBlekh No, it is not the best analogy. Unlike keys, you want to have as much people having a copy of it (which, in short, is the only way to ensure it is uncorrupt). And if you put your md5 hash in article (publication) content, or some text, it is much more likely to be cross-archived that a (potentially big) file. What is ironic, git does not protect against malicious use (one force-push and you are done).
@PiotrMigdal: I agree - it is not the best analogy. However, I was just trying to make a point, which, by the way, assumed a centralized archival solution (perhaps, I misunderstood you, as I thought that was your assumption). Anyway, it seems to me that the solution you're talking about is distributed and, thus, IMHO might be implemented, using blockchain technology. As for potential malicious use of git via force-push, I don't understand how it could be malicious, if all repository operations are logged.
something... something... BLOCKCHAIN?
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44704 | Does Hill University (USA) have legitimate accreditation?
I need to know if Hill University is accredited. Especially in the field of MBA degrees.
Why do you say "Hill University (USA)"? I don't see anything on their site that suggests any particular connection to the United States.
It's a diploma mill. Don't waste your time or your money.
The Hill University's, website dead as of Sept 2015*, accreditation page did not make it clear which of their degrees were accredited, instead the two accrediting bodies (IOEAB and OKOLA) are listed at this random website as "fake degree accreditation agencies". They are also the accrediting agencies used by Speedy Degrees which would suggest to me that accreditation by those bodies is more or less meaningless.
Further, the web domain is .com and not .edu which is highly atypical for US universities. The requirements for .edu domain require a US location and "proper" accreditation. While not using a .edu domain could be related to the online nature of the university, it is also a warning sign that the accreditation might be questionable.
* Recent reports by NYTimes and UIUC list this university as a fake.
Their webpages also use stock images, another strong indicator of an unaccredited degree mill. Google Search-by-Image is one of the easier ways to detect imposter institutions.
In fact, the entire text of that page is clearly plagiarized from http://www.edinburgheducation.net/accreditation.html ... which may itself be an imposter.
It might be the other way round, since the EE webpage mentikns Hill as if they did a faulty search-and-replace http://www.edinburgheducation.net/about.html
Note: .edu now requires "proper" accreditation, but people who had .edu domains before the early 2000s were grandfathered in; .edu doesn't necessarily guarantee proper accreditation.
For what it's worth, it is possible for an online-only university which has a recognized US accreditation to get a .edu domain. Example. So the fact that Hill University doesn't have one is more likely related to lack of accreditation than its business model.
A list of accrediting organizations for US universities is available from Wikipedia. Note that in general individual degree programs are not accredited; only the universities as a whole are.
@FerasAlSoufi I suggest doing your own web searches on both the individual behind the first web site you list, and the organizations behind the other three, before deciding.
Please modify the answer to account for what Nate has said.
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71161 | Lack of undergraduate research experience and impact on PhD applications
I am currently a second year (final semester) undergraduate enrolled in Nagoya University's G30 program. After I graduate, I intend pursue a PhD in the chemical sciences, and I am looking to apply to universities in the United States and the UK. So far, I have been doing well academically--I'm at the top of my class and have cumulative GPA of 4.08/4.3.
Unfortunately, till date I haven't been able to secure any research experience whatsoever in my university, and not for lack of trying. I have approached research groups in my departments whose work I found interesting, but have been turned down by all of them. The rules prevent them from taking on undergraduates students who are not in their 4th year, and they have stuck by them adamantly.
I do get to work on a research project in my fourth year as part of my graduation requirement, however, I do find it disheartening that I can't start early.
Regardless, I am still approaching people, looking for a break and also looking into other avenues outside of university.
However, what if nothing works out--would one year of research experience be sufficient? Personally, I don't think it is enough to prepare me well for graduate school. Moreover, I am concerned about how an admissions committee will view this lack of of research experience?
Additionally, in the UK, most universities that I am interested in encourage applicants to get in touch with faculty/potential advisors before the make a formal application. By my estimate, I ought to be doing this sometime during my third (early 6th semester) year, and thus would have had probably little to no experience conducting research in a laboratory. How can I overcome this potential handicap, and get them to take me seriously?
Keep going at it!
If local colleagues only take students from 4th year onwards, there must be good reasons - like fairness, openness, transparency, risk assessment... Look forward to your 4th year and beyond :)
Also, how typical is your 'lack of experience'? If all students of your 'class' share this, you will not stand out negatively, and PhD recruiters will expect you by default to have limited experience. Then of course if you manage to acquire relevant experience, that will make you stand out from the crowd.
Your question 'what if not...?' seems to go far beyond your original point and your main ambition.
Take it as a game and keep the flame alive. Keep looking for opportunities, and you are bound to find one that will fit your circumstances.
Another way to go at it could be to approach higher education institutions where you would be interested in applying, and ask them what their expectations are in terms of lab work experience.
This way you will have a clear vision of the standard you have to meet to have a good chance of being offered a place, and potentially a scholarship.
You will not have to second-guess what they want any more, and you can focus on achieving what they look for, and more.
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100333 | My mum was recently diagnosed with cancer. Should I tell my supervisor?
Yesterday, my mum was recently diagnosed with cancer. However, we have yet to know what stage is her cancer and whether the cancer can still be removed from her body or it has metastasized to other parts of organs. This is a major health concern and it will of course affect my health and mental being for the next several years.
I am a PhD student and I thankfully successfully submitted my thesis a few months ago. So far, I have yet to receive the news regarding my viva. Given the history of my university and accounts from other students' experiences, my department is very tardy in processing viva examinations. It can take up to six months for students to finally undergo the viva and then a few months for correction afterwards. Now I have to worry and be stressful for two things: my mum's health condition and my viva.
I want to e-mail my supervisor about the possibility of speeding up my viva process. I have been well prepared for my viva for a month. I have re-read my thesis multiple times and re-read the journals that I cited. I really hope that my department can speed up my viva so I can move on with my life (getting a good job, taking care of my mum, etc.). Delaying my viva will certainly damage my well-being. However, I don't know whether emailing my supervisor will undermine my professionalism (the art of separating personal and work).
I am in my 20s with no experience of experiencing sudden loss of my loved ones and this news will definitely affect me in the immediate future. And I don't write this post to look for sympathy or anything. This news will certainly make me appreciate life and moments that we have now.
Should I e-mail my supervisor to state my current condition and hopefully she could do something regarding my PhD limbo?
EDIT: I do have a very good relationship with my supervisor. However, I don't want to come across as someone who tries to milk this tragedy for my own gain. Therefore, I am juggling the decision whether it will be fine or not to tell my supervisor and at the same time to request viva speed up.
By 'right', do you mean 'by law' or 'by social norms'?
If you don't tell, good chances your advisor will notice that something is going on. Personally, I would like to know, not only because it will have impact on the production, but because I care about my students. I would do everything on my power to help. I don't believe I'm rare in this aspect :)
The question in the title (does supervisor have a "right" to know) is not really the same as the question in the body (would telling my supervisor be helpful).
@ff524 I submitted a revised title.
I had a lot of terrible things happen last month, like my Grandmother dying after being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, my coworker committing suicide, and my cat dying. I told my Principle Investigator that I've had a lot of crazy stuff going on, and she was so kind and compassionate.
If you are ib good relation your supervisor will (try) to help. Why not to tell him her that you right want to speed up the process? This is not to ask for marks. It is a complete different story. It can be the case of foreigner with any type of urge and limbo situation (as what country next ? To give an idea. To which school shall I put my son for the next year. ...and so on). All the best.
Many countries have rules in place that allow employees to take paid or unpaid leave to care for an ill relative. No shame or unprofessionalism should result from making a request to accommodate a need to deal with a loved one's illness.
If you have a good relationship with your advisor, then your advisor should understand.
(That said, the advisor may or may not have much control over the viva, depending on who is responsible for scheduling and organizing it, and who else must attend. But you won't lose anything by asking.)
Regardless of whether there's a legal requirement to grant leave, I'm confident that leave will be granted if requested.
What happened/might happen should not affect you severely for several years. If it does affect your mental well-being for more than a few months, to a degree where you are not able to work most of the time, you can and should get professional help, which might even be provided at your university.
Usually, there will be times where you feel fine, and times where you might want to stay in bed all day - therefore it would generally be good that your supervisor knows what is going on.
If it is possible to speed up your process of defending your PhD will depend on local regulations. In your case, it might be best to talk with your supervisor (not just email him/her) to inform him/her about your and your mom's situation, and to see together if there are ways that your supervisor can support you (e.g. by speeding up the final steps required for your PhD). That is, if you have a relatively good relationship with your supervisor.
good, answer, what if students are at the beginning of Ph.D., first year. what would you suggest them then?
@SSimon The same, why should it differ? It might be even less of a problem, because it could be possible to work less for a while, or work from home (depending on the research), to spend more time with one's relatives.
Really? WOW unexpected, since usually there is contract in olace
@SSimon How could a contract change anything?
Personally, I would tell them - just so they know.
They could ask you what you would like to do : earlier date or later date and then see what is possible.
They won't tell anyone else so it won't go public so that is not a worry.
However, Best wishes to you and Mum.
Do not hide behind your problems
If your mum's health directly affects your ability to work and your supervisor notices or will soon notice, explain yourself. Do not make up any excuses, because there is nothing to be sorry for. Just...
State the facts
Tell them what happened and that it is currently influencing you as you are understandably worried. Do not, again, use this to "hide behind", just state it as a fact and mention that you are trying to do your best.
Take the help you are offered
At that point, as you stated you have a good relationship with your supervisor, they might already offer you help or tips. They are a human being, they have been going through one or the other hard situation in their life as well. They are your supervisor, they have an interest in you succeeding.
Ask for help
Some people might be hesitant to offer help. Maybe they just don't know what you need, maybe they do not want to feel that they do not believe in your ability to handle your own problems. Maybe they are just overwhelmed with their own life. If you need specific help from a specific person, feel free to ask. Asking does not hurt. Don't request things (yet), but ask tentatively. Ask for what you can do first, before asking for what they can do for you. Ask "Is there anything I can do to speed up my viva, so I can focus on being there for my mum?"
Request what you are entitled to
If things get worse, you might be entitled to time off to care for a sick relative, for example. Not everybody around you will know that or think of it, so request these benefits when you need them instead of waiting until you are offered them.
But most importantly:
Stay calm
Maybe a long, hard journey is ahead of you. Maybe things turn out better than expected. For now, do not create worst-case scenarios until your mum has a full diagnosis. Also, do not paint worst-case scenarios for others. This might be influencing for years, or it might be a bad scare, but could be over in much less time. (I have seen both happen amongst family friends and acquaintances. Interestingly, the people who were scared most after the initial diagnosis fought the cancer fast and completely in less than 18 months. Some are calmly living with it for years now. I am not trying to play down your worries, but keep an open mind for the good scenarios. That will enable you to be much stronger for yourself and your mum.)
Stay calm.
Your mother has been diagnosed with cancer and that is terrible news. But, I truly encourage you to remain optimistic.
Remain optimistic.
Cancer treatments have advanced significantly and the outlook upon diagnoisis is generally good. (You haven't provided details on the specific type of cancer, so I won't speculate further.)
(In)Action.
At this stage, I personally don't recommend taking any action with regards to academia. Look after yourself; wait for a full diagnosis. Try walking, exercise, or even working, anything that helps you get through the wait.
Viva. You've submitted your thesis. Congratulations! The hard work is already done. The viva process varies country-to-country, so it is difficult to provide specific details. But, the time-frame probably cannot be shortened by much, because time is required to evaluate your thesis (which is probably a long document). Your supervisor might be able to help speed-up the process, but the evaluation procedure is probably conducted externally, so it is unclear what speed-up can be achieved.
Once you and your mum have received her full diagnosis, you'll be able to think more clearly about the future. Perhaps ask another question then. For the moment, stay calm, remain optimistic, and look after yourself.
(Possibly) Going beyond the scope of the question, one can ask: When should I tell my supervisor about a personal issue? I personally recommend telling a supervisor when that issue has the potential to negatively impact your work over a prolonged period.
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28890 | Do any scientific publishers have a stated commitment to authors regarding copyright infringement?
Within the debate of whether science should move to an Open Access / CC-license scheme, or remain with a more traditional scheme where the authors transfer copyright to the publisher, one argument that gets made relatively often is that the latter provides a better defence against copyright breaches. I would like to know how much this argument actually works in favour of the author.
One good example of this argument is made in the position paper Publishers seek copyright transfers (or transfers or licenses of exclusive rights) to ensure proper administration & enforcement of author rights, by the STM Association, which states among other points that
In general, publishers in the field of science, technology and medicine (STM) prefer assignments over licences, mainly because:
authors are rarely in a position to defend themselves against infringers, plagiarists, pirates and free-riders, partly due to financial considerations; [...]
Thus, an assignment enables the publisher: [...]
to react more rapidly to copyright infringements, unauthorised derivatives and plagiarism;
This position is endorsed, for example, by the IOP, in their Introduction to Copyright leaflet.
However, this argument only works in as much as the interests of the publisher and the author are aligned, which is not necessarily the case.
For one, it may be in the publisher's interest to stop copyright violations agreed to, or initiated, by the author, as in the Elsevier takedown notices to academia.edu last december. (Note, though, that I am not claiming these are wrong or that it is right for authors to violate agreements they have signed.)
On the other hand, if a copyright violation occurs and the author objects to it, it may or may not be a good business case for the publisher to take legal action against it, and the sort of outcomes that will be acceptable to the publisher may not be in line with what the author needs.
Dealing with bad-faith copyright violations is definitely a problem and Open Access is not ideally equipped to deal with them. (That is: if someone brazenly republishes in violation of a CC license (i.e. lack of attribution, unendorsed+unlabelled modifications, commercial use of a CC-BY-NC article, or such), how can the author sue?) However, it's not clear to me that the alternative does work in the interest of the author.
So, my question is: do any scientific publishers have stated policies about their actions in the case of copyright violations, or stated commitments to authors regarding this? It would seem a fair counterpart of the publishing contract, where the author hands over the rights of the text in return for a commitment to disseminate and defend it, but this is not usually how the scientific publishing business works in my experience.
Failing that, I would be interested in evidence, either public, statistical or anecdotal, about publishers' behaviour in such cases, though I know these are not easy to come by.
This is not really germane to your question, but in the case you mention in your third-to-last paragraph, it seemed that the issue was actually that the republication did not violate the CC license (but maybe the author wasn't aware that was the case, and if she had thought more carefully, would rather have published under a license that did not allow such republication).
@Nate I know that case is complicated, but the licence violations I do think may have happened are improper attribution (i.e. lack of citation and licencing status in a publicly-available TOC) and unendorsed modifications. In any case, and regardless of whether they happened in that case, the question stands: if such licence violations do happen, what recourse do authors have to defend their IP and moral rights? And, conversely, (my question here,) does switching to traditional publishing offer a guarantee against that?
@E.P. but that case is not complicated--it is simply a case of authors not understanding the terms of the license. It is explicitly stated in plain language--not complex legalese--that commercial derivatives can be made. And this is to the advantage of the author because it means that if you're making, say, a reasonably priced textbook you can put it in there without chasing down the author for permission (it was already granted in CC-BY), thus the author gets more exposure. If it bothers the author that it also licenses it for an unreasonably priced text, CC-BY is not for them, period.
@msouth I'm taking the reference out because it just clouds this issue. I agree that the authors' reaction was overblown and they should have read and understood the license in the first place. Have you actually looked at the book, though? There is no attribution of the journals where most (all?) of the contained articles appeared. There are also editorial changes w.r.t. the author-sanctioned versions, as I understand it, which are not clearly labeled as such.
I cannot properly answer your question, but: I don't really see a difference between normal copyright and CC regarding bad-faith copyright infringement and plagiarism. CC-license do comply to copyright laws, they just let you decide which rights you want to share with users. The point thus is: is the author backed by an institution (like the publisher or the university?) That can happen or not, and does not depend on the license of the article itself.
Moreover, in the specific case of self-archiving you often have a timestamp of the moment of upload, and that is useful for fighting copyright infringement.
@Aubrey the situation for CC papers is complicated but it is not the question I'm asking here. Timestamps are great if you go to court but doing so is expensive and time-consuming. Publishers claim that their institutional clout can make that easier; the question is whether it does in practice and how formally committed they are to that defense.
Nicely formulated and interesting question (+1). While I don't have any direct experience to back up my point of view, I very much doubt that publishers have time, resources and, most importantly, intent to react on and comprehensively analyze every potential copyright violation globally across all their corresponding outlets. While @CapeCode's answer is nice (+1), I'm pretty sure that it is more of an exclusion from the typical behavior of publishers. (to be continued)
(cont'd) Stated simply, using the OP's own words, publishers and authors IMHO do not have their interests aligned due to their practically monopolistic influence on authors through establishing their dependence via branding, rankings and other questionable mechanisms. Just my two cents.
Since you also ask for anecdotal evidence, I have a first hand experience with a commercial publisher (Wolters Kluwer) that reacted quickly and professionally to my message reporting prohibited commercial use of my work. This particular journal gives free access to articles after a one year embargo.
An internet magazine based in India copied verbatim large parts of the introduction and abstract of one of my papers with some words in between to try to make it look like an original journalistic report. The 'article' was available for a fee.
Since I formally transferred my rights to the publisher in the author agreement, I really only reported the issue out of interest for the outcome. They took contact with the 'company' that subsequently retracted the content from their website.
I suspect established publishers like Wolters Kluwer have significantly more legal firepower than a one-person operation run from an internet cafe in Hyderabad.
Out of curiosity, how well was your original paper referenced in this 'report'?
@E.P. there was no mention of my paper in the freely-available 'preview' in which I found the lifted paragraphs. I obviously did not purchase the full article (I doubt that there was even one).
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1357 | What are good practices for sharing protocols online
We're beginning a fairly large effort to share the vast number of protocols accumulated in our lab and pushing them all to the cloud. Naturally, you don't want the knowledge of older graduate students lost when they graduate.
We have had experience with putting all of this information into OpenWetWare but there is a small but non-trivial learning curve with the wiki-format. Another possibility would be to create living documents with google docs and organize the links in a wiki format. Finally, there is always the dropbox method of having a bunch of files in folders. I was curious about good methods to create a repository of protocols.
By protocol, do you mean a lab methodology, or the object you study (as in network protocol)?
Lab method/technique.
Do you wanna make such protocols kind of "living documents", so as to enable peers to improve them along the time?!
Thanks to Stack Exchange, I've recently started to become familiar with Markdown and in particular its variants, including MultiMarkdown and Pandoc. These might be the ideal alternative, as they're very easy to master—after all, it's what powers sites like this one!—and yet powerful enough that it can handle most of your needs.
Individual users can write their protocols in a simple, easy-to-read text format, and then output that to HTML, PDF, Word files, or whatever. Then all you need is a master page to catalog everything, and a web site manager who's skilled enough with a command prompt to handle the conversions using one of those tools. The format's flexible enough to handle hyperlinks as well as graphics with a minimum of fuss.
The other advantage of having a text-based system is that it makes version control very easy as well.
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1358 | Good practices with lab wikis?
OpenWetWare and Google Sites have been effective strategies in curating lab knowledge. I was curious about what are effective ways to create an effective wiki. Factors include:
Ease of use and low learning curve
Speed of sharing and diversity of shared files
Privacy and protection from sabotage
Organizational flow
Legally sharing papers/manuscripts
to protect from sabatoge, make sure that a login is required.
In addition to @David's suggestion, also only accept connection from on campus IPs (you can usually VPN if you are at home). But for security issues such as this, best thing to do is to consult your local IT department to tailor something to your needs.
In one of the labs (about a dozen people) I work with, we use a MediaWiki install given to use by the university that requires log-in to view everything but the front page or to edit. Although the learning curve is not steep (most people already know how to use Wikipedia) it has been hard to convince the undergraduate lab members to use the wiki. It mostly serves as a place for:
short project summaries (since the lab has many different projects)
notes/minutes from lab meetings, a place to store slides and presentations, and
link repository (for instance I maintain a big collection of links to relevant StackExchange questions).
With a former supervisor, we used to have a private MediaWiki install that was used by a our small group (3 or 4 people). Since we worked on theory/math it contained:
short tutorials on how to do automated calculations as experiments for testing potential theorems (before trying to prove them), and
collection of special cases that we had calculated by hand.
It was relatively well maintained by the prof, and a pretty good guide for understanding some of the work behind his earlier papers.
I also keep a personal private TiddlyWiki, there I keep:
notes from papers I've read (although I am slowly moving this over to Mendeley)
collections of relevant links from the internet
a more structured index of the folders and files on my harddrive (through local links) that is easier to navigate and search than my file system directly.
partial documentation of code and notes on partial results of simulations
administrative stuff like members of mailing lists, and groups I organize.
For me, the most useful was the private Wiki, the second most useful was the small group wiki because of the good maintenance by my prof, and least useful is the large lab wiki.
A wiki is a platform, which you can use in whatever way you see fit. Personally, I've used them academically for the following purposes:
Lab notebook
I was running cognitive psychology experiments on subjects. I would make a top-level page that contained links to a separate page for all of my research projects. On each research project page, I had links to separate pages for each of the following:
Study protocols (behavioral testing, brain scanning, data cleaning, data analysis) - separate pages for each
Change log to the paradigm itself
Troubleshooting notes... as I encountered problems, write them down here
Subjects (one page per subject
Each subject page contained notes on each session, results, general info ("subject performed poorly today, possibly due to stress from midterms"), as well as the results of their data analysis.
Publication repository
This wiki was basically a place for me to store papers. Many wikis allow embedding of pdfs, and I would store pages as follows. The top-level page segmented topics. Each topic page contained links to pages about individual papers, as well as links to ongoing summaries of my reading. This was where I would write down my thoughts and conclusions after reading papers, and made it easier for me to combine my thoughts on multiple papers... after reading a new article, I would review what I had written there and try to somehow incorporate the new article in my ideas (if relevant, more often than not it wasn't).
These are just two ideas, and they were just used by me, not my whole lab. I'm sure you can think of more (managing lab meetings, managing collaborations, managing lab-wide protocols, etc).
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118955 | What can be done to possibly avoid corrupt practices in the blind peer review process?
During my short career as a researcher I observed a few seemingly unethical behaviors by Editors and Associate Editors:
being asked to include a particular new author in order to be accepted
being asked to cite articles with no apparent link with my article
being told by the conference TCP (one of the top conference) to reject all the articles I review
In one unique case, I reviewed an article and recommended strong rejection, it was subsequently accepted without revision. Reviewing the authors profile and handling editor, I found one of the author is an Associate Editor for another journal. It appears that both help each to publish articles in their journals.
All the above experiences were observed in well-reputed journals and conferences. Given all this, how what can I do to "clean this mess" in academic the journal/conference review process?
How do you deduce that I want opinion or discussion? I want to hear the answers from other members.
By the way instead of closing you can make edits in my question.
@Monika agreed! in addition of over controlling students. I know few professors from developed countries who offer money from project funds to students from country like india, pakistan, bangladesh etc. to include their name in article. Paying 200-300USD from project and get thousand of dollars incentives is a good business.
To prevent this question from being closed as "being a rant," you might want to edit the title of the post to something like "What can be done to possibly avoid corrupt practices in the blind peer review process?"
@St.Inkbug it is specific question and if you scroll down I have answered and asked community to provide their opinion. I can see the opposition is coming from the editorial board members. I am also AE of few journals now. If you we don't stand and clean up this mess, then this whole system will lose its credibility. Its not atypical you can see other community members do agree and experienced similar corruption.
@Monika this nexus is strong :)
This question is voted to be close soon.
OP has absolute right to share his/her story, and I hope they do it. However, SE is not a blog for sharing stories. This is a Q&A forum, and this story is not a good Q so far.
@Monika if you agree with this question, then please vote for reopen.
No-one said OP's story is not important. It is very important. But OP does not have a clear, answerable question here, so it does not fit SE format. If OP can turn their story into a question, it will be welcome here. But I am not OP and I can't ask question based on their experience.
I don't see why this question can't be answered without invoking opinion. "How to fight back and clean this mess from academic journals/conferences?" - "it can't be done" is such an answer. Open to changing my mind, but I'm voting to reopen for now.
Significantly revised the post, tried to clean it up and remove the rant-y aspects. @MKB - feel free to roll back the edit if it's too significant.
Short answer while the question is still closed: Switch to a more ethical research area. (I have never experienced any of the situations you describe.)
There is not a lot that you can do change the system. However, there are certain things you can do in the various instances you describe:
being asked to include a particular new author in order to be accepted
If the person has no good claim to authorship, I would politely refuse such a request and explain why this person is not an author. If they refuse to publish your paper, then submit elsewhere.
being asked to cite articles with no apparent link with my article
If there is no apparent link, then you can't cite it. I would respond with something like "We do not see how this article is related to our work. If the reviewer wishes to explain the relationship, we can include a citation."
being told by the conference TCP (one of the top conference) to reject all the articles I review
There is little point in reviewing the papers if the decision has already been made. You can politely refuse the review request.
In one unique case, I reviewed an article and recommended strong rejection, it was subsequently accepted without revision. Reviewing the authors profile and handling editor, I found one of the author is an Associate Editor for another journal. It appears that both help each to publish articles in their journals.
It's up to the editor to make the accept/reject decision, not the reviewer. Sometimes reviewers get it wrong and the editor has good reason to ignore their recommendation. However, it sounds like you believe this to be a case of corruption. There is little you can do about this other than refusing to have further interactions with these journals. You can tell others about what you have witnessed. Presumably others have witnessed it too. If news of this spreads, then it will (deservedly) harm the reputation of the editor.
All the above experiences were observed in well-reputed journals and conferences.
This is unfortunate. Such behaviours should bring journals and conferences into disrepute.
On the individual level, you can choose where to submit your articles and which review requests to accept. There are many factors to consider when choosing where to submit. Of course, prestige is a big factor, as publications in prestigious venues helps advance your career. However, you can include reviewing practices as a factor. You can also refuse review requests from venues that you believe will ignore your reviews. And, if there are venues that you believe are doing a good job, you can support them by submitting and reviewing.
If enough people begin to avoid venues with questionable practices, then that will have an effect on them. Likewise, if people support venues with good practices, then those will go up in the prestige rankings.
I am putting my answer here and will like to hear from community members as well. I hope there are people out there who will like to take practical steps as well.
I my opinion its hard to change the people but we can change the system. To assure fairness of review process it should be mandatory to publish article along with whole review process, including reviewer's comments, author's responses, and identity of handling editor.
Do you suggest revealing the identities of the reviewers as well?
I think only revealing the identity of handling editor is enough. it will push editors to have better review process. However, revealing reviewers identities after the completion of review process is also good suggestion.
No problem :) you provided with example. To be honest the quality of research papers 25-30 years ago was way better.
I have seen journals where the handling editor is named with each paper, so that part of your suggestion is already being practiced in some journals.
@JoelReyesNoche could you please name those journal? In my major is computer science. I will love to publish in those journal.
A search for "handling editor filetype:pdf" yielded results like this paper from Acta Societatis Botanicorum Poloniae which lists the handling editor of the paper at the left column of the first page.
@MBK - Please take advantage of the Markdown formatting. Two returns makes a break. You don't need to manually add tags. You can click "edit" to see my changes and see how it works in the live preview.
This does not answer the question. OP describes their "short career", which means they likely don't have the influence or seniority to enact the changes you propose. This is just not something OP can do (at least, not yet).
I agree with JeffE. "It should be mandatory" is not an answer to "What can I do".
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397 | What style questions should I ask potential graduate students interviewing for positions in my lab?
As a converse to this question, as a professor, I find it difficult to conduct a useful interview. What types of questions should I ask which would give me a good idea as to how (1) productive and (2) self-sustaining of a student the interviewee may be? If different questions are required for each parameter, please mention that in your answer.
I underwent an interview recently from a prospective adviser, and I found the questions he asked of me to be pretty insightful - hence I'm sharing them here.
Why do you want to pursue research in this specific area?
This would highlight the candidate's motivation in wanting to do research in a particular field - and would also tell the professor more about the candidate's exposure to this area.
What made you apply to this lab/university, as a continuation of the previous question?
The answer would tell you whether the applicant had simply browsed the rankings list of universities, or did he/she actually go through the research publications of the lab - and the application was done due to an intersection of the two!
What would you like to be doing post Ph.D.?
There is no "right" answer to this, but it also tells a lot about the candidate's motivation in pursuing a PhD.
Finally, you can ask the candidate to discuss any problem that he is familiar with in that field - doesn't have to be anything fancy/complicated, but that would serve to highlight the clarity of the applicant's reasoning, communication skills, and level of exposure to the field.
I wish I could mark both yours and @aeismail correct... both excellent answers!
In addition to the questions that shan23 has mentioned, I ask candidates for my group a few other questions:
What kind of advising style do they like? How "hands-on" or "hands-off" do they want me to be? If they want someone whose style is vastly different from mine, that's going to be a problem.
What is your preferred working environment? (When?, Where?, etc.) I just want to get a sense of what they're going to be like to work with.
What kinds of projects do they like? Do they want a methodology-driven project, or are they more interested in applications.
Have you spoken with members of my group? I want future group members to have an interest in who they'll be working with.
Ask them about their expectations out of their coming 3-5 years as a grad student!
I find that a significant portion of the frustration that I (and those others around me) have experienced is due to severe disparity between expectations and reality. Note that this is as much for the benefit of the prospective student as it is for you as the PI.
Specifically things to consider regarding expectations:
The amount and style of supervision the student expects. My expectation was that I would "do science" and not "paperwork", in reality my PI knew less about the paperwork then I did, so I typically ended up needing to do a bunch of paperwork regarding employment (like salary raises, progress reports etc) and always late too...
The abundance and lack of relevant competencies in the lab, for that proposed project. I was confident that the lack of computational competency at our lab wasn't gonna be a problem for me. I couldn't be more wrong..
The workplace interaction with colleagues. I was under the impression that we'd be a team of intellectuals, tackling problems together, from our own angles. Again I was dead-wrong... Here, everyone's buried under their own pile of... Similarly, I can imagine that if the student expects to be a lone-wolf, forced team-work might be frustrating in the long run.
How to handle getting stuck/frustrated. This is quite self-explanatory I guess..
This is my favorite question to ask in interviews:
Can you tell me about a problem you encountered in the laboratory, and the process you went through to troubleshoot it?
I think a good general question to ask is what motivates them to do their research. The answer should give you a good idea at least for the latter and depending on the level of detail maybe also for the former.
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12620 | Self-endowed chair in the US and Europe
Endowed professorship is very common, but the financial endowment normally comes from external sources. Is it also common that a professor/research endow his/her position to establish a research group in the target university?
It should be an excellent approach for mid-level professors/researchers who can establish a research group in a top university (where it is normally hard to get that position) and get research fund from external sources such as industry and funding agencies.
This is of mutual benefit for both the university and professor, but I have not heard about such positions. Is it uncommon or just through private contracts?
UPDATE: Apparently, I confused endowed and named chair with research professor. I asked the question about research professor here. However, I still do not see a contradiction between research professor and self-endowed professor. Does a endowed chair must be necessary result of a huge donation to university? or a foundation can merely fund a professor position. If it is the latter case, one should be able to fund his own endowed position too.
As for your update. An endowed position must by definition be based on an endowment. Technically, one could create an endowed position with many small contributions (I think I might have a go at crowdfunding an endowed chair).
Endowed professorship typically are the result of a large donation of money to the university that allows them to fully fund a position in perpetuity based on the earnings on the initial donation. This is generally much larger than what an individual can bring in from external sources. If you manage to bring in that type of income, you will likely have little problem obtaining a permanent position.
I am aware of one independently wealthy individual who made a large enough donation to establish his own professorship. Basically he spent a small fraction of his wealth (which would be a large fraction of the wealth of most academics) to become a full professor with minimal teaching and service duties. His research was funded from his charitable foundation and I believe the foundation paid the standard overhead rates. He was reasonably productive throughout his entire career and probably could have obtained a professorship without using his personal wealth, but given the competitive nature of the job market and limited availability of positions, probably not at the institution of his choosing.
Oh, I interpreted the question differently (due to “get research fund from external sources such as industry and funding agencies”).
Regarding “one independently wealthy individual who made a large enough donation to establish his own professorship”, I think it creates somewhat of an ethical dilemma for the university…
@F'x I read it the same as you, but think it is a misuse of the term endowed chair. As for the ethical dilemma, it presents a big one, but individuals with a reasonable publication and teaching records and an outstanding record of bringing in grant money tend to be looked at favourably.
@shane I'd be very surprised if any reputable university would accept an endowment gift that comes with a stipulation that a particular individual be given the endowed chair, independently of the university's normal criteria for faculty appointments. (Indeed, if a university did allow such a stipulation, I'd probably stop thinking of it as reputable.) In other words, if I had a few million dollars to give away, I could endow a professorship, but I couldn't endow a professorship for myself.
@AndreasBlass but that is what the professor I know basically did at a top school. How much more "grant" funding does an applicant need to offset a poor teaching and publication record? My guess is an order of magnitude or two would cover it. In the Humanities, I am guessing $10 million would cover it and in the Sciences I cannot imagine a department turning down someone with $100 million in funding.
What you describe sounds like a research professor in the US system:
A professor who does not take on all of the classic duties of a professor, but instead focuses on research. At most universities, research professors are not eligible for tenure and must fund their salary entirely through research grants, with no regular salary commitment from internal university sources. In parallel with tenure-track faculty ranks, there are assistant and associate research professor positions.
The obvious drawback is that it puts enormous pressure on grant finding, with no tenure and thus no job security.
This is exactly what I meant, but I was thinking that research professors have institutional salary, but the university does not allocate fund for their research. Instead, they need to earn it externally.
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89082 | Different types of publications
During the literature review for my Master thesis, I have got in touch with many different types of scientific publications, meaning papers, working papers, conference papers, seminar papers and so on.
I have seen many discussion about sub-categories of these main objects but never one being at this higher level of grouping.
Thus, I was wondering which are the main difference among them in order to do some kind of hierarchy of content reliability when I read them. And clearly if there exist other types, please add them so we can build a complete collection.
Do you have any reason to believe there is a consistent hierarchy to find at that level?
In which field?
@PatriciaShanahan Computer Science
There exist a lot of standards for document/publication types. Here are some examples:
ORCiD work types
Endnote reference types
RAK WB, see chapter 1.2 (a system created for German libraries with a hierarchy for document types)
DRIVER used by DINI (repositories)
...
As stated here, each database might have its own definition, i.e. there are a lot of standards. Before creating a new one, I'd check if one of the already existing standards fits your requirements.
Note: Please feel free to edit this question to add more standards for document/publication types.
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48341 | PhD thesis - Names of appendices
I'm writing my PhD thesis (math) and struggling to find titles for the appendices. The thesis has three main chapters and for each one there is an appendix that contains some proofs that did not belong in the chapter itself (e.g. proofs of lemmas and technical details). What should I name the appendices? Currently I'm thinking about "Missing proofs for Chapter X" or "Omitted proofs of Chapter X". Any suggestions?
Do they share a common topic?
Chapters 1 and 2 are related. Chapter 3 is independent.
In a mathematics paper or thesis, the most common practice is simply to include all proofs in the body of the document, each one immediately following the statement of its corresponding theorem or lemma. So you should seriously consider just doing that.
Placing proofs in an appendix might be appropriate if they are really ancillary to the main thrust of your thesis. For instance, maybe there is a result that is not really relevant to the rest of the thesis, but you've included it simply because it is interesting. Or you state a result that is well known, but you have written your own proof as an exercise. Or you have multiple proofs of the same statement; you might want to place one of them in the body, and move the other(s) to the appendices.
But in any case, I would think there would not be more than a few proofs that would fit these criteria. As such, it would be most natural to place each proof in its own appendix, rather than to group them by body chapter or any other criterion.
You could give the appendices names like "Appendix A. Proof of Theorem 1.2.3". Or better yet, something more descriptive like "Appendix A. Proof of the Snargleberg–Veeblefester Theorem (Theorem 1.2.3)". Of course, you will want to use LaTeX's \ref to produce the theorem number.
It would be a convenience to the reader if in each appendix, you repeat the statement of the relevant theorem before giving the proof.
If you feel the number of lettered appendices A, B, C, D, etc are becoming excessive, you could move down the hierarchy. Most thesis templates are based on the book document class, in which the top-level text element is the chapter. So if you want, you could write
\backmatter
\chapter{Additional Proofs}
\section{Proof of the Snargleberg--Veeblefester Theorem (Theorem \ref{snargleberg})}
Blah blah blah.
\section{Proof of the Dumbledore Lemma (Lemma \ref{dumbledore})}
Expecto Patronum.
Producing something like:
A. Additional proofs.
A.1. Proof of the Snargleberg–Veeblefester Theorem (Theorem 1.2.3)
Blah blah blah.
A.2. Proof of the Dumbledore Lemma (Lemma 2.3.4)
Expecto Patronum.
I disagree with Pete L. Clark's suggestion to just leave the appendices with non-descriptive titles like "Appendix A". Using descriptive appendix titles will help keep the reader from getting lost.
The chapters themselves contain the main proofs so I feel like "Proofs for Chapter X" is not accurate. Perhaps "Other proofs of/for Chapter X".
I see, then maybe "additional proofs" or "supplementary proofs"?
@Johannes: After thinking some more, I have rewritten my answer.
After thinking some more, I agree with you rather than me.
I would think twice about including these results in appendices at all. You have one appendix for each chapter and each "contains some proofs that did not belong in the chapter itself (e.g. proofs of lemmas and technical details)". Why doesn't that belong in the chapter itself? That sounds like exactly the sort of material that I would expect to take up space in a math PhD thesis. You may want to organize things so that the most technical bits can be quickly identified and skipped by the uninterested reader, but putting them in appendices doesn't sound quite right to me. Appendices should contain material which is ancillary to the thesis, not the technical core of the thesis.
Anyway, if you decide to go for the multiple appendices: I would call the Appendix "The Appendix" if there is one of them, and if there is more than one "Appendix A", "Appendix B", and so forth.
Added: After more thought, I agree with @Nate Eldredge's disagreement. If there is more than one appendix, you should probably give some help to the reader by saying what is in each one. Now that I seriously contemplate this possibility though [not that seriously; I still am not convinced that this is a good use of appendices at all, but whatever...] I find the question a bit weird: in that the OP can see his thesis, he is in a much better position than we to make the titles. But a simple, descriptive title should be fine.
Thanks. I have to use a standard template and the appendices are ordered A, B, C,... but each one needs a name as well.
In most LaTeX classes, appendices are like sections or chapters, so they have a descriptive title in addition to their number or letter.
@Nate: They can have a name, but they don't need to (in LaTeX, or in mathematics generally). Johannes: I can only repeat my advice above. The fact that you are having trouble thinking of a name other than "Missing/Omitted Proofs From Chapter X" strongly suggests to me that this material belongs in Chapter X. Unless you're saying that your template requires every chapter to have an appendix?
I'm not, but this material definitely belongs in an appendix. It's tedious derivations that don't require any intuition or ingenuity, but have to be there nevertheless.
"I'm not, but this material definitely belongs in an appendix. It's tedious derivations that don't require any intuition or ingenuity, but have to be there nevertheless." How many PhD theses have you read? Over 2/3 of the theses I've looked at (let's say, a few hundred) devote a substantial amount of space to showing mastery of routine material. I cannot recall ever having seen material relegated to an appendix because it does not require ingenuity. Have you talked to your advisor about this? What does she advise?
Thanks for your helpful comments. Yes, I have talked to my advisor and he agrees, but I will see whether I can restructure things to some extent. Some of this is already published but in the paper I could simply use "Appendix A'. I guess it's hard to explain why these things should be deferred to an appendix without actually seeing the thesis, but, for example, in chapter 1 I derive some asymptotic expansions. Then in a remark I mention that the coefficients can be rewritten in a certain way, but leave the details (2-3 pages of glorified integration by parts) to appendix 1.
I suppose it's a question of style now, but I wouldn't move a proof to an appendix merely because it's tedious. The real question is: is it important? Would a reader need to check it to be convinced that your main results are correct and correctly proved? If so, leave it in the body of the paper, no matter how tedious it seems.
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103318 | All my papers have alphabetical author lists, but an award application asks for author lists to judge contribution
I am a graduate student in pure math, namely graph theory and combinatorics. I have recently been nominated by my department to be the math department candidate for a university-wide research award. In the award application materials, it asks for my CV and is very specific that the authors names need to be in the same order as on the published paper so that the level of my involvement can be judged.
I am in a field where the convention is to put all names of co-authors alphabetically, regardless of input. It is clear to me that I need to mention this on my CV, but I am worried that if I just say that that the order of the authors is irrelevant in my field, the people judging my CV will be unsatisfied because then they won't have any information about how much I contributed to each paper.
Is there a tactful way to deal with this issue?
AFAIK, the authors are in alphabetical order because the contribution is expected to be equal by all authors, right? Can't you mention that somewhere?
If they are actually judging research contributions from a CV by people not familiar with each field, this sounds like a horrible way to assign an award. Authorship order is only one of many things that vary across fields. Some fields publish primarily peer-reviewed journal articles, others conference presentations; in some fields 1 paper gets you a PhD, in others you might be expected to publish several. In some fields you publish as sole author, in others you have dozens or hundreds of authors.
@AnderBiguri I worked in a field that used alphabetical author ordering, and the contributions of different authors to papers I worked on were often very unequal. My understanding was always that we used alphabetical order precisely to avoid fights over the first/second/last author position, although to be fair I never got any "official" confirmation of that.
Do you have the possibility of explaining what your actual contribution was to each paper on the CV? When listing employments, it's very common to include what your specific responsibilities were within the team - and not just write "Researcher at X" - it might be possible to do the same here.
If you are concerned, you may want to include more information about the culture of coauthorship in mathematics. For instance, you could enclose the following updated AMS culture statement.
As a mathematical "lifer," I want to be honest: the way that we handle coauthorship in mathematics does sometimes obscure the individual contributions of the authors. On the job market, this is often circumvented by getting letters from one's senior coauthors describing the contributions you made. You might consider doing that here, or that may be too heavy-handed for this case.
You could also talk to a mentor in your department and see what they think. They may have more experience with what happens at the university level.
I appreciate the input. Unfortunately, the award application only allows for the submission of my CV and a short letter from my mentor, so this either needs to be clear from my CV or from the letter. The letter we have is already too long just detailing the required points from the application, so conciseness is important.
@Sean: In that case, you should just be clear about it in your CV, and you can include a link to (e.g.) the above culture statement.
Unless the CV has a fixed, required format, such as in an NSF proposal biosketch, you are free to include any additional information you judge to be pertinent.
Since they require the author order to match what's in the paper, then you should preface your list of publications for this CV with a quick note stating: "Mathematics publications use alphabetical order when listing authors because [reasons]." That will allow you to explain the issue concisely.
(Note that a number of other fields have similar issues—such as economics.)
I worked for more than a decade in a field where authors are always listed alphabetically, and the typical author list includes 500+ names. Individuals do get awarded in this field.
As it has been suggested, the contribution of a single author in such a paper is not officially recognized on a paper in this case, but it is unofficially recognized by the community. Most people in your field will know the work of somebody worth an award, either through letters of recommendations and word of mouth, or presentations, posters or seminars on the same topic of papers you published.
As you can afford only one letter for this award, all you can do is to highlight the public talks you have given related to the papers you list on your CV, and count on your reputation in the field. Good luck.
Another idea is to include something like an annotated bibliography for you papers. Included in your annotation will be a description of your contributions to each paper.
Doing this will have the added benefit of helping prospective employers understand what roles you played in each paper. It will also help if you are in academia and are going up for rank advancement.
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3537 | What are the pros and cons of multidisciplinary research?
Does doing multidisciplinary research enhance one's employment opportunities compared to doing a degree in "basic" sciences?
For example, is a Ph.D. in Nano-science/Nano-technology in any way better than a Ph.D. in Physics or Chemistry, considering employment in India or in Asia? Would like to hear perspectives from other regions as well.
(In India, the basic qualification for employment in universities or affiliated colleges, as Assistant Professor is M.Sc. with UGC-NET or a Ph.D. in the relevant subject. Multidisciplinary research is available only in major research institutes and a limited number of universities.)
I suspect that this may be an overly broad question. Multidisciplinarity versus "basic" sciences is a huge question that would need a books to answer it.
@EnergyNumbers The question details also suggest that? Thought, I cannot go specific than this. I am not seeking a detailed exposition of each and every multidisciplinary research arenas or all benefits/demerits of multidisciplinary research. My specific query is about employment opportunities; Am I sounding otherwise?
This does not fully answer your question, but it is certainly one consideration.
Multidisciplinary theses are often examined by multidisciplinary committees.
Examining such theses is difficult, especially if the committee has no experience examining multidisciplinary theses.
A consequence is that you will often be forced to conform to the conventions of different communities. In addition, the chemistry committee member may not see the thesis as a chemistry thesis and the sociology committee member may not see the thesis as a sociology thesis, because it lies somewhere in between the two fields and cannot be a complete thesis in both fields.
I am a PhD student in Computational Science, which is an interdisciplinary major spanning mathematics, computer science, and engineerning. We are often pegged with the label "jack of all trades, but master of none" because we are a relatively new major with out well-established guidelines or rules judging the merit of work. Often, we are required to accept a "home department" whose quality judgment rules dominate. I'm not sure if this is the case for all interdisciplinary programs, but it helps alleviate the grey area and ensures that the work is evaluated according to a well-established criterion.
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5323 | Applying to top CS PhD programs with a great record but bad GRE scores
I have a good GPA (over 3.5) from a top 5 CS school. I also have lots of research experience and a few publications. I also expect to have very good recommendations. The only problem is that I did badly on the GRE general exam (just under below average). The exam seems like a big scam, so studying for it felt like a waste of time.
One of JeffE's blog posts mentions that schools filter applicants into three piles based on GPA and GRE: MAYBE, PROBABLY NOT, and NO. Will my GRE scores land me in the PROBABLY NOT pile, even though I have an otherwise excellent record?
Will my GRE hurt my chances of getting into CMU and Stanford? Should I try to retake them, even though it's getting late? Application deadlines are around December 13.
Edit: should I say something about my bad GRE scores in the statement of purpose, or do something else if I don't end up retaking them?
Welcome to Academia.SE. There is a a lot in your question that is very specific to you. Thus, the answer may only be useful to you. Such questions tend to get closed as a too localized. Could you edit your question to make it generalizable? You would get better answers, and your answers will also be helpful to others.
Also, your question may have already been answered in one of the many graduate admissions questions already posted, like this one: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5032/how-much-score-in-gre-computer-science-subject-test-is-considered-good
Apply abroad. There are many good schools in Europe waiting for you with open arms.
The blog post @X.Crews mentions is here; however, my department's admissions procedures have changed since I wrote that.
Let's clarify - is the GRE math score below-avg? Honestly the GRE verbal score doesn't need to be higher than.. say 550. But if GRE math is under 650 I'd certainly be a tad concerned
@DaveClarke like which ones?
@Pinocchio: KU Leuven, Uppsala University, Utrecht University, to cite three I know personally.
Many PhD programs in computer science (like my own) don't require GREs; read the application instructions carefully. If it's not a requirement, just don't submit your GRE scores.
Even when you are required to submit your scores, do not mention your GRE scores in your statement. You want the admissions committee to focus on your potential for research, where you seem to have a very strong case, not your ability to take standardized tests.
If you can re-take the GREs without undue burden -- yes, re-take them. You'll feel better, knowing that you did everything you could have. (Why spend the rest of your life wondering about "what could have been"?) And, it might help you a little bit, by eliminating a potential red flag.
That said, even if you don't re-take the GREs, if you have great qualifications, you'll probably be fine. If you have great research experience, great letters, and the rest of your application package is strong, it's unlikely that the GREs will hurt you much. Great research experience and publications will almost always trump poor GREs.
What your bad GRE scores will do is raise the eyebrows of the reviewers. The reviewers may then read the rest of your application package (contact your references, etc.) that much more carefully, to try to understand why you bombed the GREs. For instance, if you bombed the verbal GREs, then reviewer might start wondering: can this person write? are they completely inarticulate? am I going to have to spend the next 5 years teaching them how to write and remedial English? And they'll peruse all available information to try to figure out what's going on. So, if you have any explanation (even if it's just "I screwed up and didn't take the GREs seriously; in retrospect, I know it was a dumb move"), it might not hurt to share this story with your letter-writers so one of them can slip that into their letter, to minimize that sort of speculation. The other approach is to mention it in your statement of purpose -- though for some people it may feel a bit less awkward if one of your letter-writers does it.
P.S. A 3.5 GPA is not a great GPA. My sense is that it is a bit on the low side, for PhD studies in a top-5 CS PhD program. That said, grades are not the most important aspect of your application, and will be outweighed by research experience and great letters describing research potential. Research experience that has led to publications is great and a huge plus for your application file.
I think a 3.5 GPA counts for a lot in most of the top universities in India. Especially if you directly translate the GPA via linear interpolation.
We typically have 1-2 students up to a maximum of 6 getting an A in a subject. This is typically more so at BITS and some of the IIT's.
So, typically only ~ 5% of the people get a 3.5 GPA overall.
I think this also applies to Princeton University now days.
So I think it is generally University dependent.
@Naresh, OK, I hear you. That said... even being in the top 5% of a graduating class is not great, when it comes to admission to a top-5 CS PhD program. Standards are very high.
3.5 is often the highest GPA possible for some of the streams at these colleges. Simply because a single person struggles to get A's in more than half the courses unless he goes over the credit limit required for graduation.
While a 3.5 GPA might not be great in itself, most colleges look for research potential. Which in turn makes the 3.5+ GPA above acceptable if his university has strict grading criteria.
For top 5-CS Ph D Program, being in the top 5% might be sufficient GPA-wise, but you have to show research potential.
@Naresh, Thanks for your comments! I certainly agree that research potential far outweighs the GPA, so this discussion is probably moot. However, I do have one question, out of pure curiousity (even though it probably won't affect X.Crew's particular case). How could 3.5 be the highest GPA possible? I'd be interested to learn more about that. Do you mean it's very hard (or very rare) to get higher than a 3.5 GPA? Or do you mean there's something that prevents getting over a 3.5? (I admit I don't know what a stream is.)
It would typically be very hard to get above 3.5, in these colleges for branches such as civil engineering/chemical engineering.This has much more to do with the way the admissions take place here rather than anything else.The top ranks typically take CS/EE/ECE as their subject, making the intellectual pool of students in a Civil Eng course to be lesser.Therefor,Civil Eng. students almost never end up with an A grade in any of the common courses. That's almost 2 years of 0-1 'A' grades.Typically the gold medalist or the valedictorian of the batch alone would get a 3.5 in the Civil Eng. program
A 3.5 GPA is not a great GPA. It is very much on the low side, for PhD studies in a top-5 CS PhD program. — Nah, not really. (I work in a top-5 CS PhD program.) It's certainly high enough to get your application past the point where grades matter.
Despite being nearly the exact opposite question, I will give the same answer that I gave about the importance of GPA
The importance of any single metric is binary and its value (important
or not) depends on the size of the department. If the department is
big, admissions committees use metrics to weed out candidates.
Basically anyone with GPA/GRE below X is triaged (doesn't matter what
school you went to, how good your references are, etc). Smaller
departments generally look at all applications. Once your applications
is looked at, it is considered as a whole. There is no formula by
which good GRE scores can offset a bad GPA. Obviously a better GPA
doesn't hurt, but you really want to worry about the things you can
control. For example, good research experience tends to trump
everything else.
I don't think it's universally true that everyone with a GPA/GRE below X is automatically triaged, without reading the rest of the folder -- at least, it is not true of the departments that I'm familiar with. That said, I agree with everything after "Once your application is looked at"... this is very helpful advice.
@D.W. I didn't say it was universal. I said it depends on the size of the department (and even that is a simplification). As soon as you read the rest of the folder, you are not performing triage. In my experience many departments and/or individuals perform triage and attempt to quickly make three piles (yes, no, maybe). In "big" departments you run out of funding before you get through the yes pile. In "small" departments you often make it through the maybe pile and still have funding.
What I'm saying is that your statement does not match my experience. I'm not familiar with any large PhD program who reviews applications in that way (they may exist, but I'm just not familiar with them), whereas I am familiar with several large CS PhD programs that don't work that way and would not triage you just because your GPA/GRE is below some threshhold.
As far as I experienced last year, a high GRE score by itself may not directly bring you an acceptance from a grad school. However, low or moderate scores may result in an early elimination in the process. I think this is often the case for other standardized tests such as TOEFL (for an international applicant). Plus, you can consider GPA in this respect as well.
I think TOEFL is a little different in that there is often a university mandated minimum.
Personally I think if a department throws out a person just based on GRE scores, you should neither apply to such department nor feel bad that you were not accepted. You will be better evaluated somewhere else. I am not sure how the GRE is supposed to rank good researchers. And for admission purposes it is used only in the US.
The GRE isn't used to rank anything. It's used to do triage, as Daniel mentioned. Having said that, I personally don't use GRE scores as triage so much as one element of a more complex filtering strategy (that starts with the research statement)
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4875 | How should "et al." be used for parenthetical versus non-parenthetical citations using the APA citation style?
Someone told me that in APA style you treat parenthetical versus non-parenthetical in-text references separately when applying et al.
For example, let's say you're citing Smith, Jones, and Roberts (2012).
You would write
Smith, Jones, and Roberts (2012) write that bla bla bla bla.
Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla (Smith, Jones & Roberts, 2012).
That is, because in the second line it is the first time you mention the authors parenthetically, you have to restate the authors' names....
I always thought you treat parenthetical and non-parenthetical citations the same. So it would be the following:
Smith, Jones, and Roberts (2012) write that bla bla bla bla.
Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla (Smith et al., 2012).
Can anyone confirm or clarify this for me?
The reference they gave for this rule is table 6.1 on page 177 of the APA Manual, 6th edition.
They interpreted the column titled "First citation in-text" and "Parenthetical Format, first citation in text) as indicating that those two formats should be treated separately. However, this doesn't make sense to me and I think that APA would have made this more explicit if it had intended this interpretation.
I asked apastyle.org and received the following response from an Editorial Supervisor
Your interpretation is correct, and your interlocutor is wrong. Table 6.1 simply gives examples of citations in different circumstances. The rules of APA Style are stated pretty clearly in the APA Publication Manual; there is no need to deduce additional unstated rules. If something in a table or figure appears to contradict the text, follow the text.
Therefore my interpretation (and Joel Reyes Noche's interpretation) of et al. is correct.
I think that the form
Smith, Jones, and Roberts (2012) write that bla bla bla bla. Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla (Smith, Jones & Roberts, 2012).
does not follow the recommended APA style. That is, I think the correct way to write it is
Smith, Jones, and Roberts (2012) write that bla bla bla bla. Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla (Smith et al., 2012).
where the first citation is the first citation "in text" and the second citation is the first citation of this work "in a parenthetical format."
Look at page 43 (figure 2.1) of the 6th edition of the APA manual. Lines 2 and 3 of page 6 of the sample paper has the first citation of "Hahn, Carlson, Singer, & Gronlund, 2006" in parenthetical form
(consistent with Hahn, Carlson, Singer, & Gronlund, 2006; Mather & Knight, 2006)
and on lines 17 and 18, a citation of the same work in text is given as Hahn, et al. (2006)
Similarly, Hahn et al. (2006) also found no age differences [...]
Now, it is not certain that the latter citation is the first citation in text of this work (because some text in the sample paper is obscured). But looking at other papers in journals that follow the APA format seems to confirm my answer.
For example, a paper in the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education (vol. 43, no. 2, p. 133) (which explicitly states that manuscripts submitted to it "should conform to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.)") has a first citation in text
In their article in Mathematics Teacher, Cirillo, Drake, and Herbel-Eisenmann (2009) situated their work on curriculum vision as described below.
Then a block quotation from this work ends in the first citation in parenthetical form
(Cirillo et al., 2009, p. 71)
This is mostly a nonissue for APA 7th edition because three or more authors are now cited as "et al." from the first mention, whether parenthetical or not, except where it would create ambiguity.
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155749 | Ask thesis supervisor for permission to include his name as co-author of a journal paper and risk being denied?
I did my Masters Thesis at a reputed organization, under a supervisor who is an expert in the field. The organization is notoriously protective about the data I acquired from there which I need in my calculations in my thesis. I would like to publish a paper with his name too, though he had very little to do with my actual work. But I am afraid that if I ask him, he will say no, owing to the over-protective nature of the organization (though it was I who took the readings and collected the values myself). I have the option to publish it without naming my supervisor or the organization. What would be the right approach here?
Why are they notoriously protective about the data [you] acquired?
@user2768 Their materials, their measuring instruments and a (minute) part of an ongoing project. Also organization policy it seems.
I'm confused: They're secretive about their materials and measuring instruments? Perhaps don't answer this question: Is the organization government or military? If not, why are they secretive? Protecting work-in-progress makes sense, but universities typically want research published. Understanding the rationale for the organization policy may help you navigate a route to publication. Speaking to your supervisor is probably the easiest way forwards.
Most likely, if your supervisor says no, it would be for a reason that precludes you from publishing with or without him.
It sounds like you need to consider three distinct issues:
Trade secrets / copyright: Is the data truly yours to publish? I am not a lawyer, but depending on location, type of employment and contracts / NDAs you may have signed, the simple fact that you took the readings and acquired the data might not make you legal copyright holder. What you may need - given that the organization in question is notoriously protective or even over-protective of their data - is permission to publish by the head of that institution, even if you do not intend to publish the entire data set but merely results derived from it. Formulations like notoriously protective make it seem highly advisable to look through any formal papers you may have signed prior to starting there.
Academic integrity: Even if advisors seem to have very little to do with a project, they still may have provided guidance or maybe even just the opportunity to acquire data (as in, they did the work of putting together equipment necessary to acquire the data). In those cases, it is still necessary to put the supervisor in the author list.
Affiliation: Putting the organization in the affiliations is - as far as I understand the situation - necessary, because without their equipment / setup, you could not have collected the data. Think of the CERN or DESY: Sure it's you spending the night on site when you have beam time, but you'd still put that organization in the affiliations.
I may be mistaken, but your question sounds like you feel that academic integrity warrants putting your advisor as co-author, but if you do that, people might notice that you publish work based on data acquired at that institute. And that institute might object to you publishing that data, hence you'd rather avoid "waking sleeping dogs". If that's the case, i.e. if people at the institute could object to you publishing the data, you should ask before publishing.
If it turns out they'd rather not have you publish but have no legal way to keep you from publishing, there's no harm in asking and you can always publish anyways. But if they have legal means to keep you from publishing, just publishing anyways could be a very bad idea with potentially serious consequences for your reputation and your career (plus perhaps penalties to be paid, but again, I'm not a lawyer).
Email your supervisor, ask them how to proceed. It is very likely you're not the first who wishes to publish somthing based on research done there.
Having used an organizations facilities, does not automatically make you affiliated to that organization, and those not necessarily imply that that organization should appear as an affiliation on a paper. More typically the use of facilities is acknowledged in the "acknowledgements" section. E.g. having used the Hubble space telescope for observations does not make you affiliated to NASA.
@mmeent True, just using their equipment only requires acknowledgements, so my example was off, thanks for pointing that out. But the OP states they did their Masters Thesis there. That makes an affiliation, in my opinion.
Excellent answer, but a nitpick re “In those cases, it is still necessary to put the supervisor in the author list.” — at least in my field, that’s not quite the case. OP should certainly offer the supervisor co-authorship, in such cases, but the supervisor may well decline the offer (in my field, this is very usual), in which case it’s fine to publish without them as author. It’s of course good to then include thanks for their support/guidance in the paper acknowledgements.
Email your supervisor: Ask them whether they'd like to co-author a paper derived from your thesis. Move forwards from there. You needn't write the paper before getting your supervisors input. You should ask for guidance whilst writing the paper.
I have the option to publish it without naming my supervisor or the organization.
Actually, you don't.
Publishing without naming your supervisor could be considered plagiarism, because they had an input. You say, he had very little to do with my actual work, but you should question whether you could have completed your thesis without him or whether he guided you, if so, that's his input.
Although you might be able to publish without being affiliated with the organization, you should acknowledge their support. (They provided resources for you to conduct your research.)
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155754 | How Can I Specialize In Two Different -but related- Areas
I am a freshman math major. I am very excited to be in university because I want to be a scientist, researcher. I have interest in different areas like sociology, economics, artifical intelligence, neuroscience etc.. I used to think that I can specialize in just one area then I have heard about a professor named Richard Bagozzi and I loved his career because he publishes papers in different areas such as economics, sociology and psychology. What should I do in my college life to be able to make research in more than one area? I am waiting for your advices, thank you.
It is too early for you to commit to a final field of study. It is good that you have a lot of interests and the opportunity to learn some things about many of them. Studying math at a liberal arts college, as I did, or at place that otherwise permits a broad education is a good way to build up a body of interests, any of which you might later decide to focus intently on. But you don't need extreme focus yet.
Your interests are likely to change, at least a bit, in the coming few years. Wait until you have more knowledge and experience before committing too deeply to any one area.
A note on math. A professor of English once told me that studying math gave me an almost perfect education, since the university also required those other subjects you mention, and more. Had I studied, say, sociology, instead, then my education would have missed something (logical, mathematical, computational thinking) that I wouldn't get otherwise. He was, of course, measuring against an Medieval notion of an "educated person." An educated person has a lot of opportunities. Strive for that.
thanks for your advices! I think I will take classes like psych101 too see if I have interest in these areas. Then I will chose my area to go and make a program for it in the third year.
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8428 | Professorship without PhD in the United States
In the discussion made in comments to this question, it has been stated that in France, it is possible (though improbable) to become a professor without having PhD. It made me curious if there is such possibility in the United States. I know that in 1970s there were leading professors in the US university who had only MSc. However, I think the main focus was on knowledge in the past, but now formalities are much more important.
Anyway, I am curious if the current regulations in the US universities allows this at all? For promotion to full professor, one needs to be assistant/associate professor. In the past, having a PhD was privilege, but it is now mandatory for holding any assistant/associate/full professor.
Does the current regulations allow a professor without PhD to teach PhD students?
This question is about impossibility vs. improbability.
If somebody proved the Riemann hypothesis without having a PhD, I am willing to bet that they could get a tenure-track position at a quite good university. Some of the top universities might have rules prohibiting it, but one of them would surely make an exception in this case. And if they produced some more good research, tenure would certainly follow. So I would say it is definitely possible.
@PeterShor You mean it is currently impossible , but if an exceptional case appears, some would be flexible enough to bend the regulations.
I have no idea whether M.I.T. has any regulations against hiring professors without PhD's. I can tell you that if somebody without a PhD proved the Riemann hypothesis, all the top math departments would definitely consider hiring him (whether or not there are regulations against it at the university level), and I am sure that, assuming he was otherwise suitable as a professor, at least one of them would make an offer. I think this demonstrates that it is not impossible.
@PeterShor I didn't mean to disagree with you. I just meant that as you said current regulations prohibits it at this time. Or maybe it is my perception and some universities have more open regulations in this matter.
If somebody proved the Riemann hypothesis without having a PhD, I am willing to bet that they could get a tenure-track position at a quite good university. — Yes, but I'm also willing to bet that any university that had a regulation about only hiring PhDs and wanted to hire her would offer her a PhD as well.
@JeffE you mean honorary doctorate (or something like that) or normal PhD but without academic works?
No, I mean a normal PhD. And what do you mean "without academic works"? They have a proof of the Riemann hypothesis!
@JeffE I mean normal academic works such as courses, thesis, etc. That person has proved the Riemann hypothesis, but not part of his PhD thesis. In a normal case, a PhD student is not credited for his past research achievements, he must conduct research in the framework of his current academic PhD project. In other words, when awarding PhD for proving the Riemann hypothesis, I am curious how the official transcript of this PhD would look like ;)
@JeffE Doesn't a PhD student need to pass courses? Doesn't a PhD degree have a transcript of courses and grades?
Discussion should take place in chat, not here. Please continue this conversation there.
Trivia: in Italy, PhD programs were only introduced in 1980, so most Italian scholars in their late fifties or sixties, including top ones, do not hold any postgraduate title.
I.G. Macdonald (algebra) is a not that recent example of this in the UK.
Robin Milner and Tony Hoare, having won Turing Awards, have never received PhDs. But then they're both in the UK...
This is solely a decision of each university. It has happened in the past. It was rare then. It is surpassingly rare today. Most universities would have some expectation for teaching of undergraduate students.
At most US institutions, you need the terminal degree in your field. For many fields this is a PhD, but in some it might be an EdD, a DMA, a DPH, a ThD, etc. However, all of these degrees are considered to one level or another to be research doctorates. Presumably faculty positions at a medical school require an MD or equivalent. Likewise for other professional schools. Positions in the visual arts, theater, dance, creative writing, cinematography, etc., may only require the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) degree, as it is considered to be the terminal degree in those fields.
"Regulations" about the requirements to hold certain academic ranks and perform certain academic duties (like mentor graduate students) are made at the institutional level.
Any citations for this claim? It certainly seems plausible, but I'd like to see some actual examples of schools with that as an explicit policy.
The University of Connecticut. See the first item in the qualifications for an assistant professor. http://www.hr.uconn.edu/employment_services/facdicttp.html
Accrediting bodies, both of institutions and of individual programs, may also have requirements that X percent of their full-time faculty have a specific terminal degree.
I was thrown out of a small mid-western college (not a university) in my first year. I was persuaded to apply to Harvard about 8 years later. I took the exams and was admitted. I paid my way by working a 40 hr/week full-time job, admittedly against the rules, at an electronics firm throughout the 4 years. I graduated with a decent, but not outstanding A.B. in a scientific field, and had, incidentally, become Chief Electronics Engineer at the firm where I had been employed. This was followed by employment in diverse research environments, then in a think-tank in Cambridge and, finally with two offers of tenured full professorship at major universities. I took one, and thus became a full professor at a major university without ever having taken a course in graduate school or having had any prior appointment as Assistant or Associate Professor. I am currently Professor Emeritus and continue to direct PhD candidates. The answer to the question is, therefore, YES
Welcome to AC.SE. As you are currently emeritus, can you just confirm that your appointment as a professor was "recent" as the question is specifically focuses on can it be done "today" and not 40 years ago. Even better would be if you could explain any departmental policies/politics associated with not having a PhD.
Andrew Casson never completed his Ph.D. and is a Professor at Yale University (and was previously a Professor at UT Austin and UC Berkeley).
Good to have an example, but his appointment was in 1980s, and it is not strange to offer a professor position to someone who already has a similar position in another university of same level.
He was hired by Yale in 2000, so they can't have had a hard rule against it then, and probably don't now.
Whether you get special consideration probably depends on how special you are. Lynn Conway joined the University of Michigan as a full professor of EE and CS in 1985 with only an MSEE. But she had some other stuff going for her, like having co-created the Mead-Conway revolution in chip design. She didn't have a PhD but she had already become a Fellow of the IEEE.
Lynn is a friend of mine and when I've asked her about her appointment, she's waived the question away, insisting that exceptions can always be made. But I'm a lecturer today in that same UM EECS department where she held her appointment before retiring and when I recently asked our chairman if it could still be done today, he insisted it would never happen. Not anymore.
The ability to enter academia without a PhD varies substantially by faculty. In faculties that train people for "the professions" it is more common to encounter academics that have come from a professional background but do not have a PhD. For example, many academics in Law faculties are professional solicitors and barristers and their expertise comes from this background, rather than from a postgraduate research degree. Many academics in Medicine faculties are medical doctors who do not have PhDs (though they still have the title "Dr" from their medical degrees). The same is broadly true of other "professions" such as Actuarial Mathematics, some areas of Business and Commerce, so areas of Engineering, etc.
Having said this, there is no doubt that the situation is changing rapidly over time, due to a rapid increase in the supply of PhD graduates in all faculties (see e.g., Cyranoski et al 2011, McCook 2011, Larson, Ghaffarzadegan and Xue 2014). As the pool of PhD graduates increases, there is greater competition in credentials for academic positions, particularly at entry level. This seems to be leading to a situation where entry-level academics are expected to have a PhD. In some places this is now mandatory (see e.g., Gibney 2018, Baker 2018). Growth in PhD graduates and the resultant inflation of entry-level qualifications has been so rapid that there is growing concerns of an oversupply of PhDs that cannot be absorbed into academia
(see e.g., The Economist 2010). Senior academics who entered the university system prior to this boom have usually achieved enough in research and their profession that having this degree is not an important addition, so there are still many academics at higher levels without PhDs. However, for people seeking entry into academia at lower levels, the proportion of entrants with PhDs is increasing rapidly.
Speaking from personal experience (though not at US universities), when I went through university in the late 1990s and early 2000s (in Australia) there were many academics without PhDs, mostly in the faculties listed above. In the Law faculty at my university, most academics were professional lawyers, and less than a quarter held a PhD. In the Actuarial school, the academics were actuaries, and none of them held a PhD (though one was working towards it). Encountering an academic without a PhD was extremely common. Since this time it has become uncommon to encounter an entry-level academic without a PhD.
Short answer - it depends. You mention teaching PhDs, so I assume you don't mean community or state colleges where a PhD may not necessarily be required. If you mean tenure-track or tenured professor at a "University", then I would say it's difficult, although certainly not impossible. To make a blanket statement applying to all U.S. institutions would just be silly. But I would consider it a rare occurrence for a non-PhD to step into the tenure-track role.
There are a number of non-tenure track professorships (adjunct, teaching, practicing professional, or whatever title an institution gives them) that don't necessarily require PhDs. Note that these professorships are typically focused on teaching rather than scholarly research and usually don't come with any tenure guarantees.
Another counterexample: Walter Russell Mead, who joined the Bard faculty in 2005 and received tenure in 2010 if I am not mistaken. Admittedly, Bard does not grant doctorates, but it is regarded as a strong liberal arts college.
I'm under the impression that there are strong incentives to have faculty with terminal degrees for accreditation purposes, but historically it was not unusual and you can find more recent examples, though they certainly fall in the improbable category.
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13029 | Who should recommend applicants for administrative positions?
In a related question, Who should write a recommendation letter?, I came to the conclusion that letters of recommendation should be written by academics in the same field who knows the applicant's work, though, they may not know the applicant in person.
I wonder who should be named as references when applying for a senior administrative job such as dean, vice president, provost, president? In this case, the search committee should be interested in the applicant's skills for administrative tasks, rather than achievements in his or her academic discipline.
For example, a dean is applying for a provost position. Shouldn't the references be persons who have been directly involved in the applicant's role as dean in his current position?
For such high-level positions, just get references from the most powerful people you can get on board. That's a political process, so play it as such.
@F'x you mean somehow letter of support? e.g., recommendation by other university presidents or senior administrators? In other words, if senior administrator from other universities recommends an applicant, then he is a suitable candidate?
@F'x I am not sure that "name dropping" is really the way to go (although I really have no idea). Wouldn't you still want people who can comment on how good you can administrate.
Speculating, I'd guess your bosses from earlier administrative positions. Your chair when you were vice-chair, your dean or provost when you were chair, the chair of the important university-wide committee you sat on, the president of the professional organization that you were vice-president of, etc.
@NoahSnyder when 3 - 5 references are needed, only one can be the immediate past boss (where holding the senior position). What should be the list of references?
I didn't mean to imply immediate bosses only. The provost from when you were chair is even better!
The key when soliciting recommendation letters is to find persons who can provide insights into your credentials applicable for the job you are looking for. From this perspective the view you shared that letters "should be written by academics in the same field who knows the applicant's works" is only a special case.
When applying for a high level administrative job you need to find people at as high a level as possible. These should know your background, experience etc. but also be aware of the demands of the job for which you apply (this can be seen either in general or specific terms). There is thus no limit to whom you ask for letters but they will definitely not be as limited as for a regular academic position. Clearly anyone who has seen your capability to lead and administrate, for example, large projects, a department or research group will be appropriate. I can also add that you will most likely mostly look for letters from people in positions at similar or higher level than you (within academia, not necessarily so if you ask for letters from other professionals). But, the key is still to solicit support for the key aspects of the job to which you apply.
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7478 | Doubt regarding authorship
One of the master's student is working on a research problem. I am a PhD student. I have an idea which I proposed to my advisor on the same problem. Now he wants me and the masters student to work on that idea and publish a paper. Would I be treated as a first author in that paper or would I be a second author?
You should discuss this with your advisor BEFORE starting to work on it if this is a problem for you. Usually he makes the final call.
i am a 5th year phd student and need papers for passing from PhD
Wouldn't it be better to work on your own projects instead of shoehorning your way into someone else's?
What you "need" isn't the issue here. As others have said, you MUST discuss this openly with your advisor AND the MS student. In my opinion, if this is the MS student's project, they'd get a right of first refusal on involvement and author order, but that depends also on the specific context.
Are you sure you need to be the first author for papers in your PhD? Where I am, a major contribution to a paper where one is second author also counts. In fact, a paper I've done with a colleague will be part of BOTH our PhD's — as long as we clearly state in your theses what our own personal contributions were.
A PhD student insisting on being the first author on a master project is something not welcoming sometimes. Specially if the master student understands the problem and she can solve it by herself. In this case, unless you will bring a new major perspective to the solving method, you won't be the first author.
I have worked with master students and my role was very clear from the beginning. I was involved either as
supporter to the master student
(i.e. checking the literature, suggesting improvements, studying the problem, brainstorming for better ideas, help with writing)
or
the master student is supporter for me
(i.e. doing code implementation, graphic design..etc).
If the research problem is the student thesis, then most likely you will not be the first author (it is the student thesis, right?)
The authorship thing is the supervisor responsibility. If you are very concerned about it (i.e. you wouldn't work unless you are the first author), then you should speak with the supervisor before starting. Tell her why you want to be the first author.
This said, if you took the leading position as an experienced researcher you might be the first author without asking for it (unless alphabetical ordering took place).
You give a partial version of the story using pejoratives instead of trying to stay based on facts. So it is difficult to answer your question with that information.
What we can say is that authorship is something to be discussed with your advisor. It will be his decision, in the end. A good way to help yourself is to work hard on that idea, and clearly make your point. The best way to help yourself be first author is to write the paper, or at least the more significant portions of it! Start already with introduction and methods, and as soon as results are gathered, write it up and then submit it to your advisor. If you have done a large part of the work and wrote the manuscript, you should have no problem being first author.
If I work hard and do most of the parts..then can i be the first author even if it is the masters students thesis project
@user5715: You should be careful with this, since the master's student probably also wants to work hard and be first author. Of course what's right depends on the circumstances, and if you do most of the work then you deserve to be first author. However, competing too hard with junior students is generally frowned upon, and it could look bad to spend lots of time trying to be first author on someone else's master's thesis rather than focusing on deeper projects.
How is this a partial story and where are the pejoratives?
The pejoratives were removed, @PatrickT, as they should have been.
Why not see this as an opportunity to supervise an able student? Prod them, needle them, cajole them. Do whatever it takes to get the student to generate a good result. It seems to me your adviser is giving you an opportunity to grow your professional capabilities.
If the master's student does all the research work, then they should be first author.
Authorship is always controversial, but the general rule is: Contribution of authors determines the order of the authors on the scholarly publications. The first author is the one who has contributed the most and usually writes the paper. The last author is usually a professor or senior researcher who leads the team, and his role is almost supervisory.
In your case, how significant was your idea to produce outputs? If you had a significant idea, you have designed the research. Even if the MS student has made many experiments, you can make a contribution by writing and preparing the manuscript.
Finally, you can ask a senior researcher to judge between you, if still there is any controversy.
The advisor is the person who's decision will be final in this matter. I don't think it's a good idea to bring in an external senior researcher to the discussion (and I don't think any reasonably cautious researcher would accept to step in).
Your bold rule is not universal. In mathematics, theoretical computer science, and similar fields, authors are ordered alphabetically.
@JeffE is this believed to exist also in AI publications (i.e. AAAI,IJCAI,FLAIRS,CP) ?
@seteropere: Apparently not: http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/journals/ijcia/ijcia11.html
@seteropere: sometimes, it depends on the tradition particular authors associate themselves with. E.g., publications by KBS Group of TU Vienna have a strong tendency to follow alphabetical order (see all the Eiter et al. papers). I saw this elsewhere too, but it's quite rare.
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1698 | How do I prepare for the UK Research Excellence Framework submission?
I want to strengthen my return for the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF). My publications are fine, but how can I improve my REF "impact"?
Get people to cite your papers.
@DaveClarke I think paper citations influence the quality rating of the publications and at least do not directly influence impact. Would you care to elaborate in an answer how citations can improve my "impact".
My mistake. I understood impact to be, essentially, how much your work has affected the field, measured roughly by citations. But isn't REF about assessing institutions, not individuals?
"For the purposes of the REF, impact is defined
as an effect on, change or benefit to the economy,
society, culture, public policy or services, health, the
environment or quality of life, beyond academia" - and in particular, influences on either research or teaching are specifically excluded. So citations are not the answer - but I can't tell you what is, except to suggest that you read http://www.ref.ac.uk/media/ref/content/pub/assessmentframeworkandguidanceonsubmissions/02_11.pdf and the other documentation very carefully!
Necessary disclaimer: I have not had to be involved in REF. This is what I summarized from my experience of the recent French evaluation system. Reading the REF guidelines, it seems pretty similar in focus (although to be honest, for all their wordiness, I prefer the very detailed REF guidelines over the French way of not explicitly detailing every rule).
So, with that out of the way, I would say there are two ways to “improve” what is essentially one’s societal impact. Both are important.
On paper
This is the short-term way of improving your impact: just present it better. Peruse the guidance documents (and possibly other guidance, including documents your local university might issue in order to help its staff), write down the relevant keywords, list all items that can be counted towards “impact”. Then, brainstorm (possibly with colleagues or friends!) for ways to tie your already existing contributions to these items. Sometimes it is just a matter of remembering stuff you didn't think of (in my case, I remembered that we had some colleagues from an industrial company who showed up at a series of tutorials).
For real
Of course, you can also try to influence your plans to include more activities of clear societal impact. There are unlimited number of things you could come up with, and they depend widely on context (which you did not give). Keeping it short and generic, here are a few good examples that I can think of (some of them more applicable in some fields, obviously):
organize panel discussions on your favorite topic, open to the general public
open lab day
“cultural heritage” research
create visualizations of your research (pictures, movies, whatever), and publish it
interviews or other interventions in the media (even local)
being listed on experts registries: courts, journalism schools
all kinds of work with local artists
workshop or discussion groups involving academic and industrial communities
being a member of a standardization body
It looks like some sort of random list, cause I tried to list diverse activities. I'm sure others will have plenty of ideas to add!
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197590 | Difference Between Unit Cost and Salary (MSC Fellowship)
I am trying to understand the difference between Unit Cost and Salary.
I receive a MSC Fellowship and the different types of allowance on the surface appear like a good salary. All numbers combined they should add up to 66-76k per year. However, this is nowhere near what I actually receive as my salary (which is much lower ~30%).
There are two questions here:
The discrepancy between unit cost and salary has been explained to me comes from social security contributions – including health insurance, accident insurance and severance pay. However I still pay all of these things from my low salary? It feels like I am paying this cost twice.
I understood that the mobility allowance will be paid in full to me. Again More than 30% have already been deducted before tax. Where does that money go?
What can you ACTUALLY expect as a gross salary from the MSC? Without hidden fees and shell game tricks?
This is in Italy
I added italy tag to the question.
Please spell out acronyms the first time you use them. And if you're talking about specific fellowships post a link to the actual regulations.
I'd suggest you talk to the person at your university or fellowship body who explained this to you and have them clarify the things that don't make sense to you. They should be able to explain exactly what is going on.
Mobility allowance: maybe this money are allocated for your trips to conferences/visiting periods et simila. This was the case with some Marie Curie grants. It was a lot of money (up to 30% of the total fellowship). It will be paid in full to you if you spend it, i.e. you are expected to travel, to pay travel expenses and then get them reimbursed. Is it removed from your total scholarship (do you mean this with "deducted before tax")?
From your scolarship of 100, you have 30 reserved for travelling (+obscure uni overhead),on the 70 remaining you pay all sort of social contributions&taxes.
Thanks for the comments. I think I now understand where the money goes.
It looks like you've run into a common surprise for first-time grant holders. In many countries employers have to pay a significant contribution to pension funds, social security, national insurance, or similar programs, based on employee salary. On a normal salary statement you don't usually see this, since by convention employee salary is specified net of these employer contributions.
However, when universities fund research, these contributions are also claimed as part of the grant budget. Different funders specify that in different ways.
In the case of MSC fellowships, a fixed total gross employment cost is specified inclusive of both employee and employer taxes. The university then takes the employer contributions (pensions, national insurance) off that total. This reduced amount is then paid to the funding recipient as their salary, who then pays their personal taxes out of it. That does look like you're personally being taxed twice, but it is two distinct taxes, one of which is usually hidden from the employee.
I am not Italian so cannot comment for sure, but a quick Google suggests this is what's happening here - Italian employer tax contributions look to be 30-35% of gross salary, in the ballpark of the reduction you're seeing. So, although it's disappointing, that sounds like a reasonable deduction, and not some trickery by the university.
(Note: This is not the same thing as 'overheads' which go into other university funds and which can be used for purposes outside your direct salary costs. That's a separate heading for MSC fellowships, and none of your salary should be going towards that.)
This is the likely explanation. This happens in exactly this way in Germany and probably also similarly in Italy and various other European countries.
Thank you! I think this is what happens and your numbers match very well. This is really dissappointing to be honest.
I am not a lawyer and this is not a legal advice.
It is impossible to answer your question exactly without looking at the documents you refer to and also precise laws in your country.
However, generally speaking, funding documents explain how much money the funding body gives to the University. The University spends the money as follows:
It pays your salary
It pays the employers (theirs) contribution to taxes, social security, etc. Depending on your country and salary, this can be quite high (~30% of salary). I am not sure if this applies to Italy.
It may also keep some money as "overheads", to cover the costs of maintaining buildings, labs, etc. Depending on your University, this can be quite high (for example in the UK, ~50%+ of all funding goes to the University)
Thank you for the response. I am familiar that a lot of the money is assigned to the overhead. However, there is no transparency in the allocation of the money. I have x amount of money allocated to unit cost. What happened with the other money is not communicated with me and I want to understand where this money goes.
@Kai It is not uncommon for University budgets to lack transparency. Some may say they don't want academics to know how much of their hard won funding are held under various budget codes and obscure rubrics and spent on fancy buildings and promotion activities rather than actual research.
Thanks. Your comment describes exactly how I perceive this.
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110960 | Quit PhD abroad vs job at home country
I’ve just moved to Canada for PhD studies at one of its best universities.
One day during my master studies, I felt that I wanted to live the international student experience and decided to move to Canada which is far away from my home country (at least 16 hours by flight!). But before moving to Canada, I thought I needed to save some money as such I decided to work and save money. I worked at a good and well-known company with very good salary and benefits, my boss really liked me.
I left the job after a year and everyone there was shocked because I was so good at it.
I have to mention that during my work there, I also met my boyfriend whom I love very much!
Despite the fact that I met my significant other, had a great job and stable life, I went on my way and moved to Canada.
After only one month in Canada, I discovered a few things.
1) It feels bad to be away from my family and friends, although I used to live away from my family during the past few years, the increased distance makes it worse.
2) I've been thinking of going back to my home country since I arrived.
3) I miss my boyfriend very badly although we talk everyday.
4) I had a great job with very good salary and now I get less than half of my previous salary.
5) My social life here sucks, I’m working on it but things are moving very very slow!
6) The main concern: I joined a small research group; only 2 PhD students and 2 masters students and no Post docs. The supervisor is very busy (we booked a meeting and he has never showed up in time! In a best case scenario he is late by an hour), he doesn’t show any interest in guiding me or helping me define my PhD project, I thought he might be busy but after taking to the students it seems that he’s always like this. He never seems to have time and I need to chase him down to talk about research and ensure things move forward. Even one of his masters students said that if I wanna have a good PhD, I must find a co-supervisor because he’s not organized!
Besides, it seems that the supervisor does not have available projects as of now and he is currently away for the next two months.
I feel like I’m sinking and made the biggest mistake of my life! I'm no longer sure I want to continue my PhD studies! I only think about going back home. I don’t know what to do. Should I look for job back home? Stay? Ask the previous company to hire me back?
I’m afraid and nervous and have no one to consult!! Please help me cause I feel like I’m wasting time here while being unhappy and very far away from my loved ones :(
?
How long do you live in Canada so far? 1 week, 1 month, 3 month?
Have you thought about attending school much closer to home? I assume there are good schools nearer.
change advisor ASAP @lala
@SSimon thank you! I'm considering changing my supervisor.
@jmh I'm also considering a closer good school while looking for alternatives. Thank you!
First and foremost your mental/physical health is the most important thing. I was in your situation as well, and did my studies away from home. Here are my thoughts hope it can help you:
Temporary break: It might be the case that you are just exhausted yourself. What about a short break? You could have a honest conversation with your supervisor and take a break.
PhD is not a silver bullet to all of your life problems: I see in your question that you are suggesting that "you are wasting time" or "bad social life". So is it the PhD or you? Are you organized and keep room for your social interactions? Or the PhD itself is stressing out to a point that you need to stick to your desk. You need to take control of your life, with or without PhD, we all have personal traits that might be good or bad; but this is what is life about. You need to learn and grow and create a life you want to be in.
Supervisor Issue: Based on your question, I doubt that it is your supervisor, but if you feel the need; you can always have a discussion with the head of your research group about your supervisor.
Schedule your Holidays: It seems your boyfriend is not with you and this is sad to you, so you could always schedule your holidays around the year.
Do Exercise: This is important, to keep you motivated; keep yourself in shape; go for a walk, go to your university gym. This will help you in physically and mentally.
Leaving PhD: After all these, if you still think you don't like research and/or PhD; then leave your PhD; it is your life and journey.
this should be cannon answer,
why not add chaning advisor?
Thanks for your advice. I know that pursuing a PhD is not easy and might be hard and challenging. I cannot allow myself to have a temporary break since I've just joined the research group.
I'm doing exercise and attending social events. For my supervisor issues; there's no head of research so I only have my supervisor to talk to, He's super nice but is not good as a guide for PhD students. That's why I'm considering looking for another research group.
@LALA If you were a second/third year PhD student that says well, I want to change my research group; then I would understand that maybe it is based on some experience. However, because you just got started, it is hard to believe that you are making a good choice by changing your research group. You see what I'm saying here?. Also, little break could be traveling outside the city you are in during the weekend. Anyhow, I would be honest and at least talk to the head of the research department about this. Hope my comments could help you. Best of luck.
You need to fundamentally evaluate why you are doing a PhD and if you think the end goal is worth it.
If your only reason to get a PhD is "I wanna live the international student experience", then you have already achieved your goal. As you have discovered, "the international student experience" is often very isolating. It takes at least one year to build a new social circle, and unlike undergraduate studies, a PhD is more like a job and you're unlikely to find your friend group in your lab. That said, most of the time this is a temporary condition: keep working on making new friends and finding new places to go, and you will start feeling more at home in your new city. Consider how long can you hold out for those changes. For another month? Six months? A year? Until you graduate?
Ideally, your goal is that you really, really want to become a researcher. Now is the time where you get to see up close how that works out. Observe your advisor (and his colleagues, since he is apparently a less than ideal specimen), and imagine yourself in their place. Does that appeal to you? Can you see yourself doing what they do, five to ten years down the road? Also remember that academia is quite international and if you choose this career you will likely have to go through multiple international moves again in the future. Do you have a closely-held dream that makes it all seem worthwhile?
You also note that you are unhappy about the lower salary. It depends on what field you are in, but in most fields a PhD doesn't increase your earning power much compared to a master's, and may even reduce it if you choose to work at a university. Get a PhD because you love what you do, not because you want to earn more.
After pondering these questions, you should have a good idea of why you are "doing this to yourself", i.e. getting a PhD. Being able to tell yourself "I chose to do this, and I continue choosing to do this because I am getting something I want out of it" helps a lot. On the other hand, if you're only doing this because it seemed like a good idea at the time, you might want to write this PhD off as a failed experiment. (Or rather a successful experiment with negative results.)
Assuming you have some reasons and want to continue, there is a second question: should you persevere with this PhD. Your advisor's lack of involvement is frankly concerning. You should heed your colleagues' advice and look for ways to work around him. Explore your options actively: Find another professor at your uni to co-supervise, find your own project that you can manage with limited help, or if nothing seems to work out consider finding a different PhD position, maybe even in your home country or somewhere only a day trip away.
Thanks for your advice. I know exactly why I'm doing PhD and my ultimate goals are well-defined but it's only hard for me to be away from the family specially that I'm quite disappointed about my supervisor and his research..
Yes, I've had an uninterested advisor in the past and it is very demoralizing. If you can find an engaged co-supervisor or even a new primary supervisor, that can totally change your experience. It seems like you aren't yet committed to a project from what you wrote above, so you should be fairly unconstrained for finding something to work on with a different prof.
We can't advise you on what you should do, but we can talk about some of the issues.
Homesickness This is real issue. There's no telling when it would spring up or what triggers it. However, it does get better over time. It comes from losing immediate connection with friends and family. It can help for you to find new people you have affinity with (religious, cultural, ethnic, hobbies, etc).
Supervisor An inattentive supervisor can stifle a PhD. At this early phase, you are exploring the problem space. You need to find out the limits to the state of the art and carve out a niche big enough to spend a few years researching yet small enough to complete. You'd want to gain credit for something novel, so you don't want it to be something that someone else is just about to publish.
It really helps to communicate with established experts in the general field. They will know where the unknowns are, and they should have a fair idea of what others are working on. Ideally, your supervisor would be such an expert. However, you can also ask to join research labs / teams during their regular discussions, or even just gather a few others in your position (not necessarily from your supervisor's small research group) and look up recent conference proceedings to browse through their "further work" sections.
In later stages of your PhD, it can also help to have co-supervisors or mentors who can coach you through papers and conferences, as well as the final write-up. You don't need to switch supervisors, but if your supervisor is inattentive, you will need to seek alternative assistence.
These are simply practical tips. The first thing you need to do, though, is to decide whether you still want to pursue a PhD. The opening paragraph of your question indicates that this was your ambition - so you're 'living your dream'! The thing to ask yourself is whether this is still your dream.
One more point: going back. It's a common experience among students studying abroad and ex-pats alike that in a sense, there's no 'going back' after several years away. You will be changed by your new environment, language and culture, and your friends and family will also have changed in the interim. Even the company that employed you would have filled the vacancy you left. Special consideration is also needed about how to nurture long distance relationships. This isn't to say that it's all uphill, but it's important to recognise that studying abroad (PhD or otherwise) is a potentially life-changing endeavour.
You sound like a resourceful person, so you're probably going to be able to work out a lot of the immediate issues yourself, and you're probably going to land on your feet whether you continue with your PhD or return now. It's the longer-term issues that can easily be overlooked during this emotionally-charged initial phase.
It seems (simply said) like everything is bad in Canada and everything is good in your hone country. So you should go back. A PhD is a huge commitment of time and energy, one does it out of passion for research and the field - it does not make sense to do a PhD when you hate it.
It is not a character flaw not to have a PhD.
I didn't say Canada is bad, there's nothing wrong about Canada. I'm taking specifically about my situation.
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99401 | If the purpose of a registered study changes, is it still a registered study?
A study was registered in 2004 at ClinicalTrials.gov with identifier NCT00080171. It defined its purpose as:
Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common cause of disability in adults. The "Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI): A Knee Health Study" is a nationwide research study that will help researchers gather more information about the physical changes that occur prior to the onset of arthritis symptoms or before OA gets worse. The purpose of this study is to examine people who have knee OA or are at high risk for knee OA; information will be used to better understand how to prevent and treat knee OA.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a paper, Fried potato consumption is associated with elevated mortality: an 8-y longitudinal cohort study, with the stated conclusions (emphasis mine):
The frequent consumption of fried potatoes appears to be associated with an increased mortality risk. Additional studies in larger sample sizes should be performed to confirm if overall potato consumption is associated with higher mortality risk. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT00080171.
On closer inspection it appears that the fried-potato paper relied on data collected for the osteoarthritis study. But the study registration mentions neither fried potatoes nor mortality.
Given the divergence of purpose, should the paper make the claim that the trial was registered?
First off, as you state it your worry is as follows:
Given the divergence of purpose, should the paper make the claim that the trial was registered?
Unpacked and clarified, I think this worry contains the following assumption:
A paper should only claim that it is a registered trial if the purpose of the trial that is registered and the claim that the paper looks at are closely connected.
I think this assumption is basically false and misunderstands the purpose of registration.
Looking over clinicaltrial.gov 's explanations of why and when to register trials, they suggest five benefits of registration and five benefits of the data, one of which is:
Facilitate systematic reviews and other analyses of the research literature
Several of the other things they state are similar in function. (There's also public benefit, ethical review, avoiding bias in the use of the data, and other features).
The data from Clinicaltrials.gov is free for anyone to use subject to these terms and conditions. The relevant item is :
In any publication or distribution of these data, you should:
Attribute the source of the data as ClinicalTrials.gov
Update the data such that they are current at all times
Clearly display the date the data were processed by ClinicalTrials.gov
State any modifications made to the content of the data, along with a complete description of the modifications
Thus, if you use data from Clinicaltrials.gov to produce research, you must cite that you took it from there and presumably should say which trial you are working from.
The specific method to correctly cite would be a conjunction of these terms and the journal's policies for citation.
On a general level, there's nothing ethical wrong with saying where the data came from. In fact, it's an obligation.
Returning to your final question, I think we can nitpick them for their English a bit. The authors might be better suited using a different phrase than
This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT00080171.
which they use in this paper and another publication where in the full-text they state:
Data for this trial (NCT00080171) were obtained from the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) database.
This leads me to believe they are using "trial" in a somewhat odd way (at least from the perspective of a native AmE speaker who works in the humanities).
Something like:
This research is based on the registered trial NCT00080171 from clinicaltrials.gov.
seems better in both instances.
But while nitpicking for English, I think that they must state that trial they used is registered but shouldn't make it seem like this was that trial's purpose.
The bias issue mentioned in that clinicaltrials.gov link is specifically publication bias, and that does become a concern when a trial is "mined" for findings that aren't connected to its registered purpose. If I have a large data set I can invariably find something that's "statistically significant" (cf. https://xkcd.com/882/ ) - part of the point of registration is to prevent that by requiring researchers to be honest up front about how widely they're casting their net.
@GeoffreyBrent okay, I've tried editing that in. Feel free to improve as you see fit.
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34416 | How may I calculate Research Contribution as Per UGC rules?
The University Grants Commission (U.G.C) is the autonomous and statutory body in India responsible for governing the rules and regulations of the universities and various other academic institutions
that come under its purview.
The rule for appointment of teachers in the important academic institutes of India is governed by its rule, "UGC Regulations on Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and Other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education 2010".
It is generally taken as the order of the day.
In this regulation, there is a provision for calculating the points for research papers, research contributions etc. I tried to go through them, but feeling slightly ambiguous. It is given generally in Appendix III.
My question is in the tables given against each item maximum score is given.
But how should we take the count of each item. I tried to go through the same but did not find anything.
What is the value of each item and how does it contribute to the maximum score as given in the tables in the aforementioned report.
I was able to download the paper using the link provided, and thus the link is functional.
I have looked at Appendix III briefly, and will offer my interpretation. However, I am not Indian and have no experience in India, so my interpretation is strictly based on what I have read and my background (US, academic + industry, where we do not use such explicit scoring systems).
My interpretation is that the maximum number of points would be awarded if the requirements for each item are fully met. E.g. if you publish a research paper in one of the specified refereed journals, you get 15 points for that publication, regardless of the number of citations that paper gets or the ranking/reputation of the journal, or even your own opinion of the quality of that paper. Though it is not stated in Appendix III, I would interpret "max points" as meaning that a lower score might be awarded if the criteria is only partially met. For example, if you published an essay or commentary in a journal rather than a full research paper, you might award yourself 4 points or 7 points rather than the full 15. (E.g. I had a letter published in PNAS critiquing a published article. It went through a review process, but at 500 words would hardly qualify as an "article". So maybe it's worth 1 point in this category.)
In part I base my interpretation at the fine granularity of the scoring system and the many explicit rules and criteria that go along with each item. I also base my interpretation on the lack of any mention of "quality" or "impact" or "significance" in the criteria.
What my interpretation leaves out is the cultural norms, both across Indian colleges and universities, and also by regions, fields/disciplines, etc. What ever the official and explicit rules of any scoring system, there are always unofficial and tacit norms as to how they are executed and interpreted.
First of all, the link you gave us in your question is not working. So, I can't figure out what you are talking about.
If you are talking about API (academic performance indicator), then I think you should look for the application form issued the university where you wish to apply for the post of assistant professor. You will find all the information about API including how to calculate your own API in that application form itself.
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6010 | Importance of Undergraduate Research
How important is it for an undergraduate student majoring in Physics and Mathematics (or any other science) to have experience in research (e.g., have a peer reviewed paper to his name most probably in collaboration with a professor) at the undergraduate level, keeping in mind that he will be applying for a master's or other postgraduate degree?
If you want admission to the very best PhD programs in the US, prior formal research experience is very important, if not necessary. Admissions committees are primarily looking for evidence of research potential. The best possible evidence for "I'll be a good researcher someday" is "Look, I'm already a good researcher." So having formal peer-reviewed publications is better than having publishable but unpublished results, which is better than having research experience but no publishable results, which is better than having no research experience. If you're applying to the top PhD programs, you will be competing with applicants (yes, plural) who have peer-reviewed publications (yes, plural).
What if someone is seeking admission to a MS or an Integrated MS/PhD programme (not a PhD, let us say that he will be applying for his PhD after his Masters). Do they also look for "evidence of research potential" like published papers?
Applying for an MS program in the US is quite different, and varies from university to university, based on whether the MS is terminal, or is a pre-screen for a Ph.D.
But if you mean a research masters (prep for a PhD), then yes. Not as much, perhaps, but only because most applicants with publications apply directly to PhD programs.
In the U.S., in mathematics, it is a bit unusual to have a peer-reviewed publication from an undergrad, despite the recent years' push for "Research Experiences for Undergrads". In some cases there are group-written papers in second or third-tier journals, but nothing too serious. Or the undergrad gets to be the tag-along on an applied-math research "team". Indeed, it is exceptional, and only rarely happens, that an undergrad in mathematics has adequate background (disregarding future potential) to make a serious contribution. It does happen, but rarely, and is not at all "expected". Evidently the situation is much different in other fields.
In terms of literal admission to good-but-not-elite programs, the usual "publications" we on admissions committees see are "nice", but not really evidence of future potential so much as enthusiasm, ... which is a good thing, for sure! ... but the level of focus and effort required for these little papers is far, far different than the level of commitment required to do a Ph.D., with or without "talent".
So, what you are saying is that though a not-too-serious paper looks nice on the CV yet it really does not affect the committee's decision? And this is restricted only to Mathematics?
@AhiralSarkar: yes, not-too-serious papers on the CV have little effect on admission committees, for math grad school. I don't know about expectations in other fields.
During my studies it was relatively rare to publish as an undergraduate. The level of research needed for a peer reviewed publication is imo higher than what an undergraduate can produce. Maybe if the supervisor writes a paper based on your results, and with a lot of help with producing the results, this might lead to a co-authorship for the undergraduate. Therefor, I think that in the Dutch system (my experience) a peer reviewed publication would be a plus, but definitely not a requirement for admission into a masters program. Ofcourse, you need have written a thesis, but it does not have to published in a peer-reviewed journal. I do not know how this experience translate to, say, the US, but I know for countries like Germany it is not even always usual for a PhD to write peer-reviewed articles.
I am from India but I have seen universities in the US prefers candidates having some publications co-authored with a professor and/or fellow students..However, you mentioned that one needs to have a thesis. Do you mean, like a special paper that one does during his masters? I don't think one has to do a thesis during one's bachelors under the usual curriculum in India.
In the Netherlands it is normal to write a thesis at the end of your Bachelor. It is meant to be the first independent research project you do. It normally takes around 3 months. But by publications do you mean publications in peer-reviewed journals, or conference publications (which can also be peer-reviewed, but often less stringent in my experience)?
I meant an arxiv paper or one in a journal (not as high profile as the Letters of Physical Review but something having an impact factor of (say) 8). And no, most Indian universities do not have this thesis requirement at the undergraduate level. However,some meritorious students often do such projects in association with a research institute but that is by the virtue of the benefits they receive if they have won a scholarship or a fellowship of sorts. It is basically, a personal effort, not a formal requirement.
The level of research needed for a peer reviewed publication is imo higher than what an undergraduate can produce — Nonsense. I can show you dozens of published counterexamples.
for countries like Germany it is not even always usual for a PhD to write peer-reviewed articles — This obviously varies greatly by field. In computer science, it is very rare for a student to get a PhD without at least one formal publication.
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6116 | How do you get started organizing a class?
As an academic in the university, how do you organize your self from the beginning of a semester?
For example:
How do you take the absent students names?
How do prepare your materials?
How do you write a syllabus for students and do you hand them out?
What computer programs do you use to plan your lessons?
I started my career as a lecturer last semester and I found myself not organized so I need to learn from your experience.
How do you take the absent students names?
I don't. If a student finds my lectures boring or useless, they shouldn't waste their time coming to class. (As others point out, there are very good reasons to require attendance in laboratory-, studio-, and discussion-based classes.)
How do prepare your materials?
Coffee and LaTeX. Lots of coffee and LaTeX.
How do you write a syllabus for students and do you hand them out?
When I started out, I modified the syllabus from the previous iteration of the course, which was taught by an experienced instructor, so I could be sure to include all the necessary details. I used to hand out the syllabus on the first day of class, but now I just post it on the well-advertised course web site.
What computer programs do you use to plan your lessons?
I write everything in LaTeX (specifically, TeXShop) and distribute everything as PDF files on the course web site. (See the first question.) I also use SubEthaEdit to edit the course web pages themselves.
And don't forget coffee stains in latex: http://hanno-rein.de/archives/349
For a lecture course, compulsory attendance is admittedly pointless. However, for a language or lab course, having such a system is probably necessary.
Unless the end of the lab has a test, attendance should not be compulsory. A university has a broad audience, some people might be following the class but already taken the labs, and they'd just waste their, your and the other students' time. It's university - if they think they can pass without the lab, and they can't, well... that's a lesson too.
One issue is not mentioned above, and is very important.
Make sure to state and post policies ahead of time for:
how you'll deal with late submission of homeworks
what your policy on cheating/plagiarism is
any related university policies that students need to be made aware of.
These are more important than you might imagine. At the very least, having the policy allows you to be consistent when dealing with student excuses, and prevents you from having to make up policy as you go along. If someone is caught cheating, it will be important to have an up-front policy that you can point to, otherwise it will be difficult to penalize the student.
This semester I'm teaching a brand new course at my university. It's an elective course, so I can be much more of the "mad scientist experimenting."
I have a generic list of topics, and a general plan for the number of lectures during the semester. That means I can organize things loosely, rather than specifying in exhaustive detail what will be covered in each lecture before the start of the semester. Some topics have taken me much less time than I anticipated, and others have run much longer.
I have been using a combination of LaTeX and MultiMarkdown to prepare my lecture notes. I have also made the conscious decision not to use slides, but instead to go "old-school" and lecture at the blackboard. I've found this makes the pace of the course slower, and allows me to focus on the major concepts, rather than trying to cram too much material into a single lecture. However, I do publish the lecture notes following the end of each lecture, making it easier for students to keep up with the material.
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6164 | Is doing a PhD just for the university requirement is a good idea?
I have an MSc degree and I work at university as a lecturer. However, the university has a policy where you should do your PhD within a given time frame. The problem is that I'm not interested in any area yet, nor am I interested in doing the work associated with a PhD.
Should I just go with it because the university forces me to do it, or should I just quit from the university and look for another job?
What do you think? Can I succeed if I start doing my PhD while i feel that I'm forced to do it?
If you don't really enjoy research, it's not a good idea to get a PhD.
nor I'm interested in doing hard work — Um. No, you don't want a PhD. And you probably don't want to be a lecturer either.
@JeffE : And I wouldn't want this person as my lecturer!
In my university back in Mexico, they had something similar, if professors want to get ahead (income, professional, etc) they had to an additional degree (Masters, PhD)
I think that if you do not have the motivation, you'll have a lot of problems, doing a PhD is already a taxing endeavor, in the sense that many times you'll start wondering wether this was a good idea or not.
As in many things in life, if you do this because you are made to (like students that go to college because their parents want to) you'll have lots of resentment.
However, not all is lost, you can try looking for something you are really passionate about, and then try to do a PhD on that.
A PhD has the potential to open many doors. Its better to do it when there is some motivation than regret later. Think six years from now and where you want to be and whether it would require a PhD.
Do note that it is not easy. It requires hardwork and dedication. There would be many times when you would want to quit. So have a strong reason to pull you through when this happens.
Most importantly, in my view you would be better placed in whatever field you choose with a PhD. You may be afraid of sacrificing three years of your life now but what about the rest of the years ahead. As the say, time flies. Only you can make the call.
Above all, a PhD is about learning how to become a researcher. You mention that you have a lecturer position, does it include doing research? If you want to become a researcher in addition to teaching, a PhD is the way to go. If performing research is what you want, doing a PhD is logical, and should be worth it. If you have no ambition in being a researcher, a PhD is going to be a very painful process, similar to doing any other job you do not enjoy.
In the end, it is all about what you want. If you want to be a reseacher, do a PhD. If not, I would not recommend it.
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57902 | What can I do if one of my referees falsifies information in a Letter of Recommendation?
I am in a difficult situation in regards to letters of recommendation and I would like to ask for a bit of advice from all of you.
This past June, I applied to several different medical schools across the country and each one required me to submit at least 3 letters of recommendations (1 from a non-science professor and 2 from science professors). All of the faculty members that I asked were happy to write me letters of recommendation. However, one of the faculty members delayed writing the letter of recommendation for a very long time (almost 5 months) despite several reminders. One of the medical schools had a strict deadline by which they wanted their application to be completed and because of the delay from this one letter writer, I was automatically rejected from the school. At this point, I decided to return to my university (I already graduated) and speak with my letter writer in person.
From the discussion with my letter writer, I found out some very disturbing things about his intentions. He was very displeased with my in-person visit to his office (even though I did email him several times beforehand without him bothering to respond). It was at this point that he began accusing me of things that were 100% false and was threatening to include this false information in his letter of recommendation. He eventually submitted his letter of recommendation, and, at this point, I could not stop him from doing so.
Now I know that many of you will say that I should have been able to see this coming and avoid asking this faculty member for a letter of recommendation. But, with all honesty, I was completely under the impression that this professor will write me a strong letter of evaluation. I viewed this person as someone that was a true mentor to me throughout college, and this situation is very disheartening. In my honest evaluation of the situation, I believe that writing a negative letter of recommendation that includes false information about a student out of spite is completely unethical. I also believe that I should have the opportunity to defend myself.
There is no way that I can see what he wrote in his letter of recommendation. If anybody here has any sort advice in regards to this situation, please I would greatly appreciate it. I would hate to see a letter of recommendation that contains false information ruin my chances of pursuing my academic goals. Is it possible to take legal action in this matter?
Often with people like that, their bark is worse than their bite. If not, the writer will probably destroy his credibility by writing link a crank. // I wonder if you could have an additional letter of recommendation sent -- and then you could hope they'll eliminate the bad one (or write and ask that it be eliminated.
I viewed this person as someone that was a true mentor to me throughout college — Ouch. I'm so sorry.
As mentioned by Dan Romik, this is indeed a very unusual situation. This is perhaps less relevant for your main question, but since it seemed that you were not expecting this reaction at all, it would be good to find out why he has such a negative perception of you(r work).
If you are already rejected, wouldn't the long-past-due recommendation quickly go into the trash?
Don't forget that writing letters of recommendation for students lies squarely in the job description of a professor. You'd be within your rights to protest this prof's delay to the dean, as well as his poor professionalism. If he didn't want to write the letter he should have said, "you should find someone else." At any rate, don't sweat it. If the letter was that late the med school admissions krewe will, possibly, not worry about it.
Thank you for the responses, one of the immediate actions that I took was ask another faculty member to write a letter of recommendation on my behalf in the hopes that it can eliminate any negative comments made by my original letter writer. Unfortunately, only a couple of the schools to which I applied were willing to accept it. Once the application cycle is finished (at which point this professor can no longer do any more harm to my application), I will be sure to file a complaint with University officials.
Also, I was able to find out why he had such a negative perception of my character, but I can assure you that his assertions are 100% false and I can prove it. This is partly why I am so frustrated with this situation.
If you know what they are, and you can prove they're false, can you prove they're false, to this former mentor?
I can definitely prove they are false to this faculty member. The problem is, he never gave me the chance. Within a few days of my meeting with him (where he made these threats), he submitted his letter of recommendation. It's simply too late.
Since it seems like that's the cause of the bizarre situation, if you think you can clear it up that way, that seems worth doing. As Kakoli wrote, he may not have actually sent a bad letter, and if he did, but you can clear it up, he might write or call in an amendment. If he didn't, and you clear it up, you can also know and not worry about it.
If the opportunity presents itself, I would love to clear this up with the professor. It seemed like he never wanted to speak to me ever again after my in-person meeting with him, which is truly saddening. Regardless of the letter of recommendation, I learned so much from him when I took his class I even gave him thank you notes. It's truly unfortunate. I can honestly say that I never expected him to ever react the way he did.
The possibilities for legal action will very strongly depend on your jurisdiction, which you have not specified. (For instance, in some countries there are freedom of information laws that open channels for applicants to demand access to their referees' letters.) Legal action, however, is unlikely to get you into med school - what you need is quick, concerted, effective action towards cancelling out its effects. If you later want to show to this person that this behaviour is not acceptable, you should really consider a route within your old institution.
Thank you for your response. I agree and I would never try to use legal action to get into medical school. I want to get into medical school based on my own academic merit. I asked another faculty member to write me a letter of recommendation and I am just hoping that this will negate anything bad that my original letter writer potentially wrote. But, yes, I agree. The best thing is to go through my old university. Like someone mentioned earlier, I have every right to complain about this faculty members lack of professionalism and respect.
Has the professor ever done this before?
Given what you say I wonder if the professor has developed some sort of mental problem.
Contrary to a lot of comments this type of situation is more common than one would think. I knew of a high school teacher who would do this for undergraduate college application essays (thats something not NEARLY as important as a grad school application) , one unfortunate student was informed by the institution they applied to that this was going on, and finally the cat was out of the bag. Again I doubt it is the majority of people but some people just like to do harm. At least this professor admitted it before the action happened.
This is a most unusual situation. It's extremely rare for there to be such a large discrepancy between what a student thinks a professor thinks about them and what the professor actually thinks about them. Considering also that in this case the professor's opinion is wrong (as I will assume for the purposes of the answer, though I know nothing of the details of course), this scenario falls right through the cracks of the whole system of letters of recommendation, which was simply not designed with such situations in mind.
With that said, I think that somewhat ironically, the very strangeness of the situation offers a glimmer of hope, since it means that you can consider unusual steps that would not be acceptable in a more normal situation. Specifically, two such steps that I can think of are:
You could write a letter to the schools to which you applied (specifically, email it to the admissions committee, and make sure to cc a staff member and ask for an acknowledgement) in which you explain the situation. If your letter is well-written and the explanation that you offer is credible, this may counter the effect of the hypothetical damaging letter from the professor. You may want to line up another letter writer in advance of sending your letter to substitute for the bad one.
You could complain about the professor's behavior to the department chair or another professor you trust at your university, explain the details of the story, and ask them to write to the schools you applied to. This would not be a normal letter of recommendation. It should be an email sent directly to the admissions committee (rather than uploaded via some kind of automated system for LORs), again explaining the situation. Having the explanation come from the chair or another faculty member, if they agree to do it, will be more credible and increase the chances of success. In fact, the chair may very well know of similar stories of odd behavior involving your professor that you were not aware of, which he could mention or hint at in his/her letter, further strengthening the credibility of your claims.
Note that in both of these suggestions you will have to disclose all the information about what took place between you and your professor to make the explanation credible and have a realistic hope that the professor's false accusations will be ignored. If some of what took place is embarrassing or damaging to you due to real rather than imagined reasons, I'm afraid that's just a risk you'll have to take. Good luck!
Thank you for the response. You provided with me with very useful information and I highly appreciate it. I do have a plethora of faculty members that I personally trust and that I can approach if ever I am in need of help. One of these faculty members is also very close with the Dean of the college. I will be sure to be in contact with this person.
You're most welcome, glad I could help and I hope things work out for you.
The professor had probably (and hopefully) just threatened to include these false accusations, but in reality has not. Apart from the fact that most people would not ruin someone's career prospects just out of spite, he would probably be aware that the other letters of recommendation from the other professors would not corroborate with this view. You clearly do not have any way of finding out what he has actually done. Additionally, if he has not actually written those lies, it might appear extremely odd if you write to the schools where you applied, explaining the situation. I don't think there's much you can do now. If you are rejected, you should apply to some other institution with a letter of recommendation from someone else.
Thank you for the response. You bring up a good point. I can't see the contents of the letter and, thus, there's no way I can confirm my fears. If I send a letter to schools explaining this situation, and it turns out that no negative comments were made in the first place, it could work against me. Honestly, the damage (if any) has already been done and all I can do is learn from this situation. I was sure to share my story with other students at my university as a warning. Once the application cycle is done, no more further damage can be done, I will report this to University officials.
Why can't he find out? If he sues, it'll come out in discovery (I assume. I'm not a lawyer); purely inside-academia notions of confidentiality with no legal standing in the real world shouldn't affect that.
I don't see how you could take legal action, the content of the letter is confidential. In my institution at least, there would be no way for you to ever see it. So, effectively, you would be taking "blind" legal action, regardless whether the letter was positive or negative. This might be construed as if you intended to have a back-up in case of rejection. That is why the institution probably won't take into account any objections from your side (including a legal action). The only thing that you might hear from them, if you brought it up, is that you should've chosen your letter writers more carefully.
That being said, I really don't think anyone would on purpose sabotage someone else's career just on a whim and on top of that being a nice person (as you describe the professor in question). So, if the letter was sent, I'd assume that it contains no lies in it. As being noted in the comments, that might very well also damage the professor's reputation.
In the end of the day, there isn't much you can do at this point. If you get rejected and still think that the professor had sabotaged you, re-apply (possibly somewhere else) and don't ask for any more letters from them.
Thank you for the response. You are absolutely correct, there isn't much that I can do at this point. The only reason I was exploring possible legal action is because letters of recommendation are part of one's academic record (much like transcripts). Thus, I believe that anyone that falsifies information on a letter of recommendation should be held accountable by the law. Please believe me, I DO NOT wish to take legal action against anyone, I was just looking for a way to defend myself.
This sounds like a situation where mediation could be extremely effective. If your town or university has a mediation office, you could formally request mediation. If not, you could still approach your dean and broach the idea.
As part of the mediation, after clearing up the misunderstanding, you could ask the professor to submit a corrected letter, with a brief explanation that there had been a misunderstanding that has since been cleared up.
Mediation can be very effective. However, there's no guarantee of success, and no guarantee the professor would accept your invitation to have a mediation. It's generally an entirely voluntary thing.
It shouldn't be you who invites him.
Some mediators are better than others. Choose carefully.
If the professor doesn't accept your invitation to mediation, I think it would still be worthwhile to go to your department, describe your predicament, and ask for assistance.
Please keep in mind that departments like to see their students get placed well after graduation.
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59114 | Informal vs. formal journal acceptance letter
I got a letter from a journal editor telling me that they 'would be happy to accept my paper'; the editor asked me to take care of some minor citation issues (I carelessly misspelled one author's last name and I misplaced the publication year of a cited work.) and then upload the final version of the manuscript to the submission system. Although this letter sounds very certain/positive to me. I am still a bit wary and anxious (after all, this is still not a formal acceptance letter). I quickly resubmitted the final version of the paper to the submission system in the same day. It has been two weeks since I heard from the editor and resubmitted the final file. I know that it's impossible to expect a speedy response. But, in my scenario, how long should I wait to write back to the editor and ask for a formal acceptance letter (or is it even okay/appropriate to do this?) At this stage, should I be worried (about any possible hiccups that may stand on the way of getting the paper published)? Thanks very much for your insights and experience sharing.
Not an answer to your question, but: is there any evidence that a referee looked at your paper? Otherwise, what you describe sounds rather sketchy. This isn't one of those low-quality pay-to-publish journals, is it?
sorry that I did not make it clear that I have to 'fix' the citation issue because I carelessly misspelled one author's last name and I misplaced the publication year of a cited work. No, the journal is one of the best journals in my field, indexed in SSCI. Also, I know that it was not sent back to the reviewers (as shown by the submission system: with the editor).
I agree that you have nothing to worry about, but I slightly disagree with the premises of Anonymous Mathematician's answer. Basically, I don't think there is such a thing as an "informal acceptance letter". Or, to be a bit more precise, I don't consider a distinction between formal and informal acceptance letters to be a helpful or a particularly meaningful one. Rather, the distinction that may be worth making in connection with your situation is between simple acceptance and "conditional acceptance". Another distinction that may be relevant here is between a well-written letter and a poorly phrased letter.
Let me explain: a conditional acceptance is one where the editor indicates willingness to accept a paper conditioned on the author making certain revisions to the manuscript that are deemed to be satisfactory. It may be reasonable to characterize the letter you got as a conditional acceptance letter from a purely logical point of view, but honestly, given the fact that you were only asked to make a couple of changes of a purely cosmetic nature, I would view this as semantic nitpicking. If, as Anonymous Mathematician said, the "informality" of the acceptance means that the journal still has a theoretical option to reject your paper, then I would argue that by the same logic they could do that even with a more formal, or less conditional-sounding, acceptance. After all, it would be no less ridiculous for them to argue that they are now rejecting the paper because you failed to satisfy the "condition" of correcting a couple of typos, than it would be for them to retract a completely formal, unconditional acceptance. If you look around on Academia.SE you will find examples even of such crazy things happening on very rare occasions.
Personally, given the "I would be happy to accept" wording and the modest nature of the corrections you were asked to make, your letter just sounds like a simple acceptance letter to me, which brings me to my second point about the distinction between a well-written and poorly phrased letter: some people -- in fact, rather a lot of people -- use language in a careless or sloppy manner and/or are not sensitive to nuances of the English language such as the difference between a conditional and unconditional verb conjugation. I think it's quite possible that the editor used the conditional tense not as a way to pressure you to submit your revised manuscript faster as Anonymous Mathematician speculated, but simply out of a lack of awareness of how the writing would be perceived by you, the recipient of the letter, and without realizing that the lack of clarity on what would happen after you submit your revised manuscript would result in needless worrying on your part, you posting a question here, us writing an answer to your question, etc.
To summarize: congratulations on your paper being (in)formally and (un)conditionally accepted to one of the top journals of your field! You have nothing to worry about, but to once again differentiate myself from Anonymous Mathematician, I won't tell you that you "shouldn't worry"; it is human and reasonable to worry, and it is human and reasonable to be annoyed at an editor who uses needlessly ambiguous language in an acceptance letter. What I would probably do in your situation is to wait a few more days and, if I still don't hear anything, send an email to the editor politely asking for an acknowledgement that my revised manuscript was accepted and for confirmation that the acceptance is "formal". You may in fact need to do this for your peace of mind, since my guess is that without contacting the editor yourself you may not get any more "formal" acceptance notification than the one you already got. (You will probably get some correspondence from the publisher at some point about galley proofs of your paper, copyright transfer forms etc., which would be an implicit confirmation of the acceptance, but this could not happen for many months.)
Thank you so much for taking your time to respond to my inquiry, which not only addresses my question but also turns my question into a learning opportunity to me and other (junior) scholars in the field. I agree with you that 'simple' acceptance seems to be more applied to my case. Thank you also for the suggestion regarding what I should proceed. Thank you once again for your information and experience sharing. I really appreciate it.
@NYC10027 no problem, you're very welcome. By the way, I've been frustrated by poor email communication myself many times, including from journal editors, and still often find myself baffled about such things, so this is by no means an issue only junior people are frustrated about.
You shouldn't worry much. It's extremely unlikely that an informal acceptance will turn into a rejection, although I suppose it is theoretically possible. In my experience, this is something editors do to get leverage over authors: authors are faster and more diligent about making revisions when acceptance has not yet been guaranteed, even when they know it is almost certain.
I wouldn't worry about the two week delay or get in touch with the editor yet. For example, if the editor is in the U.S. the Thanksgiving holiday intervened, and the end of the semester is always a busy time. It's also possible that the editor is checking with a referee (although this may not be necessary for such minor revisions). It can't hurt to ask whether the revised paper was received, but I'd recommend waiting another week or two.
Incidentally, asking you to add citations sounds a little odd. Are these from a referee report, and do they look like important references that you missed? One unethical thing editors are occasionally tempted to do is to pressure authors to add citations to manipulate citation rates. (For example, adding citations to their journal or their friend's journal.) That's not necessarily going on here, but if it is then it's an inappropriate use of informal acceptance to get leverage over authors.
Thank you very much for your information. I totally forgot about the fact that it is now the thanksgiving holiday in the States. This could take some some time. Sorry that I did not make it clear that I have to 'fix' the citation issue because I carelessly misspelled one author's last name and I misplaced the publication year of a cited work.
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122021 | How can I pay for medical school in the US?
So I have a bachelor's degree and am planning on applying to medical school this year (in the US). I've previously used federal student aid to cover the cost of my undergraduate degree.
My question is, what types of sources of funding are available to cover the cost of medical school? From what I'm reading, it seems like you can no longer get federal student aid after you have already attained a degree.
Note: I am not asking ("shopping") for specific sources, I am just wondering what types of sources (e.g., loans, stipends, savings) medical students in the US typically use to fund their studies.
Have you checked with them? You may be reading it wrong, or right... and they may also know who you could contact...
I don't think this should have been closed. It's a question about how to finance postgraduate education (of a particular kind), and we have lots of questions and answers about teaching assistantships, research assistantships, etc. Of course each institution may make specific offers, but someone could certainly write an answer about what sorts of funding sources are generally available for medical students in the US.
Note that "FAFSA" refers to a single form which is used to apply for need-based financial aid through many different programs (Pell grants, work-study, subsidized and unsubsidized loans, etc, etc), each having their own criteria. Some may be available for postgraduate studies and others may not. So conflating them all as "FAFSA aid" is likely to lead to confusion.
I made some edits which I hope will make the question more clear to readers. Please feel free to edit further if you don't agree with the revised wording.
This is clearly on-topic.
Voting to reopen...I can see how this might have been closed for "shopping" (I edited to avoid this), but no idea why it was closed as "out of scope".
I don't feel like this is sufficient for an answer but...Most medical students in the US pay for medical school from their own funds (including loans). Unlike other countries, the US does not subsidize medical education. The assumption is that upon completion of a degree and obtaining a professional position you will be compensated sufficiently to pay off any loans etc necessary to get there. I think there is a lot of room to debate that structure but SE is not a great format for debate.
By far, for professional medical education in the US, it is most common to pay for education with loans (or personal funds, if available). Even low-cost schools are expensive relative to undergraduate education. The median educational debt for graduating students is >$190k in the USA. Debts are worse if you consider earning potential in other fields.
It is simply uncommon for medical study in the US to be paid for government or other funds - these funds are limited to programs for underprivileged minorities and for those pursuing joint degrees in the sciences (and even then, loans predominate).
Being a medical doctor in the USA is lucrative, but becoming one entails major risk. Further discussion is probably beyond this stack but these discussions are constant in academic journals.
Not in medicine, but since no one else is answering, and I do know a bit about paying for grad school....
My question is, what types of sources of funding are available to cover the cost of medical school?
There is a good discussion of this here. In brief, you pay with:
Your own money (that you already have)
Scholarships and grants (which don't need paid back)
Loans
There are also service programs (e.g., in the military), in which they subsidize your education in exchange for a commitment to take a particular job for a few years after you're a doctor.
From what I'm reading, it seems like you can no longer get federal student aid after you have already attained a degree.
This is incorrect; federal student aid and federally-guaranteed student loans are available for both graduate and undergraduate students. The Stafford, Perkins, and Grad PLUS are specifically designed for this situation, and can cover up to the full cost of attendance.
In practice, my (anecdotal) understanding is that loans are the most common source of funding, and most doctors graduate with six figures of debt.
Note, the situation may be different for international students, who would not be eligible for federal student aid, including federally guaranteed loans.
By far, for professional medical education in the US, (1) and (3) are most common (really, probably (3)). (2) is incredibly rare, limited to programs for underprivileged minorities and for those pursuing joint degrees in the sciences (and even then, 1 and 3 predominate).
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47751 | Expulsion from doctoral program
I was recently expelled from doctoral program in English for plagiarism in qualifying exam. Although it was for the lack of a citation, I attended a major research university with a zero tolerance policy. What are the chances I can reapply to another doctoral program? Specifically, I am in creative writing/poetry and I was in an English PhD program...what if I apply to a PhD in creative writing program? How do I go about addressing the plagiarism of the qualifying exam in past program, but highlight I have had numerous national publications since then in poetry and won a major book award, not publication?
Usually, I would ignore minor typos in the question. The OP wants to study doctoral program in English. So I put the question into my spell checker and found two typos and a question mark missing at the end. No offence intended here. But, a reminder for the OP.
@scaaahu well, the OP wants to study creative writing...
Note to the OP, I edited out the typos.
My experience is in mathematics, rather than creative writing, but I imagine both fields approach this issue similarly. Issues of academic honesty have come up when I've served on admissions committees, and they're a huge obstacle to admission. A previous expulsion for plagiarism could turn an otherwise strong case into a quick rejection. In order to have any chance, you need to do several things:
You have to give a convincing explanation of what happened and why nobody needs to worry about future dishonesty. This is not easy, and most people fail to write anything convincing. For example, if you write "I didn't realize this counted as plagiarism, but now that I know, I certainly won't ever do it again", people will wonder what other ethical principles you might be unclear on (and how you made it to the qualifying exam in a doctoral program in English without knowing what's considered plagiarism). If you write "I was sloppy, but I've learned from the experience and will be much more careful from now on", people will worry that being careful is easier said than done, and that this is too facile an excuse. And it only gets worse from there: if you knew it was wrong and did it on purpose, then you really have a lot of explaining to do.
You need letters of recommendation from people who know what happened and are nevertheless willing to vouch for you. A letter that doesn't mention the plagiarism will probably be ignored, since the committee won't know whether the recommender even knows about it or how their opinion might change if they found out. (And it's a sensitive enough subject that nobody's going to call up the recommender and ask, out of fear that you would complain that the committee was leaking confidential information.)
I'd recommend starting by trying to recruit letter writers. If you can convince enough people to write strong letters for you, then you can take the explanation you used to convince them and incorporate it into your personal statement. If you can't secure enough letters or aren't confident in their strength, then it's not worth applying now.
I was recently expelled from doctoral program in English for plagiarism in qualifying exam. Although it was for the lack of a citation, I attended a major research university with a zero tolerance policy.
I should warn you that this sounds like a terrible basis for an explanation. It comes across like you are saying omitting citations is not so bad and your expulsion was due to an overly strict policy. Maybe that's not what you meant, but this is a delicate issue and it's important to keep from being misunderstood.
For that matter, I find the logic of the second quoted sentence to be obscure. I just don't quite understand the intended meaning. Lack of clear writing when clarity is crucial is another red flag for someone who is coming from a doctoral program in English.
I presume the section after the comma was intended to be a parenthetical. At least, it makes sense when read that way, so I'm inclined to consider this an editing glitch -- a "thinko" rather than typo.
@PeteL.Clark: The logic of the sentence makes sense if we presuppose that "the lack of a citation" is not a big deal: the OP is saying, basically, "Although it was for a minor thing that we can all agree I didn't deserve to be expelled for, I attended a major research university with a zero tolerance policy." (Of course, his/her premise is mistaken, which is why the sentence ends up being confusing.)
@ruakh: I'm starting to feel mean for piling on about it, but: no, I find the writing obscure here and in several other places independent of one's feelings about plagiarism. For instance the OP has dropped an article in the previous quoted sentence, which makes me wonder whether he is a native speaker of English. Also he writes "I have had numerous national publications since then in poetry and won a major book award, not publication", and again I don't completely understand that sentence.
So what would happen to someone who truly did "learn from it"? What sort of "convincing" thing could be given?
I did philosophy (and have no history of plagiarism), but I think your odds of admission into a PhD program are going to be extremely low with a record of plagiarism hanging on you.
First off, you're going to need to give a much better explanation than "I didn't know" and it was only a citation miss. Both of these are things that any undergraduate student should know from their first humanities class. It does not take a graduate program to learn these things.
Second, creative works don't compensate for instances of plagiarism. Instead, they generally would compound the severity of the problem. The reason is that plagiarism is about the ability of others to trust that work you submit is your own. Regardless of any factual merit, if I learned that person X lied about what was their work in area A, then I would at a minimum doubt that the work they did in area B was their work. In other words, it raises the spectre that you've been doing this for quite some time (warranted or unwarranted).
Thus, what you need is a very convincing explanation for the university you want to go to should not view what happened at the university where you were at as plagiarism. I could imagine the following as convincing:
A letter from the dean of arts and sciences (assuming you are not related) explaining that they were forced to expel you on a technicality but they believe you did nothing wrong and that the department erred.
A letter from the members of your committee (assuming you are not related) explaining that they passed your exam and don't believe you've committed an academic integrity violation, but that on a technicality they were forced to file a plagiarism charge against you.
That's about it. Otherwise, there's not much you can do that will make you a plausible candidate. Maybe a letter from a psychologist explaining that you were on test pharmaceuticals that temporarily changed your personality during the time in question.
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51687 | What is the time and topic etiquette for a first meeting with a professor to discuss research?
I am meeting with a biology professor to discuss opportunities for an undergraduate research assistantship. I initiated the contact by introducing myself via email and sending him my CV and general areas of interest. He agreed to meet with me to discuss research opportunities, but I am wondering what is the expected length of a meeting like this? Also, are there any materials (e.g. printed copy of my CV) that I should bring? Should I come prepared with questions about his research (which would require hours and hours of critical reading, because while his work seems interesting to me, it's also very difficult to fully understand) or simply honestly tell him that I'm not as knowledgeable about his work as I would like to be but it sounds very interesting to me and I want to be involved? Lastly, is casual clothing appropriate?
Any answers are appreciated. Thank you.
For clothing, see http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/51248/i-am-meeting-my-graduate-research-advisor-in-a-few-days-for-the-first-time-in-pe --- Do bring along a notebook in case you want to jot something down.
Typically from personal experience these types of meetings are informal so no need to get overly dressed or prepare a large portfolio. Casual but nice clothing is definitely appropriate. It won't be a job interview but rather just a friendly discussion. If this is your first meeting about research, it will most likely just be a brief overview of what he does and potentially what a student would be doing. If you decide to do research with him then he most likely have future meetings in which he will discuss things more in depth, give papers to read to begin learning area of research and explain what is expected.
A professor is usually more than happy to discuss their research and take on someone whose interested and determined to conduct research if they have room. That being said, often times the professor would like that you have at least a general idea about what he or she does in their research and areas that interest you. You can expect a question such as, "What about the work I do stuck out for you and made you want to pursue this?" as I can recall being asked this more than once. It is also a good idea to have a few questions for them about their research, labs, etc. Again questions don't need to be an in depth inquiry on their research but just some light questions to get to know them and their work.
It's ok to be unknowledgable on the area of research as that's the point of research; to learn about the field and discover new concepts. The important thing is showing the desire to learn. Also you are an undergraduate so it's more expected that you don't have much experience in a research field.
All in all, from my personal experience it's a quick informal discussion with the professor to provide insight to you so you can decide if you want to conduct research with them. I've had nothing but pleasant experiences with this since professors love others interested in their research and I'm sure you will have the same experience! Good luck!
Great answer! I would add that maybe you should try to get a good idea about at least one specific paper that the professor has done. This way, you can show that you put in a fair amount of effort to understand his/her work instead of possibly just skimming. You can even try to remember specific questions that you can bring up when the professor asks you about his/her research.
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69355 | Can computer science student do PhD under supervisor in mathematics?
I am masters in information security. I want to do PhD in cloud security. I am currently studying homomorphic encryption. My supervisor knows abstract algebra and has PhD in mathematics(abstract algebra). Can I do PhD under her supervision, seeing that she only knows abstract algebra which is required for homomorphic techniques?
Any guidance will be great help.
I really wonder why you ask here and not her. She knows, but we have to guess.
Even assuming you can, that would probably be a bad idea.
The answer is Maybe...
I know quite a lot of person, which are currently involved in a PhD. Since it is about cloud security, it might be useful to have a supervisor knowing algebra, since cryptography is more in the domain of mathematics than of computer science.
Since you seem not to know what you should expect from your supervisor, you might want this person what she thinks about this.
Ask her something related to the following :
What is the role of a supervisor in this PhD ?
What do you expect from me ?
In which area would you think your expertise will help me in this PhD ? Will I not struggle on the computer science's side ?
It might help you understand what you will do, what she will help you with, etc...
Hope it helps.
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24576 | What action to take when questions regarding a published paper are ignored by its author?
Recently, our group is trying to reproduce the result reported by a paper whose authors are from an Ivy league university. We are unable to reproduce the results because there are several implementation details are not mentioned in the paper. Hence, we decide to write the first author, who is now already a faculty member in another university, an email.
At first, we asked for the code, which we consider is perfectly fine, as the paper has been published. We feel the code in a published paper is no longer a secret in this transparent research era where reproducibility is highly valued. However, he simply ignored our email (3+ weeks, no response).
Then, we thought, OK, seems that he is reluctant to share the code, so let's just ask him to clarify several implementation details so that we can implement the thing ourselves and hopefully, we can reproduce the result. So, we sent a second email which very clearly asks for clarifications. Again, he ignored the email (1.5 weeks+, no response).
We now feel angry and start suspecting the authenticity of their reported results. However, we cannot accuse them of anything, since we are not able to prove that they cheated, which would be a felony if they really did.
We always feel that upon the publication of a paper, its authors, or at least the correspondence author, hold responsible for any inquiries regarding the paper, especially when the authenticity is being doubted. What they chose to do - ignoring our email - is really irresponsible.
What can we do?
Disclaimer
Thanks for the answers and comments! It is interesting that many start besieging me on my "bad" attitude in the email.
Just to clarify,
I wrote perfectly polite emails to the correspondence author;
I have NOT questioned his results or whatsoever.
... which would be a felony. — Say what?
It might take a new faculty member much more than a month to respond, especially right at the end of term.
Two things: if you asked in the past three months you have to realize that May is extremely busy with the end if the semester, then many academics go on break for at least part of the summer. Second, if you have a bad attitude (judging from your rush to judgment about felonious behavior), people are apt to ignore you.
The authors have no obligation whatsoever to respond to your emails, nor to share their code.
@Jigg Maybe true for the code sharing part. But if they are not obliged to email-clarify the unclear parts in the paper, why is there such a thing called correspondence author?
... to email-clarify the unclear parts. I have never received or send such an email. Usually a paper stands on its own and reading it thoroughly should be enough to answer any conceptual answers on it. On the other hand, no one will clarify engineering details of implementation, because this is not the original purpose of the paper
@Alexandros Not so, if the details are important parameters of the algorithm.
I didn't say you couldn't ask, people occasionally do. I did it once ore twice to request original data to compare it to mine. What I'm saying is that there is no obligation to do so.
@Alexandros You seem to be saying that no academic will ever answer any question about their papers. After all, any question must either be about the central ideas of the paper (and you seem to be saying that such a question is redundant because every paper describes its central ideas in perfect clarity) or not about the central ideas (in which case, you seem to be saying that it should be dismissed as irrelevant and not worthy of an answer). In my experience, academics are usually willing to answer reasonable questions about their papers. Often, this kicks off research collaborations.
Have you tried phoning? Or is it just these two emails?
@FarticlePilter they are definitely not obliged to email-clarify the unclear parts in the paper - most gladly do so, but it would also be perfectly acceptable and ethical to ignore your requests if they want to do so for whatever reasons. Corresponding author is responsible for the correspondence with the journal editor during the acceptance and review process; but there is no duty or obligation to correspond with random readers, unless they want to.
It's not okay to expect people to share code... codes in our research area are regularly licensed for millions of dollars, half of which goes to the university. We would never be permitted by the legal department to distribute any of it.
@FarticlePilter As long as there won't be open science, you'll have to live with it...
@Alexandros As you said, the paper usually stands on its own, but it does happen that some details get omitted, or things are ambiguous. I get that we should't jump to asking authors as soon as we come to a hard spot in the paper, but the whole point of publishing your results is that they should be reproducible and verifiable (if they're not, they're essentially worthless to the scientific community). I'm just wondering, what would you suggest to do if an procedure detail is missing which is important for reproducing the experiment and thus, the results?
@penelope ...results is that they should be reproducible and verifiable. I agree. But how many times have you received an email asking clarification questions about your paper? How many times you have asked for such details? As Jigg says it is not bad to ask, but it is not that common (maybe it is and I am mistaken) nor it is usual practice. Otherwise, the author of a paper with 1000 citations would be a support center.
"We feel the code in a published paper is no longer a secret in this transparent research era where reproducibility is highly valued." - I can think of a lot of code of mine that is neither secret nor in any shape to be shared. If someone asks me for that code, I generally decline, because a non-negligible amount of my time would be required to pack all the necessary files and assemble instructions on how to compile and/or run the respective programs. When in research, I write my code for demonstrating a point, not for redistribution, and that's exactly what it is optimized for.
@Alexandros I'm a PhD student at the beginning of my career. But, in two distinct cases where a) a detail crucial for implementation was missing from the original publication or b) I just couldn't wrap my mind around a concept in the paper, both times my supervisor suggested to contact the authors. Note that these were relatively short and simple questions, but important. I get that there is no obligations from the authors to resolve my b) case, (or the a) case), but I'm still wondering what is the "policy" on case a). I assumed, it is at least somewhat common since adviser suggested it.
@ChrisWhite That gives a rough indication that the school is not bad. Don't nitpick, please.
Please take extended discussion to [chat]. Some superfluous comments (those edited into the question) have been removed.
@MadJack I am not making any accusations, but I feel from the tone of the question that there is a belief that the original authors fabricated their results. If that is true and their research was federally funded, then there very well may be a felony. I am also open to the possibility that the OP simply can not reproduce the results because of skills deficiency.
If they are federally funded, then you can FOIA them. They are obligated by law to respond and they will be hounded until they respond. I would try more traditional methods first.
Why not just write one of the other authors?
How do you know he ignored the email?
Maybe he never received it because it was filtered before he had a chance to see it. Maybe he hasn't read his email this month because he's on vacation. Maybe that email address was good when the paper was published but not good now, but it's also not bouncing.
If one channel of communication doesn't work, try a different one. Call his office phone or send a letter to him. Write to a different author saying you've been trying to reach the corresponding author without success and you want to check the email address. Don't assume anything when you have no information.
+1 for "call his office phone". A phone calls is a very effective way to make a first contact. Then you can follow up with an e-mail summarizing what you understood from the conversation and asking for clarification of anything you didn't understand.
We always feel that upon the publication of a paper, its authors, or
at least the correspondence author, hold responsible for any inquiries
regarding the paper, especially when the authenticity is being
doubted.
Did you actually state that you do not believe in the results of the paper? If yes, this is disrespectful and plain rude. And most people ignore rude remarks from strangers in the internet. When requesting the help of any other human being, you should be polite and cautious. Also, in Academia you must be very careful when you refer to someone's work. Especially his PUBLISHED work. Because that means that the scientific community has already accepted his claims and you are the one who must prove that his results are wrong and not the other way around (if you ever get published on this subject which be hard to do without his help). So, acknowledge the fact that he has nothing to prove and he will be doing you a favor if he accepts to share his code.
Also, think of the possibility that he does not want to share his code. It is his code after all (and not public domain) and he still has the right to keep it for his personal use. He may also plan to expand on his work and sharing the code prematurely deprives him of the 3 months - 1 year time-advantage over you, since you still have to implement it yourself before expanding on the current state-of-the-art, i.e., his work. In this case, provide him with an alternative. Say that you are willing to send him your datasets and if he agrees to do the experiments for you and report to you his results, it should be good enough for 90% of the cases and everyone is happy. You have the necessary data to compare against your method and he did not have to share his code, which is a logical compromise.
Also, academia is a place that you need to use your social skills. You need collaborators and not enemies / antagonists. In that sense, ask for help politely and expect that NO is a very possible answer on the other party. Also, if he is an established researcher and you are not (perhaps you are famous too - I do not know) there is the case that he ignored the email, because he simply does not even know who you are, what you do and how you will use his code. Usually, telling little things about yourself in the introductory email, sending a link to your personal homepage and google scholar profile, suffices not to consider you a crank and reply to you.
Also, sometimes the first author is a graduate student and the student might not want to share his code because he feels threatened. So, check all the authors profiles. See who is the most senior in the paper and CC him as well in your emails. In that case, the senior professor might encourage the student to share his code despite his objections. Either way, it cannot do you any harm.
As you see, there are multiple reasons why he did not reply to your email. Also a little flattery works on most of the cases. Note that in a sense you find this work fascinating because otherwise you would not struggle to improve it. It is not bad to say so and usually this kind of politeness opens more doors and is more useful in the long term.
Brilliant. The only quibble I have is that journal acceptance doesn't mean that the scientific community has accepted the data and conclusions as accepted, merely that they have passed the initial scrutiny of peer review (thus likely to be true). Replication and the test of time is still necessary.
Thanks @RoboKaren. You are also right for "replication and the test of time is still necessary".
+1 and thanks a lot for the suggestions. "CCing the senior professor" is an action worth trying.
I just want to address one minor point:
At first, we asked for the code, which we consider is perfectly fine, as the paper has been published. We feel the code in a published paper is no longer a secret in this transparent research era where reproducibility is highly valued.
It does not matter what your feelings are but rather what is the policy of the journal the article was published. Some journals require disclosure of data or source code but others do not. Also if the research was funded by the NSF there maybe mandatory disclosures policy. I suggest you to see if this is the case.
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3166 | Does working for a prestigious company help in a PhD application?
Does working for a prestigious company help in a PhD application? For example, suppose one does interesting work while at a prestigious company. Would this help an application?
What is a "prestigious" company?
This almost certainly depends on your field. What department(s) are you thinking of applying to?
@ravi-paul Since you have some responses below that seem to answer your question, please consider marking one of them as ‘Accepted’ by clicking on the tickmark below their vote count. This shows which answer helped you most, and it assigns reputation points to the author of the answer (and to you!).
The short answer is "probably." The long answer is "it depends."
Admission to a graduate program is almost solely dependent on how well you impress that department's graduate admissions committee (assuming you meet any minimum admissions standards: grades, GRE, etc). If they attach value to your work in industry, it'll help you out immensely. If they don't, it probably won't hurt you.
This Kaplan page outlines the general process.
If your work at the prestigious company involved a demonstration of your intellectual and/or research prowess, then yes, it'll probably help. If your work was mostly grunt work, then it's unlikely to make a large impact.
Except if you are in a recognized inner lab of a big company, it will probably not help, and not hurt. Working may help if you do something that proves that you have skills useful to research work, that's all.
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4785 | What is proper acknowledgment for figure authorship in a book chapter?
A senior researcher, with whom I worked a few years ago, is writing a book chapter. He contacted me to ask what was the latest work of our group on the topic of his chapter. I gave him a few links to recent articles and the preprint of an article soon to be published. He followed up by asking if “[you] would have a figure to illustrate [topic of the preprint]… preferably something that does not require copyright authorization paperwork”.
At first, I thought that was a bit much to ask… I had never asked for figures from anybody who was not an author on the paper. But the situation may be different for a book chapter, and obviously I'm glad to share the news of our most recent results. So, I took an hour tonight to make a nice illustrative figure, and am about to send it. However, I'd like to make certain in my mail that I ask for some sort of acknowledgment. So, my question is: if someone designed a figure for a book chapter, how would that person be acknowledged? in the figure caption, e.g. “figure courtesy of X”? in another way?
In the acknowledgements sections, the authors could write:
"The authors would like to thank F'x for providing us with Figure X".
Alternatively, in the caption of the figure they could write "Figure courtesy of F'x."
Both are acceptable, as long as you are happy. I don't think they are obliged to thank you in the paper at all.
Many graduate textbooks contain a list of references, either at the end of each chapter or at the end of a book broken down by chapter. I would imagine the citation would be there.
To the best of my (admittedly terrible) memory, I have never seen a textbook include an inline reference for a specific publication.
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30223 | What should I do when my supervisor wants to delay my graduation?
I am MASc (two year program with a thesis) student in a Canadian university. Right now, I've finished my course requirements and I want to graduate in five academic terms. I have two supervisors. One of my supervisors has said my research accomplishment is good enough to start working on my thesis. But my other supervisor isn't willing to let me work on writing my thesis. He doesn't give any specific reason why my accomplishment is not good enough or what I can do to get his approval. He said he wants me to stay for six terms and then he will approve my graduation. He is also pushing me to do PhD under his supervision. Whenever I want to discuss my masters graduation, he diverts the whole discussion into doing PhD with him. Sometimes he ends up threatening he won't approve my masters. So discussing this issue has become pointless. Anyway, I've contacted two other faculties; they said my research accomplishment is already good enough for research milestone set by university. What should I do?
Relevant question: My MS thesis advisor wants me to delay my graduation for one semester. What should I do?
My situation is different because it's not the issue of time or my supervisor is careless. My supervisor wants to delay my masters for his own benefit.
Have you actually written a complete thesis? Has the advisor given you specific tasks to complete the thesis or fix problems?
@BrianBorchers: No, I haven't written an actual thesis. I have two publications, one as a first author, another as second author. My other supervisor and two other faculties agreed it's good enough for research milestone that is required by the university. I've mentioned in post, he doesn't give me any specific reason why he won't approve it or what can be done to get his approval. He isn't saying directly but he is implying I have to complete six terms no matter what I've accomplished. So the actual written thesis doesn't matter here, I guess.
Is it a funded masters program? It could give a clue to why he is doing this. If it is funded, it could be that he spent money on you (he is invested in you), and expects to get a full 6 terms of contribution out of you. If it is not funded, there may be other reasons, or he doesnt believe it is good to have students graduate early, a topic that has been discussed on this site, usually for PHD's
Yes, it's a funded program.
Do you need to have a second supervisor? Professor B sounds like he's simply not on the same page as you and Professor A. So maybe simply eliminate him from the equation. Also, what does Professor A say about this?
If you haven't actually written your thesis, then you're not ready to graduate- this is more than a formality.
@Brian: That's true, but the OP seems to be saying that Professor B will not allow him to graduate at a certain time under any circumstances. (Also: the task of writing a master's thesis, while always nontrivial, seems to be significantly aided by already having the publications that form the material for the thesis.)
@Pete if a student came to me and told me that he wanted to graduate this semester (within the next 7 weeks) and that he hadn't started to write his thesis, I'd tell him that it wasn't possible. I've had students in similar situations who though that I was treating them unfairly when in fact I was simply being realistic about how long it would take to produce an acceptable thesis. I don't have any way of knowing whether something like this is going on here, or whether the advisor wants to keep the student around for another semester as a grad student slave...
@BrianBorchers: I've already mentioned it twice, he won't let me graduate before six terms no matter what. I asked him about his specific requirement or objection that I can fix; he avoids these question and keeps pushing me for PhD. I really don't know any other way to explain my issue.
@Brian: Well, we don't know what the deadline for submitting the thesis "this term" might be. Also, in many circumstances, if you've published two papers, then you can write your master's thesis by stapling them together and adding an introduction and conclusion. This can be done in seven weeks. Still, I agree that there is something a bit fuzzy about the question: what does it mean for Professor A to approve a thesis and Professor B not to approve it when there is no thesis?!? It's puzzling.
@PeteL.Clark: My apologies. I've edited the question. The gist is: I want to work on my thesis writing as I want to graduate in five academic terms (I have done an internship related to my research). But my other supervisor simply said I shouldn't start writing my thesis now. He doesn't give me any good reason, avoids my questions and start questioning me why I am not interested into doing PhD under his supervision. Only thing he said, he will approve my thesis at sixth academic term because that's the duration of the program set by the university.
Maybe a stupid idea (it may well depend on your country, field, etc.): Vaguely promise you are willing to start a PhD but then step away from it? Of course, it can be considered a non-ethical thing to do, so from me now, it's only an idea, not a recommendation.
Based on your description, one of your supervisors is behaving in an unethical manner. A faculty member must not delay a student's graduation purely for personal benefit. Nor should they coerce a student into beginning a PhD under their supervision. Most programs have a procedure for removing or replacing a supervisor. I recommend you use it if your supervisor is behaving unethically.
You might get a better answer if you said why you have this supervisor or what your goals are.
When I chose him, he was very nice and cordial to me. But when I've started my masters, he has been very rude, no respect for his students. Right now, I just wanna finish my masters if things don't get uglier than right now, be done with him forever. If things get uglier which is very probable, I really don't know whether I will have the courage to drop off my masters.
@user the courage to drop off my masters -- Do not do that! It sounds to me almost like suicidal thoughts, but you are certainly not in that stage. You can surely prolong your masters, it's much better than dropping it.
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1233 | PowerPoint presentations including Latex both under Windows and Mac OS
Possible Duplicate:
How to make a presentation that includes math symbols?
I have been using TeX4PPT for PowerPoint under Windows for a few years to include matematical formulas in PP presentations. Recently, I got a Mac notebook and I would like to use my PP presentations both under Windows as well as under Mac OS X. However, I cannot find a program that would allow me to use LaTeX generating formulas in PP under both operating systems (so I could use my presentations freely on both OS). Any ideas?
You should try beamer, it is an awesome tool for presentation. Furthermore there are so many available resources online.
Another possible solution is to work directly in tex (that is, via Beamer) and get a cross-platform presentations. Although, if you want to do presentation animations and sophisticated tricks, this is inferior to PPT/Keynote.
[citation needed]
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59256 | The title postgraduate researcher
I have seen the title postgraduate researcher in a couple of peoples Linkedin profiles for roles in the UK. The people listed only had masters degree before showing. What is this position formally, is it just someone who has not completed a PhD? Or are these official positions in subjects like astronomy?
It might be a title granted by some institution, but it might also, perhaps, be intended as nothing more than a descriptive phrase.
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59648 | Caught plagiarizing
First off, thank you for taking the time to read this and possibly help me.
I'm a freshman in high school. I go to a tech and aggie school so I have a week for academics then it switches off to shop. I have been struggling in my English class. I try very hard, but don't ask for help often. The course is over my head- the pace is far to fast. My teacher is more of a philosopher. He is very intimidating for me, always feeling put on the spot and embarrassed in front of the class. I'm scared to ask for help. His teaching assistant, tries to help me, I guess. She is for certain kids though and cant give me the attention I need. Originally I was put in a high class, but was taken out the next day. To be sadly with the same guy- just his next level down. I still find it over my head. I cannot complete things on time and its beyond stressful.
SO there is this essay due in a very short period of time. I have a hard time reading what we are reading and understanding what is happening. I figured I could copy and paste parts of someone else's off of an answer site, and just change the words. I've done this all the time for other classes, but I always cited my source. But this time was different, I couldn't cite what I was using. I was super stressed out for time and work that I didn't think of it, I copied from the same cite but different answers and tried to combine them while changing some words around. I Handed in the essay only halfway done.. I received a zero and a failing grade in his class. His grades close almost 2 weeks after mine did, so when he put the zero in my grade dropped out of control. I backed myself into a very small corner with dangerous things my way. I'm so scared. My parents and the school admins know. I'm so scared. I'm already getting punished at home, I cant have school do the same. This was a fresh school to a fresh start (Again.. bulling issues and school disabilities).
Please help me. Thank you.
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because high school is not academia.
This is a problem that could happen to a graduate student, and the answer would be the same except for dropping the reassurance about the low cost of failing one first year class in high school.
Agreed, this is off-topic and a duplicate of any number of other questions. That's not to be a jerk; this is simply not the appropriate forum to help a high-school freshman. He should be talking to his guidance counselor, teacher, parents and/or principal and not a bunch of strangers on the internet...which is what got him into this mess in the first place.
I've done this all the time for other classes — I think I know why you're struggling.
You mentioned bullying and disabilities. Those are fair topics for questions here.... I suggest that you start to consider your education your own responsibility, and not worry about how your family and your school are going to react to your actions. Figure out what you are interested in learning more about, and focus on that -- and let everything and everyone else go to hell. Do not allow yourself to be in a situation where you might feel tempted to cheat -- not because of the prospect of possibly getting in trouble, but because cheating does you no good in the long term.
Cheating on an assignment means you have nothing invested in it. If that's the case, then don't turn it in, don't put any effort into it at all. There's a saying: if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well. We could also say, if something is not worth doing well, then I guess it wasn't worth doing in the first place.
Not everyone can benefit from education and you seem to be wasting everyone's time (including your own).
First of all, this is your freshman year of high school. Realize that failing one class your first year is not going to make or break the rest of your time in high school.
Second of all, learn from this experience. It is incredibly easy for a teacher to determine if a student is plagiarizing. Whatever happens next, you should seek guidance on when and how to cite sources. I guarantee you that you are probably unaware of mistakes you have been making.
Finally, you should reach out to this teacher and whoever is disciplining you for your actions. Own up to your mistake without making excuses ("I was rushed", "I was overwhelmed"). Even though these things may be true, focusing on all the reasons why you made your mistake, and how they are not your fault, and how horrible your life will now be, is not going to score you any brownie points. Instead, simply say that you want guidance on how to avoid similar situations in the future. Also discuss options for extra academic support, be this a tutor or finding a different level class to take next year.
You probably can't save your grade, but you can show maturity and be proactive about improving your grades in the future. Good luck!
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11037 | Are tuition subsidies taxables for research staff?
I have two Bachelor degrees and an MMath, not looking for any more degrees at this time, but I might be interested in taking some Japanese and Chinese language courses.
I'm working as a research programmer for a university in the US (IU), and they offer the option of
a subsidy toward the tuition costs, under Section 117 of the Internal Revenue Code.
What does this mean for me?
Would such subsidy be included in my income, and would I have to cover for the taxes as if I have received all such subsidies as real money in income?
What happens to the in-state / out-of-state tuition differential? I've moved from a different state for this job mid-summer, and might start taking courses right away in autumn.
I am not a Lawyer or Accountant, and if you really worry, you should ask one of those or at the very least talk to human resources at your university.
But, based on my reading of the relevant law, part (d) [usually referred to, I guess, as Section 117-4] specifically states that if you are an employee of a university, then tuition reduction for you to take classes at said university should not count toward your gross income when calculating taxes.
The US code does not distinguish between in-state / out-of-state tuition.
Caveat: your local state laws may have different interpretation of "gross income".
Section (d) (2) mentions below the graduate level. Does it mean that only undergrad tuition waiver is not included in gross income? E.g. it's only if, after all, I do decide to take grad CS courses, too, then any such benefit will be included in gross income?
@cnst: like I said, I am not a lawyer or accountant. I can tell you what the words say and what I think they mean, but if you want to check if your interpretation of the law is correct, you have to consult a specialist.
Again, not a lawyer, but from seminars I've taken and heard about from different people at different universities, the general rule is that things are taxable when you get a notification of a direct benefit from the university. In other words, if they send you a declaration that "we have paid X dollars as a tuition benefit," that may very well be taxable income. On the other hand, if it's handled internally as a bookkeeping issue—you get charged less, and some internal "fund" covers the "difference"—then there's no actual taxable benefit to be received.
However, it is not normally the case that tuition benefits are taxable. This is particularly important for graduate fellowships, because otherwise the fellows receiving the fellowship would be "receiving" tens of thousands of dollars in "gross income" and be responsible for taxes on that, even though they never actually get the money in the first place!
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8180 | What is the minimum one should expect from the day-to-day supervisor?
What minimal responsibilities can a student expect from their day-to-day supervisor?
In my institute, we usually have the head of the institute as the formal supervisor, followed by another day-to-day supervisor. In fact, the head of the institute does nothing, and the day-to-day supervisor is the one who is supposed to do the PhD supervision.
A few institutions do codify the responsibilities of advisors and supervisors. See, for example, the "Code of Practice for Supervisors, Advisors and Research Degree Candidates" from the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, and the "Policies and Guidelines on Graduate Student Advising and Supervision" from McGill University in Canada. Are these guidelines universal?
Are you asking about a supervisor or an advisor? It's unclear in your post and what's expected is going to be different between the two. In addition, in your last sentence you ask about the real world, which would seem to indicate that you're looking for descriptions of what makes a good boss/manager?
I've deleted any reference to advisor, only left the ones from the links. The reference for the real world experience is just because usually people say that the real world is much worse, therefore the "ave a good idea what happens in the real world". Most of the PhD students go from the Master directly to a PhD.
What is the difference between a "(principal) supervisor" and an "advisor"? I've never heard the former as an official title.
I heavily edited the question to remove irrelevant and/or personal details. (I seriously considered deleting the second paragraph as well.) Please verify that I haven't changed the intended meaning of your question.
Are you asking for the responsibilities of the "Main/Principle" or the one who is doing the actual supervision?
The one that is doing the actual supervision
I changed the question to avoid the double use of "Main/Principal". I used "formal" vs "day-to-day". Please revert if you do not like it, or if I've changed the meaning.
No problem, it is ok for me.
I don't think that there is a universal answer that hold for all / most of the countries and different educational institutes. Many highly regarded research-focused universities generally tend to go with "it is the students problem if he/she fails" approach.
I think it is reasonable to expect two things from a day-to-day PhD advisor. The first is a willingness to meet in a timely manner and discuss expectations and the second is a willingness to deliver on agreements in a timely manner. If there is something you need/want from your day-to-day PhD advisor, then ask him/her about it. If you are concerned that your request is unreasonable, then ask colleagues or here.
The problem with answering the question in general is summed up in the
UTS link you provided:
At the outset it is important to acknowledge that the nature of the
student-supervisor relationship cannot be mandated, largely because it
needs to be flexible and take into account the particular
circumstances of the research project, the student and the supervisor.
As far as the universality of formal guidelines about expected behavior in regards to advising students, all universities provide a faculty handbook that has some minimal guidelines, but generally it is not as long or formal as the links you provided.
I never received anything. "willingness to meet in a timely manner" is zero. "discuss expectations" results in a one-way conversation, I am only there to take notes, his decision is the good one, never listens to me, and changes in each meeting. The meetings happen once a year (maximum twice a year) and require toons of effort. before trying to move out, I just wanted to be sure I am not exaggerating on these communication "problems".
@MaybeAnotherPhD Run, Don't Walk! Sounds like a bad advisor, but nothing so bad that you are going to find it violates any rules. It is time to find a new advisor.
you are right @DanielE.Shub, I just need to plan very well how to do this
Based on my experiences...
Based on those I know, the guidelines you link to are not general.
The day-to-day supervisor approach is typically implemented passively because the main supervisor (i.e., the guy in absentia most of the time) is too busy to actually manage the students. For this approach to be practical, the day-to-day supervisor must have expertise in your research and must be aware of the general research path of the group (i.e., can provide not only advice but direction).
For what it's worth, most labs with a day-to-day supervisor in addition to the main one will be more difficult to work in as a graduate student. The only case where this can be a benefit is where the formal advisor is some ridiculously well-known figure in the field, and your just being in their lab will lead to opportunities down the road. For the majority of labs with this setup, though, it's simply because the formal advisor is too busy to deal with (or otherwise disintereted) the graduate students, and has set up someone else to deal with them. This typically leads to communication issues, lack of guidance, long delays in your advisor reviewing your work & publications, and frustration. I would approach these setups cautiously.
Edit based on comments: The main reason these setups tend to fail is that the supervisor's unspoken job description is one that will never be filled; replicate the domain expertise and research experience of the advisor while essentially being a graduate student counselor. Anyone who can do that will be running their own lab, not helping you manage your students.
This means that those who do take the job either don't have the relevant domain expertise to adequately answer student questions, or relevant research experience to design, run, and analyze data from a complete research project. Any lacking expertise translates into "lets just wait until your next advisor meeting", which adds long delays to everything.
Do you mean that the responsibilities described in the linked guidelines are not expected in general, or only that they are not followed in general?
@JeffE I had intended it as not expected, but I would venture that they are not followed either. So, both, I guess.
Maybe my question was unclear. It's clear that the guidelines aren't followed in general. The question is whether this is because many supervisors don't do their damn jobs, or because the guidelines are unreasonable.
i think supervisors don't do their job, we have the pressure they trust on this pressure and desire to have the PhD. Something will be done good or bad, we will arrive to something, if is bad than we were bad students, if good we are heroes.
@JeffE - Ha! Text updated to address your comment.
I'll add that Guidelines, Codes, and the like are almost meaningless in academia, simply because it is easier to herd cats that to get a bunch of independent, highly-intelligent group of people to follow some set protocol or rules. Try attending a faculty meeting and you'll see what it's like. An institution may have guidelines, but there is probably very little chance of enforcing them.
You'll find supervisors/advisors on both ends of the spectrum. Some will want to be in the day-to-day operations, micro-managing all the details. Some will meet with you, then say "Come back in a few weeks when you have progress". The most common method seems to have weekly meetings to discuss progress and provide insight/expectations on advancing the project.
This is the interesting part about academia. You aren't really taught how to supervise others, or people skills in general. Most academics seem to just go with their instinctive, personality inclinations, or they simply do what their previous supervisors/advisors did.
I'll add that if you're not getting along with your supervisor, either you need to discuss the problems, or plan a move.
it is really a nightmare, sometimes i go there, and there is so much tension and frustation in the air. samething they do to students they do to their colleagues, however only after being inside you can "see"the real person behind your supervisor. Thanks for your advise @che_kid
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8957 | How is an online article referenced if there is no obvious author?
The referencing style I am using for online newspaper articles is thus:
Karlsen, T.-K. (2013) For scouts, the South American youth tournament is hard slog, not high life. Guardian [Online] 28 January. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/mar/28/scout-south-american-youth-championship-football [Accessed on 28/03/2013]
But how do I reference an article with no obvious author? For example, this is posted on the news website Balkan Insight, but has no author. So far I've been including Balkan Insight where the author name is, but also where the publication name is - i.e. where 'Karlsen' and 'Guardian' are in the previous example. And putting the in-text reference as Balkan Insight (2013).
There are probably several answers depending on the situation and on the standards in your field.
First there are papers published in journals with no authors that are referenced as:
Anonymous, yyyy. Paper title ...
In some cases an organization can be the author. this is true for, for example, governmental organizations, NGO's etc. In these cases the publications are offically published. References would be listed under the organization (often abbreviated) such as:
WMO (World Meteorological Organization), yyyy. Publication title ...
To reference online material is always a bit more complicated but I guess the anonymous author can be used and the source organization listed as the "Publisher" such as the The Guardian in your example. The point is that the source is known but not the author. If you have a lot of these sources there will of course be many "anomymous" floating around in th etext and reference list which may be awkward. In such a case you may consider using the organization as author.
Strangely 114000 papers with "Anonymous" as Author in Google Scholar. I learned something today.
@Zenon Wow, that was far more than I would have ever thought. Productive person!
I concur with the opinion of the others that Balkan Insight should be the author based on the information you gave us.
In general, for practical purposes, there is almost always a responsible person or an organisation unless they give their very best to stay anonymous. Usually, I try to find the most applicable one in the following order:
The author(s) as on the paper or the website if they were printed.
The author(s) of the collection of works if the work belongs to a collection such as a book.
The meta information of the document, e.g., from the meta tags of the HTML Web-page or from the PDF meta data.
The organisation or person responsible for the Web site containing the document.
The organisation or person responsible for the IP address assuming it is static.
If all of the above fails, you have to resort to "Anonymous". However, then you might be doing research on anonymity in the Internet, and you should find a difference representation of your sources than the Bibliography, which would be a bad match for your purposes in this case.
Citing online articles without a clear author depends on the citation format. The format you use should have clear guidelines.
For example, in Harvard Referencing (the most common in my field) if there is a publisher but no clear author then the publisher is considered the author. In your case, Balkin Insight would be the author. Following this, you are doing it properly (according to Harvard Referencing).
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8988 | How necessary is a List of Figures and a List of Tables in a dissertation?
I am writing my dissertation (word-limit 10,000 words) and am wondering if I should include a separate List of Figures and List of Tables Section after my Table of Contents? The university guidelines do not specify whether they're required or not.
I will have about 3 figures and 4 tables when I'm finished.
Then do whatever you like (after asking your supervisor/advisor of course).
To be honest, with a short dissertation with only a few figures and tables, it probably doesn't really matter one way or the other.
If your institution's dissertation guidelines say anything about it, follow them. If not, I'd say just include the lists, unless you feel you have some good reason not to. In which case, don't. Your advisor should let you know if they believe such lists should be added or removed, anyway.
Or you could just ask your advisor about it to begin with.
You should definitely ask your advisor but normally you only need a list of tables or a list of figures if there will be more than 5 items in the list. For three or four items, I would not include a list.
However, in the schools I am familiar with, there are clear dissertation guidelines so it is understood what is expected. If it is unspecified then I would go with what I said above.
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7338 | Funding for Belgian student to do a PhD in UK?
I am currently applying for PhD fundings in UK, but as the competition is rude, I am not sure to be accepted, even if I have very good grades and qualifications.
So, I want to look at other PhD fundings opportunities, that may be less obvious. For instance, I know that the European Commission proposed some PhD fundings (Marie Curie scheme or something like that), but I think it is no longer active.
If you could give me some advice, I would greatly appreciate.
Field of study : Theoretical Physics
Country of origin : Belgium, EU.
I'm not wealthy enough to fund myself for my PhD, even for one year.
Is there a specific reason you're looking at the UK, and not other countries? In my opinion, conditions for PhD students are better in other countries (NL, BE, DE, Nordic countries...), as they are employed.
The top universities often have a lot of reasonably obscure funding options.
For example with the University of Cambridge - if you go through the steps at this website they list all their funding options, you'll see for Physics there are fully-funded scholarships such as these that might be of interest to you:
Leslie Wilson Research Scholarship (£17,427 per year)
Winton Scholarship(s) in the Physics of Sustainability
Thalmann Bequest (covers EU fees only)
Schiff Fund (upto £20,000 per year)
Gulbenkian Studentship (specifically for non-UK nationals)
Gates Cambridge Scholarships
The equivalent website for the University of Oxford is here
and it reckons
35 Scholarships were found for a new student from Belgium studying
Theoretical Physics (DPhil)
so I'm not going to list them all here!!!
Best of luck!
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12910 | Is it ethical to share the knowledge for free that I've learned at the university?
I can see an enormous amount of videos on Youtube about helping to learn high-level knowledge that is usually taught at universities. Even though I'm only at the beginning of the time I'm going to take at the university before graduating, I have a desire to teach what I've learnt to others - for free, through the internet.
I believe that knowledge is global and free; however, I think sharing my knowledge wouldn't be fair for my teachers, or any other university teachers and professors.
Is sharing this knowledge fair - or ethical?
Depending on the subject matter, you may want to make it clear that what you are presenting is for informational purposes only and that you are not affiliated with an accredited institution.
Knowledge is free, education is expensive. Where do you think your university teachers and professors got their knowledge? (Hint: very little should have been original to them.) Unless you put some effort into your videos, they will probably be useless to would be learners.
@emory I don't want to teach professionally. I just want to explain things that seems to be difficult, but not that hard to understand. (for example, the basics of microeconomics, or the explaination of special algorithms like A* or the work of a raycasting engine)
I personally think that if you have the knowledge be it any programming language or be it anything else...Spreading it will not drain your knowledge instead you will become more powerful at your concepts. But when it comes to earning money, I will resist you. And you should act smartly that time.
A "dumbed-down" Youtube video on A* was what I needed before any of the equations in college on that topic started making sense. I say, go for it.
@ZoltánSchmidt I understand and agree. Put as much or as little effort into the videos as you feel like. You don't have to ask permission.
You want to make sure 1) you understand what you are teaching, and 2) what you are teaching is factual. Also, as others mentioned, is it sensitive? If so, it may not yet be factual in that case.
Copyright material is clearly off limits. In answer to your question of sharing your knowledge... Whether you share what you learned via a forum such as the one we are using or you use your information for your employer; you have in reality shared information you learned while obtaining your education. Also, what my professors taught me is not the knowledge I walked away with. Education in a university setting is intended for you to think and expand upon what is taught making what you learn, your knowledge and not necessarily belonging to the institution or the professor who instructed you.
I feel the urge to replace "university knowledge" in the question with "grandma's cookie recipe". Would you spend more than three seconds debating whether or not to write it down in a blog post? (Then there's also the fact that I seem to recall hearing that recipes are a poster child for how copyright works. The idea itself can't be protected, a given expression can. This expression would be, say, the body of a textbook. You're asking about ethics, not about the law of this, but still it's a thing to consider.)
Also, isn't applying your knowledge in your career the same as "sharing" (bits and pieces of) it, as well as your experience and your time with your employer? In exchange for money, no less. Extending this line of reasoning it would also be unethical to ever switch jobs because you'd apply experience gained from the previous workplace at the new one. I'd say your premise that sharing knowledge is unethical is flawed from the start.
Just an approach: I don't know about your country's education system but in mine (Turkey) , I have paid for my education. So I would say "I bought this knowledge". It's mine, I do whatever I want with it.
Knowledge should be free, and you should be free to spread your knowledge as much and you want... and education should be free as well, but that's another topic, or is it not?
Of course you can. You've spent so much money in learning stuff from your college. That knowledge belongs to you, it's your choice to share it with others. Each one teach one.
Should of been asked on http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/
If teachers lose their work due to free dispersal of knowledge through Internet - they should retire. It's a free market, not a church.
@Meysam I didn't know where to ask first. As I see the number of upvotes and comments, I didn't choose wrong. =)
@Meysam it's on topic here. A related question, focusing on the philosophical aspects, could be probably be asked on Philosophy.SE, but that doesn't mean the question doesn't belong here
I do not see that sharing your knowledge would in any way be a problem per se. What could become a problem is if you also share copyright-protected materials. It is virtually impossible to list what might or might not be such materials but to take other persons presentations, images, data and then sharing it would be clearly illegal (and unethical) unless they are provided with a "license" stating they are free. If you take the knowledge you gather and then put it together somehow (including making your own presentations on your own material), it should not be such a problem. In any circumstance where you want to use other peoples materials, it is always best to ask for permission. Not only does it save you possible future problems, you may find friends in the process. Watch out for materials published by commercial interests and use open source material (but do give credit to those who made it - attribution is required by licenses like CC-BY-SA and it is also a nice gesture to acknowledge the work and time by the original authors). Much material is given out for public (but not commercial) use.
A final advise, attach an open source license to your materials. I am not fully aware what licenses may apply but am sure many has good suggestions for you (check Academia.sx or ask another question on that).
So to sum up. I think it is a nice idea and perfectly fine, but be aware that you must be 100% sure you do not publish materials so that you break copyrights or abuse licenses (protect the open source practises).
Nice answer, but note that properly citing open materials is not only a question of "..a nice gesture for their work and time..", but is a necessary condition of e.g. the ordinary Creative Commons licence (CC-BY). Not giving attribution to the original author will (most of the time) be a copyright violation, even if the material is shared with an open licence. Putting works in the Public domain or using the CC0 licence allow reuse without attribution.
Good point. This is why looking at the different licenses is required.
Your main recommendations are great, but the summary seems a bit selfish by comparison — the goal of observing these good practice is not only to safeguard yourself, but also (perhaps even more importantly) to be fair to others.
@PLL yes, that did not come out right. I made a change. Feel free to edit it if you will.
TL;DR: Sharing knowledge - Yes. Sharing material - No, unless licensed.
By the way: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12910/is-it-ethical-to-share-the-knowledge-for-free-that-ive-learnt-at-the-university?noredirect=1#comment23888_12910
+1, but in addition to copyright (a legal concern), you should also avoid plagiarism (a moral one). Many materials are not eligible for copyright (because they're very old, or were created by a government employee as part of their job, or whatnot), but it's still wrong to pass them off as though they were your own.
@fileunderwater - I edited question to mention it.
@Bulwersator Great, but I read your addition as saying the opposite to my comment. I edited your addition to clarify.
I believe that knowledge is global and free
That is essentially academia in a nutshell. ;-)
I believe – strongly – that anything that runs counter this freedom also fundamentally runs counter academia, and humanity’s best interest (or, economically, the country’s best interest).
From a more legal perspective, (University) teachers are paid for teaching, not for the knowledge they posses. So you are fine, as long as you don’t disseminate copyrighted material.
This used to be different, when much knowledge was coveted, closely guarded and only handed down from teachers to their apprentices, under an agreement of privacy (see for instance the Hippocratic Oath, which regulates this, among other things).
Nowadays, knowledge cannot generally be privatised. Instead, we have the concepts of copyright and patents, but neither prevents the dissemination of knowledge. Exceptions only exist in certain circumstances, e.g. for a method that is currently being developed, where you may be asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement; for classified governmental documents, dissemination of which may make you liable to prosecution, and the publication of know-how that falls under weapons regulations.
I think there is a place for NDAs in academia.
@Daniel Oh, true, my answer should mention that. But that isn’t relevant for things you are taught in normal courses.
NDAs in academia are what wolves use after they steal an idea, unless they are human, and in which case they will give (a little) credit to their indentured servant.. err, I mean graduate student
Please stop propagating the myth that disseminating classified material is treason. The law is quite clear that this is not the case, including the case law of various people who have been prosecuted for leaking classified materials.
@jwg I’m not propagating that. I’m merely pointing out what prosecution you may face. I agree with you, but practice shows that disseminating classified information can be incredibly dangerous. I’m changing the wording though.
I think I understand the point: you spent $50,000 (or whatever) on college, and you worry that if you teach others for free, you are depriving someone else of income.
Simply put, it doesn't matter. People don't go to college to learn things. They go to college to get a piece of paper that says they learned things so that they can get a job in their chosen career.
Anyone can learn libraries, the Internet, and their own research. When I went to college to get my Computer Science degree, a good 90% of what I was taught was stuff I already knew. So why did I go to college? To get the paper that says I know how to do what I already knew how to do.
Yes, it's true that people actually do learn things in college. However, people pay for college because a degree makes them more employable. That's not something you can deliver through YouTube, and so your free education efforts will not replace the college system and will not put college professors out of work.
True, it is a peculiar, happy irony that the two reasons for "college" are not actually in conflict. Of course there's scant obstacle to learn stuff from books-and-internet, but certification (and hoop-jumping) is the "portable/communicable" version of "knowledge". And, on the good days, one does learn something from older, more experienced people, whether or not they're "smarter" or "more talented". Experience can be worth something.
Good point, Paul.
Don't think I'm discounting the value of college, because I'm not. College is essential in today's world, and in technical careers, you basically can't make a living without it.
You are paying the university for instruction and access to materials and facilities not available to the general public, not knowledge. As long as you are not violating any confidentiality agreements, copyrights, etc., you are not doing anything wrong from a legal standpoint. From an ethical standpoint, I think you would better support an educational institution's mission to make the world better by sharing your knowledge than by keeping it to yourself.
I'm a university professor who puts lots and lots of time into developing course materials and trying to figure out better ways to explain ideas to my students. Other answers seem to cover the point that you should be careful about redistributing the materials from a course.
I would like to recommend that you contact the professor who taught you the course and tell him/her of your plans. I would be very glad to hear that my course motivated one of my students to want to teach the material to others. In fact, if the student does a very good job, I might want to see about using the videos/explanations/examples in my own course or at least pointing future students towards the videos.
What you have learned in the Academia is your knowledge, and you can do whatever is pleases you.
The material that you had access in the academia is copyright of the producer, except for those that were blessed with some form of copyleft. So, unless you have some authorization, you cannot use it, in some countries. (For example, in some countries you can reproduce part of some material, for learning purposes, given that all credits are given to the proper authors, and so on. Example: reproduce some piece of some article to analyze it and study it with some students).
In some countries it's possible to have a patent on a idea, and so some ideas might be patented, and that patent might or might not be valid in your country.
And, finally, it's possible that you signed some non-disclosure agreement, and then what you learned that's covered by that contract might not be transmissible to someone else.
I disagree with some of the answers, only when asserting that you are primarily paying for instruction and materials. Typically, you are paying for a document that states you understand a specific subject, often with the intent of proving to a future employer that you understand said subject. Your school is responsible for helping you to pass the required exams to demonstrate this understanding, which in part involves access to instructors and materials to help you learn. A school that consistently fails to produce document holding students will not be a strong school for long.
Watching YouTube videos will not give you a document, so while you may have gained the instruction and materials for free, you still lack the main reason people attend higher education -- paperwork. Producing a list of your recently watched videos will also do little to entice future employers.
Unless you're directly releasing information that was obtained as part of a research project through the facility itself or (as stated previously) copyright materials, without permission, it's doubtful you are conflicting with the interests of the school. In fact you may encourage people who get interested in a subject to sign up at your institution, and be good for business. (MIT did quite a bit online for free)
When in doubt, get permission. This IS your future at stake.
Not to discount self learning, you could learn the equivalent of a doctor as far as I'm concerned, if you were driven enough, and bright enough, by simply reading publicly available information. However I won't know if you were driven or bright enough, so I'll stick to people that proved it on an exam -- for now.
Of course self-learning not equals to get an actual document that you are professional at something. I don't even attempt to do against it. I just want to share some things I've learnt with a wider audience.
It does continue to be striking to me that most people seem not to feel any added value to contact with experts on a subject.
@paulgarrett Of course people see the value, if they didn't they would get the document WITHOUT paying for an instructor; this would clearly be cheaper, but not near as valuable.
No @AnthonyHiscox. The document without the instruction is not generally available for sale. If people saw the value of instruction by experts perhaps they would pay for this on its own without paying more to have the piece of paper?
@jwg, True, but many exams can be challenged, yet people still rely on expert guidance, and materials. The paperwork might be the end game, but you still have to pass the exams to get there. About your suggestion; how are we to know it's an actual expert that is teaching us?
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143202 | Publication issue of a journal article in Elsevier
Recently, an article of mine got accepted in an Elsevier Journal. Since it was my first publication, I was not very much aware of the whole publication procedure. After acceptance of the paper, I got a link sent for gallery proof. At this stage, I found many grammatical mistakes in the paper, which I should have corrected during the revision stage. I have to agree that I was late regarding this matter. Yet, I incorporated all the extensive corrections and sent back the proof. The journal manager was helpful. He sent me a pdf file with all the corrections incorporated and asked me to approve the revised proof, which I did. Recently, I contacted Elsevier's customer support, whereby I got to know that the paper is in type-setting. It made me a bit confused because the pdf file I got from the journal manager was already corrected and type-setted.
So my question is how could be the paper in the typesetting stage if I have got a prepared pdf file of the revised proof for approval from the journal manager!! If anyone of you is familiar with this scenario, I would appreciate your feedback.
Nothing unusual is happening.
And it is quite normal to find typos in revised proof as well. At least is why you have received one. Take it as a final check opportunity.
Thank you for your feedback.
If Elsevier customer support is the same person as the journal manager, this would be weird. But there's a very good chance that they aren't the same person. Elsevier customer support is likely looking at a high-level overview of what the status is, and doesn't know the details. The journal manager would know it's the 2nd typesetting stage, but presumably the status is still reported as "typesetting" (which is, after all, what it is) and therefore also what Elsevier customer service tells you.
If you're already in contact with the journal manager, ask him/her for the status, not customer support.
Thank you for your reply.
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151420 | Choosing among graduate schools
I am an undergraduate student who has been admitted to three universities with full funding it is almost two weeks that I am stressing over my choices, therefore I decided to post my situation here to have your thoughts as well. I have been admitted to:
A high-rank Canadian University in Chemical Engineering MSc and my research will be related to Oil&Gas related fluid mechanics and simulation
A low-rank US University in Chemical Engineering MSc and my research will be about Oil&Gas related Molecular Dynamics and CFD simulations
A high-rank French graduate school in Renewable Energy Master
I am just left undecided between going to the US where a lot of opportunities are, or going to one of the top schools in my field in Canada or going to France but specialize in a rapidly growing Renewable Energy sector.
Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts!
What are your post-masters goals? This is key to answering your question.
My post-graduation plan is to work on industrial R&D in tackling energy-related challenges of the future.
First of all, congrats! I don't have a full understanding of your situation, and my field of study isn't the same, but these might be some questions which might help you rank your options:
What's your post-graduation plan? Do you plan to get a PhD or start working after you finish your MSc? Knowing what you want to do with the degree will certainly help you see joining which university/lab will take you closer to your goal.
It's a research-based MSc: how much do you know about the lab you are going to be working with? Have you talked to the PIs of those labs personally? Can you request a brief online meeting with the lab members? Are they happy with the lab culture? What are former students from those labs doing now?
In my opinion, the alignment of your research interests' and the lab's, and the lab culture are the most important.
My post-graduation plan is to work on industrial R&D in tackling energy-related challenges of the future.
I am not sure if your field is different but currently I don't see any job opportunities in the States. I am also unsure if you are living in the US or not but with COVID related visa issues, it gets complicated to get even a student visa. I have university experience both in Canada and in the US (social sciences), and without any reservation, I would pick Canada (in Canada - US comparison). However, many factors play a role in a decision like this one (e.g., language barrier, further collaborations, daily life, support system etc). But imho US lacked many of these things for me.
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59038 | Citations: What do I do when the article writer's name is the same as mine?
What should I do to give credit to an author whose first name is the same as mine and last name is not provided anywhere? I don't want it to look like I wrote the article which I am citing in any way, shape, or form, but I also don't want to make a big deal out of that one citation. I am using MLA formatting.
did you mean to write the last name is the same as yours and the first name is not provided?
Is your name particularly unusual? If not, people are used to there being more than one Smith, Durand, or Zhao.
@henning No, I wrote it correctly. My first name is the same.
@ jakebeal It's kind of in the middle. Generic but not the MOST popular.
Edit x2 actually now that I look at it, more popular than I thought.
I'm not sure I understand the situation. Where did you find an article whose author doesn't have a last name listed? (I'm assuming it's not someone with only one name.) I've never seen such a thing. If it's from an unusual source, such as a collection of pseudonymous essays, then it may be worth commenting on this when you cite it. If you give a first-name-only citation with no comment, it will look really weird and people may assume it's a mistake.
@AnonymousMathematician Yeah, the author just has their last name listed. I think for privacy reasons because it's on a hot topic (this is an argumentative essay). As for where I found it, that would kinda give my name out online which I prefer not to do. For siting, I was a bit worried about that - thanks
I'm confused, but perhaps you could call the author you're citing "Harry X." When it's the same last name, I've seen "(no relation)".
@aparente001 Thanks, I'm all set though
If it's just the first name, cite the work as being authored by a mononymic person. Author names in text are virtually always (a) full name, (b) initials + last name, or (c) just last name.
The consistent use of a first name only, along with an entry in the works cited whose author has that name and that name alone, will make it clear that you are a different person (especially if you actually do quote yourself and have a separate entry, in Last, First format with your works).
If you still feel that there is the possibility for confusion, upon first mention of the author, insert a footnote or parenthetical statement to clarify the distinction.
Ok, thanks for the help. I don't have any of my own "quotes" that I put in this essay, but I did use my full name at the top for demonstration purposes.
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148899 | How much domain expertise and network does a special issue guest editor need?
I have been invited as a special issue guest editor. The journal is genuine (I have both published and reviewed there multiple times) but not very prestigious and sometimes seen as "easy" to get into. So far the special issue has a title and a deadline, but the scope is yet to be defined by the guest editors. The title is broad enough to be its own journal. Within the fields that would fit with this title, my expertise and network range from "a little" to "none at all".
I've been a little surprised by the invitation because I thought guest editors were senior researchers in their field, and no matter how much introspection I do on the impostor syndrome, I'm not a senior researcher in this topic.
I tentatively accepted, because being a guest editor could be a great learning experience and would enhance my CV, and perhaps I don't need that much domain expertise if the other guest editors are more experienced experts and my role would be rather to carefully read papers, reviews, replies, and more reviews, before accepting a paper (or not)?
Now it turns out nobody else has accepted yet and I've been asked to find others, and I'm getting cold feet. Could people who have experience being special issue guest editors, or who are otherwise familiar with these roles, give some advice?
In special issues, are guest editors usually senior researchers with a lot of domain expertise and an extensive network in the field? Or do you also encounter those whose expertise is at best tangentially related?
How much of a handicap would it be to lack the in-depth expertise? Is this a debilitating limitation or one that can be reasonably accommodated?
The field of Earth Observation / Remote Sensing. The publisher is based in Switzerland, specialises in open access, and its journals are indexed by the usual places,
If you are the only guest editor, why not change the topic to suit yourself?
@AnonymousPhysicist I don't know what to do with so much freedom.
Why the downvote?
In my experience, special issues of respectable journals are usually connected to some conference. The guest editors are the organizers or program committee (or a subset thereof), and the authors are people who either spoke at the conference or were invited to speak but couldn't attend. The situation you describe looks quite strange to me.
but not very prestigious and sometimes seen as "easy" to get into (Impact Factor 4.1) --- I guess it would take someone familiar with the field of Earth Observation / Remote Sensing to know what exactly what "not very prestigious" means, because 4.1 is stellar high in some fields. For example, one of the top 2 or 3 most prestigious journals in all of mathematics has an impact factor of 3.027.
@DaveLRenfro you're right, academia varies more than I think. I have removed the impact factor from the question because it doesn't really add important information and is without sufficient context.
For what it's worth, I had no idea what was good or bad for impact factors, even in mathematics (my few papers came out before this started being something people worried about), and thus I googled a few OK but not top journals I know of to get an idea, and was getting impact factors under 1. So I decided to look at one of the most prestigious journals I knew offhand (it's associated with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton), and at this point I realized that impact factors must vary drastically with field. Prior to this I would have guessed they varied a bit, but not to this extent.
I've edited journals without holding a PhD in the past (don't ask). Doing a mediocre job is not that hard - to invite reviewers for example you just need to do a literature survey of the paper's field, which is standard Masters-level work. You can then invite reviewers even if you don't know them. The success rate is quite good - I think roughly 50% of the reviewers I invited responded to the invitation (although a substantial number decline). Doing just this, it's possible to keep the journal operating, although of course it will not do well. Since you know something about the field you should be able to do better: for example you can desk reject with more confidence, make sure every accepted paper has something interesting to say, and so on. If you can understand what the papers are saying on a high level, you should not have to worry about not being able to do a good job.
However, there are several potential problems I can see:
You've said it's an open access publisher based in Switzerland, which pretty much identifies which publisher it is. It doesn't have a great reputation. You could meet people who disapprove of you working with that publisher.
More concerningly, you are very likely to be asked to help solicit submissions. This is very different from reviewing submissions, and here a wide network will be helpful. You may also feel like the publisher is exploiting you - viewed one way, you are using your contacts to help them make money. If this troubles you, then that feeling could be exacerbated by the low response rate from other potential editors.
Yet another potential problem is "The title is broad enough to be its own journal". I would guess from this that the initiative for the special issue came from the publisher's staff, not the editor-in-chief. Although this isn't a red flag - there's a good chance the publisher got the editor-in-chief's approval before approaching you - it is something to keep in mind. Another issue is the broad scope could make it difficult for you to even put together a special issue since so many topics would be relevant. You could talk to the publisher and/or the editor-in-chief to narrow down the topic, if you feel it's appropriate.
One more thing probably worth mentioning is that you'll likely have a lot of scope to define what you want the special issue to look like. If the initiative really is from the publisher, chances are they will be willing to defer to your expertise, and the editor-in-chief won't object.
So, what to do now? If you don't care about doing a good job, you can go ahead. Leave the scope, invitations, marketing, etc to the publisher (they'll undoubtedly do a mediocre job at best, since they have no domain expertise) and just review any papers that actually are submitted. The special issue will not be pretty, but the amount of non-review work you need to do will be minimal. If you care about doing a good job, I'd suggest thinking it through before committing. Talk to the editor-in-chief, talk to a senior colleague, think about what you want the special issue to be about and who you might invite to contribute.
By the way: if you do go ahead, I'd recommend asking the publisher if they can offer free open access for your invited submissions.
In my experience, the main role of a guest editor is to find reviewers for submissions—and perhaps to solicit submissions. Can you think of some interesting work you'd like to see in a special issue? Do you know who you'd ask to review it? Then you're ready.
But you don't need our help with this, and you can get much more specific and exact advice—pick up the phone and have a chat with the editor-in-chief (or whomever asked you to serve). You were invited for a reason, and you may as well find out what it is.
Can the authors of the special issue serve as reviewers for each other?
@Philosopherofscience Just stumbled on your comment. There's a question on that topic: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/15903/17254
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88577 | Are fixed-term research funded staff such as post-docs entitled to redundancy rights, such as severence pay at end of contract?
According to Fixed-term employment contracts at gov.uk:
Anyone who’s worked continually for the same employer for 2 years or more has the same redundancy rights as a permanent employee.
When ending a fixed-term contract specifically:
If a contract isn't renewed, this is considered to be a dismissal, and if the employee has 2 years’ service the employer needs to show that there’s a ‘fair’ reason for not renewing the contract.
Redundancy rights include redundancy pay and a notice period, among other things.
Do those redundancy rights apply for research funded staff on fixed term employment contracts at universities in England? My question covers both postdocs (Grade 6) and other research funded staff (Grade 7).
(There are also other rights, such as Any employee on fixed-term contracts for 4 or more years will automatically become a permanent employee, but those come with caveats already on the gov.uk page; my question is specifically about redundancy rights)
Edit: It appears this may depend on whether postdocs are legally considered trainees on a work-experience placement or not. Since my question covers both postdocs and other research funded staff, the trainee-or-not status of postdocs would need to be established in order to answer the overall question.
"Workers don’t count as fixed-term employees if they: ...are a...trainee on a work-experience placement" (source: https://www.gov.uk/fixed-term-contracts/what-counts-as-a-fixedterm-contract). So post-docs might not be considered fixed-term employees. Hence, would not be entitled severance pay.
You might want to clarify whether you are considering trainees or non-trainees, because the answer will differ.
@user2768 I have no clue whether postdocs in the UK are legally considered "trainees on a work-experience placement". Certainly my employer does not describe me as such in my employment contract.
I don't know whether "trainee" is legally defined in the UK, but definitions of postdoc include the word training, e.g., "[a] postdoc is a person...who is pursuing additional research, training, or teaching in order to have better skills to pursue a career in academia, research, or any other fields" -- https://postdocs.cornell.edu/structure-postdoctoral-study
@user2768 But they're also employees, and your link is from New York, USA. There must be many precedents of postdocs leaving employment at end of contract after >2 years in the UK that can inform an answer to my question.
The definition is from a prestigious academic institution and I believe it will be accepted internationally, by academics at least. Regarding the "many...postdocs leaving employment at end of contract after >2 years in the UK," I am sure there are. But, those that didn't receive any severance pay can't help you. (They may not have insisted that their employer's obligations were fulfilled.) And any that did might not be able to help either. (They may have had a different contract.) In any case, your question relates to UK law, rather than whether particular postdocs received severance.
Try contacting the Citizens Advice Bureaux.
@user2768 I have contacted the UCU (where I am a member) with this question, they might know. See also https://www.ucu.org.uk/legal-dispute-at-stirling and https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/3547/The-ending-of-a-fixed-term-contract---some-information
the UCU looks like an excellent organisation to contact. Making several assumptions, I presume that you aren't expecting/haven't received severance, when you believe it is legally due. Moving forwards, you should consider whether you want to chase what you believe is legally due. It might well be expensive in terms of your time and finances (a lawyer might be required), and it might well damage your reputation (your supervisor, head of school, dean, ... might be involved and that could be damaging, this could be mitigated if they believe you're right).
@user2768 My end of contract is only in two years (unless renewed by another fixed-term contract), but it never hurts to know what to expect, so the hypothetical situation of a legal conflict is not currently applicable. I only learned about those rights outlined at gov.uk recently (see also this question), so now I'm curious as it would mean the armies of fixed term staff employed by the university may be in a slightly better situation than I thought we were.
See https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/3547/The-ending-of-a-fixed-term-contract---some-information and specifically "employees with more than 2 years' service are entitled to redundancy".
I'll tell you this much: They are if the academic staff unions in the UK demand that they are, and stick by this demand. And if that's not the case I'm sure the universities can come up with some legal fantasy they declare to be the truth to avoid paying.
@user2768 the most common official job title for a postdoc in the UK is "Postdoctoral Research Assistant" or "Postdoctoral Research Associate". Unilke in the US, a postdoc is considered a member of research staff and not generally a trainee (unless on a speicfic "Postdoctoral Training Fellowship").
Many PDRAs don't receive redundancy because they leave to take up a new position before the last day of their old position, but universities do pay up, without argument, if you are still in place on the last day of a contract of more than 2 years.
Yes. If you refer to your contract, you will find it is a contract of employment (and probably explicitly states that you are an employee of the university*). Indeed, some universities issue permanent contracts, with a "we'll make you redundant once the funding runs out" clause, to their postdocs.
A few other points:
If you wanted to claim redundancy benefits, you would have to wait for the university to actually let you go. This prevents you leaving before the end of your contract, so will limit your ability to look for a new job in a timely fashion. The university could just shift you into another role to avoid the redundancy costs (especially if it's one you'll want to leave); although, hopefully, most wouldn't be that cynical.
(There's a possibility that they could also require you to apply for suitable, open internal positions, but I don't know whether they could seriously claim your failure to do this equated to leaving voluntarily.)
From your own link, there is no notice period on the non-renewal of a fixed term contract; so a notice period on non-renewal of the contract would only apply to people who, by virtue of over four years of service, have become permanent employees:
Fixed-term contracts will normally end automatically when they reach the agreed end date. The employer doesn’t have to give any notice.
Postdocs are not students or trainees. Here's the definition of those two categories, from the Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002 (part 5, exclusions) (emphasis added):
18.—(1) These Regulations shall not have effect in relation to a fixed-term employee who is employed on a scheme, designed to provide him with training or work experience for the purpose of assisting him to seek or obtain work...
[cut, funding info]
(2) These Regulations shall not have effect in relation to a fixed-term employee whose employment consists in attending a period of work experience not exceeding one year that he is required to attend as part of a higher education course....
[cut, references to the acts that define a HE course]
The pay grade is irrelevant.
*Weirdly, I have seen employment contracts that state you're not (and not for self-employed contracting arrangements). I don't know why because a court wouldn't find someone not to be an employee just because the contract says so.
Excellent answer. Just like to add 1) Employers are required to offer you internal redeployment opportunities if your services are no longer required. 2) Many universities will offer two levels of redundancy, an enhanced redundancy if you can show if engaged in good faith in the redeployment system and the legal minimum if you don't. Often if you take enhanced redundancy you will be barred from working at that uni for a specified period.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:49.060576 | 2017-04-26T11:44:03 | {
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87920 | Apply PhD with no recommendation
Please allow me to ask for suggestion about no recommendation problem.
I graduated my master with distinction and my paper was published in nation wide journal, everything seems to be perfect. But after the graduation, my thesis supervisor has a personal problem with me and we've never talked since then. So now I want to apply for PhD and when it comes to recommendation, I really don't know what to do and I don't think my supervisor will write a good thing about me since we are in personal conflict.
Do you have any suggestion for this situation?
Have you tried e-mailing your thesis supervisor requesting a recommendation? A professional may be prepared to put personal conflict aside and just write about your master's degree work.
I hope that your adviser will be able to put aside personal differences when you ask him and write the recommendation that speaks to your abilities in an academic setting.
If you can be open with your formal supervisor about the "personal problem" s/he has with you, you could simply ask, "I am interested in pursuing a PhD. I know that we have disagreed about XYZ and so I wanted to ask you if you believe you could write me a fair recommendation."
Note, that this is still risky - the supervisor can write a bland recommendation (which holds little weight) or agree to write it and write a bad one anyway.
What about the director of the program you attended? That could be weighed more favorably. Other faculty members? My PhD dissertation chair never wrote recommendations for anyone, so I never even asked him (we never had a falling out or anything, it was just his personal policy). It never hurt my chances of jobs or other things because I had other faculty and references write litters for me instead.
Good luck!
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